by Paula Leyden
“Madillo! Madillo!” I called again, sure now that she could hear me.
I listened. The voice came back, quieter.
Then nothing. Dark, deep silence.
FRED
The Call of the Nightjar
I stood there making promises to myself: if Madillo comes back safely I will never be horrible to Joseph again; I will stop making up stories about Nokokulu; I will tidy my room once a week and never, ever complain about anything that is put on my plate. I’ll do anything. Anything.
The moon suddenly came out from behind the clouds, and it felt almost as bright as daylight. Now I could see everything around me: the car in the distance, the tents next to the Sleeping Cow tree and Bul-Boo standing completely still where I had left her.
I panicked at the suddenness of the moonlight, like a torch shining down from the sky, and began to run back to the tents.
Bul-Boo didn’t move. She looked almost like a statue, as if she was afraid to move even one muscle.
I stopped in front of her.
“I think I heard something, Bul-Boo, a voice. It sounded like Madillo.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat. “Where did you hear it? Is she close? Let’s go, Fred. Come on.”
I wished I hadn’t said it: I didn’t even know if it was a voice. It could have been an owl. I can never seem to stop myself exaggerating, even when it’s a situation as bad as this was.
“Wait,” Nokokulu called from inside the tent. “Don’t go anywhere. Stay there, I’m coming out.”
She sounded different somehow. Her voice was deeper than usual. It was as if someone else was speaking through her mouth.
We waited.
Inside the tent she was obviously moving about. We heard rustling and clinking, then deep mumbling words that I couldn’t understand.
We waited some more. Bul-Boo’s fingers were hurting my arm she was holding it so tightly.
“Please, Nokokulu,” Bul-Boo said, her voice shaking. “Please come out now.”
The tent unzipped and Nokokulu appeared. She looked at Bul-Boo and a different tone came into her voice. It was almost kind.
“I know. I know what you are thinking, little girl, but don’t think that. We’ll find your sister. I will find your sister.”
“But the hyena…” Bul-Boo began. “And Fred heard a voice answering him.”
“It wasn’t a voice. It was his own voice echoing off the waters of the Kariba Dam, fooling you into thinking that. The river never wanted to be a dam and it mocks us if we make sounds around it. Did it sound like a girl, Chiti?”
“I don’t know.” I had never felt more miserable in my whole life.
Nokokulu stamped her foot. “Don’t say anything if you don’t know, boy. Now, you two have to do exactly what I tell you. I don’t want arguments,” she added, looking straight at Bul-Boo. “You understand me?”
Neither of us answered.
“I will find your sister and I will bring her back to you. I want you to stay here, both of you. You are to light the fire and pack away the tents. I have packed my suitcase and locked it. You, Chiti, must put the suitcase, the tents and everything else into the car. But do not wait in the car. Wait here next to the fire. If you talk, then you must talk very quietly. Can you do this?”
“But Nokokulu…” Bul-Boo said.
“But nothing, child. You must do what I say and do it properly.”
“Why can’t we come and help you?” I asked.
“I don’t need help, especially from you. Was it me who let the little mad one go out on her own in the night to where the hyena had been?”
The kind tone in her voice had disappeared very fast.
That was the end of the conversation. Nokokulu, with no torch or stick or anything, walked off. I watched her and suddenly she seemed to me to be just a tiny old lady hobbling away, an old lady with no powers whatsoever. How could she find Madillo?
Bul-Boo and I started taking the tents down without speaking. All you could hear was the rustling of the tent material and our breathing. We carried everything to the car then locked it.
Bul-Boo lit the fire again and it burned bright against the dark sky. I sat down and she came to sit beside me. It’s funny how things happen. I’d been wanting her to sit next to me, to hold my hand, to do anything that showed that she liked me – and now she was, and now I didn’t care, because all I could think about was Madillo. I could feel Bul-Boo beside me. She’d gone so sad she’d stopped saying anything. It was like her words were trapped inside her. I felt like a useless clumsy thing sitting next to her.
It was all my fault this had happened. I knew something was going to. I knew it from the moment I woke up on Thursday morning. I knew it all day yesterday and all day today. But still I let Madillo leave our tent and go out by herself into the night. If she’d been taken away by the hyena I might as well have murdered her. If that was the case, I didn’t want to be alive, because it would live with me for the rest of my life. Every morning when I woke up, even before I opened my eyes, the first thing I’d think would be that I’d killed her.
And the worst part of it was that the cloud of doom that had been over my head was now gone. It had just vanished. Which could only mean one thing – the worst possible thing had happened.
When I was very small I used to cry a lot, if I fell out of a tree or banged my head. Stupid sore things. And I didn’t mind who saw me or heard me. Mum said I cried louder than anyone she’d ever met. But I’d not cried for a very long time. I think since I was ten.
And now I couldn’t help it.
I was sitting there with Bul-Boo, staring into the fire feeling as if my head was going to explode, and it started. Big stinging tears rolled down my face and there was nothing I could do. I could feel Bul-Boo turn her head to look at me and then her hand got hold of mine and we just sat there, the two of us crying and crying. It felt like we would never be able to stop.
