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bush from those on the other bank, he watched. Men were running up and poking in the bushes with their spears. They talked loudly to each other and did not seem eager to uncover anything.
    At home, Ras was so silent and inactive that Mariyam asked what was troubling him. He answered that he was thinking, that was all. And so he was, but his thoughts hurt him. Why would Wilida, or any of the Wantso, be so frightened of him? Was he truly ugly or monstrous? He did not think so. If he were, would he be loved by Yusufu and Mariyam so much?
    When he came back six days later, he saw that the children were again playing in the bushes. Ras crossed the river and waited until he could catch Wilida alone again. This time, he held his hand close to her mouth after her promise to keep quiet. Wilida did not scream.
    They talked, or tried to talk, for some time. She stopped shivering like a monkey trying to pass a big seed. Before they parted, she even managed to smile. But once she was out of his reach, she ran off swiftly. However, she did not cry out or tell anybody of him, as far as he could determine. And she did meet him behind a bush at the promised time. First, he scouted around carefully to make sure that she was not setting an ambush. They talked with less difficulty this time, and during the next five times they met, he progressed rapidly in Wantso.
    The sixth meeting, Wilida brought a friend, a girl named Fuwitha. Fuwitha would not come close the first meeting, or even speak to him. But, the second time, she lost her fear and joined in helping him learn the language.
    It was three weeks before Ras met some of the other children. They came silently, except for Wilida and Fuwitha, who were very proud of their friendship with the white ghost-child. By then, Ras understood that he was supposed to be the spirit of a dead boy. This was why Wilida had fainted when she first saw him and why the others had been so apprehensive. But their curiosity, plus the assurances of the two girls, had brought them.
    They squatted down to talk to him, to giggle nervously at his strange mouthings of their speech, and to reach out after many hesitations to touch him. He smiled and talked softly, saying that he would not harm them and that he was a good ghost.
    This was the day he met Bigagi, who was supposed to be Wilida's husband when they came of age.
    Later, he began to play their games with them, although he was hampered because he had to keep out of sight of the adults and older children in the fields. He became more proficient in Wantso. He wrestled with the boys, all of whom he bested easily. They did not seem humiliated. A living person could not expect to outwrestle a ghost.
    He entertained them with his stories of the Ghost-Country and of his ape mother and ape foster father. His insistence that he was the son of Igziyabher, or Mutsungo, as the Wantso called the chief spirit, the Creater-Spider, awed them. At first.
    Bigagi asked him why he wasn't dark-skinned and woolly-haired. Mutsungo had made the First People, from whom the Wantso were descended, out of spider webs and mud, and they had all been brown-skinned, thick-lipped, and kinky-haired. The Shaliku, who lived on the other side of the Swamp, were the offspring of Wantso and crocodiles. But if Mutsungo was indeed the father of Ras, why wasn't he like the Wantso? Or at least half spider?
    Ras was a match for his mother when it came to making up stories on the spot. He replied that he wasn't the son of Mutsungo but of Igziyabher, who had kicked Mutsungo from the chair of godhood and seated himself thereon. And Ras was white because Igziyabher had washed the brown out of his skin as a sign that he was, indeed, Igziyabher's only son.
    This upset the children, not so much that Ras was the son of God as his statement that Mutsungo had been kicked out as chief spirit. Ras added that Mutsungo now dwelt in the Many-Legged Swamp, where he was king of the spiders.
    But when he saw that they were