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

by Marlon James

Outside a black flurry turned into birds. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred and one. Birds looking like pigeons, looking like vultures, looking like crows landing on the windowsill

“Did you know they came before the world? Even the gods came and saw them and even the gods didn’t dare. All children come from the mother’s will, not from mating with a father. When the world was just a gourd, the witches six were one, and she circled the world until her mouth reached her tail.”

I go to the temple of Wakadishu. I go to the steps of Mantha. I go north, and east, and west, and I have not felt the presence of the gods. Not one. But that is another of your tricks, is it not, God butcher? Nobody knows what they lost because nobody remembers what they have had.

This is your King? Shall we call him Khosi, our lion? Get him a kaphoonda for his royal head. Three brass rings for his ankle. We should call players of moondu and matuumba, and all drums. Shall we call xylophone? Shall we call all earth chiefs to come and bow down in red dirt? Shall I pluck a hair from my head and stick it in his?

Have you looked upon your son? How could you, you have never even known your son. Put your gaze on him now. If a demon beast bared a nipple, he would grab it and suck it.

Have you not noticed that more and more, the men of the lands are like you, and the women too? You have been around witchmen and fetish priests, but when have you last seen an offering? A sacrifice? A shrine? Women gathered in praise? Fuck the gods, you say. I have heard you. And yes fuck them, this is the age of kings. You don’t believe in belief. I butcher belief. We are the same.” “I will tell my mother she has one more son. She will laugh,” I said. “Not with your grandfather’s cock in her mouth she will not.” My head went red. I grabbed my ax from the Leopard, who growled.

Thunder god mystic brother blessed with tongue, and the gift of kora. It is I, Ikede, son of Akede, I was the griot that lived in the monkeybread tree.

I been walking many days and many nights, when across it I come, the tree near a river I climb up and hear the parrot, and the crow, and the baboon I hear children laughing, screaming, fighting, making gods hush and there up top lie a man on a rug.

The grand cutter, he grab the slain and pull, and pull he say, One cut! Kick the knife and we will kill you. Run from the knife and we will disown you. He say, One cut! And the Wolf Eye, he grab the cutter arm and he say, No. Listen to me, he say No. The man in the mountain and the women in the river hear a whisper that drop like thunder and everybody quiet. The Wolf Eye say, The sum of my days is all about cutting the woman out Cut her out of me cut her out of my mother cut her out of all who walk and carry the world And he look down at him maleness crowned at the top by femaleness and say What in this make wrong, how is this not the will of the gods and if it’s not the will of the gods then it is the will of me he look at Mossi and say You tell me I cut all woman out from my mother to whoever pass the house when it is I who leave my mother and I who would now cut away my own self and with this he get up and with this he leave the knife and he walk away and the people silent for he still a fierce man

and in a blue room she sit looking old and weak but her eyes look young When did he die? Tracker ask. When a grandfather was supposed to die, she say. And he look at her like he have something to say And his mouth quiver like he have something to say And Mossi start to move we out of the room like he have something to say But Tracker stagger again and this time he fall And she stoop down and touch his cheek One of your eyes didn’t come from me, she say and what come out his mouth was a wail And he wail for his mother And he wail for his mother And night come for day And day come for night And still he wail.

The Malangika. The tunnel city, somewhere west of the Blood Swamp but east of Wakadishu, about three hundred paces below the ground and as big as a third of Fasisi. Hundreds of years ago, before people wrote accounts, the first people from above had a quarrel with the gods of sky over rain, and the gods of earth gave them this place to hide from sky wrath. They dug wide and deep, and the caverns rose high to hold buildings of three, four, and even five floors. Columns from chopped-down trees and stone to brace the tunnels so that they never collapsed, though two sections collapsed twice. Throughout the tunnels, builders carved out holes above to let the sun and moon light the street, like the lamps of Juba. People in the Malangika were the true first ones to unlock the secret of metals, some say. But they were selfish and greedy, and became the first blacksmith kings. They died holding on to their iron and silver. And some working other kinds of art and craft dug even deeper. But the people of this city soon died out, and the city itself was forgotten. And only in a place forgotten could a new city arise, a city with no notice, a city that was a market. A place that sold what could not be sold aboveground, not even at night. The secret witches market.

