let us have this. The Leopard ran up, almost knocking over two of the dozen statues and carvings in the hallway, and embraced me.
“Good Tracker, I feel I have not seen you in days.”
“It has been days. You couldn’t pull yourself out of sleep.”
“This is a true word. I feel as if I was sleeping for years. And I wake to such dismal rooms. Come now, what sport is there in this city?”
“Kongor? In a city pious as this even the mistresses seek marriage.”
“I already love it. Yet is there not some other reason we are here? We hunt a boy, do we not?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember and I do not.”
“You remember the Darklands?”
“We went through the Darklands?”
“You were one for harsh words.”
“Harsh? To whom? Fumeli? You know he likes when we spar. Are you not hungry? I saw a buffalo outside and thought to kill it, or at least bite off the tail, but he seems an ingenious buffalo.”
“This is very strange, Leopard.”
“Tell me at the table. What happened these few days since we left the valley?”
I told him we were gone a moon. He said that was madness and refused to hear any more.
“I hear the gap in my belly. It growls obscene,” he said.
This table was in a great hall, with plate after plate of scenes covering all the walls in the room. I got to the tenth plate before I saw that these works of the grand bronze masters all showed scenes of fucking.
“This is strange,” I said again.
“I know. I keep looking for one where the cock goes in the mouth hole or the boo hole but I couldn’t find any. But I hear this is a town of no shoga. How could that be tru—”
“No. It’s strange that you remember nothing. The Ogo remembers everything.”
The Leopard, being a Leopard, ignored the chairs and jumped up on the table, not making a sound. He grabbed the bird leg from a silver tray, crouched on his heels, and bit into it. I could tell he did not like it. Leopards eat all things, but there was no rush of blood, hot and rich, spilling into his mouth and over his lips as he bit into it, which always made him frown.
“You are the one strange, Tracker, with your riddles and half meanings. Sit, eat porridge while I eat—what is this, ostrich? I’ve never had ostrich, could never catch one. You said the Ogo is remembering?”
“Yes.”
“What does he remember? Being in the enchanted bush? I remember that.”
“What else?”
“A great slumber. Traveling but not moving. A long scream. What does the Ogo remember?”
“Everything, it seems. His whole life came back to him. Do you remember when we set out? You had a problem with me.”
“We must have solved it, for I do not remember it.”
“If you heard yourself, you would not have thought so.”
“You are confusing, Tracker. I sit and eat with you, and there is love between us that until now was the kind we never had to declare. So stop living in a squabble so little that I cannot remember it, even with you prompting me. When do we go to the boy’s house? Shall we go now?”
“Yesterday you wer—”
“Kwesi!” his arrow boy shouted, and dropped the basket he was carrying. Maybe I did forget his name out of spite. He came over to the table, not looking or even nodding at me.
“You are not well enough to be eating strange things,” he said to the Leopard.
“Here is meat and here is bone. Nothing is strange.”
“Go back to the room.”
“I am well.”
“You are not.”
“Are you deaf?” I said. “He said he is well.”
Fumeli tried to glare at me and fuss over the Leopard with the same face, but it came out as him fussing a little over me and glaring a little at the Leopard. Even when it was not funny, this boy provoked me to laugh. He stomped off, grabbing his basket on the way out. One of his little parcels fell out. Cured pig, I could smell it. Supplies. The Leopard sat down on the table and crossed his legs.
“I should lose him soon.”
“You should have lost him moons ago,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing, Leopard. There are things I must tell you. Not here. I do not trust these walls. Truly there are some strange things here.”
“You’ve said this four times now. Why is everything strange, friend?”
“The black puddle woman.”
“It’s these statues that bother me. I feel like an army is going to watch me fuck