And every time we did, whatever I tried teaching him, he always turned it into one of his stupid songs. And we’d go out hunting, and he’d be singing, making it up as he went, changing his lines and singing them again and again so he could memorise them until all I wanted to do was strangle him. Him singing and scaring away all the rabbits and rats so we’d end up hungry. Again. Singing: “Don’t sing when you’re hunting—you’ll scare away the game.”
What he didn’t scare away was people. Gods. I was trying to keep us alive out there, keep us away from lions and jackals and men who wanted to rope us or fuck us, and he’d be singing up a sandstorm!
Once I woke up next to our raft—we were hidden down in the reeds—and this moron must’ve gone out singing up and down the riverbank because there had to’ve been three dozen people there when I got up, all of them gazing at my golden little brother, whooping after every song like he was growing wheat out of his ass.
Those idiots. They brought him bowls of fruit and maize, piles of bread, even meat. I mean, they cooked it all right there in front of him, like he was the son of Noot or something.
And so, in the sixty moons or whatever it took us to get down to Min-the-Beautiful, this kind of stupidity just grew. Spread like a disease. Because those fools started telling everyone they met about the golden boy, so when we’d arrive at our next spot, they’d be waiting for us.
Not for us. For him. I was just his older brother. His donkey. Carrying their offerings back to our raft.
I don’t know where he got his words-of-power. To me, his singing was what a cat sounded like when you kicked it till it bled musk, or when you strangled a monkey till its neck snapped. What I’m saying is, it couldn’t’ve been his voice that roped people.
So his words-of-power, I don’t know. Maybe he’d found an ujat or something and swallowed it? Because I looked, I don’t know how many times, and I never found it.
Maybe he’d made a deal with devils. Up the west bank, past the cliffs, over in the mountains of Manu where the Sun Boat disappeared every night—there were devils all over there. Infesting the whole area. “Beware the Mountains of Manu and the Land of Death, where devils dance and never rest.” Yeah, yeah.
So, by the time we got to Min-the-Beautiful, there were crowds—thousands of people, at least—waiting for him. Jumping and whooping and waving palm fronds, begging him to sing.
So naturally he said we had to stay.
And we couldn’t’ve been there more than six moons before he’d sung them all his old songs and a whole bunch of new ones, preachy as all hell, every stupid thing he’d learned down the river or heard from his adoring apes at every stop, when these losers wanted to make him their king.
Their king!
And who was there waiting for him in the front when they asked him, but those two girls I’d pointed out to him at Throne Rock! The ones he said to leave alone. The must’ve followed us!
Sisters. Both hoping to be his wives. Gorgeous as year-calves, begging him to be their bull. And dozens more like them.
He wasn’t interested in all those hip-swayers in the crowd—old ones, young ones, skinny ones, fat ones, widows, virgins—but those two girls: he took the taller one. Had her hair mudded up into two braids, out and up like a cow’s horns. He sang her some line about how she had eyes like a cow’s. She was wet for him on the spot. I could smell her. Like a netful of catfish. I accidentally drooled on myself, but nobody saw.
Then in front of all those crackpots he treated me, his older brother, like his boy. Told me oh-so-generously I could have the other one. Just had to be nice to her was all, not scare her, and not take any other wives. Who the hell did he think he was? He actually made me promise to be nice to his giveaway calf in a herd of one? To keep me poor?
If only I could’ve found that ujat of his. If he’d swallowed it, if it was lodged in his gut, I could carve him open like a hare. Then everything he had would be mine: those adoring morons, their houses and crops, his Throne-girl with the hair-horns—gods, I wanted to bull her till she screamed my name to the stars!
So, I took his leftovers. No point letting it go to waste. Kept her in the house they gave me, brother of their new king. House-Lady. That’s what I called her. Had to keep her roped in there so she wouldn’t sneak out and hop my brother’s face till he choked on her crotch.
And he must’ve been using that ujat on me because for a dozen-dozen moons, House-Lady didn’t give me any sons, not even daughters, no matter how much I speared her. But the damned thing must’ve been faulty, poisoning his Throne-girl, too, because she didn’t give him a litter, either. At least I had that. Idiot.
Then one day the golden man got bored with all his morons. Said he had too many songs now. Had to share them with the world. “Journey to the corners . . . so that all may grow from wisdom’s words.” Whatever. Put his Throne-girl in charge. Over everyone. Over me!
Said he’d be back when the world was wise.
I didn’t believe any of his shit.
But the second he left, I caught her looking at me. Why not? They need a good spearing, regularly, or they go wild. Like hyenas. Tear down everything around them and piss on it all.
But that one, she liked to play games. When I went to her hut that night, like her eyes’d told me to—I don’t know if he’d
