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. ."
* * *
The date merchant was returned to his family in a nearby village, and Mbutu and Talisha were never so
heartily sick of the palm-fruits as they were after the twelve feasts in their honor, involving every possible
perversion of dates that twenty generations of villagers and date-merchants could devise. There were
date pastries, date punch, date salad, date bread, and date-stuffed-everything and
everything-stuffed-dates, with all options either marinaded in palm wine, fried in palm oil, or both. And
there were yet more horrors as the jackal-camels or jacamals, as they became known attacked again
and again.
Something, obviously, had to be done. If just to save them from the villagers.
"We must kill them," said Talisha. "They are vicious beasts, but they can be killed."
"Are we talking of the jacamals," Mbutu asked, "or the chefs?"
Talisha paused, considering. "The jacamals," she said at last. "We must kill them. Cut them with knives,
trap them with traps, poison them with date punch." She pushed the cup away from herself in revulsion.
"No," said Mbutu, differing with the warrior for once, "we must talk to them. Explain the situation."
The knife-dancer looked at her as if she were mad, then at last said, "Wait, are you talking about the
chefs?"
"No, the jacamals." Mbutu simply spread her hands, allowing her rings to flash. "I spoke to the stork and
I spoke to the hippo. They are beasts now, yes, but very clever beasts, and the sons of jackals and
evil-minded camels are very clever beasts indeed. Besides which, they have the hearts of bandits, and so
can be counted on to be greedy. If we explain matters to them in the right fashion, we can count on them
to follow their enlightened self interest . . . and ours, as the case may be."
Talisha leaned closer and took another nut-stuffed date, which were as addictive as they were vile, from
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the tray. "Go on, storyteller. I'm listening . . ."
* * *
The plan was simple: a wedding feast fit for jackals and evil-minded camels. Chickens were stuffed with
dates and roasted, then placed with more dates into a goat and roasted, then the roast goat was stuffed
into a sheep (with more dates) and that was roasted too, and the roasted sheep was stuffed into a
slaughtered ox, which was smeared with date paste and left out to bake in the sun, abandoned at the
edge of the date grove along with Mbutu and Talisha, who sat in hammocks suspended from the tops of
the palm trees like large bunches of dates.
The smell was truly incredible, especially when Talisha put date pips into her sling and killed three
vultures who wished to crash the feast. Others were discouraged, after which one of the jacamals finally
arrived, eyeing the traditional village wedding feast, which was complete in its presentation except for not
having been stuffed into a camel and set ablaze with palmwine as the finale.
Mbutu rubbed her feather earplug, sacred to Darshima, orisha of parrots, and called out in something
between the howl of a jackal and the evil braying of a camel: "Welcome, brother. This feast is in your
honor."
The jacamal sniffed the air. "What poison did you use, sorceress?"
"No poison," Mbutu wailed back, correcting her accent in the strange jacamal speech, "merely chicken,
goat, sheep, rotted beef, and lots of dates. Lots of them."
The jacamal sniffed again. "And to what do I owe this courtesy?"
Mbutu paused, wondering how to render the flowery speech she'd composed into jacamal cries At last
she tried: "Honored cousin, I know that the shape you wear now is not the one you were born with.
Moreover, my partner and I have a proposition which we both might find equally profitable, ending with
you being restored to your proper form, and all of us becoming exceedingly rich."
The jacamal waggled its long and evil ears and twitched its equally long and evil nose, which was doubly
horrible, for it combined a camel's buck teeth with a jackal's fangs. "What do you propose, cousin?"
Mbutu paused, realizing she was playing a long shot, but a reasonable one to try. "First of all, payment. I
have it from my sources that you and your brothers recently came into some startling wealth, a great
number of beads of finest craftsmanship, blue eyes, such as are commonly used to avoid the gaze of a
witch."
The jacamal spat. "Fat lot of good it did us. They obviously didn't work."
Mbutu smiled to herself. They most obviously did, for after a long while of sorcerous speculation, she
had realized this: It was the eyes of a witch that held his power, and as such an eye could protect against
them. However, if that eye had been stolenfrom a witch, then that eye would be the curse itself, not the
protection from it, just waiting for the extra hint of malice to release the curse and aim the strike. For
example, an everyday insult like "You fat hippo" or "You sons of jackal's and evil-minded camels." Yet
there was no point in telling the jacamal that.
Mbutu waved one hand and demurred. "Ah, but the lay public does not know of the eye-charm's
defectiveness, do they? And the rest of those beads will still be quite valuable, if just for craftsmanship
alone."
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The jacamal nodded. "They would. Certainly there'd be enough to pay for our restoration, if you have
that power, sorceress." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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