Night Woman's Brand

I knew no man was supposed to go out at night. Women, yes, but not us men. I couldn't count the number of times I had been told, 'It's too dangerous at night. Stay here. Or go with a woman.' Of course I didn't listen. I never listen.

I had to know. I had to know what it was that had everyone so frightened to let their sons out at night.

I stalked through the jungle, firm on infirm ground, tireless in the tiring heat of a wet-season night. Six years as a porter had made me strong—strong in my legs and in my heart. I would never again complain about heat or land or long distance, because marching had squeezed the last complaint out of me long ago.

I watched out for danger, and I listened for it too. Smelled for it. Whenever I saw snake tracks, I changed my direction. When I hit the Mvua River, I crossed it over a fallen tree trunk. I didn't wade through it and make noise that might alert the night predators. I was doing everything a man should do in the jungle.

Except that I was out there to begin with. I could hear the old men now, saying, 'The Night Woman is out there.'

It always came back to the Night Woman. My uncles (and my father too, blessed-are-the-dead), would always lower their voices when someone mentioned her. 'She would snatch you up with a net,' they would say. 'She'll use her magic to sink your feet into the ground. She'll root you like a tree.' 'She waits at the bottom of lakes.' 'No, she lives in the shadows of caves.' 'She spawns from the God's knife flower whenever you don't leave enough offerings for it.' And she would ruin you—that was the one thing all the men agreed on. She would make your cock limp forever, she would take away your tongue so you couldn't please your woman with it, she would turn you into a bat and only turn you back when she wanted to ravish you.

But how did these men know? They had never seen the Night Woman, so they couldn't have known. They must have been lying. What was really out there? I had to know.

The Gods approved. All the birds that flew over me flew the way I was walking, and the animals were not avoiding me, which would have been a sign that my mana had gone dark and that evil fate would swallow me up.

"Hello, Tamu."

I panicked. I drew my knife. I looked up at the voice, not sure what I was expecting.

It was a woman. Between drapes of moss, a tall, tall woman leered down at me through pale eyes with bright, knowing pupils. Her hair, tied into three braids, flowed like sleeping snakes down her svelte body.

And that body. It was black. Not rich brown like my own skin, but as black as her hair. As black as the night. Once I took it all in, I felt like I was seeing her for the second time. I wondered if I had encountered her in a dream.

"I don't deign to visit boys in their dreams," she said aloud. It was smooth and deep, a voice that could tie you up in your sleep. "I assure you, boy, that we have never met before."

Now that I saw her. Face to face, I was sorry I had ever gone out.

Run!

Hide!

Fight!

I should have done any of those things, but I couldn't move. Something told me that I was speaking to an authority older than humankind, that it was a bylaw of the universe that she was to be obeyed.

"If you run," she said, "I will let you get away. But then you will spend the rest of your life wondering what I would do to you."

"Who are you?" I asked. "I have to know."

"On your knees."

"What?"

"I do not answer requests. But a good boy who kneels..." she stooped to bring her sharp, smiling chin level with my eyes. "I do things to good boys they don't even dare think of. I make them love me for it."

I was sinking to my knees. Was I doing that myself, or was she pushing me down so gently that I couldn't feel her do it? I did not look away from her eyes.

Her eyes. Her ravishing eyes.

"Open your mouth," she said.

I did.

She slid her hand into me. Supple fingers poked at my teeth, explored my mouth, took up my tongue and fondled it. Her fingers tasted like night air.

"You remind me of Kuibiwa," said the Night Woman. "You submit to me, but you don't even know why. You came into the jungle, searching for a monster. You wanted to be devoured." She removed her fingers.

"Devoured?" I said.

Slowly, deliberately, she parted her loincloth. "Use that tongue," she commanded. "Please me."

I could not disobey her. I crawled forward, I knelt upright and eased myself into her womanhood. I breathed on her, hot and heavy like I had been told women like, then I gave her a gentle pass with my tongue. Where there should have been warmth, I tasted only coldness.

She gave the barest hint of a moan. I licked again, looked up into her eyes and saw a smile.

"No," she said. "Not like Kuibiwa. You are more like Sahoo. You are eager. You have a need to please."

I licked her deeper. My tongue pressed against the soft skin beneath her folds. Her skin pushed back, and I could feel her clench with pleasure. She was warm on my tongue now. I had brought it out of her.

"Men belong on their knees," she said. "Alone, men stand up straight. They howl in battle. They push and they work. But before a woman, they kneel. Sahoo knew this. He knew that he belonged to women. He belonged to me." Another little sigh of pleasure. "I still have him somewhere."

I slowed my tongue to a stop. I separated from her. A few strings of mixed saliva and juice still connected my lips to her pussy. "Are you a woman?" I asked. "Born of another woman? Raised like any other? Or are you..." I could not think of how to put it. "Are you something else?"

She looked down at me, and her eye brows made a spear-tip aimed directly at my heart.

Instantly, I was sorry I had asked.

