Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

TWENTY-FIVE

You killed him!”

I pulled my ax.

“Child of a fucking whore, you killed him,” I said.

“Tracker, how tiresome you are. For moons you have thought of killing this beast. You have slit his throat in the dream jungle. You have tied him to a tree and burned him. You have shoved all sorts of things up in every part of his body. You had a knife to his neck. You name him as the cause of all your misery. And yet now you scream when finally you get what you wish.”

“I never wished for that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Go into my head again and you will—”

“I will what?”

“Free him.”

“No.”

“You know I will kill you.”

“You know you cannot.”

“You know I will try.”

We stood there. I ran back to where the Leopard was. The ground was the mound of a new grave. I was about to dig him out with my hands when a whistle came from behind me, a cold wind that looked like smoke. It dove into the mound and made a hole as wide as my fist.

“Now he breathes,” the Aesi said. “He will not die.”

“Pull him out.”

“You would best think about what you want in these last days, Tracker. Love or revenge. You cannot have both. Let him dig himself out. It will take him days, but he will have enough strength to do so. And enough rage. Come, Tracker, Sasabonsam sleeps by day.”

He and Nyka mounted their horses. The mound was too still. I stepped away but still watched it. I thought I heard him, but it was creatures of dawn. We rode away.

Gods of morning broke daylight. The forest was in sight but still not close. The horses grew tired, I could feel it. I did not shout to Aesi to stop, though he slowed to a trot. Sasabonsam would have gone to sleep. I rode up to him.

“The horses will have rest,” I said.

“We won’t need them when we reach the forest.”

“That was not a question.”

I halted my horse and climbed off. Nyka and the Aesi looked at each other. Nyka nodded.

I slept, I do not know for how long, but warm sun woke me up. Not noon, but after. None of us spoke as we mounted our horses and rode off. We would reach the forest before evening if the horses ran steady. The afternoon was still hot and wet in the air, and we came across another battlefield, from a long-fought battle, with skulls and bones, and parts of armour not salvaged scattered about. The skulls and bones led up to a hill as high as a house with two floors, maybe two hundred paces to the right of us. A hill of spear shafts, other broken weapons, and shields, dented and cracked, and bones scraped clean of flesh and sinew. The Aesi stopped and reined his horse.

He watched the hill. I asked him nothing, and neither did Nyka. From behind the hill of spears appeared a headdress, then a head. Someone walked to the top. The face, in a mask of white clay covering all but eyes, nose, and lips, her headdress dried fruits, or seeds, along with bones, tusks, and long feathers hanging down and brushing her shoulders. White clay on her bare breasts, down to her belly, with stripes that looked like the zebra’s, and a ripped leather skirt on her hips.

“I shall meet you by the mouth of the forest,” the Aesi said, and rode towards her. Nyka hissed the curse that could not come out of my mouth. The woman turned and went back where she came from. I rode off and after a while heard Nyka riding behind me.

We were some time in the forest before either of us noticed. The bush was too thick with grass and fallen trees for the horses, so we went on foot.

“Should we wait for the Aesi?” Nyka said, but I ignored him and kept walking.

Something about this forest reminded me of the Darklands. Not the trees pushing their way up into sky or plants, tufts, and ferns spreading out of the trunks like flowers. Or the mist so thick it felt like light rain. The silence is what took me back to that forest. The quiet is what bothered me. Some vines reached down right in front of us like rope. Some swung back up and around branches like snakes. Some vines were snakes. Dark had not yet come, but no sunlight came through these leaves. But this was not the Darklands, for the Darklands had many ghost beasts. Things cooed, and cawed, and screeched, and bawled. Nothing growled, nothing roared.

“This shit,” Nyka said. I turned around and saw him scraping worms off his foot. “Worms know decay when it steps on them,” he said.

I climbed over a fallen tree, the trunk as wide as I was high, and kept walking. The tree was far behind me when I noticed that Nyka did not follow.

“Nyka.”

He was not on the other side of the tree either.

“Nyka!”

His smell was everywhere, but no trail opened up to me. He became air—everywhere but nothing. I turned around only to see two gray legs spread wide, and before I could see between them something white and wet shot into my face.

He tore it from my head, my face, my eyes, something that also went in my mouth that felt like silk and had no taste. The silk off my eyes, I could see it wrapped around me, tight and shiny, though I could see my skin through it. A butterfly wrapped in a cocoon. My hands, my feet, none could move no matter how I tried to kick, stomp, tear, or roll. I was stuck to the trunk of a weak branch bending with me. This made me think of Asanbosam, Sasabonsam’s brother with no wings, hopping up and down on his tree branches full of rotting women and men. Except nothing rotted here. I thought this good until I heard him above me and saw that he preferred his meat fresh. He bit off a little monkey’s head and the tail dropped limp. He saw me looking up at him only when all was gone but the tail, which he sucked into his mouth with a wet, slithering sound.

“Honk honk honk, that be all they do. Me, me not even was hungry. Know this pretty ape, when mami kipunji come looking for baby kipunji I going be eating her too. Make a mess, such a mess these kipunji, make a mess, they swing over looking for fruit and make such a mess in me house, yes they be making it and making it, and shit all over the leaves, shitting it, yes they shitting it and my mami-mami she going say, she would say, not going say for mami-mami, she be dead—oh, but she say keep a clean house or the wrong woman going want you, that be what she say kippi-lo-lo that be what she say.”

He started to climb down the tree trunk, crouching like a spider, so low that his belly rubbed the bark. First I thought no ghommid was ever this big. Shoulders like a thin man with all muscle, but his upper arm was as long as a tree branch and his forearm stretched longer, so that his whole arm was longer than all of me. And legs as long as his arms. This is how he came down to me, stretching his right hand out straight and digging into the bark with his claws, lifting his right leg and bending it over his back, over his shoulder and head, and grabbing the trunk. Then his left hand and his left foot, his belly rubbing the trunk. He crawled down, right above my head, crawled backways, lifted himself up to the waist, and twisted his body around, almost a full twist, and reached for the last branch sticking out, first left hand, then right, and then left foot and right, still twisted at the waist so that right below his waist was his buttocks, not his crotch. He swung one arm over as if it would break and scratched his back. He crouched on the branch in front of me and his knees went past his head and his arms almost touched the ground. And between his legs, a hairy sheath like that of a dog, and from it came the juice he shot in my face. The juice hit the tree trunk across and turned to silk. He crawled over to that trunk and shot another silk line back to the branch. Then, crawling on both lines, he weaved a pattern with his hands and toes until he built something strong enough to sit on, which he did. Skin gray and covered in scars and marks like river folk, so light you could see the blood rivers along his limbs. Bald head with a sprout of hair on top, white eyes with no black, teeth yellow, and sharp, and poking out of his mouth.

“Take a story and give me, yes? Take a story and give me.”

“I know no monster of your sort.”

He belched and laughed like a hiss. He looked at me and wiped off his laugh.

“Take a story and—”

He swung both legs behind his shoulders and his sheath shot wet silk high up in the trees. He grabbed the web with his arms and pulled her down, the mother monkey. She honked and honked and he held her right above his face. Face-to-face, the mother monkey whimpering in fear. She was smaller than my arm. He split his mouth open and bit her head off. Then he chewed up the rest of her and sucked in the tail. He looked at me again as he licked his lips.

“Take a story and give me, yes? Take a story and give me.”

“I had heard that those like you, you are the ones who give stories. And lies. And tricks.”

“Those like me. Like me? Nobody like me. No no no no. I will have story. I have no more of my own. Take a story and give me to feed, yes? Or I going feed on something else.”

“You are the trickster and storyteller. Are you not one of Nan Si? And this is one of your tricks?”

He jumped over on me, his toes digging into the tree, his arms grabbing branches, his crotch right in front of my face. He bent his head so low that I thought he was about to lick himself, but stared right at me.

“This is what you wish, I can see it. Killing or dying, either death the same. You welcome either, you want both. I can give it to you. But who is Nan Si?”

“What are you?”

“Tell me you see my pale tone, hunter. I am like the one you came in with.”

“Did you kill him?”

“He leave you.”

“Not for the first time.”

“He don’t know that you gone. This forest has plenty enchantments.”

“So has every forest.”

“Know that I am not of the forest, I am not of the Nan Si. Not one, no, not one. I was a man of great breadth with knowledge of science and mathematics.”

“White science and black math. You were a white scientist. Now you are a was.”

He nodded, too hard and too long.

“What did you push?”

“What was already in the mind. Beyond the fetish priest, and beyond the prophet. Beyond the seer. Even beyond the gods! True wisdom is never without, it is within, was always within. Within always.”

“And now you are a beast, eating monkeys and their mothers, and making webs out of your cum.”

“There was fear in you. It is gone, gone, gone. I so hunger for a tale. None of these beasts speak. None have magic.”

“I seek a flying beast and his boy.”

“A flying beast? Will you kill him? Will you do it slow? What shall you do with them?”

“He came past you.”

“No beast come past here.”

“This is a forest, and Sasabonsam rests in forest.”

“This is a forest of life, and he is among the dead things of the world.”

“So you know him.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

He grabbed something above my head and put it in his mouth.

