Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy #1)

by Marlon James

Ku men had skill with bow and arrow, leading the cattle to fresh fields, drinking milk, and sleeping. The women had skill with pulling grass for thatch roofs, plastering walls with clay or cow shit, building fences to keep in the goats and the children chasing after goats, fetching water, washing the milk skins, milking the cattle, feeding the children, cooking the soup, washing the calabashes, and churning the butter.

Every King before him was the oldest son of the King’s oldest sister.

“He murdered his sister and all under her roof,” I said.

“And when the time come Moki send his oldest daughter to the ancient sisterhood where no girl can become a mother. That way his oldest son, Liongo, become King.

“Defeat is not the problem. Victory is.”

“Sogolon, you keep mourning this death of morals you never had,” I said.

dhow.

“I hope not. But I think of your mother, or rather the mother you told me about who might not even be real, or if she is real, not as you say. You sound like fathers where I am from who blame the daughter for rape, saying, Had you not legs to run away? Had you not lips to scream? You think as they do that suffering from cruelty

or escaping it is a matter of choice or means, when it is a matter of power.”

“You say I should understand power?” “I say you should understand your mother.”

“His mother. She and I have much in common.” “You’ve both abandoned your own children?” “Maybe we’ve both had our lives ruined by men only to have our children grow up blaming us for it. Pray forgive that remark;

“Tomorrow night, we get this boy once and for all. The day after, we go to the river lands and get our children. The day after that, who in all the fucking gods knows?” Leopard said.

Behind us, light shone ahead as if it came from the Mweru, but it was just the break of daylight.

Yes, it is as you say, I was in Mitu for four years and five moons. Four years from when we left the boy in the Mweru.

“Fuck your thoughts on my words. This is what you do, what you always do. Ask, and ask, so that you will know and know. And when you finally know all there is to know of someone, you use that knowledge to betray them. Help yourself, you cannot, for it is your nature, as eating her young is crocodile’s nature.”

have seen him like this before,” Nyka said to the Aesi, speaking only to him but wanting me to hear. “Strangest of things that I remember.” The Aesi said nothing, and Nyka always took silence as a sign to continue. He told him that Tracker cares about nothing and loves no one, but when he has been wronged deeply, his whole self, and the self beyond the self, seek only destruction. “I have seen him this way once. And not even seen but heard. His need for vengeance was like life fire.”

And one day they came upon a tree where . . . they came upon a place where love lived. The boy was with him, someone wrote in blood on sand. A beautiful hand wrote on the sand in blood. But that is not the story.

For the man who lived in the house of love, he came upon the message written in blood, by one who was dead. And he was beyond words, but filled himself with grief and rage, for they were dead. They were all dead. Some of them only half was left. Some of them half-eaten, some of them drained of blood, and drained empty. And this man he cried, and this man he wailed, and this man he cursed the silence of the gods, then cursed them too. And this man, he buried them, but could not bury the one made of spirits, for though they could not kill her, the killing ground made her go mad and she roams all the way to the sand sea, groaning a spirit song. And this man fell to his knees nine times in great grief, and profound dismay, and magnificent sorrow. And

this man, after season upon season of grief, let that grief sink, and harden, and turn into rage, which sunk, and hardened, and turned into purpose. For he knew who the boy came with, or who came with the boy. He knew it was the beast whose brother the Leopard killed, though the beast came and took his revenge on him. He said to his friend, All these deaths are on your hands. And he sharpened his axes and dipped his knives in viper spit, and he set out for the Mweru, for that is where the boy came from and that is where he would go back to. Here is truth, the man did not think on this very long, for he was still beyond thought. Here is deeper truth. He would kill the boy and who...

“No, you should not have. What lives we lead. Remorse for what we should not have done, regret for what we should. I miss being a leopard, Tracker. I miss never knowing should.”

Maybe this was how all stories end, the ones with true women and men, true bodies falling into wounding and death, and with real blood spilled. And maybe this is why the great

stories we told are so different. Because we tell stories to live, and that sort of story needs a purpose, so that sort of story must be a lie. Because at the end of a true story, there is nothing but waste.