Black Leopard, Red Wolf Read online

  On the path two bodies blocked the way, a boy and the albino girl, each with a spear stuck in the back. Everywhere was red from the blood of children, and the huts were on fire. The lower hut had caved into a huge mound of ash and smoke, and the middle, weak from burned beams, split in two. One half fell into the rubble of the lower hut. The tree swayed, black and naked, all its leaves burning off. Fire raged in the top hut. Half of the roof was burning, half of the wall black and smoking. I leapt for the first step and it broke under me. Falling, tumbling, I was still rolling when the Leopard jumped up safer steps and ran straight into the hut. He had kicked a hole into the back wall, still safe from flames, and kept kicking till it was big enough. He came out a cat, holding a boy by the neck of his shirt, but the boy did not move. Leopard nodded towards the hut, telling me there were more in there.

  Inside the flames were screaming, laughing, jumping leaf to leaf, wood to wood, cloth to cloth. On the floor, the boy with no legs, holding on to the boy with giraffe legs, and screaming for him to move. I pointed to the opening and picked up Giraffe Boy. The boy with no legs rolled through the opening and I looked around for anybody I had missed.

  The Sangoma was on the ceiling, still, her eyes wide open, her mouth in a silent scream. A spear went right through her chest, but something pinned her flat to the ceiling as if it was the floor, and it was not the spear. Witchwork. There was only one person I could think of who could do witchwork. Somebody had broken through her enchantments and made it all the way to her floor. Fire hopped on her dress and she burst into flames.

  I ran out with the boy.

  The twin boys came out of the bushes, their eyes wide open and mouths loose. A look I knew would never leave them, no matter how many moons. The Leopard pulled away a dead boy to see another, an albino, alive and under him. He screamed and tried to run but stumbled and the Leopard grabbed him. I placed Giraffe Boy on the grass when blue Smoke Girl appeared, trembling so hard she was breaking into two, three, four girls. Then she ran off, vanished, reappeared at the edge of the forest. She vanished, and appeared in front of me again, yelling quiet. She ran off again, stopped, ran, vanished, appeared, stopped, and looked at me until I saw that she wanted me to follow.

  I heard them before I saw them. Hyenas.

  Off behind a fallen tree three of them were fighting over a piece of flesh, scowling, ripping, biting each other to get a grip, and swallowing chunks whole. I shut it out, any thought of what they could be eating. Four more had chased a little boy right up a tree, snarling and laughing, mocking before the kill. Smoke Girl appeared right in front of the boy and frightened the pack. They backed away but not far enough for the boy to run. I climbed a tree fifty paces away, and jumped from branch to branch, tree to tree as I saw the Leopard do. From one branch high I jumped to one low, then swung back up to a branch on high. I scrambled down one branch and leapt onto another, slid down the trunk that split in two like a slingshot, through leaves slapping me in the face, jumped and grabbed another branch that bent from my weight and then threw me up.

  The hyenas were cackling, setting up order, deciding who should kill him. And that tree was tall with thin branches, not in talk with the trees around it. I jumped from a branch on top, grabbed another, swung from it, and landed in the tree, breaking all the branches around me, scraping my legs and left cheek and swallowing leaves. The four hyenas moved in closer and Smoke Girl tried to hold the boy. Large hyenas, the biggest in the pack. Female. I threw a dagger and missed a paw. One jumped back, right into my second throw, which struck her head. One ran off, two stayed and snarled and cackled.

  A hatchet in each hand, a knife in my mouth, I jumped from on high, down right in front of one of the remaining two, and double-chopped her face quick, yanking, chopping, yanking, chopping until blood and flesh splashed my face and blinded me. She knocked me over and bit into my left hand, tearing at it, crushing it, making me gnash teeth and frightening the boy. The second tried to bite my feet. I stabbed the first hyena in the neck. Pulled out and stabbed again. Stabbed again. Stabbed again. It fell. The hyena snapping at my feet moved in to bite. I swung my good hand and the knife sliced across her face, bursting one eye open. She squealed and ran off. Two other hyenas bit into the little flesh left by the others and took off.

