Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Off behind a fallen tree three of them were fighting over a piece of flesh, scowling, ripping, biting each other to get a grip, and swallowing chunks whole. I shut it out, any thought of what they could be eating. Four more had chased a little boy right up a tree, snarling and laughing, mocking before the kill. Smoke Girl appeared right in front of the boy and frightened the pack. They backed away but not far enough for the boy to run. I climbed a tree fifty paces away, and jumped from branch to branch, tree to tree as I saw the Leopard do. From one branch high I jumped to one low, then swung back up to a branch on high. I scrambled down one branch and leapt onto another, slid down the trunk that split in two like a slingshot, through leaves slapping me in the face, jumped and grabbed another branch that bent from my weight and then threw me up.

The hyenas were cackling, setting up order, deciding who should kill him. And that tree was tall with thin branches, not in talk with the trees around it. I jumped from a branch on top, grabbed another, swung from it, and landed in the tree, breaking all the branches around me, scraping my legs and left cheek and swallowing leaves. The four hyenas moved in closer and Smoke Girl tried to hold the boy. Large hyenas, the biggest in the pack. Female. I threw a dagger and missed a paw. One jumped back, right into my second throw, which struck her head. One ran off, two stayed and snarled and cackled.

A hatchet in each hand, a knife in my mouth, I jumped from on high, down right in front of one of the remaining two, and double-chopped her face quick, yanking, chopping, yanking, chopping until blood and flesh splashed my face and blinded me. She knocked me over and bit into my left hand, tearing at it, crushing it, making me gnash teeth and frightening the boy. The second tried to bite my feet. I stabbed the first hyena in the neck. Pulled out and stabbed again. Stabbed again. Stabbed again. It fell. The hyena snapping at my feet moved in to bite. I swung my good hand and the knife sliced across her face, bursting one eye open. She squealed and ran off. Two other hyenas bit into the little flesh left by the others and took off.

My left hand, bloody and stringing with hanging flesh, went lifeless. The boy was so scared that he backed away from me. Smoke Girl ran to me and beckoned him to come over. Just as he ran, a hyena leapt at him. She landed right on top of the boy, dead with two arrows right through her neck. The boy screamed as I pulled him out. The Leopard shot two more and the rest of them ran away.

The little boy the Leopard pulled out of the hut never woke up. We buried six, then stopped because there were so many and each death was killing us. The four others we found, we wrapped in whatever cloth or skin we could find and set on the water for the river to take them to the underworld. They looked like they were flying to the call of the goddess. After we found berries and cooked meat for the children, and they fell asleep long enough to stop crying and screaming in their sleep, the Leopard led me into the woods.

“Cast blame,” he said.

“Why? You know who did this.”

“Can you smell him?”

“I can smell all of them.”

“There will be more.”

“I know.”

Smoke Girl would not let me go. She followed me to the edge of the clearing, past what was once protected by enchantments, until I shouted at her to go back. The Leopard had those left alive—the boy we saved from hyenas, the albino boy, Ball Boy, the twins, Giraffe Boy, and her. There were too many bodies to bury and most were burned. The roof of the top hut caved when I turned to leave, and the albino boy started crying. The Leopard did not know what to do. He pawed the boy’s face until he climbed up and rested his head on his shoulder.

“I should go,” he said.

“You can’t track them.”

“You can’t kill them.”

“I will take the hatchet and the knife. And a spear.”

“I can follow them now.”

“They masked their tracks going through the river. You won’t find them.”

“You have only one arm.”

“I only need one.”