She darted at him, then at me, then back at him, choking on the end of her chain. I stayed back, not wanting her to think we were closing in. She hid her face and started crying again.
The Leopard turned and looked at me. His face was near lost in the dark but I saw his eyebrows raised, pleading. He felt too much. He always did. But it was all sensation to him. Fast heartbeat, lustful swell, sweat down the neck. We stepped over some stones, climbing up the last few steps.
“Leopard, she cannot take care of herself. Le—”
“They want my boys. Everybody took my boys,” she said.
Leopard went back down the stairs and returned with a loose brick. Over by the wall, and away from her, he hammered at the chain’s end, built into the mortar. First she tried to run, but he hushed her with a shh. She looked away as Leopard hammered at the chain. The chain clanged and clanged, it wouldn’t break but the wall did, cracked and cracked until he pulled the peg out.
The chain dropped to the floor. In the dark I saw her stand up and heard her feet shuffle. The Leopard was right in front of her when she stopped shaking and looked up. The little light coming in touched her wet eyes. The Leopard touched the shackle around her neck and she flinched, but he pointed to the crack in the wall and nodded. She did not nod, but held her head down. I saw the Leopard’s eyes, though the room had been too dark moments before to see them. The light flickering in his eyes came from her.
Lightning flashed from her head and went down her limbs. The Leopard jumped but she grabbed him by the neck, heaved him off the floor, and flung him against the wall. Her eyes blue, her eyes white, her eyes crackling like lightning. I ran at her, a charging buffalo. She kicked me straight in the chest, and I fell back and hit my head; the Leopard was rolling over beside me. She grabbed him by the crook of his arm and sent him flying into the wall on the other side. She was lightning, burning the air. She grabbed his left leg and pulled him back, squeezing the ankle, making him howl. He tried to change but couldn’t. Lightning ran through her body and came out of her holes, making her yell and cackle. She kicked him and kicked him and kicked him, and I jumped up and she looked at me. Then she looked away quick like somebody called her. Then back at me, then away again. The Leopard, I knew him, I knew he would be angry, he leapt at her, hitting her in the back and knocking her down, but she turned over and kicked him off. The woman jumped back, blue light inside her a thunderstorm. She tried to run at me but Leopard grabbed the chain and pulled her back so hard she fell again. But she rolled and jumped back up and made for the Leopard. The woman screamed again and raised her hands, but then an arrow burst right through her shoulder. I thought she would scream louder, but she said nothing. The Leopard’s boy, Fumeli, was behind me. He shot her again, the second arrow almost in line with the arrow in her shoulder, and she howled. The lightning coursed through her and the whole room glowed blue. She growled at him but the boy drew a new arrow and looked right down the shaft at her. He could aim for her heart and hit. She stepped back as if she knew. Lightning woman leapt for the window, missed, grabbed the sill, digging her nails in the wall, pulled herself up, punched out the window bars, and jumped.
The Leopard ran past Fumeli and me and down the steps.
“Did he teach you how to—”
“No,” he said, and went down after him.
Outside, the Leopard and Fumeli were already many paces ahead of me, down a narrow alley with no lantern light coming from any window. They had slowed to a walk when I caught them.
“Do you have her? In your nose? Do you have her?” the Leopard said.
“Not this way,” I said, and turned down a lane running south. This street boasted beggars, so many lying in the alley that we stepped on a few, who shouted and groaned. She was running like a madwoman, I could tell from her trail. We turned right, down another alley, this one pocked with potholes full of stinking water and a guard on the ground, shaking and foaming at the mouth. We knew this was her doing, so none of us said it. We followed her scent. She ran ahead of us, upending carts and knocking over mules trying to sleep.
“Down here,” I said.
We caught up with her at a fork, the road on the right going back into town, the left heading to the north gate. No sentry at that gate held a club or spear that could stop her. I have never seen a soul run that fast who was not lifted by devils. Two sentries with shield and spear saw her and stepped forward, raised their spears above their heads. Before either could throw she jumped high, as if running on steps of air, and slammed into the city wall. She dug into the mortar before falling, scrambled up to the top of the wall, and jumped off before more guards could get to her. The sentries kept their spears ready to throw at the sight of us.
“Good men, we are not enemies of Malakal,” I said.
“Not friends neither. Who else coming to bother us near the noon of the dead?” said the first guard, bigger, fatter, iron armour no longer shiny.
“You saw her too, do not deny it,” the Leopard said.
“We seeing nothing. We seeing nothing but three witchmen working night magic.”
“You must give us leave,” I said.
“Shit we must give you. Leave before we send you somewhere you won’t like,” said the other guard—shorter, skinnier.
“We are not witchmen,” I say.
“All prey gone to sleep. So starve. Or go find whatever entertainment keeping a man up.”
“You will deny what you have just seen?”
“I seeing nothing.”
“You saw nothing. Fuck the—”
I cut the Leopard off. “That is fine with us, guard. You saw nothing.”
I took a bracelet off my hand and threw it at him. It was three snakes, each eating another’s tail, the sign of the Chief of Malakal, and a gift for finding something even the gods told him was lost.
“And I serve your chief, but that is nothing. And I have two hatchets and he has bow and arrow, but that is nothing. And that nothing ran by two men as if they were boys and jumped over a city wall as it were a river stone. Open your locks and give us three leave, and we will make sure the nothing that you didn’t see never comes back.”
This was the north wall. Outside was all rocks and about two hundred paces to the cliff, where the drop-off was sharpest. She stood about a hundred paces away, scurrying left, then right, then left again. It looked like she was sniffing. Then she dropped to the ground and sniffed the rocks.
“Nooya!” the Leopard said.
She turned like somebody who heard a noise, not something she knew was hers, and ran again. As she ran the lightning struck inside her and she screamed. Fumeli, still running, drew the bow and arrow, but the Leopard growled. We ran along the side of the cliff towards its point. We were closing on her, for though she was far faster than us she would not run straight. She ran right to the edge of the cliff and without stopping leapt off.
EIGHT
The boy became air three years ago. On the way to the collapsed tower, I wondered how much one could change in three years. A boy at ten and six is so changed from a boy at ten and three that they may be different people. Many times I have seen it. A mother who never stopped crying or looking, giving me coin to find a stolen child. That is never a problem; it is the easiest of things, finding a stolen child. The problem is that the child is never as he was when taken. For his taker, often a great love. For his mother, not even curiosity. The mother gets the child back, but his bed will remain empty. The kidnapper loses the child but lives on in that child’s longing. This is true word from a child lost and then found: None can douse it, the love I have for the mother who chose me, and nothing can bring love for the woman whose kehkeh I dropped out. The world is strange and people keep making it stranger.
Neither I nor the Leopard spoke about the woman. All I said that night was, “Show the boy some gratitude.”
“What?”
“Thanks. Give the boy thanks for saving your life.”
I walked back to the gates. Knowing he wouldn’t, I said my thanks to the boy as I passed him.
“I didn’t do it for you,” he said.
So.