  My left hand, bloody and stringing with hanging flesh, went lifeless. The boy was so scared that he backed away from me. Smoke Girl ran to me and beckoned him to come over. Just as he ran, a hyena leapt at him. She landed right on top of the boy, dead with two arrows right through her neck. The boy screamed as I pulled him out. The Leopard shot two more and the rest of them ran away.

  The little boy the Leopard pulled out of the hut never woke up. We buried six, then stopped because there were so many and each death was killing us. The four others we found, we wrapped in whatever cloth or skin we could find and set on the water for the river to take them to the underworld. They looked like they were flying to the call of the goddess. After we found berries and cooked meat for the children, and they fell asleep long enough to stop crying and screaming in their sleep, the Leopard led me into the woods.

  “Cast blame,” he said.

  “Why? You know who did this.”

  “Can you smell him?”

  “I can smell all of them.”

  “There will be more.”

  “I know.”

  Smoke Girl would not let me go. She followed me to the edge of the clearing, past what was once protected by enchantments, until I shouted at her to go back. The Leopard had those left alive—the boy we saved from hyenas, the albino boy, Ball Boy, the twins, Giraffe Boy, and her. There were too many bodies to bury and most were burned. The roof of the top hut caved when I turned to leave, and the albino boy started crying. The Leopard did not know what to do. He pawed the boy’s face until he climbed up and rested his head on his shoulder.

  “I should go,” he said.

  “You can’t track them.”

  “You can’t kill them.”

  “I will take the hatchet and the knife. And a spear.”

  “I can follow them now.”

  “They masked their tracks going through the river. You won’t find them.”

  “You have only one arm.”

  “I only need one.”

  He wrapped my arm in aso oke cloth that I knew was Sangoma’s head wrap. The men’s smells were fading before, but had stayed strong since dusk. Resting for the night. Step for step they had come to the hut on the same trail we had. I could have found them even without my nose. Trinkets tossed all along the way, when they realized the Sangoma’s charms were worth nothing. I found them and my uncle before deep night, roasting meat on a spit. The burning-meat smoke had scared all the cats. The half-moon gave dim light. Uncle must have come to prove he could still use a knife. Against children. They were between two marula trees, joking and mocking, one of them spreading his arms, bugging his eyes, sticking out his tongue, and saying something in village tongue about a witch. Another was eating fruit off the ground, walking drunk and calling himself a rhinoceros. Another said the witch had bewitched his belly so he was going off to shit. I followed him past the trees out to where elephant grass reached past his neck. Far enough that he could hear them laugh but they wouldn’t hear him strain. The man lifted his loincloth and crouched. I stepped on a rotten twig for him to look up. My spear struck him right through the heart and his eyes went white, his legs buckled and he fell in the bush, making no sound. I pulled the spear out and shouted a curse. The other men scrambled.

  At another tree I climbed up and threw my voice again. One of the men came close, feeling his way around the trunk, but not seeing anything in the dim light. His smell I knew. I wrapped my legs around a branch and hung down right above him with the ax as he called for Anikuyo. I swung my arm in swift and chopped him in the temple. His smell I knew but his name I could not remember, and thought about it too long.
r />   A club hit me in the chest and I fell. His hands around my neck, he squeezed. He would do it, he would chase my life out, and boast that he did so himself.

  Kava.

  I knew his smell, and he knew it was me. The moon’s half-light lit up his smile. He said nothing, but pressed into my left arm and laughed when I bit down a scream. Somebody shouted to see if he’d found me, and my right hand slipped from his knee but he didn’t notice. He squeezed my neck harder; my head was heavy, then light and all I could see was red. I didn’t even know that I’d found the knife on the ground until I grabbed the handle, watched him laugh and say, Did you fuck the Leopard? and jammed it right in his neck, where blood spurted out like hot water from the ground. His eyes popped open. He did not fall, but lowered himself gently on my chest, his warm blood running down my skin.

