Black Leopard, Red Wolf

I ran and jumped on him; we fell back on the stairs and rolled down the steps. My hands around his neck and squeezing until either his neck snapped or his breath died. Rolling down the steps, skin bruising, blood shedding, his, mine, the steps, the loose mortar. Me losing earth, him losing voice, rolling and rolling and hitting the floor below, the force of the fall and him kicking me in the chest. I fell back and he was upon me. I kicked him off and pulled a knife, but he knocked it out of my hand and punched me in the belly, then the face, then the cheek, then my chest but I blocked his hand, pushed away the knuckle, punched him under the chin, again across the left eye. The Leopard ran down as Leopard and changed maybe, I didn’t see, I kept my eyes on him. He ran, and jumped, and kicked, I dodged and swung up my elbow and hit him square in the face and he was down, head hit the ground first. I jumped on him and punched his left cheek then right, then left, and he hit me in the ribs twice and I fell off, but rolled out of the way of his knife as he stabbed the floor. I kicked his kick, and kicked his kick again and scrambled up as he scrambled up, and the Leopard knew better than to pull me back or stop me, and looking at the Leopard I didn’t see him come up behind and swing for the back of my head and hit and it got wet and I fell to my knees, and he swung his hand back to hit me again and I kicked his feet and he fell. I got on him again and swung my hand back to punch him again, his face running blood, looking like a dark juicy fruit bruised open, and a blade pushed itself against my throat.

“I will cut your head off and feed it to crows,” Nsaka Ne Vampi said.

“I smell him all over you,” I said.

“Take your hands off his neck. Now,” she said.

“No—”

The arrow shot straight through her hair. The Leopard’s boy was a floor below, another arrow in the bow, pulled tight and ready. Nsaka Ne Vampi raised her hands. A wild gust of blue wind hit the floor and blew us away from each other in the quick. The Leopard and I hit the wall hard and Nsaka Ne Vampi rolled away.

Nyka laughed on top of it, as he tried to pull himself up. He spat at the wind, which howled louder, pinning me against the wall. Her voice was on top of it, the old woman’s. A spell set loose on the floor. The wind died as soon as it came, and we were separated from each other, across the room. Bunshi came down the steps, but the old woman stayed above.

“Them you expect to find this boy?” Sogolon said.

“You two know each other,” Bunshi said.

“Black mistress, have you not heard? We are old friends. Better than lovers since I shared his bed for six moons. And yet nothing came to pass, eh, Tracker? Did I ever tell you I was disappointed?”

“Who is this man?” Leopard asked me.

“But he told me so much about you, Leopard. He never gave any word about me?”

“This son of a leprous jackal bitch is nothing, but some call him Nyka. I swore to every fucking god that would hear me that when I saw you next, if that day ever came, I would kill you,” I said.

“That day is not today,” Nsaka Ne Vampi said. She had two daggers out.

“I hope for your sake you make him pull out when he fucks you. Even his seed is poison,” I said.

“This reunion does not move well, I think. There is thunder under your brow,” Nyka said.

“Tracker, let’s—”

“Let’s what, cat?”

“Whatever you are looking for, today is not the day to find it,” he said.

I was so furious, all I could feel was heat, and all I could see was red.

“You didn’t even do it for gold. Not even silver,” I said.

“Still such a fool. Some tasks are their own reward. Nothing means nothing and nobody loves no one, isn’t that what you love to say? Yet you are the one with all this feeling, and you trust it above everything else, even your nose. Fool for love, fool for hate. Still think I did it for money?”

“Leave now, or I swear I won’t care who I kill to get to you,” I said.

“You leave instead,” the old woman said. “But stay, Leopard.”

“Where he goes, I go,” the Leopard said.

“Then both of you leave,” the old woman said.

Nsaka Ne Vampi took Nyka upstairs, her eyes on me the whole time.

“Get out,” Bunshi said.

“I was never in,” I said.

Deep in the night, I woke up to my room still dark. I thought I was rising from troubled sleep but she had gone into my dream to wake me up.

“You knew you would follow me,” she said.

The thickness of her form trickled down the windowsill. She rose into a mound, stretched as high as the ceiling, then shaped herself into a woman again. Bunshi stood by the window, sitting in the frame.

“So you are a god,” I said.

“Tell me why you wish him dead.”

“Will you grant me the wish?”

She stared at me.

“I don’t wish him dead,” I said.

“Oh?”

“I wish to kill him.”

“I will have the tale.”

“Oh you will, will you. Very well. This is what passed between me and Nyka.”