Black Leopard, Red Wolf Page 18

  The old woman spoke.

  “Tracker. I am Sogolon, daughter of Kiluya from the third sister empire of Nigiki, and yes you speak true. There is more to this story. Will you hear it?” the old woman said.

  “Tracker?” said the Leopard.

  “Fine, I will,” I said to her, and stood ground.

  “Then speak it, goddess,” Sogolon said to Bunshi.

  Bunshi turned to the slaver and said, “Leave us.”

  “If your story is the same as his, or even more dull, I will sit with this knife and carve nasty scenes on the floor,” I said.

  “What do you know of your King?” she said.

  “I know he’s not my King,” the Leopard said.

  “Nor mine,” I said. “But of every coin I make the Malakal chief wants half so he can give the King quarter, so yes he is my King.”

  Bunshi sat in the slaver’s chair as men do, leaning to one side, her left leg over the arm. Nsaka was at the doorway, looking out. The Ogo stood still, and the old woman Sogolon stopped writing runes in the air. I felt like I was around children waiting on the grandfather to tell them a new story about old Nan-si, the spider demon who was a man once. It reminded me to never take the story of any god or spirit or magical being to be all true. If the gods created everything, was truth not just another creation?

  “This was long past that Kwash Dara, when he was still a prince, had many friends for sporting, and wenching, and drinking, and fighting, like any boy of his own age. One friend most of all could out-sport him, out-wench him, out-drink him, and out-fight him, and yet even with all those things they moved like brothers. Friends even when the old King took sick and went to the ancestors.

  “Basu Fumanguru became known as the man who whispers to the Prince. At the time the council of elders also had a death. Kwash Dara hated the council from when he was a child. Why do they always take young girls? he would ask his nana. And I heard they fuck into their hands and take the seed across to the river islands to give to some god, he said. The King when he was a prince studied at the palace of wisdom and glutted on knowledge, and science, and things being weighed and measured, not just believed. So did Basu Fumanguru. Kwash Dara knew Basu as a man like him in all ways and loved him for it. He said, Basu, you are like me in all ways. And just as I ascend the throne I wish for you to ascend the seat of the elders. Basu said he did not want this seat, for the elders sat in Malakal, five to six days’ ride from Fasisi, where he was born, where lived, all that he knew. Also, he was still young, and to be an elder meant to renounce many things. The Prince became King and said, You are too old for lovers, and we are too old for sport. It is time to set all that aside and do good for the kingdom. Basu objected, and objected until the King threw down his royal staff and said, By the gods I am Kwash Dara and that is my decree. So Basu Fumanguru took his seat with the elders in Malakal, to report as an ear to the King.

  “But then the strangest of turns happened. Basu fell in love with his seat. He became devout and pious and took a wife, handsome and pure. They had many children. The King had put him there to make sure the wisdom of the elders lined up with the desire of the royal house. Instead, Basu demanded that the desires of the royal house line up with the wisdom of the elders. Everything was fight, fight, fight. He challenged the King through dissent sent through the drums, he challenged him with letters and many writs, delivered by men on foot and on horse. He challenged him in visits to court and even in the privacy of the King’s chambers. When the King said it is so because I am King, Basu Fumanguru took his case to the streets of Malakal, which spread faster than infection to the streets of Juba, the paths of Luala Luala, and the great roads of Fasisi itself. Basu would say, You are King but you are not divine until you join the ancestors like your father.

  “So one day Kwash Dara demanded grain tax from the lands of the elders, which no king had done before. The elders refused to pay. The King sent decree to lock them all up in prison until the tax was paid. But two nights after they locked them away, rain broke all over the North Kingdom and did not stop until all the rivers flooded and killed many, and not just Ku and Gangatom living by the great water. In some places water rose so high that entire towns vanished, and fat bodies floated everywhere. The rain did not stop until the King released Basu Fumanguru. And still things got worse.

  “Learn this. In the early years, when the elders clashed with the King, the will of the people was with the elders, for the King was arrogant. It did not make the King weak, for he conquered many nations in war. But in his own country people were starting to ask, Do we have one king or two? I tell you true. Some people were more afraid of Fumanguru than the King, and he was fearsome in all his ways. And righteous in them too. But everything changes. The elders, already fat, got fatter. They got so used to having their will that when people defied them, or were too late with rent, or failed to give proper tribute, they started to take justice themselves instead of leaving such things to the King’s magistrates. They captured highway robbers and chopped their hands off. They hung whoever trespassed and ate the fruit of their lands. They stopped seeking the gods and instead met with witches to work spells and curses. They got fat from taxes that never reached the King.

  “Listen here now. Some people hated the King, but soon everybody hated all elders but Basu. One man would say, The elders took my cattle saying this is tax for the King, but the tax collector came seven days ago. This elder would say, Give me what you will earn from your crops now and we will make sure the gods double your yield come harvest. But instead of harvest, blight killed the crops. Another man will say, When will they stop coming for our girls? They are taking them younger and younger, and no man will marry them. They were the law in Malakal and all lands below Fasisi, and when they did not meet in council, they spread to their cities and infected each with its corruption. But it was a decree by the King himself that the elders can only be judged by the gods, never men.

