by Marlon James
“Ten and seven horses? Is that all I am to you, ten and seven? And in silver? Was your birth so low that you think this is what I am worth?”
She cussed and snarled for so long that it began to bore me, and still she cussed. I could tell the kidnapper was coming to think mayhaps he should pay the Prince to take her back. I smelled the shape-shifter’s gift on him, a cat like the Leopard. A Lion, perhaps, and the other men lying about were his pride and the woman by the fire looking at them both with a scowl was his mate until this princess. All of them squeezed into a room with the Princess yapping like cockatoo. This was the plan: that the Lion and his pride kidnap the Princess and demand a sum. A sum which her father would gladly pay because his daughter is worth more than silver and gold. The ransom, the Princess would use to pay mercenaries to overthrow this Prince, who had no princedom to overthrow. At first I thought she was like those boys and girls kidnapped too young, who in the midst of captivity start to show loyalty to their captors, even love. But then she said, “I should have picked Leopards; at least they have cunning.” The head Lion man roared so loud it frightened people in the street.
“I think I know how this story ends,” the Leopard said. “Or maybe I just know you. You told the Prince his daughter’s plot, then slipped away as quiet as you came.”
“Good Leopard, what would be the fun in that? Besides, my days were long and business slow.”
“You were bored.”
“Like a god waiting for man to surprise him.”
He grinned.
“I went back to the Prince and gave good report. I said, Good Prince, I have yet to find the bandits, but on my way, I did pass by a house near the old market, where men were conspiring to take your crown.”
“What? Are you sure of it? Which men?” he asked.
“I did not look. Instead I hurried back to you. Now I will go find your daughter,” I said.
“What should I do with these men?”
“Have men sneak up to the house like thieves in the night and burn it to the ground.”
The Leopard stared at me, ready to pull the story out of my mouth.
“Did he?”
“Who knows? But next moon I saw the daughter at her window, her head a black stump. Then I cursed Kalindar and moved back to Malakal.”
“That is your story? Tell me another.”
“No. You tell me of your travels. What does a Leopard do in new lands where he cannot hunt?”
“A Leopard finds flesh wherever he can find it. And then there is flesh he eats! But you know how I am. Beasts like us were never made for one place. But nobody traveled as far as I. Boarded a ship I did, eager I was. I went to sea, then boarded another ship and it went farther out to sea for moons and moons.”
He climbed up in the chair and stooped on the seat. I knew he would.
“I saw great sea beasts, including one that looked like a fish but could swallow an entire ship. I found my father.”
“Leopard! But you thought he was dead.”
“So did he! The man was a blacksmith living on an island in the middle of a sea. I forget the name.”
“No you did not.”
“Fuck the gods, maybe I don’t want to remember. He was no longer a blacksmith, just an old man waiting to die. I stayed there with him. Saw him forget to remember, then saw him forget that he forgets. Listen, there was no Leopard in him—he had forgotten it all living with his young wife and family under one roof, which is no Leopard’s nature. Curse you and your whiskers, he said to me many times. But some days he would look at me and growl and you should see how startled he was, wondering where the growl came from. I changed in front of him once and he screamed as an old man screams, making no sound. Nobody believed him when he shouted, Look a wildcat, he will eat me!”
“This is a very sad story.”
“It gets sadder yet. His children in that house, my brothers and sisters, all had some trace of the cat in them. The youngest had spots all over his back. And none of them liked to wear clothes, even though on this island in the river, men and women covered everything but eyes. When he was dying he kept shifting from man to Leopard to man on his death mat. It scared the children and grieved the mother. In the end it was only me, my youngest brother, and him in the room, since everybody else but the youngest thought it was witchcraft. The youngest looked at his father and finally saw himself. We both became Leopards and I licked my father’s face to calm him. In endless sleep, I left him.”
“That is a sad story. Yet there is beauty in it.”
“You a lover of beauty now?”
“If you saw who left my bed just this morning, you would not ask that question.”
I missed his laugh. The entire inn heard when the Leopard laughed.
“A wanderer I became, Tracker. How I moved from land to land, kingdom to kingdom. Kingdoms where people’s skin was paler than sand, and every seven days they ate their own god. I have been a farmer, an assassin, I even took a name, Kwesi.”
“What does it mean?”
“Fuck the gods if I know. I even became an entertainer of the bawdy arts.”
“What?”
“Enough, man. The reason I sought you out—”
“Fuck the gods with your reason, I will hear more of these bawdy arts.”
“We don’t have much time, Tracker.”
“Then be quick about it. But spare no detail.”
“Tracker.”
“Or I shall rise and leave you with the bill, Kwesi.”
He almost winced when I said that.
“Fine. Enough. So I was a soldier.”
“This doesn’t begin like a bawdy story.”
“Fuck the gods, Tracker. Maybe the story begins when a man found an army—”
“North or South?”
“Fucks for both. I say, this man found an army with need for a man with superior archery skills. This man found himself in lands with no food, and no amusement. This man might have been great with killing the enemy, but was not great keeping peace between his fellow soldiers. Though one or two comely ones served their use.”
