This was Zambia — Zambia, Africa.
The giant who pulled me from the Zambezi River called himself Shumbuto, because that was his name. He was naked, save for a shredded cloth tied around his waist. The purpose of this meager covering was lost on me, as his penis openly bounced to and fro between his legs as he walked.
Shumbuto carried a blade that was bigger than my entire body. When he strayed from the river’s edge, quick swipes at encroaching vegetation allowed him to forge a new path. Pesky shrubs and dainty ferns crumpled at his feet. As the angry flow of the Zambezi faded into the distance, the trees grew much taller, their upper branches forming a broken canopy far above my head. The holy ceiling provided long slivers of shade as we walked. Clearly, this Africa was in a universe unto its own, far removed from Texas.
Shumbuto talked on and on, offering an impromptu tour of my strange, new whereabouts, though he kept getting sidetracked by the happiness in his heart (his words).
“You do not know how long we have prayed for a son,” he rejoiced. Though he spoke about me, he wasn’t speaking to me. On that first walk, he was preoccupied with reconciling his thoughts. The few times he considered me at all were to verify that I was still there, following his fast footsteps and not, in fact, just some teasing dream.
“… and this is where I killed the mighty …”
“… and this spot is halfway to …”
“… and here is a good spot for sitting in rain …”
“… and this is a lizard. Hello, lizard!”
The canopy parted, unveiling a noonday sky. The spongy grass under our feet turned from soft green to firm yellow to hard brown in mere steps. A few more and it disappeared completely — burned away by the harsh sun. Until now, I’d been so immersed in the unfamiliar spectacle of nature that I’d barely registered the loss of my shoes. They, along with my troubled past, belonged to the Zambezi now. Godspeed.
“Come, boy. We are almost to our home.”
Home. It was a word I never knew. Not to get overly sentimental, but the idea of an actual home had always been a fantasy to me. A home was something that only good boys and girls were allowed. Somewhere deep down, I knew that couldn’t be true. It was just one of Billy’s many lies. Probably. Maybe.
Up ahead, sitting in a nowhere land of dirt and sun, there was a single small hut, held together by tree limbs, stones, and hardened mud. It had no physical door in the American sense — no hinges, knob, or even a frame to justify such things.
“Here. We are here! Shandra-Namba! Come!”
Shumbuto bent his bulk down and disappeared through a medium-sized hole in the curvature of the wall. I stood outside, patiently wavering, expecting to collapse. The heat, exhaustion, detoxification, likely starvation, dehydration, and probable shock were getting to me.
“She is out.” He emerged disappointed. “She will return soon. Come!” He beckoned me. “Come, you are welcome!”
Inside Shumbuto’s hut there was nothing. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. There was a blanket made of some animal’s golden fur draped across the ground, a clay pitcher in one corner, and a wood stool in another.
When it struck Shumbuto that he did not know my name, he asked it of me.
“Marcus,” I croaked. My mouth was dry. Parched. Swollen. Dirt. Shumbuto handed me the pitcher, and from it I drank the purest water I’d ever known.
“Marcus,” he repeated, chewing on my nomenclature. “You have a good name. What does it mean?”
“What does it mean?” I repeated. “Nothing, I don’t think.”
“No!” Shumbuto stood taller than before and struck his chest with a proud, tight fist. “All names have meaning. I am Shumbuto. My name means ‘peace by blood.’ I wear it well. It is who I am.”
“Peace by blood,” I repeated.
“In time, you will learn our ways. You have nothing to fear from me.”
He led me back to the entrance with his strong, protective, life-saving arm around my shoulder.
“Everything I have is yours,” he said as he swept his free hand in a high arc to indicate his vast empire of wind. “I am your father now.”
I stood there in the doorway, believing in impossibilities.
“Come, rest,” Shumbuto said. “You have traveled far. You must sleep.”
I lay down. The ground was uncomfortable for a few minutes, but then the soft fur of the blanket took hold. I surrendered myself to sleep, soothed by Shumbuto’s heavy breathing. My savior was taking his own well-earned nap. I drifted as he drifted.
In my dreams, I saw the faces of Billy and Calliope as I’d always wished they could be: shining, full of love, and happy. “You will grow into your name, boy. By your manhood, it will define you,” my ex-parents whispered in tandem, in Shumbuto’s voice.
I slept the sleep of gods and wallabies. When I woke, Shumbuto was gone and someone new was observing me from the stool in the corner.