“I will meet them. In the field or the swamp. Or the sand sea. Or here.”

I tried to pull my hands but the silk squeezed tighter. I yelled at the white scientist. I jerked forward, trying to pop my cocoon off the tree, but it would not budge. He smiled, watching my struggle. He even grinned when I jerked. I cursed him again.

“Let me kill him, him and the boy, and I will return for you to kill me. Smash my head open and suck the brain out. Cut me open and show me what first you will eat. Do what you wish. I swear it.”

He went back to the branch.

“Kamikwayo is what some called me.”

“Where did you practice white science?”

“Practice? Practice is for the student.”

“The white scientists of Dolingo enter men’s heads so they desire unnatural things.”

“Dolingon are butchers. A meat shop with all of them. Meat shop! I was neither scientist nor witchman. I was an artist. The greatest student to leave the University of Wakadishu—not even the wisest seers, and teachers, and masters could teach me, for I was wiser than them all. They said, You, Kamikwayo, must devote the rest of your days to the life of the mind. That is what they said, I was there when they said it. Go to the Wakadishu palace of wisdom. I studied the spider to get the secret of his delicious web. You are a small mind, perhaps Gangatom, so you cannot think as the scientist, but think of the web, think of how far it stretches before it breaks. Think it, think it, think it now. I said to all of them, Think of rope that can stick to the man the way web sticks to the fly. Think of armour soft as cotton but can block the spear, and even the arrow. Think of a bridge across the river, the lake, the swamp. Think of all these things and more things if we could make the web just like the spider. Hear this, river man. This scientist could not make the web. I mixed so many spiders, I squeezed their bellies, I taste the thing in my mouth to tell the ingredients apart, but still it slipped away from me like a slimy thing. Slip away! But I worked day and night, and night into day, until I make a potion, I make a glue like the sap from the tree and I take a stick and stretched it like a long line of spit, and it dried, and it cooled and it was solid. And I called my brothers and said, Lo! I made the web. And they were amazed. And they said we have not seen anything of the like in all science and mathematics, brother. And then it cracked, and then it broke, and they laughed, how they laughed, and one said it broke on the floor just as I am broke in the mind, and they laughed even more, and they shamed me and went away to their quarters to sleep and talk of potions to make a woman forget they raped her.

“I tell you a true thing. I was beyond sad, beyond grief. This science was poisoning me, so I grabbed my bottles and drank the poison. I would sleep and never wake up. And then I did. I woke up with a fever in me that did not cool. I woke up and saw that I slept on the ceiling, not the bed on the floor. I rubbed my eyes and saw long gray monster’s hands come at my face. I cried, but my cry came out a shriek, and I fell to the floor. My arms so long, my legs so long, my face, oh my face, for I tell you more truth, I was the prettiest of the scientists, yes I was, men came at me with grosser propositions than they did concubines, saying, Pretty one, offer your hole, your mind is of no use. I cried, and I screamed and I wailed until I felt nothing. And nothing, nothing was the best. I liked nothing. By noon I loved my nothing. I crawled on the ceiling. I ate food while sitting on the wall and I did not fall. I thought I was going to piss, or cum, but it was a sweet and sticky thing that came out, and I could hang from the wall!

“My brothers, they did not understand. My brothers all, they all have the failure of the nerves, they achieve nothing because they risk nothing. One shouted, Demon! and threw bottles at me, and even I did not know that I could duck so low that only my elbows and knees were in the air. I spurt web around his face until he could breathe no more. Now listen to this, for I not going to say it again. I killed the first one before he make alarm. The rest, they up in another room doing science on village girls, so I go up to the inner room, one hand carrying precious oil, the other carrying a torch. And I walked on the ceiling and kicked down the door, and one of them inside said, Kamikwayo, what is this madness? Get off the ceiling. And I thought something smart and final to say, something to follow with a wicked laugh. But I had no words, so I shattered the jug of oil, then I threw down the torch, and then I closed the door. Yes I did. How they howled, oh how they howled. The sound was pleasing to me. I ran to the bush, the great forest where I am free to ponder on big things and small things, but who is there to tell me great tales?”

He pointed at me and grinned.

“Good hunter, you pulled a story out of me. Now you shall tell me a tale. I go sick from the company of people, and yet I am so very lonely. Even that tells you how much I am alone for no lonely person says so. I know this is true, I know it. Take a story and give me, yes? Take a story and give me.”

I looked at him, rubbing his legs together, his eyes wide and his hollow cheeks packed from a grin. He would have been an albino or a grown mingi had his white skin not taken on the pale gray of the white scientists.

“Will you give me freedom if I tell you a story?”

“Only if it gives me great mirth. Or great sadness.”

“Oh, you must be moved. Otherwise you bite my head off and eat me in five bites,” I said.

He looked at me, stunned. I think he said something about not knowing the monkey was my kin, but his web hole dripped silk.

“No. I am a man and a brother. I am a man!”

He hopped over to me and grabbed my neck. He snarled and growled, ripped the silk around me, tore my clothes, and scraped one of his claws against my neck.

“Am I not a man? I ask you. Am I not a man?”

His eyes went red and his breath was foul.

“What kind of man eats other men? Am I not a man? Am I not a brother? Am I not man?”

His voice rose louder and louder, like a shriek.

“You are a brother. You are my brother.”

“Then what is my name?”

“Kami … Kami … Kami … Kola.”

This is where he was most a man. I could not read his face. Monsters can never hide a face behind a face, but men can.

“Take a story and give me.”

“You wish for a story? I shall give you a story. There was a queen, and she had men and women who bowed to her like a queen. But she was no queen, only the sister of Kwash Dara, the North King. He exiled her to Mantha, the hidden fortress on the mountain west of Fasisi, breaking his father’s wish that she stay at court. But that father had broken with his father before that, for each generation has sent the eldest sister to Mantha before she could claim the rightful line to the throne. But that is not the story.”

This King sister who thinks she is a queen, Lissisolo was her name. She plotted against the King with several men, and Kwash Dara, he punished her. He killed her consort and her children. He could not kill her, for great a curse it is for family blood to kill family blood, even bad blood. So he banished her to the hidden fortress, where she was to be a nun the rest of her life, but this King sister, she schemed. This King sister, she plotted. This King sister, she schemed more. She found one of the hundreds of princes with no kingdoms in Kalindar and took him as a husband in secret so that when she gave birth to a child he would be no bastard. She hid the child to save him from the anger of the King, for he was angry indeed when his spy told him of the marriage and the birth. And he set out to kill the child. But that is not the story.

This King sister, she lost the child, or men stole him, and she hired me and others to find the child. And we found him, captive to bloodsuckers, and a man with hands like his feet and wings like a bat, and breath like the stench of long-dead men, which gave his brother joy to eat, for he prefers the blood. And even as we returned the child, for there were several of us, there was something about this child, a smell that was there and not there. But men of the King were after the child and the King sister so we rode with them to the Mweru, where the prophecy said they would be safe, though another prophecy says no man can ever leave the Mweru. But that is not the story.

I tell you true. Something about that boy would trouble the gods, or anyone who desires his heart always to be at peace. I was the only one who saw, but I said nothing. So he stayed in the Mweru with his mother, and with the personal guards of women and the rebel infantry of men who stood guard outside the lands, for no man who enters the Mweru leaves. And it so happened that the one demon we did not kill, the one with bat wings, the one they call Sasabonsam, he came for the boy and he snatched him, or so they said and will still say. And he flew away with the boy, who never screamed, though he could scream, never shouted, though he shouted at many things, never, ever raised alarm, though his mother was always expecting an intruder. You cannot push the person who jumped. And the bat man and the boy, they did much terrible sport. Much that is vile and disgusting, much that would outrage the lowest god and the wickedest witch. And one day they came upon a tree where … they came upon a place where love lived. The boy was with him, someone wrote in blood on sand. A beautiful hand wrote on the sand in blood. But that is not the story.

For the man who lived in the house of love, he came upon the message written in blood, by one who was dead. And he was beyond words, but filled himself with grief and rage, for they were dead. They were all dead. Some of them only half was left. Some of them half-eaten, some of them drained of blood, and drained empty. And this man he cried, and this man he wailed, and this man he cursed the silence of the gods, then cursed them too. And this man, he buried them, but could not bury the one made of spirits, for though they could not kill her, the killing ground made her go mad and she roams all the way to the sand sea, groaning a spirit song. And this man fell to his knees nine times in great grief, and profound dismay, and magnificent sorrow. And this man, after season upon season of grief, let that grief sink, and harden, and turn into rage, which sunk, and hardened, and turned into purpose. For he knew who the boy came with, or who came with the boy. He knew it was the beast whose brother the Leopard killed, though the beast came and took his revenge on him. He said to his friend, All these deaths are on your hands. And he sharpened his axes and dipped his knives in viper spit, and he set out for the Mweru, for that is where the boy came from and that is where he would go back to. Here is truth, the man did not think on this very long, for he was still beyond thought. Here is deeper truth. He would kill the boy and whoever protected him, and the bat and whoever stood in his way. He knew nothing of the ways of bats, but knew the ways of boys, and all boys make their way home to their mothers.

