Black Leopard, Red Wolf (Dark Star Trilogy)

by Marlon James

  “Ugh, eunuchs. Better an abuka with no holes, no eyes, no mouth than a eunuch. I thought one became this to swear off fucking, but curse the gods, there they are, infesting every whorehouse, making the blood boil of every man who just wants to lie on his back for a change. I wish we could find the child right now.”

  “I know who we could find right now.”

  “What, who?”

  “The slaver.”

  “Gone to the coast to sell his new slaves.”

  “He is not even four hundred paces from here and only one of his men travels with him.”

  “Fuck the gods. Well it’s been said that you have—”

  “Do not say it.”

  We dipped into an alley and took two small torches.

  He followed me past a tower with seven floors and a thatch roof, one with three floors and another four floors high. We passed a small hut where lived a witch, for nobody wanted to live above or below a witch; three houses painted in the grid patterns of the rich; and another building of mysterious use. We had left roads and gone northwest, right at the edge of the fourth wall, and not far from the North fort. I was a savannah dog, picking up too much flesh, living and dead, and burned by lightning.

  “Here.”

  We stopped at a house four floors high, the taller buildings beside it throwing moon shadow. No door stood in front and the lowest window was as high as three men foot-to-shoulder. One window near the top and in the center, dark with what looked like flickering light. I pointed to the house, then the window.

  “He is here.”

  “Tracker, a problem you have,” he said and pointed up. “Are you now crow to my Leopard?”

  “All the birds in the ten and three kingdoms and a crow is what you call me?”

  “Fine, a dove, a hawk—how about an owl? You better fly quick because this place has no door.”

  “There is a door.”

  The Leopard looked at me hard, then walked as far around the house as he could.

  “No, you have no door.”

  “No, you have no eyes.”

  “Ha, ‘you have no eyes.’ I listen to you and hear her.”

  “Who?”

  “The Sangoma. Your words fall just like hers. You think like her too, that you’re clever. Her witchcraft is still protecting you.”

  “If it were witchcraft it wouldn’t be protecting me. She threw something on me that binds craft; this I was told by a witchman who tried to kill me with metals. It’s not as if one feels it on the skin or in the bones. Something that remains even after her death, which again makes it not witchcraft, for a witch’s spells all die with her.”

  I walked right up to the wall as if to kiss it, then whispered an incantation low enough that not even his Leopard ears could hear.

  “If it were witchcraft,” I said.

  I shuddered and stepped back. This always made me feel the way I do when I drink juice of the coffee bean—like thorns were under my skin pushing through, and forces in the night were out to get me. I whispered to the wall, This house has a door and I with the wolf eye will open it. I stepped back and without my torch the wall caught fire. White flame raced to four corners in the shape of a door, consumed the shape, crackled and burned, then put itself out, leaving a plain wooden door untouched by scorch.

  “Whoever is here is working witch science,” I said.

  Mortar and clay steps took us up to the first floor. A room empty of man smell, with an archway setting itself off in the dark. Blue moonlight came through the windows. I knew stealth, but the cat was so quiet I looked behind me twice.

  People were talking harshly above us. The next floor up had a room with a locked door, but I smelled no people behind it. Halfway up the steps the smells came down on us: scorched flesh, dried urine, shit, the stinking carcasses of beasts and birds. Near the top of the steps sounds came down on us—whispers, growls, a man, a woman, two women, two men, an animal—and I wished my ears were as good as my nose. Blue light flashed from the room, then flickered down to dark. No way we could climb the last steps without being seen or heard, so we stayed halfway. We could see in the room anyway. And we saw what flickered blue light.

  A woman, an iron collar and chain around her neck, her hair almost white but looking blue as light flickered through the room. She screamed, yanked at the chain around her neck, and blue light burst within her, coursing along the tree underneath her skin that one sees when you cut parts of a man open. Instead of blood, blue light ran through her. Then she went dark again. The light was the only way we could make out the slaver in dark robes, the man who fed him dates, and somebody else, with a smell I both remembered and couldn’t recognize.

