CHAPTER 31
The Mfunda

When they finally got to Zjala, Nasomi’s posse filled their bags with foodstuffs for the rest of the journey, even though Nasomi was making a plan to go alone. She’d brooded over it, and trying to convince them to stay in Zjala didn’t work.

“I go everywhere My Heart goes,” Buyechi said. He was walking better now, but she could tell he was masking the pain. “I fear no witches.”

“I will not risk your life anymore, Buyechi,” Nasomi said over and over again.

“It is only pain I feel. My leg will be better, and I will fight for you again. For me to honor my duty as a warrior.”

Djina said she, too, wasn’t afraid of witches. “Out here, even though it is dangerous, is where I feel more alive. I will come with you.”

She stopped trying to convince them, but the same notion she had had in Nari was overwhelming her: It has to be me to do it. Alone. This is my burden.

They rested in Zjala for the night, finding accommodation in an inn atop a hill. Nasomi and Djina had one room and Buyechi another. As she drifted to sleep, Nasomi said an apology to the Mara for the life of Wakani and Nhema, for the injury of Buyechi, and for taking away the girl Djina.

“They died for me,” she whispered. “They were hurt for my sake. I will not become like the Bride who lets others die for what she wants. Forgive me.”

“Mhmm?” said Djina, who lay on a pallet near Nasomi.

“I’m sorry, Djina. I was talking to myself. It’s a habit I inherited from my father. I’ll be quiet now.”

“Please, if you want to talk to yourself, go ahead. It is healthy, especially if it helps you relieve all the tension within.”

“Some would say it’s insanity.”

“What do some know? I talk to myself when I am in distress, I remind myself that things will turn for the better. There is much you can learn from yourself.”

“I thank you, Djina, for your words. I will sleep now.”

In the telling Nasomi had, the Bride sat on a rock, warming herself over a fire. There was a tome burning in the flames. The Bride was quiet, deep in thought.

She got up, walked away from the other two, into a field of corn stalks. From there came cursing and shouting, and sobbing.

“Maybe she’ll let us go this time?” the hyena said.

Tambo let his hand fall to the ground languidly. “I have no more strength, Gweuka.” His voice was weak, whispery. “I wish she would kill herself right now and let this be over. She will never find it.”

The hyena grunted where he sat. He flopped his head onto his paws, slept. Tambo stared for a long time at the field of corn into which the Bride went.

Nasomi awoke, judging it a good time to slip away from the others. She got up from the straw pallet and tiptoed to where Djina slept, stretched her hand to get the bags that were by the girl’s head. As she slid the first bag to herself, Djina opened her eyes. “Is it time to go?”

Nasomi sighed. “For me, Djina. You must stay.”

“You were trying to abandon me?”

“Yes.”

“You told me you dreamed I was with you when you went back to Nari.”

“That was a long time ago. Things can change. And I can go and come back for you. You needn’t go thousands of miles for nothing.”

“It’s not for nothing, Nasomi. This is what I want.”

“I need to get to my man quickly. He needs me.”

“I promise I won’t slow you down. Look, I have money.” She took out a small pouch from under her garment. “We can afford to travel together.”

“Djina, I hope you didn’t steal that.”

“It doesn’t matter where it came from.” Djina stood and took Nasomi’s hand. “We’re going together, that’s the important thing. I will not try to get in the way, or try to get killed.” She grinned, kneading Nasomi’s shoulder.

Nasomi could pretend to go to sleep and try again later, but Buyechi might awake at any time. “We are going now, without the warrior.”

“Why?”

“Because I say s0. Are you coming or not?”

Nasomi picked up one bag and peeped outside the door. The night was quiet, and a cold breeze greeted her cheeks. She tiptoed as quickly as she could away from the inn to where they had tethered their horse, and Djina followed.

She helped Djina onto the horse, got onto it herself, and wasted no time in riding the horse to the road that led away from the town.

They rode through the next morning and into the afternoon, taking little rest and food. They walked in the evening to let the horse gain its strength, and they slept a little in the night. The next morning, they were out riding again, and morning turned to afternoon and evening and night. And again. The days and nights were long, and the road wound, meandered, stretched, dipped, turned, disappeared, appeared, rolled, widened, narrowed, rutted, smoothened… and they came into Ndinge territory.

