He was speaking Riverspeech, the common tongue of the many towns that flanked the Zaikumbe. It was but one of many languages Zuriye knew.
“I understand you,” she said. “Where am I?”
“You are in Bagara. My name is Mkimba, and I am a rootman. Your bite is healed, and the poison is gone.”
“And I am Zuriye of the Komeh,” the stranger said. “I thank you for saving my life.”
“I can only claim part of the credit for that,” Mkimba demurred. “Had it not been for Mgaru, here, you would now be inhabiting the belly of a nsanga. And if Mgaru hadn’t also sucked most of the jaculi-venom out of you on the riverbank, you would not have survived long enough to reach me.”
Zuriye turned her gaze to Mgaru. His face reflected the truth of the rootman’s words. Solemnly, Zuriye reached one hand toward Mgaru. Hesitantly, he took it in his. Then Zuriye drew his hand downward and pressed the back of it to her lips.
“For the one who saved my life,” she murmured softly after she raised her face again.
Mgaru could not speak. But as their eyes met, something beyond words passed between them. Then Mweyzo cleared his throat, and the moment passed. Mgaru released Zuriye’s hand and glared resentfully at his father.
“Zuriye, there is much we need to know about you,” the diop said. “Such as the whereabouts of your people – Komeh, is it? – and how we might return you to them. But first, there is something I must ask of you. When strangers come to Bagara, we all wish to greet them. And my people have been concerned about you. They wish to see that you are well. Do you feel strong enough to step outside this house for a few moments so the people may see you?”
Zuriye noted the diop’s forced manner, and the tense way he gripped the staff that seemed to be the only sign he bore of his rank. She sensed there was something beneath Mweyzo’s words of concern.
“Yes, I think I can do that,” she replied.
Sitting up on the mat, she wrapped the cloth around her slender waist. Then she swayed to her feet. The sudden change in position caused a momentary dizziness. When she wavered, Mgaru came quickly to her side and supported her with his arm.
“Again, I thank you,” Zuriye told him.
“For you, anything,” Mgaru blurted. Then he bit his lip self-consciously.
Leaning on Mgaru’s arm, Zuriye walked with the others through the entrance. She blinked in the sudden blaze of sunlight while the assembled Bagara stared at her. In turn, she regarded them with an appraising eye.
The men were mostly of medium height, with stocky, well-knit bodies left mostly bare by the knee-length shuka that was their only garment. Their hair grew in tight, close caps. Some wore bronze ornaments on their arms and legs. Unlike some people of the river, the Bagara did not scarify their bodies.
Like the men, the women went bare to the waist, though the hems of the women’s shukas touched the ground. To the Bagara, a corpulent woman was a beautiful woman, and many were the mammoth breasts and rolls of dark abdominal flesh that glistened in the sunlight. The hair of the young girls was plaited in rows across their heads. The mature women’s coiffures rose from the back of their skulls in enormous, inverted cones of hair woven into a latticed framework. Naked children of both sexes peered shyly at the stranger standing between the diop and his son.
To the Bagara, Zuriye presented a bizarre figure: silver turban, silver-painted eyelids, lips, and shallow breasts tipped with white circles, not to mention her stick-thin body and eyes that seemed too large for her face ...
Mweyzo opened his mouth to speak – then closed it abruptly as the silence bred from mutual curiosity was shattered by a weird, inhuman scream.
Before the echoes of the terrible cry died away, an incredible shape appeared as if it had been conjured out of empty air. The apparition capered and shrieked like a mad thing, circling the periphery of the crowd. Zuriye stared in astonishment as Bagara men shrank fearfully from the intruder, and Bagara women ushered their children toward their homes.
“Ajoola,” they whispered fearfully. “Ajoola, the Witch-Smeller ...”
Mgaru’s arm reached protectively as Ajoola, after a final prodigious bound, began to creep toward them. He was a sight to frighten even the bravest. Naked save for a shuka of civet fur, his skin was pocked with suppurating sores. His body was skeletal, but wires of sinew ran taut beneath filthy skin. His face was like a skull with beady eyes burning madly in sunken sockets. Cracked lips pulled back in a grotesque rictus from blackened stumps of teeth. His nose had been cut away, leaving a huge hole gaping between his eyes and jaws.
To Zuriye, who trembled beneath Mgaru’s grasp, Ajoola was an image from a nightmare. But to the Bagara, he was an oracle of Ngai the High God. Only the word of a diop bore more authority than the divinations of a Witch Smeller – but not always. Ajoola glared directly at the stranger. The calm and warmth Zuriye had felt since her awakening fled like a hare at the approach of a lion.
Suddenly, Ajoola demonstrated the reason he was named Witch Smeller. He dropped to all fours, his maimed nose sucking in air as he quested along the ground. Closer and closer he crawled toward Zuriye.
Mgaru released Zuriye and took a step toward Ajoola. Before he could advance further, Mgaru’s father caught him in a fierce grasp.
“Don’t be a fool,” he hissed into Mgaru’s ear.
Zuriye nearly gagged at the stench wafting from Ajoola’s sores as he shuffled his way to her feet. Then he looked up at her.
Zuriye wanted desperately to push through the crowd and flee toward the river, the forest – anywhere, as long as it was far away from this horror. But she seemed powerless to
