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

by Marlon James

This Bunshi said the Omoluzu came to kill Fumanguru and she saved his child as his dying wish. But it was not his child. Somebody told Ekoiye to send word as soon as someone came asking of Fumanguru, because somebody knew one day a man would come to ask. Somebody has been waiting for this, for me, for someone like me all along. They were not after Fumanguru. They were after the child.

one moon past, a fact that staggered him every time I said it. I think I know why. Time is flat to all animals; they measure it in when to eat, when to sleep, when to breed, so missed time to him feels a board with a huge hole punched out.

Bingingun. This is what I learned from the Kongori and why they hate nakedness. To wear only skin is to wear the mind of a child, the mind of the mad, or even the mind of the man with no role in society, even lower than usurers and trinket sellers, for even such as they have their use. Bingingun

They wear the aso oke cloth underneath, and this cloth is white with indigo stripes, and looks like that with which we clothe the dead. They wear net on the face and hands, for now they will be masquerade, not men with names. When the Bingingun spins and makes a whirlwind the ancestors possess them. They jump high as roofs.

Omoluzu had without a doubt been here. Only plants that grew off the dead grew here.

I grabbed it. Cloth, simple as aso oke fabric, but not. I pulled at it, but the boy would not let go. He died with this, his last show of defiance, the poor, brave child. I halted the thought before it went further. One more pull and it was free. A piece of blue cloth torn from something bigger. The boy was wrapped in white. I put the cloth to my nose and one year of sun, night, thunder, and rain, hundreds of days of walks, dozens of hills, valleys, sands, seas, houses, cities, plains. Smell so strong it became sigh, and hearing and touch. I could reach out and touch the boy, grab him in my mind and reel from him being so far away. Too far away, my head rushing and jumping and sinking below sea then flying higher and higher and higher and smelling air free of smoke. Smell pushing me, pulling me, dragging me through jungles, tunnels, birds, ripped flesh, flesh-eater insects, shit, piss, and blood. Blood rushed into me. So much blood my eyes went red, then black.

Ten and five of them standing in a half-moon, lake-blue turbans on their heads, lake-blue veils covering all but eye and nose. A sash the same blue across chest and back, black tunic and breeches underneath. And with spear, bow, spear, bow, spear, bow, and on and on, till the last one, carrying a sword on his left, sheathed, like mine.

The man with the sword was not dressed as they. He wore a red cape over his right shoulder and under his left, flapping in the wind and slapping the ground. A tunic with the chest open that stopped right above his thighs and tied at the waist with a leather belt that held his sword. He waved them down, but watched me the whole time. Sadogo stood in position, waiting for a fight.

He was tall but shorter than me, his eyes almost reached mine, and his face was hidden in black dye. Gourd helmet with an iron stitch running in the middle, though the sun was gone and it was cool. A thin silver necklace, lost in chest bush. Head shaped sharp like an arrowpoint, nose hawk-like, thick lips that curved up as if he was smiling, and eyes so clear I could see them in the dark. Rings in both ears.

The Ogo told me of all his killings, one hundred, seventy and one. Know this, no mother survives the birth of an Ogo. The griot tells stories of mad love, of women falling for giants, but these are the stories we tell each other under masuku beer. An Ogo birth comes like hail. Nobody can tell when or how and no divination or science can tell it. Most Ogo are killed at the only time they can be killed, just after birth, for even a young Ogo can rip the breast off the poor woman he suckles, and crush the finger that he grips. Some raise them in secret, and feed them buffalo milk, and raise them for the work of ten plows. But something in the head snaps at ten and five years and the Ogo becomes the monster the gods fated him to become. But not always. So when Sadogo came out of his mother and killed her, the father cursed the son, saying he must have been the product of adultery. He cursed the mother’s body to a mound outside the village, leaving her to vulture and crow, and would have killed the child or left him exposed in the hollow of an ako tree had word not spread that an Ogo was among them born in the village. A man came two days later, when the man’s hut still stunk of afterbirth, shit, and blood, and bought the baby for seven pieces of gold and ten and five goats. He gave the Ogo a name so in that way he would be regarded as a man and not a beast, but Sadogo had forgotten it. When he was ten and two in years, Sadogo slew a lion who had developed a taste for man flesh...

