Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Tracker wakes naked in chains and shackles, and the Queen’s chancellor interrogates him. Refusing to give up the boy’s location, Tracker asks for Sogolon. She tells him how they breed children in Dolingo, rants against the former male rulers of the city, and discusses the colonial and violent madness of the North and South Kings.

In return, Tracker threatens to haunt Sogolon as a ghost. She leaves him, and Venin comes in the room. After getting knocked out in a fight with the guards, Tracker awakes to “white scientists” (448): men in black robes with white skin and locks. They torture him with a Bad Ibeji parasite who puts fingers through his nose into his brain.

James represents the experience of the Bad Ibeji taking over Tracker here with a long run-on sentence that retraces the main narrative of the novel, but backwards and in other temporal configurations. Moments of lucidity interrupt Tracker’s stream of consciousness—causing him to realize the Bad Ibeji is pumping him for information—and he tries to think of things other than the boy. Once the Bad Ibeji has a fix on the boy in one of Dolingo’s trees, it retracts its claws and scampers away. Tracker passes out.

Sadogo, Venin, Mossi, and the buffalo break in and release Tracker from his cell. During his three days in prison, a slave rebellion started. He tells the questing party the boy’s location: Mwaliganza. Venin admits that a ghost called Jakwu who wants revenge against Sogolon possesses him.

A crowd attacks nobles. The party pushes through, making their way towards the boy. Fires break out in the Mungunga tree, but the fellowship makes it to the Mwaliganza tree to find the Adze, a monster of bugs and claws, as well as guards infected by lightning. Mossi saves Tracker from an Eloko, and Venin-Jakwu fights off an Eloko. They reach the Ipundulu with his claws around Sogolon’s neck, and Tracker throws a torch at the bird-monster.

As the Ipundulu tries to recover, Tracker discovers the boy hiding under a chair. Sasabonsam—the bloodsucker—attacks, and Sogolon casts a wind spell, but he flies away with Ipundulu and the boy. The questers surround Sogolon and confront her about her lies. Venin tells some truths about Sogolon’s past with Jakwu’s experiences and voice.

They agree to take Sogolon with them and ride off past the griot’s missing house. Tracker loses the boy’s smell when Sasabonsam flies through one of the magic gates. Jakwu crosses through the shrinking door and pulls Sogolon through before it closes, burning her alive with the door’s curse.  

They bathe in a river and decide to travel to Kongor on a slave ship after seeing one docked nearby. Sadogo gets his own room—due to nightmares that cause him to punch holes in walls—on the second level of the ship.

In the first level, Tracker and Mossi have sex, and talk about Mossi’s former wife and children, Tracker’s mingi, and how the Sangoma gave Tracker his wolf eye. Mossi confronts Tracker about his hatred of women. Then they have sex over and over again until the ship docks.

Dressed as sailors, Mossi and Tracker sneak through Kongor with Sadogo and buffalo. Suddenly, scents overtake Tracker—of the boy and others. They run into Leopard, and Tracker introduces Mossi. Leopard gifts Mossi some swords.

Leopard leads Tracker to Lissisolo, and Tracker tells her about Sogolon’s fate and how she gave Venin’s body to Jakwu. Bunshi appears from the floor, and they talk about how the party was deceived about the boy. Lissisolo reveals that white scientists work for the King and Sogolon, and that the Seven Wings joined the King’s army traveling to Gangatom. Tracker agrees to still return her boy.

After leaving Lissisolo, Leopard gifts axes to Tracker and shares his story: The discord between them came from Fumeli using a potion called Babcoop, “devil’s whisper” (492), while fingering Leopard. When Fumeli added another finger, Leopard discovered Fumeli was controlling him. Tracker laughs as Leopard explains he still needed someone to carry his bow, so Fumeli is still with him.

Then, Leopard takes Tracker to Nsaka and Nyka, the latter now infected with lightning like the caged woman. The lightning connection allows him to feel the pain Tracker inflicted on the Ipundulu. Nsaka is determined to kill the lightning bird to save Nyka because she owes him a debt for freeing her from slavery.

After teasing Tracker about Mossi, Leopard takes Tracker to the Malangika, a street where he could “smell necromancy” (502) where the Ipundulu is hiding. The next night, they return to the waterlogged house on that street with Nsaka and attack the Sasabonsam. Sadogo and Mossi join the fight, and they reach the room where the boy is nursing from the Ipundulu.

Mossi and Nsaka behead the lightning bird. Sasabonsam is severely injured, but manages to fly away. They take the boy, and return to find Aesi with Lissisolo and Bunshi.

The use of italics connects the written word with spoken poetry or song. Both the griot that the questers stay with and Sadogo’s bet-collector friend sing poetry, and when the lyrics arise in text, they are lineated and italicized. Written texts that aren’t poetry, like Basu’s writs and directions, also receive italicization. This typographic choice sets apart the elevated language—elevated because of its artistic merit (as in verse) or immortal quality (e.g. the ability to outlive Basu).

Also, the griot’s song is similar to the songs of French troubadours and, in turn, their inspiration, Sufi poetry. The old man sings of “Love. That was all of his singing. Love looking. Love losing. Love like how poets from where Mossi come from talk about love. Love he did lose” (406). Mossi comes from an area similar to Rumi’s homelands, and Rumi (as the most famous of many Sufi poets) wrote many poems about love. James also underscores the whirling dervish connection when Mossi suggests they “spin like dancing men” (420).

The lineation of poetry is aesthetically opposite from the run-on sentence created by the Bad Ibeji’s mind reading. This style of free flowing stream-of-consciousness became popular from the British modernists, like Woolf. James plays with time in a way that is similar to the emotional jumps in time that Woof uses in Mrs. Dalloway. However, Tracker suffers from unnatural mind-control rather than naturally musing like Clarissa Dalloway. Bad Ibeji comes from the Yoruba religion’s idea about twins.

In addition to the Ipundulu’s white skin, the white scientists have a pale complexion. White’s purity becomes “white like only the purest evil” (489), and absence of color creates associations; “nothingness is white” (448). This recasting of hues’ significance—white as negative rather than superior—illustrates a primary difference between James’s imaginary world and modern Western conceptions of beauty and morality. This is one way the genre of fantasy can interrogate race and race relations.

Aesi—”the extra four limbs of the Spider King” (509)—tries to trade Bunshi for the boy and belittles Mossi’s eastern monotheistic homeland. Lissisolo argues with Aesi, and an invisible “nothing” (511) attacks her. Aesi reveals that he has been travelling in Sadogo’s mind, causing his night terrors, and killed the old griot through him.

Aesi provokes Sadogo by taunting him about the bet-collector, but the invisible force interrupts Sadogo’s attack. Leopard pounces on the nothing that holds Lissisolo, Aesi kills Bunshi, and Nsaka runs off with the boy. The party fights with swords and axes, and Fumeli’s arrows hit Aesi in the forehead.

Tracker and Sadogo fight the “shadowings” (515), but they cover Sadogo; he crashes through floors of the building with them covering his body. Mossi finds Tracker mourning over the hole made by Sadogo’s suicidal killing of the monsters, and convinces him to leave.

The questers ride out of the city on horses as the possessed crowd chases them and birds swarm and attack them. Lissisolo takes the boy into Mweru and Nsaka rides back to Kongor. Tracker cries over Sadogo’s death, and Mossi comforts him. They plan to head to Gangatom through one of the ten and nine doors in Nigiki.