Switch!

by Karen Prince

  Joe turned his back on Nandi, as much to avoid breaking down in front of the girl, as to hide his bitterness. He missed his family already, in a way that he did not miss them when he was at boarding school. At least then he had known he would be coming back. What if Nandi was telling the truth and there was no way out of here? What if...? If he were stuck here, it would be a hundred times better to be stuck with Nandi than with Kitoko. He closed his eyes and nodded.

  “There!” she said, suddenly all smiles. “I am sure you will be happy with me. Now don’t despair, I can win this game.”

  She left him to go and play bao, and Joe slumped dejectedly on the divan. No one stopped him – he did not have a master or mistress yet. He looked at his finger. It was strange how it seemed to be healing so fast. At least Nandi appeared to be winning. She had a much larger pile of ivory beads in her home trench. He closed his eyes for a moment.

  ~~~

  Joe woke with a gasp as Kitoko yanked him up into a sitting position using the slingshot around his neck. For a long moment Kitoko stared reproachfully into his startled eyes, his face inches from Joe’s, while Joe struggled to breathe. Then he yanked the slingshot from around Joe’s neck.

  “I’ll have that,” he said. “We don’t want any more accidents around here.”

  Joe froze. Kitoko must have won him after all.

  “And that’s enough lying around for you,” Kitoko said, kicking Joe to chivy him along. “Come on, get up, you lazy boy, and come with me. And keep up. I am only going to go through the rules once.”

  Joe shot up off the divan to follow Kitoko, and promptly sat down again as the blood rushed suddenly to his head.

  “He must have cheated!” Nandi wailed. She helped Joe up and dragged him down the passage as Kitoko disappeared around a corner, followed by his entourage. “Hurry up, Joe,” she said. “You have to do exactly what Kitoko says, or he will have you beaten... Or worse.” She stopped as he winced in pain from the kick in his ribs. “Don’t worry, Joe. Just keep your head down and try to blend in. He should get bored with you quite quickly. And I will try to stay close by so that Kitoko does not get out of hand.”

  “And I will expect you to carry my arrows...” Kitoko said, bumping into a couple of his entourage as he backtracked around the corner to see where Joe had got to. “You haven’t heard a word I said? Have you?” Then he rounded on Nandi. “And you! push off! He is my boy now. And you can go and find his clothes while you’re at it. I won’t have him running around in a proper Kurta till the little savage has earned it!”

  So much for blending in, Joe thought, as he followed Kitoko’s litany of rules down the passage.

  20

  Lions!

  The sun beat down on them as they trudged, single file, across a section of open bush-veld, following the cliffs north in search of the trail Fisi had said lead up the escarpment. Jimoh had made them start out before dawn, to ensure they reached the safety and shade of the woodland before the worst of the heat. Not that Ethan felt in the slightest bit hot. If anything, it was as if something was shielding him from the heat of the sun, or else his body was repairing itself as he went. Apart from the blinding headache, which had gone as suddenly as it had appeared, and a slightly bitter tingling on the sides of his tongue, he felt no effect from his chasing off of the Adze either.

  Tariro, on the other hand, sagged visibly as he trudged ahead of Ethan. Sweat trickled down his face, his shoulders stooped, and he kept putting his hand up to shield the back of his neck which his dreadlocks did not quite cover. Lifting Jimoh’s dad’s hat off his own head Ethan quietly placed it on the boy in front of him.

  “Ethan, I can’t take your hat.” Tariro turned around, placing it firmly back on Ethan’s head. “With your white skin you will probably get sunstroke. That’s if we haven’t already all died of hunger and dehydration before we get to the spring.” Tariro looked at the remaining magic water in his bottle. “This bloody stuff better be working! It isn’t exactly thirst quenching.”

  “No, Tariro, Ethan is right about hat,” Jimoh smiled patiently from behind. “Ethan can make hat with kanga.” He lifted the hat off Ethan’s head, swiped good-naturedly at a swarm of midges circling his head, trying to get to the moisture in his eyes, and placed the hat on Tariro’s head. “Leopard told Ethan magic from amulet will protect him from getting sick from sun.”

  “Okay, well I will take the hat for now,” said Tariro, “but only until my own magic kicks in.

  That was another strange thing since being at Sobek Lake, Ethan thought; the midges, who seemed to cluster around everyone else, avoided him. They flew towards him, but changed direction at the last minute.

