The Sleeping Baobab Tree

by Paula Leyden

  The blasts of Nokokulu’s horn were getting more and more impatient. We couldn’t ignore her.

  Fred started running towards the car.

  “Last one there has to sit in the front seat on the way home!” he shouted. “And it’s not going to be me.”

  FRED

  The Cloud of Doom

  As I ran towards the car I felt the ground rumbling underneath my feet. Like when you’re hungry and your stomach grumbles, only much bigger. The kind of feeling that goes right through your feet to your brain.

  “They’ve opened the Kariba Dam!” I shouted back at Bul-Boo, who was still quite a way behind me.

  “What?” Bul-Boo said, slowing down. “Wait – tell me.”

  I stopped running and waited for her. Forgetting for a minute who I was dealing with – she knows a whole lot more than me about dam walls and the shaking of the earth.

  As she reached me she sped up again and ran right past.

  “Sorry, Fred,” she called over her shoulder, laughing. “I just don’t want to be map reader on the way home.”

  She reached the car before me but not by much, and she must have forgotten for a moment that Nokokulu was still in it, because as she reached it she banged both her hands on the bonnet and let out a yell. “Back seat for me!”

  Not a good move.

  “Hey! What did I tell you about noise here? Strange things will happen if you don’t listen to your elders, believe me.”

  My stomach lurched. In my experience my great-granny doesn’t make idle threats. When Mum says that she’s never cooking us another meal because we just gobble our food and leave, we shake our fingers at her (in a more jokey kind of way than Nokokulu does) and say, “Idle threats!” It makes her mad.

  But whatever kind of threat Nokokulu was making, it was a believable one. For me, anyway. Madillo stopped laughing too. Bul-Boo was trying to look as though she had suddenly come upon us entirely by accident and could not believe her bad luck.

  “You,” Nokokulu said, pointing at her. “Boo! What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. I’m doing nothing,” Bul-Boo said.

  “Well, the storm has gone away and Mad Girl and Silly Boy aren’t going to be any use” – I could tell she had put capital letters in the names by the way she said them – “so you can help me build the fire. You other two, go and play.”

  As if we were three years old.

  “What if the storm comes back?” I asked.

  “What if there’s a warthog who comes here to eat us all? What if there’s a giant snake curled up in the tree and it slithers down in the night? What if the rivers run up the hill and drown us all?” Nokokulu said.

  She thinks she’s so clever. It’s not how ancient people should behave. And I wouldn’t mind about the warthog, as I don’t think there’s a single case in human history of a warthog eating people, but did she have to put the snake in there? Along with the word “slither”?

  Bul-Boo smiled at me and I couldn’t tell whether it was because of Nokokulu being so rude or the other kind of smile. But I didn’t really mind which one it was, either would do.

  While Bul-Boo and Nokokulu were setting out the fire (well, Bul-Boo did most of the work: Nokokulu prefers to be the one giving orders), Madillo and I sat a short distance away. Waiting.

  I decided to talk to Madillo about the fact that the cloud of doom had not yet gone away from above my head.

  “You know my gift?” I said.

  I had to say it carefully because all Madillo wants in life is a gift. She thinks it’s very unfair that I have one and she doesn’t. She keeps trying to create gifts in herself but I’ve told her you can’t do that. You have to be born with them.

  She nodded.

  “Well, you know I woke up the day before yesterday with a premonition?”

  “The doom one?”

  “Yes. Like all my others.”

  “What about it?” she said, tracing circles in the dust with a stick, pretending not to be that interested. I could tell she was desperate to know.

  “Well, it’s a bad one, and it still hasn’t gone away. I can’t give you any details, but it means that whatever is going to happen is still ahead of us.”

  “What’s the use of being able to predict bad things if you don’t know what they are?” she said. “I could do that and then when something goes wrong, as it always does eventually, I’d say, ‘Oh, I knew that was going to happen.’”

  I’d never told her that my gift was limited to general awfulness. I’d always just said I didn’t want to share the details because they were too depressing. But it looked like she was starting to not believe me.

