“I want to go home.”

  “Yes, don’t we all.”

  Conabitt looked around. “You’re not home?”

  “Not since my exile,” the old man said merrily before getting serious. “Giving leaders good, blood-shedding broths, turns out, dear boy, is no good for quarrels.”

  “Can you take me home?” He sat up in a cot made of hides, pulled drum-tight by strands of hair. He was in a single, sizable room chopped by partitions of beams and the skin of a gargantuan lizard.

  “Why you want to go back?” the man said, pushing him flat. “A young boy, in dee jungle? Some would call dat paradise.” Conabitt didn’t like the feel of the old man’s hand, which lingered on his bare chest like the dry tongues of cats.

  When his rescuer’s hand lifted, so did the man’s eyes. He and Conabitt looked about the room, the old man seemingly pleased to point out and identify the various gourds and cupels. Strewn about them, sooty braziers burned.

  Since arriving on the north shore, this strange land had been presented to the boy through copper-clasped books and an array of tutors. One such academic had partially indoctrinated him in local lore. Only a wizard—though the blacks called them something different—would decorate their hut in (casting his eyes to the barked rafters) nailed-up bats, nailed-in ears, and a beheaded monkey that hung from a hook.

  “Are you a,” the boy fumbled, rising, “a latta, ladair—”

  “Indeed, dear boy.” The man’s face creased to a wide grin, exposing yellow teeth and spaces between them. “Da Lathairboni, enchanters of da wild. We do God’s work,” quickly adding, “just lookit theez dressings. You took nastier fall dan you know.” It hadn’t seemed that nasty, though the boy kept his thoughts to himself. “I am Ullumon,” the old man said, running his spidery fingers over the scalp of his bald, ashen head. “Ullumon da Lathairboni.”

  The Suelan seemed to be waiting for something, displeased when the young white showed no sign of recognition. “I am Conabitt L—”

  “Yes.” The old man let him slip off the bed and wander toward a corner. “Da whole continent know who you are. Seed of da rulah—but you be eefin more special dan dat.”

  “For gold? Where’s my nanny?”

  “Gold!” the man spit. “Gold be nuttin’—gold be for doze spear-chuckas back dare. Oh, and dee old woman, had to leave her body. Poor ting.”

  That pulled him back to reality. “Thank you for saving me.” And the boy meant it, his fate at the hands of those men now only beginning to bubble to a grim surface. Distracting himself from another thought on the matter, he fixated on something sad yet wholly magnificent: a dead cat. Conabitt bent down to gaze upon a leopard that had been put in a curled position underneath a cluttered table.

  “Oh, my pleasure.” Ullumon said. “My pleasure, dear boy. But we must do some-ting about your name.”

  “Did the hyenas kill this, too?”

  “I dink I call you…Diamond.”

  Conabitt bent down further, running his hands through the black and yellow fur. A sudden roar sent him toppling over backwards, sparing the removal of his head by way of a lightning-fast paw.

  Ullumon laughed. “That is Leebu.”

  The boy gaped, seeing above those flashing teeth that the living cat had only one eye. That keen yellow orb glared at him, its owner growling less as the boy backed away.

  “It’s—it’s alive.”

  “Dat he be. Dat be he—at least for a little while longah. He be as old as I, as da cat year’s leap. Do not mind Leebu. In fact, he will be one of you greatest teachers.”

  “He will?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “And the hyenas?”

  “Friends!” Ullumon cheered, rising to his feet and reaching for his staff. “We all friends here.”

  “Why Diamond?”

  “’Cuz,” Ullumon said as if he’d been waiting. “’Cuz, dear boy, you be special and small and white as a Suelan lily. And,” he hobbled just beyond a partition, “I dink you be hard. Harder one day, like hammered steel. With,” flinging the partition aside, Ullumon exposed a bubbling cauldron, “a little tutelage.”

  The Lathairboni took hold of a hollowed horn and dipped it into the pea-green broth. “I will teach you, Diamond, da fruits and joys of power.”

  “But why me?”

  “Other than you land in dis old man’s lap? Told you, you special, dear boy—now, yes, da fruits of power. Wouldn’t you want such tings when given da spear one day to rule you own whites?”

