Black Leopard, Red Wolf

by Marlon James

  “I shall find you in ten days,” I said to him.

  “Eight is the better number,” he said. “More than seven days with my mother and all I can do is try not to kill her. Drink some more.”

  * * *

  —

  A warmth, first on my forehead, ran down my neck. I opened my eyes and the piss hit my face and blinded me. I rubbed my eyes without thinking, and my right hand pulled my left. A shackle on my right hand, a chain, a shackle on my left. In front of me, a leg raised and piss spurting on me. Off in the dark, loud laughter. I lashed out but the chain stopped me. I tried to stand, I tried to scream, the women in the dark laughed louder. The animal, the beast, the dog pissed on me like I was the trunk of a tree. First I thought Nyka just left me drunk in an alley to be pissed on by dogs. Or someone, a madman or a slaver—they infested these alleys—or a husband who did not want me to find him now found me. My mind went wild, thinking three men or four, or five had found me in the alley and said, Here is the man who took the comfort from our lives. But men did not laugh like women. The dog lowered his foot and trotted away. The floor was dirt and I could make out walls. My mind went wild again. I would ask, Who are you men that I shall soon kill, but something gagged my mouth.

  Popping out of the dark first, two red eyes. Then teeth, long and white and ready. Light was above me when I looked up, light peeking through branches hiding this hole. A trap I fell into. A trap long forgotten, so that even the trapper would not know that I shall die here. But who put a gag in my mouth? Was it so that I could not scream while it bit into me and tore chunks apart? And yet before I saw the face, when it was just eyes and teeth, the piss told me everything. The hyena backed up in the dark, then charged straight at me. Another jumped out of the dark from the side and knocked her in the ribs, and they both rolled into the dark, scowling, growling, barking. Then they stopped and started laughing again.

  “Men in the West call us the Bultungi. You have unfinished business with us,” she said in the dark.

  I would have said I have no business with spotted devils, or that nothing glorious springs from deceiving scavengers, but I had a gag in my mouth. And hyenas, from what I knew, had no qualm with live flesh.

  The three came out of the dark: a girl; a woman older, perhaps her mother; and a still older woman, thin, with her back straight. The girl and the old woman wore nothing. The girl, her breasts like large plums, hips spread wide; her nana, a sprout of black-haired bush. The old woman, her face mostly cheekbones, her arms and frame thin, and her breasts lanky. The middle woman, her hair in braids, wore a red boubou tunic with rips and smudges. Wine, or dirt, or blood, or shit, I didn’t know; I could smell all of them. Also this. I looked into the dark for the male who pissed on me, but no man came. But the two naked women came in the little light, and I saw it on both of them. Long cocks, or what looked like cocks between their legs, thick and swinging quick.

  “Behold, it looks at us,” the middle one said.

  “Look at hyena womankind, longer and harder than you,” the young one said.

  “Shall we eat it now? Take him in? Limb by limb?” the old one said.

  “Will you raise much fuss, man? Living or dead flesh makes no difference to us,” the middle one said.

  “Come, come no fuss, rend the flesh, juice the blood, eat it, us,” the old one said.

  “I say we kill him now,” the young one said.

  “No, no, eat him slow, start with the feet, precious meat,” the old woman said.

  “Now.”

  “Later.”

  “Now!”

  “Later!”

  “Quiet!” the middle one shouted, then swung her arms wide and struck both.

  The young one changed first, in a blink. Her nose and mouth and chin shot out of her face and her eyes went white. The muscles on her shoulder pumped and popped up, and those in her arms raised from arm to fingertip as if snakes ran under the skin. On the old woman her chest spread as if new flesh was tearing out of the old, all under her rough skin. Her face went the same. Her fingers, now black claws, the tips like iron. All this happened far quicker than I describe it. The old woman growled, and the young girl did the heh-heh-heh laugh that was not a laugh. The old woman charged the middle one but she swatted her away like a fly. The old woman pawed the ground, thinking to charge again.