  This is what I wanted to say to the witchman.

  That the reason he could not see me in the dark, could not hear me move through the bush, could not smell me on his trail, running after him as he ran away because he knew something had fallen like twisted wind on his men, the reason why he tripped and fell, the reason why none of the stones he found and threw hit me, or the jackal shit he mistook for stones, the reason why, even after binding her with a spell, and killing her on the ceiling, the Sangoma’s witchcraft still protected me, was that it was never witchcraft. I wanted to say all that. Instead I jammed the knife in the west of his neck and slashed his throat all the way east.

  My uncle shouted at them not to leave, the last two who were near him. He would double their cowries, triple them, so they could pay for other men to fight their blood feuds or gain another wife from a comelier village. He sat down in the dirt, thinking they were watching the bush, but they watched the meat. The one on the right dropped first, my hatchet slicing his nose in two and splitting open his skull. The second ran right into my spear. He fell and was not quick. I ran my spear through his belly and struck the ground, going for his neck. Enough time for my uncle to think there was hope. To run.

  My knife struck him in the back of his right thigh. He fell hard, yelling and screaming for the gods.

  “Which of the children did you kill first, Uncle?” I said as I stood over him. He groveled, but not to me.

  “Blind god of night, hear my prayers.”

  “Which one? Did you take the knife yourself, or hire men to do it?”

  “Gods of earth and sky, I have always given you tribute.”

  “Did any scream?”

  “God of earth and—”

  “Did any of them scream?”

  He stopped crawling away and sat in the dirt.

  “All of them scream. When we lock them in the hut and set it on fire. Then there was no more screaming.”

  He said that to shake me, and it did. I didn’t want to become the kind of man who was never disturbed by such news.

  “And you. I knew you were a curse but I never thought you would be hiding mingi.”

  “Don’t ever call—”

  “Mingi! You ever see rain, boy? Feel it on your skin? Watch flowers burst open in just one night because the earth is fat with water? What if you never saw the like again? Cows and cats so scrawny their ribs press through skin? All of these you would have seen. You will wonder for moons why the gods have forgotten this land. Dried up the rivers and let women give birth to dead children. That is what you would bring on us? One mingi child is enough to curse a house. But ten and four? Did you not hear us say hunting was bad and getting worse? Bumbangi can wear foolish mask and dance to foolish god; none of them will listen in the presence of mingi. Two more moons and we would be starving. No wonder the elephant and the rhinoceros has fled and only the viper remains. And you, the fool—”

  “Kava was the one protecting them, not me.”

  “Watch how he lie! That is what Kava say you would do. He followed you and some Leopard you lying with. How many abominations can there be in one boy?”

  “I would say let Kava prove his word, but he no longer has a throat.”

  He swallowed. I stepped closer. He limped away.

  “I am your beloved uncle. I am the only home you have.”

  “Then I shall live in trees and shit near rivers.”

  “You think drums won’t hear? People will smell all this blood and blame you. Who is he, the one without family? Who is he, the one without child? Who was the one that Kava returned to the village and spoke of, saying he was working curses on his own people? All these men you have killed, what will their wives sing? You, who chose wicked children, and cursed the land, have now taken their fathers, sons, and brothers. You’re a dead man; you might as well take that knife and cut your own throat.”

  I yawned. “Do you have more? Or will you get to your offer now?”

  “The fetish priest—”

  “Now you take the word of fetish priests?”

  “The fetish priest, he told me something would fall like a storm on us.”

  “And you thought lightning. If you thought at all.”

  “You are not lightning. You are plague. Watch me now, how you come to us at night like bad wind, and set flow curses. You were supposed to kill Gangatom. Instead you have done their work. And even they will never turn on their own. Nobody is yours and you will be nobody’s.”

  “You a soothsayer now? Is tomorrow before you? Beloved uncle, I have one question.”

  He glared at me.

