The boy began to laugh, a small giggle, then a loud cackle so loud it bounced across the water. Sogolon slapped him, but he kept laughing. She slapped him again, but he caught her hand with his teeth and bit hard. She pushed him, but he would not let go. She slapped him again and still he would not let go. He bit hard enough that Sogolon could no longer see to the wind, and her little storm weakened to a breeze, then nothing.
The ground shook, rumbling as if about to crack. A wave rose out of the lake and crashed on the banks, knocking over Sogolon and the boy. Sogolon began waving her hands to whip up the wind again, but the ground split open and sucked her in right up to the neck, then closed around her. She yelled and cursed and tried to move but could not.
And there was the Aesi, right on the banks, as if he was never not there. The Aesi stood in front of the boy, viewing him as one would a white giraffe or a red lion. Curious more than anything. The boy looked at him the same way.
“How did anyone think you could become King?” he said.
The boy hissed. He cowered from the Aesi like a shunned snake, writhing and curling, as if he would roll on the ground.
“I destroyed you,” Sogolon said to the Aesi.
“You delayed me,” the Aesi said, walking past her and grabbing the boy by the ear.
“Stop! You know that he is the true King,” she said.
“True? You wish to bring back the matriarchy, is it? The line of kings descended from the King sister and not the King? You, the Moon Witch, who claim to be three hundred years old, and you know nothing of this line you’ve sworn to protect, this great wrong in all the lands, and all the worlds that you will make right?”
“All you have is pretty talk and lies.”
“A lie is thinking this abomination can be a king. He can barely speak.”
“He told Sasabonsam where I lived,” I said, picking up my ax.
“Yelp and whimper, like a bush dog. Sucking blood from his mother’s breast, he is not even a vampire but an imitation of one. And yet I feel remorse for this child. None of this was his choice,” the Aesi said.
“Then neither shall death be his choice,” I said.
“No!” Sogolon screamed.
The Aesi said, “You have one task. And you have done it well, Sogolon. There is disgrace. Look at your sacrifice. Look at your charred face, your burned skin, your fingers have all become one fin. All for this boy. All for the myth of the sister’s line. Did the King sister tell you the history of our ways? That these sisters beget kings by fucking their fathers? That each king’s mother was also his sister? That this is why the mad kings of the South are always mad? The same bad blood coursing through them for year upon year, and age upon age. Not even the wildest of beasts do such a thing. This is the order the woman called Sogolon wishes to restore. You of the three hundred years.”
“You is nothing but evil.”
“And you are nothing but simple. This latest mad king, Sogolon, we say he is the maddest for starting a war he couldn’t win because he wanted to rule all kingdoms. He may be mad, but he is no fool. A threat is coming, witch, and not from the South, or North, or even East, but the West. A threat of fire and disease and death and rot coming from across the sea—all the great elders, fetish priests, and yerewolos have seen it. I have seen them in the third eye, men red like blood and white like sand. And only one kingdom, a united kingdom, can withstand them and the moons, years, and ages of assault. And only one strong king, not a mad one, and not a malformed blood addict with a mother mad for power, for neither could conquer, nor rule, nor a whole kingdom keep. This Mweru queen, does she not know why the house of Akum ended that line of succession? He said it all night. A threat was coming, an ill wind. And that boy, that little abomination, he must be destroyed. You are nothing but a life lived in a lie.”
“A lie, a lie, a lie,” the boy said, and giggled. We all looked at him. Up to now I had never heard him speak. He still writhed and bent himself, touching his toes, curling on the ground, the Aesi having let go of his ear.
“He dies tonight,” the Aesi said.
“He dies from my ax,” I said.
“No,” Sogolon said.
“A lie, a lie, a lie ha ha ha,” the boy said again.
“A lie, a lie, a lie ha ha ha,” Nyka said. I had forgotten about him. He approached the child, both of them saying it over and over until they were one voice. Nyka stopped right in front of the child.