  “It took your ribs five moons to heal last time,” the middle one said.

  “Take the gag out and let him give us sport,” the old one said. The young one changed back to girl. She came to me and indeed her smell was foul. Whatever she last ate, she ate days ago and chunks of it rotted somewhere on her body. She ran her hands around the back of my head and I thought of banging my head against the wall, anything, even the slightest thing to resist. She laughed and her foul breath ran past my nose. She pulled the gag and I coughed up vomit. They all laughed. She came in close to my face as if about to lick the vomit off, or kiss it.

  “A comely bitch, this one be,” she said.

  “As man goes, he will not be the worst to go down my stomach,” the old one said.

  “Long in leg, thin in muscle, lean in fat, he will not be much of a meal,” said the old one.

  “Salt him with his brains, and add some hog fat to his flesh,” said the young one.

  “I give him this,” said the middle one. “In the only matter that counts with man, he impresses me. How do you run with it swinging so low?”

  I coughed until my throat was raw.

  “Maybe he will have water,” the old one said.

  “I have in me some strong water,” the young one said, and laughed. She hiked up her left leg and grabbed her dangling cock, then laughed instead of pissed. The old one laughed as well.

  The middle one stepped forward. She said, “We are the Bultungi, and you have unfinished business with us.”

  “Unfinished business I will finish with my hatchet,” I coughed. They all laughed.

  “Chop it off, place it in another room, and boom! Man still acting like he swinging,” said the old one.

  “Old bitch, not even me understand that,” said the young one.

  The middle one stood right before me. “Do you not remember us?” she said.

  “The hyena has never been a memorable beast.”

  “Make me give him something to remember,” the young one said.

  “Truly who remembers the hyena? You look like the head of a dog pushing out of the asshole of cat walking backwards.”

  The old and middle women laughed, but the young one flipped to fury. She changed. Still on two legs, she charged for me. Middle one kicked her leg out and tripped her. Young one landed hard on her chin and slid a little. She crouched and growled at the middle one, then started to circle her as if about to fight over fresh kill. She growled again, but the middle one, still in the form of woman, let loose a snarl louder than a roar. Maybe the room shook or maybe the young one, but even I felt something shift. She whimpered heh-heh-hehs under her breath.

  “How long since you saw our sisters?”

  I coughed again.

  “I stay away from half-dead hogs and rotting antelope, so I would never see your sisters.”

  I only noticed now, with her close, that her eyes were all white as well. The old one went off in the dark but her eyes popped out of the black.

  “And what sisters? You boy-beasts who change to women, what are you?”

  They all laughed.

  “Surely you know us. We are the beasts where the woman do the tasking and the men do the tasks. And since men have made it that the biggest cock rules ground and sky, does it not make sense that woman should have the biggest cock?” said the middle one.

  “This is a world where men rule.”

  “And what good has come of your rule?” the old one said.

  “There is game, there is bush, there are rivers without
poison, and no child starves because of the gluttony of his father, since we put men in their place, and the gods willed it,” said the middle one.

  “He don’t remember any of them. Maybe we cry. Maybe we make him cry,” the young one said.

  “I would tell you how many moons have passed, but we do not fear gray in the hair, nor the crook in back, so we do not count moons. Do you not remember the Hills of Enchantment? A boy with two axes jumped a pack of us, killing three and maiming one. Who could no longer hunt, became prey.”

  The other two groaned.

  “Women doing what they do. Protecting their young. Nurturing, providing—”

  “Feeding them whatever young child you were too glutted to feed yourself.”

  “That is the way of the bush.”

  “And should you come across me with half of your cub in my mouth, would you tell yourself that too is the way of the bush? Fuck the gods, if you are not the shiftiest of creatures. If you are in the bush, and of the bush, why do I smell your fucking stink in the city? You roll in the street and grovel like a mangy bitch to the women whose children you snatch at night.”

