Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

  “He is not a man. It does not matter. I think the boy went of his own will.”

  “Maybe he was offering something more than toys or breasts.” Nyka laughed. “Tracker, I remember you. You still lie by only saying half the truth. So a stupid boy that you found was stolen again by a demon with wings like a bat. Nobody tasked you to find him. No one is paying you. And the sun is the sun and the moon is the moon whether you find him or not.”

  “You just said you did not know me.”

  “He is nothing to you, and neither is the bat man.”

  “He took something from me.”

  “Who? And will you take something from him?”

  “No. I will kill him. And all like him. And all who help him. And all who have helped him. And all who stand in the way between me and him. Even this boy.”

  “Still smells like a game. You want me to help you find him.”

  “No I want to help him find you.”

  * * *

  —

  So I went back for the child and the three of us left the Malangika. We went above, following a tunnel at the end of the road of blind jackals. Aboveground was no more at war than before I went under. The Ipundulu took nothing, just wrapped his wings tight around his body so that he looked like a strange lord, a lower god wearing a thick agbada. By then the sun had dropped and flamed the sky orange, but everything else was dark.

  “Would you like me to take the child who you carry with you?” he asked.

  “Touch him and I will throw this torch in your face.”

  “Helpful is all I am trying to be.”

  “Your eyes will pop out of your skull from the effort.”

  The tunnel led out to a small town, where I left the child with a goat skin full of milk at the door of a known midwife. Just outside the town, north of the Blood Swamp, were wildlands. I started walking, but Nyka stood still.

  “Once out of the Malangika, the boy will sense you and come running,” I said.

  “So will every lightning woman and blood slave,” he said.

  He wished he was the man who loved such devotion, but they were not devoted to him. “They are devoted to the taste of my blood,” he said.

  “To tell truth, I thought more of you would be waiting above. The giant, I expected. The Moon Witch, perhaps. Most certainly the Leopard. Where is he?”

  “I am no keeper of the Leopard,” I said.

  “But where is he? You have great love for that cat. Wouldn’t you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “You two do not speak?”

  “My mother or my grandmother, which are you?”

  “No question was ever simpler.”

  “You wish to know about the Leopard, go and ask the Leopard.”

  “Will your heart not grow fond when you see him next?”

  “When I see him next, I shall kill him.”

  “Fuck the gods, Tracker. Do you plan to kill everybody?”

  “I will murder the world.”

  “That is a big task. Bigger than killing the elephant or the buffalo.”

  “Do you miss being a man?”

  “Do I miss warm blood running through me, and skin not the colour of all wickedness? No, good Tracker. I love waking up thanking gods I’m a demon now. If I could ever sleep.”

  “Now that I see you, I think for a man like you, this was the only future for your form. What do you think the boy has been feeding on all these years, if not your blood?”

  “The blood is his opium or his physic, not his food.”

  “Now that you are aboveground, he will seek you.”

  “What if he is a year away?”

  “He has wings.”

  “Why do you not smell him?”

  We kept walking alongside dying sunrays, which meant north. Night would come down before we got to the Blood Swamp.

  “Why do you not smell him?”

  “We head north. Unlike the Ipundulu . . . you . . . the former you. Sasabonsam hates cities, and towns, and would never rest in one. He could never hide his form like the Ipun . . . like you. He would much rather hide where travelers pass and pick them off one by one. Him and his brother. Before I killed the brother. The Leopard killed the brother. The Leopard killed the brother, but he smelled my scent on him, so he thinks it was me.”

  “How did the Leopard kill him?”

  “Saving me.”

  “Then why do you blame the Leopard?”

  “This is not what I blame him for.”

  “Then what—”

  “Quiet, Nyka.”

  “Your words—”

  “Fuck your thoughts on my words. This is what you do, what you always do. Ask, and ask, so that you will know and know. And when you finally know all there is to know of someone, you use that knowledge to betray them. Help yourself, you cannot, for it is your nature, as eating her young is crocodile’s nature.”

  “Where is the giant?”

