by Karen Prince
Ethan looked around in astonishment to see if anyone else had noticed the leopard communicate with the crocodiles, and then shook his head. He was having enough trouble getting his mind around prophecies and switching witches without having to think about crocodiles with magic. And what was that meaningful look? Was Jimoh a descendent or was the cat amused that Jimoh stroked him?
“Can we get on with the scry thing?” Ethan said to the witch. If there was a chance that he could see where Joe was, however slim, he was anxious to find out. “Joe may be in danger if the people who were after you have him instead.”
The witch fished out a pendant from between her breasts where it hung on a leather thong. Light from the glowing red crystal slowly died away as she placed it in the plough disk. Taking a flat oval piece of wood from a skirt pocket she placed it beside the plough disk. Another pocket held a small leather pouch and a tiny glass vial containing a transparent liquid. She shook a pile of dark grey crystals out of the pouch onto the wood and made a well in the middle of them.
When everyone was quiet and she had their full attention, she hovered the vial theatrically over the crystals – making sure to jingle her bracelets, Ethan noted with a smirk – before pouring the contents into the tiny volcano. The small explosion gave off a whiff of burning metal, like the smell of welding, which floated through the air to compete with the scents of the citronella candles and pipe tobacco. A wisp of purple smoke curled up eerily, then dissipated in the dark.
The villagers expelled a collective breath.
“It’s just iodine and turpentine!” Ethan’s disappointed mutter was cut short by a glare from the witch. He was beginning to make sense of the angry man’s skepticism. If it weren’t for the creepy way he could understand the leopard, Ethan would also have suspected the whole thing was just a series of tricks.
While the purple smoke distracted them all, the witch pricked her finger and allowed a drop of blood to fall in the plough disk. “I need five people who know the boy well to come and put their hands into the water,” she said.
Ethan, Tariro and Jimoh crept forward and gingerly put their hands in the water. It felt warm and oily. Ethan hoped the witch’s blood did not carry hepatitis or anything worse. It would be a pity if he were completely free of asthma, only to fall prey to some blood-born disease. He wondered if his body would really repair itself as she’d said, then smiled at his own gullibility. Of course his body would heal itself – that’s what immunity was all about. The crocodile must have got a light grip on him coming out of the pool, that’s all.
“Not right in like that,” directed the witch. “Just the tips of the fingers on the edge of the disk.”
Jimoh’s dad leaned forward and added his hand as instructed. The angry man pushed his way forwards and grudgingly added his hand. “I do this against my better judgement,” he said under his breath. “We should be calling the police.”
“Now close your eyes and concentrate hard on the boy, Joe,” the witch said.
She hummed in a deep bass voice while the leopard made a rumbling sound beside her. For a long time nothing happened. Then one of the women screamed and Ethan’s eyes shot open. It was not quite like television, but there was a clear, slightly rippled, vision on the water surface, of a blonde boy walking out of the ocean, holding a surfboard.
“He’s at the sea?” Ethan gasped, splashing water all over the place. He’d thought Karibu was just over the immediate mountain range. The nearest ocean was over a thousand kilometers away. The image disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. The witch glared at the angry man but it was Tariro who looked embarrassed.
“Sorry, wrong boy,” Tariro mumbled and then, in reply to Ethan’s snarl, “What! I didn’t think it was actually going to work, so I wondered what Darryl was up to... from school.”
Some of the villagers hadn’t believed it was going to happen either, Ethan noticed. They scrambled up and moved away, clicking anxiously, no longer wanting to take part in this sinister thing. Others moved forward curiously. The angry man’s composure vanished, to be replaced by a slightly wild-eyed look, but he added his hand to the disk with the other four and the witch resumed her humming. Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, thinking about Joe with all his might. He willed the disk to reveal to them where Joe was.
Jimoh nudged him softly and he peered through his eyelashes. A wavy image passed over the water in the disk and settled there. The witch exhaled sharply.
