Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

EIGHT

The boy became air three years ago. On the way to the collapsed tower, I wondered how much one could change in three years. A boy at ten and six is so changed from a boy at ten and three that they may be different people. Many times I have seen it. A mother who never stopped crying or looking, giving me coin to find a stolen child. That is never a problem; it is the easiest of things, finding a stolen child. The problem is that the child is never as he was when taken. For his taker, often a great love. For his mother, not even curiosity. The mother gets the child back, but his bed will remain empty. The kidnapper loses the child but lives on in that child’s longing. This is true word from a child lost and then found: None can douse it, the love I have for the mother who chose me, and nothing can bring love for the woman whose kehkeh I dropped out. The world is strange and people keep making it stranger.

Neither I nor the Leopard spoke about the woman. All I said that night was, “Show the boy some gratitude.”

“What?”

“Thanks. Give the boy thanks for saving your life.”

I walked back to the gates. Knowing he wouldn’t, I said my thanks to the boy as I passed him.

“I didn’t do it for you,” he said.

So.

Now we were walking to the collapsed tower. Together, but we did not speak. The Leopard ahead, me behind, and the boy between us, carrying his bow and quiver. Since we had not spoken we had not agreed, and I was still half of the mind to say no. Because the Leopard did speak true in this, that it’s one thing if you are unlucky in war, of lower birth, or slave born, but chaining a woman as prisoner is something else, even if she was clearly possessed by some kind of lightning devil. But we did not speak of the woman; we did not speak of anything. And I wanted to slap the boy for walking ahead of me.

The collapsed tower stood to the south of the first wall. Nobody on these streets, or paths, or alleys looked like they knew the King was coming. In all my years in Malakal I had never been down this street. I never saw reason to go to the old towers, past the peak, and down below the reach of most of the sun. Or up, as the climb was first so steep that the clay street turned into a narrow lane, then steps. Going down was steep again, where we passed the windows of houses long gone from use. Another two on both sides of the lane that looked like it housed wicked acts, for it was covered in markings and paintings of all kinds of fucking with all kinds of beasts. Even going down, we stood high enough to see all of the city and the flat land beyond it. I heard once that the first builders of this city, back when this was not yet a city, and them not yet fully men, were just trying to build towers tall enough to get back to the kingdom of sky and start a war in the land of gods.

“We are here,” the Leopard said.

The collapsed tower.

That itself is a misspeak. The tower is not collapsed, but it has been collapsing for four hundred years. This is what the old people say, that back then men built two towers apart from the rest of Malakal. The building masters went wrong from the day they built on a road going down instead of coming up the mountains. Two towers, one fat and one thin, built to house slaves before ships came from the East to take them away. And the thin tower would be the tallest in all the lands, tall enough, some say, to see the horizon of the South. Eight floors for both but the taller one would reach even farther upward, like a lighthouse for giants. Some say the master builder had a vision, others say he was a madman who fucked chickens and then chopped their heads off.

But what everybody saw was this. The day they set the last stone—after four years of slaves killed by mishap, iron, and fire—was one of celebration. The warlord of the fort, for Malakal was only a fort, came with his wives. Also there, Prince Moki, the oldest son of King Kwash Liongo. The master builder chicken-fucker was about to splash chicken blood at the base and invoke the blessing of the gods, when just like so, the taller, thinner tower rocked and cracked, hissing dust and swaying. It rocked back and forth, west then east, swinging so wide that two slaves on the unfinished roof fell off. The thin tower tilted, tipped, and even bent a little until it ran into the fat tower, like lovers rushing to a hard kiss. This kiss shook and clapped like thunder. The tower looked like it would crumble but it never did. The two towers now squashed together into one tower, but neither gave way, neither fell. And after ten years, when it was seen that neither tower would give way, people even took to living there. Then it was an inn for weary travelers, then a fort for slavers and their slaves, and then as three floors in the thin tower collapsed on each other, it was nothing. None of this explained why this slaver wanted to meet there. On the three top floors, many steps had broken away. The boy stayed outside. Something rumbled a few floors down, like a foundation about to give.

“This tower will finally come down with all of us in it,” I said.

We stepped up to a floor like I have never seen, in a pattern like on kente cloth, but black and white circles and arrowpoints, and spinning even though everything was still. Ahead of us, a doorway with no door.

“Three eyes, look they shining in the dark. The Leopard and the half wolf. Is that how you gained the nose? Do you relish blood like the cat?” the slaver said.

“No.”

“Come in and talk,” the slaver said.

I was about to say something to the Leopard but he changed and trotted in on all fours. Inside, torches shot light up into a white ceiling and dark blue walls. It looked like the river at night. Cushions on the floor but nobody sat on them. Instead an old woman sat on the floor with her legs crossed, her brown leather dress smelling like the calf it came from. She had shaved all around her head but left the top in braids, long and white. Silver circle earrings big as lip plates hung off her ears and rested on her shoulders. Around her neck, several necklaces of red, yellow, white, and black beads. Her mouth moved but she said nothing; she looked at neither me nor the cat, who was trotting around the room as if looking for food.

“My spotted beast,” the slaver said. “In the inner room.”

The Leopard ran off.

I recognized the date feeder. Right beside his master and ready to stuff his mouth. Another man so tall that until he shifted to his left leg, I thought he was a column holding up the ceiling, carved to look like a man. He looked like one who could stomp and make this tower finally collapse. His skin was dark but not as dark as mine, more like mud before it dries. And shiny even in the little light. I could see the beautiful dots of scars on his forehead, one line curling down his nose and out to his cheeks. No tunic or robe, but many necklaces on his bare chest. A skirt around the waist that looked purple and two boar tusks by his ears. No sandals or shoes or boots, but nobody would have made such things for a man with his feet.

“Never have I seen an Ogo this far west,” I said. He nodded, so I at least knew he was an Ogo, a giant of the mountain lands. But he said nothing.

“We call him Sadogo,” the slaver said.

The Ogo said nothing. He was more interested in moths flying into the lamp at the center of the room. The floor trembled whenever he stepped.

Sitting on a stool in a corner by a closed window was the tall, thin woman from that night. Her hair, still out and wild, as if no mother or man had told her to tame it. Her gown, still black but with white running a ring around her neck and then down between her breasts. A bowl of plums rested in her hand. She looked like she was about to yawn. She looked at me and said to the slaver, “You did not tell me he was a river man.”

“I was raised in the city of Juba, not some river,” I said.

“You carry the ways of the Ku.”

“I am from Juba.”

“You dress like a Ku.”

“This is fabric I found here.”

“Steal like a Ku. You even carry their smell. Now I feel like I’m passing through the swamp.”

“The way you know us, maybe the swamp has passed through you,” I said.

Now the slaver laughed. She bit into a plum.

“Are you Ku, or trying to be? Give us a wise river saying, something like one who follows the track of the elephant never gets wet from the dew. So we can say that river boy he even shits wisdom.”

“Our wisdom is foolishness to the foolish.”

“Indeed. I wouldn’t be so bold with it, if I were you,” she said, and bit into another plum.

“My wit?” I asked.

“Your smell.”

She rose and walked over to me.

She was tall, taller than most men, taller than even the lionskin roamers of the savannah who jump to the sky. Her dress reached the ground and spread so that it looked like she glided over. And this—beautiful. Dark skin, without blemish and smelling of shea butter. Darker lips as if fed tobacco as a child, eyes so deep they were black, a strong face as chipped out of stone, but smooth as if done by a master. And the hair, wild and sprouting in every direction as if fleeing her head. Shea butter, which I already said, but something else, something I knew from that night, something that hid itself from me. Something I know. I wondered where the Leopard went.

The date feeder handed the slaver a staff. He struck the ground and we looked up. Well, not the Ogo; there was no up left for him to look. The Leopard came back in smelling of goat flesh.

The slaver said, “I tell you true and I tell you wise. Is three years ago a child was taken, a boy. He was just starting to walk and could say maybe nana. Taken from his home right here in the night. Nobody left nothing, and nobody called for ransom, not through note, not through drums, not even through witchcraft. Maybe he was sold to the secret witches market, a young child would bring much money to witches. This child was living with his aunt, in the city of Kongor. Then one night the child was stolen and the aunt’s husband’s throat cut. Her family of eleven children, all murdered. We can leave for the house at first light. There will be horses for those who ride, but you must go around the White Lake and around the Darklands and through Mitu. And when you come to Kongor—”

“What is this house to you?” the Leopard said.

I did not see him change and sit on the floor near the old woman, who still did not speak, though she opened her eyes, looked left, right, then closed them again. She moved her hands in the air, like the old men forming poses down by the river.

“It is the house where they last saw the boy. You don’t plan to start the journey from the first step?” the slaver said.

“That would be from the house that gave the child away in the first place,” I said.

“Who is they that last saw the boy? You are in the business of slaving lost boys, not finding them,” said the Leopard. Funny how willing he was to question our employer when his belly was full.