  “Gangatom came for my father and my brother, and caused my grandfather to flee. How is it, beloved uncle, that they never came for you?”

  “I am your beloved uncle.”

  “And when I asked how I know you, the ways of the city, you said you came with your brother, my father—”

  “I am your beloved uncle.”

  “But my father was dead. You fled to the city with my grandfather, did you not? You bought yourselves chairs like bitchmen. My house had two cowards, not one.”

  “I am your beloved uncle.”

  “Loved by who?”

  I ducked before he threw it, my own knife. It hit the tree behind me and fell. He jumped up and yelled, charging me like a buffalo. The first arrow burst right through the left cheek and right. The second shot into his neck. The third through his ribs. He stared at me as his legs failed, falling to his knees. The fourth also went through his neck. Beloved uncle fell flat on his face. Behind me, the Leopard put down his bow. Behind him were the albino, Ball Boy, the twins, Giraffe Boy, and Smoke Girl.

  “This was not for their eyes,” I said.

  “Yes it was,” he said.

  At sunrise, we took the children to the only people who would have them, people for whom no child could ever be a curse. The Gangatom villagers drew spears when they saw us approach, but let us through when the Leopard shouted that we brought gifts for the chief. That man, tall, thin, more fighter than ruler, came out from his hut, and eyed us from behind a wall of warriors. He turned his head to the Leopard, but his eyes, set back under his brow and in shadow, stayed on me. He wore a ring in each ear and two beaded necklaces around his neck. His chest, a wall of scars from tens on top of tens of kills. The Leopard opened his sack and threw Asanbosam’s head out. Even the warriors jumped back.

  The chief stared at it long enough for flies to swarm. He stepped past the warriors, picked it up, and laughed.

  “When the flesh eater and the blood drinker brother take my sister they suck just enough blood to keep her alive but feed her so much filth that she become their blood slave. She live under their tree and eat scraps of dead men. She follow them across all lands until even they tired of her. She follow them into rivers, over walls, into a nest of fire ants. One day Sasabonsam grab his brother and fly off a cliff, knowing she going follow.”

  He held up the head, and laughed again. The people cheered. Then he looked at me and stopped laughing.

 
“So, Leopard, is it boldness or foolishness you have? You bring a Ku here?”

  “He comes bringing gifts too,” the Leopard said.

  I pulled my uncle’s goatskin cape and his head fell out. His warriors stepped closer. The chief said nothing.

  “But are you not his blood?”

  “I am nobody’s blood.”

  “I can see it in you, smell it, whether you deny it or not. We kill many men and several women, most from your tribe. But we do not kill our own. What kind of honor do you think this bring you?”

  “You just said you killed several women, yet you will talk of honor?”

  The chief stared at me again. “I would say you cannot stay here but you did not come to stay.”

  He looked behind us.

  “More gifts?”

  We left the children with him. Two women grabbed Giraffe Boy, one by the ass cheek, and took him to their hut. A young man said his father was blind and lonely and would not care that the twins were joined together. That way he never had to worry about losing one. A man with noble feathers in his cap took Ball Boy on a hunt that day. Several boys and girls surrounded the albino, touching and poking him until one of them gave him a bowl of water.

  The Leopard and I left before sunset. We walked along the river because I wanted to see even a glimpse of someone Ku, someone I would never see again. But no Ku would have come to the river to meet a Gangatom spear. Leopard turned to go back into deep forest when leaves rustled behind me. Most times she passes like a spirit but if afraid enough, or happy, or angry, she will rustle leaves and knock over bowls. Smoke Girl.

  “Tell her she cannot follow,” I said to the Leopard.

  “I’m not who she follows,” he said.

  “Go back,” I said when I turned around. “Go be the daughter to a mother, or the sister to a brother.”

  Her face appeared out of the smoke, frowning as if she did not understand me. I pointed to the village, but she did nothing. I waved her off and turned away, but she followed. I thought if I ignored her, and ignored what it did to my heart beating, she would go away, but Smoke Girl followed me to the edge of their village and after.