Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“I am no lord,” he said, looking past me.

“You are the lord of this magnificent house,” I said.

He smiled but it quit his face quick. I would have said, Take me to her room, this is still your house, if I thought to enter her room was what he wished. He was not afraid of her; instead they seemed like brother and sister or sharers of old secrets.

“I shall go in,” I said. He looked at me, then past me, then at me, pressing his lips to appear unconcerned. I headed for her door.

“Will you follow?” I asked as I turned around to see him gone.

Sogolon did not lock her door. Not that any of the doors had locks, but I would have thought so of hers. Maybe every man believes that all an old woman has is secrets, and that was the second time I thought of secrets when I thought of her.

The smells in the room hit me first. Some I knew that took me out of the room, some I have never smelled the like. In the center of the room, a black-and-red rug with the curved patterns of textiles from the eastern kingdoms, and a wood headrest. But on the walls, painted, scrawled, scratched, and written, were runes. Some as small as a fingertip. Some taller than Sogolon herself. From them came the smells, some in coal, some in wood dye, some in shit, and some in blood. I saw the rug and the headrest and paid no attention to the floor. That was covered in runes as well, the freshest ones in blood. The room was so covered in marks that I hesitated to look at the ceiling, for I knew what I would see. Runes but also a series of circles, each wider than the one before. Truth, had I the third eye, I would have seen runes written in air.

One smell in the room, fresher than the rest, moved on the wind and grew stronger.

“You scare the lord of the house,” I said.

“He is no lord to me,” Bunshi said as she poured herself down from the ceiling to the floor.

I stood still and stiff; there was no way a black mass moving down from the ceiling was going to trouble me.

“I don’t think I want to know who are your lords,” I said. “Maybe you are a lord yourself that nobody worships anymore.”

“And yet you are so gentle with the giant,” she said.

“Call him Ogo, not giant.”

“That was a noble thing, hearing a man as he empties the whole world of his conscience.”

“Have you been spying on us, river witch?”

“Is every woman a witch to you, Wolf Eye?”

“And what of it?” I said.

“All you know of women is your mother jumping up and down your grandfather’s cock, yet you blame all of womandom for it. The day your father died was the first day of freedom your mother ever saw until your grandfather enslaved her again. All you ever did was watch woman suffer and blame her for it.”

I walked to the door. I would not hear any more of this.

“These are protection runes,” I said.

“How do you know? The Sangoma. Of course.”

“She covered the tree trunks with them, carved some, branded some, left some hanging in air and on clouds and on the ground. But she was Sangoma. To live as her is to know that evil forces rise day and night to come for you. Or wronged spirits.”

“Who did the Sangoma do wrong?”

“I mean Sogolon, not her.”

“What a story you have made of her.”

I went by the window and touched the marks all around the frame. “These are not runes.”

“They are glyphs,” Bunshi said.

I knew they were glyphs. Like the brands on that attacker who came in the whore’s window. Like the note wrapped around the pigeon leg. But not the same marks exactly; I could not tell for sure.

“Have you seen them before?” she said.

“No. She writes runes to keep spirits from coming in. For what does she need glyphs?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“I need no answer. But I leave today, before the sun goes.”

“This day? Do you need me to tell you that is too soon?”

“Too soon? It has been a moon and several days. A moon already wasted in a forest that nobody should have gone into. Me and the Ogo leave this evening. And anyone else who cares to. Maybe the buffalo.”

“No, Wolf Eye. There are more things to learn here. More things to—”

“To what? I am here to find a child, collect my gold, and go find the next lost husband who is not lost.”

“There are things you don’t even know that you don’t know.”

“I know where goes the child.”

“You keep this secret?”

“I tell who I feel needs to know. Maybe you sent us on a mission expecting us to fail. Good … whatever you are, for truly I know not … how stands your fellowship now? Nyka and his woman—”

“She has a name.”

“Fuck the gods if I care to remember it. Besides, they took off first, before we even left the valley. The Leopard is gone, and so is Fumeli, not that the boy had much use, and now your Sogolon is gone to wherever. Here is truth. I saw no reason for a group to find one child anyway. Nor did any of us. Not Nyka, not that cat, and not your witch.”

“Think like a man and not a child, Tracker, this is no task for one, or two.”

“And yet two is what you have. If Sogolon returns and is willing then we will be three.”