The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 (6 page)

Atuye stood his ground, though he couldn't fail to notice the clenching of Babakar's fist, nor his willingness to use it.

"All I know is that when we went to old Kuya Adowa this morning to ask if she could help us, she told us to seek the answers to our questions from Babakar
hi
Sounkalo's new woman."

Something close to fear gripped Babakar in a cold grasp as he again recalled the
tynbibi's
visit, and her warning… angrily he shook the feeling off.

"You'd take the word of a half-mad old woman over mine?" he challenged.

The two farmers stood in silence. They knew, of course, what had happened to Babakar's family during the war, and Atuye had witnessed the man's ferocity in battle. It was unlikely to the point of absurdity that the Babakar he and Mwiya knew could be involved in the mysterious destruction of the fields. But the woman… was her obvious nervousness due to fear… or guilt?

The tension between Babakar and Atuye was threatening to erupt at any moment into physical conflict. Wisely Mwiya averted it.

"Calm down, Babakar. Of course we believe you. But you and Atuye aren't the only ones to have suffered because of these marauding gazelles. We've got unanswered questions here, and somehow we must find the answers to them."

"You can depend on that," Atuya added.

"We fought side by side against the Sussu, Atuye. But anyone who seeks to harm Amma is as much my enemy as they were," Babakar said quietly.

Atuye's heated reply was quickly cut off by Mwiya. "All right, Babakar. I understand. We must talk of this again later, though. Tonight the Council of Elders meets in Gadou. Will you come?"

"To Motoni with the Elders!" Babakar snarled. "Will they save us from the gazelles as they saved us from the Sussu?"

"I am sorry you take that attitude," said Mwiya. "You may well regret it before this matter's done."

When Babakar did not reply, the visitors returned to the road that led to Gadou. Babakar turned to Amma, who had said nothing since her reply to Atuye.

"We will leave tonight," he told her. "There is nothing here for us now."

"No!" Amma said with vehemence. "If we go tonight, the old woman's suspicions will be proven correct, at least to people like Atuye. We must wait a day, maybe two before departing. By then they'll have other things to think about."

"What other things?"

"The gazelles."

"What do you really know of the gazelles?" Babakar demanded, digging his fingers into her arm.

Amma glared full into the big man's eyes and said, "Nothing."

Contritely, Babakar released her arm. Before he could say anything more, Amma spun on her heel and strode stiff-backed to their dwelling. Babakar followed only after one last, despairing glance at his twice-ruined
wassa
field
.
 

Amma remained uncommunicative while they gathered their few belongings together, mostly Babakar's. As they ate a supper of millet cakes and thin stew, Babakar spoke encouragingly of the possibilities that awaited them in the cities of the south. He could put his war skills to use as guardsman to a Merchant Lord, or. even the Emperor, he reasoned. And the Merchant Lords were always seeking women to peddle their goods for them beneath the huge multicolored awnings of the market squares. Since the time of the First Ancestors, the market had been the province of women, and an attractive one like Amma would find little difficulty finding a place in a square. Perhaps the loss of their crop was not so disastrous as it seemed, he reassured.

Amma was indifferent to his enthusiasm. After the sun sank in a crimson blaze beyond the horizon, and they prepared to retire for the night, she rebuffed Babakar's advances, keeping her
asokaba
wrapped firmly in place as she curled close to the edge of the sleeping-mat. When Babakar reached to touch her shoulder, the skin felt cold before she flinched away. It was as though the fire and tenderness of the night before had never happened…

Anger stirred in Babakar as his ardor ebbed. Then the flash of resentment faded as quickly as it had come. The experience Amma had endured since the coming of the Sussu might have driven another person over the brink of madness. The destruction of the bean-crop by the gazelles must seem to her but one more in an endless series of calamities. Though she might prefer to battle the demons of her past alone this night, Babakar vowed that when morning came, Amma would know that she need never face them alone again. Thus resolved, he drifted into a deep slumber that remained undisturbed when Amma slid quietly from the sleeping-mat and melted into the shadows outside the doorway…

Hard hands shook Babakar out of sleep. His eyes flew open; bleary darkness and shadowy shapes swam before him as he was hauled roughly to his feet. Alertness came in a rush as the intruders hustled him out the doorway of his dwelling.