The slaver laughed. I stared at him, hoping my stare would say, What game are you playing?

“Who is he and what is he to you?” the Leopard asked.

“The boy? He is the son of a friend who is dead,” the slaver said.

“And so most likely is the boy. Why do you need to find him?”

“My reasons are my own, Leopard. I pay you to find him, not investigate me.”

The Leopard rose. I knew the look on his face.

“Who is this aunt? Why was the child with her and not his mother?”

“I was going to tell you. His mother and father died, from river sickness. The elders said the father fished in the wrong river, took fish meant for the water lords, and the Bisimbi nymphs who swam underwater and stood guard struck him with illness. He spread it to the boy’s mother. The father was my old friend and a partner in this business. His fortune is the boy’s.”

“A slave rich as you, catching his own fish?” I said.

The slaver paused. I said, “Do you know how to tell a good lie, master Amadu? I know how to tell a bad one. When people talk false, their words are muddy where they should be clear, clear where they should be muddy. Something that sounds like it might be true. But it’s always the wrong thing. Everything you just said, you said different before.”

“Truth don’t change,” he said.

“Truth changed between one man saying the same thing twice. I believe there is a boy. And I believe a boy is missing, and if he’s missing many years, dead. But four days ago, the boy child was living with a housekeeper. Today you say aunt. By the time we get to Kongor it will be a eunuch monkey.”

“Tracker,” the Leopard said.

“No.”

“Let him finish.”

“Good, good, wonderful, fine,” the slaver said, and held his hand up.

“But stop lying,” the Leopard said. “He can smell when you do.”

“Is three years ago a child was taken. A boy, he was just starting to walk and could say maybe papa.”

“Late for a child, even a boy,” I said.

“I tell you true and I tell you wise. From his home right here in the night. Nobody leave nothing, and nobody send notice for ransom. Maybe—”

I pulled the two hatchets from my back. The Leopard’s eyes were going white and his whiskers grew longer. The tall woman stood up and moved to the slaver.

“You heard him?” I said to the Leopard.

“Yes. The same story, almost right down to the word. Almost. But he forgets. Fuck the gods, slaver, you have rehearsed this and still you forget. You must be the worst liar or the echo of a bad one. If this is an ambush I will rip your throat out before he splits your head in two,” the Leopard said.

Leopard and I stood side by side. The Ogo saw me and the Leopard on one side of the room and the slaver and tall woman on the other, and stood still, his eyes hiding under the wild bush of his brow. The old woman opened her eyes.

“One room too small for so many fools,” she said. But she did not move from the mat.

She must have been a witch. She had the air and the smell of witches—lemongrass and fish, blood from a girl’s koo, and funk from not washing her arms or feet.

“Messenger is what he is, all he is,” she said.

“The first time, his message was a pig. This time it’s a sheep,” I said.

“Sangoma,” the old woman said.

“What?”

“You talk in riddles, like a Sangoma. Did you live with one? Who teach you?”

“I don’t know her name and she taught me nothing. The Sangoma from the Hills of Enchantment. The one who saved mingi children.”

“Also the one who give you that eye,” she said.

“My eye is none of your business. This some plot against us?” I asked.

“But you be nothing. Why would anyone plot against you?” the old woman said. “You wish to find the child or no? Answer the question plain, or maybe …”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe the woman is still part of the man. No man has cut you. No wonder you so flighty.”

“Should I be like you then, a credit to your kind?”

She smiled. She was enjoying this. And there it was, a smell again, stronger this time, stronger mayhaps because of the discord in this room, but also outside it. I could not describe it, but I knew it. No, the smell knew me.

“What do you know of the men who took the boy?” I asked.

“What makes you think they were men?” the tall woman said.

“What is your name?”

“Nsaka Ne Vampi.”

“Nsaka,” I said.

“Nsaka Ne Vampi.”

“As you wish.”

“I tell you true, we know nothing,” she said. “Night is when they came. Few, maybe four, maybe five, maybe six, but they were men of strange and terrible looks. I can read the—”

“I can also read.”

“Then go to the Kongor great hall of records and seek it yourself. Nobody saw them enter. Nobody saw them leave.”

“Did no one scream?” said the Leopard. “Had they no windows or doors?”

“Neighbors saw nothing. The women overcharged for her millet porridge and flatbreads, so why would they listen twice what noises come from her house?”

“Why this boy, of all the boys in Kongor?” I asked. “Truly, Kongor is so steadfast in breeding warriors that finding a girl would be a bigger mystery. One boy in Kongor is the same as any other. Why him?”

“That is all we will say until Kongor,” the slaver said.

“Not enough. Not enough by half.”

“The slaver said his piece,” said Nsaka Ne Vampi. “You have the choice, yes or no, so make it quick. We ride in the morning. Even with fast horses it will take ten and two days to get to Kongor.”

“Tracker, we leave,” the Leopard said.

He turned to go. I watched the Ogo watch him as he stepped past.

“Wait,” I said.

“Why?”

“Have you not yet finished making marks?”

“What? Make sense, Tracker.”

“Not you. Her.”

I pointed to the old woman still crouched on the ground. She looked at me, her face blank.

“You have been drawing runes since we came into this room. Writing on air, so nobody here would know. But they are there. All around you.”

The old woman smiled.

“Tracker?” the Leopard whispered. I knew how he was when he understood nothing. He would change, ready for a fight.

“The old crone’s a witch,” I said, and the Leopard’s hair went wild across his back. I touched behind his neck and he stayed.

“You are writing runes either to let someone in or keep someone out,” I said.

I stepped forward and looked around the room.

“Show yourself,” I said. “Your stench was with this room from the moment I entered it.”

In the doorway, liquid coursing down the wall pooled on the floor. Dark and shiny, like oil, and spreading slow like blood. But the smell, something like sulfur, filled the room. “Look,” I said to the Leopard, and pulled a dagger from my waist. I clutched the blade, chucked it at the puddle, and the puddle swallowed it with a suck. In a blink, the knife shot out from the puddle. The Leopard caught it right before it hit my left eye.

“Work of devils,” he said.

“I have seen this devil before,” I said.

The Leopard watched the puddle move. I wanted to see how the others reacted. The Ogo stooped down, but was still taller than everybody else. He bent even lower. He had never seen the like before. The old woman stopped writing runes in air. She was expecting this. Nsaka Ne Vampi stood fast, but moved backward, one slow step, then another. Then she stopped, but something else made her step back again. She was here for this, but perhaps this was not what she was waiting for. Some beasts can walk through a door. Some must be conjured from ground, and some must be evoked from sky, like spirits. The slaver looked away.

And this puddle. It stopped spreading and reversed, closed in on itself and started to rise, like dough being kneaded by invisible hands. The black shiny dough rose and twisted, and squeezed in, and spread out, even as it grew taller and wider. It twisted on itself, getting so thin in the middle that it would break in two. And still it grew. Little pieces popped away like droplets, then flew back and joined the mass. The Leopard snarled but did not move. The slaver still did not look. The black mass was whispering something I did not understand, not to me but on the air. At the top of the mass a face pushed itself out and sucked itself back in. The face pushed through the middle and vanished again. Two branches sprouted from the top of the mass and turned into limbs. The bottom split and twisted and spun into legs and toes. The form shaped itself, sculpted itself, curved herself into wide hips, plump breasts, the legs of a runner and the shoulders of a thrower, and a head with no hair and bright white eyes, and when she smiled, bright white teeth. She seemed to hiss. As she walked she left droplets of black, but the droplets followed her. Some separated from her head but followed her as well. Truly, she moved as if underwater, as if our air was water, as if all movement was dance. She grabbed a cloak near the slaver and dressed herself. The slaver still did not look at her.

“Leopard, the torch,” I said. “The torch right there.”

I pointed at the wall. The black woman saw the Leopard and smiled.

“I am not the one you think,” she said. Her voice was clear, but vanished on air. She would not raise her voice to make herself heard.

“I think you are exactly as I think,” I said. I took the torch from the Leopard. “And I would guess there is as much hate between you and flame as there was with them.”

“Who is she, Tracker?” the Leopard said.

“Who am I, Wolf Eye? Tell him.”

She turned to me, but said to the Leopard, “The wolf fears that by saying them he will invoke them. Say I lie, if I lie, Tracker.”

“Who?” said the Leopard.

“I fear nothing, Omoluzu,” I said.

“I rose from the floor while they fall from the ceiling. I speak while they say nothing. Yet you call me Omoluzu?”

“Every beast has its comelier version.”

“I am Bunshi, in the North. The people in the West call me Popele.”

“You must be one of the lower gods. A godlet. A bush spirit. Maybe even an imp,” I said.

“News of your nose I have heard, but nobody said anything about your mouth.”

“How he keeps putting his foot in it?” Nsaka Ne Vampi said.

“You know of me?”