  Replacing his father in some stuffy throne seemed to the ten-year-old as the cloudiest of yet-to-comes. “I suppose,” he said, prodded by a moment’s want to correct the kind old man that his father only ruled a colony. “And you’ll take me home after?”

  “Of course.”

  There was another answer as to why him, one Ullumon refrained from delivering when he poured the broth back into the vat and gave the abomination a good stir. Because the magician was a degenerate, and imaginative, getting old, and running out of nights to corrupt much more than the beasts he tasked with his wiles.

  “We will make you heavenly and mighty.” Ullumon handed the boy the horn, gesturing him to dip into the vat. After a moment’s hesitation the boy sipped, sipped then drank. He began to swish, almost immediately. “Sleep now. We start tomorrow.”

  *

  A captain swung open the door to the governor’s office, exchanging the hellish heat of the Suelan morning for the hellfire being lobbed inside. The meeting already in full swing, the career-ending accusations had already rolled downhill, wheeling across the polished floor and onto the toe of his forward-most boot.

  “Are you the man who was in charge of last night’s convoy?” Conabus Lotgard had said it cold. Worse, he had to say it twice. A decorated man, ghastly pale, eyed the helmet the governor pawed then answered him on behalf of the captain: “He is, my lord.”

  Before explanations could be attempted, before pardons begged or pallid final salutes given, the young officer was dragged screaming from the office, out of the mansion and onto the colony’s gallows where his neck was summarily broken.

  “Now,” Governor Lord Conabus Lotgard said, cooling further and slicking back an escaped flume of hair that had been hanging like a blond root in his grave. “Turn this fetid land upside down if you must. Find my son.”

  The colonel, reunited with his feather-crest helmet, commanded and barked and ordered his staff back out into the day. A pair of perched hornbills took flight, egressing from the rock the colonel threw at the horses who’d returned to the gate riderless.

  “You heard Lord Lotgard.” The colonel eyed each of his five remaining captains. “Scorch the earth. Kill every savage if you have to, man, woman, monkey-eyed nit—find that boy’s precious hide or lose your own. Dismissed!”

  *

  When he awoke, Conabitt didn’t sit up in his blue silken sheets. The young boy, groggy but getting better, gazed upon the Suelan room, now brightened by the rays of a late morning. The door was open, leaving in place of the night’s darkened wood a solid block of sun.

  Conabitt sprang onto his knees, pinning his back against the wall’s dried, armor-like mud. No hyenas entered. After careful moments he determined that none lounged or panted beyond the threshold either. Calm now, slipping out of bed, he tiptoed to the doorway.

  Gobbles and drawn-out screeches—he’d thought he’d heard such, and he was right. Odd, but it sounded like the old man was talking to who or whatever was carrying on. Outside, the dry earth was beaten by wide, menacing prints. Not just hyena, though they’d made many, but cats. Not just that old leopard’s. There were other things, too, not quite man’s, perhaps a largish type of monkey. Something told the boy that all the animal crap that was absent may be stinking nearby in the jungle, a wall-thick green that leaned in on all sides as if to learn the secrets of the lonesome hut.

  Two hideous birds sat out on a low branch. Conabitt imagined if a dragon and a rooster had a baby, the result would be these winged things, with their open beaks, swinging and shuttering. Ullumon stood below, feeding them. “Oh?” He laughed. “Dank you, hornbill. Dank you. Excellent work. Good morning, Diamond. You sleep like Leebu. Careful, watch you step now.”

  Conabitt looked down to see he was stepping into a snare. A more careful glance revealed a high number of insidious traps, some swinging with their new captives.

  His mother had told him that when his father was overworked, excusing his behavior was the best thing to do. Stress, she’d say. Then maybe it was the stress from the brushes with death playing with the boy, or so he wagered. Brushes that poor, old wretched woman and six warriors had been unable to escape. His heart didn’t hurt for them as he felt guiltily it should, but rather, he wondered how the old black man could look so different in the light of day.

  Conabitt had once put a drop of his father’s Saffreen oil in his sister’s lemon water, rendering her giddy until she had to be excused from the table. Maybe there had been something in that drink?

  Ullumon looked little different than a burned version of his mother’s father. Tall and without hair, gangly, long arms that ended in fingers always fiddling about in jars, or pouches, or feeding strange birds that he still spoke to. But nothing, what—eerie?—whatever he’d seen a night ago.