  “It’s not like that, Madillo, and this time I’m scared.”

  She looked a bit more sympathetic now. “When is this thing going to happen? Do you at least know that?”

  “Tonight,” I said, before I could stop myself. Even though this wasn’t strictly true, I wanted her to think I knew that at least.

  Madillo went still. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  “Tonight, here, under the baobab tree where we’re surrounded by the bones of dead people? Where we’ll be sleeping on top of graves? Where the spirits of Nokokulu’s ancestors roam free?”

  Bul-Boo always tells me I’m too dramatic about things, but I’m nothing compared to her twin.

  “Well, yes,” I said defensively.

  Why had I said tonight?

  “We’ll have to tell the others.”

  “The others plural? You think I’m going to tell Nokokulu? I’m not even going to tell Bul-Boo,” I said. “She’ll laugh at me.”

  Madillo looked at me. I could see she was going to say something, but then she didn’t.

  “OK, you’re right. Well, she wouldn’t laugh at you, but she wouldn’t believe you. I hope you’re wrong, Fred. And I hope we get back home soon. We need to carry on the investigation into the disappearance of Aunt Kiki and the others.”

  I didn’t want to say it to Madillo but getting back home was the least of my worries. Nokokulu would get us home even if she took ages about it. It was the thought of Aunt Kiki that was making my head hurt.

  FRED

  Nocturnal Lettuce

  Nokokulu can be nice when she decides to be, even if it makes her grimace. Today, without me even knowing, she had packed all my favourite foods – sausages, chocolates, baked beans and more chocolates.

  “Lucky we have enough for our surprise visitors, Chiti,” she said, winking at me.

  The raging creature from earlier had clearly disappeared. Maybe it was because she’d had something to eat – half a bar of chocolate while she was watching Bul-Boo do all the work. Bul-Boo says that if people don’t eat often enough their blood sugar gets low and it makes them grumpy. That’s probably why Nokokulu eats all the time. She must have very sensitive blood sugar.

  Bul-Boo finished stoking up the fire then came and sat down next to me. Sometimes I wish I didn’t like her in the way I think I do, because it makes everything so complicated. We’ve been friends since we were small and we’re just used to each other. I didn’t even know now if she was sitting next to me because she liked me or because she was just used to sitting next to me. Last year I wouldn’t have thought anything about it.

  Nokokulu put her small frying pan carefully onto the coals at the side of the fire so it wasn’t in the middle of the flames. She also had a small pot with nshima in it and she crouched by the side of the fire, stirring it.

  “Good,” she said. “Now things are right. We will wait for the food to cook and when we’ve eaten it all we’ll go to bed and give my ancestors some peace.”

  We all just nodded. Silence is often best when Nokokulu is in a good mood, because it means she stays that way. The sun was starting to go down already so I supposed it would soon be time for bed.

  “Yes, boy, it will soon be night,” she said, looking at me. (I don’t know how she always knows what I’m thinking.) “But who says it has to be d
ark for you to sleep? Do you think lions look at their watches and wonder if it’s too early to go to bed? No, they don’t. They sleep in the sun, because that’s the best time to sleep.”

  “Lions are nocturnal,” Bul-Boo commented.

  Bul-Boo knows a lot of interesting facts but I would have preferred her to keep this one to herself.

  “Nocturnal?” Nokokulu said. “And you think you aren’t?”

  Madillo frowned at Bul-Boo to stop her saying anything else. Often it’s Bul-Boo trying to get Madillo to be quiet, but today it was the opposite.

  “Well, I suppose I could be nocturnal,” Bul-Boo said slowly, “if I was a lion.”

  “And you could very easily be one,” I jumped in, before World War III started. “We could all be lions. I mean, lions, like humans, are ninety-nine per cent water, so there’s very little difference between us.”

  Bul-Boo turned to look at me. “Fred, are you sure you’re not thinking about lettuce?” she asked. “Or jellyfish?”

  “Yes,” I said, “lettuce. And jellyfish. But they could be nocturnal too if they wanted to be.”

