Black Leopard, Red Wolf

“Your men, any of them ever travel through the Darklands?”

“The Leopard said it’s only bush.”

“None of them ever go before, not even the giant?”

“The Ogo. Ogos do not like to be called giant.”

“His small brain is all that is saving him.”

“Make your meaning clear, woman.”

“I clear as river water. They not going to reach the other side.”

“They will if they stay on the path.”

“You already forget. That is what the forest hoping you do.”

“They will have much to tell us on the other side.”

“They not going to reach the other side.”

“What is this bush?” the painted girl said.

“Do you not have a name?”

“Venin, I told you.”

“You going back for your friends?” Sogolon asked.

“They are not my friends.”

I looked at her and Venin, and the sky.

“Where is Bunshi?”

Sogolon laughed. “How long you going take to find the missing if you take this long to notice the gone?”

“I don’t track the goings and comings of witches.”

“Will you go for them?”

“None would show me gratitude for it.”

“Gratitude is what you seeking? You come cheap.”

She grabbed the reins.

“You wish to save them, save them. Or don’t. What a band of fellows this turn into. Bunshi and her fellowship of men, which is why it fail before it even begin. Cannot make fellowship with men. A man alive is just a man in the way. Maybe we meet again in Mitu, if not Kongor.”

“You say that as if I am going back.”

“I will see you or I will not. Trust the gods.”

Sogolon rode off in a gallop. I did not follow.

TEN

The witch was right. I turned off into the bush before I got to the path. The horse pulled up. I rubbed his neck. We stepped through the bush. I thought there would be cool mist but wet heat swept in and pushed sweat out of my skin. White flowers opened and closed. Trees stretched far into sky with foreign plants bursting out of the trunks. Some vines hung loose, others swung back up into the trees, where leaves blocked most of the sky, and the sky that could be seen already looked like night. Nothing swung or swayed, but sounds bounced in the bush. Water drizzled on me, but was too warm to be rain. Off in the distance three elephants blared and startled the horse. You could never trust the animals in the Darklands.

Above me a woodpecker pecked slow, tapping out a message above the beat and under it. Men walk through the bush. Men walking through the bush. Men they walk now through the bush.

Above me swung ten and nine monkeys, quiet, not meaning harm, curious perhaps. But they followed us. The elephants blared again. I did not notice we were on the path until they were right in front of us. An army. They blared, they swung their trunks, they raised and stomped, then charged at us. They stomped louder than thunder but the ground did not shake. I leaned into the horse’s neck and covered her eyes. This startled her again, made her shift, but the elephants would have been worse. They passed beside us and right through us. The ghosts of elephants—or the memory of elephants, or somewhere a god dreaming of elephants. You could never tell in the Darklands what was flesh and what was spirit. Above us was total night but light came through the leaves as if from small moons. Farther off on the left, in what looked like cleared bush but was not, apes stood, three or four in front, pushing away large leaves. Five in the clearing hit with light. More stood behind, some jumping down from branches. One of the apes opened his mouth, bared his flesh-tearing teeth, long and sharp, two atop and two at the bottom. I never learned the tongue of apes, but I knew if I stopped they would charge us and run away, then charge us again, closer and closer each time until they grabbed me and the horse, beating us both to death. Not the ghosts of apes or the dream of apes, but real apes, who liked living among the dead. My head brushed some leaves and they opened up to reveal bunches of berries bold and bloodlike. Eat just one and I would sleep for a quartermoon. Eat three more and I would never wake up. This god-forgotten forest where even the living things played with death and sleep. Above, more birds cawed and cackled and trilled and yapped, and mimicked and screeched and screamed. Running past us, two giraffes as small as house cats, running from a warthog as big as a rhinoceros.

I should not have come here. No you should not have, a voice said inside and outside my head. I did not look around. Whatever you are looking for in the Darklands, you will always find it. In front of me hung threads of thin silk, hundred and tens of hundreds reaching the ground.