I kept putting more wood onto the fire just so I would have something to do. Just so I’d feel useful.
Every time we heard a sound we’d both jump. I knew there couldn’t be snakes because they don’t like fire, but some of the noises came from the tree, almost like something was running around on the trunk. Sometimes I heard the sound of a nightjar. Dad told me once that the noise they make is called churring, and it sounds like that – like a long drawn out churrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It would have been a nice sound to hear if we had just been in the garden back home. But not there. There the only sound I wanted to hear was the sound of Madillo’s voice.
BULL - BOO
Shadows Short, Shadows Tall
No time ever passed as slowly as that night. I felt as if Fred and I had been sitting there for our whole lives. As if days had passed since we’d watched Madillo crawling out of the tent. Hours since Nokokulu had walked off into the night. Now it was just us – me and Fred alone in the shadow of the sleeping baobab tree. I couldn’t even phone Mum and Dad because I wouldn’t be able to find any words to say to them. And they were so far away. I tried thinking about anything else, about the investigation into Aunt Kiki’s disappearance, but I couldn’t. Nothing else seemed to matter now.
Fred kept trying to talk to me, but the only person I wanted to talk to was Madillo and she wasn’t here. I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t know anything any more.
The moon had got brighter and brighter as the hours passed and the clouds all disappeared, but I didn’t care about that. I just felt like an empty person, as if there was a huge hole in me where I used to be.
Fred started confessing something to me and even though I heard some of the words, nothing much made any sense. He was trying to say it was his fault because he had known something bad was going to happen, he had known since yesterday or the day before. I didn’t want him to talk about it: I didn’t care whose fault it was. I just wanted Madillo back. Nothing else.
Suddenly I felt it. Something was moving.
I held ont
o Fred’s hand as tightly as I could. “I can feel something,” I whispered. “Can you?”
“No, what?”
“Someone is near by. I can feel it.”
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a shiver go through me.
“Fred,” I said, “look.”
Two human-shaped shadows stretched out from behind the tree. They were moving. A long one and a very short one.
My heart sounded like a drum beat in my head. I felt as though I wouldn’t be able to stand up. And then I heard a scream, but it was my own.
I couldn’t stop. It was as if I had no control over my voice, screaming out into the night.
Then suddenly I heard a familiar “Aiyeee!”
That stopped me. It was Nokokulu.
Fred and I jumped up from the fireside. “Nokokulu.”
The shorter, Nokokulu-shaped shadow came out from behind the tree.
She was alone.
“Where is she? Where’s Madillo?” I shouted.
“She’s all right,” Nokokulu said. “Nothing’s wrong. She’s just asleep.”
I didn’t answer. I just ran past her to behind the tree. Then I stopped as I saw a tall thin man walking slowly towards me. He was carrying a bundle, and as the moon shone down on it I could see Madillo’s curly brown hair. I stood still, my legs as heavy as concrete.
The man carried on walking. Slowly and carefully.
He stopped when he reached me.
“She will be well now,” he said, bending down so that Madillo’s head was next to mine. “She will be well.”
His voice sounded like the molasses they feed the cattle, thick and sweet. It made me feel as if I was about to fall asleep standing there in front of him. I could do nothing, only nod my head.
Madillo was fast asleep, in the deepest sleep I had ever seen. Even her eyelids were still.
I looked at her and found my voice again. “But she doesn’t sleep like that. She wakes up so quickly if there’s noise. Why isn’t she waking up?”
“She is the same like you, I know that. Same face, same thinking. I know you are scared, but you mustn’t be. She needs to sleep now. You must be patient.”
He stood up and smiled. “Patience, that is all.”
I nodded.
“So,” Nokokulu muttered, “you don’t even know his name and you nod your head like a small wagtail bird. But me you don’t believe. Me, who has known you since you were the size of baby warthogs. Ha!” She pointed to the tall man. “You,” she said, “come with us to the car and put the child inside. We are leaving.”
The man didn’t seem to mind how she spoke to him. He just bowed his head and began walking towards the car. He looked as though he was moving very slowly, but his footsteps were so big that we had to run to keep up with him. He was taller than anyone I had ever met and his neck was as long and thin as a piece of bamboo. I don’t know how it held his head up. He was wearing loose baggy shorts, and around each ankle were bracelets that looked like they were made of copper, glinting in the moonlight.
I grabbed onto the back of his shirt as he walked, to make sure he didn’t disappear with Madillo. Fred sprinted ahead of us to unlock the car door. The tall man leant down and gently laid Madillo on the back seat. I jumped in afterwards and curled up next to her holding her hands, which felt very cold.
I looked up at the man. “When will she wake up?” I asked. “Her hands are so cold. Is she all right? Are you sure she’s all right?” I had started crying again. She looked so small and weak and she wasn’t moving.
The man gave me a gentle smile. “She’s very tired, so she’ll sleep for a long time, but it will be all right. In the morning she will wake up.” He looked at me. “She will wake up, I promise you.”
I believed him.
FRED
An Alive Something
Nokokulu had got into the car and she started the engine while I was still standing there, so I jumped into the passenger seat, and without another word to the tall man she drove off.
