Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“They are not closed. Yours are, right now.”

“But I never sleep.”

“Never?”

“A little, sometimes never. Night comes and goes like a flash and I may have slept for two flips of a sandglass. Since I never tire in the morning, I assume I slept according to need.”

“What do you see at night?”

“Stars. In my lands night is where people do the evil to enemies they call friends in the day. It’s when sihrs and jinns come play, and people scheme and plot. Children grow to fear it because they think there be monsters. They build a whole thing about it, about night and dark and even the colour black, which is not even a colour here. Not here. Here evil has no qualm with striking at noon. But it leaves night beautiful in look and cool of feel.”

“That was almost verse.”

“I am a poet among prefects.”

I thought to say something about wind rippling on the river.

“This boy, what is his name?” he whispered.

“I don’t know. I don’t think anyone bothered to name him. He is Boy. Precious to many.”

“And yet nobody named him? Not his mother? Who has him now?”

I told him the story up to the perfume and silver merchant. He raised himself up on his elbows.

“Not this Omoluzu?”

“No. It wasn’t the boy’s blood they followed. These were different. The merchant, his two wives and three sons all had their lives sucked out of them. Just like Fumanguru. You saw the bodies. Whoever they are, they leave you worse alive than dead. Did not believe it until I saw a woman like a zombi with lightning coursing through her like blood. I came to Kongor to find the boy’s scent.”

“I see why you need me.”

I knew he smirked, even if I didn’t see it.

“All you have is a nose,” he said. “I have an entire head. You want to find this child. I will find him in a quartermoon, before the man with wings finds him.”

“Seven nights? You sound like a man I used to know. Do you care what we do when we find him?”

“Pursuit, Tracker. I leave capture to others.”

He stretched out on the grass and I looked at my toes. Then I looked at the moon. Then I looked at the clouds, white and shiny on top, silver in the middle, and black underneath as if pregnant with rain. I tried to think of why I never think of this boy, not what he might look like, or sound like, even though he was the reason we were here. I mean, I thought of him when I tracked all that happened, but I was more taken with Fumanguru, and the lies of Belekun the Big, and the game both Sogolon and Bunshi were playing with information; taken by all who sought this boy more than the boy himself. I thought of a room of women all about to fight over a dull lover. Even this Aesi wanting the boy sparked something brighter in me than the boy himself. Though I was sure that it was the King himself who wanted him dead. This King of the North, this Spider King with four arms and four legs. My King. Mossi uttered something, somewhere between a sigh and a moan, and I looked over. His face was to me but his eyes closed and the moonlight moved up and down his face.

Before first light something floated on the breeze, a smell of animals far off, and I thought of Leopard. Anger burned in me, but then it left in the quick, leaving sadness and many words that I could have said. His laugh would have bounced all over that cliff. I did not want to miss him. I had gone years without seeing him before we met at that inn, but until then I always felt that he was the one soul who if I ever needed him would appear without me even asking. The detestable Fumeli crowded my thoughts and made me want to spit. Still, I wondered where he was. His smell was not unknown to me; I could have used the memory of it to find him, but did not.

We set out before sunrise. The buffalo kept nodding to his back until I climbed on, lay down, and went fast to sleep. I woke up to my cheek rubbing against the coarse chest hair of the Ogo.

“The buffalo, he grew tired of carrying you,” Sadogo said, his massive right hand cradling my back, his left in the hook of my knees.

Ahead, Sogolon rode with the girl and Mossi rode alone. The sun, almost gone, left the sky yellow, orange, and gray, with no clouds. Mountains far off on both sides, but the land was flat and grassy. I didn’t want to be cradled like a child, but I didn’t want to ride with Mossi either, and I would have slowed everyone down on foot. I pretended to yawn and closed my eyes. But then he ran across my nose and I jumped. The boy. I almost slipped from Sadogo’s hand but he caught me and put me down. South, but heading north, just as sure as we were north heading south.

“The boy?” Mossi said. I didn’t see him dismount, or that everybody had stopped.

“South. I can’t say how far. Maybe a day, maybe two days. He’s heading north, Sogolon.”

“And we are heading south. We will meet in Dolingo.”

“You seem very sure,” Mossi said.

“I sure now. Not so sure ten days ago until I go and do my own work, just as the Tracker go and do his work.”

“Here is good trade. You tell me how you come by your knowledge, and I will tell you how I come by mine,” I said.