“I’ve always been fascinated by Ndinge customs,” Djina said, as they rode through a village. “I always knew that if I ran away, I’d come here and live the rest of my life with them.”

“Now you can.”

Djina laughed. “You’re still trying to get rid of me. But I am with you now, and I know that whatever lies ahead is a thousand times better than if I stay here.”

“Even if it is pain and death?”

“Even. My religion teaches that when we walk in the path the gods have set for each of us, we will come into a glorious end at our death.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be quick to call you pious.”

“In my own way, I am. You’re part of my strange but glorious spiritual journey, as I am yours. That’s why you dreamed me, years before you met me. The Ndinge have a saying. In Badjom it goes Zjala ne djuka, djuka ne zjala. In Ao’Mu it says ‘All is nothing, nothing is all’. I don’t know how I can explain it to you, Ao’Mu is strange to translate to.”

“The man who bought Nhema said that.”

“It’s a Ndinge philosophy which means all things are equally sacred. But that’s the first meaning.”

“Nothing is too precious to hold on to, maybe?”

“That can be another way of putting it, and that’s one way my people interpret it. The Ndinge take it to mean two things: As everything comes from a formless nothing, everything is sacred. The blade of grass is as sacred as the leaf in the tree. And all things being sacred or important, then nothing is sacred or important. All is nothing. Nothing is all.”

“That can be confusing.”

“That’s just the beginning. Holiness would be regarding everything as sacred. And it would also be to regard nothing as sacred. Here’s a question for you, which I always challenged my father with: If taking someone’s thing is sinful, isn’t it equally sinful for the first person to possess it?”

“Perhaps. If everything is the same, then it belongs to no one. But that doesn’t excuse you taking from another. It wouldn’t make sense if someone could shift their family into a house I built with my own sweat. Or take my husband.”

“My father would give you a hug for saying that. ‘We’re not Ndinge!’ he always tells me. ‘We have our own teachings!’ We had a Ndinge prisoner some months back, a Mfunda. I talked much with him and he explained the philosophy. ‘All is nothing, nothing is all’ means everything is a part of and an expression of the formlessness from which it comes. They call the formlessness the big ‘nothing’. The nothing from which everything comes. All form, that which we can hear and see and feel and experience comes from the nothing taking up different shapes out of its potential to do so. I can take a piece of clay and form a doll or a brick. It’s a brick or it’s a doll, but it is clay. And clay is water and soil, and water and soil are forms of a substance that molds them. And perhaps that substance is the nothing we’re talking about or yet another of many forms of a preceding nothing, and on and on that way. You see where I am going with this? That means while I am me right now, I am also made of the same substance that makes the sky, the water, the stones I pick up, the cob I eat for supper. I am me, I am this horse, I am the warrior Buyechi, I am you.”

Djina continued talking, but Nasomi’s mind had latched onto that last statement. She mulled it over, lost in the edifying noesis of breaking and merging things ad infinitum. Objects, colors, sounds. To this thing called nothing that was behind everything. Maybe that was why, through her dreams she could be anyone anywhere, while asleep somewhere.

When they rested again, Nasomi sought out the Bride. Tambo and Reema and Gweuka were awake in the same spot they’d burned the book. The fire was dead, the remaining ash being fondled by a breeze. Tambo sat in the same position, holding his head in one palm.

“I have made up my mind,” the Bride said.

“You’re as foolish as ever. It is over. Learn to recognize when you’ve lost.”

“I can’t, don’t you see?” She flopped to the ground, lay down facing the sky, hands on her belly. “I have to try.”

“You heard what they said. You’re leading us to our deaths if we go there. The Tunka are not like any people we’ve met. They’re savage—”

“There are no people I’ve met that I can’t best.”

“That’s what you want to prove?”

“I have made my mind. We go tomorrow.”

Tambo stood up. He was breathing like a bull about to charge.

“You’re the stupidest woman I have ever known, you know that? You’re selfish, big-headed, you never listen to anyone. Nothing is not worth sacrificing until you get your way. And you go blaming others, making them suffer for your own childish desires, things that don’t even make sense. You’ve got what you deserved, and now you want the whole world to pity you. To suffer for you. No one wants to be with you unless you force them. You’ve broken up families, murdered innocent people, destroyed ages of wisdom. All because you don’t like the way your face looks! You’re stupid, you’re evil, you know that? You’re a snake in a hen pen, a fly in the soup. I can never love you if you were the most beautiful thing in the world, if you were the only woman—”

“Tambo, I am tired.” She said it coolly, but her shadow wiggled slightly. “I want to sleep. Sit down, keep quiet.”

