Black Leopard, Red Wolf

The small monkey jumped down before I could pull my second ax. He leapt onto my chest. I pushed him away from my face as he tried to bite my nose off. Both of them EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’d. The man ran into the other room. The small one whipped his tail around, trying to slash me, but I grabbed his neck with one hand and held the ax for him to slash his tail right into the blade. He shrieked and fell back, bawling. I pulled my second ax and hammered both at his body, but the larger monkey yanked him away with his tail. The bigger monkey threw a jar at me, I ducked and it smashed into the wall. He slapped the smaller monkey to shut him up. I ran over to a shelf as glass jars kept shattering around me. Then silence.

Near my foot, a wet hand lay. I grabbed it and threw it to my right. Jar after jar smashed against the wall. I grabbed my axes, jumped up, threw the first one. The large monkey dodged the first but ran into the second, which chopped his forehead. He fell against a shelf, pulling it down with him. The smaller one picked up his tail and ran off through a dark crevice between two shelves. I pulled away books and scrolls until I saw the stem of my ax. I hammered into the mad monkey’s head with both axes until his flesh hit my face.

In the room but behind me it was, the door where from the rotting heart of an antelope hung a cracked Ifa bowl.

Inside the room, the man sat with a woman, and child sat at the table. Both woman and boy styled their hair stranger than in any land I have been to, branches sticking out of their heads as with the deer, and dried dung holding hair and branches together. The woman looked at me with glowing eyes, and the child, a boy, perhaps, smiled as a flower popped open from one of the branches. The man looked up.

“You wearing nothing but white. Who do you mourn?” he said.

He saw me looking at the wife.

“She good with the fucky-fucky, but gods alive, she can’t cook. Can’t cook a shit. Me no know if me can offer none of this to you. Cook it too long, I tell you. You hear me, woman, you can’t cook it too long. Blink three time and peppered afterbirth is ready. You want a piece, my friend? It just come out of a woman from the Buju-Buju. She don’t care that she make the ancestors mad for not burying it.”

“Did the afterbirth come with a baby?” I asked.

He frowned, then smiled. “Strangers, they be coming to the doctor with jokes and jokes. No so, wife?”

The wife looked at him, then at me, but said nothing. The boy cut a piece of the afterbirth with his knife and shoved it in his mouth.

“So, you are here,” he said. “Who you is?”

“You sent two of yours to welcome me.”

“They welcome everybody. And since you is standing there, they—”

“Gone.”

I put away my axes and pulled the knives. They continued eating, trying to pretend I was gone, but kept looking in my direction, the woman especially.

“You the baby seller?”

“I transact many a thing, always with a honest man heart.”

“An honest man’s heart must be why you are in the Malangika.”

“What you want?”

“When did your skin return to you?”

“You still talking nothing but foolishness.”

“I seek someone who does business in the Malangika.”

“Everybody do business in the Malangika.”

“But what he buys, you’re of a few who sell it.”

“So go check the few.”

“I have. Four before you, one after you. Four so far dead.”

The man paused, but just for a blink. The woman and child kept on eating. His face was to his wife but his eyes followed me.

“Not before my wife and child,” he said.

“Wife and child? This wife and this child?”

“Yes, don’t do—”

I threw both knives; one struck the woman in the neck, the other struck the boy in the temple. Both shook and jerked, shook and jerked, then their heads crashed on the table. The old man screamed. He jumped up, ran to the boy, and grabbed his head. The flower on his head wilted, and something black and thick oozed slow from his mouth. The old man wailed and screamed, and bawled.

“I seek someone who does business in the Malangika.”

“Oh gods, look!”

“You kill children now

,” a voice I knew said.

“What he buys, you have been known to sell,” I said to the old man. “Sakut vuwong fa’at ba,” I said to the thought.

“Oh gods, my sorrow. My sorrow,” he cried.

“Merchant, if any god were to look, what would he say about you and your obscene family?”

“There were voices, you heard them say that we were an obscene family,” the voice I knew said.

“They were my one. They were my one.”

“They were white science. Both of them. Grow another one. Or two. You might even get a pair who can talk next time. Like a grass parrot.”

“I call black heart men. I tell them hunt you and kill you!”

“Mun be kini wuyi a lo bwa, old man. I brought weeping to the house of death. Do you know what I wish for?”

I came nearer. The woman’s face was rougher up close, as was the boy’s. Not smooth, but run through with lines and ridges, like vines intertwined.