This man rode one horse into the dirt, another one into the sand, one into bush, and one right into the Mweru. The night was open in all the lands, and outside the lands was the infantry. Who knows how many were lazy from food, or asleep? He came upon them, rode through them with a torch in his hand, kicking over pots and trampling one soldier, and they hurled spears and missed, and searched for arrows but were too tired or too drunk and shot at each other, and when a few roused themselves enough to grab spear, and bow, and clubs, they saw where he was headed, and stopped. For if death seems so sweet to him, who are we to stop him, one of them must have said.

And what did this man wear other than rage and sadness? He rode the horse through the harsh soil of the Mweru, lighter than sand and thicker than mud, past springs that would boil off man flesh and stank of sulfur. Past fields where nothing grew and underfoot old bones of men cracked and broke. One of those lands where the sun never rose. He came upon a lake of black, brown, and gray that ate away at the shore and he rode around it, for who knew what creature lived in there? He wanted to shout at the lake that he would take any monster that came out for delaying him, but rode around.

The ten nameless tunnels of the Mweru. Like ten overturned urns of the gods. His horse stood outside one, as high as four hundred paces upon four hundred, or higher, taller than a battlefield, taller than a lake was wide, so high that the roof vanished in shadow and fog. And wide as a field as well. At the mouth of the tunnels, his horse was an ant and he was less. The farthest tunnel had the widest mouth, beside it a tunnel that was the tallest, but the entrance smaller than a man standing on another’s shoulder. Beside it, a tunnel just as tall, the entrance sunken in to the earth so he could ride the horse straight in. Beside that, a tunnel not much higher than the horse. And so on. But each tunnel rose much higher than their openings, and more than toppled urns, they looked like giant worms asleep or felled. On the walls at the base of the tunnels, copper or rust, fashioned by divine blacksmiths, or someone else. Or iron, or brass, burned together in some craft only the gods know. On the outside walls of the tunnels, sheets of metal, in rust and in shine, from ground to sky.

A screech. Birds with tails, and thick feet, and thick-skin wings. Moss and brown grass overrun the ceiling of every tunnel, joining them together. Bad growth hiding what they were. Everything becoming brown. He and horse rode down the middle tunnel to the light at the end, which was not a light, for the Mweru had no light, only things that glow.

And at the end of the tunnel, wide flatlands pockmarked with perfect holes, with pools of water that smelled like sulfur, and at the foot of the wilderness, a palace that looked like a big fish. Up close it looked like a grounded ship made of nothing but sails, fifty and a hundred, even more. Sail upon sails, white and dirty, brown and red, looking like blood spatter. Two stairways, two loose tongues rolled out of two doors. No sentries, no guards, no sign of magic or science.

At the doorway, he threw away the torch and pulled both axes. In the hallway, tall as five men standing on shoulders, but wide as one man with his arms spread, orbs floated free, blue, yellow, and green and burning light like fireflies. Two men, blue like the Dolingon, came at him from both sides, saying, How can we help you, friend? At the same time, both drawing their swords slow. He leapt and swung both hands down on the left guard, hacking him again and again in the face. Then he chopped him once in the neck. The right guard charged, and he jumped out of the way of his first strike, spun on the ground, and hacked him in the knee. The guard dropped on that same knee and howled and the man chopped him in the temple, the neck, the left eye, then kicked him over. He kept walking, then running. More men came, and he jumped, leapt, dropped, chopped, hacked, cutting them all down. He dodged out of one sword and elbowed the swordsman in the face, grabbed his neck, and slammed him into the wall twice. He kept running. A guard in no armour but with a sword screamed and ran straight for him. He blocked the sword with one ax, dropped to his knees, and chopped the guard’s shin. The guard dropped the sword, which he grabbed and stabbed him with.

An arrow shot past his head. He grabbed the near-headless guard and swung him around to catch the second arrow. As he ran, he felt each arrow pierce the guard until he was close enough to throw the first ax, which hit the bowman right between the nose and the forehead. He took the bowman’s sword and belt. He ran until he came out of the corridor into a great hall, with nothing but orbs of light. A giant came at him and he thought of an Ogo, who was his great friend, who was a man, not a giant, a man of always present sorrow, and he howled in rage, and ran and jumped on the giant’s back and hacked and hacked at his head and neck until there was no head and neck, and the giant fell.

“King sister!”

No sound in the room but his echo, bouncing mad on the walls and ceiling, then disappearing.

“Will you kill everyone?” she said.

“I will kill the world,” he said.

“The giant was a dancer and nurse of children. He had never done any in this world a bad thing.”

“He was in this world. That is enough. Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

He grabbed a spear and threw it where he thought the voice was coming from. It struck wood. The orbs shone brighter. She sat on a black throne ringed with cowries, and several hands above it lodged the spear. Two guards, women, stood by her side with swords, two beside them crouched with spears. Two elephant tusks at her feet and carved columns tall as trees behind her. Her headdress, thick cloth wrapped around and around to look like a flaming flower. Flowing robes from chest to feet, gold breastplate on her chest, as if she was one of the warrior queens.

“How hard it is, exile to this place of no life,” he said.

She stared at him, then laughed, which made him furious. He was not speaking wit.

“I remember you being so red, even in the dark. Red ochre, like a river woman,” she said.

“Where is your son?”

“And how skillful you were with an ax. And a Leopard who traveled with you.”

“Where is your boy?”

“Bunshi, she was the one who said, They will find your boy, especially the one called Tracker. It has been said he has a nose.”

“It’s been said you have a cunt. Where is your fucking boy?”

“What is my boy to you?”

“I have business with your son.”

“My son has no business with men I don’t know.”

He smelled him coming in the dark, trying to move in the shadow, to move quiet. Coming from the right. The man did not even turn, just threw his ax and it hit the guard in the dark. He yelped and fell.

“Call them. Send for every guard. I will build a mountain of corpses right here.”

“What do you want with my boy?”

“Call them. Call your guards, call your assassins, call your great men, call your best women, call your beasts. Watch me build a lake of blood right before your throne.”

“What do you wish with my boy?”

“I will have justice.”

“You will have revenge.”

“I will have whatever I choose to name it.”

He stepped towards the throne and two women guards swung down at him from ropes. The first, carrying a sword, missed him, but the second, with a club, knocked him over. He fell and slid on the smooth ground. He ran to the dead guard’s sword and grabbed it right before the second guard swung her club at him again. She swung hard but could not stop his swing quick enough. He kicked her in the back and she fell. He charged but she swung the club up and struck him in the chest. He fell on his back and she jumped up. He tried to swing his sword but she stomped on his hand. He kicked her in the koo, and she fell hard on her knees into his chest, which knocked his air out. The guard, her knuckles hard leather, punched him in the face, and punched him and punched him again and knocked him out.

Hear this. He woke in a cell like a cage hanging off the floor. It was a cage. The room, dark and red, not the throne room.

“He would have me give suckle. What mockery they would have sung had a griot lived in these lands. You will say what must there be in a land with no griot. Mark it, even though he was past six in years, and was a boy soon a man. He came to my breasts before he even looked at my face.”

The man turned to where the voice was coming from. Five torches lined a wall to his right, but lit nothing. Below it, dark and shadow, a throne maybe, but he could not see anything above two thin pillars, carved like birds.

“Give a man a free hand, he rub it all over you. Give a boy … Well, he would not be denied it. And what would the gods say, about a woman who denied her child food? Her boy? Yes, they have been blind and deaf, but which god will still not judge a mother for how she raised the future King? Look at me, what milk could be in these breasts?”

She paused as if waiting for an answer.

“And yet even full men, you all must suck the breast. And my precious boy. Come to the breast like he come to war. Should I tell you this, that he almost bit my nipples off? The left, then the right? Tore the skin, cut the flesh, and still he kept sucking. Well, I am a woman. I shouted at him and he would not stop, his eyes closed like how you men close when you cum. My boy, I had to grab his neck and strangle him until he stopped. My boy, he looked at me and he smiled. Smiled. His teeth red from my blood. From then I gave him a servant girl. She was not stupid in the head. She cut herself every night so that he could suck. Is there strangeness in this? Are we strange? You are Ku. You cut the cow’s throat to drink the blood, is there strangeness in such?”

The man said nothing. He grabbed the bars of the cage.

“What you think is all over your face. You look at me, with your disgust and your judgment. But do you know what it is to have child? What you would do for it?”

“I do not know. Perhaps abandon him to be killed. No, sold. No, stolen, and raised by vampires. And maybe always have someone to ask someone to ask someone find the little one, with lie after lie so that no one would even know that you had a son. Is that what it is like to have a child?”

“Quiet.”

“Finest of mothers you must be.”

“I will not let you near him.”

“Did you let him go or did you lose him again, fine mother?”

“You seem to think my son has done wickedness.”

“Your son is wickedness. A devil—”

“You know nothing. Devils are born. All the griots sing of this.”

“You have no griot. And devils are made. You make them. You make them by leaving them to anyone who fancies a—”

“You dare to know what goes on in my head? You judge me, a queen? Who are you to tell me what to do with my child? You have none. Not a single one.”