  “Dead. And he was not a giant, he was an Ogo.”

  We came to the edge of the Blood Swamp. I have heard of monstrous things in these wet lands, insects as big as crows, snakes wider than the trunks of trees, and plants hungry for flesh, blood, and bone. Even the heat took shape, like a mad nymph out to poison. But no beast came near us, sensing two creatures worse. Not even when swamp water reached us at our waists. We walked until the water fell to our knees, then our ankles, until we stepped on mud and rough grass. All around us, thick vines and thin trunks twisted and bent and wrapped into each other, making a wall as dense as a Gangatom hut.

  The smell came to me before we came to it. An open savannah, with few trees, little grass, but reeking of death stink. Old death stink; whatever rotted started rotting seven days ago. I stepped on it before I saw it, and it gave way under my foot. An arm. Two paces from it a helmet with a head still in it. Ten or so paces away, vultures flapped their wings, pulling entrails out, while above a flock of the same, fat with food, flew away. A battlefield. All that was left of war. I looked up and the birds went as far as I could see, circling bodies, landing for more, picking meat off men, men baking in metal armour, men so bloated they bubbled, heads of men looking like they were buried up to their necks in the ground, their eyes pecked away by the birds. There were too many to smell any one. I kept walking, looking for North or South colours. Ahead of us, spear shafts and swords were the only things that stood. Nyka followed me, also looking.

  “You think a soldier willed himself to live for eight days so you could pluck his heart?” I asked.

  Nyka said nothing. We kept walking until the savannah ran out of bodies, and parts of bodies, and the birds were behind us. Soon we ran out of trees and were standing at the edge of the Ikosha, the salt plains, two and half days’ ride across, and nothing but dirt cracked like dried mud and silver like the moon. He walked towards us as if he just appeared from nothing and started walking. Nyka’s wings opened but he saw that I did nothing and closed them.

  “Tracker. I remind you this is your idea to take me with you.”

  “It’s not my idea.”

  “I am indeed the owner of this idea,” he said as he approached.

  That is what he said, in the very way I knew he would say it. We had been hunting for two moons and nine days. He looked at us with arms akimbo, like a mother about to scold us.

  The Aesi.

  * * *

  —

  Nyka struck some dry branches with lightning. Fire woke up quick, and he jumped back. I came back from deeper in the swamp with a young warthog. The body I cut open to stick on a spit, the heart I cut out and threw to Nyka. He would not have shame this hour. He would not eat it with both me and the Aesi looking, but neither of us would turn away. He hissed, sat on the ground, and bit into it. Blood exploded over his mouth and nose.

  I looked at the
two of them, both I had once tried to kill, both known to have wings—one white, the other black. The me who once would have pulled axes to kill both of them on sight, I wondered where he went.

  “Perilous thing it is, being in the South. Enemy territory in the middle of war—are all your plans this mad?” the Aesi said.

  “You did not have to come,” I said.

  “What is his plan?” Nyka said, red all around his mouth.

  I cut off pieces of the hog and handed some to both. Both shook their heads. Nyka said something about the taste of burned flesh is now foul to him, which made me think of the Leopard and I did not want to think of the Leopard.

  “We are seeking the boy and his monster,” the Aesi said.

  “He already told me this,” Nyka said.

  “I am seeking the boy. He is seeking the monster. The monster attacked a caravan north of here; one man said he ripped a cow in half with his feet, then flew away with both halves. The boy was on his shoulders like a child with his father. They flew off into the rain forest between here and the Red Lake,” the Aesi said.

  “Are you not still with the North King? My memory, sometimes she comes and more times she goes, but I remember that once we were supposed to find this boy and save him from you. Now you both search for the boy to kill him?”

  “Things change,” I said, before the Aesi opened his mouth and bit into a piece of hog. I glared at him.

  “They did save him. Did you not, Tracker?” asked the Aesi. “Saved the boy from his band of undead and led him and his mother to the Mweru. Three years later you . . . Shall I tell this story?”

  “I control no man’s mouth,” I said.