He sat, kept silent. He faced away from her, lay on the ground. Only Gweuka and Nasomi got to see a tear run from the corner of Reema’s eye. Down her temple. Over the ear. Onto the ground like a raindrop.

Reema clicked her fingers and a shimmer shot out of the ground, surrounding her, Tambo and Gweuka into a protective dome. It shoved Nasomi away, waking her up.

Nasomi thought she had the territory in her mind, as she had seen in her last telling dream. She led Djina into a north-easterly direction, saying it would take them toward Ashge quickly. Tambo and company were perching near Ashge, Tambo’s legs unable to move after walking through the night. The Bride spoke little, brooded on her choice much. She once told Tambo and Gweuka that she had decided it was time to give it up, but changed her mind again and sent Gweuka ahead to Dunia to reconnoiter it.

As Nasomi and Djina blundered through some woods, the trees became closer and larger, the grasses taller and thicker, and the ground softer. A quarter moon beamed in the cloudless sky at night, helping their visibility, but soon a mist rose, obscuring the ground ahead. The smell of many decaying things hung in the air, and nocturnal insects began to chirp and bite.

The trail was presently lost. All they could do was move forward as they had been doing, skirting obstacles, wading through ankle-high murky waters, slapping and swatting at stinging insects. Nasomi spied a large shadow sweep by and she clutched Djina’s arm to stop and listen. The forest was alive with tweets, creaks, groans and the whistling of a breeze through the trees.

Djina began to tell Nasomi a tale of the ghosts said to live in the Ndinge swamps, but she stopped when Nasomi didn’t acknowledge if she was listening. Throughout the night, things dashed below the tree, creatures’ eyes stared at them from the shadows, and a cold touched their bones even though they covered themselves thickly. When they came to a peaceful clearing, they both had trouble sleeping, and Djina whispered a song.

At dawn, as she tried to get up on the horse, Nasomi missed a footing and she fell down, twisting her ankle again.

“Swallow the Bride!” Nasomi cursed. She attacked a shrub that was before her, striking it with her staff. Shredded leaves and twigs flew about. She slashed at the grasses, shouted out one more curse, hit the lower branch of the tree they had slept in.

Djina touched Nasomi's shoulder, and before she realized what she was doing, Nasomi turned and pushed her away. The girl landed on her rump.

Nasomi felt ashamed. “I am so sorry, Djina. Are you fine?” She winced when she tried to turn her foot. It stung as though she had stepped on fire. She sat down.

“I am fine.” Djina got up, dusted herself and picked up the supply bag that had been slung over her shoulder before the push. “Is it bad?”

“I think I’ll be able to walk after a while.”

“Was it a dream?”

“It’s always the dreams!” Nasomi said, too loud.

“What has the Bride done now? Is Tambo alright?”

“These tellings. I hate them!”

“But they will help you find your husband.”

“Will they, Djina? They only show me how incapable I am of doing anything! All I have are my dreams. He's dying, my Tambo is dying and she knows it, she's killing him. Her power is terrible now, but she’s still insisting on going to Dunia. Will I keep chasing them till I am old and toothless, watch him die? I have come all this way to see him die. I will feel everything, see everything. Do nothing.”

Nasomi realized she was wheezing. She tried to compose herself, ashamed by it, but the thoughts were terrible in her mind and it got worse.

“You’re a liar, Nasomi,” Djina said.

“Wha...?” Nasomi breathed to find words. “What did I say? What did I lie about?”

Djina burst into laughter. “It does work, after all.” She laughed some more. “I just wanted to disturb whatever was going on with you.”

“What for? I’m not in a good mood, Djina.”

“Yes, that’s why. My father − as much as I have wronged him − taught me that you need to shake yourself from an entanglement of thinking, remember your calm and face your problem with a clear head.”

“This is not the time to remain calm.”

“It more especially is. Let me show you what I mean. It will help.”

She sat before her, took Nasomi’s hand in her own. “Close your eyes… go on, close them.”

“Djina, please—”

“I can teach you some things, Nasomi. Close your eyes.”

Nasomi reluctantly did.

