Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“I went back to the Prince and gave good report. I said, Good Prince, I have yet to find the bandits, but on my way, I did pass by a house near the old market, where men were conspiring to take your crown.”

“What? Are you sure of it? Which men?” he asked.

“I did not look. Instead I hurried back to you. Now I will go find your daughter,” I said.

“What should I do with these men?”

“Have men sneak up to the house like thieves in the night and burn it to the ground.”

The Leopard stared at me, ready to pull the story out of my mouth.

“Did he?”

“Who knows? But next moon I saw the daughter at her window, her head a black stump. Then I cursed Kalindar and moved back to Malakal.”

“That is your story? Tell me another.”

“No. You tell me of your travels. What does a Leopard do in new lands where he cannot hunt?”

“A Leopard finds flesh wherever he can find it. And then there is flesh he eats! But you know how I am. Beasts like us were never made for one place. But nobody traveled as far as I. Boarded a ship I did, eager I was. I went to sea, then boarded another ship and it went farther out to sea for moons and moons.”

He climbed up in the chair and stooped on the seat. I knew he would.

“I saw great sea beasts, including one that looked like a fish but could swallow an entire ship. I found my father.”

“Leopard! But you thought he was dead.”

“So did he! The man was a blacksmith living on an island in the middle of a sea. I forget the name.”

“No you did not.”

“Fuck the gods, maybe I don’t want to remember. He was no longer a blacksmith, just an old man waiting to die. I stayed there with him. Saw him forget to remember, then saw him forget that he forgets. Listen, there was no Leopard in him—he had forgotten it all living with his young wife and family under one roof, which is no Leopard’s nature. Curse you and your whiskers, he said to me many times. But some days he would look at me and growl and you should see how startled he was, wondering where the growl came from. I changed in front of him once and he screamed as an old man screams, making no sound. Nobody believed him when he shouted, Look a wildcat, he will eat me!”

“This is a very sad story.”

“It gets sadder yet. His children in that house, my brothers and sisters, all had some trace of the cat in them. The youngest had spots all over his back. And none of them liked to wear clothes, even though on this island in the river, men and women covered everything but eyes. When he was dying he kept shifting from man to Leopard to man on his death mat. It scared the children and grieved the mother. In the end it was only me, my youngest brother, and him in the room, since everybody else but the youngest thought it was witchcraft. The youngest looked at his father and finally saw himself. We both became Leopards and I licked my father’s face to calm him. In endless sleep, I left him.”

“That is a sad story. Yet there is beauty in it.”

“You a lover of beauty now?”

“If you saw who left my bed just this morning, you would not ask that question.”

I missed his laugh. The entire inn heard when the Leopard laughed.

“A wanderer I became, Tracker. How I moved from land to land, kingdom to kingdom. Kingdoms where people’s skin was paler than sand, and every seven days they ate their own god. I have been a farmer, an assassin, I even took a name, Kwesi.”

“What does it mean?”

“Fuck the gods if I know. I even became an entertainer of the bawdy arts.”

“What?”

“Enough, man. The reason I sought you out—”

“Fuck the gods with your reason, I will hear more of these bawdy arts.”

“We don’t have much time, Tracker.”

“Then be quick about it. But spare no detail.”

“Tracker.”

“Or I shall rise and leave you with the bill, Kwesi.”

He almost winced when I said that.

“Fine. Enough. So I was a soldier.”

“This doesn’t begin like a bawdy story.”

“Fuck the gods, Tracker. Maybe the story begins when a man found an army—”

“North or South?”

“Fucks for both. I say, this man found an army with need for a man with superior archery skills. This man found himself in lands with no food, and no amusement. This man might have been great with killing the enemy, but was not great keeping peace between his fellow soldiers. Though one or two comely ones served their use.”

“Ever the Leopard.”

“This is how it came to pass. We attacked a village that had no weapons besides stones to cut meat, and burned down their huts with women and children still in them. It happened this way. I said, I do not kill women and children, not even when hungry. The commander’s little bitch says, Then kill them with your bow. I say these are not fighters in war and he says you have an order. I walk away because I’m no soldier and this was not a fight worth coin.