“Everybody knows of you. A great friend of cheated wives and an enemy to cheating husbands. How loudly your mother must boast of you,” Bunshi said.

“And what are you, God’s piss? God’s spit, or maybe God’s semen?”

Around me the air got thick and thicker. Every animal knows there is water in the air even without rain. But something was clotting around my nose and it was hard to breathe. The air got denser and wetter and surrounded my head. I thought it was the room but it was only my head, a ball of water forming and trying to force itself up my nostrils even without me breathing. Drowning me. I fell to the floor. The Leopard changed and jumped at the woman. She fell to the ground as a puddle and rose up on the other side of the room, right into the squashing hand of the Ogo around her neck. She tried slipping out but couldn’t change. Something about his touch. He nodded towards me, holding her up like a doll, and the water broke away into air. I coughed. The Ogo dropped the woman.

“Leopard, stay if you wish. I go,” I said.

The old woman spoke.

“Tracker. I am Sogolon, daughter of Kiluya from the third sister empire of Nigiki, and yes you speak true. There is more to this story. Will you hear it?” the old woman said.

“Tracker?” said the Leopard.

“Fine, I will,” I said to her, and stood ground.

“Then speak it, goddess,” Sogolon said to Bunshi.

Bunshi turned to the slaver and said, “Leave us.”

“If your story is the same as his, or even more dull, I will sit with this knife and carve nasty scenes on the floor,” I said.

“What do you know of your King?” she said.

“I know he’s not my King,” the Leopard said.

“Nor mine,” I said. “But of every coin I make the Malakal chief wants half so he can give the King quarter, so yes he is my King.”

Bunshi sat in the slaver’s chair as men do, leaning to one side, her left leg over the arm. Nsaka was at the doorway, looking out. The Ogo stood still, and the old woman Sogolon stopped writing runes in the air. I felt like I was around children waiting on the grandfather to tell them a new story about old Nan-si, the spider demon who was a man once. It reminded me to never take the story of any god or spirit or magical being to be all true. If the gods created everything, was truth not just another creation?

“This was long past that Kwash Dara, when he was still a prince, had many friends for sporting, and wenching, and drinking, and fighting, like any boy of his own age. One friend most of all could out-sport him, out-wench him, out-drink him, and out-fight him, and yet even with all those things they moved like brothers. Friends even when the old King took sick and went to the ancestors.

“Basu Fumanguru became known as the man who whispers to the Prince. At the time the council of elders also had a death. Kwash Dara hated the council from when he was a child. Why do they always take young girls? he would ask his nana. And I heard they fuck into their hands and take the seed across to the river islands to give to some god, he said. The King when he was a prince studied at the palace of wisdom and glutted on knowledge, and science, and things being weighed and measured, not just believed. So did Basu Fumanguru. Kwash Dara knew Basu as a man like him in all ways and loved him for it. He said, Basu, you are like me in all ways. And just as I ascend the throne I wish for you to ascend the seat of the elders. Basu said he did not want this seat, for the elders sat in Malakal, five to six days’ ride from Fasisi, where he was born, where lived, all that he knew. Also, he was still young, and to be an elder meant to renounce many things. The Prince became King and said, You are too old for lovers, and we are too old for sport. It is time to set all that aside and do good for the kingdom. Basu objected, and objected until the King threw down his royal staff and said, By the gods I am Kwash Dara and that is my decree. So Basu Fumanguru took his seat with the elders in Malakal, to report as an ear to the King.

“But then the strangest of turns happened. Basu fell in love with his seat. He became devout and pious and took a wife, handsome and pure. They had many children. The King had put him there to make sure the wisdom of the elders lined up with the desire of the royal house. Instead, Basu demanded that the desires of the royal house line up with the wisdom of the elders. Everything was fight, fight, fight. He challenged the King through dissent sent through the drums, he challenged him with letters and many writs, delivered by men on foot and on horse. He challenged him in visits to court and even in the privacy of the King’s chambers. When the King said it is so because I am King, Basu Fumanguru took his case to the streets of Malakal, which spread faster than infection to the streets of Juba, the paths of Luala Luala, and the great roads of Fasisi itself. Basu would say, You are King but you are not divine until you join the ancestors like your father.

“So one day Kwash Dara demanded grain tax from the lands of the elders, which no king had done before. The elders refused to pay. The King sent decree to lock them all up in prison until the tax was paid. But two nights after they locked them away, rain broke all over the North Kingdom and did not stop until all the rivers flooded and killed many, and not just Ku and Gangatom living by the great water. In some places water rose so high that entire towns vanished, and fat bodies floated everywhere. The rain did not stop until the King released Basu Fumanguru. And still things got worse.

“Learn this. In the early years, when the elders clashed with the King, the will of the people was with the elders, for the King was arrogant. It did not make the King weak, for he conquered many nations in war. But in his own country people were starting to ask, Do we have one king or two? I tell you true. Some people were more afraid of Fumanguru than the King, and he was fearsome in all his ways. And righteous in them too. But everything changes. The elders, already fat, got fatter. They got so used to having their will that when people defied them, or were too late with rent, or failed to give proper tribute, they started to take justice themselves instead of leaving such things to the King’s magistrates. They captured highway robbers and chopped their hands off. They hung whoever trespassed and ate the fruit of their lands. They stopped seeking the gods and instead met with witches to work spells and curses. They got fat from taxes that never reached the King.

“Listen here now. Some people hated the King, but soon everybody hated all elders but Basu. One man would say, The elders took my cattle saying this is tax for the King, but the tax collector came seven days ago. This elder would say, Give me what you will earn from your crops now and we will make sure the gods double your yield come harvest. But instead of harvest, blight killed the crops. Another man will say, When will they stop coming for our girls? They are taking them younger and younger, and no man will marry them. They were the law in Malakal and all lands below Fasisi, and when they did not meet in council, they spread to their cities and infected each with its corruption. But it was a decree by the King himself that the elders can only be judged by the gods, never men.

“Basu would not sit with any of this. He was never the chief elder—the King never made good on the promise—but they respected him as once a warrior, and he clashed against his own brothers who had gone corrupt. People say, Go to Basu if that elder took your crops, Go to Basu if a witch spun a curse, Go to Basu for he is the one with reason. People say this. One time an elder had seen a girl in the fourth wall and decided he would have her. She was ten and one in years. He told her father, Send your child to serve as maid to the water goddess, or no wind or sun will prevent your sorghum fields from blight. You and your wife and your many sons will starve. The elder did not wait for the girl to be sent; he came and took her himself. This is what happened. Basu was gathering items for a retreat to a holy place in the bush to seek the word of the gods, when he heard the screams of the girl as the elder was on top of her. A rage went up his head and Basu was no longer Basu. He grabbed a gold Ifa bowl, used to divine the will of the spirits, and struck the elder in the head. And struck him, and struck him, and struck him until he was dead. Basu was in new waters after that. His brothers hated him and he was hated by the King and everyone at court. He should have known there were numbers to his days. Fumanguru and his family fled to Kongor.

“Then one night they came. Tracker, you know of who I speak. It was the Night of the Skulls, a powerful omen.”

“Your brothers?”

“We are not blood.”

“You have no blood.”

She looked away from me. The Leopard, his eyes wide open, was listening like a child left in a bush of ghosts. She continued, “There are many ways to summon them. If you have someone’s blood, speak a curse and throw it up to the ceiling. But first you would need to be under a witch’s enchantment, or they will appear and kill you. Or you could call a witch to do it for you. They appear on the ceiling, people call them the roof walkers, and whether a witch summons them or they are lured by your blood, the hunger in them grows so big that they will hunt you like starving dogs. And the spell will never leave you. Nobody can escape them, and even if you do they will appear anytime you are under a roof, even for a blink. Many man, many woman, many young boy and girl sleep under stars because they will never be rid of Omoluzu.

“You were wondering, Tracker, how come they never followed you here? How long before you slept under a roof?”

“Near a year,” I said.

“Omoluzu cannot follow you out of the underworld if that is where they found you. And had they found you here, they cannot follow you there. But if I were you, I would not throw blood.”

“What did the Omoluzu do?” the Leopard said.

Bunshi stood up. Her robes billowed even though no wind blew. Outside a crash, some shouts, and some screams. People drunk on drink and sport, people drunk on the excitement of the coming King. Kwash Dara, the same king in her story.

“As I said before. They came on the Night of the Skulls. Fumanguru’s seven sons were long asleep and time was reaching deep night, the noon of the dead. All of them asleep, even the youngest, also called Basu. Asleep were the ground and garden slaves, but awake were the cooks milling grain, Basu’s youngest and oldest wives, and Basu, in his study, reading volumes from the Palace of Wisdom. This is what happened. An elder with friends at court sent a witch to speak a dark enchantment on the house, then paid a slave to gather the youngest wife’s menstrual blood. Omoluzu hunger is monstrous—it is the smell of blood that lures them, not the taste. This slave found her blood cloths, bundled them together, and in the dark when the other slaves were asleep, threw her mistress’s blood cloths up to the ceiling. The witch never told her to run, so she went to sleep. In the dark the rumble on the ceiling must have sounded like thunder far away. Thunder that even the light sleeper sleeps through.

