CHAPTER 30
The Secrets of Beauty and Love

Wakani was dead, stabbed with his own spear. He sprawled grotesquely on the ground, a strange expression on his face like he was saying, It is well, My Lady. I will go home tomorrow.

A tear ran down Nasomi’s cheek. “Not like this. It shouldn’t be like this.” Fury and hate burned hot inside her. “It shouldn’t end this way!” she said at the top of her voice. “What am I going to say to Khuya?”

She hated her dreams even more. Wakani had not been in her returning dream because he was going to die. “Why in the depths do these dreams have to be right? I told him to go home. I told him… What will I ever say to Khuya his daughter?”

Buyechi had a deep wound in his thigh. He couldn’t get up to walk and fever caught him. Djina used one of Nasomi’s extra dresses to tie around his wound, but the blood soaked through.

Djina had a cut on her forehead and a number of scratches all over her body, but she was otherwise whole. She knelt beside Nasomi to comfort her wordlessly.

When Nasomi stood, she discovered she had a sprained ankle, and stepping on the ground with her left leg sent a fever and weakness all over her body. She stood still to let the feeling pass. Djina offered a hand but she brushed it away, and limped toward where Nhema the horse lay on the ground with a pool of blood forming around him.

Nhema had hit his neck against a tree trunk and fallen onto some sharp rocks. Sometime during the fight, he had got up and run on ahead, but had fallen and could not move anymore.

As the sun was rising, Nhema was grunting his last breaths. “I don’t know what to do,” Nasomi said, to herself. “I am tired of losing.”

Djina came next to her. She had salvaged Nasomi’s bag. “That’s the scariest baby I have ever seen.”

Nasomi only gave her a look.

“What are you, Nasomi?”

Nasomi thought for a moment. “One of them.”

“Eh? I don’t get.”

“Apparently there are people in the world who possess some gift or other. I haven’t met anyone like me, though.”

“Magic, you mean?”

“If you want to call it that. I can see things in my dreams.”

“You defeated those… things. The baby and the jackal.” She shuddered. “I still feel tingles about all of it.”

“They’re powerful sorcerers, both of them… Well, were. Their type of magic has strange effects on them. I fail to imagine how the Toddler got that way. Some most powerful ones choose animal forms: jackals, lynxes, hyenas.”

“But you defeated them.”

Nasomi looked at her hands, as if she could see in them the power of her tellings. “My ability can undo their magic. Djina, my journey is no good thing. There’s danger. And death.”

“I will follow you wherever you go.”

“Don’t be silly, Djina. I cannot protect you. You must remain at Zjala, make a new life for yourself.”

“I am coming with you, Nasomi. I have a feeling I should be with you.”

Nasomi told her about the dream she had had many years back, of returning to Nari with Tambo, a girl named Djina and a dragon named Mdua.

“Eh? A dragon?”

“I could have misremembered that part. Maybe it was somebody who likes to think he’s a dragon.”

An ox cart trundled their way from the direction of Zjala. The two men in it jumped off, came to them. One whistled when he looked upon the gore. He spoke in Djom with Djina, who told them what happened. He switched to Ao’Mu when he studied Nasomi.

“I have not heard of witches attacking people on this road before,” he said. “Dark times we are living in.”

The other man had a staff in his hand. He used it to poke the injured horse. “A mighty fine horse this was,” he said.

“His name was Nhema,” Nasomi replied.

“He will make some fine meat.”

“Are you insane? No one is eating my horse. I will bury him.”

“Zjala ne djuka, woman. Why waste to the earth what can remain and sustain a good number of people? Your horse died so that we can live. How much would you have?”

“Just do whatever you think you need to after I am gone, please. Some food and water,” Nasomi said, and there was a tear in her eye. “And your staff.”

He clutched it to himself. “It is quite sentimental.”

“I have a bad leg. It will help me walk.”

“Give the lady the stick,” the other man said, slapping his friend on the back. “Your son can whittle you another one.”

The man gave her the staff, as well as pieces of flatbread, a water gourd and some balm to use for their injuries. The two men helped her dig a grave and bury Wakani. Buyechi played a sad tune on his flute, and Nasomi spoke solemn words over Wakani’s departure.

I can’t take them with me anymore, Nasomi realized. She regretted telling Djina about the dream. It’s dangerous. They will all be killed by Reema. They will all have to stay behind.

Nasomi said it was time to move on. Buyechi rode Wakani’s horse while she and Djina walked. The going was slow, imbued by a solemn silence. They moved for over three miles in this manner, and they all became too tired and hungry to move on.

“Let’s sit here and eat,” Nasomi said.

Djina laid Nasomi’s cloak on the ground, helped Nasomi to sit on it. They ate the bread and drank the water and applied the balm to their wounds.

“Every one of your people seems to speak my language well,” Nasomi said to Djina.

“Ao’Mu is easy to learn,” Djina said. “I could speak it well when I was two. My language is something else. It has so many depths of expressions. I am still learning it, can you imagine.”

“It must be a tough language.”

“The fundamentals are easy to grasp. Djom means thing. A thing in general. The plural of that would be djombo. What else can I teach you? Zje is you, zji is me, zju is him or her. So I can ask: Zje’kdjin? Meaning, what is your name?”

“So, Djina?”

“Djina literally means ‘girl’s name’. But it has some sacredness attached to it. So it’s a word that depicts the glory and beauty of a woman. Eh… li is to walk, lo to crawl or move slowly. We have a saying: kedlak zje’li kedlak zje’lo um: You cannot walk without first crawling.”

