Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“All the Ku arrows are bone and quartz.”

“The Ku still kill children whose top teeth grow first.”

This is how the Leopard taught me to kill with bow and arrow. Hold the bow on the side of the eye you use less. Draw the bow from the side of the eye you use more. Spread your feet until they are shoulder wide. Use three fingers to hold the arrow on the string. Raise and draw the bow, pull the string to your chin, all in the quick. Aim for the target and release the arrow. The first arrow went up into the sky and almost struck an owl. The second struck a branch above the hole. The third, I don’t know what it struck but something squealed. The fourth struck the trunk near the ground.

“She is getting annoyed with you,” he said. And pointed to the tree. He wanted me to retrieve the arrows. I pulled the first out of the branch and the little hole closed up. I was too scared to pull out the second, but the Leopard growled and I yanked it quick. I turned to run but a branch hit me flat in the face. The branch wasn’t there before. Now the Leopard laughed.

“I can’t aim,” I said.

“You can’t see,” he said.

I couldn’t see without blinking, couldn’t draw without shaking, I couldn’t point without shifting to the wrong leg. I could release the arrow, but never when he said so and the arrows never hit anywhere I pointed. I thought of aiming for the sky just so it would strike the ground. Truth, I did not know the Leopard could laugh this much. But he would not leave until I shot an arrow through the hole in the tree, and every time I struck the tree, it slapped me with a branch that was either always there or never there. Night sky was heavy before I shot an arrow through the target. He grabbed arrows and started walking, his way of saying we were done. We went down a path that I did not recognize, with rock and sand and stone covered in wet moss.

“This used to be a river,” he said.

“What happened to it?”

“It hates the smell of man and flows under the earth whenever we approach.”

“Truly?”

“No. It’s the end of rainy season.”

I was about to say that he has been living with the Sangoma for too long, but didn’t. Instead I said, “Are you a Leopard that changes to man or a man that changes to Leopard?”

He walked off, stepping through the mud, climbing the rocks in what used to be a river. Branches and leaves blocked the stars.

“Sometimes I forget to change back.”

“To man.”

“To Leopard.”

“What happens when you forget?”

He turned around and looked at me, then pressed his lips and sighed.

“There’s no future in your form. Smaller. Slower, weaker.”

I didn’t know what to say other than “You look faster, stronger, and wiser to me.”

“Compared to whom? You know what a real Leopard would have done? Eaten you by now. Eaten everyone.”

He didn’t frighten me, nor did he intend to. Everything he stirred was below my waist.

“The witch tells better jokes,” I said.

“She told you she was a witch?”

“No.”

“Do you know the ways of witches?”

“No.”

“So you either speak through your ass or fart through your mouth. Be safe, boy. You would have made a terrible meal. My father changed and forgot how to change back. Spending the rest of his life in the misery of this shape.”

“Where is he now?”

“They locked him in a cell for madmen, when a hunter came upon him as a man fucking a cheetah. He escaped, boarded a ship, and sailed east. Or so I heard.”

“You heard?”

“Leopards are too cunning, boy. We can only live alone; leave it up to us we’d steal each other’s kill. I have not seen my mother since I could kill an antelope myself.”

“And you don’t kill the children. That is a surprise.”

“That would make me one of you. I know where my mother keeps. I have seen my brothers, but where they run is their business and where I run is mine.”

“I had no brothers. Then I came to the village to hear I had one but the Gangatom killed him.”

“And your father became your grandfather, Asani told me. And your mother?”

“My mother cooked sorghum and kept her legs open.”

“You could have a family of one and still drive them apart.”

“I don’t hate her. I have nothing for her. When she dies I will not mourn, but I will not laugh.”

“My mother suckled me for three moons and then fed me meat. That was enough. Then again I’m a beast.”

“My grandfather was a coward.”

“Your grandfather is the reason you’re alive.”

“Better to give me something to be proud of instead.”

“For you have no pride already. What would the gods say?”

He came up to me, close enough for me to feel his breath on my face.

“Your face has gone sour,” he said.

He stared deep into me as if trying to find the lost face.

“You left because your grandfather is a coward.”

“I left for other reasons,” I said.

He turned away and spread his arms wide as he walked, as if talking to the trees, not me.