Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“How did you come upon each other?”

Kava still watched where the Leopard left in the bush.

“Before the Zareba. I had to prove that the boy with no mother is worthy of becoming a man, or die the boy. He must go out past the bush, slip past Gangatom warriors in open fields. He must not come back without the skin of a great cat. Listen to what come to pass. I was in the yellow bush. I heard a branch crack and a baby cry and I saw that Leopard holding a baby at the neck. With his teeth he’s holding him. I draw my spear and he growls and drop the baby. I am thinking I will save this baby, but the baby start bawling and will not quiet until the Leopard pick him up again with his teeth. I throw my spear, I miss, he is on me and even as I blink I see a man about to punch me. He says, You are just a boy. You will carry the baby. So I carried him. He found me the skin of a dead lion and I took it back to the chief.”

“The beast just says carry this mingi child and you carry him?” I asked.

“What was mingi? I didn’t know until we came to she,” Kava said.

“That is not … Who is she?”

“She is who we come to meet.”

“And since then you sneak off near the end of every moon and bring mingi children to this she? Your answer leaves more questions.”

“Then ask what you want to know.”

I was quiet.

We waited until the Leopard came back, in the shape of a man with the frown gone from his face. Now he walked behind us, sometimes so far back that I thought he went off on his own, sometimes so close I could feel him sniff me. On him I smelled the leaves he ran through and the fresh wet of dew, the dead scent of the girl and the fresh musk of the grave dirt under his fingernails. The sun was almost ready to go.

Kava is like most men; he carries two smells. One when the sweat runs down his back and dries, the sweat of hard work. And one that hides under the arms, between the legs, between the buttocks, what you smell when close enough to touch with lips. The black Leopard had only the second smell. Never had I seen it before, a man whose hair was black cotton. On his back and legs when he passed me to take the baby from Kava. His chest, two little mountains, his buttocks big, legs thick. He looked as if he would crush the child in his arms, but licked dust off the baby’s forehead. Only birds spoke. There we were, a man white like the moon, a Leopard who stood as a man, a man and a woman tall as a shrub, and a baby bigger than them both. Darkness was spreading herself. The little woman hopped from Kava to the Leopard, and sat on his arm, laughing with the baby.

A voice inside me said they were some sort of blood kin and I was the stranger. Kava told no one who I was.

We came up to a small, wild stream. Large rocks and stones marked the banks, green moss covering them like a rug. The stream cackled and sprayed mist up into the branches, ferns and bamboo stalks hanging over. The Leopard placed the baby on a rock, crouched right by the banks, and lapped the water. Kava filled his waterskins. The little man played with the baby. I was surprised he was awake. I stood by the Leopard but he still took no notice. Kava stood farther down, looking for fish.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I told you.”

“This is not the mountain. We went around, then down several paces ago.”

“We will get there in two more days.”

“Where?”

He crouched down, cupped some water, and drank it.

“I want to go back,” I said.

“There is no going back,” he said.

“I want to go back.”

“Then go.”

“Who is the Leopard to you?”

Kava looked at me and laughed. A laugh that said, I am not even a man yet, but you give me man problems. Maybe the woman in me was rising. Maybe I should have grabbed my own cock skin and smashed it off with a rock. This is what I should have said. I did not like the man-Leopard. I did not know him to dislike him, but disliked him anyway. He smelled like the crack of an old man’s ass. This is what I would have said. Do you talk without speaking? Do you know each other as brothers? Do you sleep with your hand between his legs? Shall I stay awake till the moon is fat and even the night beasts sleep to see if he comes to you—or will you go to the Leopard and lie on top of him, or him on top of you, or maybe he is like one of those my father liked in the city, who put men in their mouths?

The baby, sitting up, laughed at the little man and woman making faces and jumping up and down like monkeys.

“Name him.”

I turned around. The Leopard.

“He needs a name,” he said.

“I don’t even know yours.”

“I don’t need one. What did your father name you?”

“I don’t know my father.”

“Even I know my father. He fought a crocodile, and a snake and a hyena only to drive himself mad with man envy. But he chased after the antelope faster than a cheetah. Have you done that? Bit deep with your sharpest teeth so that the warm blood bursts into your mouth and the flesh is still throbbing with life?”