I looked out of my window and saw him running back into the bush. I don’t know if it was because of his long neck, but he ran like a giraffe. You never notice how fast giraffes run as they take such long steps. I didn’t know why the tall man was running, but I didn’t feel like asking Nokokulu when she was driving. She’d turn to look at me when she answered and forget to look at the road.
Suddenly something bumped into my side of the car and I heard a soft thud, as if we’d gone into a sandbank or something. Or hit an animal. Or maybe a human. I was in the car with Mum one day when a dog ran into the road and we knocked into him. It felt like that.
“Aiyeee!” Nokokulu yelled as she slammed on the brakes. (That was the second time she’d said that tonight. I honestly preferred “Ha!” – her “Aiyeee” is high-pitched and goes right through your head.)
I looked into the back seat and saw that now Bul-Boo was fast asleep too. She and Madillo were lying almost in a heap on top of one another, a tangle of twins.
“I’ll go and look, Nokokulu,” I said, “but keep the lights on.”
I didn’t especially feel like getting out of the car but thought I’d try to be the brave one.
“You stay in the car,” she instructed. “It doesn’t matter what it is. The car’s all right – we can carry on driving.”
I don’t know anyone else on this earth who would say something like that. There could be a person lying half dead in the road and Nokokulu was happy to leave them there as long as her car was OK.
“But…”
“How many times must I tell you, I don’t want to hear you say ‘but’? It’s the most foolish word in the dictionary. If I was in charge I would take the word out of every dictionary and hang it up in the street so people could laugh at it.”
She started the car and began to move off.
I turned round and stretched up to look out of the back window.
By the light of the moon I could see a large shape, almost as big as a lion, lying on the road. As I stared at it I swear I saw it lift its head weakly and stare back at me with small shining eyes. Then it flopped down again as if it was dead.
I sat back down quickly in my seat and turned to Nokokulu. She was looking straight ahead as if nothing had happened.
“There was something on the road, Nokokulu,” I said.
“What kind of something?”
“I don’t know, but I think it was alive. It was looking at me.”
“Ha! An alive something looking at you. Chiti, one day you will make up a story that someone will believe and then you’ll be in real trouble. Find the map so we can get home.”
Home was the only place I wanted to be right now, and as far away as I could ever get from the creature lying on the ground behind us, so I took out the map and started reading.
For once in her life Nokokulu followed my instructions and we went straight home, no detours or stops or anything. There was not a single sound from the back seat the whole way. Both Madillo and Bul-Boo slept even when the sun started to rise. Nokokulu didn’t have much to say either, so the only voice in the car was mine telling her when to turn and when to go straight on.
As we came nearer to Lusaka I turned to her and asked, “Nokokulu, what are you going to tell Mum and Dad?”
I think it was the wrong thing to say.
“What?”
That was not the Kind Voice.
“Well … we’re arriving back so early and the twins are sleeping and…” I suddenly remembered. “They don’t even know we have the twins with us.”
“So?” she said.
“So what will you tell them?”
“I don’t have to tell them anything, boy. You tell them the truth. The truth is sometimes a good thing.”
That would have been fine if it was a normal adult saying it, but in Nokokulu’s case I don’t think she’d know the truth if it walked up to her on a sunny day and said, “Pleased to meet you. Call me Truth.”
So
I asked her, “What truth?”
“That we went on a nice holiday to Ng’ombe Ilede, and we set up our tents by the side of the great tree, we spoke to my ancestors and I told you nice stories. We decided to come back early because we were hungry. That truth. You have another truth you want to tell them, boy?”
Another one? “No, Nokokulu, that truth is OK.”
“And the mpundu – we send them home before your mum and dad wake up and everything will be all right.”
So she said.
BULL - BOO
Aunt Kiki and the Snake Oil Salesmen
We were approaching Lusaka when I woke. I could see the orange glow of the city ahead of us. I looked down at Madillo. She was still fast asleep. But now it looked like a more normal sleep. I moved her along the seat so she was more comfortable.
I sat back and closed my eyes. The events of the night didn’t seem real. A picture of the tall man who had carried Madillo came into my mind, the way he’d loped across the land and then disappeared from view. I could remember his face so clearly. But perhaps none of it was real. Perhaps Nokokulu had created a shared illusion, a small spell that had caught the three of us in its tentacles. No. Now I was sounding like Madillo – an illusion with tentacles?
I wouldn’t think about it. I needed to put the night out of my mind. There were other things I had to be doing. I’d go back to the investigation into Aunt Kiki’s disappearance and start by looking at the Holistic Healing Hope website I’d saved to my favourites. It loaded quickly on my phone this time. I followed the HOPE IN AFRICA! link. And there it was. A picture of a bright modern building. The caption beneath it said: Holistic Healing for Zambia. Ratsberg and Wrath were photographed at the door. Beneath the picture the text said:
We have run a clinical trial here in Lusaka. We took eight long-term “AIDS victims”. For years they had been forced to take poisonous medicines by ruthless doctors who work for large international drug companies. After three months on our special tablets containing only vitamins and herbs, these people are cured. To order our tablets, click here. To contact us click here or come into our clinic. We will look after you. We will cure you and give you hope for a new life.