Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Lightning flashed from her head and went down her limbs. The Leopard jumped but she grabbed him by the neck, heaved him off the floor, and flung him against the wall. Her eyes blue, her eyes white, her eyes crackling like lightning. I ran at her, a charging buffalo. She kicked me straight in the chest, and I fell back and hit my head; the Leopard was rolling over beside me. She grabbed him by the crook of his arm and sent him flying into the wall on the other side. She was lightning, burning the air. She grabbed his left leg and pulled him back, squeezing the ankle, making him howl. He tried to change but couldn’t. Lightning ran through her body and came out of her holes, making her yell and cackle. She kicked him and kicked him and kicked him, and I jumped up and she looked at me. Then she looked away quick like somebody called her. Then back at me, then away again. The Leopard, I knew him, I knew he would be angry, he leapt at her, hitting her in the back and knocking her down, but she turned over and kicked him off. The woman jumped back, blue light inside her a thunderstorm. She tried to run at me but Leopard grabbed the chain and pulled her back so hard she fell again. But she rolled and jumped back up and made for the Leopard. The woman screamed again and raised her hands, but then an arrow burst right through her shoulder. I thought she would scream louder, but she said nothing. The Leopard’s boy, Fumeli, was behind me. He shot her again, the second arrow almost in line with the arrow in her shoulder, and she howled. The lightning coursed through her and the whole room glowed blue. She growled at him but the boy drew a new arrow and looked right down the shaft at her. He could aim for her heart and hit. She stepped back as if she knew. Lightning woman leapt for the window, missed, grabbed the sill, digging her nails in the wall, pulled herself up, punched out the window bars, and jumped.

The Leopard ran past Fumeli and me and down the steps.

“Did he teach you how to—”

“No,” he said, and went down after him.

Outside, the Leopard and Fumeli were already many paces ahead of me, down a narrow alley with no lantern light coming from any window. They had slowed to a walk when I caught them.

“Do you have her? In your nose? Do you have her?” the Leopard said.

“Not this way,” I said, and turned down a lane running south. This street boasted beggars, so many lying in the alley that we stepped on a few, who shouted and groaned. She was running like a madwoman, I could tell from her trail. We turned right, down another alley, this one pocked with potholes full of stinking water and a guard on the ground, shaking and foaming at the mouth. We knew this was her doing, so none of us said it. We followed her scent. She ran ahead of us, upending carts and knocking over mules trying to sleep.

“Down here,” I said.

We caught up with her at a fork, the road on the right going back into town, the left heading to the north gate. No sentry at that gate held a club or spear that could stop her. I have never seen a soul run that fast who was not lifted by devils. Two sentries with shield and spear saw her and stepped forward, raised their spears above their heads. Before either could throw she jumped high, as if running on steps of air, and slammed into the city wall. She dug into the mortar before falling, scrambled up to the top of the wall, and jumped off before more guards could get to her. The sentries kept their spears ready to throw at the sight of us.

“Good men, we are not enemies of Malakal,” I said.

“Not friends neither. Who else coming to bother us near the noon of the dead?” said the first guard, bigger, fatter, iron armour no longer shiny.

“You saw her too, do not deny it,” the Leopard said.

“We seeing nothing. We seeing nothing but three witchmen working night magic.”

“You must give us leave,” I said.

“Shit we must give you. Leave before we send you somewhere you won’t like,” said the other guard—shorter, skinnier.

“We are not witchmen,” I say.

“All prey gone to sleep. So starve. Or go find whatever entertainment keeping a man up.”

“You will deny what you have just seen?”

“I seeing nothing.”

“You saw nothing. Fuck the—”

I cut the Leopard off. “That is fine with us, guard. You saw nothing.”

I took a bracelet off my hand and threw it at him. It was three snakes, each eating another’s tail, the sign of the Chief of Malakal, and a gift for finding something even the gods told him was lost.

“And I serve your chief, but that is nothing. And I have two hatchets and he has bow and arrow, but that is nothing. And that nothing ran by two men as if they were boys and jumped over a city wall as it were a river stone. Open your locks and give us three leave, and we will make sure the nothing that you didn’t see never comes back.”