by Karen Prince
It was a good thing no one went in search of Chuki to confirm this story. At the sound of her low hiss, Joe turned to see her creep cautiously into the shelter where she squatted in front of him, one hand covering her mouth in a sign indicating the need for silence, the other hand holding a shard of gourd filled with what looked like stew, some twisted stalks and a rough-skinned fruit.
“Aw... Boy,” she said softly. He could hear a slight crack in her voice.
Only then did Joe’s composure break. He started to weep quietly, and wished he could hide his face in his hands. He could see she was also close to tears as she hunkered down awkwardly on the floor and tried to feed him, the gravy running down her fingers and dripping on the floor. She made no move to untie him but she did not seem to mind the mess.
“Why didn’t you run when you heard my music?” she whispered.
Joe was so shocked; the food in his mouth went momentarily unchewed. “I waited for you. I did not think you would attack me. Why did you attack me?”
“That was Mesande,” she said.
“You helped her tie me up.”
“I had to, or she could accuse me of failing to help capture a demon.”
“Untie me now, then.”
“Later. If I untie you now she will know it was me. I am also a hostage here, but not like you,” she whispered. “My people live far to the north. I, and the other hostages, cannot leave Malamulu village except with one such as Mesande. They will not let us escape, but they may not harm us or our people will kill their own hostages and attack this pack.”
Joe took a bite of the twisted stalk she offered him. It was tough and irritating against his mouth. Bitter starbursts of flavour set his tongue tingling and his eyes narrowed as he spat. Could she be feeding him some sort of poison? No, she really was upset, and she had tried to help him on the track.
“Why are you helping me now then?” he said uncertainly.
“I do it to annoy Mesande,” she said with a wicked grin, “because I like Fisi, the one she is planning to mate with. I play the music to warn the others that she is coming and she knows it but she dare not stop me. She is cruel. You see what she does with the snake.” She ran a hand soothingly down the length of the snake’s back and tut-tutted. “Poor creature, all its blood has gone to its head. I am sure she means to set it on someone. If it lives long enough.”
“Well, I am not an animal,” Joe said. “I expected help.”
She wiped the side of his mouth with her thumb and sucked the gravy off. “And you shall have it,” she said, patting his cheek kindly. “I cannot help you but my friends will come for you as soon as it is dark. I will create a diversion with the snake, and I will make sure the villagers in the yard see me in the square while my friends cut you down. You must take off the strange clothing and put on the pelt that they bring you, and then follow them. The others must think you are a shape-changing demon when they see the empty clothing.” She laughed softly. “It will delay them from going out to search for you.”
After she snuck out again, the time dragged by. Joe’s arms ached so badly he wanted to cry. His bladder grew so tight it was painful, but he was damned if he would give Mesande the satisfaction of seeing him wet himself. The argument in the yard went back and forth, but he was too miserable to look over the wall.
Shortly after the sun went down, a long shadow detached itself from a nearby shelter and slid silently in beside Joe. A stocky young boy, clutching a rusty knife in one hand, gave Joe a nod, gripped the snake gently around its neck, unhooked its tail and slid it cautiously out of its prison, then tiptoed out into the night with it.
The effect of the snake was satisfyingly electric. A piercing shriek split the air and pandemonium broke out. Villagers and hyenas scattered in all directions.
Joe felt his hands released from the beam and his knees buckled under him. He fell to the floor, writhing in agony as the muscles in his feet and his arms adjusted.
“No time!” a boy hissed, dragging him up to his feet and hacking at the ties that bound him to the divining rod with a knife, while another struggled to remove Joe’s shorts and replace them with a skirt-like pelt.
With trembling hands Joe grabbed a handful of pebbles from beside the doorway and stumbled out behind the boys as they ducked into the shadows, crouching low. Joe followed his rescuers as silently as possible under the boma down to a stream that ran beside the settlement.
“Walk in the middle of the stream as long as you can to hide your scent,” one of the boys said, pressing a water skin, and some dried meat into Joe’s hands. “We must go back and cover your tracks.”