"What is this?" he shouted hoarsely… then the indignant words that were to follow died in his throat at the sight that greeted him in the moonlight.

Starkly silhouetted in the pale glare stood Kuya Adowa. Her hand was clenched firmly on the
tiro-pouch
dangling between her breasts, and her face bore an expression of wrath and hatred. Behind her several of the neighboring farmers stood in a tight circle, surrounding… Amma. They were armed with staves and long daggers, and two of them carried torches. Quick glances to his left and right confirmed that it was Mwiya and Atuye who firmly pinioned his arms.

Enraged, Babakar surged strongly against his captors' grasp. "Damn you; you dare to invade a man's house and drag his woman from her bed? Are you Songhai or Sussu?"

The insult stung Atuye into delivering a sharp blow to the side of Babakar's head. As Babakar staggered, Atuye growled, "You know damn well she wasn't in your house, son of Sounkalo. We caught her on the way from the field of Falil
iri
Nyadi."

Babakar froze, his instinct to struggle overridden by shock. He had assumed that Amma had been torn from his side moments before he had been awakened.

"Amma… is it true?" he asked. She did not reply. Her head was bowed; he could not see her eyes.

Abruptly Kyua Adowa spoke. "Let him go. It isn't his fault."

"What
isn't my fault?" cried Babakar.

"You should have come to the Council of Elders, Babakar," Kuya said. There was a note of pity in her voice. "We decided that the farmers whose fields had escaped destruction would guard their crops tonight to drive away the gazelles should they return. Falil, here, was one of those who kept watch. Tell Babakar what you told us, Falil."

Falil, whose age could not have been more than eighteen rains, stepped shyly from the knot of people around Amma. His eyes seemed to reflect moonlight in his dark face as he spoke.

"I watched our field from a tree that grows near it, so that I'd be better able to see the gazelles coming. For a long time, nothing happened. I was about to fall asleep when I heard something coming into the field. I thought it might be the gazelles. But when I looked, I saw
her."
He jerked his head toward Amma, not daring to look at her. His fear of her was obvious.

"She didn't see me, though," he continued. "I was about to climb down and ask her what she was doing in my field, when she pulled her turban off her head. I saw the moon flash off something in her hair. Then she took off her
asok-aba,
and rolled on the ground…"

With a bellow of outrage, Babakar leaped at the youth. Atuye and Mwiya had not released their hold on him, though, and they dragged him back.

"She didn't see me!" Falil cried, his eyes wide with fright.

"She rolled and rolled, and she
changed.
When she got back to her feet, she wasn't a woman anymore.
She was a gazelle!"
 

"This is madness!" roared Babakar. "Have you people lost your senses, to listen to stories a child wouldn't believe?"

"I know what I saw!" the younger man flared. "She was a gazelle. She raised her head and gave a cry like nothing I've ever heard before. Then she stood still… for how long I do not know. Then I heard a rumble of hooves, and a rustle in the wind, and suddenly a whole herd of gazelles was in the field. There were scores of them, eating our millet. I should have climbed down and yelled at them to scare them off. But I was afraid. If you had seen how she
changed.
… At last they were done, and they ran off to the west. All of them but
her.
She rolled on the ground again after the others were gone, and when she stood up, she was a woman again. She put on her turban and
asokaba,
and walked away from the-field. I climbed down from the tree and ran to the field of my neighbor. We caught her as she came down the road to this house, then took her to Kuya Adowa. The rest, you already know."

Babakar shook his head in disbelief. He looked pleadingly at Amma, but she would not return his gaze.

"Kambu,"
Kuya Adowa whispered. "An animal imbued with the power of a spirit-being beyond the realm of man. They control the actions of the animal they invade, and they can assume the shape of humankind, and speak the language of men. They read our thoughts, and tell us what they know we would most like to hear. Yet even though they may look human, they are not. Babakar! Your woman is a
kambu.
A
kambu
cannot love. She means only evil for you, Babakar. If not, then why didn't her creatures spare your field?"

