The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson Read Free Book Online

Sorcerer. Over there.” Xho Xho eyed and dismissed every passing face, as though in hope or dread of one he knew. “Master Suresh got one of the biggest outfits
at
Mother of Waters. Cain’t miss it. Ask anybody.” The boy slithered out from under the shepherding hand. “Well, let me get up with you brothers later at the piazza tonight. All right? I need to go holler real quick at these niggas I used run with.
Yo, Walé!
I’m out! You coming or what?”
    “Yeah! Hold up!
Damn!
”
    What if, as Walead and Messed Up took off after Xho Xho up the Mainway, Demane had only shouted,
Hey
, y’all be good!
Hear me?
What then?
    His eyes were shut, though. He was rubbing his temples.
    The brothers scattered.
    Cumalo stayed. “What is it, that in-city thing bothering you? Can I help?”
    “ . . . No.” Demane blinked and looked around, the sense-ruckus quieting into lucidity. “It’s better now. I’m all right.”
    “Well, come on,” Cumalo said. “I’ve got a surprise for you.” He took Demane’s hand and tugged.
    A block down from the piazza was a shantytown of food vendors. They stopped at a dingy stall and offered she who worked there warm greetings and smiles. The old woman blinked at them, seeming put out by this interruption of her boredom. It was not at first certain that Cumalo’s courteous request and nugget of rock salt would suffice to stir the concessionaire into sullen motion. She slapped the salt onto the countertop, chose a consequent fragment, and popped it into her mouth. Twice—voluptuously—her eyes fell closed and open again. That softened gaze and a slackened scowl made her seem as pleasant as anyone while she savored the salt. And then the urban disdain returned.
    With a fat pestle, the old woman mashed black fruit in two bowls.
    “They grow it all along the Daughter,” Cumalo said. The mounded berries spat dark juice, disintegrating into pulpy slurry. “Other than back home, I’ve never found it anywhere except in Mother of Waters.” The tart musk of that aroma! “You can
bet
how surprised I was first time I saw it here.” Men were meant, at this end of the continent, to eke out their tears. Demane therefore hardened his face against the surge of homesickness.
    She unstoppered a jar. Hell and its chemicals scorched the air. “You boys take it with that Demon?”
    “We good, we good!” Cumalo hurriedly assured her. “Sweet’s just fine, ma’am.”
    She grunted and did not pour from the jar but set it aside. She scraped a mugful of dirty crystals from a sack. Half went to either bowl. The pestle worked the grit down into the indigo soup.
    She stepped back and grunted once more.
You want em, get em
.
    “Over there?” Cumalo nodded toward a prayerhouse, where northerners made petition to their fathergod. There about the entryway was the typical semicircle of wall, low and squat: just right for tall men to half sit, half stand.
    “Hey now. You bring me
back
them bowls, hear?”
    “Yes’m.”
    They perched on the balustrade. From within the prayerhouse emerged basso fulminations, and the muttered
amen
of lighter voices.
Sweet and credible are the lies of the Whisperer, enemy of God. So beware such close-close friendship, young brothers, lest Hell’s dragon make you his plaything!
    Demane sipped. Every morning of a long romantic year—years ago now—Atahly had handed him bowls of crushed honeyed fruit, just a bit richer than this. And before then, his mother or father, or Saxa’s parents, had fed him breakfast with the same. “How did she get it so sweet? That wasn’t honey.”
    “
Sugar
, they call it. Down around Olorum they grow whole fields of the stuff as wide as kingdoms. Most goes overseas: up on the north continent, they can’t get enough. You can’t really find honey out this side of the continent. Nobody seems to know how to keep bees the way we do back home. Still, this tastes pretty good, I think.” Cumalo looked at him as if fearing to see disappointment.