“The Tracker can tell who they be. They fall from the ceiling the way I rise from the ground. They run on the ceiling as if tethered to sky. When they leap, they almost touch the floor, but land back on the ceiling so hard that you wonder if it not they who are on the ground and you who are in the air. And they have blades made of nothing on this earth. They rose and formed, and chopped up nearly every living slave save one. She ran out screaming that the dark has come to kill us. Tracker is right that I am like them. But I am not them. And yet I felt them, I felt them coming and knew they were near, but did not know which house until I heard Basu himself shout. Omoluzu chased the slave, who ran to Basu’s wife. The wife grabbed a torch, thinking of the great legends where light defeats darkness, but they surrounded them and chopped both their heads off.

“Omoluzu appeared in the grain room and killed the cooking slaves. They appeared in the children’s room and cut them up before any of them even woke. They were merciful with no one. When I climbed into the house it was too late, and still there was killing. I stepped into a hallway thick with blood. A man ran to me holding a baby, Basu holding young Basu. He looked like a man who knew death was chasing him. I could hear death rumble on the ceiling like thunder, like mortar was breaking apart. Black racing across the ceiling like darkness and coming after him. I say, Give me your child if you want him to live. I am his father, he says. I say, I cannot save both of you and fight them, and he says, You are just like them. But we share neither mother nor father, I say. I did not have time to convince him I was good or evil. I saw the darkness behind him take shape into three, then four, then six Omoluzu. Give me the boy, I said. He stared at his child long, then handed him to me. The baby was only one year born, I could tell. We were both holding him and he could not let him go.

“They are coming,” he said.

“They are here,” I said.

“He looked at me and said, This was the work of the King. Kwash Dara. This was the work of the court, this was the work of the elders, and my son is witness that this happened.

“Your son will not remember, I said.

“But the King will, he said.

“I flicked up my second finger and it became a blade. I pushed below my rib right here and cut it open. The father was afraid but I told him he need not fear, I make a womb for the boy. I cut my womb open the way midwives sometimes do when the baby is unborn and the mother is already dead. I pushed the baby through and my skin sealed him inside. The father was in terror, but seeing my belly big, as if with child, gave him some peace. Will he die in you? he said, and I said no. Were you a mother? this man Basu asked me, but I did not answer. I tell you true, there was a heaviness in me. I have never carried children. But maybe every woman is a mother.”

“You are not a woman,” I said.

“Quiet,” said the Leopard.

“The Sangoma said you had a mouth on you,” she said.

I didn’t ask how she knew.

“The Omoluzu had blades. I had blades too.”

“Of course you did.”

“Tracker, enough,” said the Leopard.

“One came for me, swung his one blade, but I had two.”

“That’s a scene for the griots, a pregnant-looking woman fighting shadow devils with two blades.”

“A scene indeed,” said the Leopard. I was starting to wonder about him. He was feeding on her story like someone starving, or like someone glutting, I could not tell.

“He swung at me and I ducked. I jumped up to the ceiling, their floor, and chopped his head off with my two blades. But I could not fight them all. Basu Fumanguru was brave. He pulled out a knife, but a blade came for him from the back and stabbed right through his belly. But their bloodlust was not satisfied. They could smell the family’s blood on the boy even with him inside me. One swung and cut me in the shoulder, but I swung around and cut his chest open. I ran and jumped through the same window I came through.”

“Not anywhere have I heard such a story. Not from the hawk, not even from the rhinoceros,” the Leopard said.

“It is a very good story. There were even monsters. None of it makes me want to help you,” I said.

She laughed. “If I was looking for noble men with the heart to help a child, I would never have called you. I really don’t care what you want. It is a task for which you will be paid four times more than the highest you have ever charged. In gold. What you like or want, whatever it is in your head means nothing to me.”

“I …” I had nothing to say.

“What of the child—after, I mean?” the Leopard said.

“I did not take him to his aunt. Omoluzu smells blood upon blood and would have, should whoever commanded them willed it, gone after any family. I took him to a blind woman in Mitu, who used to be loyal to the old gods. Without sight she would not know who the child was, or try to find out. She was with a child so could suckle him also, and keep him for a year.”

“Used to be loyal?”

“She sold him at the slave market in the Purple City, near Lake Abbar. A baby fetches great coin outside of Kongor, especially a male. She told me this as I started to slit her throat with this finger.”

“What wise choices in people you make.”

I knew from across the room, Nsaka Ne Vampi rolled her eyes. I did not look, but I knew.

“I tracked the child to a perfume and silver merchant who was going to take him to the East. It took me a moon and it was too late. He was late with his silver and merchants in Mitu sent mercenaries to find him. You know where they found him? At the border of Mitu. They found flies but no stench of death. Somebody ransacked the caravan and killed everyone. Nobody touched the civet, or silver, or myrrh. Never found the boy; they took him.”

“The King?” I asked.

“The King would have had him killed.”

“So he is gone? Why not leave him gone?”

“You would have a child walking with murderers?” the old woman said.

“Because a child in the company of witches would fare much better,” I said. “What use is the boy to murderers?”

“They found use,” Bunshi said.

I remember what the date feeder said to the slaver in the lightning woman’s tower. About the little boy knocking on the woman’s door, crying that he was running from monsters, only to let them in as soon as her family fell asleep. I nodded at the Leopard, hoping he caught what they were not saying.

I couldn’t decide whether to sit down, stand up, or leave.

“A little boy survives roof walkers only to be sold into slavery, where he was kidnapped by who, witchmen? Devils? A society of boy-lover spirits starting out the child early? What will happen next, maybe Ninki Nanka the swamp dragon will smell them as they go through the bush and eat them all?”

“You don’t believe in such creatures?” Bunshi said. “Despite all you have seen and heard and fought with? Despite the animal beside you?”

“You don’t need belief in evil creatures when men flay their own wives,” I said. I turned and looked at the Leopard, who was still drinking in this story.

“But you do believe speaking clever is wise. Good. I am not paying for your belief. I am paying for your nose. Bring me back the boy.”

“Or proof of his corpse?”

“He is alive.”

“And when we find him, what then? You are asking us to go against the King?”

“I’m paying you to expose the King.”

“Proof that the King is behind a murder.”

“There is more to the story of the King than you know. And if you knew you could not bear.”

“Of course.”

“She’s not paying you to ask or to think. She’s paying you to smell,” said Nsaka Ne Vampi.

“How do you know they have not killed the child?”

“We know,” Bunshi said.

I almost said I know too, but looked at the Leopard. He glanced at me and nodded.

A door opened and shut. I thought it was Fumeli but it was not his smell. Nsaka Ne Vampi walked over to the doorway and looked out. She said, “In two days we ride for Kongor. Come or don’t come, it makes no difference to me. She’s the one that wants you.”

She pointed to Bunshi, but I kept looking past her. I didn’t even hear what she said after, because of the scent coming up the stairs. The scent I caught earlier, which I thought was Bunshi, but I had never met her and she was right, she did not smell like Omoluzu. This scent was coming closer, someone carrying it, and I knew I hated it, more than I have hated anything in years, more than I have hated men I have known but killed anyway. He was coming up the stairs, coming closer, I could hear the patter of his feet and with each step my fury was bursting into flames.

“You are late,” Nsaka Ne Vampi blurted. “Everyone is—”

I cut her words off with the hatchet that I flung straight past her face to lodge in the door.

“God’s fuck! You barely missed me, friend,” he said, stepping into the doorway.

“I wasn’t trying to miss,” I said, and threw the second one straight for his face. He dodged but it grazed his ear.

“Tracker, what the—”

I ran and jumped on him; we fell back on the stairs and rolled down the steps. My hands around his neck and squeezing until either his neck snapped or his breath died. Rolling down the steps, skin bruising, blood shedding, his, mine, the steps, the loose mortar. Me losing earth, him losing voice, rolling and rolling and hitting the floor below, the force of the fall and him kicking me in the chest. I fell back and he was upon me. I kicked him off and pulled a knife, but he knocked it out of my hand and punched me in the belly, then the face, then the cheek, then my chest but I blocked his hand, pushed away the knuckle, punched him under the chin, again across the left eye. The Leopard ran down as Leopard and changed maybe, I didn’t see, I kept my eyes on him. He ran, and jumped, and kicked, I dodged and swung up my elbow and hit him square in the face and he was down, head hit the ground first. I jumped on him and punched his left cheek then right, then left, and he hit me in the ribs twice and I fell off, but rolled out of the way of his knife as he stabbed the floor. I kicked his kick, and kicked his kick again and scrambled up as he scrambled up, and the Leopard knew better than to pull me back or stop me, and looking at the Leopard I didn’t see him come up behind and swing for the back of my head and hit and it got wet and I fell to my knees, and he swung his hand back to hit me again and I kicked his feet and he fell. I got on him again and swung my hand back to punch him again, his face running blood, looking like a dark juicy fruit bruised open, and a blade pushed itself against my throat.

