Black Leopard, Red Wolf

The first-person narrator, Tracker, responds to an unheard Inquisitor in an interrogation about the death of a boy. Tracker says he isn’t the killer, but will tell a story. He admits that he’s called wolf—a titular character—by some.

His story will include a “Leopard” (4)—the other titular character—and a witch. Then he diverges from this promised tale to insult the unheard questioner and describe how he killed and injured the other men in his cell.

Tracker offers two more stories: one about a merchant who hired him to find his wife in Purple City, and another about his father coming home from an opium den and making him play a game called Bawo. His unnamed father abuses him and his unnamed mother, but he fights back, injuring his father severely or killing him—Tracker offers two endings. He’s then exiled by his mother. He discards his clothes and travels to Ku.

The third story Tracker tells is about a queen who hires him to find her dead King. He finds an old woman by a river, guarding the way to Monono, and sleeps with her. She gives his semen to some fish and tells him to follow them. Through a “wall of river” (10), he comes upon four joined castles with people of various colors in them.