“Not a single one.”

“What?”

“Not a single one.”

And the man told her a story:

“They did not have names, for Gangatom never gave them names, for they were all so strange to them. Which is not to say that the Gangatom made much fuss over the strange. But if one were to say Giraffe Boy, all in the village would know who it is they call. I was not like you, none of them were my blood. But I was like you, I let others raise them, and said it was for their own sake when it was for mine. Someone said the North King was making slaves of the river tribes to serve his war, so we went for them, for war is like fever, everybody gets infected. We took them from the Gangatom, but some of them did not want to go. I said to the children, Let us go, and two of them said no, then three, then four, for why should they go with a man they do not know and another they do not like? And he who was partner to me, he said look at this, and he showed them a coin and then closed his hands, then opened them again, and the coin vanished, and closed his hands again, and he asked in which hand is the coin, and Giraffe Boy pointed to his left, so he opened his left and a butterfly flew away. Tell you truth, they followed him, not me. So we all followed him to the land of Mitu, and there we lived in a baobab tree. And we said to the children, You need names, for Giraffe Boy and Smoke Girl are not names, they are what people call you. One by one they lost their anger for me, Smoke Girl last. Of course, the albino, who was no boy, but tall like a man, we named him Kamangu. Giraffe Boy, who was always tall, we named him Niguli, for he was not even like the giraffe. He had no spots and it was his legs, not his neck, that was long. Kosu is what we called the boy with no legs. He rolled everywhere like a ball, but always picked up dirt, or shit, or grass, or when he yelled, a thorn. First we gave the joined twins names that joined and they cursed us like old widows. You and him share everything and yet you have different names, they said to me and Mossi. So the noisy one, we called him Loembe, and the more quiet but still loud one we called Nkanga. And Smoke Girl. He who was mine said, One of them must have a name from where I come from. One must remind me of me. So he named Smoke Girl Khamseen, for the wind that blows fifty days. You talk to me of children—what was the name of your boy, but boy? Did you ever name him?”

“Shut your mouth.”

“You queen among mothers.”

“Quiet!”

She shifted in her seat but remained in the dark. “I will not sit here in judgment by a man. Making all sorts of claims about my boy. Did rage bring you here? For it was not wisdom. How shall we play? Shall I bring my son out, right now, and give you a knife? Love is blindness, is it not? I ache for your loss. But you might as well have told me about the death of stars. My son is not here. How quickly you refuse to see that he is a victim as well. That I woke up to hear my son gone. Kidnapped. That my son has spent so many years and moons not living according to his will or mine. How could he know anything else?”

“A devil the size of three men, with wings as wide as a canoe, slipped into your palace unnoticed.”

“Take him out,” she said to the guards.

A cloth fell on the cage and left him in black. The cage fell to the ground and the man slammed against the bars. They kept him in the dark for the longest time—who knows how many nights? When they lifted the cloth from his cage, he was in another room, with an opening in the roof and red smoke rushing through the sky. The King sister was standing by another chair, not like her throne, but with a tall back.

“My birthing chair shows me my past. Do you know what I see? He was born feet first. I would take it as an omen, had I believed in omens. What did Sogolon say about you? It has been said you have a nose. Maybe she was not the one who told me. You want to find my son. I would like that too, but not for your reasons. My son is a victim too, even if he walked out into the Mweru on his own, why can you not see?”

He did not say to her, Because I have seen your boy. I have seen how he looks when he thinks no one watches him.

“My yeruwolo said I should trust you to find my boy. Maybe even save him from the bat. I think she is a fool, but then … I have no ending for what I was about to say.”

She nodded to the Tracker, and one of her water women came to him with a piece of cloth, green and white. Torn from what, who knew.

“It is said you have a nose,” she said.

She pointed at him and the water woman ran to the cage, threw the cloth, then ran away from it. He picked it up.

“Will this tell you where he goes?” she said.

He squeezed the cloth but did not smell it, held it away from his nose and caught the King sister, her eyes wide, waiting. He threw the cloth away. They covered the cage again. When he woke in the throne room, he knew sleep had taken him for days. That they must have put him under wicked vapors or sleeping magic. The room had more light than before but still it was dark. She sat on her throne, the same women behind her, guards at both walls, and an old woman, her face white, walking towards him. They had left his hands free, but put a copper collar that felt like tree bark around his neck. Two guards stood behind him, moving nearer as he tried to walk.

“I make you an offer again, Tracker. Find my boy. Do you not see that he needs to be saved? Do you not see that he is blameless?”

“Only days ago you said, I shall not let you near him,” he said.

“Yes, near. Seems the Tracker is the only man who knows how to get near my son.”

“That is no answer.”

“Maybe I appeal to the very heart that seeks revenge. An appeal is of the heart too.”

“No. You’ve run out of men. Now you ask the man sworn to kill him.”

“When did you swear? To whom? This must be one of those things that men say, like when he says this is the best, but this is my favorite. I have never believed in oaths or in men who swear by them. I want your word that should I release you, you will find my son and bring him back to me. Kill the monster if you must.”

“You have an infantry. Why not send them?”

“I have. Hence my asking you. I could have ordered you. I am your queen.”

“You are no Queen.”

“I am Queen here. And when the wind in these lands turns I will be the mother of a king.”

“A king you have lost twice.”

“So find him for me. How can I mend your sorrow? I cannot. But I have known loss.”

“Have you?”

“Of course.”

“Then it pleases my heart to know. Tell me now that I am not the only one to come home to find his son with half of his head missing. Or just the hand of another son. Or him most dear with a hole where his chest and belly used to be. Or maybe hanging from—”

“Are we to compare loves murdered and children butchered? This is where you will judge to see if you are better than me?”

“Your child was just hurt.”

“My other children were murdered by my brother.”

“Shall we compare so you can come out victorious?”

“I never said this was a contest.”

“Then stop trying to win.”

He said nothing.

“Will you find your King?”

He paused. Waited. Knew she expected him to wait, to pause, to think, to even struggle within the head, then come to a decision.

“Yes,” he said.

The old woman looked up at him and tilted her head as if that was the way to know a person true.

“He lies. There is no question he will kill him,” she said.

He elbowed the guard behind him in the nose, pushed him away, grabbed and pulled out the guard’s sword, and stabbed it deep in its master’s belly. He ducked without looking, knowing the other guard would go for the neck. The guard’s sword cut through air above his head. He swung from below and chopped him in the calf. The guard fell and he shoved the sword in his chest, then took his sword too. More guards all stepped out as if they had popped out of the wall. Two came at him first and he became Mossi, he of the two swords, from the East, who never visited him in mind or spirit since he wrote in his own blood in the dirt. Mossi did not visit him now; Tracker just thought of him standing on rocks, practicing with swords. He kicked the first guard in the balls, jumped on him when he fell, leapt at two other guards, knocked away their spears with his left sword, and sliced one in the belly with the right sword and chopped the other in the shoulder. But hark, his back burst with blood and the guard who slashed him charged. He rolled out of the guard’s second strike. The guard swung again, but he hesitated—on orders not to kill, this was clear. The guard paused too long; Tracker’s sword went right through him.

Men surrounded him. He lunged at them, they stepped back. The collar clamped around his neck squeezed in tight, like a hand pulling a noose tighter. From his hands, both swords fell. He coughed and couldn’t cough, growled and couldn’t growl. Tighter, tighter, his face swelled, his head about to burst. And his eyes. Fright. Not fright. Shock. You look like you didn’t know. Bad man, you must did know. The Sangoma’s enchantment is fading from you. You will have no mastery of metals. No wind came in the nose, no wind left. He fell to one knee. The guards stepped away. He looked up, tears blinding him, and the old woman held out her right hand and made a fist. She did not smile, but looked like a woman thinking a happy thought. He tried to cough again; he could barely see her. He pawed the floor and found the sword. Scooping up the grip, he held it up like a spear and threw it hard and quick. The spear struck the old woman right in the heart. Her eyes popped. She opened her mouth and black blood came out. She fell and the collar broke from his neck. A guard struck him in the back of his head.

Smell it,” the King sister said to Tracker when he woke up. Who knew which room this was, but he was back in the cage and the same strip of cloth was at his feet.

“It is from him. His favorite bedding. He would have the servants wash it every quartermoon, indeed it was many colours once. I can make you a new bargain. Find him and bring him back, and do whatever you wish to the other one. If you can leave the Mweru. Many men enter, but no man can ever leave.”

“Witchcraft?”

“Which witch would want a man to stay? But you can try to leave. Smell the rag.”

He grabbed the piece of cloth, brought it to his nose, and breathed in deep. The smell filled his head, and he knew what it was before his nose took flight, followed the source; he jumped on it as it took him right between her legs.

“Look at you. You wanted to know where he was going and I gave you where he came from.”

She laughed loud and long and the laugh bounced over the empty hall.

“You. You will be the one to murder the world?” she said, and left him.