"You dare to ask if I am human?" she hissed. She stood silent, watching me tremble, then grew an evil smile. "I would condescend to answer you, but neither answer would make you stop licking me. I will tell you when I want you to know, and no sooner. I had a hill-tribe boy who disrespected me, and I sealed his mouth shut and left him bound in a giant spider's-web. Now put that tongue to good use."

I should have done something. I should have gotten up and left. But if I had had the wherewithal to do that, I never would have knelt at her feet in the first place. I opened my mouth and put my tongue to her again.

She was close. And hotter too, hotter than was human— telling the fate of the hill-tribe boy had raised her heat. If I took much longer, she would burn my tongue. But I did not rush. I caressed her slowly, teasing the nub, plunging into her depths. I made sure to look up into her eyes as I did it.

"Yes..." She closed her eyes. She was sweating, clenching, ready to burst like a normal woman. Then she did. She kept her mouth closed, but was not silent. Her pleasure rushed out of her, soaking me from my jaw to my collarbone. When finally she was still, she looked down at me and smiled. It was a sweet smile, a loving smile. Not like the knife-edged way she had looked at me before.

"I will keep you," she said. "Stand up, boy, and come back with me."

I said it on an impulse: "No."

"What?" It was mild, curious. She was not angered yet, which made me want to take it back and obey her.

But I didn't. "I'm done. I'm leaving."

"I decide when you leave. Now get back on your knees. You need a lesson."

"No. I wanted to find out. I wanted to know what the men were so afraid of. Now I know. I'm not staying with you."

She gazed venom at me. The hungry cobra, the fierce lioness, the spirit of undoing—I saw them all in her eyes. I got ready to run.

She caught me anyway.

She was not strong, certainly not as strong as I was, but she was upon be before I knew she had moved. With a hand on my shoulder and another around my neck, she pulled herself to me, pressed herself into me. She kissed me on the chest, and fire burned on her lips. Searing, boiling heat. I screamed, I kicked, and I shoved. My skin withered under her kiss, and when I fought myself free of her, she stood and watched, arms folded. She smiled at me the way a woman might smile at a finely cooked meal.

"What..." I slapped at the burn, as if that would make it stop hurting. I looked up at her, desperate. "What did you do to me?"

She did not open her mouth. She only watched me down the bridge of her nose.

I scrambled, stood up, dashed off into the darkness. Her deep, closed-lipped laughter haunted me all the way.

No one was awake when I came stumbling back to the village. I slinked into my tent, sick with dread, and tried to sleep. Dawn came like a fever, slow and painful.

When people started waking up, started seeing me, I couldn't hide my guilt. Soon enough they wanted to see what I was covering up on my chest. The old men knew what that black kiss-mark meant. I'll never know how they knew, but they knew. I had been claimed, claimed by the Night Woman.

Most people were shocked. A few were outraged. But Tayari, a girl I barely knew, looked hurt. Betrayed. Had she wanted to marry me? I will never know.

"This is beneath you," my mother blustered, putting on a show for the rest of the tribe. "You've offered yourself to a monstress! I don't want to see you again until you have evened your honor. Until you have proven you are better than this."

Banishment. And a chance at redemption. A part of me had expected death, hadn't realized that I might have a life after this.

I spent the day preparing to strike out alone. I gathered into my bag everything I was allowed to take. I said no goodbyes, partly because I was sullied, claimed, and no one wanted to speak to me... but partly because there was the hope that I would come back with my head high.

Then I left. I forged into the jungle, along a little-used porter's path I remembered from half a year ago. I could walk like that all day. For that matter, I could walk like that all day for a month, for a whole season, on and on until I reached the sea.

And then what?

The day wore on. With every footprint, a little hope sloughed off my soul and stayed there in the dirt, until I had none left. I was a porter. I walked, and I carried heavy things. What heroic deed, what honorable feat could I ever manage? And for that, what were my people expecting? I didn't know. The village women sometimes told tales of men's derring-do, but I hadn't listened. I never listened.

The sun sank beneath the tree canopy. I sat down, peeled off my pack and laid my head in my hands.

Then I heard laughter. It came deeply, softly, through closed lips.

The Night Woman was calling me. But she would not come to me. So I went to her. I left my pack behind and found her sitting on a ledge, a man's height above me. She sat with one leg folded over the other. Her white toenails stood stark against that ink-black skin.

"You gave yourself to me," she said through a smile. "You allowed me to mark you. Did you really think your people would let in a branded Night Boy? To the world, you are nothing but used goods, a slave tagged with someone else's mark."

I was silent.

"Go," she said. "Go out into the wild. Fall over yourself trying to prove you're more than a man, and be eaten alive."

I looked up at her, hopeless.

"Or..." She let that word hang in the air. She held up a slim, dark collar, dangling from its leash like a spider. "Kneel."

I looked over my shoulder. There was nothing to see there except jungle. I knelt, spread my legs, extended my neck and closed my eyes.

She shifted. She lowered herself from her perch with grace that defied gravity. Her hands gently cradled my cheeks, tipped my head up. Her lips gently met mine, and she kissed me softly, sweetly. Lovingly, I thought.

She did not burn me this time. She did not have to, for I already wore her brand.