“I will cut your head off and feed it to crows,” Nsaka Ne Vampi said.

“I smell him all over you,” I said.

“Take your hands off his neck. Now,” she said.

“No—”

The arrow shot straight through her hair. The Leopard’s boy was a floor below, another arrow in the bow, pulled tight and ready. Nsaka Ne Vampi raised her hands. A wild gust of blue wind hit the floor and blew us away from each other in the quick. The Leopard and I hit the wall hard and Nsaka Ne Vampi rolled away.

Nyka laughed on top of it, as he tried to pull himself up. He spat at the wind, which howled louder, pinning me against the wall. Her voice was on top of it, the old woman’s. A spell set loose on the floor. The wind died as soon as it came, and we were separated from each other, across the room. Bunshi came down the steps, but the old woman stayed above.

“Them you expect to find this boy?” Sogolon said.

“You two know each other,” Bunshi said.

“Black mistress, have you not heard? We are old friends. Better than lovers since I shared his bed for six moons. And yet nothing came to pass, eh, Tracker? Did I ever tell you I was disappointed?”

“Who is this man?” Leopard asked me.

“But he told me so much about you, Leopard. He never gave any word about me?”

“This son of a leprous jackal bitch is nothing, but some call him Nyka. I swore to every fucking god that would hear me that when I saw you next, if that day ever came, I would kill you,” I said.

“That day is not today,” Nsaka Ne Vampi said. She had two daggers out.

“I hope for your sake you make him pull out when he fucks you. Even his seed is poison,” I said.

“This reunion does not move well, I think. There is thunder under your brow,” Nyka said.

“Tracker, let’s—”

“Let’s what, cat?”

“Whatever you are looking for, today is not the day to find it,” he said.

I was so furious, all I could feel was heat, and all I could see was red.

“You didn’t even do it for gold. Not even silver,” I said.

“Still such a fool. Some tasks are their own reward. Nothing means nothing and nobody loves no one, isn’t that what you love to say? Yet you are the one with all this feeling, and you trust it above everything else, even your nose. Fool for love, fool for hate. Still think I did it for money?”

“Leave now, or I swear I won’t care who I kill to get to you,” I said.

“You leave instead,” the old woman said. “But stay, Leopard.”

“Where he goes, I go,” the Leopard said.

“Then both of you leave,” the old woman said.

Nsaka Ne Vampi took Nyka upstairs, her eyes on me the whole time.

“Get out,” Bunshi said.

“I was never in,” I said.

Deep in the night, I woke up to my room still dark. I thought I was rising from troubled sleep but she had gone into my dream to wake me up.

“You knew you would follow me,” she said.

The thickness of her form trickled down the windowsill. She rose into a mound, stretched as high as the ceiling, then shaped herself into a woman again. Bunshi stood by the window, sitting in the frame.

“So you are a god,” I said.

“Tell me why you wish him dead.”

“Will you grant me the wish?”

She stared at me.

“I don’t wish him dead,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I wish to kill him.”

“I will have the tale.”

“Oh you will, will you. Very well. This is what passed between me and Nyka.”

Nyka was like a man coming back from things I was yet to go through. It was two years since I last saw the Leopard, and I was living in Fasisi, taking any work I could find, even finding dogs for stupid children who thought they could keep dogs, and who cried when I brought the animal’s just-buried carcass back to the father who killed it. Indeed, a roof over my head was the only reason I bedded women, since they were more agreeable to me staying the night than men, especially when I was searching for their husbands.

A noblewoman who lived for the day when she would finally be called to court, but who in the meantime fucked one man for every seven women she smelled on her husband’s breath, said this to me as I came at her from behind in the marriage bed and thought of Uwomowomowomowo valley boys smooth in skin: It has been said you have a nose. Both man and wife spilled perfume on the rugs to hide the smell of others they brought to bed. Later she looked at me and I said, Do not worry, I will please myself. What do you wish from my nose? I asked. My husband has seven mistresses. I do not complain for he is a painful, terrible lover. But he has gone stranger of late, and he was already very strange. I feel he has taken an eighth mistress, and that mistress is either a man or a beast. Twice has he come home with a smell that I did not recognize. Something rich, like a burning flower.

I did not ask how she heard of me, or what were her wishes when I found him, only how much she would pay.

“A boy’s weight in silver,” she said.

I said, This sounds like a good offer. What would I know of good or bad offers? I was young. Give me something of his, for I have never seen your husband, I said. She grabbed what looked like a white rug and said, This is what he wears under his garment. Are you married to a man or a mountain? I said. The cloth was twice as wide as the span of my arm and still carried the trace of his sweat, shit, and piss. I did not tell her there were two different shits in this cloth, one from him and another from him pleasuring someone’s ass. As soon as I smelled him I knew where he was. But I knew where he was when she said burning flower.

“Be careful. Many mistake him for Ogo,” she said.

Only one thing smelled of burning flower. Only one thing smelled like something rich burned away.

Opium.

It came from the merchants in the East. Now there were secret dens in every city. Nobody I knew who had taken it had a tomorrow. Or a yesterday. Just a now, in a den with smoke, which made me wonder if this man was opium’s seller or slave or a thief of men under opium.

The smell of the husband and the opium led me to the street for artists and masters of craft. Fasisi streets had no plan. A wide street twisted into a narrow lane, burped into a river with just a rope bridge, then another lane again. Most of the houses had thatch roofs and walls built of clay. On the highest hill in the delta, the royal compound sat behind thick walls guarded by sentries. I tell you, it was a mystery why this, the least magnificent of the northern cities, was the capital of the empire. Nyka said this is the city that reminded the King of where we came from and to never go back, but he does not yet enter this story. Fasisi smiths are the masters of iron, if not manners. And iron is what made this backward town conquer the North two hundred years ago.

I stopped at an inn whose name meant “Light from a Woman’s Buttocks” in my language. They locked the windows shut but left the door open. Inside, many men lay wherever there was floor, on their backs, their eyes here but gone, their mouths leaking drool, their owners uncaring as the remnants of embers tipped from pipe bowls and burned out on their robes. A woman in the corner stood over a large pot that smelled of soup missing peppers and spices. Truth, it smelled more like the hot water used to skin an animal. Some of the men moaned, but most kept quiet, as if in sleep.

I passed a man smoking tobacco under a torch. He sat on a stool and leaned his back against the wall. Thin face, two large earrings, strong chin, though that might have been the light. The front half of his head he shaved, leaving the back to grow long. Goatskin cape. He did not look at me. From another room came music, which was odd, since nobody in this hall would notice. I stepped over men who did not move, men who could see me but had eyes only for the pipe. The burning-flower smell of opium was so thick that I held my breath. One never knew. Upstairs a boy screamed and a man cursed. I ran upstairs.

For someone not an Ogo this husband was as huge as one. He stood there, taller than the doorway, taller than the tallest cavalry horse. Naked, and raping a boy. I could only see his legs dangling, lifeless. But he was bawling. His two giant hands grabbed the boy’s buttocks while he forced himself. The wife did not want him dead, I thought, but said nothing about wanting him whole.

I pulled two throwing daggers, little ones, and flung them at his back. One cut across his shoulder. The husband yelled, dropped the boy, and turned around. The boy landed on his back and didn’t move. I watched him, waited too long. The husband was upon me, all muscle and skin, his shoulders massive like an ape’s, his hand grabbing my entire head. He picked me up like a doll and threw me across the room. He growled as he had while raping. The boy rolled over and grabbed one of the rugs. The man, like a buffalo, charged at me. I dodged and he ran right into the wall, cracking it and almost bursting right through. I grabbed a hatchet to chop his heel, but he reached back and kicked me all the way to the wall on the other side. It slammed the breath out of my mouth and I fell. The boy scrambled, stepping on my legs as he ran out. The man pulled his head out of the wall. His skin dark, wet from sweat, hairy like a beast’s. He batted away a line of spears leaning on the wall. Truly I knew men who were big and men who were fast but no man who was both. I pulled myself up and tried to run but his hand was around my neck again. He cut my breath off, and that wasn’t enough. He would crush my bone. I couldn’t reach knife or hatchet. I punched, thumped, scratched his arms, but he laughed as if I was the boy he was raping. He glared at me and I saw his black eyes. My sight was going dark and my spit ran down his hand. He even had me off the floor. Blood was ready to burst out of my eyes. I barely saw the man from downstairs break a clay jar on the man’s back. The husband swung around and the man threw something yellow and rank in his eyes. The not-Ogo dropped me and fell to his knees, screaming and rubbing his eyes as if about to scratch them out. Air rushed into me and made me fall to my knees as well. The man grabbed my arm.