  “We ready for our first lesson?”

  The boy dithered. “What do I have to do?”

  “Come. Come, dear boy.” Back into the glow of the hut’s stuffy warmth they went, up to a new cauldron bubbling. One pop farted out a smell so noxious the boy thought he was going to fall over.

  “Please,” the boy looked up, “don’t make me dri—”

  “Drink, yes. It’s not so bad going down.” Ullumon dipped in a horn, sucking out its ooze nectar so not a drop remained. “Diamond, you must know, once you drink,” the old man paused and rubbed his chin. “Do you know how da first day of fall be better dan da rest? Da otha days we all call fall? How dee cool winds feel da coolest da first time? Or, I know, dear boy, I know, how opening one of your daddy’s gifts, how da surprise be only once—this, this be like da Uulgunii.”

  The Uulgunii, or God’s Broth, was what waited for Conabitt. Explained in terms a boy would understand, Conabitt learned that once imbibed, God’s Broth packed a magical punch. Though servings would be plenty, the first cup, or the first dirty cattle-ash horn, bestowed fantastic gifts. So much so, habitual drinkers of the God’s Broth teemed with envy at the sight of a drinker’s first dive into animal wonder.

  “Wid a few more odds an ends,” the Lathairboni said, gesturing to random charms that hung about the rafters, “we show you what no white boy ever has seen. Special be the soup of da Lathairboni, but it last only a few day.” Ullumon handed him the loaded horn. “You drink when you ready.”

  At this, the old man left the boy to start a tirade against the one-eyed leopard. Leebu had wandered in from some morning outing to lie down upon exposed, half-empty sacks. What composition made up their bulk the boy could not say, but as he dared another sniff at the fetid broth, he aptly guessed that they were not to be laid on.

  Ullumon yelled nonsense and grumbled low. The feline retaliated with drawn-out, articulate snarls. It amused the boy; the two seemed to be genuinely arguing with the other, chalk full of the pauses and talk-overs one would expect in a parlor room debate.

  Something like taking a dare to jump off a low bridge onto the roof of a moving carriage, or how his mates had once convinced him gulping down live frogs was an inestimable rite of passage, Conabitt put the rim to his lips. He drank slowly, watching the old, black, crazy man stomp and wiggle bony fingers at Leebu.

  “I told you, Leebu,” Ullumon said, clear as day. Clearer. “Rooibos and wormwood are one thing, but one cat hair in Goonu powder and the whole thing is ruined, damn you.”

  “Shut that toothless mouth,” Leebu said. Conabitt felt as if he’d been put in a sack and hurled in the air. Or it was like he’d walked neck-deep out in a river, sinking below, and in doing so discovered he now gazed upon a new world with the open eyes of a fish. Leebu continued, snapping back at whatever threat Ullumon had made while the boy’s revelation had blocked all hearing: “Contagion? You haven’t cast a contagion spell since I sucked on my mother’s teat. I’ll lay where I wish.”

  “I put a spell on you,” Ullumon raged, “and another is coming! Keep it up!”

  “It can talk?” Conabitt heard himself say, in growlish vernacular.

  “Ah,” Ullumon exclaimed, also in cat language, clapping his hands. “Look who joins the conversation!” His strange take on Orisulan words was now absent. The old man spoke fluent and clear. “Leebu, you want to ask Diamond here if my magic is any good?”

  Leebu snorted, curling himself into a ball.

  “How long will it be like this?” The boy felt like he was going to float away.

  “Oh,” Ullumon smiled up at the rafters, “two days, dear boy. Maybe three.”

  “Then I won’t be able to talk to animals?”

  Leebu looked up without stirring. “By then, you’ll wish you couldn’t.”

  “Shut,” Ullumon kicked at the leopard, turning his would-be nest into a burst of powders, “up!”

  After Ullumon shooed the cat from the sacks and tightened them to his satisfaction, the leopard and old man gazed upon their new pupil. The still, clear stare of a cat with fangs like dinner knives shook the young boy. “Hello,” he quivered, furthering his fortitude until he straightened his back and tried again. “Hello, Leebu.”

  “Hello, Diamond,” said the cat.

