Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“You don’t understand a thing. The white man. He didn’t kill her, and what he do, he do it to others. Many a woman like her running loose in these lands and many a man too. Even some children and I hear a eunuch. From women he take everything so they have nothing, but nothing is something too big for any one woman to bear, so she search and she run and she look. Look at her. Even now she want to be with him, she will be near him and want nothing else, she will let him eat her, she will never let him go. She will never stop following. He be her opium now. Look at her.”

“I am looking.”

“If he shift south she run south to that window. If he change west, she switch and run until the chain pull her back by the neck.”

“He who?”

“Him.”

“This story of yours growing long in the teeth. And the boy?”

“What of the boy?”

“You know what I am asking, Your Excellence.”

The slaver said nothing. The tall woman looked at the chained woman again as she raised her head from filthy arms. It looked like the tall woman was smiling at her. The chained woman spat on her cheek. The tall woman struck her face so hard and so quick, the chained woman’s head slammed against the wall. The chain links clicked and clanged from being pulled hard then let loose.

“If this tale had wings it would have flown to the east by now,” she said. “You want to follow the trail of a lost boy? Start with those child-raping elders in Fasisi.”

“I want you to follow this boy, the one this woman see in the company of a white man. It’s him.”

“An old tale mothers use to scare children,” the tall woman said.

“Tell me true—why you doubt? You never see women like her before?”

“I have even killed a few.”

“People from Nigiki all the way to the Purple City talk about seeing a man white as clay, and a boy. And others as well. There are many accounts of them entering city gates, but nobody witness their departure,” the date feeder said. “We have—”

“Nothing. From a madwoman missing her dormouse. It is late,” the tall woman said.

I grabbed the Leopard’s hand, still hairy, still about to change, and nodded to the lower floor. We snuck down and hid in the empty room, looking out in the dark. We looked out as the tall woman went down the steps. Halfway she stopped and looked over to us, but the dark was so thick you could feel it on your skin.

“We will let you know what we decide tomorrow,” she said to the others.

The door closed behind her. The slaver and his date feeder followed soon after.

We should leave,” I said.

The Leopard turned to go upstairs.

“Cat!”

I grabbed his hand.

“I will free this poor woman.”

“The same woman with lightning coursing through her? The woman eating from dog carcass?”

“That is no animal.”

“Fuck the gods, cat, you wish to quarrel now? Cut this notion loose. Ask the slaver about the woman when we see him. Besides, you were fine with chains on women only a night ago.”

“That is different. Those were slaves. This is a prisoner.”

“All slaves are prisoners. We go.”

“Free her I will, and you will not stop me.”

“I am not stopping you.”

“Who calls?” she said.

The woman had heard us.

“Could these be my boys? My lovely noise of boys? You gone so long, and still I didn’t make any millet porridge.”

The Leopard made a step and I grabbed his hand again. He pushed me away. She saw him and ran back to her corner.

“Peace. Peace be with you. Peace,” the Leopard said over and over.

She darted at him, then at me, then back at him, choking on the end of her chain. I stayed back, not wanting her to think we were closing in. She hid her face and started crying again.

The Leopard turned and looked at me. His face was near lost in the dark but I saw his eyebrows raised, pleading. He felt too much. He always did. But it was all sensation to him. Fast heartbeat, lustful swell, sweat down the neck. We stepped over some stones, climbing up the last few steps.

“Leopard, she cannot take care of herself. Le—”

“They want my boys. Everybody took my boys,” she said.

Leopard went back down the stairs and returned with a loose brick. Over by the wall, and away from her, he hammered at the chain’s end, built into the mortar. First she tried to run, but he hushed her with a shh. She looked away as Leopard hammered at the chain. The chain clanged and clanged, it wouldn’t break but the wall did, cracked and cracked until he pulled the peg out.

The chain dropped to the floor. In the dark I saw her stand up and heard her feet shuffle. The Leopard was right in front of her when she stopped shaking and looked up. The little light coming in touched her wet eyes. The Leopard touched the shackle around her neck and she flinched, but he pointed to the crack in the wall and nodded. She did not nod, but held her head down. I saw the Leopard’s eyes, though the room had been too dark moments before to see them. The light flickering in his eyes came from her.