Hallowed Ground

by Paul Twivy

  ‘I am not going to lie to you. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that this leopard will lead them to a burial chamber. A burial chamber that a Victorian explorer unearthed and which he believed would unlock the secret of the Fairy Circles.’

  There it was, said. A paragraph and it was done.

  What Ubuntu had practised many times in his head in the last few days, had been released into the ears of its receiver and was settling like magic dust in the depths of his brain.

  For a minute or more, they stood, arms interlocked, like a statue of Ancient clasping Modern Africa.

  Ubuntu released Basarwa’s arms and turned away, felling his cause to be hopeless and worried that he was bullying.

  ‘Have you asked any other San?’

  ‘No, and I shouldn’t have asked you.’

  Seeing Basarwa trembling in tension between his duty and his fears made him feel ashamed.

  ‘I trust you and I’ll do it,’ Basarwa announced, much to Ubuntu’s surprise. ‘But I want to ask a reward.’

  ‘Name it!’

  ‘I would like a sponsored place to be offered every year at the Augustineum for a San child.’

  ‘Nothing could give me greater pleasure. And if I needed further proof that you are the perfect guide, you have just provided it.’

  ‘We don’t know what we are going to encounter and so we need to allow for anything and everything,’ Darius suggested.

  ‘Sounds like my average working day,’ Li chimed.

  The four families had gathered at the Wilde’s house to plan their expedition.

  Various maps had been spread, stained with the snack-smeared hands of those poring over them.

  ‘Can everyone please be careful with the maps,’ Anne barked. ‘They’re getting oily. You need to make sure your hands are clean.’

  Tabs were ripped on beer cans and soft drinks; wine was poured with a glug like a stream. Ralph was so excited that he was offering to make cocktails, to everyone’s amusement.

  ‘Ralph, darling, this isn’t an Embassy party!’ Anne admonished.

  ‘No, thank God,’ he replied. ‘It’s far more interesting!’

  Selima, Joe, Freddie and Hannah were drawing route maps on random pieces of paper. Clara was putting the final touches to her painting of the burial chamber as she imagined it. It was an interesting hybrid between a Pharaoh’s tomb, a beehive, and a large toy store. She trundled it round to all the parents, at various stages of its artistic evolution, picking up praise, suggestions and a large number of toffees.

  The parents assembled around the dining-table to agree the practicalities.

  ‘Let’s start with the logistics,’ said the ever-practical Li.

  ‘Ubuntu has talked to the San guides who say we must track on foot,’ Ben confirmed.

  The teenagers of the Apocalypse were in their own huddle but eavesdropping.

  ‘You know who the San guide is don’t you?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘No,’ the others chimed.

  ‘Basarwa, the gardener from school. Apparently, he used to be the most skilled tracker in Namibia.’

  ‘I always said there was something special about him,’ Joe bragged.

  ‘Oh yeah, right,’ Selima jibed.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s guiding us,’ Freddie said. ‘Don’t you remember that warning he gave us, when you tripped over him at the beginning of term.’

  Ben piped up.

  ‘Listen everyone, we’ll have to drive to the outskirts of the farm and pitch camp overnight, followed by an early start.’

  ‘Yay! I love tents,’ Clara called out without even looking up from her model.

  ‘Listen, Clara, you’re going to have to behave,’ Anne warned her. ‘No wandering off, you hear?’

  ‘When do I ever disobey you?’ Clara said, cheekily raking up her own indignation.

  ‘How long have you got?’ Ralph responded.

  ‘We’ll need five tents,’ Darius calculated.

  ‘The San will bring their own,’ Ben reminded him.

  ‘We still need five,’ Li pointed out. ‘One for all the equipment.’

  ‘We’ll need to start early again. Five thirty at the latest,’ Darius said.

  ‘Because leopards are very muscular,’ Clara said proudly.

  ‘Crepuscular,’ Freddie corrected.

  ‘Food?’ Ralph asked, as he busied himself, topping up drinks.

  ‘Sorted,’ Barbara replied. ‘I’m organising the groceries, but everyone needs to help with the cooking.’

