Black Leopard, Red Wolf

That evening she came to him and said, I have spoken my fill of verses. Give me new words. He walked to the bars that were not locked and said:

Bring words to voice and

Meat to this verse

Coal and ash

Flicker a flame

Brilliant

She stared at him through the bars.

“What I tell you is a true word, Ogo, you have an awful voice, and that is terrible verse. The griots do get their gifts from the gods.” Then she laughed. “Give me this word. What they call you?”

“I am called nothing.”

“What does your father call you?”

“A curse from the demons who fucked my whore of a wife and killed her.”

She laughed again.

“I laugh, but it makes me very sad,” she said. “I come here because you are not like the rest.”

“I am worse. Three times as many I have killed, compared to the bravest fighter.”

“Yes, but you are the only one who does not look at me like I am next.”

He walked right up to the bar and pushed at it, opened it a little. She shifted a little, tried not to look as if she jumped.

“Truly, I will kill anything. Cut past my skin to find my heart and it will be white. White like nothingness.”

She looked at him. He was almost three times her height.

“If you were for true heartless, you would not have known it. Lala is my name.”

When he told the master that he wished to leave, he did not tell him that he wanted to go north, then east, for whoever speaks such verses that the girl recites will not care that he towers over the biggest of men. He did not ask to buy Lala, but he did plan to take her. But the master learned that this new thinking was the doing of his bet collector. For sure they are not lovers, for not even the hugest of women can take an Ogo, and she is small as a child and frail as a stick. This Ogo was growing close to her head and speaking like her.

The next morning Sadogo woke up to see the blue Ogo, in the middle of the courtyard, pull himself out of her body, leaving her smashed, ripped, and wrecked in a full moon of her own blood. Sadogo did not run to her, he did not cry, he did not leave his cell, he did not speak of it to the master.

“I will pit you against him finally so you can avenge her,” he said.

Later that night, another slave girl came to his cell and said, Look at me, I am now the wagers maid. They will lower me in the bucket.

“Tell the old men it would be foolish to bet against me.”

“They have already betted.”

“What?”

“They have already cast bets, most for you, some against you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The word was you were the smart Ogo.”

“Speak plain and true, slave.”

“The Master of Entertainments, he send bets, by slave, by messenger, and by pigeon, from seven days before, saying you will be pit against the blue one in a fight to the death.”

Before the fight, noise from the well rose loud and thick and bounced off dirt and rock. Noblemen in noble gowns, and gold-streaked slippers, and because this was a special night of special entertainment, they brought several noblewomen with heads wrapped like tall flowers pointing up to the sky. They were impatient, even though many battles left men with broken limbs, smashed heads, and a neck yanked out like from a chicken. Some men started cursing and some women too. Bring the sad-faced one, they chanted. Sad Ogo, sad Ogo, sad Ogo, they said, and shouted, Sad.

Ogo.

Sadogo.

Sadogo.

The blue Ogo threw off a black hood and leapt from a high ledge to the mound. He puffed his chest out. The women hissed and called for Sadogo. I will ram an iroko branch up his ass till it bursts through his mouth and cook him on a spit, the blue Ogo said.

Sadogo came in from the west, a tunnel no man had used before. He had wrapped his knuckles in straps of iron. The master followed him and began to shout.

“Lightning strike and thunder roll, even the gods stealing a look on this right now. Mark it, good gentlemen. Mark it, good wives and virgins. This day not going to be a day anyone soon forget. Who didn’t bet, bet now! Who bet, bet again!”

The new slave girl came down in the bucket and men threw satchels and coins and cowries at her. Some fell in the bucket, some hit her face.

Sadogo saw the new slave girl, lowered to the lowest ledge, then raised from ledge to ledge and swung around to take the bets. Just then it came to him, poetry sung by the girl in a language he did not understand. A language that might have said, Look at us, we speak of melancholy, and melancholy no matter the tongue is always the same word. The blue Ogo’s fist clobbered him right on the cheek and he spat the thought out. He fell back down in the water, which rushed into his nose and made him choke.