The Sleeping Baobab Tree

by Paula Leyden

  She frowned. “I did fall asleep, now I remember: I had weird dreams about the two-legged hyena. It must have been because we’d been talking about it. There was someone else who came into the dream too. A really tall man who looked like one of those beautiful carvings. You know, the ones that are just skinny the whole way up and down and have beads on their necks and legs and everywhere?”

  We both nodded.

  It was true what Nokokulu had said – Madillo really didn’t know that this had actually happened.

  “The man in my dream looked like that. Anyway, then I woke up back in the car.” She looked surprised at this, as if it had only just occurred to her how odd this was. “Who put me in there?” She wrinkled her nose. “I hope you didn’t carry me, Fred?”

  I couldn’t see why that thought would cause anyone to wrinkle their nose up.

  “No,” Bul-Boo said. “It was a man who looked like that, like the man you’re describing. Somehow Nokokulu knows him. She went out to look for you because we couldn’t find you, and when she came back he was with her, carrying you.”

  Madillo stared at us. “Stop it, Bul-Boo! How could a man who appeared in my dreams pick me up without me waking?”

  I didn’t know how to make Bul-Boo stop talking so I went behind Madillo’s back and tried to signal to her to keep quiet. The only problem was that Madillo saw my reflection in the window and turned round.

  “What’s the matter with the two of you?” she shouted, sounding on the verge of tears. “Just tell me! What’s going on?”

  Bul-Boo finally got the message.

  “Sorry, Madillo,” she said quickly. “It’s not true. There was no man. It was Nokokulu who carried you to the car. She’s stronger than she looks. She said you stayed asleep because you were exhausted from all the noise you’d been making.”

  “But there was a two-legged hyena,” I said, before I could stop myself.

  At that they both turned on me.

  “What?”

  I probably shouldn’t have blurted that out, but this wasn’t the part Nokokulu had told me to keep quiet about. And as I was the only one who had seen it I decided it was OK to carry on.

  “We were driving away, you were both asleep, and the car hit something. It made a kind of thudding noise as if we’d knocked someone over. I asked Nokokulu if I should get out and look in case we had killed someone, or an animal or something. But she said no. In fact she said she didn’t care what it was as long as her car was all right. Even if it was a baby.” (That was an exaggeration, but you cannot tell a good story without exaggerating.) “So we drove off and I looked behind us and do you know what I saw?”

  “No.”

  “A giant animal, bigger than a lion but not quite as big as an elephant. It was lying there as if it was dead. Then suddenly it lifted its head up and it stared at me. Stared right at me with yellow eyes. It was as if it knew me.”

  Mum says I have a condition called confabulation – where I fill in details where there is supposed to be nothing. So if it’s a story about a horse galloping through a town and coming out the other side without incident, by the time I tell it the horse will have had seventeen extraordinary experiences along the way. Maybe she’s right.

  “Did it stand up?” Madillo asked.

  “No. After it lifted its head it lay down in a weak, dead kind of way. And I couldn’t see much as Nokokulu wanted to get away and it was dark. I couldn’t even see how many legs it had.”

  “Fred, are you making this up?” Bul-Boo asked suspiciously.

  “No! I couldn’t make something like that up,” I said.

  “Well, you could,” Madillo argued. “We all know that.”

  She was right. I probably could.

  “You know, Fred,” said Bul-Boo, “it could have been a stray dog from Pambazana village. A really big dog that wandered off and happened to get in the way of Nokokulu and her yellow car.”

  “It could,” I conceded, “but it also could have been a two-legged hyena. A Man-Beast. Couldn’t it?”

  She shrugged, as she does when she doesn’t want to admit that I could be right.

  The three of us sat looking at one another for a few moments until I jumped up and said, “I challenge whoever of you is first downstairs to a game of Ultimate Tenkaichi.”

  We all ran down to the playroom and managed to spend the next hour on the PlayStation, miraculously uninterrupted by parents, small irritating younger brothers or great-grandparents. That was a first.

  Bul-Boo and I played against each other and Madillo sat next to us giving a running commentary.

  The three of us together. As it should be.

  Epilogue

  The tall man runs slowly in the moonlight, his steps even and steady. He will run like this until he reaches his home.

  As he runs he thinks about the beast who roamed this earth since time began: a creature who outlived the hunters, the traders, the farmers and the fishermen; a creature who kept to himself, and hid behind the smallest of rocks or up in the tallest of trees; a creature whose size changed in the moonlight.

  He has seen him too many times to count.

  And now he is gone. For ever. His footprints will no longer frighten the people who come here seeking answers from those who have gone before them; he will no longer prey on those who venture out of their villages.

  The man thinks about the old woman, the one who has no fear in her, not of the living or the dead. She is a mystery to him. He had not seen her before, yet he felt that he knew her. On her face were the lines of those who lived long ago.

  It was she who ended the reign of the ancient creature.

  It was she who blessed the small girl with the sleep of forgetting.

  As he runs he knows he will not be able to forget the old woman. He cannot, for she has freed him from his burden of following the creature who has no name; the burden of trying to protect those he would attack; and most of all the burden of failure.

