We left the children with him. Two women grabbed Giraffe Boy, one by the ass cheek, and took him to their hut. A young man said his father was blind and lonely and would not care that the twins were joined together. That way he never had to worry about losing one. A man with noble feathers in his cap took Ball Boy on a hunt that day. Several boys and girls surrounded the albino, touching and poking him until one of them gave him a bowl of water.
The Leopard and I left before sunset. We walked along the river because I wanted to see even a glimpse of someone Ku, someone I would never see again. But no Ku would have come to the river to meet a Gangatom spear. Leopard turned to go back into deep forest when leaves rustled behind me. Most times she passes like a spirit but if afraid enough, or happy, or angry, she will rustle leaves and knock over bowls. Smoke Girl.
“Tell her she cannot follow,” I said to the Leopard.
“I’m not who she follows,” he said.
“Go back,” I said when I turned around. “Go be the daughter to a mother, or the sister to a brother.”
Her face appeared out of the smoke, frowning as if she did not understand me. I pointed to the village, but she did nothing. I waved her off and turned away, but she followed. I thought if I ignored her, and ignored what it did to my heart beating, she would go away, but Smoke Girl followed me to the edge of their village and after.
“Go back!” I said. “Go back, I don’t want you.”
I started walking and she appeared in front of me again. I was about to shout but she was crying. I turned away and she appeared again. The Leopard started to change and growled, and she jumped.
“Go back before I curse you!” I shouted.
We were at the edge of Gangatom territory going north into free lands and then Luala Luala. I knew she was behind me. I picked up two stones and threw one at her. Went right through her, the stone did, but I knew it would horrify her, the move.
“Go back, you fucking ghost!” I shouted, and threw the second stone. She vanished and I did not see her again. The Leopard had walked off far before I realized I was still in one spot and had not moved. I wouldn’t until he growled.
I went with the Leopard to Fasisi, the capital city of the North, and found many men and women with lost things and people, who could use my nose. The Leopard grew tired of walls and left after two moons, and I was for long moons alone.
When I next saw the Leopard, years had passed and I was a man. Too many bitter men knew me in Fasisi, so I moved to Malakal. He was there for four nights before leaving word with my landlady that he would see me, which I thought was clear since he would have no reason to see this city. The Leopard was still strong in jaw and handsome and came in man form, tunic and cape, as men in the city would have killed a beast. His legs thicker, the hair around his face wilder. He wore whiskers, but this was a city where men loved men, priests married slaves, and sadness was washed away with palm wine and masuku beer. I smelled his arrival the night he came to the city. A night where even the rain, waking up old smells, could not weaken his funk. He still smelled like a man who only washed if he happened to cross a river. We met at Kulikulo Inn, a place where I did business, a place where the fat innkeeper served soup and wine, and nobody cared who or what came through the door. He held a jug of beer and offered me palm wine that he would not drink himself.
“You look well, so different, a man now,” he said.
“You look the same,” I said.
“How is your nose?”
“This nose will pay for this wine, since I see no pouch on you.”
He laughed and said he came with a proposal.
“I need you to help me find a fly,” he said.
SIX
This.
You wish that I read this.
Check the account for yourself, you say. Make my mark where it says different from what happened. I don’t need to read; you write as Ashe wishes. Ashe is the everything, life and death, morning and night, good luck and bad tidings. What you in South think is a god but is where the gods come from.
But do I believe it?
A smart question. Fine, I will read it.
Testimony of the Tracker on this the ninth day. A thousand bows to the elders’ pleasure. This testimony is written witness, given appeal to the gods of sky who stand in judgment with lightning and viper venom. And as is the elders’ pleasure, the Tracker gives account both wide and far, since great many years and moons have passed from the loss of the child to the death of the same one. This is the middle of the Tracker’s many tales, meaning which be true and which be false I shall leave to the judgment of the elders, alone in the counsel of the gods. The Tracker’s account continues to perplex even those of uncommon mind. He travels deep in strange lands, as if telling tales to children at night, or reciting nightmares to the fetish priest for Ifa divination. But such is the pleasure of the elders, that a man should speak free, and a man should speak till the ears of the gods are filled with truth.