  ‘The four of us want to make the meal,’ Hannah offered.

  ‘Five,’ Clara corrected.

  ‘Great,’ Barbara said. ‘I’ll believe it when I taste it!’

  ‘You won’t, Mum, that’s the whole point,’ Joe protested. We’re talking gourmet here.’

  It warmed her heart to see him so animated by friends.

  ‘Li, what about the radiation?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I’ve managed to get radiation suits from work. Standard issue for uranium mines. I’ll also bring more sensitive Geiger counters. We need to keep measuring.’

  ‘I have ropes,’ Darius said. ‘Plus, two rope ladders and a winch for lowering equipment…or people if necessary. If the entrance is deep, we’ll need them.’

  ‘The children aren’t going anywhere deep,’ Anne said. ‘I’ll bring a full medical kit but I’m not packing splints and Plaster of Paris for broken limbs.’

  ‘Now you mention it, don’t you think it might be wise?’ Ilana asked.

  ‘Ok fine,’ Anne said, resigning herself to the group neurosis that had now gripped them.

  ‘Mum, is there a cure for Golden Leopard fever?’ Freddie asked, reading her thoughts.

  ‘If there were, Freddie, I would have administered the antidote by now, believe me,’ Anne responded with a loving smile.

  ‘Who wants to stop this madness?’ Selima asked, intoxicated by the whole adventure. ‘If it’s a fever, bring it on!’

  ‘Let’s hope for a Secretary Bird!’ Ilana said, in between gulps of wine.

  ‘Why?’ Joe asked.

  ‘So that someone can take notes,’ Freddie offered.

  ‘It’s a tradition that they bring you luck,’ she answered.

  ‘I’d rather have a more beautiful bird,’ Clara protested, ‘like a peacock.’

  ‘Safety is beauty, Clara,’ Li said. ‘Especially when you’re a parent.’

  ‘Yes, safety is also dull,’ Joe remarked.

  Barbara, who had remained noticeably quiet, and who had consumed rather too much wine, waiting for a click of peace to be switched on in her head, tapped her, rapidly-emptying, wine glass with a knife, calling them to order. Her voice was throaty and somewhat slurred…

  ‘I hope it’s not out of order for me to say something at this point.’

  ‘Mum, you’re drunk,’ Joe interrupted, fearing for her dignity and a little bit for his own.

  Ben signalled for him to be quiet.

  ‘Whilst the four or so months since we arrived in Namibia have been…’ she fumbled for the words which Ben supplied.

  ‘Stimulating?’

  ‘Stimulating, thank you Ben. They have also been professionally challenging, to put it mildly.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Clara asked.

  ‘It means, my dear Clara, that my first hotel site yielded a Victorian explorer, a lot of controversy, but… no hotel.’

  ‘Including an encounter with a vicious Namibian guide!’ laughed Ilana.

  ‘Exactly,’ Barbara said, ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself. My second hotel site is a farm flooded with radiation and a rare leopard that doubtless will have to be protected, thus preventing building work. Apart from that, everything’s perfect!’

  Being able to view the last few mon
ths through the lens of Barbara’s disaster-prone, professional life triggered hysterical laughter around the room. She continued…

  ‘But whilst my professional life has basically gone up in smoke, my personal life has rarely looked better. My husband is experiencing a fever-pitch level of excitement in hunting down a burial chamber… nothing entirely new in that, but lovely to behold. More importantly, I have rarely seen my youngest son so happy and with such good friends. And, finally…’

  ‘Mum, enough!’

  ‘No, Joseph!’ Barbara always used the longer version of her son’s name when she wanted to control him. ‘Finally, I would just like to say how glad I am that I have found, in an obscure corner of Africa whose name I couldn’t even spell a year ago, I have found friends – true friends – from around the world.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Ralph, ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  ‘You’ll drink to anything at the moment!’ said Anne, plucking a wine bottle out of his hand.

  ‘Whilst we are on the subject of friendship,’ Li started.

  ‘Oh no, a chain-reaction!’ Hannah muttered, fearing her father would cry, as he sometimes did after drinking whisky and turning red.