  The Aesi laughed. He wrapped his black robe around himself and sat down on a mound made by dead branches and moss.

  “Do you remember when you hid from me, Tracker? Hide from me you did, in the dream jungle. I found the Ogo instead. Poor man. Mighty, but simple.”

  “Do not ever speak of him.”

  The Aesi bowed his head. “Forgive me.” Then, to Nyka, “The Tracker knew to stay awake, for I roamed the dream jungle, looking for him. But many years later—shall we count the years?—he found me one night. The boy, I will give him to you if you help me find him who I seek, he said before even saying peace be with you. And if you help me kill him, he said. What was strange, and I thought so at the time, was that Tracker’s dream was coming from the Mweru.”

  “No man leaves the Mweru,” Nyka said.

  “But a boy can. It is in the prophecies that a boy who will come from those lands will be the dark cloud above the King. But who has time for prophecy?” the Aesi said.

  “Who has time for any of this?” I said, and cut off two pieces of hog and wrapped them in leaf. “Sasabonsam attacked a caravan heading north. We too should go north, on the Bakanga trail, and stop telling tall tales by a fucking fire, as if we are boys.”

  “Sasabonsam is not a wanderer, Tracker. He heads to the rain forest. He will make home—”

  “We travel together, so how is your news always different from mine? He will choose a trail so that he can kill any fool who takes it. The winged one is not like his brother. He doesn’t wait for food to come to him, he seeks it. He will go where he sees men go, and he will go where they are not protected.”

  “He is still on his way to the forest.”

  “Both of you are fools,” Nyka said. “You are saying two parts of the same thing. He will head to the rain forest with the boy. But he will feed and gather bodies along the way.”

  “The Aesi is forgetting to tell you that we are not the only ones looking for the boy,” I said. “Nobody here is lacking rest, so we leave.”

  “Where is North, Tracker?”

  “It’s on the other side of my shit-filled ass,” I said.

  “The night has had enough of you,” the Aesi said.

  “I wish the night would try and—”

  “Enough.”

  * * *

  —

  Monsoon is the real enemy when it comes to war,” the Aesi said.

  The sun bounced through the knotty branches and hurt my eyes. I closed them and rubbed until they itched.

  “Our King wants this war to end before the rains. Rain season comes with flood, comes with disease. He needs victory and he needs it soon.”

  “He’s not my king,” Nyka said.

  I sat up and heard the rush of the river. They must have dragged me to the edge of the salt plains, for I rolled over and saw open grasslands. Grass tall and yellow, hungry for the rain season he was talking about. The bobbing and swaying heads of giraffes far off gobbling leaves from tall trees. Rustling through the bush, guinea fowl, cat, and fox. Above, a flock of sand grouse calling family to water. I smelled lion and cattle and gazelle shit. My calf rubbed against something hard that would cut it.

  “Obsidian. There is no obsidian in these lands,” I said.

  “A man before you must have left it there. Or maybe you think you were first.”

  “What did you do to me?”

  Aesi turned to me. “Your brain was all fire. You would burn yourself out.”

  “Do that to me again and I will kill you.”

  “You could try. Do you remember many moons ago once in Kongor, when I chased you down that market street? Every mind on the street was mine but yours and the . . . him . . . your—”

  “I remember.”

  “Your mind was closed to me because of the Sangoma. You have felt it, haven’t you? Her enchantment is leaving you. You lost it when you left the Mweru.”

  “I can still unlock doors.”

  “There are doors and there are doors.”

  “I have faced swords since then.”

  “Because you are the goat looking for the butcher.”

  “Why didn’t you possess Mossi?”

  “Sport. But last night you needed to cool yourself before you lose use.”

  Truth be told, I felt sore in every muscle, in every joint. I felt no pain the night before, when anger ran through my blood. But now, even kneeling made my legs hurt.

  “But you are right, Tracker. We lose time. And I have only seven more days with you, before I have to save this King from himself.”