“Karibu is somewhere in India?” Ethan whispered, not wanting to disturb the image a second time. India was even further away than the ocean. The boy he saw was Joe. Still in his electric blue board-shorts, short blonde hair and his bare, peeling shoulders, only he lay fast asleep in a forest, cuddled up against a tiger.
“No, he is close by,” the witch said, “and he will be safe with Hajiri, but not for long. Hajiri is a kindly tiger but he is the pet of the Almohad and inevitably he will lead the boy there.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Drat! This is going to get complicated.”
The Almohad enslave their captives!
Ethan intercepted the warning between the leopard and the witch. Neither of them said it out loud, or even thought it. The information was just there without having to think. Like how to make your lungs inhale, or your heart pump. He wondered if they were aware he had received it. More importantly, though, he wondered if these Almohad would enslave Joe.
Peering more closely at the dish to see if Joe was tied up, Ethan caught a glimpse of dark shadows moving stealthily in the jungle behind where the tiger slept, and for a split second another image of Joe flashed into his mind. There was blood on his face! But when Ethan peered closely at his cousin it was as if he had imagined it. Joe looked perfectly peaceful sleeping against the tiger.
Glancing from Jimoh to Tariro, Ethan wondered if they had seen the blood too. Tariro shook his head and rubbed his eyes as if he could not believe them. Jimoh shook his hand in the water, trying to bring the image back, but the witch had lost focus. From the expressions on their faces, Ethan was sure none of them had seen it. A cold shiver ran through his body. Had he imagined the blood on Joe because he was spooked by the shadows? Was the tiger as safe as the witch said it was?
Suddenly he noticed the leopard, Salih, staring at him. “It is what may be,” purred the cat. “Gogo has been working on her powers of seeing into the future, but so far she has proved to be terrible at it. Sometimes she flashes. It’s probably inaccurate.”
~~~
The witch would not allow the villagers to stay and watch her switch back to Karibu at midnight. It would be upsetting for the little ones and too many witnesses would put her off her stride, she’d said firmly.
But she had not been as firm with the camping boys. Tafadzwa, Simba, Tendayi, Tekeramayi, and many whose names Ethan did not remember, all stood around her in bright-eyed anticipation. Giving her leopard one last hug before pushing him away, she clutched the opal, screwed up her eyes and muttered something that sounded like a curse.
There was a soft whump, and for a moment she appeared less solid in the firelight, but no matter how fiercely she contorted her face, the amulet failed to move her. She smacked her lips as if she had tasted something nasty. Ethan could taste a faint hint of tin in his own mouth, and from their disgusted expressions, it looked as if the other boys did too.
“Well, that’s disturbing,” Salih said.
“No energy. You’ve drained the lot!” the witch grumbled, glaring at the opal in her outstretched palm.
Even some of the assembled campers let out a groan and looked accusingly at Ethan for spoiling the trick. It was a huge responsibility being the one with magic, Ethan thought bitterly. He wondered if any of them would like to trade places.
“Could the opal take the power back if I hold it again?” he offered, eyeing it nervously as it fizzled and cracked like a wet firework in Gogo Maya’s hand. He was loath to touch it in case it burned him, but he hoped it would take back its power. He wondered wh
y they hadn’t thought of doing that before. It wasn’t his fault he’d touched it, and he wanted nothing to do with its power. At least that was what his head told him. His hand felt strangely drawn towards it.
“Don’t be silly,” Gogo Maya huffed, “that would be like trying to herd hornets back into their nest. If you touch it again, anything could happen.”
But when Salih cocked an eyebrow at her, she gave a long-suffering sigh and handed it over to Ethan.
As soon as it touched his palm, the fizzing stopped and its glow oscillated gently.
“Oh, close your hand, you stupid boy!” Gogo Maya snapped.
As he did so, Ethan felt a wave of cool calmness pass over him, beyond anything he’d ever felt before. It only lasted an instant, and when he opened his hand to look at the opal, it lay dead and cold in his palm. “Oh no...” he said. “I’ve made it worse!”