  ‘I, er, want to thank you all for the amazing support you gave me during the genocide crisis,’ Li declared. ‘Especially after my deputy’s …. suicide.’

  ‘Li, not in front of…’ Sarah said, gripping his arm.

  ‘We’re not children anymore, Mum,’ Hannah said.

  ‘I am,’ Clara piped up.

  ‘Anyway,’ Li continued, ‘although like Barbara, my career has seen better days, I am very grateful to all of you that I was not destroyed by shame. And seeing Hannah buried in friends rather than books, is a joy, much as I admire books.’

  Hannah blushed.

  ‘Dad!’

  Sarah looked at Selima and Hannah holding hands and felt both joy and a deep sense of loss.

  ‘Can I say something totally unconnected to this mutual admiration society please?’ Joe enquired.

  ‘Of course, you can Joe, ‘Ben said.

  ‘Can we get dessert now?’

  15

  The Discovery

  Hannah awoke in the tent feeling unusually warm. Then she realised why. In the middle of the night, when she’d heard a pack of wild dogs howling and yelping under the full moon, she had hopped into Selima’s bed and wrapped around her for comfort. Selima had reached out sleepily and held Hannah’s hand to indicate that she was happy to be invaded, indeed understood her need for comfort.

  It felt wonderful to be close to her, mingling warmth, intertwined; two tiny creatures under the vast African sky. She wondered how someone who had been thousands of miles and a cultural world away a few months ago, could now be her soulmate.

  It made her think how many ‘Selima’s’ and ‘Freddie’s’ and ‘Joe’s’ there must be in the world: people she could be close to in the right circumstances. We only scratch the surface of human intimacy in a lifetime. It was a thought that warmed the world and promised to send her back to sleep again.

  However, she could already see through the tent walls the faintest glimmering of dawn and rolled on to her back. Then the soundscapes of dawn overwhelmed her. There were layers to it. In the ‘foreground’, there was twittering from all sides: the trebles of the dawn chorus: silly, nonsensical and constant. Threaded through them was an intermittent corkscrewing up and down: the chromatic scale of a practising bird. Piercing that occasionally was the percussive beat of wings: low-flying herons or egrets as they swooped low over the campsite.

  The lapwing made its occasional single, tinkling note like a nervous child playing the triangle in a school band. There were also sounds like a boomerang being thrown and returning, whirring, back into its thrower’s hands. The baritone grunts of a hippo in the river added an element of farce. Woven into this tapestry of sound, was warbling, cooing, the chirrup of insects and the soft padding and bracken-twitching of foraging kudu. All this on a single planet.

  ‘What time is it?’ Selima asked sleepily.

  ‘Time for intrepid explorers to be stirring.’

  ‘Stirring is what spoons do in coffee, not what I do in the morning.’

  Hannah laughed.

  ‘The sounds outside are extraordinary. To think they happen every day.’

  ‘One day they might not,’ Selima observed.

  Hannah paused to take in the thought.

  ‘In the city we wake up to mechanical sounds… even in Windhoek: cars, alarms, doors slamming, radios blasting. Out here it sounds like a different planet,’ Hannah observed.

  ‘No, it sounds like a planet, full stop,’ Selima answered.

  ‘It’s like Eden.’

  ‘Until you step outside.’

  ‘Why have I spent so much of my life reading books?’ Hannah asked herself, rolling on to her side to face Selima.

  ‘Because books make sense of life. If I could read as fast and fluently as you, I’d devour them as well.’

  ‘You’re right. I take for granted that I can read quickly. Has my mum been good? With the dyslexia…’

  ‘No. Better than good. She’s been amazing. So patient…’ Selima said.

  ‘Glad she is with someone!’

  A flock of birds unzipped the sky above them.

  ‘Do you like Joe?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘What do you mean? Of course, I like Joe.’

  ‘No, I mean do you like him…in that way?’

  ‘He fascinates me. We’re very different. Remember how aggressive he used to be? We’re lock and key if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean. That’s what I feel about Freddie,’ Hannah said, unable to resist smiling.