  * * *

  —

  The Bakanga trail. Not a road or even a path, just a stretch trod by wagon and horse and feet so much that plants stopped growing. On both sides, a forest of whistling thorns giving off ghost music, swaying trunks with branches thinner than my arm. The trail turned to dirt, cracked mud, and rocks, but it reached the horizon and then went beyond it. On both sides, yellow grass with patches of green, and small trees round like the moon, and taller trees where the leaves spread wide and the tops were flat. I heard Nyka say the biggest and the fattest of gods squatted on them too long, which is why the tops sat so flat. I turned and looked behind me, saw him talking to the Aesi and realized that he had said nothing. I was remembering him from another time. This trail was at times full and noisy with animals, but none stirred. None of the giraffes from near the swamp, no zebra, no antelope, no lion hunting the zebra or antelope. No rumble of elephant. Not even the hiss warning of the viper.

  “There are no beasts in this place,” I said.

  “Something has scared them away,” the Aesi said.

  “We agree he is a thing, then.”

  We kept walking.

  “I have seen him like this before,” Nyka said to the Aesi, speaking only to him but wanting me to hear. “Strangest of things that I remember.”

  The Aesi said nothing, and Nyka always took silence as a sign to continue. He told him that Tracker cares about nothing and loves no one, but when he has been wronged deeply, his whole self, and the self beyond the self, seek only destruction. “I have seen him this way once. And not even seen but heard. His need for vengeance was like life fire.
”

  “Who was the man that made him seek revenge?” the Aesi asked.

  I know Nyka. I know he stopped and turned to face him, eye-to-eye, when he said, Me. He sounded almost proud. But then even the most wretched things Nyka ever said or did were always followed by a voice that sounded like he would kiss you many times and softly.

  “He will kill this Sasabonsam, is that how you call it? He will kill him on just malcontent alone. What did this beast do?”

  I waited for the Aesi to answer, but he said nothing. Sunlight left us, but it was still day, at least near evening.

  Clouds gathered in the sky, gray and thick, even though rain season was a moon away. Before deep dusk, we came upon a village, a tribe none of us knew. A fence on both sides of the trail made of tree branches thatched together that ran for three hundred paces. Ten and eight huts, then two more that I did not see at first glance. Most on the left of the trail, only five on the right, but no different. Huts built of mud and branches with one window to look out, some with two. Thick thatch roof held down by vine. Three were twice the size of the others, but most were the same. The tribe gathered their huts in clusters of five or six. Outside some of the huts lay scattered gourds, and fresh footsteps, and the thin smoke of fire put out in a rush.

  “Where are the people?” Nyka said.

  “Maybe they saw your wings,” the Aesi said.

  “Or your hair,” Nyka said.

  “Would you like a pause in the bush to fuck each other?” I asked. The Aesi made some remark about me forgetting my place in this meet, and that as the adviser of kings and lords, he could leave me and resume his real business, and not to forget, ungrateful wolf, that it was I that saved you from the Mweru, since no man who enters the Mweru ever leaves.

  “They are here,” I said.

  “Who?” Nyka said.

  “The people. No man flees a village without his cow.”

  In the center of one cluster, cows lay lazy and goats hopped on tree stumps and loose wood. I went to the first hut on my left and pushed in the door. Dark inside and nothing moved. I went to the next, which was empty as well. Inside the third was nothing but rugs and dried grass on the ground, clay jars with water, and fresh cow dung on the east wall, not yet dry. Outside Nyka was about to speak when I raised my hand and stepped back in. I grabbed the large rug and yanked it away. The little girls screamed into a slap on the mouth from their mother. On the floor, her children curling into her like not-born babies. One girl crying, the mother her eyes wet but not weeping, and the other daughter frowning straight at me, angry. So little and already the brave one ready to fight. Do not fear us, I said in eight tongues until the mother heard enough words to sit up. Her daughter broke from her, ran straight up to me, and kicked my shin. Another me would have held her back and laughed, and played in her hair, but this me let her kick my shin and calf until I grabbed her hair and pushed her back. She staggered into her mother.