The child ran towards him and leapt into an embrace. Nyka grabbed him, wrapped him in a hug. The boy leaned in on his chest, resting, nuzzling like a baby lamb. Then Nyka flinched and I knew the boy had bitten into him. The boy was sucking blood like mother’s milk. Nyka wrapped his arms around him. He flapped his wings until his feet were off the ground. He rose higher, and higher, this time not sinking, not collapsing, not dipping from the weight or from his weakness. Nyka flapped his wings again and a lightning bolt, white and brighter than the sun, sliced through the sky and struck them both. The ground shook from the boom, which was too loud for anyone to hear the boy scream. The lightning struck and stayed, blasting them both as Nyka held tight against the boy kicking and screaming, until the long bolt sparked a flame that spread over them and blew out quick, leaving nothing but little light embers that vanished in the black.
“Oh cursed kings, oh cursed kings!” Sogolon wailed.
She wailed for so long that when it finally weakened, it became a whimper. I smelled burned flesh, and waited for something to come over me—not peace, not satisfaction, not the sense of balance from revenge, but something I did not know. But I knew I waited for it, and I knew it would not come. The Leopard coughed.
“Leopard!”
I ran over to him, and he nodded his head like a drunkard. I knew his blood was gone. I pulled the sword from his chest and he gasped. He fell from the tree and I caught him and we both fell to the ground. I pressed my hand to his chest. He had always wanted to die as a leopard, but I couldn’t imagine him changing now. He grabbed my hand and pulled it to his face.
“Your problem is that you were never any better than a bad archer. This is why we have had such bad fates, you and I,” he said.
I held his head and stroked the back of his neck as I would a cat, hoping it brought relief. He was still trying to change, I could feel it under his skin. His forehead thickened, and his whiskers and teeth grew, his eyes shone in the dark, but he could change no further.
“Let us switch bodies in the next of our lives,” I said.
“You hate raw meat and could never bear even a finger up your ass,” he said, and laughed, but it turned into a cough. The cough shook him and blood from his wound oozed between my fingers.
“Should never have come for you. Should never have taken you out of your tree,” he said, coughing.
“You came for me because you knew I would go. Here is truth. I was in love and I was in boredom, both at the same time, two rulers in the same house. I was going mad.”
“I made you leave. Remember what I said? Nkita ghara igbo uja a guo ya aha ozo.”
“If a wolf refuses to howl, people will give it another name.”
“I lied. It was if a dog refuses to bark.”
I laughed while he tried to.
“I left because I wanted to.”
“But I knew you would. In Fasisi when they asked, How will you find this man? He … has been dead twenty moons. I said … I said—” He coughed. “I said, I know a tracker, he could never resist good sport. He says he works for the coin, but the work is his pay though he will never admit it.”
“I should not have left,” I said.
“No, you should not have. What lives we lead. Remorse for what we should not have done, regret for what we should. I miss being a leopard, Tracker. I miss never knowing should.”
“And now you are dying.”
“Leopards do not know of death. They never think of it, because it is nothing to think of. Why do we do this, Tracker? Why do we think of nothing?”
“I don’t know. Because we have to believe in something.”
“A man I knew said he didn’t believe in belief.” He laughed and coughed.
“A man I knew said nobody loves no one.”
“Both of them only fools. Only f …”
His head fell back in my arms.
Give them no peace, cat. Find sport in the underworld and shame its lords, I thought but did not say. He was the first man I could say I loved, though he was not the first man I would say it to.
I wondered if I would ever stop to think of these years, and I knew I would not, for I would try to find sense, or story, or even a reason for everything, the way I hear them in great stories. Tales about ambition and missions, when we did nothing but try to find a boy, for a reason that turned false, for people who turned false.
Maybe this was how all stories end, the ones with true women and men, true bodies falling into wounding and death, and with real blood spilled. And maybe this is why the great stories we told are so different. Because we tell stories to live, and that sort of story needs a purpose, so that sort of story must be a lie. Because at the end of a true story, there is nothing but waste.
Sogolon spat in the dirt.
“I wish my eyes had never seen your face,” I said.
“I wish my eye never see me too.”