Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“He said much, this Nyka. What did he say of my eye? That I plucked it from a dead dog, and shoved it in my face? Poor Nyka, he could have been a griot, but would cheat history.”

“You hate him so.”

“Hate? This is what I did when I could not find him. I hunted down his sister and his mother. I would kill them both. Found both of them. Do you hear me, Nyka, I found them. Even had words with the mother. I should have killed them, but I did not, do you know why? Not because the mother told me all the ways she failed him.”

“I will have him back,” Nsaka Ne Vampi said.

“Ipundulu’s witch is dead. There is no back.”

“What if we kill him, the Ipundulu? You said he was injured and weak. If we kill him, Nyka will come back to me.”

“Nobody has ever killed an Ipundulu, so how in a thousand fucks would any soul know?”

“What if we killed him?”

“What if I don’t care? What if I lose no sleep over your man dead? What if I feel deep sorrow, such deep sorrow for not killing him myself? What if I didn’t give a thousand fucks for your ‘we’?”

“Tracker.”

“No, Leopard.”

“This is a tickle for you. This gives you joy.”

“What gives me joy?”

“Seeing him so low.”

“You would think so, would you not? I despise him and even a deaf god hears I have no love for you. But no, this does not tickle me. As I said, it disgusts me. He is not even worth my ax.”

“I will have him back.”

“Then get him back, so I can kill an actual man, instead of what you have in there.”

“Tracker, she comes with us. She will go for the lightning bird, while we get the child,” the Leopard said.

“You know who he is, Leopard. The other one who travels with the boy. We killed his brother. You and I. Remember the flesh eater in the bush, the forest of enchantment when we stayed with the Sangoma, do you yet remember? The one who strung me in that tree with all those bodies? We were but boys then.”

“Bosam.”

“Asanbosam.”

“I remember. The stench of that thing. Of that place. We never found his brother.”

“We never looked.”

“I’ll bet he dies from the arrow, just like his brother.”

“Four of us and we couldn’t kill him.”

“Maybe you four—”

“Don’t assume what you don’t know, cat.”

“Listen to both of you. Talking like I vanished from the room,” Nsaka Ne Vampi said. “I will join you to get the boy and I will kill this Ipundulu. And I will have my Nyka back. Whatever he is to you, he is not to me and that is all I have to say.”

“How many times has he broken your heart? Four? Six?”

“I am sorry for all he is to you. But he is none of those things to me.”

“So you’ve said. But those things he is to you, he was to me once as well.”

She looked at me as I looked at her. Us understanding each other.

“If you still want him after all this, if you want us, we will be waiting,” she said.

Then we heard the thump of Nyka running into the wall again and Nsaka Ne Vampi sighed.

“Wait outside for me,” I said to the Leopard. She shut her eyes and sighed when he bumped into the wall again. I wondered how would she fight with Nyka making her tired.

“He also made me love him once, this is what he does,” I said. “Nobody works harder at getting you to love him, and nobody works harder to fail you once you do.”

“I am my own woman and feel for myself,” she said.

“Nobody needs Nyka. Not what he is.”

“He is this because of me.”

“Then his debt is paid.”

“You said he betrayed you. He was the first man to not betray me.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s still alive, unlike all the other men who betrayed me. One used to farm me out as his slave every night for men to do as they wished. I was ten and four. When he and his sons weren’t raping me himself. They sold me to Nyka one night. He put a knife in my hand and put the hand to his throat, and said do as you wish this night. I thought he was speaking a foreign tongue. So I went to the master’s room and slit his throat, then I went to his sons’ room and killed them all. What a terrible thing to lose a father and all your stepbrothers, the town people said. He let the town think he murdered them and fled in the night.”

“Sogolon had a story like yours.”

“What do you think makes the sisters of Mantha, sisters?”

“You were—”

“Yes.”

“You’re not showing him love. You’re repaying a debt.”

“I find girls who are about to become me, and save them from the men doing the coming. Then I take them to Mantha. They are who I owe. Nyka I always said I owed him nothing.”

Why did you not kill her?” Leopard asked outside.

“Who?”

“Nyka’s mother. Why didn’t you?”

“Instead of killing her, I would tell her of his death. Slowly. In every detail, right down to how it sounds to hack off his neck in three chops.”

“Leave, both of you,” she said.

Walking back to the lord’s house, Leopard said, “Your eyes still don’t know when your lips lie.”

“What?”

“Just now. All that show about Nyka’s mother. That’s not why you didn’t kill her.”

“Really, Leopard, tell me.”

“She was a mother.”

“And!”

“You still wish for the like.”

“I had the like.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Now you speak for me?”

“You are the one who just said ‘had.’”

“Why did you take me there?”