Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Testimony of the Tracker on this the ninth day. A thousand bows to the elders’ pleasure. This testimony is written witness, given appeal to the gods of sky who stand in judgment with lightning and viper venom. And as is the elders’ pleasure, the Tracker gives account both wide and far, since great many years and moons have passed from the loss of the child to the death of the same one. This is the middle of the Tracker’s many tales, meaning which be true and which be false I shall leave to the judgment of the elders, alone in the counsel of the gods. The Tracker’s account continues to perplex even those of uncommon mind. He travels deep in strange lands, as if telling tales to children at night, or reciting nightmares to the fetish priest for Ifa divination. But such is the pleasure of the elders, that a man should speak free, and a man should speak till the ears of the gods are filled with truth.

He goes into the sight, smell, and taste of one memory, with perfect recall of the smell in the crack of a man’s buttocks, or the perfume of Malakal virgins in bedchambers coming out of windows he walked underneath, or the sight of the glorious sunlight marking the slow change of seasons. But of spaces between moons, a year, three years, he says nothing.

This we know: The Tracker in the company of nine, including one more who still lives and one not accounted for, went searching for a boy. Kidnapped, he has alleged. The boy at the time was alleged to be the son or ward of a slaver from Malakal.

This we know: They set out first from Malakal at the beginning of the dry season. The search for the boy took seven moons. A success, the child they found and returned, but four years later he was lost again and the second search, in smaller company, took one year and culminated with the boy’s death.

At the request of the elders, the Tracker has spoken in detail of his upbringing, and with clear speech and fair countenance has recounted a few details of the first search. But he will speak only of the end of the second search, and refuses to give testimony of the four years in between, where it is known that he took up residence in the land of Mitu.