Ten and five paces, the air grew colder, and heavier. Out of this strange air I stepped, then walked forward again until sour dew touched my face. The enchantment left my mouth a whisper, and after that I waited. And waited. Something scurried behind me and I pulled my knives quick, then turned around to see rats running away. So I waited longer. I was about to start walking when above me the air crackled and sparked, then burst in a flame that raced in a circle the span of my arms, and went out. The air was less heavy and sour, but the road looked the same. Not one of the ten and nine doors, but just a door. Seven steps in, the floor vanished. I tried to jump back but fell in, spun, and stabbed the knives into the dirt around me. Below my feet, only air. The drop could have been to the center of the world, or into a pit of spikes or snakes. I pulled myself up, ran back, dashed to the edge, leapt into the air, missed the landing, and slammed into the side, stabbing the dirt to not fall in again.

“Merchant, if any god were to look, what would he say about you and your obscene family?” “There were voices, you heard them say that we were an obscene family,” the voice I knew said.

He cried to his gods. He may have really loved this woman. This boy. But not enough to join them.

“The road of blind jackals!” he shouted. “The road of blind jackals. Down where the tunnels all fall down and all sort of thing live in the rubble. West of here.”

Nothing walked this road of blind jackals but the fear to walk it. Two spirits did come to me screaming, looking for their bodies, but nothing struck fear in me anymore. Nothing was struck in me, not even sadness. Not even indifference. The two spirits both ran through me and shivered. They looked at me, screamed, and vanished. They were right to scream. I would kill the dead. The entrance was so small that I crawled inside until I was again in a wide space, as high as before, but all around was dust, and bricks, cracked walls, broken wood, rotting flesh, old blood, and dried shit. Carved out of this was a seat like a throne. And there he was, sprawled on it, looking at the two rays of light that hit his legs and his face. The white wings, black at the tips, spread out and hanging lazy, his eyes barely open. A little bolt jumped off his chest and vanished. The Ipundulu, the lightning bird, looking as if he could not bother with this business of being Ipundulu. I stepped into something brittle that broke at my feet. Shed skin. “Greetings, Nyka,” I said.

“The Nyka I know would have fed him bits of his own woman himself,” I said. “That Nyka you know. I don’t know this Nyka. And I do not know you.” “I am—” “Tracker. Yes, I know your name. Even witchmen and devils know it. They even whisper, Watch the Tracker. He has turned from red to black. Do you know what they mean? There is trouble all around you. I look at you and see a man darker than me.” “All men are darker than you.” “I see death as well.” “What a deep thinker you have become, Nyka, now that you eat women’s hearts.” He laughed, looking at me as if just seeing me. Then he laughed again, the cackle of the mad, or the cackle of one who had seen all the madness of the world. “And yet I’m the one in this room with a heart,” he said.

His words did not upset me, but I thought right then of the me that it would have once struck. I asked him how he came to be this way, and this is what he told me. That he and Nsaka Ne Vampi set off, not because of me, for he would have dealt with me, for such violent hate could exist only where there was still violent love beneath it.

Nyka said nothing. We kept walking until the savannah ran out of bodies, and parts of bodies, and the birds were behind us. Soon we ran out of trees and were standing at the edge of the Ikosha, the salt plains, two and half days’ ride across, and nothing but dirt cracked like dried mud and silver like the moon.