Joe hesitated. He was still unsteady on his feet.
“The witches are that way.” The other boy pointed south-west, back up the plateau, the way the girls had brought Joe.
“Thank you...” Joe whispered, wondering why they would be directing him towards witches, but before he could ask, the two boys had melted into the shadows.
He would worry about that later. For now, he was free, but he would not be for long if Mesande could weasel her way out of her demon lie.
Joe ran downhill beside the stream for about twenty paces to throw her off track and then waded into the water, making his way upstream as fast as he could, trying not to splash water as he ran. He could see his way quite clearly in the moonlight. Of course, it meant she would be able to see him too. Not that she needed to; she would set her hyenas on him. She could probably smell him out herself, the vicious brat. What he would have done for a can of pepper to put her off the track.
As soon as he reached the top of the plateau, he relieved himself, drank as much water as he could stomach, refilled the skin the two young boys had given him from the stream, and set off at a brisk trot, heading towards the distant mountains.
12
A Dubious Power
Ethan fought the urge to run as the hippopotamus stood eyeing him on the bottom of the pool. It was barely two meters away. Its massive grey head scythed slowly from side to side almost level with his. The skin around its eyes and the sides of its face was an unexpected salmon pink and single spiky whiskers stuck out of crater-like pores all over its broad muzzle. One lone bubble escaped in slow motion from its closed nostrils, and drifted to the surface. He wasn’t sure if it could open its mouth underwater without drowning, but he knew it had enormous tusk-like incisors inside that could cut a human in half. The rest of its giant barrel-shaped body was hairless, and looked nearly as big as a rhinoceros.
He’d read in his survival manual that hippopotami were extremely aggressive and were responsible for more human fatalities than elephant, rhino and buffalo combined. Any sudden noise or movement may be all that would be needed to trigger an attack. Barrelling into the water at speed had not helped his cause. The manual had told him to jump off the path and stand dead still, but there had been no advice for the eventuality of meeting one in deep water.
Rotating his hands slowly by his sides, trying to keep in the same spot under the water, Ethan struggled to remember what other advice the manual had given. It claimed that hippopotami do not swim but walk along the riverbed, and Ethan wondered if it was as simple as pushing up to the surface, out of the creature’s reach. There had been nothing about how far or how fast a hippopotamus could push off from the bottom, but it definitely had mentioned that hippopotami were faster than people both on land and in the water.
Staring at the creature in horror, he knew he would have to make up his mind quickly. His lungs were already burning and he thought the hippopotamus could hold its breath for at least five minutes.
“Don’t bite me,” he prayed, as he slowly bent his legs in preparation to push off. An overwhelming surge of hostility swept over him from the beast as it hovered indecisively between savaging him and walking away.
It was not as if he were reading the thoughts or emotions of this creature like he could with Fisi and Salih. Anyone could have picked up the hostility from the animal’s body language, but,
on the other hand, he could have sworn the feeling radiating off it went deeper than that. Sulkiness immediately came to mind, and a feeling of having been cheated. If he could feel all that from the animal, Ethan wondered if it could feel anything from him. It seemed almost too much to hope for but he glared at it with all his might and thought, “Go away!”
Suddenly something else plunged into the water beside Ethan, and Darwishi swam between Ethan and the hippopotamus, drawing the hippopotamus’ attention away. The hippopotamus whirled around in slow motion and bounded after the crocodile, propelling himself at considerable speed through the water by pushing his stubby little legs off the bottom of the pool in forward leaps. The animal was much faster than him underwater. Ethan wasted no time shooting up to the surface of the pool.
Salih floundered on top of the water. “Push me under the waterfall, Ethan,” he spluttered. Ethan could see what he meant. Partly concealed behind a waterfall near where they had landed, the rest of the group huddled together in a shallow cave-like depression in the riverbank. Ethan pushed Salih towards them, and Tariro and Fisi hauled him up beside them, where he limped to one side and fell panting to the floor.