That night Tracker was awake in the dream jungle. Past trees as small as shrubs and shrubs as tall as elephants, the Tracker went and looked for him. He came upon a still pond where nothing seemed to live. First he saw himself. Then he saw the clouds, then mountains, then a path and elephants running away, then antelopes, then cheetahs, and past them another road that led to a city wall, and up the wall a tower, and in the tower looking out, then straight at him, eye-to-eye, the one he searched for. This man was he ever surprised to hear the Tracker’s call, but he knew why before asking.

“You know I can kill you in your sleep,” he said.

“But you wonder why I would have called you, the worst of enemies,” Tracker said. “Tell no lie. No man can leave the Mweru, but you are no man.”

He smiled and said, “True, you cannot leave the Mweru without either dying or going mad, a goddess with revenge towards me made it so, unless there is one beyond magic to lead you out. But what shall I get for it?”

“You want this boy’s head. I am the only one who can find him,” Tracker said.

It was a lie, for he had lost all track of the boy’s smell, and he would learn after that the boy no longer had a smell, truly none at all, but a bargain they struck, him and the Aesi.

“Tell me where in the palace you are when you find out,” the Aesi said.

This man who was not a man came for him; indeed it took him one and a half moons to do so, and the North had long thrown first spears at the South. Wakadishu and Kalindar.

This is what happened. The Tracker woke to the sound of bodies falling. A guard entered his cell and nodded for him to follow, saying nothing. They both stepped over the dead guards and kept walking. Down a corridor, past a hall, down steps, up steps, and down more. Down another corridor, past many dead guards and sleeping guards and felled guards. This guard who said nothing pointed to a horse waiting at the foot of the massive steps leading out, and Tracker turned to say what, he did not know, only to see that the guard’s eyes were wide open but saw nothing. Then he fell. Tracker ran down the steps, stopped midway to grab a dead guard’s sword, then mounted the horse and rode away, past the smoking lakes, through the tunnel, and right to the edge of the Mweru. The horse dug into his hooves and threw him, but he grabbed the reins even as he flew off the horse. The horse turned and galloped away.

Tracker kept walking and after a while saw a figure in the dark wearing a hood. He sat cross-legged and wrote in the air the way Sogolon had, and was off the ground, floating on air. Tracker approached and the man stretched his hand out to say stop. He pointed right and Tracker walked right, and when he had stepped ten and five paces, fire shot out of the earth before him. He jumped back. The man beckoned Tracker forward ten steps and gestured to stop. The earth below him cracked and split and moved apart in a loud rumble, shaking the ground like an earthquake. The man put both feet down, rubbing something sticky in his right hand. He threw it—a heart—into the chasm and the chasm hissed and coughed, and closed itself. Then he waved at Tracker to come. He threw something else and it sparked the air like lightning. Spark spread to spark, which spread to spark, and then a boom that knocked Tracker down.

“Get up and run,” the man said. “I no longer have a hold on any of them.”

Tracker turned around and saw a cloud of dust coming. Riders.

“Run!” the man shouted.

Tracker ran, with the riders coming up behind him, to where the man was, and both stood, Tracker trembling as the riders rode straight at them. He saw the calm in the man and borrowed it even as everything in him wanted to scream, We will be trampled, fuck the gods, why do we not run? A horseman came within a breath of his face before he rode into the wall that was not there. Man and horse slammed into it one after the other, and many at once, some horses breaking their necks and legs, some riders flying into the sky and slamming into the wall, some horses stopping quick and throwing their riders off.

Tracker caught the Aesi as he passed out, and pulled him away.

“And that is the story I have taken and given to you,” I said.

“But, but … but … but … that is no story. That is not even half of one. Your story is only half-delicious. Shall I only kill half of you? And who is this man who is not a man? Who is he? I will have a name, I will have it!”

“Do you not know? They call him the Aesi.”

The white man went all blue. His jaw dropped and he grabbed his shoulders, as if cold.

“The god butcher?”

I did not wake from sleep. And yet right there I was in another forest that felt different from the one I was in before. I blinked several times, but this was a different forest. Nothing lived and nothing moved. None of the smells of life, no new flower, no recent rain, no fresh dung, the spider, gone like an afterthought. At my foot was a pile of something pale gray and white and thin enough to see through, like shed skin. Beside it, hiding in the grass, my two axes and the back harness to hold them. I wedged my finger in one of the slits I had made in the leather and pulled it out, Nyka’s feather. His whole path opened up to me as soon as I brushed the feather past my nose.

Behind me, maybe thirty paces, then right, then a bend, then down, maybe downhill and then across, then up again, a small hill perhaps, but still under forest cover, then into someplace that he had not left. Or this could still be a dream jungle of some kind. I once overheard a drunk man in a bar in Malakal say that if you are ever lost in a dream and cannot tell if you are asleep or awake, take a look at your hands, for in a dream you always have four fingers. My hands showed five.

I grabbed my things and ran. Forty paces through wet grass and mud, and ferns that stung my calves, then right, almost into a tree, and dodging them left and right and left, over the corpse of a beast, then slowing down because the forest was too thick to run and every step was a shrub or tree, then to a bend like a river, then downhill until I smelled the river first and then heard it, a waterfall rushing down on rocks. And I skipped over the rocks, climbed slow but still tripped, and hit my calf against a sharp rock edge that drew blood. But who could stop to look at blood? I climbed down to the river and walked in the water to wash away the blood, and after much time I ran up a bank that rose higher and higher, and then I pulled my ax and cut through even thicker bush and all the time Nyka’s smell came on stronger and stronger. And I cut and pushed my way through thick, wet leaves and branches slapping my back, until I came upon not a clearing, just a gathering of trees taller than towers, with much space in between. He was near, so near that I looked above me, expecting Sasabonsam to have him hanging high. Or that he and Sasabonsam would meet as one, vampire to vampire, and both were already conspiring to pull me up into one of these trees and tear me in half. Deep in whatever was there for his heart, I expected it of Nyka.

I was walking. I heard my own footsteps in the bush. A man walked before me, several paces ahead, and I wondered how I had not seen him before. Slow he walked, with no purpose in step, just wandering. His hair long, and curly, and when he pulled his cloak tighter, arms light as sand itself. Something jumped into my heart. I ran up close to him and stopped, I didn’t know why. Up close the wet hair, the sharp turn from jaw to chin, the beard red, the cheekbones high, all were enough for me to think it was him and not enough for me to say, No, it could not be. The cape hid his legs, but I knew the wide stride, the balls of his feet hitting the ground before the heel, even in boots. I waited for his smell, but none came. The cape fell off and rolled into the bush. His feet I saw first, green from grass and brown from dirt. Then his calves, always so thick and strong, so unlike any man from these lands. And the back of his knee, and his buttocks, always so smooth and white, as if he never liked lying naked in the sun at the top of the baobab tree like one of the monkeys. Above his buttocks, trees and sky. Below his shoulders, trees and sky. Above his buttocks a hole, a nothing, everything eaten out from his belly to his back, leaving a gap big as the world. Dripping blood and flesh, and still he walked.

But I could not. My legs had never been this weak, and I fell to my knees and breathed heavy and slow, waiting for Itutu to come to my heart. It did not. All in my head was my crawling on top of him, cradling his head, for there were flies everywhere else, and weeping, and bawling, and screaming, and screaming, and screaming into the trees and sky. And reading what he wrote in his own blood in the sand:

The boy, the boy was with him.

I cried, Beautiful man, I should not have been late. I should have come before you left this world and coaxed your soul into a nkisi, and wrapped it around my neck, so I could rub it and feel you. A mystic with a nkisi shaped like a dog said, There is a tormented spirit that would have words with you, Wolf Eye, but I wanted no words. I called his name and it came out a whimper.

This Mossi kept walking into the deep bush. This I know. A time surely comes when grief is nothing but a sickness, and I had grown sick of sickness. I raged and howled and the smell of that monster and of that vampire bird both came upon me, and I rose and pulled both my axes and ran shouting at nothing, chopping at nothing. I ran from a new thing, it must have been a head witch trying to drive a needle through deaths upon deaths and sew them together. My father whom I did not know, and my unavenged brother. And Mossi, and so many more. Not a head witch, but the god of the underworld telling me of the wronged dead that I must make right, as if I am why they are dead. How must the Tracker who lives for no one have so many dead on his watch? Must he be blamed for them all? My head argued with my head, making me stumble. The Leopard should have been right here, right now, so I could stab him in the heart. My foot hit a downed tree and I fell.

When I looked up I saw feet. Hanging high above me even when I stood up. Legs white like kaolin dust with his black feet loose and dangling. Ribs pressed out of his thin chest and black blood streaks dried up from running down his belly. Two black spots where his nipples used to be and dried blood that had flowed from them. Bite marks all over his chest, and neck, and his left cheek. Somebody was looking for a tender spot to bite. His chin resting on his chest, his arms spread out and tied off with vines. His wings spread wider and trapped in branches and leaves.

“Nyka,” I whispered.