Unexpectedly, a gleeful smile spread over the witch’s face, and she stretched out her hand for the amulet. Then she hugged her skirt around herself tightly, screwed her eyes shut in concentration, muttered a curse, and disappeared with a thunderous thwack, leaving a slight vacuum in the air as she went.
“It probably just needed a kick start,” said Tariro, who was the first to get his breath back. “You know, like loosening a jam jar.” Immediately he laid claim to the witch’s abandoned cat, putting an arm around Salih’s neck and knuckling him on the forehead. “Don’t worry, Puss,” he said in the patronizing tone used to pet a dog. “We’ll look after you.”
The leopard looked like he bore the indignity bravely, but Ethan’s skin crawled. He wasn’t sure why, but his hands twitched with the effort of not pulling Tariro off it. Strangely, it didn’t seem to have anything to do with vermin, or anxiety over Tariro getting his hands dirty. He just didn’t want the boy touching the cat.
They hovered in the clearing beside the Crystal Pool for a while, in case the witch had been able to switch with Joe. It crossed Ethan’s mind that if Joe did reappear, it would spoil the adventure. No! He shook his head. Why on earth had he thought that? He did not want an adventure. He wanted his cousin back.
Moments later, a large, motley collection of skin and bones exploded out of the darkness, yelped, rolled over and over, ricocheted off the riverbank and came to a halt before the campfire, looking slightly dazed. It stank of swamp.
“Who are you?” it said indistinctly, staggering towards the boys as they scrambled backwards to get away from it, nocking slingshots and raising machetes as they went. Ethan scanned their faces to see if anyone had heard it speak. No. Of course they hadn’t. It hadn’t actually spoken. Just a knowing, similar to the cool wave Salih sent through his head, but harsher, and warmer. It felt almost like a hot flush of embarrassment. His hand flew to his cheek. It even felt hot.
“Be careful what you wish for, boy,” the leopard said to Ethan in a smooth, wry tone before disentangling himself from Tariro, suddenly all sleek power. “Welcome,” he said to the hyena. “Do not be afraid. You appear to have been summoned to this place in error, but we will soon have you home again. Can you swim?”
“I’m Kishi,” it said, sticking its chin out in a determined way. “Kishi are never afraid.” Then its brain caught up with its mouth. “What do you mean ‘swim’?”
“Yes, we are going to swim down this river, back to Karibu with these boys,” Salih said to it, brooking no nonsense. “It is all arranged.” And with that, he stalked off into the bush.
Ethan directed a sour look at the cat. Distracted by the arrival of the hyena, he had not understood what Salih meant till he remembered his errant thought about Joe not switching with the witch. The Leopard had plucked that thought right out of his head! It made him feel horrible. He hadn’t really wished Joe would not switch back. He hoped his thought had not affected the outcome of the switch, like a wish or something.
He wondered if he should warn the others that the leopard could read their minds. At the very least, he would have to watch his own thoughts around the animal. Now Ethan wasn’t even sure if the cat had actually seen the image of Joe beaten up in the scry earlier, or if it had read that out of his imagination.
Realizing that everyone was waiting on him for an explanation, Ethan sighed. “Another pet, according to the leopard,” he said. “He’ll be coming with.” He gave the hyena a long despairing look. It had been a nonsensical day – what was one more talking animal.
One by one the boys relaxed the slingshots and machetes they had trained on the animal, and drifted off to bed behind him.
At first, the hyena hung about the camp, his head turning from side to side as if looking for answers, while everyone else crammed themselves under the mosquito nets for the night. Then he went prowling up and down the riverbank, alternately exploring, and muttering “swim!” indignantly under his breath.
Ethan settled down in his sleeping bag, wondering what a Kishi was. He sensed the hyena brightening considerably as it stumbled upon the remains of the duiker they had eaten for supper.
Oh no! I can feel it, even when it isn’t trying to speak. As he fell asleep, he wondered if that was going to be a good thing or a pain in the neck.
10
A Turbulent Beginning
When Ethan awoke dark shapes moved in the predawn light by the pool. Jimoh was busy packing things onto the inner-tube floats he had helped his dad make the day before.