  Joe had been awake since five o’clock. His mind was racing. He often wished he had another kind of mind. A mind more like Freddie’s that took time, played with ideas, rolled them over and tested their texture. Joe’s mind was always chasing answers like a wolf hustling sheep. It exhausted him.

  Freddie awoke to see Joe already sketching in his notepad, his face aglow with the reflection of his head-torch. He had come to admire, even love, Joe’s intensity, draining though it could sometimes be.

  ‘How long have you been awake?’ Freddie probed.

  Joe checked his watch.

  ‘Eighty-three minutes. Look, I’m sorry to bombard you as soon as you wake up, but I need to test this idea on you.’

  ‘Shoot,’ Freddie said, despite doubting whether he was compos mentis enough to focus on one of Joe’s challenges.

  ‘So, the computer analysis shows that there are twenty-eight different types of fairy circle. You suggested it might be an alphabet. But whose alphabet and why?’

  ‘No idea,’ Freddie said, trying to bury himself deeper into his sleeping-bag and stay out of the chill morning air. He felt like a larva that doesn’t want to hatch. ‘Ancestors? Tribes? Aliens?’ he suggested,

  ‘Aliens?’ Joe said incredulously.

  ‘Well, not all those UFO sightings can be fakes, can they? Haven’t you ever had that feeling we’re being watched? Or gazed into the sky and seen something that can’t be a plane or a satellite, but then dismissed it? Statistically there must be other life in the Universe mustn’t there?’

  ‘Quite possibly. And look at Oumuamua?’ Joe replied.

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ Freddie exclaimed.

  ‘Apparently, it means “distant messenger from the past” in Hawaiian,’ Joe explained. ‘It’s the name they’ve given to this cigar-shaped object astronomers have spotted close to the sun. They think it might be an alien probe.’

  ‘Why?’ Freddie quizzed

  ‘Because it’s been seen to accelerate. Which suggests it has its own power, it’s not just being pulled by gravitation. They think, from the way it reflects light, it
might have a very thin sail.’

  ‘So, a real space- ship,’ Freddie observed, thinking of the words literally. ‘We’ve sent two Voyagers out there with music and greetings in fifty-nine languages, and images, to communicate. Why wouldn’t others do the same and seek us out?’

  ‘So, here’s my line of thinking,’ said Joe. ‘What is the best way to communicate to another race? Images of course. Hannah was right, it’s pictures and symbols that are universal.’

  ‘We don’t know that. How do we know if other races even have eyes? Or any of our senses?’ Freddie pleaded.

  ‘Ok, just bear with me. Do you know Seurat?’ Joe asked

  ‘The painter?’

  ‘Exactly. You know the style he became famous for?’

  ‘Dots. Hundreds of them.’

  ‘Yes, he used hundreds of dots of paint to make up a picture. Like pixilation in a modern TV or computer. In fact, he effectively invented the TV before Baird. So, supposing you were to take satellite photos of the fairy circles and you pull back, reduce the scale until each circle becomes a dot…. would those dots form a picture?’

  ‘You mean the Fairy Circles are a giant picture message?’ Freddie asked.

  ‘I sense you’re not convinced,’ said Joe beginning to sound frustrated: either because his friend was not logical, or because he was too logical. He couldn’t work out which.

  ‘Like a lot of the things you say, Joe, I’m bowled over by how clever it is. But, first of all, wouldn’t it take the most monumental computing power to convert the hundreds of thousands of fairy circles into dots? Secondly, what kind of message is so important that you’d burn it on to the face of a planet?’

  ‘Now that,’ Joe said, ‘is the most exciting question I have ever heard.’

  Darius, Sarah, Barbara and Ilana, had prepared breakfast for everyone: fruit, bread, cereal and eggs.

  Basarwa had already showered, eaten his own porridge, and was busy checking torches and sharpening his bowie knife.

  The other bushman ‘Ace’ - named in affection after his prowess as a guide - was preparing his Maasai-style belt of tools.

  Hannah, Selima, Freddie and Joe appeared from their tents.