A gentle clicking sound filtered through the blackness. The pain in Wilson’s hand reached all the way up to his shoulder. His face felt on fire. The clicking sound grew more insistent. He opened one eye with some effort and saw the timber bars of the cage as a dark silhouette against the glare. Then he moved his head in the direction of the clicking and made out a squirming, moist sluglike something, suspended half an inch away from his nose. He groaned and pushed himself back, but the little monster followed him and the clicking expanded into croaks and sighs.
“Please, sir, stay still.” A voice came from his right. “Your face is the size of a kalimba gourd. He puts the mswimbe to draw the blood away. Mswimbe is ugly, but a good little creature.”
Wilson felt hands holding him down, then a cold animal wetness on his cheek and a slight sting. After that they opened his fist, and there was a slithering sensation between his fingers—and he passed again into blackness.
A while later—Wilson couldn’t say how long—he woke up feeling better. It was bright outside the cage. He sat up and looked around and found that he shared his prison with two other occupants: The closest, a wizened Iwo man, squatted a few feet away, staring at him with an expression of intense concentration. He was no more than three feet tall, small even by the standards of his people, and he wore three plastic flashlights around his neck on a strand of woven vine and a helmetlike headpiece of dried mud. A rough leather pouch hung from his waist. The other was a normal-size African, slumped in the far corner in a heap of khaki rags that had once been a military uniform. He had a long skinny-horsey face and a crooked nose and bloodshot yellow eyes that showed he had not eaten recently, and he smoked a foul-smelling cigarette in small, greedy puffs. When he saw that Wilson was awake, he made a vague gesture and leaned forward.
“Your face is much better,” he said. “And your hand, how does that feel?”
Wilson looked at his hand, wrapped in a bandage of fresh green leaves. He wiggled his fingers; the pain was a bare fraction of what it had been before.
“Not bad, I guess,” Wilson said. “Who did this?”
The soldier nodded at the Iwo.
Wilson waved his leafy hand in the little man’s direction. “Thanks, mister,” he said.
The Iwo did not make a sound, continued to stare.
“I only have a few cigarettes left,” the soldier said to Wilson, “but after what you’ve been through, I am happy to share. Do you want one now or later?”
Wilson shook his head. “That’s O.K. I’m not a big smoker. In fact I didn’t smoke at all until recently.” Then he noticed the gold officer’s insignia still attached to the man’s tattered collar. “What are you doing in here?” Wilson said, and he waved his bandaged hand at the brightness beyond the cage. “You should be out there with them.”
The soldier pulled the collar away from his neck so Wilson could see it better. “This is the staff and crescent moon,” he said. “Not the staff and star. I am Colonel Jokannan Saba of the Anda Patriotic Front. These Bupu bastards ambushed my platoon on the far side of Lake Tsuwanga near Imbobo about two months ago. A few of the men got away, I think, but I did not.” He gave a sad shrug. “Everyone they could not sell, they killed in the blood ceremonies at Lungwalla. I’m the highest-ranking officer, so they brought me here for special treatment. They’re going to boil me alive—privilege of rank, you know. But to tell the truth, I don’t really care. I am sick of the war. Been sick of the war for years now. Got to end someplace for me. This place is as good as any.”
“I know the feeling,” Wilson said, and was about to say more when he was interrupted by a trill of clicks and croaks from the Iwo. The small man duck-waddled forward on his haunches and reached into his pouch and withdrew a handful of leaves. Five leeches, black and shiny, wiggled at the damp center.
“Oh, no!” Wilson said.
“The Iwo says it’s time for your medicine again,” Colonel Saba said. “Got to put the mswimbe back on your face.”
“You can understand his clicking?” Wilson said.
Colonel Saba shrugged. “More or less. I was officer in charge of the Hruke Forest District for three years. There I came into contact with many Iwos. Their language is not that difficult, really. Very primitive. You learn to use your tongue and the back of your throat in ways you never thought possible.”
“Tell him I’ve had enough of the leeches,” Wilson said. “Tell him to forget it.”
The colonel made a few hesitant croaks, and the Iwo trilled back.
“He says he is your physician. And your physician tells you to take the mswimbe right now,” the colonel said. “Otherwise your face may fall off. Infection sets in very quickly in this climate.”
Wilson lay back and submitted to the treatment. He shuddered as the slimy creatures slithered around his face and fought down images from his worst nightmares.
The colonel crawled over to take a look. “You should see the little blighters work,” he said. “Very amazing.”
“No, thanks,” Wilson said.
“Your face was a purple mess of bruises when they brought you in here. Now it’s almost normal.”
“Great,” Wilson said. “I’ll look nice when they boil me alive.”
“I’m afraid that is a fate reserved for officers,” the colonel said. “It is not so bad from what I hear. You pass out from the heat before it really starts to burn.”
“What are they going to do to me?” Wilson said, and the dread took hold of his guts.
“Best not to think about that,” the colonel said. He settled back into the corner and extracted another cigarette from the crumpled pack concealed in his rags. “This Iwo, he is a brave man,” he said as he lit up. “He’s too old for the slave traders; he knows the Bupus will kill him. But about an hour or so after they brought you here, he walked out of the jungle, and he sat down in front of the cage and sang a song in his language until they came and threw him inside.”
“Why the hell did he do that?” Wilson said.
“I will tell you the name of the song he was singing, and you will understand,” the colonel said. “It’s called ‘The Ghost Man from Far Away Who Set Free the Forest People on the Night of the Red Stars’; that’s a loose translation, of course. This song will be sung by their children and their great-grandchildren. The song is about you, my friend. You are an epic hero now, a great man, like Sequhue or Odysseus. This Iwo was chosen to come and take care of you here before the end. Perhaps if you are lucky, he has a drug in his pouch that will dull the pain of the torture.”
Wilson couldn’t think what to say, then the leech slithered over his lips, and he held his breath. When it moved away again, he said, “Tell him thanks a lot for his help. But tell him I’m not the great man here. He is.”
Colonel Saba delivered this message in halting clicks.
The Iwo smiled suddenly, and it was as beautiful and strange as a smile on the face of a leopard in the heart of the jungle.