“Only light things,” he said softly, scratching the hyena behind the ear. It nipped gently at his hand. Ethan wondered if Jimoh was also able to hear the creature talk, or if he just had a way with animals.
The leopard, who had crept in sometime during the night to lie too close to Ethan, shot up at the disturbance, and swept past him into the bushes without a word.
Ethan switched on his headlamp and quickly scanned his body to see if the leopard had passed him any fleas. After rummaging in his backpack for a small trowel and a length of toilet paper, he carefully made his way into the bushes to dig a hole, ever watchful for snakes. He wished he knew what it was, exactly, he had done to the opal the night before, and why he’d had such an irresistible urge to hold the amulet. For that matter, why did he feel so out of sorts with Tariro when he went to pet the leopard? It was not as if he wanted to touch the animal himself. Or did he?
By the time he got back, the boys were up and dismantling the shelter.
Tafadzwa tapped him on the shoulder and stood there beaming, holding out his precious slingshot for Ethan to take. It was beautifully engraved with a double-headed hornbill, its body along the shaft, and one scimitar beak pointing up each of the slingshot’s forks.
“He wants you to have it for luck on your journey,” Tendayi interpreted. Ethan shifted his weight from one foot to the other, swallowing a lump in his throat. It must have taken Tafadzwa days to carve the thing.
“Please tell Tafadzwa I am honoured to have his slingshot, but I’ll only be borrowing it, and I’ll take good care of it. When I get back I’ll return it to him.” There was an awkward silence. Did the boys think he wouldn’t be coming back? On impulse, he unpacked his laptop and held it out to Tafadzwa. “Please will you look after this for me?” he asked. Then, turning towards Tendayi, he said, “Do you know how it works?”
“Yes, we have them in school.” Tendayi turned his attention to the computer. “Not as fancy as this, but I know how it works.”
“Does Tafadzwa know?”
“No,” Tendayi said. “They don’t have computers at the kraal school – no electricity.”
“If you can find a power source, do you think you could teach Tafadzwa? Even if it’s just how to play the games. There are some great movies on there too, if he wants to show the little kids.”
Two large tractor tubes floated on the water nearby. Little boys tested them for comfort and springiness with the help of the hyena, who had obviously overcome his apprehension for swimming. He wriggled about on his back on the hessian hammock in the middle of a tube, his paws in the air, laughing mani
acally, while the boys jumped up and down on the edges of the tube trying to dislodge him. Every now and again they would bounce in just the right place and the hyena would go flying through the air to land with a terrific splash. Then the game would start all over again. No one seemed to care that their playmate was a wild animal, or that their trampoline was tethered to the supply tubes that were spinning and bobbing around wildly, threatening to capsize and drench the equipment which had been tied onto them.
The crocodiles lounged passively beside the pool. Not that Ethan could read their faces, but they didn’t look as if they were going to bite anyone. They seemed to wait patiently while Jimoh’s dad attached rope harnesses to them and linked them up, first with the supply tubes, then the transport tubes, and then a few tubes with nothing on them. Ethan could not get used to the idea that the crocodiles were behaving as docile as horses, and that they were actually going to drag him and the boys down the river. He wondered if he would be able to understand them as he had the hyena the night before. Concentrating hard on the one’s face, he tried to imagine what it was thinking, but he got no response. That meant the only way anyone could communicate with the creatures was if they went through Salih. Worse still, Ethan scowled, the only way anyone else could communicate with Salih appeared to be through him. Why him?
Even though it was still dark, Jimoh’s father wore his outback hat. After hugging his son, he shook Tariro and Ethan by the hand and solemnly transferred the hat to Ethan’s head. “You are very pale, Ethan,” he said. “You will need protection from the sun.”
“Thank you,” Ethan said, fidgeting the hat a little forwards on his head. He found himself swallowing the lump in his throat for the second time that day. Trying to compose himself, he turned quickly and scrambled onto the tube between Tariro and Jimoh. Tariro hesitated only slightly before he made space for Ethan, then he changed his mind.