Say something, Leopard, I thought. Say, Tracker, is this how we will now find sport, you and me—so I would cut you and shut you up. But he just stared at me.
“Do it,” said Nyka the Ipundulu. “Do it, dark wolf. Do it. Whatever peace you seek you will never find. And it will never find you, so do it. Forget peace. Seek vengeance. Tear a hole a hundred years wide. Do it, Tracker. Do it. Is he not the reason you suffer?”
Leopard looked at me, his eyes wet. He tried to say something but it came out as just sounds, like a whimper, though he was too brave to whimper. I wanted to cut a hole in something so badly. And then a rumble rose under him in the quick. The dirt broke up into dust and pulled him under the earth. I jumped back and shouted his name. He forced his hand through the ground and kicked and kicked, but the ground swallowed him. I looked up as the Aesi draped his hood over his head.
TWENTY-FIVE
You killed him!”
I pulled my ax.
“Child of a fucking whore, you killed him,” I said.
“Tracker, how tiresome you are. For moons you have thought of killing this beast. You have slit his throat in the dream jungle. You have tied him to a tree and burned him. You have shoved all sorts of things up in every part of his body. You had a knife to his neck. You name him as the cause of all your misery. And yet now you scream when finally you get what you wish.”
“I never wished for that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Go into my head again and you will—”
“I will what?”
“Free him.”
“No.”
“You know I will kill you.”
“You know you cannot.”
“You know I will try.”
We stood there. I ran back to where the Leopard was. The ground was the mound of a new grave. I was about to dig him out with my hands when a whistle came from behind me, a cold wind that looked like smoke. It dove into the mound and made a hole as wide as my fist.
“Now he breathes,” the Aesi said. “He will not die.”
“Pull him out.”
“You would best think about what you want in these last days, Tracker. Love or revenge. You cannot have both. Let him dig himself out. It will take him days, but he will have enough strength to do so. And enough rage. Come, Tracker, Sasabonsam sleeps by day.”
He and Nyka mounted their horses. The mound was too still. I stepped away but still watched it. I thought I heard him, but it was creatures of dawn. We rode away.
Gods of morning broke daylight. The forest was in sight but still not close. The horses grew tired, I could feel it. I did not shout to Aesi to stop, though he slowed to a trot. Sasabonsam would have gone to sleep. I rode up to him.
“The horses will have rest,” I said.
“We won’t need them when we reach the forest.”
“That was not a question.”
I halted my horse and climbed off. Nyka and the Aesi looked at each other. Nyka nodded.
I slept, I do not know for how long, but warm sun woke me up. Not noon, but after. None of us spoke as we mounted our horses and rode off. We would reach the forest before evening if the horses ran steady. The afternoon was still hot and wet in the air, and we came across another battlefield, from a long-fought battle, with skulls and bones, and parts of armour not salvaged scattered about. The skulls and bones led up to a hill as high as a house with two floors, maybe two hundred paces to the right of us. A hill of spear shafts, other broken weapons, and shields, dented and cracked, and bones scraped clean of flesh and sinew. The Aesi stopped and reined his horse.
He watched the hill. I asked him nothing, and neither did Nyka. From behind the hill of spears appeared a headdress, then a head. Someone walked to the top. The face, in a mask of white clay covering all but eyes, nose, and lips, her headdress dried fruits, or seeds, along with bones, tusks, and long feathers hanging down and brushing her shoulders. White clay on her bare breasts, down to her belly, with stripes that looked like the zebra’s, and a ripped leather skirt on her hips.
“I shall meet you by the mouth of the forest,” the Aesi said, and rode towards her. Nyka hissed the curse that could not come out of my mouth. The woman turned and went back where she came from. I rode off and after a while heard Nyka riding behind me.
We were some time in the forest before either of us noticed. The bush was too thick with grass and fallen trees for the horses, so we went on foot.
“Should we wait for the Aesi?” Nyka said, but I ignored him and kept walking.
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.
“This shit,” Nyka said. I turned around and saw him scraping worms off his foot. “Worms know decay when it steps on them,” he said.
I climbed over a fallen tree, the trunk as wide as I was high, and kept walking. The tree was far behind me when I noticed that Nyka did not follow.
“Nyka.”
He was not on the other side of the tree either.
“Nyka!”
His smell was everywhere, but no trail opened up to me. He became air—everywhere but nothing. I turned around only to see two gray legs spread wide, and before I could see between them something white and wet shot into my face.
He tore it from my head, my face, my eyes, something that also went in my mouth that felt like silk and had no taste. The silk off my eyes, I could see it wrapped around me, tight and shiny, though I could see my skin through it. A butterfly wrapped in a cocoon. My hands, my feet, none could move no matter how I tried to kick, stomp, tear, or roll. I was stuck to the trunk of a weak branch bending with me. This made me think of Asanbosam, Sasabonsam’s brother with no wings, hopping up and down on his tree branches full of rotting women and men. Except nothing rotted here. I thought this good until I heard him above me and saw that he preferred his meat fresh. He bit off a little monkey’s head and the tail dropped limp. He saw me looking up at him only when all was gone but the tail, which he sucked into his mouth with a wet, slithering sound.