Ethan climbed up after him, and they all turned to watch as Darwishi shot out of the far side of the pool with the hippopotamus in hot pursuit. The animal soon got bored with the chase, and lumbered back to the pool to join his pod on the far side. He lurked belligerently amongst the water hyacinth in the shallows, his ears, nose and eyes poking up above the water, letting off a series of disapproving grunts from time to time. Ethan suppressed a shudder as another hippopotamus lifted its massive mouth out of the water and yawned, showing incisors almost the size of Ethan’s forearm.
“We thought you were a goner,” Tariro said, palm pressed to his chest dramatically. Then, unexpectedly, he grabbed Ethan in a bear hug. “I know you can hold your breath for a long time, but you were down there well over a minute. Amun guided us all to this shelf as we landed, and we sat here watching that hippo get madder and madder till he slunk under the water. We saw him walk along the river bed and we saw you land practically on top of him, but there was nothing we could do.”
Fisi gave Ethan a hug too, even though Ethan tried to ward it off, remembering that Fisi had picked his nose earlier. Fisi’s hug was stiff, and wooden, as if he was trying to learn the customs of his new friends, but didn’t quite understand the sentiment.
“Yo,” he said in perfect imitation of the way he had heard Tariro say it, and then stood awkwardly beside Ethan. Too close. Ethan had to hold his breath against the smell. He hoped the hyena youth would learn the concept of personal space quickly, and personal possessions too. He was wearing Jimoh’s hat. Jimoh, himself, sagged against a rock at the back of the shallow cave, breathing with difficulty. He looked ashen. Salih padded over to him and prodded his stomach gently, then licked his face.
“This one is hurt, Ethan,” he said. “You must send the other two away before we can help him because they must not see. Tell them I have power to heal him but I need your help.”
Ethan hesitated. He wasn’t sure Tariro would believe him if he said it was the leopard’s idea to send Tariro out to gather up their equipment from amongst the hippopotami while he stayed safely with Jimoh. Tariro would think he was copping out of the more difficult task. When he suggested it, however, Tariro shook his head, more as if to clear it, than to argue.
“You are something else, Ethan,” he grinned, obviously still not entirely happy to believe Ethan could understand Salih, despite the evidence of his own eyes when Fisi had changed. He looked worriedly at Jimoh. “Do you really think the leopard can help him?”
“He says he can,” Ethan said firmly.
“Okay, me and Fisi will get our stuff together and go and find a place to camp.” Ethan guessed the idea of a talking leopard was easier for Tariro to swallow than the idea that Ethan had spontaneously guessed that the hyena would change into a man. He wondered if he should remind Tariro that the leopard considered Fisi to be a potential danger, but the two of them had already sidled out from under the waterfall and were headed down the riverbank.
Ethan crouched beside Jimoh after they left, and took the boy by the hand. “What can you do?” he asked Salih.
“I was hoping this wouldn’t come up.” The leopard’s face had an innocent expression, but Ethan sensed something else. Shiftiness, he thought. “It is you who must help Jimoh,” Salih said.
“That’s your plan, Salih? I can’t help him. He looks hurt inside! He probably has a broken rib or something.” He stared at Jimoh in astonishment. Jimoh had a broken rib! He knew it without a doubt. Just by touching Jimoh, he knew it. He let go of the boy’s hand as if it had scalded him, and glared at Salih. “How am I supposed to fix this? I’m not a doctor.”
Salih dropped into a low crouch beside Ethan, his tail twitching gently back and forth like a metronome.
“When I saw how quickly the crocodile bite healed, I thought you must have power of your own,” he said, “but the more I see of you the more I begin to suspect the only power you have is what you sucked out of the witch.” He cocked his head as if he’d had a thought, and then went on.
“It is not easy to suck the power out of a witch. I would like to know how you knew you could do that, and how you managed to shield yourself from her.” He regarded Ethan for a moment with appraising eyes. Then he shook his head ruefully, and went on, “But that is for another time. If I had known, I would never have risked sending you to fetch the amulet. As it is, you have absorbed enough of her magic to heal this boy. Enough from her, and certainly enough from the amber of her amulet.
