Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“We in these lands know of him bewitching girls, but never a boy. His head I will smash myself, before he can whip his wings. Those wings bring thunder, do you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“He flaps his wings and a storm blows with lightning and thunder, harder and wickeder than the wind Sogolon makes with magic.”

“Then we shall clip his wings. I will tell you of the others later.”

“And of wings, what of the man with black wings?”

“The Aesi? He also seeks for the child, and he will not rest till he finds him. But he knows neither where we are, who has the boy, nor of the ten and nine doors, or he would have used them. This is simple. We save the child and hand him back to his mother, who lives in a mountain fortress.”

“Why?”

“She is the sister of the King.”

“Confusing, is what this is.”

“I make it simple.”

“Like me?”

“No. No, Sadogo. You are not simple. Listen to me, this is not about being simple. There are things I have been told that I have no words how to tell you, that is all. But know, this child is part of a bigger thing. A truly bigger thing, and when we find him, if we keep him safe, it will echo through all the kingdoms. But we must find him before these men do kill him. And we must find him before the Aesi, for he too will kill him.”

“You said it was foolish to believe in magic boys. I remember.”

“And I still believe it to be foolish.”

I stood up and looked over the wall. The prefect was gone.

“Sadogo, I like simple. I like knowing this is what I will eat, this is what I will earn, this is where I shall go, and this is who I shall fuck. And that is still how I choose to move in this world. But this boy. It is not even that I care so much as it is we are in so deep. Let us finish it.”

“Is that all that drives you?”

“Should there be more?”

“I don’t know. But I am tired of my hands called to fight when I don’t know what to fight for. The Ogo is not the elephant, or the rhinoceros.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. There is the money. And there is something I suspect, that this child, this boy, has something to do with what is right in this world. And as much as I don’t care for this boy or even this world, yet still I move in it.”

“You care for nothing in this world?”

“No, I do not. Yes, I do. I do not know. My heart jumps and skips and plays with me. Shall I tell you something, dear Ogo?”

He nodded.

“I am no father and yet I have children. I have no child here, yet they are around me. And I know them less than I know you, but I see them in dreams and I miss them. There is one, a girl, I know she hates me, and it bothers me, because I see with her eyes and she is right.”

“Children?”

“They live with the Gangatom, one of the river tribes, at war with my own.”

“You have this girl and others?”

“Yes, others, one as tall as a giraffe.”

“You have them live with the Gangatom, though you are Ku and they war with the Ku. The Ku will kill you.”

“As you say it, yes.”

“You make me think, this ‘man is simple’ is no bad thing.”

I laughed.

“You may be speaking truth there, dear Ogo.”

“You said the boy might be in Nigiki or Wakadishu.”

“They use the same doors we used to escape the Darklands, but they use them in reverse. We had word of an attack on a household at the foot of the Hills of Enchantment that beat even their sacred magics. Twenty and four days ago, almost a moon. They spend seven to eight days in one place, killing and feeding, which means they have used the door to Nigiki. From Nigiki they kill and go to Wakadishu.”

“They’re almost there.”

“They are there already. It takes five days to get to Wakadishu on foot, maybe six, and they are on foot. My guess is that no beast can stomach the filth of them, so no horses. If they are in Wakadishu they will only be there for another two days, maybe three. Then they walk to the next door, the one we came through on the way to Dolingo.”

“Shall we not meet them there?”

“They will go through the citadel. They will want to feed, and who can resist such noble stock as the Dolingon? Besides, Sadogo, our numbers are few. We might need help.”

“So we cut them off?”

“Yes, we cut them off.”

He clapped his hands and it echoed across the sky. Then he spread them and I walked right to him as if to embrace. He flinched a little, not sure what I was doing. I wrapped my arms around him, my head in his armpit, and inhaled deep and long.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Trying to remember you,” I said.

Sadogo then asked me if I thought the girl was pretty.

“Venin, I told you her name,” he said.

“She is pretty as girls go, I think, but her lips are too thin as is her hair, and she is only a little darker than the prefect, whose skin is hideous. Do you think her pretty?”

“I feel like half of an Ogo. My mother died when she had me, which is fine for she would have lived to curse me and my birth. But I feel like not the Ogo in many things.”

“You are right and you are true, dear Ogo. And yes she is pretty.”