Sadogo's tale

“Is every woman a witch to you, Wolf Eye?” “And what of it?” I said. “All you know of women is your mother jumping up and down your grandfather’s cock, yet you blame all of womandom for it. The day your father died was the first day of freedom your mother ever saw until your grandfather enslaved her again. All you ever did was watch woman suffer and blame her for it.”

“Think like a man and not a child, Tracker, this is no task for one, or two.” “And yet two is what you have. If Sogolon returns and is willing then we will be three.”

“Is the tracker such a fool to think I am the only one looking for this child?” “Who else seeks him?” “The one who visits you in dreams. Skin like tar, hair red, when you see him you hear the flutter of black wings.” “I don’t know this man.” “He knows you. They call him the Aesi. He answers to the North King.” “Why would he visit my dreams?” “They are your dreams, not mine. You have something he wants. He too might know that you have found the child.” “Tell me more of this man.” “Necromancer. Witchman. He is the King’s adviser. From an old line of monks who started working secret science and invoking devils and were thrown out of the order. The King consults him on all things, even which direction to spit. Do you know why they call Kwash Dara the Spider King? Because in everything he moves with four arms and four legs, except two of each belong to the Aesi.”

That night I was again in a dream jungle. A new kind of dream where I wondered why I was in it, and why a dream of trees and bushes and bitter raindrops. And moving but not walking, and knowing something would reveal itself in a clearing, or in the mirror of a puddle, or in the lonely cry of a lonely ghost bird. Reveal something that I already knew. The Sangoma once told me that the dream jungle is where you find things that are hidden in the waking world. And that hidden thing might be a lust. The knowledge is in leaves, and dirt, and mist, and heat thick like a ghost, and it is a jungle because the jungle is the only place where anything can wait behind the cover of a large leaf. The jungle finds you, you cannot seek it, which is why everyone in the jungle seeks why they are there. But looking for meaning will drive you mad, the Sangoma also said. So I did not ask for meaning when Smoke Girl was the first to run to me, then run past me, not ignoring me but so used to my presence. And in the jungle was a man I only saw by hair on his hands and legs. He touched my shoulder, and chest, and belly, leaned his forehead to touch mine, then grabbed two spears and walked away. And Giraffe Boy stood with his legs wide open, the boy with no legs curled into a ball and rolled right between them, and the patch of sand in the middle of the bush blinked, then smiled, and the albino rose out of the sand as if he came from it and was not just hiding in it. Then he grabbed a spear and wen...

Dream jungle

“Some of these parchments are older than the children of the gods. Word is divine wish, they say. Word is invisible to all but the gods. So when woman or man write words, they dare to look at the divine. Oh, what power.”

This old bastard was becoming my favorite person in Kongor who was not a buffalo. Maybe because he was one of the few who did not point to my eye and say, How that? A leather-bound book, on its own pedestal and large as half a man, opened up and from it burst lights and drums. Not now, he shouted, and the book slapped itself back shut.

“So that even if the wrong man came this close to the water, he would never be able to drink.”

“You trust the good word of a prostitute over a man of justice?” “You’re a man of order, not justice,” I said. “Continue with your story.” “No surprise you confuse the two.” “Continue, I say.”

Here is my guess. Written accounts of kings began only with Kwash Netu’s age. The rest belong only in the voices of the griots. And there is the problem. The men who sing about the deeds of all kings are in the King’s employ.”

Somebody is both one step ahead of us, waiting for us to come, and one step behind us, waiting for us to move so that he can follow.

His hair short and red. Earplugs glimmered in both ears. The same man I saw back in the pool in the Darklands. This man Bunshi called the Aesi. In a black cape that flapped open like wings, waking up the wind and whipping up the dust. Mossi drew his sword; I did not draw my knives. The dust around him would not settle, rising and falling and swirling and shifting into lizard-like beasts as high as the walls, then swirling again into dust, then into four figures as huge as the Ogo, then falling to the ground as dust, then rising again and flapping like wings. The prefect grabbed my shoulder.