  Then somebody else touched a stick and it burst into flame like a torch. The chained woman jumped back and scrambled against the wall.

  A woman held the torch. I had never seen her before, was sure of it even in the dark, but she smelled familiar, so familiar. Taller than everybody else in the room, with hair big and wild like some women above the sand sea. She pointed the torch to the ground, to the stinking half carcass of a dog.

  “Tell me true,” the slaver said. “How did you get a dog up into this room?”

  The chained woman hissed. She was naked and so dirty that she looked white.

  “Move in close and I tell you true,” she said.

  The slaver moved in close, she spread her legs, her finger spreading her kehkeh, and shot a streak of piss that wet his sandals before he could pull away. She started to laugh but he cracked his knuckles and punched the cackle out of her mouth. The Leopard jumped and I grabbed his arm. It sounded as if she was laughing until the tall woman’s torch shined on her again as tears pooled in her eyes. She said, “You you you you you all go. You all must go. Go now, run run run run run because Father coming, he coming on the wind don’t you hear the horse go go go you he won’t kiss the head of you unclean boys, go wash wash wash wash wash wash wash—”

  The slaver nodded and the tall woman shoved the torch right up to her face. She jumped back again and snarled.

  “Nobody comes! Nobody comes! Nobody comes! Who are you?” the woman said.

  The slaver moved in to strike her. The chained woman flinched and hid her face, begging him not to strike her anymore. Too many men striking her and they strike her all the time and she just want to hold her boys, the first and the third and the fourth, but not the second, for he does not like when people hold him, not even his mother. I still held on to the Leopard’s arm and could feel his muscles shift and his hair grow under my fingers.

  “Enough with that,” the tall woman said.

  “This is how you get her to talk,” the slaver said.

  “You must think she is one of your wives,” she said.

  The Leopard’s arm stopped twitching. She wore a black gown from the northern lands that touched the floor, but cut close to show she was thin. She stooped down to the woman in chains, who still hid her face. I couldn’t see it but knew the chained woman was trembling. The chains clanged when she shook.

  “These are the days that never should have happened to you. Tell me about her,” the tall woman said.

  The slaver nodded to his date feeder and the date feeder cleared his throat and began.

  “This woman, her story, very strange and sad. It is I who am talking and I will—”

  “Not a performance, donkey. Just the story.”

  I wish I could have seen his scowl but his face was lost to the dark.

  “We don’t know her name, and her neighbors, she scared them all away.”

  “No she did not. Your master here paid them to leave. Stop wasting my time.”

  “As if I give two shakes of a rat’s ass about your time.”

  She paused. I could tell nobody expected that to come out of his mouth.

  “This always his ways?” she said to the slaver. “Maybe you tell me the story, slave monger, and maybe I cut his tongue out.”

  The date feeder pulled a knife from under his sl
eeve and flipped the handle to her.

  “How this for sport? I give you the knife and you try,” he said.

  She did not take it. The woman in chains was still hiding her face in the corner. The Leopard was still. The tall woman looked at the date feeder, with a curious smile.

  “He has chat, this one. Fine, out with your story. I will hear it.”

  “Her neighbor, the washerwoman, say her name is Nooya. And nobody knows her or claims her so Nooya be her name, but she don’t answer to it. She answer to him. Nobody living to tell the story but she, and she not telling. But this is what we know. She live in Nigiki with her husband and five children. Saduk, Makhang, Fula—”

  “The shorter version, date feeder.”

  The tall woman pointed at him. She did not take her eye off the woman in chains.

  “One day when the sun past the noon and was going down, a child knock on her door. A boy child, who look like he was five and four years in age.”

  “We have one word for that in the North. We call it nine,” the tall woman said.

