Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“I have no heart for killing,” he said.

He brought his feet up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. I clapped. I had sat down on the floor while he spoke, but rose and clapped.

“Instead you have others do the killing for you. You forget what led me to you. Save the heart pull for the next sad girl whose own heart you rip out, Ipundulu. You are still a murderer and a coward. And a liar.”

The sour look came back to his handsome face.

“Hmm. Had you come to kill me, that torch you would have thrown already. What is your desire?”

“Was there one with him, with bat wings?”

“Bat wings?”

“Like a bat. His feet the same as his hands, with iron claws. Huge.”

“No, there was no one such. I am telling the truth.”

“I know. If he was among them he would never have let you live.”

“What do you want, old friend? We are old friends, no?”

“The creature with bat wings, people call him Sasabonsam. That boy you speak of, we reunited him with his mother five years ago. Sasabonsam and the child are together again.”

“He stole the boy.”

“That is what his mother says.”

“You do not.”

“No, and you just said why.”

“Indeed. The boy was strange. I thought he would have even tried to run to those who came to save him.”

“Instead he warned those who took him. He is like no boy of this age.”

“That was pompous, Tracker. Not like you.”

“How would you know what I am like if you have forgotten, as you say?”

I went up to his shamble throne and sat down close, facing him.

“Where you could not save him, we did. And even with all of us, we could only hurt Sasabonsam, not stop him. There was something wrong with that boy. His smell would be strong, and then it would fade as if he was running hundreds of days away, and then he would be right in front of me.

“Here is a story. We tracked them to Dolingo. When I found them, I caught the Ipundulu pushing the boy from his chest. The little boy, he was sucking his nipple. Would you believe what I thought? I thought of a boy child and his mother, some boy child who never stopped longing for the mother’s milk. Except this mother had no koo. And then I thought, what kind of wickedness was this, how foul was this that he had been raping the boy so long that he thought this was the natural way of things. And then I saw it for what it was. No rape. Vampire blood. His opium.”

“There are women and boys who come to me as if I am their opium. Some have run from so far, for so long, they have no feet. But none has found me in the Malangika. He will want it more than the embrace of his own mother.”

“Sasabonsam went for him in the Mweru.”

“No man leaves the Mweru. Why would anyone even enter?”

“He is not a man. It does not matter. I think the boy went of his own will.”

“Maybe he was offering something more than toys or breasts.” Nyka laughed. “Tracker, I remember you. You still lie by only saying half the truth. So a stupid boy that you found was stolen again by a demon with wings like a bat. Nobody tasked you to find him. No one is paying you. And the sun is the sun and the moon is the moon whether you find him or not.”

“You just said you did not know me.”

“He is nothing to you, and neither is the bat man.”

“He took something from me.”

“Who? And will you take something from him?”

“No. I will kill him. And all like him. And all who help him. And all who have helped him. And all who stand in the way between me and him. Even this boy.”

“Still smells like a game. You want me to help you find him.”

“No I want to help him find you.”

So I went back for the child and the three of us left the Malangika. We went above, following a tunnel at the end of the road of blind jackals. Aboveground was no more at war than before I went under. The Ipundulu took nothing, just wrapped his wings tight around his body so that he looked like a strange lord, a lower god wearing a thick agbada. By then the sun had dropped and flamed the sky orange, but everything else was dark.

“Would you like me to take the child who you carry with you?” he asked.

“Touch him and I will throw this torch in your face.”

“Helpful is all I am trying to be.”

“Your eyes will pop out of your skull from the effort.”

The tunnel led out to a small town, where I left the child with a goat skin full of milk at the door of a known midwife. Just outside the town, north of the Blood Swamp, were wildlands. I started walking, but Nyka stood still.

“Once out of the Malangika, the boy will sense you and come running,” I said.

“So will every lightning woman and blood slave,” he said.

He wished he was the man who loved such devotion, but they were not devoted to him. “They are devoted to the taste of my blood,” he said.

“To tell truth, I thought more of you would be waiting above. The giant, I expected. The Moon Witch, perhaps. Most certainly the Leopard. Where is he?”

“I am no keeper of the Leopard,” I said.

“But where is he? You have great love for that cat. Wouldn’t you know where he is?”

“No.”

“You two do not speak?”

“My mother or my grandmother, which are you?”

“No question was ever simpler.”