Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“You could try. Do you remember many moons ago once in Kongor, when I chased you down that market street? Every mind on the street was mine but yours and the … him … your—”

“I remember.”

“Your mind was closed to me because of the Sangoma. You have felt it, haven’t you? Her enchantment is leaving you. You lost it when you left the Mweru.”

“I can still unlock doors.”

“There are doors and there are doors.”

“I have faced swords since then.”

“Because you are the goat looking for the butcher.”

“Why didn’t you possess Mossi?”

“Sport. But last night you needed to cool yourself before you lose use.”

Truth be told, I felt sore in every muscle, in every joint. I felt no pain the night before, when anger ran through my blood. But now, even kneeling made my legs hurt.

“But you are right, Tracker. We lose time. And I have only seven more days with you, before I have to save this King from himself.”

The Bakanga trail. Not a road or even a path, just a stretch trod by wagon and horse and feet so much that plants stopped growing. On both sides, a forest of whistling thorns giving off ghost music, swaying trunks with branches thinner than my arm. The trail turned to dirt, cracked mud, and rocks, but it reached the horizon and then went beyond it. On both sides, yellow grass with patches of green, and small trees round like the moon, and taller trees where the leaves spread wide and the tops were flat. I heard Nyka say the biggest and the fattest of gods squatted on them too long, which is why the tops sat so flat. I turned and looked behind me, saw him talking to the Aesi and realized that he had said nothing. I was remembering him from another time. This trail was at times full and noisy with animals, but none stirred. None of the giraffes from near the swamp, no zebra, no antelope, no lion hunting the zebra or antelope. No rumble of elephant. Not even the hiss warning of the viper.

“There are no beasts in this place,” I said.

“Something has scared them away,” the Aesi said.

“We agree he is a thing, then.”

We kept walking.

“I have seen him like this before,” Nyka said to the Aesi, speaking only to him but wanting me to hear. “Strangest of things that I remember.”

The Aesi said nothing, and Nyka always took silence as a sign to continue. He told him that Tracker cares about nothing and loves no one, but when he has been wronged deeply, his whole self, and the self beyond the self, seek only destruction. “I have seen him this way once. And not even seen but heard. His need for vengeance was like life fire.”

“Who was the man that made him seek revenge?” the Aesi asked.

I know Nyka. I know he stopped and turned to face him, eye-to-eye, when he said, Me. He sounded almost proud. But then even the most wretched things Nyka ever said or did were always followed by a voice that sounded like he would kiss you many times and softly.

“He will kill this Sasabonsam, is that how you call it? He will kill him on just malcontent alone. What did this beast do?”

I waited for the Aesi to answer, but he said nothing. Sunlight left us, but it was still day, at least near evening.

Clouds gathered in the sky, gray and thick, even though rain season was a moon away. Before deep dusk, we came upon a village, a tribe none of us knew. A fence on both sides of the trail made of tree branches thatched together that ran for three hundred paces. Ten and eight huts, then two more that I did not see at first glance. Most on the left of the trail, only five on the right, but no different. Huts built of mud and branches with one window to look out, some with two. Thick thatch roof held down by vine. Three were twice the size of the others, but most were the same. The tribe gathered their huts in clusters of five or six. Outside some of the huts lay scattered gourds, and fresh footsteps, and the thin smoke of fire put out in a rush.

“Where are the people?” Nyka said.

“Maybe they saw your wings,” the Aesi said.

“Or your hair,” Nyka said.

“Would you like a pause in the bush to fuck each other?” I asked. The Aesi made some remark about me forgetting my place in this meet, and that as the adviser of kings and lords, he could leave me and resume his real business, and not to forget, ungrateful wolf, that it was I that saved you from the Mweru, since no man who enters the Mweru ever leaves.

“They are here,” I said.

“Who?” Nyka said.

“The people. No man flees a village without his cow.”