“Ever the Leopard.”
“This is how it came to pass. We attacked a village that had no weapons besides stones to cut meat, and burned down their huts with women and children still in them. It happened this way. I said, I do not kill women and children, not even when hungry. The commander’s little bitch says, Then kill them with your bow. I say these are not fighters in war and he says you have an order. I walk away because I’m no soldier and this was not a fight worth coin.
“Say this also happened. The little bitch screamed traitor and in the quick his men were upon me; meanwhile soldiers were still setting fire to children trapped in huts. Four soldiers came at me, and I fired four arrows between four sets of eyes. The little bitch tried to scream again but my fifth arrow went right through his throat. So it goes without telling you, Tracker, that I had to leave, under the cover of fire smoke. But then I wandered for days and days before I found that I was in the sand sea where nothing lives. Four days without water or food, I started to see a fat woman walking on clouds and lions walking on two legs, and a caravan that never touched the sand. Men from the caravan picked me up and threw me in the back.
“I woke up when a boy’s mother had him throw water in my face. The caravan dumped me at some doorstep in Wakadishu.”
“From the sand sea to Wakadishu takes moons, Leopard.”
“’Twas a fast caravan.”
“So now you’re a mercenary,” I said.
“Look at this leper accusing another leper of leprosy.”
“But I find men, not kill them.”
“Of course. It’s cow’s blood you’re always wiping from your helmet. Why do we war over words? Are you happy, Tracker?”
“I am content with much. This world never gives me anything, and yet I have everything I want.”
“Fool, not what I asked you.”
“Beasts look for happiness now? Be less the man
and more the Leopard, if this is the man you are going to be.”
“Fuck the gods, Tracker, ’tis a simple question. The longest answer is but one word.”
“This affects your offer?”
“No.”
“Then there’s your answer. I am busy and better busy than bored, is that not so?”
“I’m waiting—”
“For what?”
“For you to say that sadness is not the absence of happiness, but the opposite of it.”
“Have I ever said that?”
“You say something close. And who does your heart belong to?”
“You told me once nobody loves no one.”
“I may have been young, and in love with my own cock.”
“Jakrari mada kairiwoni yoloba mada.”
“What use is that tongue to a cat?”
“Your cock is like a camel to you.”
I was starting to tell him things just to hear that cat laugh.
“I don’t trust people who take voyages without return; it gives them no stakes. I’ve been, let’s say, disappointed by men with nothing to lose,” he said.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“You answer a question with a question?”
“Because here we are, whining like first wives of husbands who no longer want us. But then I’m a boy raised by no one and you pretend to be a man when it suits you, but there are many enchanted beasts that can talk. Whatever this offer is of yours, I’m liking it less and less.”
“My offer hasn’t left my lips, Tracker.”
“No, but you are doing some kind of test.”
“Forgive me, Tracker, but I have not seen you in moons upon moons.”
“And you are the one who sought me out, cat. And now you waste my time. Here’s coin for the raw boar. And extra for all the blood they left in for you.”
“It does me good to see you.”
“I was about to say the same, then you started wondering about my heart.”
“Oh brother, your heart I wonder about all the time. Worry too.”
“This too is part of it.”
“What?”
“Your fucking test.”
“Tracker, we are freeborn. I am drinking and eating with another. At least sit if you’re never going to eat.”
I got up to leave. I was a good few paces away from him when I said, “Send word for me when I have passed whatever test it was you were trying to give me.”
“You think you passed?”
“I passed when I came through the door. Or you wouldn’t have waited four days to call on me. You ever see a man who doesn’t know he’s unhappy, Leopard? Look for it in the scars on his woman’s face. Or in the excellence of his woodcraft and iron making, or in the masks he makes to wear himself because he forbids the world to see his own face. I am not happy, Leopard. But I am not unhappy that I know.”
“I have word of the children.”
He knew that would stop me.
“What? How?”
“I still trade with the Gangatom, Tracker.”
“Give me this word. Now.”
“Not yet. Trust me, your girl is fine, even if she still huffs and puffs and turns to blue smoke when she loses her temper, which is often. Have you seen them?”
“No, not ever.”
“Oh.”
“What is this oh?”
“A strange look on your face.”
“I have no strange look.”
“Tracker, you are nothing but strange looks. Nothing is ever hidden from your face, no matter how much you try to mask it. It’s how I can judge where your heart is with people. You are the world’s worst liar and the only face I trust.”
“I will hear of the children.”
“Of course. They—”
“Did none say I came to see them? Not one?”
“You just said you have not seen them. Not ever, this is what you said.”
“Not ever it might as well be, if they say they have not seen my face.”
“More strangeness, Tracker. The children are fat and smiling. The albino will soon be their best warrior.”
“And the girl?”
“I just told you about the girl.”
“Eat.”
“We have other matters to discuss, Tracker. Enough with nostalgia for now.”
