Wizard of the Crow

“When midnight came,” Kamltl explained, “I wrote a notice, CLOSED FOR THE NIGHT: COME BACK TOMORROW, and I asked the one I saw last to hang it outside.”

“They are doing exactly what they did in the day when I posted the notice about Tajirika’s absence,” Nyawlra said.

What are you talking about?” Kamltl asked, puzzled.

She told Kamltl about her day at the office and about the grant of special powers to Sikiokuu to crush the Movement for the Voice of the People. Kamltl in turn recounted his adventures as the Wizard of the Crow.

“A never-ending dream,” Kamltl concluded.

“More like a never-ending nightmare,” Nyawlra said, looking at her watch and suddenly standing up. “It is very late. Tomorrow we shall need all the strength we can muster to face the queuing daemons.”

When we wake up,” Kamltl said, “we shall find them gone.”

6

But the queues did not go away. For a while all the news of the Global Bank mission, the battles of Mariko and Maritha with Satan, and the saga of flying souls and pamphleteering djinns was supplanted by the drama of the invasion of Eldares by queuing daemons.

Nyawlra and Vinjinia arrived at the office at about the same time every day. They talked of how curious it was that the queue of hunters for future contracts had dwindled to zero, Nyawlra neglecting to tell Vinjinia that it had simply changed location. Pressed by Vinjinia to do something about the remaining queue, the Santamaria police said there was not much they could do without the report from the police motorcycle rider who had still not returned. So the two women waited patiently for the return of the rider to signal the end of the queue.

Their monotony was broken only when Vinjinia brought her two children, Gaciru and Gaclgua, to the office during midterm break. The children said that they did not want to stay home with their father because he kept on barking a single phrase over and over, and they were a little afraid that he might be turning into a dog.

Gaciru and Gaclgua were so excited by the sight of the queue that they quickly forgot about their father’s illness. They stood by the window, looking out and asking endless questions. Were they students? For only in school had they seen people queue. They soon grew bored with the whole thing, as there was little out there by way of shoving, hide-and-seek, or frantic chases eliciting admonition.

Gaclgua was the first to ask their mother to tell them a story, and Vinjinia pointed at their new auntie.

Nyawlra sang them work songs and recited poems about weaver-birds and elephants. But the children wanted stories. Nyawlra told them that stories were for evenings only, at home by the fireside and not daytime in the office by the phoneside. Hakuna matata. Gaciru and Gaclgua would pretend that it was evening and the office was home and all the people in the queue were listeners. Eventually Nyawlra yielded and said she would tell them a story about a blacksmith, an ogre, and a pregnant woman.

What are ogres? they now wanted to know, and Nyawlra explained that the maritnu were humanlike creatures who sometimes fed on humans, including little children. The creatures had two mouths, one in front and the other at the back of their heads, and they ate flies through the mouth at the back. Otherwise the mouth at the back was well concealed by the creature’s long hair, which fell over its shoulders.

“Like my mother’s hair?” Gaciru asked.

“Gaciru, are you saying that your mother is an ogre?” interjected Vinjinia, laughing.

“My mother is not an ogre,” said Gaclgua. “She does not eat other humans.”

“Tell us the story” they said in unison.

A certain blacksmith went to an iron smithery far away. In his absence, his pregnant woman gave birth to two children.

“Like us two,” Gaciru said in a tone between a question and a statement.

“Yes, like you two, a boy and a girl, but in their case they were twins.”

“What were their names?” Gaclgua asked.

Nyawlra was caught off-guard, for in the version she had received the children had no names.

“At the time of the events of the story, the woman had not given them names,” she said.

“Why?” Gaciru asked.

“Because it was an ogre who helped her deliver and who now nursed her, and she did not want the ogre to know their names,” Nyawlra improvised again.

“Why did the ogre do all that?” Gaciru asked.

“Silly Because the husband was not there,” Gaclgua chimed in.

“Mummy! Mummy, Gaclgua is calling me silly!”

“Stop it, you two,” Vinjinia shouted from where she was, “or I shall ask Nyawlra not to tell you stories anymore.”

The ogre was really a very bad nurse. After cooking food, he would dish it out and put the plate in front of the woman, but as soon as she stretched her hand to pick it up the ogre would quickly take the dish away and say: “I see you don’t want to eat my food, but it is all right, I will eat it for you.” The ogre did the same with water: “You don’t want it? I shall drink it for you.”

‘Gaclgua teases me in the same way,” Gaciru complained.

“You do the same to me,” Gaclgua shot back.

They argued back and forth, each accusing the other of the same mean crime, and they would have gone on except for Nyawlra’s warning them that if they did not stop the story would disappear.

“Tell us what happened next,” they pleaded.

All four grew big tummies: of kwashiorkor for mother and children and of fat for the ogre.

One day the woman saw a weaverbird in the yard.

“Is that the same weaverbird that you sang about?” Gaciru asked.

“Which one?” Nyawlra asked, for she had forgotten about the earlier song.

“How can she tell the story if you two keep on interrupting her with endless questions?” Vinjinia interjected.

“We shall not ask anymore,” Gaciru and Gaclgua said together, “until the end.”

In exchange for castor oil seeds, the bird agreed to take a message to the blacksmith far away. Nyawlra described how the bird flew and flew and flew until it finally reached the smelting yard and landed on the branches of a tree. It was very tired, but it sang.

Blacksmith smelting iron

Make haste, make haste

Your wife has given birth

With the ogre as the midwife

With the ogre as the nurse

Make haste, make haste

Before it is too late

Nyawlra asked Gaclgua and Gaciru to join in the singing so that they would help in defeating the ogre. The weaverbird jumped from tree to tree, trying to attract the smith’s attention. Now, the blacksmith was with others, and at first they simply chased it away as a nuisance, but seeing the bird’s persistence they took the time to listen to it more carefully. It was then that the blacksmith remembered that he had left a pregnant wife behind and realized that the bird was telling him of the danger facing his wife and children. He gathered his spear and shield and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, soon reaching home, where he joined his wife and children, and with their combined strength they were able to defeat the evil creature.

“Did you say their combined strength?” Gaciru asked. “I thought that babies cannot fight?”

“Or women?” added Gaclgua.

“Who told you that women cannot fight?” asked Gaciru. “Me, I cannot let a boy, any boy, beat me without fighting back,” Gaciru said, glaring at Gaclgua.

“I talked about their strengths, big and small, being combined,” Nyawlra told them, explaining how the babies cooperated by not crying too much and how the woman, though weak, gave the husband all the details she had