“Hello, Marcus. I am Shandra-Namba. You have come to us, just as we have known you would. Yet, you are somewhat younger than we expected.”
I sat up and rubbed my eyes. My hands came away covered in river grime. Shandra-Namba came to me with the pitcher of water and washed my face clean with a rag. I didn’t know what to say, what to do, what to think, or how to act, but none of it mattered because this woman seemed to know me.
“It is all right, Marcus. Your old life is behind you now.” She shifted her weight on the stool and I caught sight of her left breast inside her flimsy tunic. Noticing me noticing it, she tucked it back, not in shame but with decorum.
“You are weathered beyond your years. It is OK to forget,” she said. “You are hurt, lost, confused. Forget it all.”
She hypnotized me with her kindness.
“But …”
But nothing. She was right. I’d lived one lifetime and was ready for the next. Everything past was preposterous. Let it fade.
“Shumbuto thinks you are an angel sent to us by God. Let him believe what he wishes. He is a good man.”
“What do you believe, Shanna … Sha …?”
“Shandra-Namba. I believe in many things, Marcus. I believe in my husband. He says you fell from the sky. If he says a thing, it is true. But I also believe you are more human than angel. Shumbuto thinks that God pushed you out of his nest, intending for you to fly. He believes that because you could not, you fell to the earth, to us. And Shumbuto understands it is our duty to help you learn.”
“Learn to fly?”
“In a way, yes. And I believe so too. But I am more practical than Shumbuto. He is a kind soul, but sometimes, perhaps too innocent.”
“I’m no angel,” I reflected. “I am the spawn of devils.”
“Such big ideas for such a small child!”
I blinked hard, fighting more tears. I would forget. I would have to.
“It is OK, Marcus. You will learn to leave it all behind. Just as I said.”
“But … how?”
“Time will help. You will see. And, Marcus.” She came close and held my face in her hands. My heart swelled, and in that moment, I knew I would love her forever. “I believe in you.”
Gently, she pulled me toward her breast and more tears came.
“Cry, Marcus. It is good. Cry to forget, child.”
Somewhere in the middle of it all, she kissed my cheeks. And somewhere in the middle of it all, she stroked my hair. And somewhere in the middle of it all, our unbreakable bond was formed.
And so, I became their son and learned their ways.
In those first few weeks, I had many questions, the most prominent of which was why they had chosen to make their home on the harshest land around. In every direction, there was suitable forest that would be much more conducive to survival; yet that desolate patch of dead earth, that anti-oasis, was their home.
“The harsher the land, the stronger the man,” Shumbuto preached. “Where not a weed can grow, a true man can prosper.”
“But,” I persisted as we entered the forest path that led to the river, “why not build a hut by the water? We have to walk so far every day just to fill our pitchers!”
“You do not enjoy the walk? How can you not? I love a good walk! It keeps me fresh and appreciative of my body. You should learn, Marcus, that you cannot have everything so easy. Life is full of hardships. You have fought many already, I am sure. But you no doubt have untold hardships yet to come. You will see. Hopefully, your struggles will make you stronger. This is the only way. The alternative is unforgivable. Weakness in a man is shameful.”
He paused in his speech and in his stride. We were about halfway to the Zambezi. I held a bucket in each hand, while Shumbuto carried four. He was an ox of a man, as I’m sure I have already said, but his inner strength was even greater. His resolve to live on his own terms, no matter what, was a thing to be admired. I know that now.
“I don’t understand. Why should anyone want to make their life harder than it already is?”
“That is not my meaning. By appreciating life for its many challenges, you will be amazed when it surprises you with top rewards. Yes, that sounds accurate.”
He sat on the ground and motioned for me to join him. “Take this path, for example.”
I looked down the trail as far as I could see. We’d traversed this long, unlikely route back and forth twice a day since my arrival, and it never crossed my mind to think of how it came to be. I did now, and Shumbuto brightened when he saw my quizzical face poring over it.
“Shumbuto! How has the path come to be?” I asked. Already I was beginning to speak like him.
He was a funny man at times. He would make jokes with his eyes, as he did now. They rolled up in an innocent manner as if to say, “Surely, I have no idea.” And then his pupils darted down to the scabbard hanging from his belt (he was wearing short pants made of hemp that day). Inside that scabbard, I knew, was his blade.