  There was a small silence following that, which I suppose I should have expected. Because I know there is no such thing as a nocturnal lettuce. I looked across at Nokokulu and she was grinning at me. “Yes, boy, you’re right. Anything is possible,” she said. “Now, let’s eat.”

  Madillo gave me a thumbs up. Catastrophe avoided. Nokokulu was still in a good mood! Now all I had to do was hope that Bul-Boo would try and keep her comments to herself for the rest of the trip.

  “You know, children,” Nokokulu said as she was dishing food out onto two tin plates, one for her and one for the three of us to share. “A little girl lived here long ago and she flew away from her mother, up into the clouds above us. A small naughty child who never grew, because she wouldn’t eat her nshima.” She didn’t look at Bul-Boo when she said that but we all knew who she was talking about. Bul-Boo never eats it. She says that any type of porridge makes her feel ill. I don’t understand it but Mum says it’s probably just because she likes doing some things that are different from her twin, and Madillo would eat a whole potful of it if you let her.

  “Actually,” Bul-Boo said (when Bul-Boo uses the word “actually” in that voice, you know she’s going to make what she thinks is an important announcement), “the reason that the little girl, who was called Bukoko, didn’t grow is because her mother drank too much beer when she was pregnant. It had nothing to do with nshima. Sister Leonisa told us about her. Even her name means that.”

  “Sister Leonisa wouldn’t even know how to spell Bukoko,” Nokokulu said, raising her eyebrows. “Does she speak ChiTonga? Now, who wants to grow tall and strong?” she asked, holding out the nshima pot.

  I nudged Bul-Boo to stop her saying anything else. This time it worked.

  BULL - BOO

  Old Hidden Face

  One thing about Fred that is good and bad all at the same time is that he’s quite nosy. He always wants to know what’s going on. He had been desperate all day to find out if there was anything in Nokokulu’s huge suitcase. When she wandered off after supper for a walk (she says you have to walk after every meal to let your food digest), he sneaked into her tent to take a look. He should have known that the minute he did that, she’d appear. She has a knack of doing that.

  When she found him I could hear every word she said. “Nosy, nosy boy!” she shouted. “Trying to look into poor old Nokokulu’s suitcase. What are you looking for? You should be careful, you might find something in there that would make you run for a thousand miles. You would run till those skinny legs of yours could run no more, then you’d fall down into Kalulu the Hare’s burrow and that would be the last we’d see of you. Kalulu, you know, is a very tricky hare, and he doesn’t like children coming down to disturb him when he’s taking a rest.”

  Fred must have then said something ridiculous, like he was unpacking her suitcase. I couldn’t hear him properly.

  “How long you think we are staying here? One month? Did you want to put my unpacked clothes in the tent cupboard?” said Nokokulu, clearly warming to her theme. “Where is the tent cupboard? I can’t see it. Or maybe you were going to throw my things on the floor?”

  There was no answer from Fred.

  “Ha!” she said. “One day when you stick your long nose into places it shouldn’t be, a big axe will come from nowhere and chop it off. Then what? Then you’ll keep it in its proper place. Now go. Leave my things alone.”

  Fred scuttled out of the tent and back to the fire.

  “I don’t know what I did to deserve Nokokulu,” he said. “If karma is true, she’ll come back as a male praying mantis.”

  “That’s not a nice thing to wish on your great-granny, Fred,” I said, laughing.

  Fred always feels sorry for the male praying mantis because when it’s finished mating it gets its head bitten off by the female. Which really isn’t very nice. Fred says it’s a female conspiracy and that there are never any fathers around to warn their sons about it because all the fathers are already dead.

  “I don’t really want her head bitten off, but why does she say all those things to me?” Fred said. “And in front of you and Madillo?”

  I couldn’t answer that so I changed the subject. “Speaking of heads, do you remember the story Sister told us about that research being done on the guillotine?”

  He nodded.