  “Look, not long now,” Jimoh said, pointing across the vlei at a copse of trees. “Rafiki say spring is in those trees.”

  The Tokoloshe had shown no discomfort at all at the blistering heat and the long trek. They were as exuberant and inquisitive as a bunch of five year olds at a theme park – dashing out on side trips to overturn rocks or investigate an anthill, and then running back shrieking and flicking their hands as the venom from ant bites trickled up their arms.

  The spring, when they reached it, was already occupied.

  “Rafiki say, baboons no problem but we will have to wait for sable to move away,” Jimoh said, leopard crawling up beside Ethan. “I know there is no problem if we are disturbing this beast but Tokoloshe are alarmed for those horns.”

  “I am alarmed that they are pissing in our drinking water,” Tariro joked, but it was the first time either of the boys had ever seen a live sable and they were happy to sit back in the shade and watch them. Sweeping, metre-long, sabre-like horns arched over their black backs, with raised bangle-like bumps along the length of them. The antelope were also struggling with midges, constantly twitching their shaggy manes and swishing their tails in the heat. After twenty minutes or so they moved off quietly.

  A baboon, who had been sitting on an elevated rock like the king of the water, barked his defiance at their retreating backs as if he had ordered them off. Ethan caught a glimpse of his sharp molars, easily as lethal as Salih’s, and wondered at the wisdom of the Tokoloshe’s choice of what represented danger and what did not.

  The Tokoloshe were all business after the antelope left. They lay flat on their stomachs beside the water and drank deeply, cupping the water up into their mouths, while the king baboon glowered at them from his rock. The rest of his troupe went about their business, picking fleas off each other and lounging about, completely ignoring his posturing.

  From amongst the assorted dangly things tied around their waists, each Tokoloshe produced a small calabash with a gum stopper, which they filled with water. While Jimoh strained water through Ethan’s kanga to fill his water bottle, Ethan commandeered Jimoh and Tariro’s hats and strung a curtain of pods around the brim of each to shoo away the midges. He had seen a similar thing done in a documentary about the Australian bush. Within minutes several Tokoloshes had fashioned themselves hats from broad leaves with pods dangling from their rims.

  “Fast little learners,” Tariro said.

  Salih came back with two baby warthogs, sending the troupe of baboons scattering into the bushes, but they soon crept back and took up their previous positions. Salih seemed as wary of them as they were of him.

  “As weak as I am with hunger, I don’t think I will be able to eat those ugly little things with all their warty bumps and bristly hairs,” Ethan said.

  “You are going to starve,” Jimoh said, exasperated. He rallied together some Tokoloshe to collect dry twigs and helped them start a fire. He pulled his Swiss Army knife out of his pocket to a chorus of oohs and aahs from his little friends and they set about skinning the piglets and cutting them into narrow strips, which they threaded onto sticks to suspend above the fire.

  “I have a plan,” Jelani the Tokoloshe said, sidling up to Ethan and wiggling his bushy eyebrows up and down suggestively, almost spilling his new leafy hat on the ground. He c
hose a small calabash from his skirt and waved it in front of Ethan’s face.

  “Sleeping poison,” he said with relish. “The witch makes it for our arrows.” Before Ethan had finished wondering what the little man planned to do with the sleeping potion, Jelani had dashed into the spring with it. He poured the contents of the calabash out in a circle around himself and then started to gently agitate it into the water with his hands. Several more Tokoloshe jumped into the water after him excitedly. They had obviously done this before. After a few seconds, finger-sized fish floated to the surface to be collected by the Tokoloshe.

  “What a brilliant idea!” exclaimed Ethan, wading in to help.

  “Not so fast,” Salih laughed, “that one is already looking sleepy.” Sure enough, one Tokoloshe slipped quietly under the water. Tariro had also noticed and, being the closest, dashed in and hauled him out, laying him gently in the shade to sleep it off.

  They threaded the fish through their gills onto skewers and roasted them over the fire.

  At a signal from Rafiki, Jelani lifted the sleeping Tokoloshe over his shoulder and everyone followed him into the bush, much to the relief of the fractious baboon, who barked his truculence as they went.