“Teach me something vulgar.”

Djina gawked at her, then smiled wickedly. “Zje’pi toov. It says—”

“Please don’t tell me what it means. I just want to be able to say it to someone when I meet her. Zje’pi toov.”

Djina laughed. “Nasomi, you bad girl.”

Djina attempted to teach Nasomi some more Djom, but Nasomi was in too much pain to comprehend it. She soon fell asleep.

She had a telling dream. Tambo, Reema, and Gweuka were in Olonge, followed at a distance by its curious denizens.

Tambo looked sick, exhausted, stooping as he walked. The Bride's spell on him sapped his health. But he followed after her, like a dog on a leash.

The Bride sashayed through an avenue of people backing away. The cloak on her back, of lynx skin, was tattered at the hem. It was heavy with the blackness of her power.

Three men dressed in bright orange and red robes emerged from the entrance of a massive edifice. The elder one was the tallest, his hair so white it almost glittered. The shorter one of the three was portly and torpid. The other was also pot-bellied and had a slack countenance.

“What do you want?” the white-haired man said.

“Only to ask a few questions. May we do this privately?” The crowd was thickening.

“We do not answer to your demands, witch. We have heard of what you did in Siloka village. We do not look lightly upon terrorism on our people.”

“It was because they couldn’t get me what I wanted. I was being nice, but they were mean and insulting. I tried not to kill them, but they left me no choice.”

“Here are your choices from us: leave, never return, or face a trial.”

Reema smiled. “Will the trial include you giving in to my demands? I have heard you are wise and know many things. The great Mfundae, the ones who know everything.”

“There is nothing for you here,” replied the Mfunda.

“I want to know the secrets of beauty and love.”

The Mfundae looked at each other, whispered amongst themselves. The shorter one replied to her.

“Love comes from the heart and beauty - well, one is born with it.”

“Do not let my looks fool you. I was born beautiful and still am beneath this ugliness imposed on me by some fools.” Gweuka cowered when she scowled at him.

“I want to reclaim it, and also the love that others had for me. Tell me how I can have this magic.”

“There is no such thing as magic for beauty and love. If you’re as powerful as you claim, you should understand that. Please leave.”

She approached. “I have come a long way and traveled many years. I cannot accept that answer. If it was that simple, why did you confer among yourselves before you answered me? Tell me what I want to know.”

The white-haired Mfunda shook his head. “There are things even the most learned Mfunda cannot know. Those are mysteries even our gods cannot tell us.”

“You lie. Show me to your magic records and items.”

“You are mad!” the average one said. “Have you no respect? Who are you to demand such a thing of servants of the spiritual order?”

A power radiated from the Bride’s cloak, like wisps of black smoke. The shadow on it fell to the ground, and the cloak billowed from the lightness. The shadow expanded towards the Mfundae as she approached.

They took the challenge. Retrieving handfuls of golden dust from pockets, they came at the Bride, blowing the dust off their palms. It swirled in the air, materializing in the form of a thin pellucid wall that dragged towards the Bride.

But her shadow passed under the wall, unperturbed, still expanding. She didn't break her walk and the wall shattered when she came in contact with it. The Mfundae were wide-eyed, and before they could run, black tentacles shot out of the widening shadow and grasped and wrapped around them. It pulled them down.

As the lazy-faced one struggled, a tentacle squeezed about his neck until he was pale and out of breath. He sprawled lifeless onto the ground. The shorter Mfunda wailed as the shadow engulfed him too.

The older Mfunda was calmer, his arms raised in submission. The denizens of Olonge were screaming and stampeding away.

“Tell me what I need to know,” Reema commanded.

“We have told you. There's no such thing as—”

An appendage shot out of the shadow, grabbed at the man's neck, yanked him down. The hyena put a paw on the old man’s chest.

He panted. “There have been legends− Tell your beast to step off me.”

“I will not. Speak, like the wise man you are.”

“The Tunka gods - they had the power to grant beauty.”

A smidge of uncertainty swept over the Bride's face. “The Tunka?” she said, a shaking in her voice. “I hear they are ugly scum. What can they ever do for me? I want to know what you have!”

“We have nothing. I speak the truth. The Tunka lost their grace, yes. Their gods exiled them when they apparently let us Ndinge and Badjom people settle onto their land. They are left distraught and barbaric, deprived of all beauty and civility. There's an ancient city called Dunia. It was the Tunka capital before their gods banished them to the oceanside. There is word that an ancient power lingers there, the power of their old gods. But it is an angry power, and no one goes there.”

“You could have saved yourselves all this trouble if you had told me this in the first place.”

“Eh!” the Mfunda screamed. “You are mad, woman. The Tunka are wild and dangerous, they kill and eat anyone who gets close to them. Your daring will get us all in trouble—”

“I didn’t say I am going there, old lunatic. Since you’re now in the mood to talk, come, show me your vast knowledge.”

She walked toward the building, and her shadow dragged the screaming, thrashing Mfunda toward her. Tambo and Gweuka followed as she entered. They stepped into a large hall lit by sunlight boxing in through large square windows near the roof. The hall seemed to want to hold on to a grey gloominess, though.

On hundreds of plinths in the hall that stood to the height of the belly were thick tomes. Some were open to random pages.

“Which shall we start with?” the Bride demanded.

“The Wise Teachings of Mfunda Fomara,” the Mfunda croaked. He pointed to a tome.

The shadow dragged him across the floor. “Begin to read.”