  “Basu would not sit with any of this. He was never the chief elder—the King never made good on the promise—but they respected him as once a warrior, and he clashed against his own brothers who had gone corrupt. People say, Go to Basu if that elder took your crops, Go to Basu if a witch spun a curse, Go to Basu for he is the one with reason. People say this. One time an elder had seen a girl in the fourth wall and decided he would have her. She was ten and one in years. He told her father, Send your child to serve as maid to the water goddess, or no wind or sun will prevent your sorghum fields from blight. You and your wife and your many sons will starve. The elder did not wait for the girl to be sent; he came and took her himself. This is what happened. Basu was gathering items for a retreat to a holy place in the bush to seek the word of the gods, when he heard the screams of the girl as the elder was on top of her. A rage went up his head and Basu was no longer Basu. He grabbed a gold Ifa bowl, used to divine the will of the spirits, and struck the elder in the head. And struck him, and struck him, and struck him until he was dead. Basu was in new waters after that. His brothers hated him and he was hated by the King and everyone at court. He should have known there were numbers to his days. Fumanguru and his family fled to Kongor.

  “Then one night they came. Tracker, you know of who I speak. It was the Night of the Skulls, a powerful omen.”

  “Your brothers?”

  “We are not blood.”

  “You have no blood.”

  She looked away from me. The Leopard, his eyes wide open, was listening like a child left in a bush of ghosts. She continued, “There are many ways to summon them. If you have someone’s blood, speak a curse and throw it up to the ceiling. But first you would need to be under a witch’s enchantment, or they will appear and kill you. Or you could call a witch to do it for you. They appear on the ceiling, people call them the roof walkers, and whether a witch summons them or they are lured by your blood, the hunger in them grows so big that they will hunt you like starving dogs. And the
spell will never leave you. Nobody can escape them, and even if you do they will appear anytime you are under a roof, even for a blink. Many man, many woman, many young boy and girl sleep under stars because they will never be rid of Omoluzu.

  “You were wondering, Tracker, how come they never followed you here? How long before you slept under a roof?”

  “Near a year,” I said.

  “Omoluzu cannot follow you out of the underworld if that is where they found you. And had they found you here, they cannot follow you there. But if I were you, I would not throw blood.”

  “What did the Omoluzu do?” the Leopard said.

  Bunshi stood up. Her robes billowed even though no wind blew. Outside a crash, some shouts, and some screams. People drunk on drink and sport, people drunk on the excitement of the coming King. Kwash Dara, the same king in her story.

  “As I said before. They came on the Night of the Skulls. Fumanguru’s seven sons were long asleep and time was reaching deep night, the noon of the dead. All of them asleep, even the youngest, also called Basu. Asleep were the ground and garden slaves, but awake were the cooks milling grain, Basu’s youngest and oldest wives, and Basu, in his study, reading volumes from the Palace of Wisdom. This is what happened. An elder with friends at court sent a witch to speak a dark enchantment on the house, then paid a slave to gather the youngest wife’s menstrual blood. Omoluzu hunger is monstrous—it is the smell of blood that lures them, not the taste. This slave found her blood cloths, bundled them together, and in the dark when the other slaves were asleep, threw her mistress’s blood cloths up to the ceiling. The witch never told her to run, so she went to sleep. In the dark the rumble on the ceiling must have sounded like thunder far away. Thunder that even the light sleeper sleeps through.

  “The Tracker can tell who they be. They fall from the ceiling the way I rise from the ground. They run on the ceiling as if tethered to sky. When they leap, they almost touch the floor, but land back on the ceiling so hard that you wonder if it not they who are on the ground and you who are in the air. And they have blades made of nothing on this earth. They rose and formed, and chopped up nearly every living slave save one. She ran out screaming that the dark has come to kill us. Tracker is right that I am like them. But I am not them. And yet I felt them, I felt them coming and knew they were near, but did not know which house until I heard Basu himself shout. Omoluzu chased the slave, who ran to Basu’s wife. The wife grabbed a torch, thinking of the great legends where light defeats darkness, but they surrounded them and chopped both their heads off.

  “Omoluzu appeared in the grain room and killed the cooking slaves. They appeared in the children’s room and cut them up before any of them even woke. They were merciful with no one. When I climbed into the house it was too late, and still there was killing. I stepped into a hallway thick with blood. A man ran to me holding a baby, Basu holding young Basu. He looked like a man who knew death was chasing him. I could hear death rumble on the ceiling like thunder, like mortar was breaking apart. Black racing across the ceiling like darkness and coming after him. I say, Give me your child if you want him to live. I am his father, he says. I say, I cannot save both of you and fight them, and he says, You are just like them. But we share neither mother nor father, I say. I did not have time to convince him I was good or evil. I saw the darkness behind him take shape into three, then four, then six Omoluzu. Give me the boy, I said. He stared at his child long, then handed him to me. The baby was only one year born, I could tell. We were both holding him and he could not let him go.

  “They are coming,” he said.

  “They are here,” I said.

  “He looked at me and said, This was the work of the King. Kwash Dara. This was the work of the court, this was the work of the elders, and my son is witness that this happened.

