We stopped at a house four floors high, the taller buildings beside it throwing moon shadow. No door stood in front and the lowest window was as high as three men foot-to-shoulder. One window near the top and in the center, dark with what looked like flickering light. I pointed to the house, then the window.
“He is here.”
“Tracker, a problem you have,” he said and pointed up. “Are you now crow to my Leopard?”
“All the birds in the ten and three kingdoms and a crow is what you call me?”
“Fine, a dove, a hawk—how about an owl? You better fly quick because this place has no door.”
“There is a door.”
The Leopard looked at me hard, then walked as far around the house as he could.
“No, you have no door.”
“No, you have no eyes.”
“Ha, ‘you have no eyes.’ I listen to you and hear her.”
“Who?”
“The Sangoma. Your words fall just like hers. You think like her too, that you’re clever. Her witchcraft is still protecting you.”
“If it were witchcraft it wouldn’t be protecting me. She threw something on me that binds craft; this I was told by a witchman who tried to kill me with metals. It’s not as if one feels it on the skin or in the bones. Something that remains even after her death, which again makes it not witchcraft, for a witch’s spells all die with her.”
I walked right up to the wall as if to kiss it, then whispered an incantation low enough that not even his Leopard ears could hear.
“If it were witchcraft,” I said.
I shuddered and stepped back. This always made me feel the way I do when I drink juice of the coffee bean—like thorns were under my skin pushing through, and forces in the night were out to get me. I whispered to the wall, This house has a door and I with the wolf eye will open it. I stepped back and without my torch the wall caught fire. White flame raced to four corners in the shape of a door, consumed the shape, crackled and burned, then put itself out, leaving a plain wooden door untouched by scorch.
“Whoever is here is working witch science,” I said.
Mortar and clay steps took us up to the first floor. A room empty of man smell, with an archway setting itself off in the dark. Blue moonlight came through the windows. I knew stealth, but the cat was so quiet I looked behind me twice.
People were talking harshly above us. The next floor up had a room with a locked door, but I smelled no people behind it. Halfway up the steps the smells came down on us: scorched flesh, dried urine, shit, the stinking carcasses of beasts and birds. Near the top of the steps sounds came down on us—whispers, growls, a man, a woman, two women, two men, an animal—and I wished my ears were as good as my nose. Blue light flashed from the room, then flickered down to dark. No way we could climb the last steps without being seen or heard, so we stayed halfway. We could see in the room anyway. And we saw what flickered blue light.
A woman, an iron collar and chain around her neck, her hair almost white but looking blue as light flickered through the room. She screamed, yanked at the chain around her neck, and blue light burst within her, coursing along the tree underneath her skin that one sees when you cut parts of a man open. Instead of blood, blue light ran through her. Then she went dark again. The light was the only way we could make out the slaver in dark robes, the man who fed him dates, and somebody else, with a smell I both remembered and couldn’t recognize.
Then somebody else touched a stick and it burst into flame like a torch. The chained woman jumped back and scrambled against the wall.
A woman held the torch. I had never seen her before, was sure of it even in the dark, but she smelled familiar, so familiar. Taller than everybody else in the room, with hair big and wild like some women above the sand sea. She pointed the torch to the ground, to the stinking half carcass of a dog.
“Tell me true,” the slaver said. “How did you get a dog up into this room?”
The chained woman hissed. She was naked and so dirty that she looked white.
“Move in close and I tell you true,” she said.
The slaver moved in close, she spread her legs, her finger spreading her kehkeh, and shot a streak of piss that wet his sandals before he could pull away. She started to laugh but he cracked his knuckles and punched the cackle out of her mouth. The Leopard jumped and I grabbed his arm. It sounded as if she was laughing until the tall woman’s torch shined on her again as tears pooled in her eyes. She said, “You you you you you all go. You all must go. Go now, run run run run run because Father coming, he coming on the wind don’t you hear the horse go go go you he won’t kiss the head of you unclean boys, go wash wash wash wash wash wash wash—”
The slaver nodded and the tall woman shoved the torch right up to her face. She jumped back again and snarled.
“Nobody comes! Nobody comes! Nobody comes! Who are you?” the woman said.