  “That scientist who was trying to work out whether people who had their heads chopped off felt any pain? So he asked one man to wink if he was feeling sore once his head was off. And he winked thirteen times. Can you imagine that? A head winking at you as it lay on the ground!”

  “And Sister trying to demonstrate by lying on her desk and winking at us. That was funny,” Fred said.

  “It wasn’t funny, it was awful,” I told him. “Anyway, did you find out what was in her suitcase?”

  “No,” he said gloomily. “It was locked and I was just trying to pull one of the sides open so I could look inside when she arrived. You heard the rest.”

  Singing was coming from the tent. “Come back here, Chiti, before your nose isn’t pretty.”

  “That’s not normal behaviour,” I said.

  “Normal?” Fred replied. “That’s perfectly normal for her. She makes her own normal.”

  “We’d better go to her then. Where’s Madillo?”

  I looked round and saw Madillo crouching down and peering at something on the ground. As we ran to her she stood up.

  “Paw prints,” she said, pointing.

  We both looked down and there they were.

  Hyena prints. I knew because of the shape and the toenails.

  But only two?

  I knew Fred and I would be thinking the same thing. Kryptops. The one Sister Leonisa calls the Old Hidden Face because most of the monster’s face was hidden underneath bumpy horny skin. David in our class secretly calls Sister “Kryptops” but I think that’s a bit mean.

  OK, so a kryptops’ paw prints would have been bigger than these, but I’d never seen such huge hyena prints.

  I broke the silence. “These weren’t here earlier.”

  “I know.” Fred looked positively ill.

  “I thought lions wouldn’t come this close, because of the village near by?” Madillo said.

  “Hyenas, Madillo. Don’t you remember those prints Dad showed us in Luangwa? With the pointy toenails?”

  “Well, lion, hyena, what’s the difference? Both of them could eat us and I don’t think they’d be particularly worried if we got them muddled up. Do you think they’d pause between mouthfuls to ask, ‘Did you really get me confused with a lion?’ Sometimes you’re just too particular, Bul-Boo.”

  I wasn’t going to reply to that.

  “Do you see there are only two paw prints?” Fred said.

  Madillo knelt down next to them. “You’re right. Only two.”

  “There’s something very strange going on,” Fred
said. “I don’t like it.” He paused and then whispered, “What if it’s the Man-Beast?”

  “The Man-Beast is something Nokokulu made up,” I said, trying to sound as though I believed what I was saying. “There’s probably a really simple explanation. The poor hyena must have been walking along minding its own business and the wind came up and blew away the prints. But these two weren’t blown away, because they were protected.”

  “By what?”

  “Well, by this rock,” I said, pointing to something that couldn’t really be called a rock. More like a small stone.

  “You mean this pebble?” Madillo said.

  I must write down Madillo’s sole purpose in life in my notebook: Never Let Bul-Boo Get Away With Anything At All.

  “This pebble could change the course of a hurricane. Geology is a complex thing,” I said, hoping that would end the conversation.

  At that moment a small shadow fell across the paw prints. Nokokulu had arrived.

  She looked down at the ground and said nothing, which was unusual for her. Suddenly she didn’t look like her usual bossy rude self. She looked scared.

  “Did you make these?” she said finally, looking at the three of us.

  We all shook our heads.

  She crouched down next to them and looked up at us again. “Are you sure?”

  “We didn’t, Nokokulu,” Fred said. “But why are there only two?”

  “Ha!”

  Sometimes when she says “Ha!” she sounds triumphant, as if she has just reached the top of Mount Kilimanjaro carrying three cheetahs on her back. But this “Ha!” had an “I told you so” sound to it.

  “How many paw prints do you want?” she said, grinning at Fred as if she’d just said something really clever.

  “I don’t want any prints, Nokokulu, but I don’t understand why there are only two.”

  “Why do you need to understand everything, boy? Two feet, three feet, four feet, why is there a problem? Maybe its other feet were bitten off by a lion, so now it has to walk on two? A sad two-legged hyena. Don’t be thinking about them any more. Leave these silly things and come and help me put out the fire so we can go to sleep.”