Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Morning peeked as if about to change her mind. The fourth day since Kava and I set out. The little woman said whoever was following slept by day and hunted at night. So we walked. Past a forest of killed trees the air went wet again, thick as it went down the nose into the chest. The trees had leaves again and the leaves were getting darker, bigger. We came upon a field of trees larger than anything I had ever seen in the world. I would have run out of men to count. They weren’t even trees, but the crooked fingers of buried giants sticking out of the ground and covered in grass, branches, and green moss. Giant stalks bursting out of the ground and reaching into the sky, giant stalks curling into the ground like an open fist. I walked past one and beside it I was a mouse. The ground was mounds and little hills; nowhere was level. Everywhere looked as if another giant finger was going to push through the ground, followed by a hand and an arm and a green man taller than five hundred houses. Green and green-brown and dark green, and a green that was blue, and a green that was yellow. A forest of them.

“The trees have gone mad,” I said.

“We come close,” Kava said.

Mist split the light into blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and a colour I did not know was purple. One hundred or 101 paces down, the trees all bent in one direction, almost braiding together. Trunks growing north and south, east-west, shot up, reached down, twisting into and out of each other, then down on the ground again, like a wild cage to hold something in or keep something out. Kava jumped on one of the trunks, bent so low that it was almost flat with the ground. The branch was as wide as a path, and the dew on the moss made it slippery. We walked all the way on one trunk and jumped down to another bending below it, moving up again, and jumping from trunk to trunk, going up high, then down low, then around so many times that only on the third time did I notice we were upside down but did not fall.

“So these are enchanted woods,” I said.

“These are hot-tempered woods, if you don’t shut up,” he said.

We passed three owls standing on a branch, who nodded at the little woman. My legs burned when we finally broke into sky. The clouds were thin as cold breath and the sun, yellow and hungry. In front of us, it floated on the mist. Truth, it stood on branches but the walls were set against the trunk, and had the same flowers, and moss. A house set in the tree with colours of the mountain. I couldn’t tell if they built the tree around the branches or if the branches grew in to protect it. Truth, there were three houses, all wood and clay with thatch roofs. The first was small as a hut, no bigger than a man six heads tall. Children were running around it, and crawling into the little hole in the front. Steps curled around the house and led to the one above it. Not steps. Branches set straight, and forming steps as if the trees played their part.

“These are enchanted woods,” I said.

The branch steps led to a second house, larger with a huge opening instead of a door, and a thatch roof. Steps came out of the roof and led to a smaller house with no openings, no doors. In and out of the second house came children, laughing, yelling, crying, screaming, oohing and aahing. Naked and dirty, covered in clay, or wrapped in robes too big for them. At the opening of the second house the Leopard looked out. A naked little boy grabbed his tail and he swung around and snarled, then licked the boy’s head. More children ran out to greet Kava. They attacked him all at once, grabbing a leg or an arm, one even climbed up his slippery back. He laughed and stooped to the floor so they could run all over him. A baby crawled over his face, smearing the white clay. I think that was the first time I saw his face.

“A place like this was where the North King kept wives who couldn’t breed boys. Every child here is mingi,” he said.