  “You have no honor.”

  “You bitches have me down in a hole full of man bones, and the smell of children you murder. A group of you killed ten and seven women and babies over twenty nights in Lajani until hunters killed them. Until I passed through and asked why does everywhere reek of hyena piss, they thought they were hunting wild dogs. I see your ways. You shift form to move among children, do you not? Then drag them away to kill. Not even the lowest shape-shifter kind sinks so low. Honor. There’s more honor to the worm.”

  “He keeps calling us dogs,” the young one said.

  “We followed you for a year,” the middle one said.

  “Why grab me now?”

  “I told you time is nothing to us, nor is haste. It’s your friend who took a year.”

  “Awhoa! Sister, look at his face. Look how it falls when you speak of the friend. Did you not yet see in your mind-eye that he betrayed you?”

  “Nyka. That is his name. Was there strong love between you? You thought he would never sell you for silver or gold, and yet how do we know his name?”

  “He is my friend.”

  “Nobody ever gets betrayed by their enemy.”

  “Nothing, he says. Now he says nothing. Watch the face. It’s drooping longer. No sting like betrayal’s sting. Watch the face,” the young one said.

  “It turns into a . . . a . . . scowl? Is it a scowl, sisters?” the old one asked.

  “Come out of the dark so you can see clear.”

  “I think the boy shall cry.”

  “Take heart, boy. He sold you to us a year ago. In that time I think he might have even grown to like you.”

  “He just like gold coin more.”

  “Do you wish that we kill him?” the middle one said as she stooped in front of me.

  I lunged at her as far as the chains would let me, but she did not even flinch.

  “I can do this for you. A final wish,” she said.

  “I have a wish,” I said.

  “Sisters, the man has a wish. Should one of us attend to it or all three?”

  “All three of you.”

  “Give us this wish, we shall hear it,” said the old one.

  I looked at them. The middle one smiling as if she was the healer woman come to touch my forehead, the old one cupping her ear as she looked at me, the younger one spitting and looking away.

  “I wish you would stay in hyena form, for though you are a hideous animal and your breath always stinks of rotting corpse, at least I didn’t have to bear you in the mockery form of women. Women who make me ask what kind of woman smells as if she shits from the mouth.”

  The old and young ones howled and changed form again, but I knew the middle one would not allow them to touch me. Yet.

  “I wish to see the view of the gods, when I kill each of you.”

  The middle one threw herself at me as if to kiss. Indeed she grabbed my head as if to kiss and parted her lips. Sisters, she said, and both ran to me as women, and grabbed my arms. Strong, strong women, they held me down no matter how hard I struggled. She moved in to kiss my mouth, but moved her lips upward, touching my nose, brushing my cheek, and stopping at my left eye. I closed it before she licked it. She took her fingers and pried it open. She covered it with her mouth and licked the eye. I yelled and struggled, jerked my chest up and tried to nod my head out of her grip. I screamed before I knew what she was doing. Then she stopped licking. And started sucking. She pressed her lips around the eye and sucked, and sucked, and I could feel myself pulling out of my own head, sucked into her mouth. I screamed and screamed but that made the other two laugh and laugh. She sucked and sucked and all around my eye was dark and hot. It was leaving me. It was leaving me. It was forgetting where it should be and leaving for her mouth. My eye, she sucked it until the whole thing plopped out of my lids and into her mouth. She pulled it slow. She licked around it once, twice, three times and I think I said no. Please. No. Then she bit it off.

  I woke up in total dark. They raised my arms up and my face rested on the right. I could not touch my face, even though surely that had been a dream? I did not want to do it. I could not touch my left eye, so I closed the right. Everything went black. I opened again and there was the light on the ground. I closed again and everything was black. The tears ran down my cheeks before I even thought to cry. I tried to bring my knees up and my foot stepped on it, slippery and soft. They left it there for me to see. The goddess who hears man’s cry and returns the same cry mocked me.