Nyka did not move. I said his name louder. A giggle came out of the bushes below. I looked into the bush and into the bush looked at me. He stared as he did before, eyes wide for no reason, not delight, not malice, not care, not even curiosity. Just wide. Older. Taller. I could tell from just the eyes and his thin, bony cheek. I would rather he laughed. I would rather he said, Look at me, I am your villain. Or whimper and plead, Look at me, your real victim. Instead he just looked. I looked at his eyes and saw Mossi’s dead eyes, looking forever and seeing nothing. He dashed out of that grass patch right before my ax came for his face. I charged straight into the bush, thinking the beast growl came from another mouth but mine. I surged through branches and ripped through leaves into darker bush. Nothing. Bloodsucker-tit-biting ghoul, still giggling like a baby. Gone.

Above me Nyka groaned. I stepped out of the bush and walked right into Sasabonsam’s hand-foot kicking me in the face.

My head and back hit the ground. I rolled up to my knees, and jumped back to my feet. He flapped his wing but it kept hitting trees, so he landed on his feet and looked at me. Sasabonsam. I had never stopped to look at his face. His big white eyes, jackal ears, and sharp bottom teeth sticking out from his lips like a warthog’s. His whole body overrun with black hair except for his pale chest and pink nipples, an ivory necklace, and a loincloth that made me laugh. He growled.

“Your smell, I remember it. I follow it,” he said.

“Quiet.”

“Come round looking for it.”

“Silence.”

“You not there. So I eat. The little ones, they taste strange.”

I charged at him, ducking before he swung his wing. Then I rolled to his left foot and chopped it with both axes. He jumped and shrieked like a crow. You always aim for the toes, said a voice that sounded like me. The ax barely touched him. He tried to swat me with his hand but I ducked, jumped to his knee, and swung my ax at his face as I leapt off. The blunt side hit his cheekbone and he snarled, then swatted at me. His hand missed me but his claws slashed four lines across my chest. I fell to one knee and he kicked me away. My back slammed into a tree trunk and my breath rushed out.

And my eyes rolled. And there was nothing. My chin grazed my chest, and I saw my nipples and belly. My head grew heavy, and my eyes did not work well. Nyka groaned and pulled at his hands. My chin hit my chest again. I looked up straight into Sasabonsam’s knuckles.

“Six of them for one of you. Look at your quality,” he said.

He said more but blood trickled from my right ear and I could not hear. He punched at my face, but I nodded and his hand struck the tree. He howled and slapped me. I spat blood on my legs, and my legs did not work.

“Where are my askis, the little one say.”

He grabbed my throat.

“The little ball, the little one he tried to roll away. You want know how far he get? He the one that say, My father going come back and kill you. He going chop you with he two askis.”

“Kosu.”

“Father, he call you. Father? You don’t roll like a ball. You don’t have no askis now. Look at your quality.”

“Kosu. Ko—”

He punched me again. I spat out two teeth. He wrapped his long fingers around my head and pulled me up.

Axes, he was saying that Father was going to chop him with axes.

“He never scream. And I have him in many bites.”

“Kosu.”

I could only see bits of light through his thick and stinking fingers. His claws scratched my neck.

“When I reach the bone in his back, still he did not cry. Then he die. And I bite the back of the head and suck—”

“Fuck the gods.”

He threw me and a peace came over me in flight that cut when I landed in branches and leaves. He grabbed at my ankle and I kicked him away. He giggled and grabbed my leg again and kept giggling as he pulled me out of the branches. My back and head hit the ground and then I was moving; he was pulling me.

“You the fool and she the fool. She the one in gold and red and all she do, she sit. I see her through the window. Only I know the boy. I come for him in the weird place and he follow me. He even call me, for the white one teach him how to call. Me never want the boy for he don’t want me, he want the lightning one, but he call me and I come take him, and the night did quick and I fly away with him and he say I hear my mother talk about the wolf and he cubs and how she try to make him her soldier and they live in the monkeybread tree and I say that is the one who kill my brother, I hear, he says so and the boy say fly with me on your back and I can take you, and he take me.”

I said, Quiet, but it died before it fell out of my mouth. I don’t know where he was dragging me, and my back scraped against grass and dirt and stones in water, and then my head sunk underwater as he pulled me through a river, and the back of my head hit a rock, and I went dark. I woke up and I was still under the water and coughing and choking until he pulled me out into grass and under trees again.

“The white one, the pretty one, the one who when I squeeze him until I see the blood flow under the skin, delicious, he a fighter, he better fighter than you. He get teach by the one with the two sword. The two of them, I break down the door and the two of them swing down from the tree saying they going fight me. And they jump up on me and strike and the one with two sword throw one sword to the white-skin and he come at me, this boy, he jump, and the boy he strike me in the head and it hurt and the man jab me in the side right here, right here and the sword go in but stop at my chest cage right here, I thump him with me knuckle and he fall back and the white-skin run at me and duck before I swat him with my wing and he grab my wing and stab right through it, see right there how it still a hole, that the white-skin do and I grab him with this foot and grab him with my other foot and fling his up into the tree and a branch knock him quiet. Yes yes. And the one that is a ball, he roll up behind me and knock me off me two foot. And I fall and he laugh but I grab him before he run away and I bite him and pull the flesh out, sweet flesh, sweet, sweet flesh, and I take another bite and another bite and the man with hair scream. He put some of them on horse and slap the horse. And they ride off and he come for me and he angry, and I like angry and he fight and fight and fight, and stab and cut and go for my eye and I catch the sword and the white-skin stab me right up me shithole and now I is fury, yes I was.”

He pulled me out of light grass into dark and above me was also dark. I kicked at his hand again and he swung me up and slammed me back down on the grass. Blood poured out of my ear again.

“I grab white-skin and I smash him, and smash him, and smash him, and smash him, and smash him until all he juice run out. And the long hair one he bawl and bawl and make like a dog, but he fight like a warrior man, he and two swords, better than you with one ax. Stay still and make me smash you too, I say to him, but he do this and this like a fly and he cut me across my back—he cut the skin! Nobody cut the skin and is many moon me see me own blood, then he flip around, better than you, and stab me in the belly and he look at me, and I stop and make him look at me, because many man think something down there, but nothing down there but flesh. I beat him away with this hand.”

He dropped me to show me his hand.

“And pull out the sword with this hand. I don’t use sword good but he reaching for he knife and I push it right through he chest just like I push my finger through mud. I swing the sword and cut he throat. And then I jump on him and eat the nice part first. Oh, the belly, then the red part, oh the fat, like a hog. They think my brother like the flesh and I like the blood, but I eat anything.”

I wished I had a voice to beg him to stop, and I wished he had ears to hear.

“Then I go after the others, the runners, yes I did. How they going flee far when I faster than a horse? The two-head one.”

“They were two, you son of a bitch. Two.”

“The other head he start cry for his brother. You know what I tell the ostrich one?”

“Niguli. His name is Niguli.”

“A strange taste. You feed him strange? He cried. I say, Cry, boy, cry. You not the one I come for, he should get eat instead of you.”

“No.”

“Lie. Lie. Lie. I lie. Me would eat you first then them. They call you Father?”

“I was—”

“You didn’t breed none. And you don’t after watch none. You open the pen and let in the wolf.”

“The Leopard. The Leopard killed your brother.”

He grabbed my throat again.

“The ghost one, I couldn’t grab her. She be a dust in wind,” Sasabonsam said.

He tossed me to the ground. Dark came on me in the day. Wanting to kill, wanting to die, in your head they are the same colour, and the door to one leads to the other. I wanted to say he would get no joy out of killing me, that I had walked from north to south of these lands and walked through the two kingdoms in war, and walked through arrows and fire and the killing plans of people and did not care, so kill me now, kill me hence, kill me quick, or kill me from toe to finger to knee and up, and I still would not care. But instead I said:

“You know no griot.”

Sasabonsam’s ears flattened, and he squeezed his brows. He stomped towards me. He stood over me, and I was between his legs. He spread his wings. He bent down until his face was right in front of my face, his eye on my eye. Rotten flesh settled between his teeth.

“I know how a little boy taste,” he said.

I took my two knives and stabbed his two eyes.

Blood from his almost blinded mine. He roared like ten lions, fell back on his own right wing, and snapped it at the bone. He roared louder and flailed around until he grabbed both knives and pulled them out, screaming with each pull. He ran straight into a tree, fell on his back, jumped up, and ran again, right into another. I grabbed a stick and threw it behind him. He jumped, swung around, and ran into another tree. Sasabonsam tried to flap his wing but only the left flapped. The right swung but it was broken and limp. I searched around for the knives as he ran into trees. He roared again and stomped the ground, and scraped the grass and ground with his hands looking for me, coming up with clumps of dirt and leaves and grass and panting, and roaring, and shrieking. Then he would touch his eyes and howl.

I found one knife. I looked at his neck. And his pale chest and pink nipples. At his fright at everything. At him backing into his right wing and cracking it again.

He fell on his back.

I stood up and almost fell to one knee. I rose again and limped away.

Back through the bushes and down the hill and across the river, Sasabonsam was still howling, squealing, and bawling. Then he went quiet.

The me of many moons ago would search for why neither fate made a difference to me. I did not care. Nyka was still up in the tree, still trying to free himself. I had found one ax in the bush under his tree, and the other several paces away. I heard him before I saw him, crawling down the tree on hands and legs like the white spider before, crawling to get to Nyka, to a sweet spot to drink blood. The boy. I threw my ax, but the pain in my leg made me miss, just a hand’s length from the boy’s face. He scurried back up the tree. I threw the second ax to Nyka’s right and cut through the vines gripping his hand. He pulled it free. I thought he would say something. I thought how there could be nothing that he would say that I would care to hear. I fell to one knee. Then he shouted my name and I heard a wing flap.

