Wizard of the Crow

defeat.”

“Yes, I saw them, half beast and half human…” said Kamltl.

“As a figure of speech?” Nyawlra asked.

“They were real,” Kamltl said emphatically. “The ones I saw when in my bird form were real.”

Unable to take his wanderings as a bird with a straight face, Nyawlra interrupted: “When Maritha and Mariko were telling me about the Soldiers of Christ believing in a Devil who resides in a cat, I felt like laughing but did not. Do you know why? The Soldiers of Christ remind me of my maternal great-grandmother. She was among the first or second generation of those who ran away from what they saw as savagery and sought refuge in the new Christian mission centers, though in her case she was also running away from a marriage forced on her. Do you know that my great-grandmother, to her dying day, when she was more than ninety years old, believed in the physical reality of devils and angels? That they often walked the earth? God was also real, and she described him as an old man with a white beard and long silvery hair reaching down to his feet. That was her explanation for why nobody could tell the gender and color of God. But what am I supposed to think when the one I love, whose judgment and insights I trust, tells me that he has been a bird and seems to believe it? If the soldiers remind me of my great- grandmother, you remind me of Gaciru and Gaclgua-you know, Vinjinia’s kids. When Tajirika was stricken with white-ache and Vinjinia came to work in the office for the first time in her life, she often brought her children with her and I told them stories. They loved the Marimu stories about the two-mouthed ogres, with one mouth at the back of the head and the other in front…”

“That is it,” Kamltl interrupted. “You have said it. Ogres.”

Nyawlra was startled by his reaction, and she stared at him, once again struck by how seriously he seemed to take the whole thing. Kamltl noticed her disbelief.

“Nyawlra, don’t ask me to explain, but do me a favor,” he said, trying to reassure her of his sanity. “Go back to Maritha and Mariko tomorrow and ask Vinjinia to find out if Tajirika has grown long hair or has started wearing a cap, or covering his head at night or doing anything unusual, however small, that he was not doing before. Ask them to give her this message. At night when Tajirika is asleep, she should inspect his face well, and particularly the back of his head.”

“What?” Nyawlra asked, mystified.

“I want to know if Tajirika has grown a second mouth.”

Nyawlra could not help it. She laughed till she felt as if her ribs were cracking. But Kamltl did not join her laughter.

“You cannot be serious. I should not have brought you news of the cat’s crucifixion.”

“It is not just Tajirika,” Kamltl said, ignoring her. “I suspect the same of Kaniuru and the other followers of the Ruler.”

She felt like laughing again but held back. What was going to be an uneventful return to Eldares had turned out to be a drama of sorts, Nyawlra thought. A cat, a bird, and now an ogre? Maybe she had underestimated what Kamltl had gone through. Maybe the shooting and the coma had affected his mind.

She was up early the next day and went to buy the Eldares Times; by the time she came back Kamltl had already cooked. They sat down to a breakfast of bread, eggs, and lettuce. As she ate she kept glancing at the headlines.

“Oh, look at this,” she said to Kamltl, and pushed the newspaper across the table toward him.

On the front page was a picture of Sikiokuu. The caption said that the ex-minister had taken a delegation of the members of his Loyal Democratic Party to pledge loyalty and affirm that his party was ready to work with the Ruling Party to nurture the healthy growth of Baby D, and he called upon all the other loyal parties to follow his example. The same page had pictures of Kaniuru and Tajirika in their new roles as Ministers of Finance and Defense, respectively.

“Did you look at the pictures carefully? Did you see how they are dressed?” Kamltl asked Nyawlra, and pushed the newspaper back to her.

“I don’t see anything odd about it,” she said.

“They are wearing baseball caps turned backward.”

“So what?” Nyawlra asked, puzzled.

“Fear not the caps they are wearing but the mouths the caps might be covering.’’

Nyawlra raised her head from the newspaper and looked at Kamltl, her doubts about his sanity deepening.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” she said in English, smiling at him, humoring him. “Okay I will ask Maritha and Mariko to visit Vinjinia.”

2

Several weeks later, Nyawlra got an urgent summons from Maritha and Mariko. She went to their place. Had they succeeded in their mission? What had Vinjinia reported? Nyawlra was pleased with the way she and Vinjinia had worked together in the past. In her hour of greatest need, Vinjinia had acted as her eyes and ears at the State House. She knew that Vinjinia was doing so mainly as a thank-you to the women who had come to her rescue, but still her acts of solidarity, no matter the motivation, showed that her heart was not made of stone. Her position as the managing director of the Mwathirika banks, with the Ruler’s sons on its board of governors, as well as the position of her husband, first as Minister of Finance and now as Minister of Defense, would make her invaluable to the movement. They had not communicated since Nyawlra’s presumed death, and so this message from Vinjinia was going to be a measure of where their relationship stood.

“Matters are not that good,” said Maritha.

“Property and power can change hearts,” Mariko said.

“Tell me the news,” Nyawlra said.

“We went to her place in Golden Heights,” Maritha said.

“Because she does not come to the cathedral as regularly as she used to,” Mariko explained.

“And we knew that this matter was important to you,” said Maritha.

“In the front yard was Tajirika’s Mercedes-Benz, with its ministerial flag waving in the wind,” Mariko said.

“When Vinjinia saw that it was us, she came outside and quickly led us back to the gates.”

“There was no please come in or anything like that.”

“No welcome with a cup of tea or water.”

“Not like old times.”

“It was as if she was now tired of us.”

“Not that we are complaining.”

“Oh, no. If anything, we are still grateful for the way she came to our defense against those soldiers. Oh, what has come over young people that they would turn on their mothers and fathers?” Maritha said.

“We pray for them daily.”

“That they may see the light and glory of the Lord.”

“Amen,” the two said in unison.

“So what happened?” asked Nyawlra, thinking that they were straying into irrelevance.

“We talked outside, at the gates,” Mariko said.

“And from the way she received us we knew that all was not well,” said Maritha.

“Yes, we sensed this long before she opened her mouth.”

“I asked her: How are the children?”

“She said: Gaciru and Gaclgua! You call them children? These days they cease to be children the moment they go to secondary school. They are young adults. Anyway, they are at home on holidays. But what wind has blown you toward these parts?”

“So we told her,” started Maritha.

“That we have a message from the dead…” added Mariko.

“She did not even let us finish. She said that she did not want any messages from the dead. Things have changed. Aburiria is no longer what it used to be. To us is now born a savior, Baby D. The people who used to give a bad name to the Buler, like the late Machokali and the ex-minister Sikiokuu, with their endless fights for power,