“Is he blind?” I asked.

“Maybe for the next few blinks, maybe for a quartermoon, maybe forever, you can never tell with bat piss.”

“Bat piss? Did you s—”

“A giant is just as dangerous blind, young boy.”

“I’m not a boy, I’m a man.”

“Die as a man, then,” he said, and ran out. I ran after him. He laughed all the way out the door.

He said his name was Nyka. No family name, no house of origin, no place he called home, and no home he was running from. Just Nyka.

We hunted together for a year. I was good at finding everything but business. He was good at finding everything but people. I should have known but he was right, I was a boy. He made me wear robes, which I did not like, for they made fighting difficult, but people in some cities took me for his slave when I wore only a wrap. Most towns we went to, nobody knew of this Nyka. But everywhere we went where somebody knew him, they wanted to kill him. In a bar in the Uwomowomowomowo valley I saw a woman walk right up to him and slap him twice. She would a third time, but he caught her hand. She pulled a knife with the other and grazed his chest. Later that night my hand was between my legs as I heard them fuck across the room.

Once we searched for a dead girl who was not dead. Her kidnapper kept her in a burial urn in the ground behind his house, and took her out whenever he wanted amusement. He gagged her mouth and bound her hands and feet. When we found him he had just put his children to sleep and left his wife to go around the back to do things to this girl. He pulled away loose plants and scooped away dirt, and took out the hollow stick that he stuck in the top of the urn so that she could breathe. But this night it was not her in the urn, but Nyka. He stabbed the man in the side and he staggered back yelling. I kicked him in the back and he fell. I took a club and knocked him out. He woke up tied to the tree near where he buried the girl. She was weak and could not stand. I put my hand on her mouth, telling her to stay quiet, and gave her a knife. We steadied her hand as she pushed the knife down into his belly, then chest, then belly again over and over. He screamed into the gag until he would scream no more. I would have the girl get satisfaction. The knife fell out of her hand and she lay next to the dead man, crying. Something changed in Nyka after that. We were liars and thieves but we were not killers.

I tell you all this because I want you to see him as I saw him. Before.

Business was drying up in Fasisi. I grew tired of the place and wives missing husbands every seven days. We were at the same inn we always went to split our profits. And drink palm wine or masuku beer or liquor the colour of amber, which set fire in the chest and made the floor slippery. The fat innkeeper with a frown line right above the wart above her brow came over.

“Pour us both the bottled fire,” Nyka said.

She produced two mugs and filled both halfway. She said nothing, not even when Nyka slapped her buttocks as she went back to the counter.

“Good fortune awaits in the city of Malakal, or the Uwomowomowomowo valley below,” I said.

“Good fortune you thinking? What if I am hungry for adventure?”

“North?”

“I think I shall see my mother,” he said.

“You said before, the second-greatest thing you two gave each other was distance. You have also said you have no mother.”

He laughed. “That is still true.”

“Which?”

“How much bottled fire did you drink?”

“Which mug is yours?”

“You drank from it?” he asked. “Good. When last we talked of fathers, you said you fought yours. One day my father, he comes in from a day of not working, only scheming and plotting and going nowhere. Hitting us was sport. One time he hit my brother in the back of the head with the walking stick and my brother was simple after that. My mother made sorghum bread. He beat her too. One time he whipped her with the walking stick, and she hopped on one foot for two moons and limped after that. So yes, let us say that this was a night he comes home from drink and swings the cane and hits me in the back of the head. Then he kicks and beats me on the ground, knocks another tooth loose, shouting for me to get up and take more. One day we shall talk just of fathers, Tracker. So yes, let us say he swings the stick at my head, but he’s too slow, and I too fast, and I catch it. Then I grab the stick from him and swing it to his head. He falls, just like that, on the floor. I take the stick and beat him and beat him, and he holds up his hand, and I break all his fingers, and he holds up his arms, and I break his arms, and he holds up his head and I break his head till I heard crack, crack, crack and still I beat, and then I hear crunch, and then sloosh, slosh, and my mother screams, You killed my husband, you killed your brothers’ father. How will we eat? I burned him behind our hut. Nobody asked for him, because nobody liked him, and everybody rejoiced at the smell of his burning flesh.”

“And your mother?”

“I know my mother. She is right where I left her. And yet I will see her, Tracker. I leave in two days. Then we can go on whatever adventure you like.”

“You are the one always seeking adventure. Meet me in Malakal.”

“Meet me where you smell my scent. A lazy night this is, and we have fucked out the entire quarter. Drink some more.”

I drank and he drank until we tamed that fire in the chest, and then we drank more. And he said, Let us forget talk of fathers, friend. Then he kissed me on the mouth. This was nothing; Nyka kissed all and everyone, in greeting or parting.

“I shall find you in ten days,” I said to him.

“Eight is the better number,” he said. “More than seven days with my mother and all I can do is try not to kill her. Drink some more.”

A warmth, first on my forehead, ran down my neck. I opened my eyes and the piss hit my face and blinded me. I rubbed my eyes without thinking, and my right hand pulled my left. A shackle on my right hand, a chain, a shackle on my left. In front of me, a leg raised and piss spurting on me. Off in the dark, loud laughter. I lashed out but the chain stopped me. I tried to stand, I tried to scream, the women in the dark laughed louder. The animal, the beast, the dog pissed on me like I was the trunk of a tree. First I thought Nyka just left me drunk in an alley to be pissed on by dogs. Or someone, a madman or a slaver—they infested these alleys—or a husband who did not want me to find him now found me. My mind went wild, thinking three men or four, or five had found me in the alley and said, Here is the man who took the comfort from our lives. But men did not laugh like women. The dog lowered his foot and trotted away. The floor was dirt and I could make out walls. My mind went wild again. I would ask, Who are you men that I shall soon kill, but something gagged my mouth.

Popping out of the dark first, two red eyes. Then teeth, long and white and ready. Light was above me when I looked up, light peeking through branches hiding this hole. A trap I fell into. A trap long forgotten, so that even the trapper would not know that I shall die here. But who put a gag in my mouth? Was it so that I could not scream while it bit into me and tore chunks apart? And yet before I saw the face, when it was just eyes and teeth, the piss told me everything. The hyena backed up in the dark, then charged straight at me. Another jumped out of the dark from the side and knocked her in the ribs, and they both rolled into the dark, scowling, growling, barking. Then they stopped and started laughing again.

“Men in the West call us the Bultungi. You have unfinished business with us,” she said in the dark.

I would have said I have no business with spotted devils, or that nothing glorious springs from deceiving scavengers, but I had a gag in my mouth. And hyenas, from what I knew, had no qualm with live flesh.

The three came out of the dark: a girl; a woman older, perhaps her mother; and a still older woman, thin, with her back straight. The girl and the old woman wore nothing. The girl, her breasts like large plums, hips spread wide; her nana, a sprout of black-haired bush. The old woman, her face mostly cheekbones, her arms and frame thin, and her breasts lanky. The middle woman, her hair in braids, wore a red boubou tunic with rips and smudges. Wine, or dirt, or blood, or shit, I didn’t know; I could smell all of them. Also this. I looked into the dark for the male who pissed on me, but no man came. But the two naked women came in the little light, and I saw it on both of them. Long cocks, or what looked like cocks between their legs, thick and swinging quick.

“Behold, it looks at us,” the middle one said.

“Look at hyena womankind, longer and harder than you,” the young one said.

“Shall we eat it now? Take him in? Limb by limb?” the old one said.

“Will you raise much fuss, man? Living or dead flesh makes no difference to us,” the middle one said.

“Come, come no fuss, rend the flesh, juice the blood, eat it, us,” the old one said.

“I say we kill him now,” the young one said.

“No, no, eat him slow, start with the feet, precious meat,” the old woman said.

“Now.”

“Later.”

“Now!”

“Later!”

“Quiet!” the middle one shouted, then swung her arms wide and struck both.

The young one changed first, in a blink. Her nose and mouth and chin shot out of her face and her eyes went white. The muscles on her shoulder pumped and popped up, and those in her arms raised from arm to fingertip as if snakes ran under the skin. On the old woman her chest spread as if new flesh was tearing out of the old, all under her rough skin. Her face went the same. Her fingers, now black claws, the tips like iron. All this happened far quicker than I describe it. The old woman growled, and the young girl did the heh-heh-heh laugh that was not a laugh. The old woman charged the middle one but she swatted her away like a fly. The old woman pawed the ground, thinking to charge again.

“It took your ribs five moons to heal last time,” the middle one said.

