plan to find him in dreams? Or maybe you plan to send your little maiden here.”
“Get out,” Fumeli said.
“No no no. You do not speak to me. And I only speak to him.”
“And if the him is me, then I say, you don’t speak to him or me,” the Leopard said.
“Leopard, are you mad or is this some game to you? Are there two children in this room?”
“I’m not a chil—”
“Shut up, boy, by all the gods I’ll—”
The Leopard jumped up. “By all the gods you will … what?”
“What is this relapse? First you are hot then you are cold, you are one thing, and then you are another. Is this little bitch bewitching you? I don’t care. We go now and argue later.”
“We leave tomorrow.”
The Leopard walked over to the window. Fumeli sat up in the bed, stealing looks at me.
“Oh. So we are in these waters again,” I said.
“How funny you talk,” Fumeli said. In my mind my hands were at his throat.
“Yes. In those waters, as you’ve said. We go our own way to find the boy tomorrow. Or we don’t. Either way we leave here,” the Leopard said.
“I told you about the boy. Why we need to find—”
“You tell me many things, Tracker. Not much of it any use. Now please go where you came from.”
“No. I will find what is this madness.”
“Madness, Tracker, is you thinking I would ever work with you. I can’t even stand drinking with you. Your envy stinks, did you know it stinks? It stinks as much as your hate.”
“Hate?”
“It confused me once.”
“You’re confused.”
“But then I realized that you are full from head to toe with nothing but malcontent. You cannot help yourself. You even fight it, sometimes well. Enough for me to let you lead me astray.”
“Fuck the gods, cat, we are working together.”
“You work with no one. You had plans—”
“To what, take the money?”
“You said it, not I. Did you hear him say it, Fumeli?”
“Yes.”
“Shut that fucking ass mouth, boy.”
“Leave us,” said the Leopard.
“What did you do to him?” I said to Fumeli. “What did you do?”
“Other than open my eyes? I don’t think Fumeli seeks credit. He’s not you, Tracker.”
“You don’t even sound—”
“Like myself?”
“No. You don’t even sound like a man. You’re a boy whose toys Father took away.”
“There’s no mirror in this room.”
“What?”
“Leave, Tracker.”
“Fuck the gods and fuck this little shit.”
I jumped at Fumeli. Leapt onto the bed and grabbed his neck. He slapped at me, the little bitch in him too weak to do anything else, and I squeezed. “I knew you consulted with witches,” I said. A big, black hairy mess knocked me down and I hit my head hard. The Leopard, full black and one with the dark, scratched my face with his paw. I grabbed at his neck skin, and we rolled over and over on the floor. I punched at him and missed. He ducked right down to my head and clamped his jaws on my neck. I couldn’t breathe. He clamped and swung his head, to break my neck.
“Kwesi!”
The Leopard dropped me. I wheezed air and coughed up spit.
The Leopard growled at me, then roared, almost as loud as a lion. It was a “get out” kind of roar. Get out and don’t come back.
I headed for the door, wiping my wet neck. Spit and a little blood.
“Don’t be here tomorrow,” I said. “Neither of you.”
“We don’t take orders from you,” Fumeli said. The Leopard paced by the window, still a Leopard.
“Don’t be here tomorrow,” I said again.
I went to the Ogo’s room.
Bingingun. This is what I learned from the Kongori and why they hate nakedness. To wear only skin is to wear the mind of a child, the mind of the mad, or even the mind of the man with no role in society, even lower than usurers and trinket sellers, for even such as they have their use. Bingingun is how people of the North set a place for the dead among the living. Bingingun is the masquerade, drummers and dancers and singers of great oriki. They wear the aso oke cloth underneath, and this cloth is white with indigo stripes, and looks like that with which we clothe the dead. They wear net on the face and hands, for now they will be masquerade, not men with names. When the Bingingun spins and makes a whirlwind the ancestors possess them. They jump high as roofs.
He who makes the costume is an amewa, a knower of beauty, for if