“You?” I said, surprised. “You cut this entire path? How long did it take you?” I looked up. Left. Right. The path had not merely been cut through leaves and bush, but the stalwart trees had been cleared as well! “You chopped down the trees? That must have taken forever!”
“What is forever? I will never know. Will you?”
As funny as he could be with his eyes and as strong as he was with his arms, Shumbuto was equally as confounding with his philosophies.
“What you must know, Marcus, is that everything worth doing is worth doing.”
“What does that mean?”
“You are so full of questions. You will learn, in time, your own answers.”
To this day, I often wonder if Shumbuto was a learned shaman or just a brilliant nincompoop. He would always say that each man is put on Earth for a purpose, but only a select few are wise enough to glean what that purpose is before their time comes. Furthermore, even fewer men, upon knowing their purpose, can approach it with patience, hone it into a practical skill, study it, live it, and God willing, pass it on. Shumbuto’s greatest skill, his life’s purpose and reason for existence, he said, was to hunt.
When I would ask Shumbuto to take me on one of his hunts, his answer was always, “No, Marcus. You are far too young.”
Shandra-Namba agreed. It was the only aspect of life that separated me from them. In every other way, they treated me as an equal.
Each day, I helped prepare the meals. Whether dinner consisted of mushrooms and berries from a recent gathering or fresh meat from one of Shumbuto’s hunts, I would assist Shandra-Namba in the preparation. Cooking came easy to me, though that’s not saying much. All I had to do was get the fire going and toss whatever the meal was onto the metal slab. The heat did all the work. Heat and patience. The only real skill was in knowing when to turn the food. A trained monkey could do it.
We ate meat often. Our greatest source of protein came from Shumbuto’s hunts. His excursions were, on average, biweekly. He would leave, shrouded in mystery, before the sun. At first, I slept through his exits. I was an active boy and therefore slept peacefully as Shumbuto crept out of the hut. When I awoke to find him gone, I asked Shandra-Namba of his whereabouts. She only replied, “Your father is off providing for us. He will return when his bounty is full.”
I watched for him every daylight hour (and a few by the light of the moon). When he finally returned, he emerged from the forest with a giant sack slung over his shoulder. I rushed to greet him, dancing around him in a circle as he walked.
“Shumbuto! What have you got there?”
“Here, Marcus, is enough meat to fill our bellies for a full month.”
He dropped the sack near the fire pit. There, he held Shandra-Namba in a loving embrace and kissed her in a way I’d never seen before. There were true feelings between them. Watching them like that made my arms tingle. Letting his wife go, Shumbuto lifted me up onto his shoulders. I laughed freely, as a child should, as he ran around the hut a dozen times before he stopped the game and put me down.
He set his blade down next to his kill. I stared in awe at that incredible sack of meat. From what animal had it come and how had he killed it? Was it just one beast? It couldn’t be, could it? I imagined the corpses of a herd of buffalo within. The sack was huge!
“Father,” I said. It was the first time I’d called him by the reverent title. “You are truly a great hunter.”
“Hunting, Marcus, is not a thing to admire. Killing another of God’s creatures is no easy work. You should never look at it as sport. It is merely a means to survival. Come, walk with me. There are more sacks to retrieve.”
More sacks! How could it be? Shandra-Namba let on that she was not surprised. I ran into the hut and grabbed one of my very few possessions, a large stick I had whittled into a spear.
“Leave your spear, son,” Shumbuto said. “You won’t need it.”
“But …” I stopped, realizing any argument would fall on deaf ears.
I dropped my meager plaything and followed him into the forest. Immediately, we veered off the path. Up until now, I’d not ventured from it. Shumbuto forbade it.
The sounds of the forest hushed as we passed through. I found myself breathing lighter, listening closer, attuning my body to our surroundings. At times, I swear I could feel the great jackalberry’s roots groaning under the earth as we passed, hear far-off birds muttering in their nests above, sense Shumbuto thinking. Yes, even then, the hunter was in me.
After nearly two hours of walking in silence, Shumbuto at last stopped and turned to me.
“How are you feeling, Marcus?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You have not spoken a word since we left Shandra-Namba. Are you frightened?”
“No.” I wasn’t.
“If you are frightened, that is natural. I have yet to tell you where we are going.” He studied me carefully. I did not twitch or flinch. “Are you not curious?”
“Yes, Father,” I said. “But I know that when we arrive, we will be there.” This wisdom shocked even me, and I betrayed my confidence with an ever-so-brief grin.
