Black Leopard, Red Wolf

He started to climb down the tree trunk, crouching like a spider, so low that his belly rubbed the bark. First I thought no ghommid was ever this big. Shoulders like a thin man with all muscle, but his upper arm was as long as a tree branch and his forearm stretched longer, so that his whole arm was longer than all of me. And legs as long as his arms. This is how he came down to me, stretching his right hand out straight and digging into the bark with his claws, lifting his right leg and bending it over his back, over his shoulder and head, and grabbing the trunk. Then his left hand and his left foot, his belly rubbing the trunk. He crawled down, right above my head, crawled backways, lifted himself up to the waist, and twisted his body around, almost a full twist, and reached for the last branch sticking out, first left hand, then right, and then left foot and right, still twisted at the waist so that right below his waist was his buttocks, not his crotch. He swung one arm over as if it would break and scratched his back. He crouched on the branch in front of me and his knees went past his head and his arms almost touched the ground. And between his legs, a hairy sheath like that of a dog, and from it came the juice he shot in my face. The juice hit the tree trunk across and turned to silk. He crawled over to that trunk and shot another silk line back to the branch. Then, crawling on both lines, he weaved a pattern with his hands and toes until he built something strong enough to sit on, which he did. Skin gray and covered in scars and marks like river folk, so light you could see the blood rivers along his limbs. Bald head with a sprout of hair on top, white eyes with no black, teeth yellow, and sharp, and poking out of his mouth.

“Take a story and give me, yes? Take a story and give me.”

“I know no monster of your sort.”

He belched and laughed like a hiss. He looked at me and wiped off his laugh.

“Take a story and—”

He swung both legs behind his shoulders and his sheath shot wet silk high up in the trees. He grabbed the web with his arms and pulled her down, the mother monkey. She honked and honked and he held her right above his face. Face-to-face, the mother monkey whimpering in fear. She was smaller than my arm. He split his mouth open and bit her head off. Then he chewed up the rest of her and sucked in the tail. He looked at me again as he licked his lips.

“Take a story and give me, yes? Take a story and give me.”

“I had heard that those like you, you are the ones who give stories. And lies. And tricks.”

“Those like me. Like me? Nobody like me. No no no no. I will have story. I have no more of my own. Take a story and give me to feed, yes? Or I going feed on something else.”

“You are the trickster and storyteller. Are you not one of Nan Si? And this is one of your tricks?”

He jumped over on me, his toes digging into the tree, his arms grabbing branches, his crotch right in front of my face. He bent his head so low that I thought he was about to lick himself, but stared right at me.

“This is what you wish, I can see it. Killing or dying, either death the same. You welcome either, you want both. I can give it to you. But who is Nan Si?”

“What are you?”

“Tell me you see my pale tone, hunter. I am like the one you came in with.”

“Did you kill him?”

“He leave you.”

“Not for the first time.”

“He don’t know that you gone. This forest has plenty enchantments.”

“So has every forest.”

“Know that I am not of the forest, I am not of the Nan Si. Not one, no, not one. I was a man of great breadth with knowledge of science and mathematics.”

“White science and black math. You were a white scientist. Now you are a was.”

He nodded, too hard and too long.

“What did you push?”

“What was already in the mind. Beyond the fetish priest, and beyond the prophet. Beyond the seer. Even beyond the gods! True wisdom is never without, it is within, was always within. Within always.”

“And now you are a beast, eating monkeys and their mothers, and making webs out of your cum.”

“There was fear in you. It is gone, gone, gone. I so hunger for a tale. None of these beasts speak. None have magic.”

“I seek a flying beast and his boy.”

“A flying beast? Will you kill him? Will you do it slow? What shall you do with them?”

“He came past you.”

“No beast come past here.”

“This is a forest, and Sasabonsam rests in forest.”

“This is a forest of life, and he is among the dead things of the world.”

“So you know him.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

He grabbed something above my head and put it in his mouth.

“I will meet them. In the field or the swamp. Or the sand sea. Or here.”

I tried to pull my hands but the silk squeezed tighter. I yelled at the white scientist. I jerked forward, trying to pop my cocoon off the tree, but it would not budge. He smiled, watching my struggle. He even grinned when I jerked. I cursed him again.