BOOK ONETHE THREE

GBESSA

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IF SHE WANTED TO CONTINUE, Gbessa first had to rid the road of a slow-moving snake. Greenish brown with golden eyes as difficult to gaze into as the sun, the snake's body was no different in color from the woods it had crawled from, and it seemed to Gbessa that the surrounding bushes were jealous of her departure, so they extended their toes to block her path. Orange dust stained the belly of the snake, which writhed as it hissed, and Gbessa pointed a five-foot stick in its direction. The snake was not afraid of her, or of the stick, and it raised its head and advanced.

The confrontation occurred several moonfalls after that searing hot day when she was banished from Lai for good. She had championed that path for weeks, stumbling over iron pebbles and timber branches departed from their roots, squeezed between sugarcane stalks, and still, refusing to look back. Strands of her hair left her for the veils of clay grains that also traveled the long and pitiless road. Gbessa could not return. Safua was in the other direction, hand in hand with her rejection, and also those deaths. Gbessa lightly poked the belly of the excitable creature, and at once it lunged at her. She took a step back, only barely avoiding a bite on her shin.

I was there that day, drawn to her, just as I was drawn to those gifted others who were present the day the ships came.

"Take care, my darling," I whispered in Gbessa's ear. "Take care, my friend."

She glanced over her shoulder, as if she had heard me, or as if she hoped the movement was Safua, and the snake lunged again, this time biting her ankle before fleeing into the stalks at the other end of the road. Gbessa fell to the ground, yelling. She cried, and it was clear that her leg was in pain, but also her heart, because she held the tears captive, clenching her jaw closed through the sobs. She rubbed her ankle as if digging for bones, then squeezed the reddened skin where the snake had bitten, squeezed hard to relieve herself of the poison. Perhaps nothing would happen beyond the sting. Perhaps she would faint from the pain. But eventually, she would wake up. Gbessa rubbed her wound, but she knew then, as she knew always, that this poison would remain with her forever. She knew then, as she knew always, that she, like her love for Safua, would not, could not, die.

THERE WERE NO VAI GIRLS LIKE GBESSA. The coastal village of Lai had seen only one woman as cursed — Ol' Ma Famatta — who they say is sitting in the corner of the moon after her hammock flung her there on her 193rd birthday. But even Ol' Ma Famatta's misfortune was nothing compared to that of Gbessa, whose curse was not only her inability to die, but also the way death mocked her.

Lai was hidden in the middle of forests when the Vai people found it. There was evidence of earlier townsmen there, as ends of stoneware and crushed diamonds were found scattered on hilltops in the unexpected company of domestic cats. But when the Vai people arrived from war-ravaged Arabia through the Mandingo inland in the early eighteenth century, they found no inhabitants and decided to occupy the province with their spirits.

On a plot of land one mile long and one half mile wide, they used smelted iron to build their village — a vast circle of houses constructed of palm wood from nearby trees, zinc roofs, and mud bricks to keep them cool during the dry season.

During the day the Ol' Pas sat together and drew lines and symbols in the dirt that represented how many moons it had been since the last rainfall, or the last eclipse or other wonders of the sky. They waited for the spirits to reveal themselves in nuances and uncover secrets of the land and its animals.

Among many things — like which Poro warrior would best lead upcoming defenses against local tribes so that the Vai army would return with cattle, harvest, and captives to help tend the village rice farms — the spirits also told the Ol' Pas to take care of the sensitive animals of the province — specifically, cats. The Ol' Pas then divulged to the villagers the news they gathered from the spirits.

Ol' Ma Nyanpoo never listened.

Before Gbessa was born, Ol' Ma Nyanpoo — old, bitter, widowed — was living only two houses down from Khati, Gbessa's pregnant mother. Ol' Ma Nyanpoo had a pudgy orange cat whom she beat regularly to numb her loneliness. The village elders warned Ol' Ma Nyanpoo of what the spirits had told them about beating cats, but she disregarded them — she was powerless to her pride, and she hoped she would make the spirits angry enough to reunite her with her deceased love.

When Kano, Cholly the fisherman's slave, knocked on Ol' Ma Nyanpoo's door to deliver to her the fish that her nets had caught, the pudgy cat stared hoggishly at the tin bucket. He hid behind the fire pit as Ol' Ma Nyanpoo closed the door in Kano's face and inspected the bucket for any sign of pilfering. When the cat's head peeked around the pit, she grabbed a fish from the bucket and waved it at him.

"You will not touch it!" she yelled, shaking the fish. Scales, saltwater, and blood flew, and the cat dodged Ol' Ma Nyanpoo's warning. That night when Kano finished his chore of cleaning fish for Cholly's wife, he blew the light from the last lantern away. The whistle his compressed lips made married the pungent smell of fish and journeyed through the village circle to Ol' Ma Nyanpoo's house, awakening the cat. The cat arose from the corner where he had been lying and probed the room. In the dark, his cold nose led a desperate search for Ol' Ma Nyanpoo's bucket of fish.

Ol' Ma Nyanpoo's leg twitched and she snored expletives into the night. Alarmed, the cat positioned himself to run in the event that she leaped from her sleep to beat him with the redwood handle of the porch broom. But she remained in abysmal slumber in the murky room. The cat proceeded toward Ol' Ma Nyanpoo's fish, disregarding the likely retribution on the following day, when she would discover that her fish were gone. When he finally reached it, he lifted himself up to the rim of the bucket, careful not to scrape the edge with his nails. His eyes were large, his mouth ready, when a hard blow threw him across the room.

"I told you, enneh-so?" Ol' Ma Nyanpoo asked, lighting her lantern. The cat tried picking himself up, only to meet another hard slap to his head. He stretched his claws and hissed at the old woman. She struck his head once more and the cat shrieked, this time waking a neighbor, whose inquiring voice and lantern moved slowly toward the village circle.

The cat, determined to escape her fury, scurried over to the fire pit.

"Oh no!" Ol' Ma Nyanpoo said. "You'n going nowhere." She dragged him out from behind the fire pit by his tail. In the village circle, neighbors gathered outside of Ol' Ma Nyanpoo's door, baffled at what had made the old woman so angry that she had beat the poor cat in the middle of the night.

"I will teach you! You will feel it!"...