“How you are not of my own flesh and blood is a mystery to me.”
It was true. It was a marvel how much I’d learned in our extremely short time together.
“Through there.” He pointed at a grove to the left. “That is where we are headed. You can just about see it.”
I squinted to the spot and could barely make out some object.
“Do you see?”
“I see something,” I said. “What is it?”
“It is my hunting shack, Marcus.”
“What is a hunting shack?”
“Come. I will show you.”
As we came upon the structure, my first thought was that it was much bigger than our hut. It was at least three times the size and constructed of solid oak. The wood should have been warped by years, but there was no moss or imperfection that I could see. There were also no windows, which seemed strange. Size and lack of windows aside, I could tell that it had been built by the same hands that put up our hut.
To the right of the building, a large concrete slab sat atop two sizable boulders. Two questions came to mind but poured out of me as one. “How did you move it what is it used for?”
Shumbuto understood and answered half of my twofold thought, employing his own doublespeak.
“Of the many mysteries in this universe, the weight of a heavy object matters not.”
Brilliant. But as to the use of the slab, I could easily guess. As we came upon it, I could see that it was stained with years of blood.
“Oh,” I said.
“Yes. Oh,” he said. And then he gently led me away from the killing rock.
The shack’s door was a massive thing; it swung on a system of springs and latches. I had not seen anywhere close to this level of mechanical ingenuity back at our hut. Everything there was primitive; we had only the bare necessities for survival. This place, however, was modern by comparison. The door itself was evidence enough. And the fact that it had a lock on it; well, that was just sheer genius.
Shumbuto knelt down and dug his hands into the dirt. Within seconds, he came up with a metal key. Again, the phrase “brilliant nincompoop” flashed through my head. I chased the thought away and waited for him to unlock and open the door.
Once inside, I was again struck by the similarities the shack held to our own home. It consisted of one room that served one purpose. In the center were a stool and a desk. On the desk, there were many knives. Scattered about the ground and leaning against each wall were all kinds of implements of destruction. Bows, arrows, spears, daggers, and the like served as deadly decor. I’d never seen so many weapons in one room, which is saying a lot, coming from my embattled background.
In all the strange killing tools in Shumbuto’s shack, there wasn’t a single firearm. Not a pistol or a revolver. Not a shotgun. Not a tommy gun nor a bobby gun nor a charlie gun. No machine guns or rifles. No dice. Zip. Zilch. Zero.
“Wow,” I said, taking it all in.
Making his way through the shack, Shumbuto was careful not to step on anything. In one of the far corners, he retrieved what he’d come for: a second and third sack. He picked them up and walked back to the front. He walked past me, saying his trademark “come.”
I took one final look at the place. Had Shumbuto made all these weapons? And if not, how did he acquire them? Some appeared awfully intricate in their design. Leaving the shack, I noted again the relatively technologically advanced door. I suppose any man can make anything as long as he has know-how and time.
Back outside, I lost any sense of composure I may have held before. I knew nothing of our surroundings and could only concentrate on spouting infantile questions. In effect, I was a child once again.
“Shumbuto! Did you make all of those weapons? Every one? Do you use them all? What are they called? Do you use different ones for different animals? How many kinds of animals have you killed? Did you build this place all by yourself? With your own two hands?”
I stopped to breathe. Shumbuto was silent. I pressed on, ignoring the futility of my onslaught.
“I know, I know. Too many questions. I’m full of questions. But this is amazing! You have to take me hunting with you!”
“No, Marcus. You are far too young.”
“Don’t say that!” I stamped my feet and crossed my arms. “Why would you say that? Why did you show me this place if not to teach me how to hunt? I want to hunt! I do! It’s not fair! Why would you tease me like this, Shumbuto? Why did you bring me here?”
Shumbuto said nothing. He dropped one of the sacks at my feet. I had my answer. He turned and walked back into the forest. Still furious, I decided I would do better to follow him than be lost here. I was certain I would never find my own way back to our hut. I picked up the sack and dragged it after him.
Two more long, silent hours passed, but this time, I was in tune with nothing. The air between us was heavy, and so was the sack. It hung over my shoulder, mocking me with its weight.
I had myself a very angry walk back. I wanted to be like my new father, but all he wanted of me was a slave — someone to carry his kill back to his woman. It was humiliating, infuriating, and mean.