“Now, breathe. A slow intake… hold it… now, breathe out. Let’s do it twice more. In… hold… out. In… hold… out. Keep doing that, even as I speak. You have lied, Nasomi. To yourself.”

“About what?”

“About who you are.”

“I know who I am.”

“Take that which you’ve said you are. Hold it in your mind like you would hold sand.”

“I don’t—”

“See it in your mind. Now, toss the sand away. Watch it spread, some of it falling, some of it flying away like dust. See it as it spreads out, get lost in everything. Breathe in strength. Breathe out the tension. There is an urgency in your mind.”

“Of course there is.”

“Breathe it out, let the urgency float away. To a place where you can find it later, but not here, not now. Here and now, breathe in peace.”

Nasomi remembered the way the mage kept his mind like a home, with the perfect spots for everything. She tried that, putting her urgency on a shelf in the kitchen of her mind.

“More urgencies are showing up, demanding attention. Send them away, and the next, and the next, until you are left empty. Just a breathing calm being.”

Nasomi broke apart the thoughts in her head, sent them flying everywhere her mind dared to expand.

“There’s a deep peaceful feeling at your base, isn’t there?” Djina prompted.

Nasomi had a feeling. It was the one that preceded the telling dreams: a tug, a pit of warm peace, lifting through her body.

“There is, but I’m not sure it’s the same feeling you’re talking about.”

“As long as it is gentle, demanding nothing from you, but giving you much, then we’re talking about the same one. Here’s what I have found: It has no name, but it names everything. It has no shape, but it forms everything. That is the deep nothing, what connects you to all. Feel it. Call it up.”

As Nasomi focused on the feeling, something flashed into her mind. A moment. A vivid vestige. For that brief instant, she was someone else, looking out a window, longing.

A telling.

She opened her eyes, found Djina looking at her sweetly. “You look peaceful now, full of light and ready to take on the world.”

“I want more. Lead me into it. I felt something, saw something.”

“Let’s use the staff,” Djina said, lifting it off the ground. “We’ll use it as a reminder, as a door if you may. You know how when you smell something, it brings to memory a happy childhood moment? Or when you see an object, and you remember something fond? For me, it’s the smell of fish. It takes me back to when I went to the river with my grandfather. Sunshine, happiness, so much to eat. And the rain. I love the sound of it. It brings all the wonderful times I was at home, watching the rain, taking hot beverages and listening to my grandfather tell me stories.”

Nasomi smiled. “I know what you mean.”

“This staff will be your reminder of the deep calm feeling inside you. Take it in your hand and think of nothing but the… the nothing.”

Nasomi took the staff in her right hand, closed her eyes, let the feeling come up again. The same window came to her mind, the same feeling of longing. Longing for someone to return. A city spread outside the window.

“When it vanishes,” Djina said, “let go of the staff and do it again. All we want is the picking of the staff to remind you to remain calm.”

Nasomi set the staff down, closed her eyes. When she picked it up, she fell into the telling.

Outside the window, a group of children played with a leather ball. Beyond them, towering over trees and other tall buildings, a wall through whose slits the sun poked through. Nasomi knew this place. It was her city Nari. She also knew this person. Her daughter, Ramona.

Nasomi opened up her eyes, dropping the staff. “Did I fall asleep?”

Djina shook her head. “It can feel like that sometimes. Also like a heartbeat is as long as a watch. Time doesn’t seem to matter.”

Nasomi took the staff again, closed her eyes, focused on the feeling. Nari formed before her, through Ramona’s eyes. Nasomi tried to float her ghost from her daughter, succeeded after the third try. She went through the roof out into the sky, saw her home city as she had left it. She was in Nari’s sky as well as sitting on the floor of a forest miles and miles away.

She was aware of both circumstances, unlike in Mifirhana where she had eventually fallen asleep. Also, unlike in Mifirhana, she was not in any emotional upheaval to have this telling. She’d just calmed herself all the way into it.

“Djina,” she said. “Teach me more of this. Teach me all you know.”

Djina giggled. “That’s all there is to it. Only more practice. I must say, you look much better. You learned this faster than I expected.”

“You’re a wonderful teacher. Wiser than you portray in many cases.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is.”

“I am your Mfunda,” Djina said, laughing.

“Thank you. You’ve helped me see a part of my gift I never imagined I had.” She picked up the staff, whipped through the world in search of Tambo.