He goes into the sight, smell, and taste of one memory, with perfect recall of the smell in the crack of a man’s buttocks, or the perfume of Malakal virgins in bedchambers coming out of windows he walked underneath, or the sight of the glorious sunlight marking the slow change of seasons. But of spaces between moons, a year, three years, he says nothing.
This we know: The Tracker in the company of nine, including one more who still lives and one not accounted for, went searching for a boy. Kidnapped, he has alleged. The boy at the time was alleged to be the son or ward of a slaver from Malakal.
This we know: They set out first from Malakal at the beginning of the dry season. The search for the boy took seven moons. A success, the child they found and returned, but four years later he was lost again and the second search, in smaller company, took one year and culminated with the boy’s death.
At the request of the elders, the Tracker has spoken in detail of his upbringing, and with clear speech and fair countenance has recounted a few details of the first search. But he will speak only of the end of the second search, and refuses to give testimony of the four years in between, where it is known that he took up residence in the land of Mitu.
This is where I, your inquisitor, set a different bait. He had come, that ninth morning, to talk of the year he reunited with the mercenary called Leopard. Indeed, he had said before that it was the Leopard that came to him with the offer to search for the child. But a lie is a house carefully built on rotten stilts. A liar often forgets the beginning of his tale before he gets to the end, and in this way one will catch him. A lie is a tale carefully told if allowed to be told, and I would seek to break his untruth by asking him to tell a different part of the tale. So I asked him not of the first search or the second, but of the four years in between.
INQUEST: Tell me of the year of our King’s death.
TRACKER: Your mad King.
INQUEST: Our King.
TRACKER: But the mad one. Forgive me, they are all mad.
INQUEST: Tell me of the year of our King’s death.
TRACKER: He is your king. You tell me.
INQUEST: Tell me of —
TRACKER: It was a year, as years go. There were days, there were nights with nights being the end of day. Moons, seasons, storms, drought. Are you not a fetish priest who gives such news, inquisitor? Your questions grow stranger by the day; this is true talk.
INQUEST: You remember the year?
TRACKER: The Ku don’t name years.
INQUEST: Do you remember the year?
TRACKER: It was the year your most excellent King shat his most excellent life out in the most excellent shit pit.
INQUEST: Speaking ill of the King is punishable by death in the South Kingdom.
TRACKER: He’s a corpse, not a king.
INQUEST: Enough. Tell me of your year.
TRACKER: The year? My year. I lived it full and left all of it behind when it ended. What more is there to know?
INQUEST: You have nothing else?
TRACKER: I fear that you would find greater tales among those of us dead, inquisitor. Of those years I have nothing to report but steadiness, boredom, and the endless request of angry wives to find their unsatisfied husbands—
INQUEST: Did you not retire those years?
TRACKER: I think I am the best to remember my own years.
INQUEST: Tell me of your four years in Mitu.
TRACKER: I spent no four years in Mitu.
INQUEST: Your testimony on the fourth day said after the first search you left for the village of Gangatom and from there, Mitu. Your testimony on the fifth day began, When he found me in Mitu I was ready to leave. Four years remain unaccounted for. Did you not live it in Mitu?
[Note: The sandglass was a third from being empty when I asked him this question. He looked at me as men do when they contemplate petulance. An arch in his eyebrow, a scowl in his face, then a blankness, a drop in the corner of his lips, and his eyes wet, as if he went from anger at my question to something else at the thought of an answer. The sandglass was empty before he spoke again.]
TRACKER: I know of no place named Mitu.
INQUEST: You? The Tracker who claims to have been to so many kingdoms, to the place of flying beasts, and the land of talking monkeys and lands not on the maps of men, but you have no knowledge of an entire territory?
TRACKER:Take your finger out of my sore.