  She smiled; the date feeder scowled and said, “A boy child knocking on the door rapraprapraprap like he going to knock it down. They after me, they coming for me, save this boy child! he say. Save this boy child, save him, he said. Save me!”

  The chained woman darted a look. “Sssssssssssssssave the chhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she said.

  “The little boy screaming and screaming, what could a mother do? A mother with four boys of her own. She open the door and the boy run in. He run right into a wall and fall back and wouldn’t stop moving till she close the door. Who is after you? Nooya ask. Is it your father you run from? Nooya ask. Your mother? Yes, mothers can be strict and fathers can be wicked, but the look in his eye, the fear in his eye was not for strong word or the switch. She reach to touch him and he stagger back so quick his head hit the side of a cupboard and he fall.

  “The boy wouldn’t nod, the boy wouldn’t talk, only cry and eat and watch the door. Her four sons including Makhang and Saduk say, Who is the strange boy, Mother, and where did you find him? The boy will not play with them so they leave him alone. All he do is cry and eat. Nooya’s husband was working the salt pits and would not be back till morning. She finally get him to stop crying by promising him millet porridge in the morning with extra honey. That night, Makhang was asleep, Saduk was asleep, the other two boys were asleep, even Nooya was asleep, and she never sleeps until all her boys was under the one roof. Hear this now. One of them was not asleep. One of them get up from the mat, and answer the door though nobody knock. The boy. The boy go to the door that nobody was knocking. The boy open the door and he come in. A handsome man he was, long neck, hair black and white. The night hide his eyes. Thick lips and square jaw and white skin, like kaolin. Too tall for the room. He wrap himself in a white-and-black cloak. The boy point to rooms deep in the house. The handsome man go to room of boys first and kill the first son to the third son and the floor was wet from blood. The little boy watch. The handsome man wake the mother by strangling her throat. He lift her up above his head. The boy watch. He throw her to the ground, and she is crippled with pain and she whimpering and screaming and coughing and nobody hear. She watch when he bring out the fourth son, the smallest boy, the little dormouse, holding his sleepy head up. The mother trying to scream no, no, no, no, but the handsome man laugh and cut his throat. She screaming, and screaming and he drop the fourth son and move in for her. The boy watch.

  “The father come home when the sun far up in the sky. He come home tired and hungry and know he have to go out again before the sun go down. He put down his hoe, put down his spear, take off his tunic, and leave his loincloth. Where is my food, woman? he say. Dinner should be here and breakfast too. The mother come out of her room. The mother naked. Her hair wild. The room air feel wet and the father say it smell like it going rain soon. He hear her coming to him and want to know where is breakfast and where are the children. She right behind him. The room go dark and light flashing in the room and he say, A storm coming? It was just bright with sun. He turns around and his wife is the one with the lightning flashing through her like it do now. He look down and see the fourth son dead on the floor. Her husband jump back and look up and she grab his head with both hands and break his neck. When the lightning fade inside, her head come back and she look around her house and see all of them dead, the four sons and the husband and she forget the boy and the handsome man because they both gone. Just she and the dead bodies and she think she kill them, and nothing prove her otherwise and the lightning flash up in her head and she go mad. She kill two men and break the legs of one before they catch her. And they lock her up in a dungeon for seven murders. Even though nobody believe that she could break the neck of a big man who work in the fields alone. In her cell, she try to kill herself every time she remember what really happen, because she rather believe she kill them herself than it was the little boy she let in that kill them all. But most times she don’t remember and just growl like a cheetah in a trap.”

  “That was a long story,” the tall woman said. “Who was the man?”

  “Who?”

  “The tall white man. Who was he?”

  “His name not remember by any griot.”

  “What kind of magic did he leave in her why this happen?”

  Light was starting to glow in the woman again. She shook every time it happened, as if she had fits.

  “Nobody know,” the date feeder said.

  “Somebody knows, just not you.”

  She looked at the slaver.

  “How did you get her out of prison?” she asked.

