Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“That’s nine days,” the Leopard said. “But Nigiki is South Kingdom, Tracker. Catch us they will, and kill us as spies before we even get to that door.”

“Not if we move with a hush.”

“Quiet? Us four?”

“Darklands to Kongor, Kongor to Dolingo. We can only go one way,” I said.

He nodded.

“Take care,” I said to everyone. “Slip in like thieves, slip out before anyone, even the night, knows.”

“To the river,” the Leopard said.

Fumeli kicked the horse and they galloped off. I turned back to look at the Mweru. In the dark, with the sky a rich blue, all I could see were shadows. Hills rising upward, too smooth and precise. Or towers, or things left behind by giants who practiced wicked arts before man.

“Sadogo,” I said to Mossi. “I loved that giant, even if he went mad when one called him so. If I had fallen asleep, had you let me, I would have been the one to throw that old man from the roof. Do you know how much it pained him to kill? He told me of all his killings one night. Every single one, for his memory was a curse. It took us right into the break of morning. Most of the killings were no fault of his—an executioner’s job is still but a job, no worse than the man who increases taxes by the year.”

They came, the tears. I could hear myself bawl and was shocked at it. What kind of dawn was this? Mossi stood by me, silent, waiting. He put his hands on my shoulder until I stopped.

“Poor Ogo. He was the only—”

“Only?”

I tried to smile. Mossi squeezed my neck with a soft hand, and I leaned into it. He wiped my cheek and brought my forehead to his. He kissed me on the lips, and I searched for his tongue with mine.

“All your cuts are open again,” I said.

“You’ll be saying I’m ugly next.”

“These children will not want me.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Fuck the gods, Mossi.”

“But they will never need you more,” he said, mounting the horse and pulling me up behind him. The horse broke into a trot, then a full gallop. I wanted to look back, but did not. I didn’t want to look ahead either, so I rested my head on Mossi’s back. Behind us, light shone ahead as if it came from the Mweru, but it was just the break of daylight.

TWENTY-TWO

And that is all and all is truth, great inquisitor. You wanted a tale, did you not? From the dawn of it to the dusk of it, and such is the tale I have given you. What you wanted was testimony, but what you really wanted was story, is it not true? Now you sound like men I have heard of, men coming from the West for they heard of slave flesh, men who ask, Is this true? When we find this, shall we seek no more? It is truth as you call it, truth in entire? What is truth when it always expands and shrinks? Truth is just another story. And now you will ask me again of Mitu. I don’t know who you hope to find there. Who are you, how dare you say what I had was not family? You, who try to make one with a ten-year-old.

Oh, you have nothing to say. You will push me no further.

Yes, it is as you say, I was in Mitu for four years and five moons. Four years from when we left the boy in the Mweru. I was there when this rumor of war turned into a real war. What happened there is something you can ask the gods. Ask them why your South has not been winning this war, but neither the North.

The child is dead. There is nothing else to know. Otherwise, ask the child.

Oh you have nothing left to ask? Is this where we part?

What is this? Who comes in this room?

No, I do not know this man. I have never seen his back or his face.

Don’t ask me if I recognize you. I do not know you.

And you, inquisitor, you give him a seat. Yes, I can see he is a griot. Do you think he brought the kora to sell it? Why would this be the time for praise song?

It is a griot with a song about me.

There are no songs about me.

Yes, I know what I said before, I was the one who said it. That was a boast—who am I that I would be in any song? Which griot makes a song before you pay them? Fine, let him sing; it is nothing to me. Nothing he sings I will know. So sing.

Thunder god mystic brother

blessed with tongue, and the gift of kora.

It is I, Ikede, son of Akede,

I was the griot that lived in the monkeybread tree.

I been walking many days and many nights, when across it I come,

the tree near a river

I climb up and hear the parrot, and the crow, and the baboon

I hear children

laughing, screaming, fighting, making gods hush

and there up top lie a man on a rug.

What kind of man is this?

not like any man in Weme Witu, Omororo, or even Mitu.

And he said,

are you looking for beauty?