I spun around and saw Sasabonsam swinging hands in the air and scraping the ground, sniffing. Smelling me out the way I smell everyone. I lurched backward and tripped over a fallen branch.

And then it was all thunder and then lightning, one bolt, then three, all striking Sasabonsam, but with no end, just blasting and striking and spreading all over him and running into his mouth and ears and coming out of his eyes and mouth, as fire and juice and smoke and something came out of his mouth, not a scream, or a shriek, or a yell. A wail. Hair and skin caught flame and he staggered and dropped to one knee as lightning still struck him and thunder still dropped heavy on him, and fell Sasabonsam did, his body burning in a huge flame, then going out just as quick.

Nyka fell from the tree.

He was saying something to me, but I did not listen. I grabbed my ax and went over to the charred carcass of Sasabonsam and swung it down at the neck. I yanked out and chopped, yanked out and chopped until the ax hacked through skin, through bone, straight to the ground. I fell on my knees and didn’t know I was shouting until Nyka touched my shoulder. I pushed him away, almost swinging my ax at him.

“Take your disgusting hands off me,” I said. He backed away, his hands in the air.

“I saved your life,” Nyka said.

“You also took it. Not much it was, but you took it.”

Not far from the Sasabonsam, I dug a hole in the earth with my hands, placed the necklace of my children’s teeth in it, then covered the hole back up. I patted the earth slow until it was smooth, and still I would not leave, would not stop patting and smoothing it until it felt like I was making a beautiful thing.

“I never buried Nsaka. When I woke and saw her dead, I knew I had to flee. Because I was changed, you see. Because I was changed.”

“No. Because you were a coward,” I said.

“Because I went to sleep for a long time, and when I woke up my skin was white and I had wings.”

“Because you are a coward with no bones, who can only deceive. She was the one who did all the fighting, I will guess. How did you rid yourself of it?”

“My memory?”

“Your guilt,” I said.

He laughed. “You wish to hear of my remorse for betraying you.”

“I do not wish to hear anything.”

“You just asked the question.”

“You answered it. You had no remorse to get rid of. You’re not a man, I knew that before I came across your shed skin. You act as if it makes you itch, but losing skin is nothing new for you.”

“True, even when I was a man I was closer to the snake, or the lizard, even the bird.”

“Why did you betray me?”

“So you are looking for remorse.”

“Fuck the gods with your remorse. I want the tale.”

“The tale? The tale is when it came to you, my friend, I was bewitched by the very conceit of it. You wish for something more? A reason? A way that I told myself it was just? Perhaps coin, or cowrie? The truth was I just fed my fill on the conceit of it. You think of the time I betrayed you? Think of the many times I did not betray you. The Bultungi hounded me for ten and three moons. That was ten and three moons of me thinking not of myself but of you.”

“Now you wish praise?”

“I wish for nothing.”

He started walking out of the bush, now all blue from night light. As it fell dark, his skin and feathers began to glow. I didn’t know where he was going and listened for the sound of the river, but I heard nothing.

“When the Aesi freed me, he told me of the new age,” I said. “Of how a bigger war was coming as sure as this war was here, a war to destroy everything. And at the heart of this war this boy. This abominable, perverted thing.”

“And you let him live,” Nyka said.

“It was only a guess. A heart twitch, not my head. Something amiss; I saw it as I saw him. He was already mad from it. Mad for it. Ipundulu blood. I saw it, I saw it then.”

“And you let him live.”

“I did not know.”

“The boy who led Sasabonsam to your house to kill—”

“I said I did not know.”

We kept walking for several paces.

“I cannot help rid you of it,” he said.

“Of what?”

“Your guilt.”

“Call the boy so I can kill him,” I said.

“What is his name? I know not.”

“Just call him boy, or crackle a lightning from your nipples or asshole or whichever place.”

Nyka laughed loud. He said he didn’t have to call him, for he knew where he was. We walked through bush and under trees until we came upon a clearing leading to a lake. I thought it was the White Lake, but was not sure. It looked like the White Lake, which had a pool at the end, not very wide, but very deep. They looked at us as if waiting for us to appear. The Leopard, the boy, and, holding a torch, with her face and breast hidden under kaolin clay, and with her headdress of feathers and stones, the woman on the mound before. Sogolon.

Seeing her on the other side of the lake did not shock me. Nor did my not recognizing her before, perhaps because when women age in these lands, they become the same woman. Perhaps she wore kaolin to hide what must have been horrible burn scars, but from where we stood, I saw nose, lips, even ears. I wondered how she survived, while not being surprised that she did. Meanwhile the Leopard, white from dust, stood a few paces behind her, with the boy between them. The boy looked at them, and at me. He saw Nyka and turned to run but Sogolon grabbed his thick hair and pulled him back.

“Red wolf,” she said. “No, not red no more. Wolf.”

I said nothing. I looked at the Leopard. Back in his armour like a man bound to a cause not his own. Not even a mercenary, just a soldier. I told myself I did not want to know what had gone inside his heart and grabbed it, what made this man who lived for no one and nobody turn to fight for the whims of kings. And their mothers. Look at you who we once called reckless and said it with love and envy. How low you have become, lower than shame, your neck hanging off your shoulder, as if the armour made you hunch. The boy was still struggling, trying to pull himself away from Sogolon, when she slapped him. He did what I saw before: shriek, then whimper, but with no feeling in his face. He was bigger now, almost as tall as Sogolon, but not much else showed in the dimness. He looked thin, like boys who grew but were not becoming men. Smooth, in just a loincloth, his legs and arms thin and long. Looking like no king or future king. He stared at Nyka, his tongue hanging out. I gripped my ax.

“Edjirim ebib ekuum eching otamangang na ane-iban,” she said. “When darkness falls, one embraces one’s enemy.”

“Did you translate for me or him?”

“You betray what you fight so long for?” Sogolon said.

“Look at you, Moon Witch. You don’t even look three hundred years old. But then, gunnugun ki ku lewe. How did you survive going back through that door?”

“You betraying that what you long fight for,” she said again.

“You talking to me or the Leopard?” I asked.

He looked straight at me. Sogolon and the boy were at the edge of the water and even in the dimness I saw their reflections. The boy looked like the boy, the torch rounding out his large head. Sogolon looked like a shadow. No kaolin clay, and blacker than dark everywhere, even her head, which had neither feathers nor hair.

“Ay, Leopard, is there no one left? No one for you to fail?” I asked.

He said nothing, but pulled his sword. I kept looking at the black figure in the water, the torch in her hand. The water was still and calm and dark blue as coming night. In the reflection I saw the Leopard run for the child. I looked up just as he swung the sword for the little boy’s head. Sogolon did not even turn, but whipped up a hard wind in a blink, which knocked over the Leopard, threw him up in the air, and slammed him against a tree. And right behind him, his sword, kicked up in the air by the wind, went straight like a bolt into his chest and pinned him to the trunk. His head slumped.

I yelled at the Leopard and threw my ax at the Moon Witch. It cut through the wind and she ducked, missing the blade, but the handle knocked her in the face and her whole body blinked. The kaolin vanished, then appeared, then vanished, then appeared again, then vanished. Nyka and I ran around this large pond. Sogolon was a burned-up husk, all black skin and fingers fused together, holes for eyes and mouth, before the kaolin appeared, and her skin and her feather headdress, her spell again strong. She still held on to the boy. The Leopard was still.

The boy began to laugh, a small giggle, then a loud cackle so loud it bounced across the water. Sogolon slapped him, but he kept laughing. She slapped him again, but he caught her hand with his teeth and bit hard. She pushed him, but he would not let go. She slapped him again and still he would not let go. He bit hard enough that Sogolon could no longer see to the wind, and her little storm weakened to a breeze, then nothing.

The ground shook, rumbling as if about to crack. A wave rose out of the lake and crashed on the banks, knocking over Sogolon and the boy. Sogolon began waving her hands to whip up the wind again, but the ground split open and sucked her in right up to the neck, then closed around her. She yelled and cursed and tried to move but could not.

And there was the Aesi, right on the banks, as if he was never not there. The Aesi stood in front of the boy, viewing him as one would a white giraffe or a red lion. Curious more than anything. The boy looked at him the same way.

“How did anyone think you could become King?” he said.

The boy hissed. He cowered from the Aesi like a shunned snake, writhing and curling, as if he would roll on the ground.

“I destroyed you,” Sogolon said to the Aesi.

“You delayed me,” the Aesi said, walking past her and grabbing the boy by the ear.

“Stop! You know that he is the true King,” she said.

“True? You wish to bring back the matriarchy, is it? The line of kings descended from the King sister and not the King? You, the Moon Witch, who claim to be three hundred years old, and you know nothing of this line you’ve sworn to protect, this great wrong in all the lands, and all the worlds that you will make right?”

“All you have is pretty talk and lies.”