  “Leebu, you should have a moment with the boy,” Ullumon pilfered through a cupboard, “while I prepare for our great, grand adventure.”

  Leebu was also old. That, the boy could see. Exactly how much grey had encroached on the cat’s proud spots was a bit harder to tell, for light inside the place sparkled with flitters of dust caught in the lens of a washed-out red. But no doubt the proud cat’s former yellow had withered from a kingly hue down to its flaxen frown. His black held up well, mostly, nowhere better than the scar running across his face that had taken with it an eye. The other side, the good side, the one with the eye, cocked up at Ullumon. “Not this time. I’ve helped with enough of your experiments.”

  “You will and that’s the end of it!” Ullumon slammed shut the cupboard and ushered the cat out and the boy along with it.

  Only a couple strides took them out of the cleared grounds that surrounded the hut and into the dense, moist wall of the jungle. The boy followed, parting vines and sniffing the tart forest floor that made smells when he stepped on herbs undetected. The cat’s yellow backside disappeared between the flamboyant green of banana leaves, reappearing when Conabitt almost tripped.

  “Quiet,” Leebu growled.

  Conabitt whispered, “What are we looking for?” Game, surely. Marvelous game. The leopard was likely to—

  “For a place where I can sleep and you not bother me.”

  “…Oh.”

  After a while, they came to a natural tent made by fallen trees. Monkeys, alerted by the presence of the lumbering cat, hooted and hollered amongst the canopy. “Cat—cat—cat! Big cat—cat—cat!”

  “They won’t bother you?”

  Leebu growled, “No,” saying nothing until he had kneaded the grass into the right position and plopped down. “I mean bothered with the questions, boy. Your new master would have you pelting me.”

  The boy sat down. “He’s not my—you two aren’t friends, are you?”

  “You hear them? Up in the trees?” The boy nodded. “Weak. The lot of them. The lot of you. Freedom, that precious running meat, she is only had one way. In the jaws she squeals. Under the paw she submits, only and if you’re alone.” The cat’s golden eye flashed. “The problem with you social animals…” Leebu laughed, in the dry, sinister smirk that is a cat’s laugh. “Too many to count on all your plump little fingers. You rely on others. Rather than seek yourself, you become each other’s excuse, the other’s hooting face of falling, failing hopes. Blame the other.” The cat looked up. “They see me, astride below, and they fear, but did you know they also pity? Pity me. They know not the untethered bliss. A life of solitude. The scent whiffed eternal of perfect, centered oneness.”

  “…I don’t think I understand.”

  “That’s your lesson from me, boy. Oneness. Seek it. I’ve spent most of my life in service to that foul man. Plucked from wilder days.”

  “My lesson?”

  Teeth were out before he could blink. “Be of service to no one, Diamond.”

  *

  “Ah, dee friends are back!” Ullumon stood outside his door, draped in satchels. He pointed his staff at Leebu, switching back to cat speak. “Did he teach you? Show you things of the jungle?” The boy looked over at Leebu.

  “Yes. Quite.”

  “Good. Then we are ready to get started.”

  Perhaps a boy is normal; he who trots off into a great wilderness. Perhaps so, but his remarkable zest and light-footedness may have come, at least partly, from the God’s Broth coursing through his veins.

  Ullumon told Conabitt the three of them were to walk to a glade. There, further instructions would be given. Getting into a “glade”—something Conabitt imagined as a small sort of opening—would once again require parting the jungle wall. Inside, it puzzled the boy that the throaty sound of frogs and insect trills remained as he’d always heard them. Those monkeys had spoken, more or less. Leebu orated better than his father’s most versed house servant. Conabitt turned to ask the old man of this, but the sight of him prompted Conabitt to wait.

  “Do you need a hand?” Conabitt said. The old man focused intently on the ground, already huffing and grunting over fallen, spore-ridden trees. Leebu lagged behind, his long tail leisurely flicking as the Lathairboni struggled.

  This was the way of it, long through mazes of green, up a small hill where the Suelan sky peeked down eternal blue, down a slope and into bush that began giving way.

  The boy couldn’t help but wonder how the old man had managed the night before. “Did he ride a hyena back to the hut?” the boy would have asked Leebu, imagining the cat would have chuckled that dry, sinister smirk again. “Are you unwell?” he spoke aloud.