The Bakanga trail. Not a road or even a path, just a stretch trod by wagon and horse and feet so much that plants stopped growing. On both sides, a forest of whistling thorns giving off ghost music, swaying trunks with branches thinner than my arm. The trail turned to dirt, cracked mud, and rocks, but it reached the horizon and then went beyond it. On both sides, yellow grass with patches of green, and small trees round like the moon, and taller trees where the leaves spread wide and the tops were flat. I heard Nyka say the biggest and the fattest of gods squatted on them too long, which is why the tops sat so flat.

“I 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.” “Who was the man that made him seek revenge?” the Aesi asked. I know Nyka. I know he stopped and turned to face him, eye-to-eye, when he said, Me. He sounded almost proud. But then even the most wretched things Nyka ever said or did were always followed by a voice that sounded like he would kiss you many times and softly. “He will kill this Sasabonsam, is that how you call it? He will kill him on just malcontent alone. What did this beast do?”

He looked like an elder, almost like the Aesi, but taller, and much thinner, wearing earrings made of beads, and a clay skull plate at the back of his head. A brave man with many killings who now lived in fear. His eyes, two cuts in a face full of wrinkles.

“Black hair, like the ape but he not the ape. Black wings, like the bat, but he not the bat. And ears like a horse.” “And he feet like he hands, and they grab like hands, but big like his head, and he come from sky and try to go back to it.”

“Sasabonsam!” He did not even turn. I gripped both axes as if it was them that I hated. He made me think dark thoughts, that he held no joy for what he did, or even pride, but nothing. Nothing at all. That my enemy did not even know that I sought him, and even in the presence of my smell and my face I was no different from any other fool throwing an ax. Nothing, nothing at all.

“Did he teach you that as well, the one who rides with you? You would do good to keep him up front with you, for his kind prefers to kill from behind,” I said. He rode his horse right up to the front until he was beside the warrior chief. Dressed as they were with the feather helmet taming his wild hair, he seemed not only odd on the horse but that he knew it. The way a dog would look riding a cow. “How it goes, Tracker?” “Never seems to go away, Leopard.” “It’s been said you have a nose.” “Under your armour, you stink worse than them.”

Something about this forest reminded me of the Darklands. Not the trees pushing their way up into sky or plants, tufts, and ferns spreading out of the trunks like flowers. Or the mist so thick it felt like light rain. The silence is what took me back to that forest. The quiet is what bothered me. Some vines reached down right in front of us like rope. Some swung back up and around branches like snakes. Some vines were snakes. Dark had not yet come, but no sunlight came through these leaves. But this was not the Darklands, for the Darklands had many ghost beasts. Things cooed, and cawed, and screeched, and bawled. Nothing growled, nothing roared.

Skin gray and covered in scars and marks like river folk, so light you could see the blood rivers along his limbs. Bald head with a sprout of hair on top, white eyes with no black, teeth yellow, and sharp, and poking out of his mouth.

“What did you push?” “What was already in the mind. Beyond the fetish priest, and beyond the prophet. Beyond the seer. Even beyond the gods! True wisdom is never without, it is within, was always within. Within always.”

“Kamikwayo is what some called me.” “Where did you practice white science?” “Practice? Practice is for the student.” “The white scientists of Dolingo enter men’s heads so they desire unnatural things.” “Dolingon are butchers. A meat shop with all of them. Meat shop! I was neither scientist nor witchman. I was an artist. The greatest student to leave the University of Wakadishu—not even the wisest seers, and teachers, and masters could teach me, for I was wiser than them all. They said, You, Kamikwayo, must devote the rest of your days to the life of the mind. That is what they said, I was there when they said it. Go to the Wakadishu palace of wisdom.

And I thought something smart and final to say, something to follow with a wicked laugh. But I had no words,

Monsters can never hide a face behind a face, but men can.

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.

For if death seems so sweet to him, who are we to stop him, one of them must have said.

The ten nameless tunnels of the Mweru. Like ten overturned urns of the gods. His horse stood outside one, as high as four hundred paces upon four hundred, or higher, taller than a battlefield, taller than a lake was wide, so high that the roof vanished in shadow and fog.