“Take the gag out and let him give us sport,” the old one said. The young one changed back to girl. She came to me and indeed her smell was foul. Whatever she last ate, she ate days ago and chunks of it rotted somewhere on her body. She ran her hands around the back of my head and I thought of banging my head against the wall, anything, even the slightest thing to resist. She laughed and her foul breath ran past my nose. She pulled the gag and I coughed up vomit. They all laughed. She came in close to my face as if about to lick the vomit off, or kiss it.

“A comely bitch, this one be,” she said.

“As man goes, he will not be the worst to go down my stomach,” the old one said.

“Long in leg, thin in muscle, lean in fat, he will not be much of a meal,” said the old one.

“Salt him with his brains, and add some hog fat to his flesh,” said the young one.

“I give him this,” said the middle one. “In the only matter that counts with man, he impresses me. How do you run with it swinging so low?”

I coughed until my throat was raw.

“Maybe he will have water,” the old one said.

“I have in me some strong water,” the young one said, and laughed. She hiked up her left leg and grabbed her dangling cock, then laughed instead of pissed. The old one laughed as well.

The middle one stepped forward. She said, “We are the Bultungi, and you have unfinished business with us.”

“Unfinished business I will finish with my hatchet,” I coughed. They all laughed.

“Chop it off, place it in another room, and boom! Man still acting like he swinging,” said the old one.

“Old bitch, not even me understand that,” said the young one.

The middle one stood right before me. “Do you not remember us?” she said.

“The hyena has never been a memorable beast.”

“Make me give him something to remember,” the young one said.

“Truly who remembers the hyena? You look like the head of a dog pushing out of the asshole of cat walking backwards.”

The old and middle women laughed, but the young one flipped to fury. She changed. Still on two legs, she charged for me. Middle one kicked her leg out and tripped her. Young one landed hard on her chin and slid a little. She crouched and growled at the middle one, then started to circle her as if about to fight over fresh kill. She growled again, but the middle one, still in the form of woman, let loose a snarl louder than a roar. Maybe the room shook or maybe the young one, but even I felt something shift. She whimpered heh-heh-hehs under her breath.

“How long since you saw our sisters?”

I coughed again.

“I stay away from half-dead hogs and rotting antelope, so I would never see your sisters.”

I only noticed now, with her close, that her eyes were all white as well. The old one went off in the dark but her eyes popped out of the black.

“And what sisters? You boy-beasts who change to women, what are you?”

They all laughed.

“Surely you know us. We are the beasts where the woman do the tasking and the men do the tasks. And since men have made it that the biggest cock rules ground and sky, does it not make sense that woman should have the biggest cock?” said the middle one.

“This is a world where men rule.”

“And what good has come of your rule?” the old one said.

“There is game, there is bush, there are rivers without poison, and no child starves because of the gluttony of his father, since we put men in their place, and the gods willed it,” said the middle one.

“He don’t remember any of them. Maybe we cry. Maybe we make him cry,” the young one said.

“I would tell you how many moons have passed, but we do not fear gray in the hair, nor the crook in back, so we do not count moons. Do you not remember the Hills of Enchantment? A boy with two axes jumped a pack of us, killing three and maiming one. Who could no longer hunt, became prey.”

The other two groaned.

“Women doing what they do. Protecting their young. Nurturing, providing—”

“Feeding them whatever young child you were too glutted to feed yourself.”

“That is the way of the bush.”

“And should you come across me with half of your cub in my mouth, would you tell yourself that too is the way of the bush? Fuck the gods, if you are not the shiftiest of creatures. If you are in the bush, and of the bush, why do I smell your fucking stink in the city? You roll in the street and grovel like a mangy bitch to the women whose children you snatch at night.”

“You have no honor.”

“You bitches have me down in a hole full of man bones, and the smell of children you murder. A group of you killed ten and seven women and babies over twenty nights in Lajani until hunters killed them. Until I passed through and asked why does everywhere reek of hyena piss, they thought they were hunting wild dogs. I see your ways. You shift form to move among children, do you not? Then drag them away to kill. Not even the lowest shape-shifter kind sinks so low. Honor. There’s more honor to the worm.”

“He keeps calling us dogs,” the young one said.

“We followed you for a year,” the middle one said.

“Why grab me now?”

“I told you time is nothing to us, nor is haste. It’s your friend who took a year.”

“Awhoa! Sister, look at his face. Look how it falls when you speak of the friend. Did you not yet see in your mind-eye that he betrayed you?”

“Nyka. That is his name. Was there strong love between you? You thought he would never sell you for silver or gold, and yet how do we know his name?”

“He is my friend.”

“Nobody ever gets betrayed by their enemy.”

“Nothing, he says. Now he says nothing. Watch the face. It’s drooping longer. No sting like betrayal’s sting. Watch the face,” the young one said.

“It turns into a … a … scowl? Is it a scowl, sisters?” the old one asked.

“Come out of the dark so you can see clear.”

“I think the boy shall cry.”

“Take heart, boy. He sold you to us a year ago. In that time I think he might have even grown to like you.”

“He just like gold coin more.”

“Do you wish that we kill him?” the middle one said as she stooped in front of me.

I lunged at her as far as the chains would let me, but she did not even flinch.

“I can do this for you. A final wish,” she said.

“I have a wish,” I said.

“Sisters, the man has a wish. Should one of us attend to it or all three?”

“All three of you.”

“Give us this wish, we shall hear it,” said the old one.

I looked at them. The middle one smiling as if she was the healer woman come to touch my forehead, the old one cupping her ear as she looked at me, the younger one spitting and looking away.

“I wish you would stay in hyena form, for though you are a hideous animal and your breath always stinks of rotting corpse, at least I didn’t have to bear you in the mockery form of women. Women who make me ask what kind of woman smells as if she shits from the mouth.”

The old and young ones howled and changed form again, but I knew the middle one would not allow them to touch me. Yet.

“I wish to see the view of the gods, when I kill each of you.”

The middle one threw herself at me as if to kiss. Indeed she grabbed my head as if to kiss and parted her lips. Sisters, she said, and both ran to me as women, and grabbed my arms. Strong, strong women, they held me down no matter how hard I struggled. She moved in to kiss my mouth, but moved her lips upward, touching my nose, brushing my cheek, and stopping at my left eye. I closed it before she licked it. She took her fingers and pried it open. She covered it with her mouth and licked the eye. I yelled and struggled, jerked my chest up and tried to nod my head out of her grip. I screamed before I knew what she was doing. Then she stopped licking. And started sucking. She pressed her lips around the eye and sucked, and sucked, and I could feel myself pulling out of my own head, sucked into her mouth. I screamed and screamed but that made the other two laugh and laugh. She sucked and sucked and all around my eye was dark and hot. It was leaving me. It was leaving me. It was forgetting where it should be and leaving for her mouth. My eye, she sucked it until the whole thing plopped out of my lids and into her mouth. She pulled it slow. She licked around it once, twice, three times and I think I said no. Please. No. Then she bit it off.

I woke up in total dark. They raised my arms up and my face rested on the right. I could not touch my face, even though surely that had been a dream? I did not want to do it. I could not touch my left eye, so I closed the right. Everything went black. I opened again and there was the light on the ground. I closed again and everything was black. The tears ran down my cheeks before I even thought to cry. I tried to bring my knees up and my foot stepped on it, slippery and soft. They left it there for me to see. The goddess who hears man’s cry and returns the same cry mocked me.

I woke up, feeling cloth on my face, wrapped around my eye.

“Will you now say that you will kill us, we mockery of women?” the middle one said. “I wish to hear of your rage, or your savage talk. It entertains me.”

I had nothing to say. I wanted to say nothing. Not to spite her, since I didn’t want that either. I wanted nothing. That was the first day.

Day two, the old one woke me with a slap.

“Look how little we feed you and yet you still piss and shit yourself,” she said.

She threw me a piece of meat with the fur still on it. Be glad it’s fresh kill, she said. But I still could not eat raw flesh. Eat it and think of him, she said, then went back into the dark. She changed slow and it sounded like bones cracking and joints popping. She threw another piece at me. The side of a warthog’s head.

Day three, the young one ran in as if somebody was chasing her. She of the three liked changing to woman the least. She came right up to me and licked my shoulder and I flinched. I knew the heh-heh-heh was not a laugh, but it felt like mockery. She made a sound I never heard before, like a whine, like a child saying EEEEEEEEE. She opened her mouth, flattened her ears, and tilted her head to one side. She bared her teeth. Out of the dark came another hyena, smaller, the spots on the skin larger. She EEEEEEEEE’d again and the other one came in closer. The hyena sniffed my toes, then trotted away. The young one changed to woman and yelled at the dark. I laughed but it came out like a sick man’s laugh. She punched me quick in the left cheek, and again and again, until my head went dark again.

Day four, two of them argued in the dark. Present him to the clan, the old one said, for now I knew her voice. Present him to the clan and let them judge him. Every woman in the clan deserves a bite of his flesh. Every woman is not my sister, said the middle one. Every woman did not raise her cubs like my own, she said. Revenge is true, but not just for you, the old woman said. But I shall have it, the middle one said. No other woman has longed for this day, no other. The old one then said, Why not kill him, then, kill him now? You should hand him to the clan, I say this again.

