“At last they were done, and they ran off to the west ... all of them but her. She rolled on the ground again after the others were gone, and when she stood up, she was a woman again. She put on her turban and asokaba, and walked away from the field. I climbed down from the tree and ran to the field of our neighbor. We caught her as she came down the road to this house, then took her to Kuya Adowa. The rest, you already know.”
Babakar shook his head in disbelief. He looked pleadingly at Amma, but she would not return his gaze.
“Kambu,” Kuya Adowa whispered. “An animal imbued with the power of a spirit-being beyond the realm of man. They control the actions of the animal they invade, and they can assume the shape of humankind and speak the language of men. They read our thoughts, and tell us what they know we would most like to hear. Yet even though they may look human, they are not.”
Her voice shook with fury and fear as she continued.
“Babakar! Your woman is a kambu. A kambu cannot love. She means only evil for you. If not, then why didn’t her creatures spare your field?”
“No,” Babakar groaned. “No! I cannot believe it ...”
“Yes!” screamed Kuya Adowa.
Her spidery black hand reached up and tore the turban from Amma’s head. Babakar gasped. It was not a bare, fire-seared scalp that lay revealed in the stark moonlight, as Amma had led him to expect. Her head was covered by a cap of wooly black hair, as that of any woman of Songhai would be. Sprouting from the front of her skull, however, were two small, spiraled horns ... the horns of a female desert gazelle.
A wave of despair swept over Babakar. He recalled Amma’s words of only a night before: “You must not touch my turban ...”
“Amma,” he said with a sob, wondering if even her name was a lie. She had not mentioned it before he told her of his first Amma.
For the first time that night, Amma’s eyes met his. Her face, even beneath the spiraled horns, still absorbed him in its loveliness.
“One of the Sussu you killed during the war was the son of a sabane – a powerful sorcerer, a master of the Black Talk,” she told him. “The father used his skills to discover the slayer of his son. Then he used the Black Talk to bind me to his will; to use me to force my people to carry out his vengeance.
“I resisted, but his power was too strong. The effort it took to bind me killed the sabane, but the power of his Black Talk remains. I am compelled to carry out his command: to call my people like locusts to destroy your crops and starve you to death. The sabane was mad with grief. He wanted all of your people to suffer for your deed.”
“Lies! Lies!” screeched Kuya Adowa. “Can’t you see this is a creature of evil, a thing that deserves death? Her very appearance is a lie!”
Amma turned her gaze to the tyinbibi, and the elder gasped and shrank back a step. Then Amma’s eyes returned to those of the stricken farmer.
“A kambu can love, Babakar,” she said softly.
With an abrupt move, she bolted through the circle of men around her. One of them managed to grasp her asokaba, but Amma tore free and raced on, a naked shadow in the moonlight.
“Stop her!” Kuya Adowa screamed.
One of the farmers hurled his staff. Whirling end-over-end, it struck Amma on the back of her head. She fell heavily. Before she could rise, the farmers were upon her, striking hard with their staves. They hit her with the frenzy of men killing a poisonous snake.
Crazed with sorrow and rage, Babakar broke free from Atuye and Mwiya and rushed toward Amma’s attackers. Just as he reached them, an unearthly shriek rose. With a ferocity he had not felt since the last days of the war, he seized two of the men and hurled them violently to the ground.
Then he stopped, looked down and swayed like a man drunk on palm-wine. For the broken, bleeding body sprawled before him was not that of a woman. A dead gazelle lay there, its eyes staring emptily upward – as emptily as Babakar’s eyes stared down. He dropped to his knees and reached out to touch the head of the fallen creature.
“That sound,” Falil iri Nyadi said nervously. “It was just like the one she made when she summoned the gazelles.”
“Listen!” Atuye said suddenly. “Can you hear it, coming from the west? A rumbling sound ...”
Though they did not answer him, the others had, indeed, heard it. The sound grew louder. It was like the beat of an insistent drum, growing in intensity, yet retaining an underlying delicacy of tone.
“Look!” cried Falil, pointing to the dark western horizon.
The others followed his gaze, and beheld a shadowy mass detaching itself from the black gloom. Individual shapes became discernible: graceful forms advancing rapidly in breathtaking bounds. Spiraled horns flashed and glittered in the moonlight.
“Gazelles,” whispered Kuya Adowa.
Her hands clutched convulsively at her tira; strange words of sorcerous import spilled from her lips.
“What’s wrong with you, woman?” snarled Atuye. “What harm can a herd of timid gazelles do?”
“They don’t look so timid to me,” said Mwiya. “I thought you said there were scores of them, Falil. Looks more like hundreds now.”
“She called them,” Falil muttered.
“I cannot stop them!” cried Kuya Adowa. “Run!”
“From gazelles?” Atuye scoffed.
A four-legged body arrowed toward him – head down, horns pointed outward. The sharp tips of the horns hit Atuye full in the chest. With a strangled cry, he went down, eyes wide in incredulity even as blood spurted from his mouth.
Terrified, the others turned and fled, dropping staves and torches alike