  He watched as the young girl crept out of the small tent; watched as she walked fearfully to where the creature had been. Then he saw the eyes, the greedy yellow eyes. They were also watching.

  The yellow eyes moved away from the girl and stared at the man. The man stared back, feeling the waves of hopelessness flood through him.

  Then the beast started walking slowly and quietly towards the young girl, with the strange gait of one who should have four legs but now has only two. He rolled as he walked, his body awkward and clumsy, his small withered arms held in front of his face.

  The young girl looked up as the shadow fell across her. She stood perfectly still, frozen to the ground. She did not scream. The beast leant down and scooped her into his arms. The tall man had seen this before. He knew that when the fear was this big all else stopped.

  Now was the time. It was always this way.

  The tall man came and stood in front of the beast. He no longer feared him, because he knew it was not him that the beast wanted. He had stood before him like this many times. Sometimes he had saved those that the beast preyed upon; more times he had failed.

  “Leave this one. Leave her. Let her return to her family.”

  The beast held the young girl tighter and laughed, a howling rough laugh that bounced off the trees.

  The tall man’s heart beat faster.

  The beast did not move.

  The tall man knew this trick. Once before he had walked forward to try and grab the prey away, but the beast had been quicker than he was. In the blink of an eye he had opened his wide jaws and snapped them shut over his victim. The tall man had never walked forward again.

  Just then he heard a sound behind him and turned round.

  A tiny old woman was standing there. The tiny old woman who he now thinks of as he runs towards his home.

  “Ha!” she said, pointing at the beast. “You, put that child down. Now.”

  The beast laughed again.

  A small grin appeared on the old woman’s face.

  “La
ughing Hyena, you think that frightens me? Two-legged Hyena, you think that frightens me? You do not know me, but after today you will not laugh again.”

  The beast opened his mouth, but instead of laughter a swarm of buzzing honey bees flew out. An endless swarm that seemed to glow in the night. They landed on every part of him, his eyes, his nose, his ears. Some turned around and flew back into his open mouth.

  The tall man watched as the beast twitched and turned with each sting.

  “Laugh now, you two-legged cowardly runt of a creature, laugh now!” the old woman said, hopping back and forth from one leg to another.

  Suddenly the buzzing stopped and the bees turned, as one, and disappeared into the night.

  “Give me the girl now,” the old woman instructed.

  The beast looked at her, silently, his legs trembling.

  “Ha!” the old woman said, and the beast slowly collapsed, falling softly to the ground.

  The tall man ran forward and grabbed the young girl from his little stunted arms. A cloud of dust rose up around the beast and a strangled breath came out of his swollen mouth.

  The young girl looked up at the man who now held her, her eyes wide with fear.

  “Come here,” the old woman told him. “Put her down on the ground.”

  The tall man did as he was told and placed her gently down. The old woman leant over her and softly ran her fingers over her eyes. They closed.

  “The Sleep of Forgetting,” the old woman whispered. “It will wipe all this from her mind.”

  Then the tall man lifted her up again and took her to where the old woman led him.

  He knows she is safe now, the small one and her sister who looks no different from her. Safe and at home.

  The tall man stops running. He has reached the banks of the Kariba Dam. He sits down on the soft shore and stares out over the shining expanse of water, his heart filled with gladness.

  For the first time in centuries he can rest his weary body.

  For the first time in centuries he has nothing to fear. His task is complete. He too will sleep, and forget.

  Thanks and acknowledgements

  As with The Butterfly Heart, lots of people played a part in this book’s arrival. Thanks first, as always, to Tom, Amy, Christie, Kate, Aisling and Maurice and to my extended family, every single one of them. They know who they are – in-laws, out-laws, nephews, nieces, cousins, aunts and uncles. It is said that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family: given the choice I would change nothing.

  A special thanks this time to Orla Mackey in Kilkenny. Orla did the teaching notes for The Butterfly Heart and The Sleeping Baobab Tree. She is, to my mind, the kind of teacher that all teachers should be – kind, curious, hard-working, creative, insightful and patient. Thank you, Orla.

  Many other people are due thanks for their role in this book and their support of The Butterfly Heart: my lovely writers’ group, the Crabapples: Jean, Gemma, Una and Geoff; Siobhán Parkinson; Vukani Nyirenda at Kalimatundu Tales; John Nchimunyality Cargula; Mwanabibi Sikamo at Uprooting the Pumpkin; Bwalya Chileya; Mary Esther Judy; Mpikeleni Duma; Karabo Kgoleng; the Phiri family in Lusaka; Colleen Cailin Jones; Elaina O’Neill; Rachel Leydon; the Coopoo family; Marian Oliver; Louie Calvert; Alice Bennett; Stephanie Meaney; Brian Roche and St John’s School; Daniel Sana and Sydney Chibbabbuka of Bantu Pathfinders; my young writers’ group in the Kilkenny Tech; CBI and Inis for their fantastic support of children’s literature; the judges who awarded me the Éilís Dillon Award; SCBWI for their work in promoting children’s books; the libraries, the wonderful libraries, we are privileged to have them; the Kilkenny bookshops – we are blessed in Kilkenny with great bookshops and they have been a fantastic support; and all the other bookshops around the country. And to anyone else I may have forgotten … sorry! Any omissions I will make good on my website at www.thebutterflyheart.net, I promise.