  “Your son will not remember, I said.

  “But the King will, he said.

  “I flicked up my second finger and it became a blade. I pushed below my rib right here and cut it open. The father was afraid but I told him he need not fear, I make a womb for the boy. I cut my womb open the way midwives sometimes do when the baby is unborn and the mother is already dead. I pushed the baby through and my skin sealed him inside. The father was in terror, but seeing my belly big, as if with child, gave him some peace. Will he die in you? he said, and I said no. Were you a mother? this man Basu asked me, but I did not answer. I tell you true, there was a heaviness in me. I have never carried children. But maybe every woman is a mother.”

  “You are not a woman,” I said.

  “Quiet,” said the Leopard.

  “The Sangoma said you had a mouth on you,” she said.

  I didn’t ask how she knew.

  “The Omoluzu had blades. I had blades too.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “Tracker, enough,” said the Leopard.

  “One came for me, swung his one blade, but I had two.”

  “That’s a scene for the griots, a pregnant-looking woman fighting shadow devils with two blades.”

  “A scene indeed,” said the Leopard. I was starting to wonder about him. He was feeding on her story like someone starving, or like someone glutting, I could not tell.

  “He swung at me and I ducked. I jumped up to the ceiling, their floor, and chopped his head off with my two blades. But I could not fight them all. Basu Fumanguru was brave. He pulled out a knife, but a blade came for him from the back and stabbed right through his belly. But their bloodlust was not satisfied. They could smell the family’s blood on the boy even with him inside me. One swung and cut me in the shoulder, but I swung around and cut his chest open. I ran and jumped through the same window I came through.”

  “Not anywhere have I heard such a story. Not from the hawk, not even from the rhinoceros,” the Leopard said.

  “It is a very good story. There were even monsters. None of it makes me want to help you,” I said.

  She laughed. “If I was looking for noble men with the heart to help a child, I would never have called you. I really don’t care what you want. It is a task for which you will be paid four times more than the highest you have ever charged. In gold. What you like or want, whatever it is in your head means nothing to me.”

  “I . . .” I had nothing to say.

  “What of the child—after, I mean?” the Leopard said.

  “I did not take him to his aunt. Omoluzu smells blood upon blood and would have, should whoever commanded them willed it, gone after any family. I took him to a blind woman in Mitu, who used to be loyal to the old gods. Without sight she would not know who the child was, or try to find out. She was with a child so could suckle him also, and keep him for a year.”

  “Used to be loyal?”

  “She sold him at the slave market in the Purple City, near Lake Abbar. A baby fetches great coin outside of Kongor, especially a male. She told me this as I started to slit her throat with this finger.”

  “What wise choices in people you make.”

  I knew from across the room, Nsaka Ne Vampi rolled her eyes. I did not look, but I knew.

  “I tracked the child to a perfume and silver merchant who was going to take him to the East. It took me a moon and it was too late. He was late with his silver and merchants in Mitu sent mercenaries to find him. You know where they found him? At the border of Mitu. They found flies but no stench of death. Somebody ransacked the caravan and killed everyone. Nobody touched the civet, or silver, or myrrh. Never found the boy; they took him.”

  “The King?” I asked.

  “The King would have had him killed.”

  “So he is gone? Why not leave him gone?”

  “You would have a child walking with murderers?” the old woman said.

  “Because a child in the company of witches would fare much better,” I said. “What use is the boy to murderers?”

  “They found
use,” Bunshi said.

  I remember what the date feeder said to the slaver in the lightning woman’s tower. About the little boy knocking on the woman’s door, crying that he was running from monsters, only to let them in as soon as her family fell asleep. I nodded at the Leopard, hoping he caught what they were not saying.

  I couldn’t decide whether to sit down, stand up, or leave.

  “A little boy survives roof walkers only to be sold into slavery, where he was kidnapped by who, witchmen? Devils? A society of boy-lover spirits starting out the child early? What will happen next, maybe Ninki Nanka the swamp dragon will smell them as they go through the bush and eat them all?”

  “You don’t believe in such creatures?” Bunshi said. “Despite all you have seen and heard and fought with? Despite the animal beside you?”

  “You don’t need belief in evil creatures when men flay their own wives,” I said. I turned and looked at the Leopard, who was still drinking in this story.

  “But you do believe speaking clever is wise. Good. I am not paying for your belief. I am paying for your nose. Bring me back the boy.”

  “Or proof of his corpse?”

  “He is alive.”

  “And when we find him, what then? You are asking us to go against the King?”

  “I’m paying you to expose the King.”

  “Proof that the King is behind a murder.”

  “There is more to the story of the King than you know. And if you knew you could not bear.”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s not paying you to ask or to think. She’s paying you to smell,” said Nsaka Ne Vampi.

  “How do you know they have not killed the child?”

  “We know,” Bunshi said.

  I almost said I know too, but looked at the Leopard. He glanced at me and nodded.

  A door opened and shut. I thought it was Fumeli but it was not his smell. Nsaka Ne Vampi walked over to the doorway and looked out. She said, “In two days we ride for Kongor. Come or don’t come, it makes no difference to me. She’s the one that wants you.”