  “It was not difficult,” the slaver said. “They been waiting long days to get rid of her. She scare even the men. Every day as soon as she wake she would say the master going east or west or south and run in that direction, right into the wall, or the iron gate—two time she break out a tooth. Then she will remember her family and go mad all over again. They sold me her for just one coin when I said I will sell her to a mistress. I have her here for when she going to have use.”

  “Use? You’ve been standing in her shit, and the maggots of the dead dog she been eating.”

  “You don’t understand a thing. The white man. He didn’t kill her, and what he do, he do it to others. Many a woman like her running loose in these lands and many a man too. Even some children and I hear a eunuch. From women he take everything so they have nothing, but nothing is something too big for any one woman to bear, so she search and she run and she look. Look at her. Even now she want to be with him, she will be near him and want nothing else, she will let him eat her, she will never let him go. She will never stop following. He be her opium now. Look at her.”

  “I am looking.”

  “If he shift south she run south to that window. If he change west, she switch and run until the chain pull her back by the neck.”

  “He who?”

  “Him.”

  “This story of yours growing long in the teeth. And the boy?”

  “What of the boy?”

  “You know what I am asking, Your Excellence.”

  The slaver said nothing. The tall woman looked at the chained woman again as she raised her head from filthy arms. It looked like the tall woman was smiling at her. The chained woman spat on her cheek. The tall woman struck her face so hard and so quick, the chained woman’s head slammed against the wall. The chain links clicked and clanged from being pulled hard then let loose.

  “If this tale had wings it would have flown to the east by now,” she said. “You want to follow the trail of a lost boy? Start with those child-raping elders in Fasisi.”

  “I want you to follow this boy, the one this woman see in the company of a white man. It’s him.”

  “An old tale mothers use to scare children,” the tall woman said.

  “Tell me true—why you doubt? You never see women like her before?”

  “I have even killed a few.”

  “People from Nig
iki all the way to the Purple City talk about seeing a man white as clay, and a boy. And others as well. There are many accounts of them entering city gates, but nobody witness their departure,” the date feeder said. “We have—”

  “Nothing. From a madwoman missing her dormouse. It is late,” the tall woman said.

  I grabbed the Leopard’s hand, still hairy, still about to change, and nodded to the lower floor. We snuck down and hid in the empty room, looking out in the dark. We looked out as the tall woman went down the steps. Halfway she stopped and looked over to us, but the dark was so thick you could feel it on your skin.

  “We will let you know what we decide tomorrow,” she said to the others.

  The door closed behind her. The slaver and his date feeder followed soon after.

  We should leave,” I said.

  The Leopard turned to go upstairs.

  “Cat!”

  I grabbed his hand.

  “I will free this poor woman.”

  “The same woman with lightning coursing through her? The woman eating from dog carcass?”

  “That is no animal.”

  “Fuck the gods, cat, you wish to quarrel now? Cut this notion loose. Ask the slaver about the woman when we see him. Besides, you were fine with chains on women only a night ago.”

  “That is different. Those were slaves. This is a prisoner.”

  “All slaves are prisoners. We go.”

  “Free her I will, and you will not stop me.”

  “I am not stopping you.”

  “Who calls?” she said.

  The woman had heard us.

  “Could these be my boys? My lovely noise of boys? You gone so long, and still I didn’t make any millet porridge.”

  The Leopard made a step and I grabbed his hand again. He pushed me away. She saw him and ran back to her corner.

  “Peace. Peace be with you. Peace,” the Leopard said over and over.

  She darted at him, then at me, then back at him, choking on the end of her chain. I stayed back, not wanting her to think we were closing in. She hid her face and started crying again.

  The Leopard turned and looked at me. His face was near lost in the dark but I saw his eyebrows raised, pleading. He felt too much. He always did. But it was all sensation to him. Fast heartbeat, lustful swell, sweat down the neck. We stepped over some stones, climbing up the last few steps.