  Special thanks due…

  To Sophie Hicks, still a Wonder Woman amongst agents, and to Edina Imrik and all the staff at Ed Victor; to Emma Lidbury and Gill Evans at Walker Books, both truly gifted editors, for once again showing faith in my writing; to Gillian Hibbs (at www.gillianhibbs.co.uk) and Maria Soler Canton for the beautiful artwork and cover design; to Conor Hackett and everyone else at Walker Books, a magical publisher.

  And finally…

  This book, like The Butterfly Heart, is set in Zambia. As my childhood home it lingers long in my memory, may it flourish and grow.

  Nsolo and Mancala

  In the book, Fred, Bul-Boo and Madillo play a game called nsolo while they’re trying to pass the time at Ng’ombe Ilede. Unfortunately for the twins Fred always wins – perhaps because he was trained by his great-grandmother, who as we well know is something of a witch.

  Nsolo is a game that can be played anywhere by making holes in the ground and using small stones or seeds, which is how the twins and Fred play it. It is played all over Africa and goes by different names in different countries: you can now buy a version of it called mancala, which uses a wooden board and marbles. It’s great for improving your maths skills while having fun – perhaps persuade your teachers to get a board for your classroom!

  The version of the game played in Zambia is very complicated. If you would like to learn it you could look up the rules in Professor Mwizenge Tembo’s book Satisfying Zambian Hunger for Culture, which is invaluable for anyone wishing to learn more about this wonderful country. If you go to www.infobarrel.com and type into the search box the word “nsolo” you will find his article on it.

  If you manage to get hold of a mancala board the rules are different, and the game (which looks like the picture below) will have a set of rules with it. Mancala can be played from about five years and upwards and is great fun.

  Amnesty International

  The story of The Sleeping Baobab Tree is partly about our human rights, including the right to medical help, to enjoy our own culture, and to freedom of belief and freedom of expression.

  We all have human rights, no matter who we are or where we live. Human rights are part of what makes us human. They help us to live lives that are fair and truthful, free from abuse, fear and want and respectful of other people’s rights. But they are often abused and we need to stand up for them.

  Amnesty International is a movement of ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights. Our purpose is to protect individuals wherever justice, fairness, freedom and truth are denied.

  To find out more about human rights and how to start one of our very active Amnesty youth groups, go to www.amnesty.org.uk/youth

  To find out about how you can use fiction to teach human rights in the classroom, go to www.amnesty.org.uk/education

  Amnesty International UK, The Human Rights Action Centre

  17–25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA 020 7033 1500

  www.amnesty.org.uk

  “Amnesty’s greetings cards really helped me in prison. In total, I received more than 4,000 – amazing! I read each one: the best, I think, were those from children and other student activists… It amazed me to see that those children know about human rights. What a good omen for the future!”

  Ignatius Mahendra Kusuma Wardhana, an Indonesian student who was arrested at a peaceful demonstration in 2003 and spent two years, seven months and ten days behind bars, where he was beaten and threatened.

  To download full teacher’s notes on The Sleeping Baobab Tree and The Butterfly Heart, go to:

  www.walker.co.uk/downloads

  and scroll down to the Age 9+ section.

  Or, if you have a smart phone, scan the codes below:

  The Sleeping Baobab Tree Teacher’s notes

  “Ifwafwa. Yes, that’s what they call me. The Puff Adder. Slow and heavy, but fast to strike.”

  Bul-Boo and Madillo are powerless to save their friend Winifred from a terrifying fate, and time is slipping away. In desperation they call upon Ifwafwa, the snake man. But although the
man is wise, he is slow and the girls become impatient. Will he strike before it’s too late?

  A lyrical story from the butterfly heart of Africa.

  One universal declaration proclaims 30 rights and freedoms for everybody.

  But 60 years on, millions of people around the world are still denied full human rights.

  14 acclaimed storytellers take inspiration from their struggle.

  All royalties from the sale of this book go to Amnesty International, which works to protect human rights all over the world.

  A tale of dreams and midsummer magic.

  Masha lives in Icarus, the abandoned trolleybus, until one stormy night when he takes off, transporting her to an enchanted place where Cossacks dance and tigers roar. It’s nearly midsummer’s eve, when she can make a wish for her heart’s desire. But will Masha make the right wish, enabling herself and her mother to escape Uncle Igor’s clutches and live happily ever after?

  Paula Leyden was born in Kenya and spent her childhood in Zambia. As a teenager she moved with her family to South Africa, where she soon became involved in the struggle to end Apartheid. Since 2003 she has lived on a farm in Kilkenny, Ireland, with her partner and five children, where she breeds horses and writes. The Sleeping Baobab Tree is Paula’s second novel, sequel to the Éilís Dillon Award-winning The Butterfly Heart.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated, as they may result in injury.