Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

  “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.”
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br />   “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.”

&n
bsp; “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.