“I never finish. Use the nose the gods gave you, or you will not notice the viper next time.”
“You want my nose?”
“I want a boy. Seven nights now he gone. The bones tell me, but I was thinking no boy would run too far from good food.”
“Good is not what—”
“Don’t cross me, boy. He stop believing like a child, stop believing what I tell him all these moons. Child thief he call me! But such is the way—which child wants to know his own mother leave him to the wild dogs? Child thief he call me, then go off to find his mother. He even struck me when I wouldn’t move out the way. My children were too shocked, or they would have killed him for true. He jumped the tree and run south.”
I looked around. I knew some of these children could kill me in the quick.
“You will have back the boy.”
“The boy can climb into his mother shrivel-up koo and sew the life string to his belly for all I care. But he steal something precious to me.”
“A jewel? Proof that you are a woman?”
“Cursed a day it going to be when your mind catch up to your mouth. The gallbladder of the goat they sacrifice at my initiation ceremony. It has been in my hair from then. He left at morning, but took it the night before, while I was sleeping.”
“Stole it from your own head.”
“I was sleeping, I say.”
“I thought enchanted beings slept light.”
“What do you know of enchanted beings?”
“That anything wakes them.”
“Must be why you go wandering at night.”
“I don’t—”
“Hope you find what you looking for. Enough. I will have it back. You talk of witches. Without it, witches will know of this place. You may not care for children, but you will care for gold coin.”
“No need for gold in the vill—”
“You will never return to that village.”
She looked at me, the scar pattern around her eyes making them fierce.
“Take the coins and find the boy,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I just ta—”
She slapped me in the face with a loincloth. The funk rushed to my nose before I could breathe.
“Because I know how that nose work, boy. You never going to stop looking for who leave the smell, or it will drive you mad.”
She was right. I did not know I could hate her more.
“Take the coins and find the boy.”
She sent the Leopard and me. He has a nose too, she said. I thought she was going to send me with Kava. The Leopard looked neither pleased nor displeased. But right before we left, I saw them on the roof of the third hut, Kava waving his hands up and down like a madman, the Leopard looking as he always does. Kava threw a stick and the Leopard jumped him quick as lightning, his hand around Kava’s throat. The Leopard released him and walked away. Kava laughed.
“Watch where that fucking cat takes you,” Kava said to me when I saw him not long after.
I was filling wineskins with water by the river. This is what happened. After I filled them, I looked for red mud and white clay. When I found clay, I drew a white line and divided my face. Then another right along my brow. Then red lines on my cheeks and tracing my ribs, which I was seeing more, but it did not worry me the way it would have my mother.
“He takes me nowhere. I go to find the boy,” I said.
“Watch where that fucking cat takes you,” he said again.
I said nothing. I tried to mark behind my knees. Kava came up behind me and scooped up white clay. He rubbed it on my buttocks all the way down to my knees and down to my calves.
“Leopards are cunning. Do you know of their ways? You know why they run alone? Because they will betray even their own kind, and for a kill even the hyenas won’t touch.”
“Did he betray you?”
Kava looked up at me but said nothing. He was painting my thighs. I wanted him to stop.
“After you two find the boy, he will go on to southern lands. The grasslands are drying up and the prey is foul.”
“If he wants.”
“He has been a man too long. Hunters will kill him in two nights. The game is wilder, beasts that will rip him in two. Out there the hunters have poison arrows and they kill children. There are beasts bigger