Ch. 3: A Hole in the Leopard's Path

Two down. Two to go.

The news went around the forest the way news always does, faster than any runner, from the weaver birds to the monkeys to the antelope at the waterhole. “Have you heard? The spider has taken Onini to the sky. And the hornets too, in a gourd. The spider is buying the stories.” And every creature who heard it looked over its shoulder and wondered who would be next.

Osebo the leopard heard it, lying on a high branch with his tail hanging down.

“The spider,” said Osebo, and yawned enormously, showing every one of his teeth. “Let him come. Let him try. I would like to see that.”

Ananse, back in his compound, had heard what the leopard said, because news goes in both directions. He sat on his stool and did not whistle.

“Aso,” he said. “The python was proud, so I caught him with his pride. The hornets were afraid of the rain, so I caught them with their fear. But the leopard is not proud of anything except his teeth, and he is not afraid of anything at all. What do I do with the leopard?”

Aso was grinding pepper. She did not stop grinding. “What does the leopard do every night?” she asked.

Ananse thought. “He hunts. And then he goes down to the stream to drink.”

“Along which path?”

“The same one. Always the same one. You can see his footprints in the mud.”

“Then,” said Aso, still grinding, “go and dig a hole.”

So Ananse took his hoe and went into the forest, and he followed the leopard's tracks until he came to the place where the path bent down towards the stream, between two big roots, where the footprints were thickest. And there he dug.

He dug all afternoon. He dug until his arms ached and his back ached and his many legs ached in eight different ways. Then he cut thin sticks and laid them across the top, and on the sticks he laid leaves, and on the leaves he scattered earth, and on the earth he pressed a few footprints of his own, very carefully, so that it all looked exactly like the path had always looked.

Then he went home and ate his supper and went to bed. And for the first time in many nights, he slept well.

Late in the night, Osebo came down the path.

He had eaten well. He was full and slow and thirsty, and he was thinking about nothing except the cool water of the stream. He walked between the two big roots, where he had walked a thousand times before, and he put his great paw down on the path.

And the path was not there.

There was a crack of sticks, a rush of leaves and earth, a yowl that woke every bird for a mile around, and then the leopard was at the bottom of a deep pit, sitting in the dirt with leaves on his head, looking up at a small round piece of sky with stars in it.

He tried to jump out. The sides were too steep. He tried to climb. The earth crumbled under his claws.

In the morning, Ananse came along the path, humming. He stopped at the edge of the hole and looked down.

“Osebo!” he said, in a voice of great astonishment. “What are you doing down there? Is this where you live now? It is not a very nice house.”

“Spider,” growled the leopard. “Did you dig this hole?”

“Me? Dig this hole? Look at me. Look at my little arms. Do I look like a digger of holes?” Ananse peered down, shaking his head. “No, no, I think I know what happened here. You were out last night, drinking. Not water. I can smell the palm wine from here.” (He could not, because there was none, but he said it with such certainty that for a moment Osebo almost wondered.) “You were drinking, and you came stumbling home, and you fell in a hole. It happens to the best of us.”

“Get me out,” said the leopard.

“Well,” said Ananse slowly, “I could. I am a kind person, everybody says so. But if I get you out, you will only eat me. And then tomorrow you will eat my children, and the day after that you will eat my wife, who would be very annoyed about it. I do not think I can take that risk.”

“I will not eat you,” said Osebo. “Get me out and I will not eat you, or your children, or your wife. I promise it.”

“On your teeth?”

“On my teeth.”

“Very well,” said Ananse. “Wait there.”

“Where would I go?” said the leopard.

Ananse went into the bush and came back with two long, strong poles, and a great quantity of string creeper, the same tough kind he had used on the python. He lowered the poles down into the pit, side by side.

“Now,” he said, “put your front paws on this pole, and your back paws on that one, and hold tight, and I will pull you up.”

The leopard did as he was told. He put his front paws on one pole and his back paws on the other and held on tight. And while he was holding on, all his attention on the holding, Ananse let down a loop of creeper and drew it snug around his paws and the poles together. Then another loop. And another. Down went the creeper and round went the creeper, so quick and so neat, the way a spider winds up a fly, until Osebo was bound to his two poles like a load on a carrier's frame, and could not have scratched his own ear if the ear had begged him to.

“Spider,” said Osebo, “this is not pulling me up.”

“Patience,” said Ananse. “I am getting to that part.”

He made the creepers fast to a strong branch overhead, and he heaved, and he heaved, and he puffed, and little by little the leopard rose up out of the pit, poles and paws and creeper and all, until he lay on the path in the morning sunlight, grumbling, dusty and very much alive, and absolutely unable to move.

“You promised not to eat me,” Ananse reminded him.

“I would like to point out,” said Osebo with great bitterness, “that I am not in a position to eat anybody.”

“Then we understand each other,” said Ananse. “Come. Somebody wants to meet you.”

It was the hardest climb of all. A leopard weighs a great deal more than a python on a palm branch, and a good deal more than a gourd full of hornets, and Ananse had to rest at every cloud. But he got there in the end, and he set Osebo down before the golden stool.

The elders did not chuckle this time. They did not murmur. They sat very still on their stools, and several of them drew their feet up underneath their cloths.

Nyankonpon leaned forward. He looked at the leopard, bound tight to his two poles. He looked at the spider, panting and covered in red earth from the digging.

“Kwaku Ananse,” he said, and for the first time his voice was not amused. It was something else. It was respectful. “My hand has touched it. There remains what remains.”

“One more, Nana,” said Ananse. “Only one more.”

But as he climbed down the thread that evening, he was not whistling. Because what remained was Mmoatia. And everybody knows that nobody, ever, has caught a fairy.