"No," Babakar groaned.
"No!
I cannot believe it…"
"Yes!"
sceamed Kuya Adowa. A spidery black hand reached up and tore the turban from Amma's head. Babakar gasped. It was not a bare, fire-seared scalp that lay revealed in the stark moonlight, as Amma had led him to expect. Her head was covered by a cap of kinky black hair, as that of any woman of Songhai would be. Sprouting from the front of her skull, however, were two small, spiralled horns… the horns of a female desert gazelle.

A wave of despair swept over Babakar. He recalled Amma's words of only a night before… "You must not touch my turban…"

"Amma," he said with a sob, wondering if even the name was a lie. She had not mentioned it before he had told her of his first Amma…

For the first time that night, Amma's eyes met his. Her face, even beneath the spiralled horns, still absorbed him in its loveliness.

"One of the Sussu you killed was the son of a
sabane;
a powerful sorcerer, master of the Black Talk," she told him. "He used his skills to discover the slayer of his son. Then he used the Black Talk to bind me to his will; to force me to use my people to carry out his vengeance. I resisted, but his power was too strong. The effort it took to bind me killed the
sabane,
but the power of his Black Talk remains, and I am compelled to carry out his command: to call my people like locusts to destroy your crops. The
sabane
was mad with grief. He wanted all of your town to suffer for your deed…"

"Lies! Lies!" screeched Kuya Adowa. "Can't you see this is a creature of evil, a thing that deserves death? Her very appearance is a lie!"

Amma turned her gaze to Kuya, and the old woman gasped and shrank back a step. Amma's eyes returned to the stricken farmer's.

"A
kambu
can love, Babakar," she said softly. Then, in a sudden move, she bolted through the men surrounding her. One managed to grasp her
asokaba,
but Amma tore free and raced on, a naked shadow in the moonlight.

"Stop her!" screamed the
tynbibi.
One of the farmers hurled his staff. Whirling end-over-end, it struck Amma on the back of her head. She fell heavily; before she could gain her feet again, they were upon her, striking hard with their staves. They hit her with the frenzy of man killing a poisonous snake.

Crazed with sorrow and rage, Babakar broke free from Atuye and Mwiya and rushed toward Amma's attackers. An unearthly shriek rose just as he reached them. With a ferocity he had not felt since the last days of the war, he seized two of the men and hurled them violently to the ground.

Then he stopped, looked down, and swayed like a man drunk on palm-wine. For the broken, bleeding body sprawled before him was not that of a woman. It was a dead gazelle that lay there; its eyes staring emptily upward; as emptily as Babakar's stared down. He dropped to his knees and reached out to touch the head of the fallen creature.

"That sound," Falil
iri
Nyadi said nervously. "It was just like the one she made when she summoned the gazelles."

"Listen!" said Atuye. "Can you hear it? A rumbling sound,

coming from the west…"

Though they did not answer him, the others had heard it. The sound grew louder. It was like the music of some insistent drum, growing in intensity yet retaining an underlying delicacy of tone.

"Look!" cried Falil, pointing to the dark western horizon. The others followed his gaze, and beheld a shadowy mass detaching itself from the black gloom. Individual shapes became discernible; graceful forms advancing rapidly in breathtaking bounds. Spiralled horns flashed and glittered in the moonlight.

"Gazelles," whispered Kuya Adowa. Her hands clutched convulsively at her
tira;
strange words of sorcerous import spilled from her lips.

"What's wrong with you, old woman?" snarled Atuye. "What harm can a herd of timid gazelles do?"

"They don't look so timid to me," said Mwiya. "I thought you said there were scores of them, Falil. Looks more like hundreds now."

"She
called them," Falil muttered.

"I cannot stop them," cried Kuya Adowa. "Run!"

"From gazelles?" Atuye scoffed.

A four-legged body arrowed toward him, head down, horns pointed outward. The sharp tips of the horns took Atuye full in the chest. With a strangled cry he went down, eyes wide in incredulity even as blood spurted from his mouth.

Terrified, the others turned and ran, dropping staves and torches alike in the panic that clawed at their souls. They were too slow. Living projectiles of hoof and horn hurtled like lightning among them. The speed that served the gazelles so well in flight from the great beasts of prey had now become a weapon, deadly and inescapable. Screams rose amid the quiet thunder of hooves as the antelope plunged their horns through the bodies of their human prey…