“Wearing myrrh part of being a prefect?” “Wearing myrrh is part of everything, Tracker.” “Fancy prefect. Coin must be good in Kongor.” “Look, you gods, a man wearing a curtain complains of me being fancy.”

“Just like all you men of learning. Everything in the world cooks down to two. Either-or, if-then, yes-no, night-day, good-bad. You all believe in twos so much I wonder if any of you can count to three.” “Harsh. But you are no believer either.”

They are black like night and thick like tar and when they appear on your ceiling it sounds like thunder and sea. One

“What do you see at night?” “Stars. In my lands night is where people do the evil to enemies they call friends in the day. It’s when sihrs and jinns come play, and people scheme and plot.

Before first light something floated on the breeze, a smell of animals far off, and I thought of Leopard. Anger burned in me, but then it left in the quick, leaving sadness and many words that I could have said. His laugh would have bounced all over that cliff. I did not want to miss him. I had gone years without seeing him before we met at that inn, but until then I always felt that he was the one soul who if I ever needed him would appear without me even asking.

The earth kept cracking, and the girl grabbed Sogolon to help her back on her horse. The buffalo started to trot and Sadogo was about to pick me up and put me on his shoulders. From the cracking earth came heat and sulfur, which made us cough. And the cackle of old women, louder and louder until it turned into a hum.

The cracking and the cackling grew louder, until something burst out, right in the middle of the path, with a scream. A column, a tower that bent, and cracked, and split pieces off. Three others burst through the ground on the right, like obelisks. Sogolon was too weak to rein the horse, so the girl pressed her knees into him. The horse tried to gallop but the shifting, cracking column unfolded itself, shaped itself, and it was a woman, larger than the horse, below the waist dark and scaly and still rising from the earth as if the rest of her body was a snake. She rose as tall as two trees, and spooked Sogolon’s horse, which jumped up on her hind legs and threw both of them off. Her skin looked like the moon, but it was white dust floating in the air like clouds. On the two sides of the path rose four more, with thin rib bones pressing against their skin, and breasts plump, faces with dark eyes and wild locks that rose high like flame. The creatures on the right covered themselves in dust, the creatures on the left covered themselves in blood. Also this, the flutter of wings, though none of them had any wings.

Mawana witches

We walked through thick forest bush until we came to see stars dancing across open savannah,

When you last see rain in Fasisi?” “And yet there are trees.” “Defeat is not the problem. Victory is.” Even Mossi leaned in when he heard that.

“Yes, the great kings of the North make war and win plenty, but they always want more. Free lands, lands in fuss. Those cities, and towns that not take a side. They cannot help themself, man raise by man, not woman. Woman not like man, they don’t know gluttony. Each kingdom, spread wider, each king get worse. The South kings get madder and madder because they keep making incest with one another. The North kings get a different kind of mad. Evil curse them, because they whole line come out of the worst kind of evil, for what kind of evil kill he own blood?”

“Gods of sky—no, lords of sky. They no longer speak to spirits of the ground. The voice of kings is becoming the new voice of the gods. Break the silence of the gods. Mark the god butcher, for he marks the killer of kings. The god butcher in black wings. And the rest?” “Please.” “Take him to Mitu, to the guided hand of the one-eyed one, walk through Mweru and let it eat your trail. Take no rest till Go.”

“You need me. Or you would have been rid of me a moon ago. Not only do you need me, you waited a whole moon for me. Because I can find this boy;

We have come a long way, Sogolon. Longer than I would have ever gone on half-truths and lies, but something about this story . . . no, that’s not it. Something about you and the fish shaping this story, controlling so hard how each of us reads it, that turned into the only reason I came. Now it will be the only reason I leave.”

When the ewe drummer want to send you tidings good or bad, he pull the drum strings tight to the body and pitch the voice high or pitch the voice low. Through the pluck, through the pitch, through the beat, lie the message that only you can hear if it meant for you.

The people in the Hills of Enchantment call him Ipundulu.” “Lightning bird,” whispered the old man. A harsh whisper, a curse under his breath.