  I woke up, feeling cloth on my face, wrapped around my eye.

  “Will you now say that you will kill us, we mockery of women?” the middle one said. “I wish to hear of your rage, or your savage talk. It entertains me.”

  I had nothing to say. I wanted to say nothing. Not to spite her, since I didn’t want that either. I wanted nothing. That was the first day.

  Day two, the old one woke me with a slap.

  “Look how little we feed you and yet you still piss and shit yourself,” she said.

  She threw me a piece of meat with the fur still on it. Be glad it’s fresh kill, she said. But I still could not eat raw flesh. Eat it and think of him, she said, then went back into the dark. She changed slow and it sounded like bones cracking and joints popping. She threw another piece at me. The side of a warthog’s head.

  Day three, the young one ran in as if somebody was chasing her. She of the three liked changing to woman the least. She came right up to me and licked my shoulder and I flinched. I knew the heh-heh-heh was not a laugh, but it felt like mockery. She made a sound I never heard before, like a whine, like a child saying EEEEEEEEE. She opened her mouth, flattened her ears, and tilted her head to one side. She bared her teeth. Out of the dark came another hyena, smaller, the spots on the skin larger. She EEEEEEEEE’d again and the other one came in closer. The hyena sniffed my toes, then trotted away. The young one changed to woman and yelled at the dark. I laughed but it came out like a sick man’s laugh. She punched me quick in the left cheek, and again and again, until my head went dark again.

  Day four, two of them argued in the dark. Present him to the clan, the old one said, for now I knew her voice. Present him to the clan and let them judge him. Every woman in the clan deserves a bite of his flesh. Every woman is not my sister, said the middle one. Every woman did not raise her cubs like my own, she said. Revenge is true, but not just for you, the old woman said. But I shall have it, the middle one said. No other woman has longed for this day, no other. The old one then said, Why not kill him, then, kill him now? You should hand him to the clan, I say this again.

  * * *

  —

  In the night when the hole was all dark, I could smell the middle one.

  “Do you miss your
eye?” she said.

  I said nothing.

  “Do you miss home?”

  I said nothing.

  “I miss my sister. We were wanderers. My sister was everything that is home. The only thing that is home. Did you know that she could change, but chose not to? Only twice, the first when we were still cubs. Both of us, daughters of the highest in our clan. The other women who were of one form hated us, and fought us all the time even though we were stronger and had more craft. But my sister did not want to be smarter or sharper, she just wanted to be any beast moving east to west. She wanted to vanish in the pack. She would have walked on all fours forever, had she a choice. Is that strange, Tracker? We women of the clan are born to be special, and yet all she wanted was to be like everyone else. No higher, no lower. Are they among your kind, people who work hard to be nothing, to vanish in a group of your own? The one-bloods hated us, hated her, but she wanted them to love her. I never wanted their love but I remember wanting to want it. She wanted them to lick her skin, and tell her which male to growl at, and call her sister. And yet she wanted no name, not even sister. I called her a name that she would not answer to, so I called her that name over and over until she changed only to say stop calling me that or we will never be sisters again. She never became woman again. I forget the name.

  “She died as she would have wanted to, fighting in the pack. Fighting for the pack. Not fighting with me. You took her from me.”

  Day five, they threw me raw meat. I grabbed it up with both hands and ate it. Afterward I screamed all night. I never used my birth name but until then, I still remembered it.

  Day six, they woke me again with piss. The young and the old woman, both naked, and pissing on me again. I thought they did it to see if they could get me to shout or scream or curse, for indeed I heard the young one in the night say, He speaks no longer, this bothering me more than when he yap-yap-yap-yap. They pissed on me but not in my face. They pissed on my belly and my legs and I did not care. I did not even care for an early death. Whatever sport it was from this day to the next and the one after that I did not care. But the hyena from three days ago came out of the dark. He inched back.