Black Leopard, Red Wolf

The Leopard, being a Leopard, ignored the chairs and jumped up on the table, not making a sound. He grabbed the bird leg from a silver tray, crouched on his heels, and bit into it. I could tell he did not like it. Leopards eat all things, but there was no rush of blood, hot and rich, spilling into his mouth and over his lips as he bit into it, which always made him frown.

“You are the one strange, Tracker, with your riddles and half meanings. Sit, eat porridge while I eat—what is this, ostrich? I’ve never had ostrich, could never catch one. You said the Ogo is remembering?”

“Yes.”

“What does he remember? Being in the enchanted bush? I remember that.”

“What else?”

“A great slumber. Traveling but not moving. A long scream. What does the Ogo remember?”

“Everything, it seems. His whole life came back to him. Do you remember when we set out? You had a problem with me.”

“We must have solved it, for I do not remember it.”

“If you heard yourself, you would not have thought so.”

“You are confusing, Tracker. I sit and eat with you, and there is love between us that until now was the kind we never had to declare. So stop living in a squabble so little that I cannot remember it, even with you prompting me. When do we go to the boy’s house? Shall we go now?”

“Yesterday you wer—”

“Kwesi!” his arrow boy shouted, and dropped the basket he was carrying. Maybe I did forget his name out of spite. He came over to the table, not looking or even nodding at me.

“You are not well enough to be eating strange things,” he said to the Leopard.

“Here is meat and here is bone. Nothing is strange.”

“Go back to the room.”

“I am well.”

“You are not.”

“Are you deaf?” I said. “He said he is well.”

Fumeli tried to glare at me and fuss over the Leopard with the same face, but it came out as him fussing a little over me and glaring a little at the Leopard. Even when it was not funny, this boy provoked me to laugh. He stomped off, grabbing his basket on the way out. One of his little parcels fell out. Cured pig, I could smell it. Supplies. The Leopard sat down on the table and crossed his legs.

“I should lose him soon.”

“You should have lost him moons ago,” I mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing, Leopard. There are things I must tell you. Not here. I do not trust these walls. Truly there are some strange things here.”

“You’ve said this four times now. Why is everything strange, friend?”

“The black puddle woman.”

“It’s these statues that bother me. I feel like an army is going to watch me fuck at night.”

He grabbed one of the statues by the neck, and grinned that wide smile I couldn’t remember when last I saw.

“This one the most,” he said.

“Grab your bird,” I said.

We wrapped our waists in cloths and walked south to Gallunkobe/Matyube. The freemen and slave quarter, also the poorest, except for vulgar houses that spread wide instead of tall for freemen with much coin, but no noble air. Most of the houses were one room or hall, and packed so tight that they shared the same roof. Not even a rat could squeeze between each wall. The towers and roofs of the Nyembe quarter made it look like a huge fort or a castle, but no towers rose in this quarter. Freemen and slaves had no need to watch anyone, but everyone needed to watch them. And despite having the most men and women sleeping there at night, by day it was the emptiest quarter, freemen and slaves at work in the other three.

“When did Bunshi tell you such a story?”

“When? Good cat, you were there.”

“I was? I don’t … yes I do remember … memory comes forth, then slips away.”

“Memory must be one of them who heard what you do in bed.”

He chuckled.

“But, Tracker, I remember it as if somebody told me, not as if I was there. I have no smell of it. So strange.”

“Yes, strange. Whatever that Fumeli makes you smoke, stop smoking such.”

I was happy to talk to the Leopard, as I always am, and I did not want to bring up the sourness of the days past—one moon past, a fact that staggered him every time I said it. I think I know why. Time is flat to all animals; they measure it in when to eat, when to sleep, when to breed, so missed time to him feels a board with a huge hole punched out.

“The slaver said the boy was his partner’s son, now an orphan. Men kidnapped the boy from his housekeeper and murdered all others in that house. Then he said the house belonged to his aunt, not his housekeeper. Then we saw him and Nsaka Ne Vampi try to pry information out of the lightning girl, who we set free but then she jumped off a cliff and landed in Nyka’s cage.”

“You tell me things I know. Everything but this lightning woman in the cage. And I remember thinking for sure this slaver lies, but not about what.”