The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Large eyes, dark and luminous, seem fixed upon a point somewhere above the heads of his audience. Two tira, leather charm pouches, hang from beaded cords around his neck. Beside him rests a great empty turtle shell, upturned to receive the bronze coins and quills of gold-dust he hopes to earn from his listeners.
    The crowd stands quietly. There are turbaned men swathed in voluminous johos over cotton trousers, and turbaned women garbed in colorful asokabas that descend from waist to ankle, leaving the rest of the body bare. Children clad after the fashion of the adults squeeze between their elders' bodies, the better to hear the ko of the new griot. The dry-season sun burns like a torch in the cloudless sky, bathing ebony skin in a glossy sheen of perspiration.
    The griot's song ends. His listeners stamp their feet on the dusty pave: a sign of approval. Even though no coins or quills have yet found their way into his tortoise shell, the griot smiles. He knows that a man of his calling is first a story teller, no better than second a musician. His ko has served its purpose. Now it is time to earn his day's livelihood.
    "I am going to tell a story," the griot says.
    "Ya-ngani!" the crowd responds, meaning "Right!"
    "It may be a lie."
    "Ya-ngani."
    "But not everything in it is false."
    "Ya-ngani."
    The griot begins his tale.
    Mattock resting on one broad shoulder, Babakar iri Sounkalo stood shaking his head in the midst of his charred beanfield. For the thousandth time he cursed the Sussu, whose raiders had swept down from the north to despoil isolate border towns like Gadou, the one closest to Babakar's ruined farm. The Sussu had, as always, been driven back to their barren mountains by the soldiers of Songhai; Babakar himself had taken up lance and shield to join the forces of Kassa iri Ba, the invincible general from Gao, and the blood of more than a few Sussu had washed his blade.
    But now, as he surveyed the burnt acres of the field that had been in his family since the first stone was laid in Gadou, the taste of triumph had faded for Babakar. His wassa-beans had been reduced to a mere blackish stubble, and though he-knew that the next crop would grow even faster in the ash-enriched soil, alone he could never replant his beans before the wet season ended.
    Alone… again the bitter memory seared across his mind: the memory of his wife and two daughters butchered by the swords of the Sussu who had nearly destroyed Gadou with their treacherous attack. Sussu lives had paid for the loss of his family; Kassa iri Ba himself had praised Babakar's ferocity in battle.
    Now, though, Babakar faced only a grim choice as his reward. He could re-till his field in the slim hope that the wet season would last long enough for a new crop to rise, saving him from starvation. Or he could join the many others already in flight southward to the provinces untouched by the border war. The idea of abandoning the land still nurtured by the spirits of his ancestors remained unthinkable to Babakar.
    "You'll accomplish nothing standing here in self-debate," Babakar chided himself. With a gusting sigh, he raised his mattock from his shoulder and swung it down into the soil.
    It was then that he saw her, swinging gracefully down the road that separated his field from that of a neighbor slain by the Sussu. The mattock nearly fell from his hands. For it was from the west that she came, and Babakar knew that only the semi-arid wasteland called the Tassili lay west of Gadou. The woman couldn't have come from there… . she must have run off in that direction to escape the marauders, and was only now making her way back to more habitable terrain.
    As the woman came closer, Babakar saw that she was, though disheveled, beautiful to behold. Though she was not tall, a willowy slendeness lent her an illusion of greater height. The tattered condition of her asokaba contrasted with the neatly folded turban that clung closely to her head. Between the two garments, a