Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Tracker. Forsake me not in this river. Regard it, I am attacked by river demons. I shall die of sickness right here. Or will it be a water witch who drowns me so that I can become her husband. Tracker, I shall not stop shouting your name until you do. Tracker, do you not wish to stay awake? Tracker! Tracker!”

Now I wanted to jump, just to land on his head. But sleep came at me like a mistress.

“Tracker. Do not even think of jumping into this river wearing that stupid curtain. You act as if clothes are second nature to the Ku, when we all know.”

You have been trying to get me out my robes for two days now, I thought but did not say. My splash was so loud I thought it was somebody else’s until I sunk under the water. The cold hit so hard and sharp that I sucked in water and broke the surface coughing. The prefect laughed until he coughed as well.

“At least you can swim. One never knows with men from the North.”

“You think we can’t swim.”

“I think you are so obsessed with water spirits you never go in the river.”

He flipped over, dived under, and his feet splashed me.

He was still swimming, and diving, and splashing, and laughing, and shouting at me to get back in the water when I sat on the banks. My clothes were back on the cliff and I needed to get them, but not because it was cold. He stepped out of the water, shaking off the glisten of his wet skin, and sat down beside me.

“Ten years I lived in that place. Kongor, I mean,” he said.

I looked out at the river.

“Ten years I lived in that city, ten years among its people. ’Tis a funny thing, Tracker, to live in the same place for ten years with people who are by far the most open yet the least friendly people I have yet to meet. My neighbor would not smile when I said, Good morning and be safe from ruin, brother. But he will say, My mother is dead, how I hated her in life and will now hate her in death. And he might leave fruits at my door if he has too much, but will never knock on my door for me to greet him and say my thanks, or worse, invite him in. ’Tis a coarse love.”

“Or maybe he is no friend of prefects.”

I could tell without looking that he was frowning.

“Where do you go with this?” I asked.

“I feel you were about to ask how I felt to have killed men dear to me. And they were, in a way, dear. The truth is I feel remorse at not feeling remorse. I say to myself, How do I feel grief for people who kept their love at arm’s length from me always? This bores you. It bores me. Do you still wish for sleep?”

“More talk like this and I will.”

He nodded.

“We could talk through the night, or I could point out mighty hunters and wild beasts in the stars. You could also say, Fuck the witch and her old beliefs, I am a man of science and mathematics.”

“Mockery is cheap.”

“Fear is cheap. Courage costs.”

“So I am now the coward for not sleeping. What say you?”

“A strange night this is. Are we near the noon of the dead?”

“It has come and passed, I think.”

“Oh.”

He was quiet for a while.

“You men from the eastern light worship only one god,” I said.

“What is meant by ‘eastern light’? The light which falls on that place falls on this also. There is only one god. Vengeful in humor, merciful too,” he said.

“How do you know you picked the right god?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“If you can only have one, how did you make the right choice?”

He laughed. “Choosing a lord would be like choosing wind. He chose to make us.”

“All gods make. No reason to worship them. My mother and father made me. I don’t owe them worship for it.”

“So you raised yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Really.”

“Yes.”

“Hard for a child to grow with no parents, East or West.”

“They are not dead.”

“Oh.”

“How do you know your god is even good?”

“Because he is. He says he is,” Mossi said.

“So the only proof you have that he is good is his own word for it. Have I told you? I am the mother of twenty and nine children. And I am sixty years old.”

“You make no sense.”

“I make too much sense. If he says, I am good, there is no proof, only that he said so.”

“Maybe you should sleep.”

“Sleep if you wish,” I said.

“So that you can watch me in slumber?”

I shook my head. “If we are in Dolingo, you are ten days’ ride from Kongor.”

“There is nothing to ride back to, in Kongor.”

“No wife, no children, no sisters or brothers you traveled with? No home with two trees and your own little granary with millet and sorghum to return to?”

“No, no, no, no, no, and no. A few of those I fled to come here. And what do I go back to? A room that I owe in rent. A city where people grabbed at my hair so much that I cut it off. Brothers in the chieftain army I have killed. Brothers who now want to kill me.”

“There is nothing to ride forward to in Dolingo.”

“There is adventure. There is this boy you search for. There are uses for my skilled sword yet. And there is your back, which clearly needs watching, since nobody else does such.”

I did not laugh long.

“When I was young, my mother said that we sleep because the shy moon did not like when we watched her undress,” I said.

“Don’t close your eyes.”