At last we returned, and Shandra-Namba met us at the edge of the forest. She smiled, and I immediately felt guilty for all my anger. No one could stay angry while in the presence of those happy eyes.
“Did you two have a nice afternoon?” she asked. I couldn’t bring myself to speak just yet.
“Yes,” Shumbuto answered. “We had ourselves a very nice afternoon. Did we not, Marcus?”
What sort of game was he playing with me?
“Yes,” I said. And left it at that.
“Good, then!” Shandra-Namba said. “Dinner is near ready. You must be hungry?”
Not surprisingly, I felt my stomach rumble. I had been carrying some unknown, hefty meat in a sack for quite some time, but this was the first thought I had of hunger. I was grateful to have returned to the prospect of a warm, home-cooked meal. In truth, it was an exciting delight after a full week of mushrooms and berries.
If Shandra-Namba had her own curiosities about our hike, she did not give in to them. She did, however, speak of other mundane matters as I wolfed down three large helpings of mystery meat.
I’d learned by then to refrain from asking what was on the menu. The few times I’d asked, Shumbuto cryptically responded, “You will learn to tell the many flavors different meats have to offer. In time, it will be as easy as knowing the bumps on the back of your tongue.”
The last thing I wanted to hear after this day’s long, frustrating journey was more of his enigmatic bullshit. So instead of asking questions that would go unanswered, I busied my mouth with the task of chowing down.
This night’s meat was much thicker than usual. Not only that, but it was less salty and had a silkier mouthfeel. I ripped into it, shoveling in too much at once. To make up for the blunder, I stored some food in my cheeks for later access. Savoring every morsel, I rolled it greedily over my tongue between toothy grinds.
What Shandra-Namba and Shumbuto spoke of, I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t be bothered with conversation. The scrumptious meal in my mouth, in my throat, in my stomach — oh my God — was a revelation.
When I’d finally come to a point where I knew that if I ate one more bite I would explode, I lay on my back in the dirt and belched to the darkening sky.
“It is good to see you eat so well, Marcus,” Shumbuto said. I attempted to open my mouth to respond, but another burp came out.
“You call that eating healthy?” Shandra-Namba replied. “He’ll be sick before the night is through.”
Shumbuto laughed. I distinctly remember thinking, Is eating ferociously a thing to be proud of? Am I a man now? Then, I felt the unstable ingested flesh move and ripple. I was slow to sit up. My head was swimming with ideas. I felt not gorged, not even full. In fact, it was almost as if I hadn’t eaten a thing. How could that be? I was an alien in my own skin — a foreign being who did not need sustenance to live. And yet I knew full well how much food I’d consumed.
In effect, I was morphing into something else entirely, and I became invincible. I knew it then and I know it now. There was a beast inside of me and I owned it. I wanted the whole world to know the savage creature.
Shandra-Namba cleared the dinner sheet. She moved in slow motion, exuding purple streaks of light behind her. It took about a year for her to do the simple task, then she disappeared into the hut.
My face was warm. My face was hot. My face was cool. My face was not my face.
The night sky was burgeoning to envelop me. Its blistering stars were eager to pierce me with galaxy magic. Beneath them all, on harsh land, my Zambian father observed me, and I turned to observe him right back. What I saw was easier to comprehend than the cosmos’s mind games, but still, he was a tough nut to crack. My hallucinogenic perception of Shumbuto’s inexplicable nature came with an indelible moment of clarity: A person can never know the true being of another.
And with this tragic new knowledge, I released a thunderous roar.
“What was that?” I gasped, suddenly terrified of the animal within.
“What did you hear?” Shumbuto asked.
“I heard … I heard …”
But I could not say what I’d heard, because I was not sure whether I’d actually heard it. Did it come from the forest, or did it come from inside me? Was it anything at all? What was happening? I was taller than Shumbuto and growing to meet the sky. And then I was part of it. I was every star. I was the moon. I was the clouds. I was the wind. I was …
I was myself.
“Easy, my son.”
Shumbuto spoke, but I couldn’t see him. He was way down on Earth somewhere. Out of reach. I’d grown far beyond him and beyond everything. It was too much. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take it. I decided to let go of it all, fall back to reality, and when I crashed, I vomited in the dirt. I was doing a lot of that back then.
“What did I say?!” Shandra-Namba shouted from the doorway. “I told you he would be sick!”
Shumbuto held me. “It is all right, Marcus. You are all right.” His voice soothed my madness. “The day is done, my young son. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.”