“A lie is thinking this abomination can be a king. He can barely speak.”

“He told Sasabonsam where I lived,” I said, picking up my ax.

“Yelp and whimper, like a bush dog. Sucking blood from his mother’s breast, he is not even a vampire but an imitation of one. And yet I feel remorse for this child. None of this was his choice,” the Aesi said.

“Then neither shall death be his choice,” I said.

“No!” Sogolon screamed.

The Aesi said, “You have one task. And you have done it well, Sogolon. There is disgrace. Look at your sacrifice. Look at your charred face, your burned skin, your fingers have all become one fin. All for this boy. All for the myth of the sister’s line. Did the King sister tell you the history of our ways? That these sisters beget kings by fucking their fathers? That each king’s mother was also his sister? That this is why the mad kings of the South are always mad? The same bad blood coursing through them for year upon year, and age upon age. Not even the wildest of beasts do such a thing. This is the order the woman called Sogolon wishes to restore. You of the three hundred years.”

“You is nothing but evil.”

“And you are nothing but simple. This latest mad king, Sogolon, we say he is the maddest for starting a war he couldn’t win because he wanted to rule all kingdoms. He may be mad, but he is no fool. A threat is coming, witch, and not from the South, or North, or even East, but the West. A threat of fire and disease and death and rot coming from across the sea—all the great elders, fetish priests, and yerewolos have seen it. I have seen them in the third eye, men red like blood and white like sand. And only one kingdom, a united kingdom, can withstand them and the moons, years, and ages of assault. And only one strong king, not a mad one, and not a malformed blood addict with a mother mad for power, for neither could conquer, nor rule, nor a whole kingdom keep. This Mweru queen, does she not know why the house of Akum ended that line of succession? He said it all night. A threat was coming, an ill wind. And that boy, that little abomination, he must be destroyed. You are nothing but a life lived in a lie.”

“A lie, a lie, a lie,” the boy said, and giggled. We all looked at him. Up to now I had never heard him speak. He still writhed and bent himself, touching his toes, curling on the ground, the Aesi having let go of his ear.

“He dies tonight,” the Aesi said.

“He dies from my ax,” I said.

“No,” Sogolon said.

“A lie, a lie, a lie ha ha ha,” the boy said again.

“A lie, a lie, a lie ha ha ha,” Nyka said. I had forgotten about him. He approached the child, both of them saying it over and over until they were one voice. Nyka stopped right in front of the child.

The child ran towards him and leapt into an embrace. Nyka grabbed him, wrapped him in a hug. The boy leaned in on his chest, resting, nuzzling like a baby lamb. Then Nyka flinched and I knew the boy had bitten into him. The boy was sucking blood like mother’s milk. Nyka wrapped his arms around him. He flapped his wings until his feet were off the ground. He rose higher, and higher, this time not sinking, not collapsing, not dipping from the weight or from his weakness. Nyka flapped his wings again and a lightning bolt, white and brighter than the sun, sliced through the sky and struck them both. The ground shook from the boom, which was too loud for anyone to hear the boy scream. The lightning struck and stayed, blasting them both as Nyka held tight against the boy kicking and screaming, until the long bolt sparked a flame that spread over them and blew out quick, leaving nothing but little light embers that vanished in the black.

“Oh cursed kings, oh cursed kings!” Sogolon wailed.

She wailed for so long that when it finally weakened, it became a whimper. I smelled burned flesh, and waited for something to come over me—not peace, not satisfaction, not the sense of balance from revenge, but something I did not know. But I knew I waited for it, and I knew it would not come. The Leopard coughed.

“Leopard!”

I ran over to him, and he nodded his head like a drunkard. I knew his blood was gone. I pulled the sword from his chest and he gasped. He fell from the tree and I caught him and we both fell to the ground. I pressed my hand to his chest. He had always wanted to die as a leopard, but I couldn’t imagine him changing now. He grabbed my hand and pulled it to his face.

“Your problem is that you were never any better than a bad archer. This is why we have had such bad fates, you and I,” he said.

I held his head and stroked the back of his neck as I would a cat, hoping it brought relief. He was still trying to change, I could feel it under his skin. His forehead thickened, and his whiskers and teeth grew, his eyes shone in the dark, but he could change no further.

“Let us switch bodies in the next of our lives,” I said.

“You hate raw meat and could never bear even a finger up your ass,” he said, and laughed, but it turned into a cough. The cough shook him and blood from his wound oozed between my fingers.

“Should never have come for you. Should never have taken you out of your tree,” he said, coughing.

“You came for me because you knew I would go. Here is truth. I was in love and I was in boredom, both at the same time, two rulers in the same house. I was going mad.”

“I made you leave. Remember what I said? Nkita ghara igbo uja a guo ya aha ozo.”

“If a wolf refuses to howl, people will give it another name.”

“I lied. It was if a dog refuses to bark.”

I laughed while he tried to.

“I left because I wanted to.”

“But I knew you would. In Fasisi when they asked, How will you find this man? He … has been dead twenty moons. I said … I said—” He coughed. “I said, I know a tracker, he could never resist good sport. He says he works for the coin, but the work is his pay though he will never admit it.”

“I should not have left,” I said.

“No, you should not have. What lives we lead. Remorse for what we should not have done, regret for what we should. I miss being a leopard, Tracker. I miss never knowing should.”

“And now you are dying.”

“Leopards do not know of death. They never think of it, because it is nothing to think of. Why do we do this, Tracker? Why do we think of nothing?”

“I don’t know. Because we have to believe in something.”

“A man I knew said he didn’t believe in belief.” He laughed and coughed.

“A man I knew said nobody loves no one.”

“Both of them only fools. Only f …”

His head fell back in my arms.

Give them no peace, cat. Find sport in the underworld and shame its lords, I thought but did not say. He was the first man I could say I loved, though he was not the first man I would say it to.

I wondered if I would ever stop to think of these years, and I knew I would not, for I would try to find sense, or story, or even a reason for everything, the way I hear them in great stories. Tales about ambition and missions, when we did nothing but try to find a boy, for a reason that turned false, for people who turned false.

Maybe this was how all stories end, the ones with true women and men, true bodies falling into wounding and death, and with real blood spilled. And maybe this is why the great stories we told are so different. Because we tell stories to live, and that sort of story needs a purpose, so that sort of story must be a lie. Because at the end of a true story, there is nothing but waste.

Sogolon spat in the dirt.

“I wish my eyes had never seen your face,” I said.

“I wish my eye never see me too.”

I picked up Leopard’s sword. I could bring it down on her head right there, slice the skull in two like cutting a melon open.

“You wish to kill me. Better hurry up and do it. For me live a good—”

“Fuck the gods and your mouth, Sogolon. Your queen couldn’t even remember your name when I told her you were dead. Besides, if I kill you, who will send news to the King sister that her little snake is dead? How goes our fellowship now, witch? The Leopard should see the one who killed him, right behind him in the underworld. The gods would laugh, wouldn’t they?”

“There are no gods. This Aesi didn’t tell you? Even now you head so hard you don’t see what truly taking place.”

“Truth and you never lived in the same house. We are at the end of this tale, you and I.”

“He is the god butcher!”

“A new thing? But we are at the end of this story, Moon Witch. Take up this new thing with whatever hungry beast comes for your face.”

Sogolon gulped.

“Survival has always been your only skill,” I said.

“Wolf boy, give me drink. Give me drink!”

I looked at her head, like a black stone on the ground, swinging around, trying to move out of the ground. I searched for my ax and could not find it. And my knives were long gone. Losing them made me think of losing everything else. Cutting everything loose. I took the holster off my back, pulled my belt, and stepped out of my tunic and loincloth. I started walking north, following that star to the right of the moon. He came and went quick, like an afterthought, he did. The Aesi. He appeared in that way, as if he was always here, and left in that way, as if he never was. The hyenas would make use of the Leopard. It was the way of the bush, and it would have been what he wanted.

Maybe this was the part where men with smarter heads and bigger hearts than mine looked at how the crocodile ate the moon, and how the world spins around the gods of sky, especially the gone sun god, regardless of what men and women do in their lands. And maybe from that came some wisdom, or something that sounded like it. But all I wanted to do was walk, not to anything, not from anything, just away. From behind me I heard, “Give me drink! Give me drink!”

Sogolon kept shouting.

I kept walking.

I walked the lands for days, and across wetlands and dryland until I was in Omororo, the seat of your mad King. Where men detained me as a beggar, took me for a thief, tortured me as a traitor, and when the King sister heard of her child dead, arrested me as a murderer.

And now look at me and you, in Nigiki city-state, where neither of us wants to be, but neither of us has anywhere to go.

I know you’ve heard her testimony. So, what does mighty Sogolon say?

Does she say, Do not trust one word coming from Tracker’s mouth? Not about the boy, not about the search, not about Kongor, not about Dolingo, not about who died and who was saved, not about the ten and nine doors, not about his so-called friend, the Leopard, or his so-called lover from the East, called Mossi, and was that even his name, and were they even lovers? Or his precious mingi children that he did not spawn? Did she say, Trust no word coming from the lips of that Wolf Eye?

Tell me.