Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Some of the river tribes and even some places in great cities like Kongor kill newborns who are unworthy. Children born weak, or limbless, or with top teeth before bottom, or with gifts or forms strange. Five of those children strange in form we saved, but they return to me in dreams—”

“We?”

“Does not matter now. These five return to me in dreams and I have tried to see them, but they live with a tribe that is my tribe’s enemy.”

“How?”

“I gave them to my tribe’s enemy.”

“Nothing you ever say ends the way I think you would end it, Tracker.”

“After my tribe tried to kill me for saving mingi children.”

“Oh. You and these people, none of your rivers run straight. Take us finding this boy. There is no straight line between us and this boy, only streams leading to streams, leading to streams, and sometimes—and tell me if I lie—you get so lost in the stream that the boy fades, and with him the reason you search for him. Fades like that boy who just vanished in the ship.”

“You saw him?”

“Truth does not depend on me believing it, does it?”

“This is truth, there are times I forget who we are after. I don’t even think of the coin.”

“What compels you, then? Not reunite mother with child? You said that only a few days ago.”

He crawled over to me and shafts of light marked stripes on his skin. He rested his head in my lap.

“This is what you ask?”

“Yes, this is what I ask.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

I looked at him.

“The further I go—”

“Yes?”

“The more I feel that I have nothing to go back to,” I said.

“This comes to you after how many moons?”

“Prefect, news such as this comes only one way: too late.”

“Tell me about your eye.”

“It is from a wolf.”

“Those jackals you call wolves? Maybe you lost a bet with a jackal. This is not jest, is it? Which question do you desire first: how or why?”

“A shape-shifting hyena bitch in her woman form sucked the eye out of my skull, then bit it off.”

“I should have asked why first. And after last night,” he said.

“What of last night?”

“You … nothing.”

“Last night was not a deposit on something else,” I said.

“No, that it was not.”

“Can we talk of something else?”

“We talk of nothing now. Except your eye.”

“A gang ripped my eye out.”

“A gang of hyenas, you said.”

“Truth does not depend on you believing it, prefect. I wandered that wilderness between the sand sea and Juba for several moons, I can’t remember how many, but I do remember wanting to die. But not before I killed the man responsible.”

Here is a short tale about the wolf eye. After this man betrayed me to the pack of hyenas, I couldn’t find him. After that I went roaming, and roaming, full and brimming with hate but with nowhere to let all this malcontent out. I went back to the sand sea, to the lands of beetles big as birds, and scorpions who stung the life out, and sat in a sand hole while vultures landed and circled. And then the Sangoma came to me, her red dress blowing though no wind blew, and her head circled by bees. I heard the buzz before I saw her, and when I saw her I said, This must be a fever dream, sun madness, for she was long dead.

“I expect the boy with the nose to not have the nose but did not think the boy with the mouth would no longer have a mouth,” she said. It came trotting beside her.

“You brought a jackal?” I asked.

“Do not insult the wolf.”

She grabbed my face, firm but not hard, and said words I did not understand. She grabbed some sand in her hand, spat in it, and kneaded it until the sand stuck together. Then she ripped off my patch and I jumped. Then she said, Close your good eye. She put the sand on my eye hole and the wolf came in closer. The wolf growled, and she whimpered, and she whimpered some more. I heard something like a stab and more growls from the wolf. Then nothing. Sangoma said, Count to ten and one before you open them. I started counting and she interrupted me.

“She will come back for it, when you are near gone. Look out for her,” she said.

So she lent me a wolf’s eye. I thought I would see far and long and make people out in the dark. And I can. But lose colour when I close my other eye. This wolf will one day come back and claim it. I couldn’t even laugh.

“I could,” Mossi said.

“A thousand fucks for you.”

“A few more before we dock will be fine enough. You might even turn into something of a lover.”

Even if he was joking, he annoyed me. Especially if he was joking, he annoyed me.

“Tell me more about witches. Why you hate them so,” he said.

“Who said I hate witches?”

“Your own mouth.”

“I fell sick in the Purple City many years ago. Sick near death—a curse some husband paid a fetish priest to put on me. A witch found me and promised me a healing spell if I did something for her.”

“But you hate witches.”