Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Mossi said, “Old man, is this what I think it is? I thought these were uncharted lands.”

“What do you two speak of?” I asked.

The old man unrolled the scroll. A big drawing, in brown, blue, and the colour of bone. I have also seen the like; there were three in the palace of wisdom, but I did not know what they were or what was their use.

“A map? Is this a map of our lands? Who did such a thing? Such masterful craft, such detail, even of the eastern seas. Was this from a merchant in the East?” Mossi said.

“Men and women in these lands have mastered crafts too, foreigner,” Sogolon said.

“Of course.”

“You think we run with lions and shit with zebra so we cannot draw the land or paint the buffalo?”

“That is not what I meant.”

Sogolon let him go with a huff. But this map thing made him grin like a child who stole a kola nut. The man dragged it to the center of the room and placed two pots and two stones at the corners. The blue pulled me in. Light like the sky, and swirls of dark blue like the sea itself. The sea but not like the sea, more like the sea of dream. Bobbing out of the sea, as if leaping on land, were creatures great and small, grand fishes, and a beast with eight tails gobbling a dhow boat.

“I have been waiting to show this to you, the sand sea before it was sand,” the old man said to Sogolon.

Which waters are these? I said to myself.

“A map is just a drawing of the land, of what a man sees so that we too may see it. And plot where to go,” Mossi said.

“Thank the gods for this man to tell us what we already know,” Sogolon said. Mossi kept quiet.

“You mark them in red? Based on what wisdom?” Sogolon asked.

“The wisdom of mathematics and black arts. Nobody travel four moons in one flip of a sandglass, unless they move like the gods, or they using the ten and nine doors.”

“And this is them,” I said.

“All of them.”

Sogolon kneeled and Mossi stooped down, the man excited, the woman silent and with a frown.

“Where you last hear anything about them?” she said.

“The Hills of Enchantment. Twenty and four nights ago.”

“You draw an arrow from the Hills of Enchantment to … where does this point, to Lish?” Mossi said.

“No, from the Hills to Nigiki.”

“This one points from Dolingo to Mitu, but not far from Kongor,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But we came from Mitu to Dolingo, and before that the Darklands to Kongor.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand. You said they are using the ten and nine doors.”

“Of course. Once you go through a door, you can only go in one direction until you go through all doors. You can never go back until you done.”

“What happens when you try?” I say.

“You who kiss a door and flame burns away the mask of it, you should know. The door consume you in flames and burn you up, something that would scare the Ipundulu. They must be using them for two years now, Sogolon. That is why they so hard to find and impossible to track. They stay on the course of doors until they complete the journey, then they go back ways. That’s why I draw each line with an arrow at the two ends. That way they kill at night, kill only one house, maybe two maybe four, all the killing they can do in seven or eight days, then vanish before they leave any real mark.”

I walked over, pointed, and said, “If I was going from the Darklands to Kongor, then here, not far from Mitu to Dolingo, then I would have to ride through Wakadishu to get to the next door, at Nigiki. If they travel in reverse, then already they have come through the Nigiki door. Now they walk through Wakadishu, to get to—”

“Dolingo,” Mossi said.

He pressed his finger into the map, at a star between mountains right below the center.

“Dolingo.”

EIGHTEEN

We are in the great gourd of the world, where the God Mother holds everything in her hands, so that which is at the bottom of the round never falls away. And yet the world is also flat on paper, with lands that shape themselves like blots of blood seeping through linen, of uneven shape, that sometimes look like the skulls of ill-born men.

I traced the rivers of the map until my finger took me to Ku, which lit nothing in me. I wondered about it, that once I wanted more than anything to be Ku, but now I don’t even remember why. My finger took me across the river to Gangatom, and as soon as I touched that symbol of their huts I heard a giggle from my memory. No, not a memory but that thing where I cannot tell what I remember from what I dream. The giggle had no sound, but was blue and smoky.