He and horse rode down the middle tunnel to the light at the end, which was not a light, for the Mweru had no light, only things that glow. And at the end of the tunnel, wide flatlands pockmarked with perfect holes, with pools of water that smelled like sulfur, and at the foot of the wilderness, a palace that looked like a big fish. Up close it looked like a grounded ship made of nothing but sails, fifty and a hundred, even more. Sail upon sails, white and dirty, brown and red, looking like blood spatter. Two stairways, two loose tongues rolled out of two doors. No sentries, no guards, no sign of magic or science.

A giant came at him and he thought of an Ogo, who was his great friend, who was a man, not a giant, a man of always present sorrow,

He grabbed a spear and threw it where he thought the voice was coming from. It struck wood. The orbs shone brighter. She sat on a black throne ringed with cowries, and several hands above it lodged the spear. Two guards, women, stood by her side with swords, two beside them crouched with spears. Two elephant tusks at her feet and carved columns tall as trees behind her. Her headdress, thick cloth wrapped around and around to look like a flaming flower. Flowing robes from chest to feet, gold breastplate on her chest, as if she was one of the warrior queens.

“I do not know. Perhaps abandon him to be killed. No, sold. No, stolen, and raised by vampires. And maybe always have someone to ask someone to ask someone find the little one, with lie after lie so that no one would even know that you had a son. Is that what it is like to have a child?” “Quiet.” “Finest of mothers you must be.”

I was not like you, none of them were my blood. But I was like you, I let others raise them, and said it was for their own sake when it was for mine.

why should they go with a man they do not know and another they do not like? And he who was partner to me, he said look at this, and he showed them a coin and then closed his hands, then opened them again, and the coin vanished, and closed his hands again, and he asked in which hand is the coin, and Giraffe Boy pointed to his left, so he opened his left and a butterfly flew away. Tell you truth, they followed him, not me. So we all followed him to the land of Mitu, and there we lived in a baobab tree. And we said to the children, You need names, for Giraffe Boy and Smoke Girl are not names, they are what people call you. One by one they lost their anger for me, Smoke Girl last. Of course, the albino, who was no boy, but tall like a man, we named him Kamangu. Giraffe Boy, who was always tall, we named him Niguli, for he was not even like the giraffe. He had no spots and it was his legs, not his neck, that was long. Kosu is what we called the boy with no legs. He rolled everywhere like a ball, but always picked up dirt, or shit, or grass, or when he yelled, a thorn. First we gave the joined twins names that joined and they cursed us like old widows. You and him share everything and yet you have different names, they said to me and Mossi. So the noisy one, we called him Loembe, and the more quiet but still loud one we called Nkanga. And Smoke Girl. He who was mine said, One of them must have a name from where I come from. One must remind me of me. So he named Smoke Girl Khams...

ache for your loss. But you might as well have told me about the death of stars. My son is not here. How quickly you refuse to see that he is a victim as well. That I woke up to hear my son gone. Kidnapped. That my son has spent so many years and moons not living according to his will or mine. How could he know anything else?”

Two came at him first and he became Mossi, he of the two swords, from the East, who never visited him in mind or spirit since he wrote in his own blood in the dirt. Mossi did not visit him now; Tracker just thought of him standing on rocks, practicing with swords.

Or this could still be a dream jungle of some kind. I once overheard a drunk man in a bar in Malakal say that if you are ever lost in a dream and cannot tell if you are asleep or awake, take a look at your hands, for in a dream you always have four fingers. My hands showed five.

it must have been a head witch trying to drive a needle through deaths upon deaths and sew them together. My father whom I did not know, and my unavenged brother. And Mossi, and so many more. Not a head witch, but the god of the underworld telling me of the wronged dead that I must make right, as if I am why they are dead. How must the Tracker who lives for no one have so many dead on his watch? Must he be blamed for them all? My head argued with my head,

Sasabonsam. I had never stopped to look at his face. His big white eyes, jackal ears, and sharp bottom teeth sticking out from his lips like a warthog’s. His whole body overrun with black hair except for his pale chest and pink nipples, an ivory necklace, and a loincloth that made me laugh. He growled. “Your smell, I remember it. I follow it,” he said. “Quiet.” “Come round looking for it.” “Silence.” “You not there. So I eat. The little ones, they taste strange.”

