Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

  “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 l
oose. 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.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writers never create great stories. We find them. So thanks to everyone who allowed me to listen in and find worlds beyond words.

  For immense support, guidance, generosity, and sometimes blind faith, I would like to thank Ellen Levine, my wonderful agent; Jake Morrissey, my just as wonderful editor; Jeff Bennett, writer, researcher, assistant, great friend, and fine human being; Jynne Dilling Martin, Claire McGinnis, Geoffrey Kloske, and all the folks at Riverhead; Martha Kanya-Forstner, Kiara Kent, and everybody else at Doubleday Canada; Simon Prosser at Hamish Hamilton; Macalester College English Department; Robert McLean; all the researchers and scholars doing the tireless, sometimes thankless investigative and archival work on African history and mythology, including those badass librarians from Timbuktu; Fab 5 Freddy for putting up that Facebook post that sparked a million ideas; and Pablo Camacho for that absolutely stunning cover. My mother is allowed to read all but two pages of this book.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Marlon James is the author of the New York Times bestseller A Brief History of Seven Killings, The Book of Night Women, and John Crow's Devil. A Brief History of Seven Killings won the Man Booker Prize, the American Book Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Book of Night Women won the Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as the NAACP Image Award. A professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, James divides his time between Minnesota and New York.

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