“The power is in your blood,” he explained. “It makes you strong and capable of healing very quickly as the witch told you. Within reason, of course. Nothing could have saved you from a bite from that hippopotamus.” He gestured towards Jimoh. “But you can also use this blood to heal others.”
Ethan ran a finger under the collar of his T-shirt, and cleared his throat, but struggled to say anything. Was he going mad? He thought he believed the leopard. Why shouldn’t he? His own injuries, when he reached the bottom of the rapids, were not consistent with the pounding he had taken coming down. At one point he had been sure he had cracked a couple of his own ribs, yet instead of feeling grim, he felt a mild euphoric feeling in the pit of his stomach, completely at odds with the situation he was in.
He knew replacing lost blood could help to heal a person, but mending bones? He wished Salih would stop swishing his tail like that, so that he could think.
Of course he wanted to help Jimoh, but even supposing his blood could do it, how was he going to extract it without a syringe? How would he get it into Jimoh’s veins for that matter?
He took a deep breath, puffed his cheeks up and let the air out slowly. “How?” he asked.
“Good boy,” Salih said, his tail coming to a rest. “Take your special knife and make a small cut here.” He indicated a small vein on the outside of Ethan’s ankle. “This place will be the least noticeable. Then let it bleed.” He looked around for a receptacle and his eyes came to rest on Ethan’s water bottle. “Enough to fill the lid of that. Maybe twice.”
Ethan backed off in shock when he realised Salih intended him to have Jimoh drink the blood.
“Are you going to stand around making up your mind while your friend dies?” Salih growled.
One look at the sweat glistening on Jimoh’s forehead made up his mind. He would have to do it; and the sooner the better.
Taking his Swiss Army knife out of his pocket, he selected the sharpest little knife and held his breath while he made a small cut in his ankle. It smarted momentarily and then blood slowly trickled out of the nick. He cupped the cap beneath the vein to collect it as it oozed out thickly, all dark red and repulsive.
I must pull myself together, he told himself through gritted teeth. Now was not the time to faint at the sight of his own blood, but he could not help the familiar signs of lightheade
dness and nausea creeping up on him. Struggling to stay conscious, he leaned his head over the side of the ledge and let the waterfall splash on his face.
“Ethan, why you cutting yourself?” Jimoh rasped.
“Jimoh, I know it sounds gross,” Ethan said weakly, “but Salih says I must give you some blood. It will make you get better.”
“I cannot take your blood! I can see it is bringing pain.”
Ethan shook the water out of his hair. “Is there a religious or tribal problem?” he said. He knew there wasn’t, because he had seen two of Jimoh’s hunters pierce the tips of their fingers with the blade of a machete and press their wounds together. He had been appalled at the time, worrying about all the diseases they could be passing to each other. It didn’t seem to matter now.
“No, Ethan. I do not want to take it because it will make you weak. You will not be able to find Joe,” Jimoh said. Ethan could see he was fighting for every breath.
“Jimoh, it is not that sore, and when a person loses blood, their body makes more. In Cape Town we go and have some blood taken out every year or so. The nurse puts a needle in here,” he indicated the crook of his arm, “and they suck out two tins full of blood. They store it until they need to put it into someone else who needs it.” Ethan did not mention that the someone was not required to drink it. “Then they give us a cup of tea and send us home. We don’t even notice the blood is missing.” He gave a self-depreciating laugh. “I usually pass out then too, but it is only because I hate the sight of blood.”
“I will try it then, Ethan,” Jimoh said, “but if I do not get well you must go with Tariro and find Joe. Amun will try to take me back to Tjalotjo village to get help.”
Ethan grinned at Jimoh. “Then you will have to get well because if I have to go by myself with Tariro, you know I am going to strangle the boy.”
Ethan handed him the lid and Jimoh took a tentative sip. His face contorted into a disgusted grimace; then he looked embarrassed at this reaction.