“You the fool and she the fool. She the one in gold and red and all she do, she sit. I see her through the window. Only I know the boy. I come for him in the weird place and he follow me. He even call me, for the white one teach him how to call. Me never want the boy for he don’t want me, he want the lightning one, but he call me and I come take him, and the night did quick and I fly away with him and he say I hear my mother talk about the wolf and he cubs and how she try to make him her soldier and they live in the monkeybread tree and I say that is the one who kill my brother, I hear, he says so and the boy say fly with me on your back and I can take you, and he take me.”

And then it was all thunder and then lightning, one bolt, then three, all striking Sasabonsam, but with no end, just blasting and striking and spreading all over him and running into his mouth and ears and coming out of his eyes and mouth, as fire and juice and smoke and something came out of his mouth, not a scream, or a shriek, or a yell. A wail. Hair and skin caught flame and he staggered and dropped to one knee as lightning still struck him and thunder still dropped heavy on him, and fell Sasabonsam did, his body burning in a huge flame, then going out just as quick. Nyka fell from the tree. He was saying something to me, but I did not listen. I grabbed my ax and went over to the charred carcass of Sasabonsam and swung it down at the neck. I yanked out and chopped, yanked out and chopped until the ax hacked through skin, through bone, straight to the ground. I fell on my knees and didn’t know I was shouting until Nyka touched my shoulder. I pushed him away, almost swinging my ax at him. “Take your disgusting hands off me,” I said. He backed away, his hands in the air. “I saved your life,” Nyka said. “You also took it. Not much it was, but you took it.”

Not far from the Sasabonsam, I dug a hole in the earth with my hands, placed the necklace of my children’s teeth in it, then covered the hole back up. I patted the earth slow until it was smooth, and still I would not leave, would not stop patting and smoothing it until it felt like I was making a beautiful thing.

How did you rid yourself of it?” “My memory?” “Your guilt,” I said. He laughed. “You wish to hear of my remorse for betraying you.” “I do not wish to hear anything.” “You just asked the question.” “You answered it. You had no remorse to get rid of. You’re not a man, I knew that before I came across your shed skin. You act as if it makes you itch, but losing skin is nothing new for you.” “True, even when I was a man I was closer to the snake, or the lizard, even the bird.” “Why did you betray me?” “So you are looking for remorse.” “Fuck the gods with your remorse. I want the tale.” “The tale? The tale is when it came to you, my friend, I was bewitched by the very conceit of it. You wish for something more? A reason? A way that I told myself it was just? Perhaps coin, or cowrie? The truth was I just fed my fill on the conceit of it. You think of the time I betrayed you? Think of the many times I did not betray you. The Bultungi hounded me for ten and three moons. That was ten and three moons of me thinking not of myself but of you.”

They looked at us as if waiting for us to appear. The Leopard, the boy, and, holding a torch, with her face and breast hidden under kaolin clay, and with her headdress of feathers and stones, the woman on the mound before. Sogolon. Seeing her on the other side of the lake did not shock me. Nor did my not recognizing her before, perhaps because when women age in these lands, they become the same woman. Perhaps she wore kaolin to hide what must have been horrible burn scars, but from where we stood, I saw nose, lips, even ears. I wondered how she survived, while not being surprised that she did. Meanwhile the Leopard, white from dust, stood a few paces behind her, with the boy between them. The boy looked at them, and at me. He saw Nyka and turned to run but Sogolon grabbed his thick hair and pulled him back. “Red wolf,” she said. “No, not red no more. Wolf.”