Black Leopard, Red Wolf

She opened the door and blue light flashed upon the wall and my face. Lightning first, crackling through his fingers up to his brain, and down to his legs, toes, and the tip of his penis. All around him the bones of dogs and rats, gourds of food untouched and rotting, blood, and shit. And on him skin flaking off still, which had become his mark.

Nyka.

Rags lay in a pile to one corner. He saw Nsaka Ne Vampi and spat. Nyka leapt to his feet and dashed at her, the chain at his feet clanging until he ran as far as it would go. It stopped him, just a finger’s reach away from her.

“I can smell your bitch koo from here,” he said.

“Eat your food. The rats know you going to eat them and won’t come out anymore.”

“You know what I going to eat? I going to chew around my own ankle, rip off the skin, rip out the flesh, rip out the bone, until this shackle falls off, and then I going come for you, and cut you deep in your chest, so that he will smell you and come for me, and I will say, Master, look what I prepared for you. And here is what he will do. He will drink from you, and I will watch. Then I will drink from him.”

“You have claws like him? Teeth? All you have is dirty fingernails to shame your mother,” she said.

“Fingernails going to claw into your pox face and dig out your witch eyes. And then I … I … please, please unshackle me. It cuts and it itches, please, by all that is of the gods, please. Please, sweetness. I am nothing, I have nothing … I yes, yes, yes yes yes yes yesyesyes!”

He turned to the wall behind him and ran straight into the corner. I heard his head hit the wall. He fell back on the ground. Nsaka Ne Vampi looked away. Was she crying, I wanted to know. Lightning coursed through him again and he trembled, in a fit. We watched until it passed, and he stopped banging his head on the floor. He stopped panting and breathed slow. Only then, still lying on the floor, did he look at the Leopard and me.

“I know you. I have kissed your face,” he said.

I said nothing. I wondered why Leopard brought me here. If this came from his head or hers. That to see him there, hate left me. That is not full truth. Hate there was, but the hate before was of him and for him, like love. This hate was at a pathetic, wretched thing that I still wanted to kill, the way you come across a near-dead animal eating shit, or a raper of women beaten near to death. He was still looking at me, looking for something in my face. I stepped to him, and Nsaka Ne Vampi drew a knife. I stopped.

“Do you not hear? Do you not hear him calling? His sweet voice, so much pain he is in. So much pain. Agony. Oh he suffers so,” Nyka said.

Nsaka Ne Vampi looked at the Leopard and said, “He has been saying that for nights.”

“The vampire is wounded,” I said.

“Tracker?” Leopard said.

“I threw flame on him and he caught fire. Burst into flames, Nyka.”

“You tried to kill him, yes you did, but my lord, he will not die. No one shall kill him, you shall see, and he will kill you, all of you, even you, woman, you shall all see it. He will—”

Lightning crackled through him again.

“Khat is the only thing that calms him,” she said.

“You should kill him,” I said, and walked out.

“I remember your lips!” he shouted as I walked out.

I almost got to the door when a hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. Nsaka Ne Vampi, with the Leopard coming up behind her.

“Nobody is killing him,” she said.

“He is already dead.”

“No. No. What you are doing is lying. You lie because there is great hate between you.”

“There is no hatred between us. There is only the hatred I had for him. But now I don’t even have hate, I have sadness.”

“He can’t put pity to use.”

“Not for him, I have disgust for him. I have pity for me. Now that he is dead I cannot kill him.”

“He is not dead!”

“He is dead in every way that dead is dead. The lightning in him is all that stops him from stinking.”

“You think you can tell me how he is.”

“Of course. There was a woman. The one you all followed in your glorious chariot? Give us tidings, woman. Did she lead you all into a trap? Here is a weird thing. From what I hear Ipundulu turns mostly children and women, so why did he change Nyka instead of killing him?”

“He has turned soldiers and sentries,” she said.

“And Nyka is neither.”

Nsaka Ne Vampi sat down by the door. It irritated me that she thought I would stay and hear her story.

“Yes, how easy it looked. How we rode, how proud we were when we left behind you and the fools with you. Such fools, especially that old woman. Going to Kongor, why? Why when his lightning slave runs north? I was glad when we left, glad to get him away from you.”

“Is that what he is? A lightning slave? Why did you take me here, Leopard?”

Leopard looked at me, blank, saying nothing.

“Here is truth,” I said. “Years I have thought about this. Years. His ruin. I hated him so much that I would kill the man who ruined him before me. Now I have nothing.”

“He said you led him to a pack of hyenas, but he escaped.”