Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“I tell Amadu he need none of you. Any five or six warriors and a hound. You is the only one I need, but even you is a fool. Every single one of you a fool. Spend so much time growl, and scowl like hungry hyena, none of you have time to find your own shit, much less a boy. You want to know what Kongor is to me? Kongor is where man teach me him true use. And even the last thing he good for a candlestick do it better.”

“Yet you help to find a boy who will be a man,” I said.

“But you know what I do? You know what I do? I take the greatest revenge. I bury every single one of you. Every single one. I was at every deathbed. Every mishap. Every plague of bad spirits. Every death turn. And I laugh. And if the knife was only halfway in, I push it deeper. Or I travel in the air and infect your mind. And I still living. I bury you and your son and your son’s son. And will I live. I … I …” She stopped and looked around the cell as if it were the first time she was seeing it.

“Wherever you just went to, maybe go back,” I said.

“What a day wh—”

“When a man tells you what to do. Don’t you have enough spirits in your head doing that already?”

“We talking about you.”

“You talking about everyone but me. Look at what all you do. Fellowship tear apart before it even come together in the valley. Three of you go off in the Darklands and one have to follow because you is man and man never listen. Delay we by one whole moon.”

“So you sold us off.”

“So I get you out of the way.”

“And yet look at me, and look at you. One of us has a nose and the other one still needs it,” I said.

“One of we in chains and one of we not.”

“You never learned how to ask a favor.”

“The Queen will treat you and the prefect and the Ogo better than concubines.”

“Will she give us each a palace that she never visits?”

“All my life men telling me this would be the life above all lives. Well here come the Queen of Dolingo saying, That is all you have to be for however long you live. From how man talk, this should be the greatest gift.”

“Would be much greater if the man get to choose it.”

“So now you is like a woman in all things. How it feel?”

“Have the griots sing you a song about your victory over man.”

“Man? You just a nose.”

“A nose for which you still find use.”

“Yes, a nose that may still to come to use. The rest of you just in the way. And when I get the boy, know that you help bring back the natural order to the North. Let that feed you as you settle the rest of your living days here.”

“Here where everything is unnatural. A devil’s fuck for the North.”

“You look at me good, boy. Because you never see me before. You never in Kongor? You never see the Seven Wings amass? What you think in the heart of this King? The King in South too busy confusing his throne for his shithole to start a war, so why they amassing? And is not just mercenaries in Kongor. The infantry at the border of Malakal and Wakadishu get call back a moon ago. Fasisi horsemen all call to camp. The South King one kind of mad. The North King another, much worse. First he going violate the treaty and go after Wakadishu, watch my word. And that won’t be enough, for it never enough for anybody in this poison line. Then he going come conquering everywhere he can point on the map. Dolingo.”

“He can burn Dolingo to the ground.”

She stepped closer to me, still out of the reach of my chains when I stood up.

“Ha. You think he going stop at Dolingo and all the free states? What you think he going do with Ku and Gangatom and Luala Luala? A bigger kingdom will need more slaves. Where you think he going get them from? He won’t care if they have legs like a giraffe or have no legs at all.”

“Shit-cursed witch.”

“A shit-curse witch who know the only future for your children is for Fasisi to return to being the true North. He already taking men and every healthy boy from Luala Luala. The world spinning off for too long, and everything off it balance. And this shriveled bitch here you looking at? She will take anything and take anyone, especially a boy lesser than a shit mark on convict’s wall if that bring the true line of the sister back on the throne. True North. The future of the North is in the eye of the boy. And maybe then the gods will come back. The future bigger than me, it bigger than you, it even bigger than Fasisi. I don’t expect you to understand, you still sleeping, and from that sleep man like you can never wake.”

“Then look for my help in dreams, bitch.”