 Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James, Red For You, by Deon Graham, to Jeff, for Quorumoon, and a million other things, Part One. A dog, a cat, a wolf, and a fox. Be Audrey Enno or Paano. Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth. One, the child is dead. There is nothing left to know. I hear there is a queen in the south who kills the man, who brings her bad news. So when I give word of the boy's death, do I write my own death with it? Truth eats lies, just as the crocodile eats the moon. And yet my witness is the same today as it will be tomorrow. No, I did not kill him. Though I may have wanted him dead. Craved for it, the way a glutton craves goat flesh. Oh, to dry bow and fire it to his black heart, and watch it explode black blood, and to watch his eyes for when they stop blinking, when they look but stop seeing, and to listen for his voice croaking, and hear his chest heave in a death rat or sing. Look, my wretched spirit leaves this most wretched of bodies, and to smile at such tidings and dance at such a loss. Yes, I glut at the conceit of it. But no, I did not kill him. Be Audrey Enno or Paano. Not everything the eye sees should be spoken by the mouth. The cell is larger than the one before. I smell the dried blood of executed men. I hear their ghosts still screaming. Your bread carries weevils, and your water carries a piece of ten and two guards, and the goat they fuck for sport. Shall I give you a story? I am just a man, who some have called a wolf. The child is dead. I know the old woman brings you different news. Call a murderer, she says. Even though my only sorrow is that I did not kill her. The red-headed one said that the child's head was infested with devils. If you believe in devils, I believe in bad blood. You look like a man who has never shed blood. And yet, blood sticks between your fingers. A boy you circumcised, a young girl too small for your beak. Look how that dreams you. Look at you. I will give you a story. It begins with a leopard and a witch. Grand inquisitor, fetish priest. No, you will not call for the guards. My mouth might say too much before the club it shot. Hey, guard yourself. A man with two hundred cows who delight in a patch of boy skin and the coup of a girl who should be no man's woman. Because that is what you seek, is it not? A dark little thing that cannot be found in thirty sacks of gold or two hundred cows or two hundred wives? Something that you have lost? No. It was taken from you. That light. You see it. And you want it. Not light from the sun or from the thunder guard in the night sky, but light with no blemish. Light in a boy who has no knowledge of women, a girl you bought for marriage, not because you need a wife, for you have two hundred cows. But a wife you can tear open. Because you search for it in holes. Black holes, white holes, underground holes for the light that vampires look for. And you will have it. You will dress it up in ceremony, circumcision for the boy, consummation for the girl. And when they shed blood and spit and sperm and peace, you leave it all on your skin to go to the hieroglyph tree and use any hole you find. The child is dead. And so is everyone. I walked for days to swarms of flies in the blood swamp, in skin-slicing rocks in salt plains, to day and night. I walked as far south as Omaroro, and I did not know or care. Men detained me as a beggar, took me for a thief, tortured me as a traitor, and when news of the dead child reached you. Sample complete. Ready to continue?