“That knowledge passed me.”
“Why be blessed with eyes? I know two who could use them more than you.”
“Woman—”
“I never finish. Use the nose the gods gave you, or you will not notice the viper next time.”
“You want my nose?”
“I want a boy. Seven nights now he gone. The bones tell me, but I was thinking no boy would run too far from good food.”
“Good is not what—”
“Don’t cross me, boy. He stop believing like a child, stop believing what I tell him all these moons. Child thief he call me! But such is the way—which child wants to know his own mother leave him to the wild dogs? Child thief he call me, then go off to find his mother. He even struck me when I wouldn’t move out the way. My children were too shocked, or they would have killed him for true. He jumped the tree and run south.”
I looked around. I knew some of these children could kill me in the quick.
“You will have back the boy.”
“The boy can climb into his mother shrivel-up koo and sew the life string to his belly for all I care. But he steal something precious to me.”
“A jewel? Proof that you are a woman?”
“Cursed a day it going to be when your mind catch up to your mouth. The gallbladder of the goat they sacrifice at my initiation ceremony. It has been in my hair from then. He left at morning, but took it the night before, while I was sleeping.”
“Stole it from your own head.”
“I was sleeping, I say.”
“I thought enchanted beings slept light.”
“What do you know of enchanted beings?”
“That anything wakes them.”
“Must be why you go wandering at night.”
“I don’t—”
“Hope you find what you looking for. Enough. I will have it back. You talk of witches. Without it, witches will know of this place. You may not care for children, but you will care for gold coin.”
“No need for gold in the vill—”
“You will never return to that village.”
She looked at me, the scar pattern around her eyes making them fierce.
“Take the coins and find the boy,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I just ta—”
She slapped me in the face with a loincloth. The funk rushed to my nose before I could breathe.
“Because I know how that nose work, boy. You never going to stop looking for who leave the smell, or it will drive you mad.”
She was right. I did not know I could hate her more.
“Take the coins and find the boy.”
She sent the Leopard and me. He has a nose too, she said. I thought she was going to send me with Kava. The Leopard looked neither pleased nor displeased. But right before we left, I saw them on the roof of the third hut, Kava waving his hands up and down like a madman, the Leopard looking as he always does. Kava threw a stick and the Leopard jumped him quick as lightning, his hand around Kava’s throat. The Leopard released him and walked away. Kava laughed.
“Watch where that fucking cat takes you,” Kava said to me when I saw him not long after.
I was filling wineskins with water by the river. This is what happened. After I filled them, I looked for red mud and white clay. When I found clay, I drew a white line and divided my face. Then another right along my brow. Then red lines on my cheeks and tracing my ribs, which I was seeing more, but it did not worry me the way it would have my mother.
“He takes me nowhere. I go to find the boy,” I said.
“Watch where that fucking cat takes you,” he said again.
I said nothing. I tried to mark behind my knees. Kava came up behind me and scooped up white clay. He rubbed it on my buttocks all the way down to my knees and down to my calves.
“Leopards are cunning. Do you know of their ways? You know why they run alone? Because they will betray even their own kind, and for a kill even the hyenas won’t touch.”
“Did he betray you?”
Kava looked up at me but said nothing. He was painting my thighs. I wanted him to stop.
“After you two find the boy, he will go on to southern lands. The grasslands are drying up and the prey is foul.”
“If he wants.”
“He has been a man too long. Hunters will kill him in two nights. The game is wilder, beasts that will rip him in two. Out there the hunters have poison arrows and they kill children. There are beasts bigger than this tree, blades of grass that love blood, beasts that will r—”
“Rip him in two. What do you want him to do?”
Kava washed his hands of clay and started to mark a pattern on my legs.
“He will leave with me, and forget this woman and her cursed children. It was his idea to save them, and lead them here, not mine. Whether they lived or died was the gods’ business. Who lives at the top?” he asked.
“I don’t—”
“She takes food up there every day. Now she takes you.”
“Jealous.”
“Of you? My blood is the blood of chiefs!”
“It was not a question.”
He laughed. “You want to play with her dark arts, do as you wish. But the Leopard comes with me. We are going back to the village. Between us we kill the people responsible for the death of my mother.”
“You said wind killed your kin. You said—”
“I know what I said, I was there when I said it. The Leopard said he will set out once you two find the boy. Tell him that you will not go.”
“And then?”
“I will make him see,” Kava said.
“There is no future in your form.”
“What?”
“Somebody told me that a few days ago,” I said.
“Who? Nobody passes this place. You’re growing as mad as that bitch. I’ve seen you, on the roof of that hut, holding up air and playing with it like a child. She infects this place. What news have you of the boy? That he fled because he was ungrateful? Did she call him a thief? Maybe a killer?”
He stood up and looked at me.
“So she did. Do you think as a man, or does she rule all your thoughts? The boy escaped,” he said.
“This is no prison.”
“Then why he run off?”
“He thinks his mother cries for him at night. That he is not mingi.”
“And who says he lies? Sangoma? No child here knows any different. Sangoma living in the trees for years and years, so where are the children who come of age? You and the animal hunt him down to bring him back. What will you do when he says no, I will not come back?”
“I hear you now. You think the Leopard is a fool for her too.”
“Leopard is no fool. He does not care. She says go east, he goes east, as long as there is fish and the warthogs are fat. Nothing is in that heart.”
“What blazes in yours.”
“You two fucked in the forest,” he said.
I looked at him.
“He said he taught you archery. The fucking beast was feeding me verse.”
I thought about leaving him with the mystery of it, or telling him we did not and never would to give him ease, but also thinking fuck the gods and his need for ease.
“He will never love you,” Kava said.
“Nobody loves no one,” I said.
He punched me in the face—right on the cheek—and knocked me down in the mud. He jumped me before I got up. Knees on my arms pinning me down, he punched me in the face again. I kneed him in the ribs. He yelled and fell off. But I was coughing, gasping, crying like a boy, and he jumped me again. We rolled and my head hit a rock and the sky went gray and black and the mud was sinking and his spit was hitting my eye but I could not hear him, only see the back of his throat. We rolled into the river and his hands grabbed my neck, pushing me underwater, pulling me up, pushing me under, water rushing into my nose. The Leopard leapt on his back and bit him in the neck. The force knocked them both in the river. I pulled myself up to see the Leopard still on Kava’s neck, about to toss him like a doll, and I yelled. The Leopard dropped him but growled. Kava staggered backways into the river and touched his neck. His hand came away with blood. He looked at me, then at the Leopard, who was still walking in circles in the river, still marking that this is where you shall not pass. Kava turned, ran up the banks and into the bush. The noise brought out the Sangoma, who came down with Giraffe Boy and Smoke Girl, who appeared in front of my eyes and vanished again. The Leopard was back to a man and he walked past the Sangoma, back to the hut.