Right before I drifted off into some other dream, I thought I told him my truth (though I cannot be sure).
“I heard the lion roar,” I might have said. “And the lion was me.”
In the morning, I remembered everything yet understood nothing. Surely, I had been in some kind of delirium from eating too much. But who ever heard of having such an experience from food?
I stumbled out of the hut to find Shumbuto standing not far off, staring into the sun. I left him alone for a moment to relieve myself.
Now, you may have already wondered how we went to the bathroom. Well, not how, obviously, but where. Without going into too much detail (as I’m sure you’d rather I get on to the more interesting, less repugnant parts of my story), there were two pits at our humblest of homes. We had the fire pit out front and the fecal pit out back — way out back. It was right near the edge of the forest, but we never entered that way. If we were headed back there it was for one reason only: to shit in the pit.
A very dirty shovel lay nearby so that we didn’t have to be in the pit while going about our business. During my first week, I’d asked Shumbuto very simply, “What happens when the pit is full?”
“Bury the pit. Dig another,” he answered. It was one of the few times he ever gave me an absolute. His directness, even if it was in response to stinky matters, was refreshing.
Halfway to the pit, I felt the bad juju bubbling inside me. I quickened my pace. At this early point in my Zambian experience, I was still holding on to some semblance of America. I was still wearing the shorts I dropped in with. I’d just barely got them down around my ankles before my bowels emptied a river of disaster. I do remember that it was more painful than it should have been. It was also, as you might imagine, quite humorous. I laughed at the many noises I was making from both ends of my body, and in the brief silences between, I could hear Shumbuto’s deep and boisterous belly laugh from far away.
When I’d finished, I exhaled with gusto, glad to be done. I grabbed the shovel and scooped it up. I stared in brief awe at my waste. What was I looking for? Maggots? Worms? Some kind of alien baby? I was being ridiculous. I flung it into the hole and washed my hands with the water bucket; it was left there for that purpose.
When I returned to where Shumbuto stood, he was still looking to the horizon.
“Did Shandra-Namba go for water?” I asked. Where else would she have gone?
“Yes,” Shumbuto replied. “How are you feeling this morning, Marcus?”
I considered his question and realized that, with my lower system purged, I was doing rather well. I told him as much, and he nodded.
“You had quite your fill last night. Tell me, how did you like the taste?”
Was he serious? Had he not witnessed my gluttony?
“It was absolutely the best meal I’ve ever had,” I said.
“That is good, Marcus. Very good.”
“Shumbuto, what happened to me?”
“What do you remember of your vision?” he asked, and untied the tight rope from the smaller sack, the one I’d carted through the forest.
My vision.
It was a perfect description of the dreamlike experience. Too real to be false, yet too impossible to be true. In an almost detached, trance-like voice, I explained to Shumbuto that when I looked into his eyes the night prior, I grew tall. Taller than him. Taller than our hut. Taller than the trees. Into the sky. Into the clouds. And then I had a revelation.
“Yes, I am quite certain you did.” He nodded. “You can keep that truth to yourself, Marcus. Whatever it is, I hope it will serve you well someday.”
I didn’t want to doubt him, but how could it? A person can never know the true being of another person? What good would that ever do me?
“What did you hear?” he asked politely.
I told him of the roar that came from inside me. Not from the forest or the moon or anywhere in the world. It was in me.
Again, he nodded.
“It was lion,” I said, working out an epiphany worth a damn. “We ate lion last night. Shumbuto, you killed a lion?”
“I am going to show you something now, Marcus. I do not want you to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” said I.
“The lion is our one true enemy. He is the exception to our hunter’s code. Our people have been at war with him since before my father’s father’s father’s time.”
Our people? What people?
Before I could speak my thoughts, Shumbuto reached into one of the sacks and pulled out a decapitated lion’s head. It was snarling, even in death. Dried blood crusted its severed neck. I stumbled backward and fell to the ground. I crawled away, petrified. It was more than the horror Shumbuto held in the air that struck me; it was also the fact that I’d carried the beast all that way, unknowing. It was also the fact that I had eaten its insides, unknowing. It was also the fact that Shumbuto and Shandra-Namba both fed it to me. But more than anything, I was scared near to death from his lack of any emotion. As he raised the lion’s head high above his own, my savior’s pupils turned a shade of black I would not see again for twenty-seven years. His sordid eyes were the very same as those of the sabertooth wolfenshark’s.