Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Quiet. She was not a witch, she said, just a woman who had a child without a man, and this city can be wicked in its judgment of such things. They took her child, she said, and gave it to a rich but barren woman. Will you make me well, I asked, and she said, I will give you freedom from want, which did not sound like the same thing. But I followed my nose and found her child, took her away from that woman in the night, disturbing no one. Then I don’t know what happened, except I woke up the next morning, well, with a pool of black vomit on the floor.”

“Then why—”

“Quiet. It really was her child. But she had a smell about her. Tracked her down two days later in Fasisi. She was expecting someone else. Somebody to buy the two baby hands and one liver she left out on the table. Witches cannot work spells against me, though she tried. I chopped her in the forehead before she could chant, then hacked her head off.”

“And you have hated witches ever since.”

“Oh I’ve hated them from long before that. I hate myself for trusting one, is more the like. People always go back to their nature in the end. It’s like that gum from the tree, that no matter how far you pull it, snaps itself back.”

“Maybe you bear hatred for women.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I’ve never heard you speak good of a single one. They all seem to be witches in your world.”

“You don’t know my world.”

“I know enough. Perhaps you hate none, not even your mother. But tell me I lie when I say you always expected the worst of Sogolon. And every other woman you have met.”

“When have you seen me say any of this? Why do you say this to me now?”

“I don’t know. You can’t go inside me and not expect me to go inside you. Will you think on it?”

“I have nothing to think—”

“Fuck the gods, Tracker.”

“Fine, I shall think on why Mossi thinks I hate women. Anything more before I go on deck?”

“I have one thing more.”

We docked a day and a half later at noon. His forehead wound looked sealed, and none of us were sore, though we were all covered in scabs, even the buffalo. Most of that day I passed in the slave cabin, me fucking Mossi, Mossi fucking me, me loving Mossi, Mossi loving me, and me going above deck to check faces to see if anyone would start words with me. They either didn’t know or care—sailors are sailors everywhere—not even when Mossi stopped grabbing my hand to cover his shouts. The rest of the time Mossi gave me too many things to think about and it all came back to my mother, who I never, ever wanted to think about. Or the Leopard, who I had not thought of in moons, or what Mossi said that inside me is a hate for all women. It was a harsh thought and a lie, as I could not help that I have run into witches.

“Maybe you draw the worst to you.”

“Are you the worst?” I asked, annoyed.

“I hope not. But I think of your mother, or rather the mother you told me about who might not even be real, or if she is real, not as you say. You sound like fathers where I am from who blame the daughter for rape, saying, Had you not legs to run away? Had you not lips to scream? You think as they do that suffering from cruelty or escaping it is a matter of choice or means, when it is a matter of power.”

“You say I should understand power?”

“I say you should understand your mother.”

The night before we docked he said, Tracker, you are at all times a vigorous lover, but I do not think that was praise, and he kept asking me about long gone things, dead things, afterward. So much so that yes, I was getting a little tired of the prefect and his questions. In the morning the crew repaired a hole the Ogo punched through the bulkhead, without asking any questions. He said it was a nightmare.

Kongori deserted their streets at noon, a perfect time to slip into the city and vanish down an alley. Take away the streets where the Tarobe, or the Nyembe, or the Gallunkobe/Matyube lived, and people made house anywhere they could buy, cheat, inherit, or claim, which meant that if most of the people stayed indoors then the entire city would look as if it hid behind walls. Not even the sentries, usually on guard around the city limits, stood by the shore. Mossi and I took two of the ship crewmen’s clothes in exchange for cowrie shells, and one, stunned, said, I have killed men for less. We wore the sea-worn robes of sailors, robes with hoods, and trousers like men from the East.

More than seven nights had gone since we saw the city last. Maybe more but I could not remember. No loud music and nothing left of Bingingun masquerade but bits of straw, cloths, sticks, and staffs in red and green, all scattered on the street, with no master to claim them.