He took the last chunk of flesh in his mouth and chewed. There was blood on the dish. He looked at it, I looked at it, then he looked at me.
“Oh be a fucking beast, Leopard. Your wanting man’s approval troubles me.”
He smiled his huge grin, put the plate to his face, and licked it clean.
“Not fresh kill,” I said.
“But it will do. Now finally. Why I came to see you.”
“Something about a fly?”
“That was me being clever.”
“Why did you ask if I was happy?”
“This road I am asking you to come on. Oh, Tracker, the things it will take from you. Best if you have nothing in the first place.”
“You just said it was better if I have something to lose.”
“I said I’ve been disappointed by men who have nothing. Some. But the Tracker I know has nothing and cultivates nothing. Has that changed?”
“And if it had?”
“I would ask different questions.”
“How do you know I …”
Leopard swung around, trying to see what took my words.
“Nothing,” I said. “Thought I noticed … thought it went and came back …. It …”
“What?”
“Nothing. A thought loose. Nothing. Come now, cat, I’m losing patience.”
The Leopard got off the chair and stretched his legs. He sat back down and faced me.
“He calls him little fly. I find it strange that he does so, especially in that voice of his that sounds like an old woman more than a man, but I think the fly is dear to him.”
“Once more. This time with sense.”
“I can only tell you what the man told me. He was very clear—Leave instructions to me, he said. Fuck the gods, you men who are not direct. Fucks for you too—I saw that look. Friend, this is what I know. There is a child that went missing. The magistrates said he most likely got swept off in a river, or mayhaps the crocodiles got him, or river folk, since you will eat anything if hungry.”
“Thousand fucks for your mother.”
“A thousand and one if we’re speaking of my mother,” he said, and laughed. “This is what I know. The magistrates think this child either drowned or was killed and eaten by a beast. But this man, Amadu Kasawura is the name he goes by, he is a man of wealth and taste. He is convinced that his child, his little fly, is alive, mayhaps, and moving west. There is compelling stuff there, Tracker, in his home, evidence so that you believe his story. Besides, he is a rich man, a very rich man given that none of us come cheap.”
“Us?”
“He has commissioned nine, Tracker. Five men, three women, and hopefully you.”
“So his purse must be the fattest thing about him. And the child—his own?”
“He says neither yes nor no. He is a slaver, selling black and red slaves to the ships that come from people who follow the eastern light.”
“Slavers have nothing but enemies. Maybe somebody killed the child.”
“Mayhaps, but he is set in his desire, Tracker. He knows that we might find bones. But then he would at least know, and knowing for certain is better than years of torment. But I skip too much and make the mission—”
“Mission, is it? We’re to be priests now?”
“I’m a cat, Tracker. How many fucking words do you think I know?”
This time I laughed.
“I told you what I know. A slaver is paying nine to either find this child alive, or proof of his death, and he does not care what we do to find him. He may be two villages away, he may be in the South Kingdom, he might be bones buried in the Mweru. You have a nose, Tracker. You could find him i
n days.”
“If the hunt is so swift, why does he need nine?”
“Clever Tracker, is it not clear to you? The child didn’t leave. He was taken.”
“By who?”
“Better if it comes from him. If I explain you might not come.”
I stared at him.
“I know that look,” he said.
“What look?”
“That look. You are more than interested. You’re glutting on the very idea of it.”
“You read too much in my face.”
“It’s not just your face. At the very least come because something will intrigue you and it won’t be the coin. Now speaking of desires …”
I looked at the man, who not long before the sun left convinced an innkeeper to give him raw meat soaking in its own blood for dinner. Then I smelled something, the same as before, on Leopard yet not on him. When we stepped outside the inn, the smell was stronger, but then it went weak. Strong again, stronger, then weaker. The smell got weaker every time the Leopard turned around.
“Who is he, the boy following us?” I asked.
I spoke loud enough for the boy to hear. He shifted from dark to dark, from the black shadow cast by post to the red light cast by a torch. He slipped into the doorway of a shut house, less than twenty paces from us.
“What I would like to know, Leopard, is would you let me throw a hatchet and split his head in two before you tell me he is yours?”
“He is not mine, and by the gods I’m not his.”
“And yet I smelled him the whole time we were at the inn.”
“A nuisance he is,” the Leopard said, watching the boy slip out of the doorway, too timid to look. Not tall, but skinny enough to come across so. Skin as dark as shadow, a red robe tied at his neck that reached his thigh, red bands above his elbow, gold bracelets at his wrists, a striped skirt around his waist. He was carrying the Leopard’s bow and arrows.
“Saved him from pirates on either the third or fourth voyage. Now he refuses to leave me alone. I swear it’s the wind that keeps blowing him my way.”
“Truly, Leopard, when I said I keep smelling him, I meant smelling him on you.”
The Leopard laughed, but a tiny laugh, like a child caught right as he is about to do mischief.
“He has my bow when I lose arms and always finds me no matter where I go. Who knows but the gods? He might tell great stories of me when I am gone. I pissed on him to mark him as mine.”