Enough with hiding in caves for no reason, we sing the true story of kings! We don’t own truth. Truth is truth and nothing you can do about it even if you hide it, or kill it, or even tell it. It was truth before you open your mouth and say, That there is a true thing. Truth is truth even after them who rule send poison griots to spread lie till they take root in every man’s heart.

Truth

So gather your griots and let a caravan take them to Kongor, for they can live safe among the books of the house of records. For the age of the voice is over and we in the age of the written mark. The word on stone, the word on parchment, the word on cloth, the word that is even greater than the glyph for the word provoke a sound in the mouth.

Word

And he open he gown which is not no gown but his wings and he not wearing no robes, and he rape them, one then two, and most he kill and some he make live, but they not living, they living dead with lightning running through they body where blood used to run. I hear rumors that he change man too.

he let loose thunder which shake the ground and deaf the ear and knock down a whole house and lightning that shock your blood and burn you to a black husk.

“Adze? They working together?” Sogolon said. “Not them two alone. Others. Ipundulu and Adze, they two suck the body life out but they don’t drain it to a husk. That be the grass troll, Eloko. He only hunt alone or with his kind, but since the King burn down his forest to plant tobacco and millet, they join anyone. A lightning woman, this be her story. This is what happen when Ipundulu suck out all the blood but stop before he suck out the lifeblood, and breed lightning into her and leave her mad too.

“He’s saying the boy is one of them. If not a blood drinker, then under necromancy.”

The blue pulled me in. Light like the sky, and swirls of dark blue like the sea itself. The sea but not like the sea, more like the sea of dream. Bobbing out of the sea, as if leaping on land, were creatures great and small, grand fishes, and a beast with eight tails gobbling a dhow boat. “I have been waiting to show this to you, the sand sea before it was sand,” the old man said to Sogolon.

“Of course. Once you go through a door, you can only go in one direction until you go through all doors. You can never go back until you done.” “What happens when you try?” I say. “You who kiss a door and flame burns away the mask of it, you should know. The door consume you in flames and burn you up, something that would scare the Ipundulu. They must be using them for two years now,

And yet the world is also flat on paper, with lands that shape themselves like blots of blood seeping through linen, of uneven shape, that sometimes look like the skulls of ill-born men.

I wondered about it, that once I wanted more than anything to be Ku, but now I don’t even remember why.

I heard a giggle from my memory. No, not a memory but that thing where I cannot tell what I remember from what I dream. The giggle had no sound, but was blue and smoky.

The old man built a rhythm with his right fingers and a melody with his left. He cleared his throat. His voice came out higher than when he spoke. High like a cried alarm, still higher, with the top of his tongue clicking the top of his mouth to make rhythm. I it is who is speaking I am a southern griot We now few we was once all Hide in dark I come out of The wilderness, I come out of The cave, I come out and see I was looking for A lover I want get A lover I did lose Another I want get Time make every man a widow And every woman too Inside him Black like him Black that suck through the hole in the world And the biggest hole in the world Be the hole of loneliness The man lose him soul give it ’way For he was looking for A lover He want get A lover He did lose Another He want get A man when he eat like glutton Look like a man when he starve Tell me can you tell one from two You glutting by day Then you starving by night, yeah Look at you, fooling you You want find A lover You want get A lover You did lose Another You did lose A lover You did lose A lover You did lose Another You did lose Then he plucked the strings and let the kora alone speak, and I left before he sang more. I ran outside because I was a man, and string and song should never affect me so. Outside, where nothing could suck all the air out of one place. And where I could say it was wind that made my eyes wet, truth it was wind. Out on the rock the prefect stood, wind running past him, whipping his hair. The...

“Death remains king over us, does he not? He still wants to choose when to take us. Sometimes even before our ancestors have made a place. Maybe he was a man in defiance of the final King, Ogo. Maybe he just said, Fuck the gods, I choose when to be with my own ancestors.” “Maybe,” he said. “I wish I had better words, words like he used to sing. But he must have thought that whatever was his purpose, he fulfilled it. After that there was nothing to—”

Day reddened, then blackened,