In the night when the hole was all dark, I could smell the middle one.

“Do you miss your eye?” she said.

I said nothing.

“Do you miss home?”

I said nothing.

“I miss my sister. We were wanderers. My sister was everything that is home. The only thing that is home. Did you know that she could change, but chose not to? Only twice, the first when we were still cubs. Both of us, daughters of the highest in our clan. The other women who were of one form hated us, and fought us all the time even though we were stronger and had more craft. But my sister did not want to be smarter or sharper, she just wanted to be any beast moving east to west. She wanted to vanish in the pack. She would have walked on all fours forever, had she a choice. Is that strange, Tracker? We women of the clan are born to be special, and yet all she wanted was to be like everyone else. No higher, no lower. Are they among your kind, people who work hard to be nothing, to vanish in a group of your own? The one-bloods hated us, hated her, but she wanted them to love her. I never wanted their love but I remember wanting to want it. She wanted them to lick her skin, and tell her which male to growl at, and call her sister. And yet she wanted no name, not even sister. I called her a name that she would not answer to, so I called her that name over and over until she changed only to say stop calling me that or we will never be sisters again. She never became woman again. I forget the name.

“She died as she would have wanted to, fighting in the pack. Fighting for the pack. Not fighting with me. You took her from me.”

Day five, they threw me raw meat. I grabbed it up with both hands and ate it. Afterward I screamed all night. I never used my birth name but until then, I still remembered it.

Day six, they woke me again with piss. The young and the old woman, both naked, and pissing on me again. I thought they did it to see if they could get me to shout or scream or curse, for indeed I heard the young one in the night say, He speaks no longer, this bothering me more than when he yap-yap-yap-yap. They pissed on me but not in my face. They pissed on my belly and my legs and I did not care. I did not even care for an early death. Whatever sport it was from this day to the next and the one after that I did not care. But the hyena from three days ago came out of the dark. He inched back.

“Make it quick, little fool. You are only the first,” the young one said.

“Maybe we help them,” the old one said, and grinned.

The young one cackled. She grabbed my left foot and the old one grabbed my right, pulled them up and spread them wide. I was so weak. I screamed, and screamed again, but they howled each time to drown me out. The hyena came out of the dark. Male. He came right up to me and sniffed their piss. The hyena jumped between my legs and tried to push himself into me. They laughed and the old one said, You be soft and they be quick. The hyena kept shifting until his wet stinking body was in me. The boy the not-Ogo raped told me that the worst was when the gods gave you new sight so you see yourself and say this is the thing that is happening to you. The hyena kept shifting and thrusting, and forcing it past my screams, loving everything coming out of my mouth, pushing in more. Then he jumped off me. The young one laughed and the old one said, You be soft and they be quick. Another came in when he was done. And one after that. And another one.

Day seven, I saw that I was still a boy. There were men stronger, and women too. There were men wiser, and women too. There were men quicker, and women too. There was always someone or some two or some three who will grab me like a stick and break me, grab me like wet cloth, and wring everything out of me. And that was just the way of the world. That was the way of everybody’s world. I who thought he had his hatchets and his cunning, will one day be grabbed and tossed and thrown in with shit, and beaten and destroyed. I am the one who will need saving, and it’s not that someone will come and save me, or that nobody will, but that I will need saving, and walking forth in the world in the shape and step of a man meant nothing. The strong female piss made them all take me for female. The smell faded when the last one was still in me. He lunged at my throat but they kicked him away.

Somebody was in the hole. Coming at me in the dark. I could see myself as the gods see me, cowering and cringing, but still unable to stop myself. Somebody dragged something along the ground. It was still day and some light came down from above. The middle one came into the light pulling the hind leg of a dead thing. In the light the wet skin glimmered. Half still beast, a hind leg on the left, a woman’s foot on the right. A belly of spotty fur, dead hands spread out, the right one still a paw, the left one claws, not fingernails. The nose and mouth still pushed out of the young one’s face. Still holding her hind leg, the middle one dragged her back into the dark.

Day eight or nine or ten, I lost count of days, and ways to mark them. They let me out in open savannah. I could not remember them letting me out, just being out. The savannah grass was tall but already brown for dry season. Then I saw the old one and the middle one far off, but I knew it was them. I heard the rest, rumbling through the bush and then charging. The whole clan. I ran. With every step my mind said, Stop. This is the end of you. Any end is a good end. Even this. They strangled prey before ripping them apart. They gave themselves a thrill tearing flesh while the animal was still alive. I didn’t know which was true or false, which might be why I ran. The rumble of them as they came closer and closer, while I burned and bled down my legs, and my legs forgot how to run. Three of them, male, jumped out of the bush and knocked me down. Their growls in my ears, their spit burned my eyes, their bites cut into my legs. Many more jumped in, blocking the sky with dark, and then I woke up.

I woke up in sand. The sun was already halfway across the sky and everything was white. No hole, no bush, no bones all about, and no smell of hyena nearby. Sand all around. I did not know what to do, so I started to walk away from the sun. How did I get here and why did they let me go? I have never learned why. I thought I was in a dream, or perhaps the last few days were a dream, until I touched my left eye and felt cloth. Then I thought they never wanted to kill me, only leave me lame, for there was dignity in a kill and shame in not being worth even that. The sun burned my back. She was angry at me turning my back to her? Then kill me already. I was tired of it all, man and beast threatening to kill me, sucking my want to live, but never killing me. I walked until there was nothing to do but walk. I walked through day and night. Cold swept across the sand and I fell asleep. I woke up in the back of a cart of pigs and chickens. Fasisi we go, said an old man as he whipped his two donkeys. Maybe the man was kind, maybe he planned to sell me into slavery. Whatever the reason for his kindness, I jumped from the cart as we rode over rough, uneven road, and watched him continue, not aware that I was gone.

I knew Nyka was not in Fasisi. His scent was already out of town, many days away, in Malakal, perhaps. But he left my room as it was, which surprised me. Did not even take the money. I took what I needed and left everything else.

The closer I got to Malakal the stronger it was, his scent, though I told myself I was not looking for him, and I would not kill him when I found him. I would do much worse. I would search for his mother, whom he claims to hate but always speaks of, and kill her, and switch her head with an antelope’s, sewing them to each other’s bodies. Or I would do something so evil and vengeful it was beyond me being able to think of it. Or I would leave him alone, and go away for years, and let him go fat in the thought of me long dead, and then strike. But as soon as I was walking streets he walked, and stopping at places he stopped, I knew he was in Malakal. In a day I knew the street. Before the sun went down I knew the house. Before night, the room.

I waited until I was stronger. The rest came from hate. He paid his innkeeper to lie for him and had taught him how to make poisons. So when I came into the innkeeper’s kitchen, he tried to act as if he was not startled. I did not ask for Nyka. I said to him, I am going upstairs to kill him. And I will kill you before you can reach the poison in your cabinet. He laughed and said, Do what you want, I care not for him. But he pulled a dart out of his hair and threw it at me. I dodged; it hit the wall behind me and started to smoke. He ran but I grabbed him by the same hair and pulled him back. Here is how you will not reach, I said, and placed his right hand on the counter and chopped it off. He screamed and ran off. The innkeeper made it to the door, even opened it halfway, before my hatchet struck the back of his head. I left him there in the doorway and went upstairs. His smell was everywhere, but he refused to show himself. Nyka might have been a thief and a liar and a betrayer of men but he was no coward. The scent was strongest in the cupboard and it was not a dead smell. I opened the cupboard and all of Nyka was hanging on a hook. His skin. But just his skin, what was left of it. Nyka shed his skin. I have seen men, women, and beasts with strange gifts but never one who could shed like a snake. And with the skin gone, he left the scent behind too. Somehow he is a new man now.

“Then how did you know it was him coming up the steps?” Bunshi asked.

“He always chewed khat. Keeps him alive, he used to say. You might ask if I ever wondered why the hyenas let me go. I have not. Because to wonder is to think of them, and I have not thought of them until you came through my window. He did not even notice my eye. My eye, he did not even notice.”

“Forward is the hyena, backward is a fox,” Bunshi said.

“A better friend, the hyena.”

“And yet he was the one who said, Only Tracker can find this boy. To find the boy, you must find the Tracker. I will not insult you by throwing more coin at your feet. But I need you to find this boy; agents for the King are already on the hunt because somebody told him the boy might still be alive. And they only need proof of death.”

“Three years is too late. Whoever took him he answers to.”

“Name your price. I know it is not in coin.”

“Oh, but it is in coin. Four times the four times you offered to pay.”

“Your tone makes me ask: What else?”

“His head. Cut off and shoved so hard on a stake that the tip bursts through the top.”

She looked at me in the dark and nodded once.