Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Yes, the boy run hot, then it run cold. Hot for one day and then cold just like that. Never fades, no? Not like a boy who run too far, he scent just vanish, like he dip himself in the river to throw off wild dogs. This not a riddle, Tracker, surely you know why.”

“No.”

“A house with a man who owe me many things up ahead. We stop there. And … house of a man …”

Wind knocked her off the horse, kicked her high in the air, and dropped her flat on her back. Breath burst out of her mouth. The girl jumped off the horse, ran to her, but a nothing in the air slapped her. I heard the slap, the sound of wet skin on skin, but nothing to see, the girl’s face twisting left then right. Sogolon raising a hand to block her face, as if somebody came at her with an ax. Mossi jumped off his horse and ran to her but wind knocked him back as well. Sogolon fell to her knees and clutched her belly, then screamed, then yelled, then said something in a language I didn’t know. All of this I saw before, right before the Darklands. Sogolon stood up but air slapped her down again. I drew my axes but knew they were no use. Mossi ran to her again and the wind knocked him down. On the wisp of air came voices, a scream one blink, a laugh the next. Whatever it was disturbed the Sangoma’s enchantment, and I could feel something on me and within me trying to flee. Sogolon shouted something in that language again, as the wind gripped her neck and pushed her down in the dirt. The girl searched around for a stick, found a stone, and started drawing runes in the sand. The girl marked, and scratched, and dug, and brushed dirt with her fingers, making runes in the dirt until she made a circle around Sogolon. The air howled until it was just wind, then nothing.

Sogolon rose, still trying to catch her breath. Mossi ran over to help her up, but the girl jumped between them and swatted away his hand.

“She not to be touch by no man,” she said.

Which was the first time I was hearing such news. But she let the Ogo lift her up on her horse.

“These the same spirits from outside the Darklands?” I shouted at her.

“Is the man with the black wings,” Sogolon said. “Is this—”

I heard it too, along the path, on both sides, a cracking as if earth was breaking apart. The buffalo stopped and swung around. The girl, standing by Sogolon, grabbed her staff and pulled it apart to show the tip of a lance. The earth kept cracking, and the girl grabbed Sogolon to help her back on her horse. The buffalo started to trot and Sadogo was about to pick me up and put me on his shoulders. From the cracking earth came heat and sulfur, which made us cough. And the cackle of old women, louder and louder until it turned into a hum.

“We should run,” Mossi said.

“Wise counsel,” I said, and we both ran to the horse.

Sadogo put on his knuckles. The cracking and the cackling grew louder, until something burst out, right in the middle of the path, with a scream. A column, a tower that bent, and cracked, and split pieces off. Three others burst through the ground on the right, like obelisks. Sogolon was too weak to rein the horse, so the girl pressed her knees into him. The horse tried to gallop but the shifting, cracking column unfolded itself, shaped itself, and it was a woman, larger than the horse, below the waist dark and scaly and still rising from the earth as if the rest of her body was a snake. She rose as tall as two trees, and spooked Sogolon’s horse, which jumped up on her hind legs and threw both of them off. Her skin looked like the moon, but it was white dust floating in the air like clouds. On the two sides of the path rose four more, with thin rib bones pressing against their skin, and breasts plump, faces with dark eyes and wild locks that rose high like flame. The creatures on the right covered themselves in dust, the creatures on the left covered themselves in blood. Also this, the flutter of wings, though none of them had any wings. One swooped in and knocked Mossi down. She raised her hand and her claws grew. She would slice him to nothing before he turned over. I jumped in front of him and swung my ax at her hand, chopping it at the wrist. She screamed and backed away.

“Mawana witches,” Sogolon said. “Mawana witches, he … controlling them.”