  ~~~

  Rafiki lead them to a small cave he knew of. One moment they were hacking away at the dense undergrowth and the next they were in a clearing up against the cliffs and there it was. It was too early to break for camp but the opportunity of a ready-made shelter was too good to miss.

  Dark clouds built from the direction of the lake and a steady breeze smelled like rain. The Tokoloshe assured them that a tropical storm, if it broke, would be short. With a bit of luck it would pass even before the sun went down. Ethan wasn’t that tired but preferred to rest in the cave while the Tokoloshe took the other boys hunting. They were dying to exchange hunting techniques with Jimoh, and Tariro wanted to test his skills with his slingshot.

  Alone in the cave with Salih, Ethan carefully unpacked his backpack. Jimoh had suggested they pare down their equipment for the trek up the escarpment, and Ethan was glad for the opportunity to take stock of his equipment in private. He laid out his knives and his pocket full of gems on a kanga. Casting his eyes over the gems, he was shocked at how many he actually had, and the quality of them. He was no expert, but it seemed that there were millions of dollars worth of diamonds, rubies and emeralds, ranging from pea-size to grape-size. There were several sapphires there and something that looked like his mother’s Tanzanite ring, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Do you think we have enough here to pay a ransom for Joe?” he said to Salih.

  “The Almohad are particularly fond of jewels. It may be enough, but they are just as likely to snatch the jewels and all of you too. They are not renowned for their sense of fair play. It might be better to persuade the witches from Waheri village to extract Joe.”

  “But what if we go all the way to the witches and then we don’t get to Joe in time?” Ethan said. Even though he agreed that they needed food and a storm was coming, he was very worried about wasting the afternoon.

  “Gogo will meet us on the way,” Salih said. “Now put the stones away. No one must know about them,” he added hastily. Three Tokoloshe were coming up the path with wood for a fire. Ethan divided the gems up into two equal piles, stuffed them into his cargo pants pockets, and closed the zippers.

  Ethan was starting to be able to tell the funny little guys apart. These were Akin, Dembi and Manu. Dembi was still getting over the effects of the sugar, even though everyone else had stopped ages ago. Ethan suspected he had a secret stash of toffees hiding amongst the things in his skirt. He stopped what he was doing, gave a tremendous shudder, flashed almost transparent for a moment and then settled down with a contented sigh.

  “Chocolate!” he uttered with relish. He seemed to be just as enamoured with the word as the actual sweet.

  Akin and Manu exchanged a mischievous wink, their little black eyes twinkling as they hunkered down opposite each other to start the fire. Ethan noticed they were preparing to do this with a bowstring and a stick.

  “Here, let me show you,” he smiled, scooting between them. There was just enough sunlight for him to show them how to start it by directing the rays of the sun onto the dry tinder through the magnifying-glass attachment on his knife. He would show them that Jimoh was not the only one with a trick up his sleeve.

  Salih padded over to sit beside the Tokoloshe. He cocked his head to one side and watched as a wisp of smoke emerged from the tinder and curled towards the sky. Ethan cautiously cupped the wad of tinder in his hands and blew gently on it till a small flame appeared. Careful not to burn his hands, he quickly transferred it to a spot near the entrance of the cave where the Tokoloshe had placed three stones and the firewood, in readiness for the fire. He built a neat pile of small sticks on it, careful to leave gaps for oxygen to get sucked in by the heat. He turned back to the three Tokoloshe.

  “There you go,” he said, proudly pointing out his first-ever fire. But they had shifted their attention to tickling Salih. The leopard lay on his back, wriggling from side to side and grinning while three sets of hands scratched all over his underbelly. His hind leg jerked spasmodically in the air. Ethan gave a wry shrug and continued to add slightly bigger branches to his fire. Not long ago the lack of validation for his efforts would have irked him almost as much as having to make his own fire. But there was a sense of affirmation within himself that he had never felt before. This journey had made him aware of just how capable he was; he no longer needed his dad to say, “Well done, Ethan!” Well, at least not as much as he had before...

  The storm, when it broke, was torrential. A flash of lightning lit the clearing like a strobe light, making the surrounding trees dance momentarily before disappearing behind a solid wall of water. Ethan had hardly begun to worry if Jimoh and Tariro had found shelter from it, when the storm passed almost as suddenly as it had begun.

  A huge black cloud hovering over the clearing in front of the cave turned out to be flying ants by the millions. Akin, Dembi and Manu rushed out and caught as many as they could, using Ethan’s kanga. They might as well have conserved their energy because soon the ants homed in on the light of the fire and the cave was full of them, their bodies making strange clicking sounds as they crawled about. Akin and Dembi scooped them up by the handful and de-winged them while Manu threw hands full of the insects’ plump juicy backsides into a shield and fried them in their own fat over the fire. On closer inspection Ethan saw the shield was none other than the sweet tin lid, bashed into a concave shape. Overcome with hunger, he tried one and then another and another. The idea of it turned out to be much worse than actually eating them. They tasted like squishy buttered popcorn.

  He was glad to be relatively well fed by the time the others returned. They were saturated but proudly carrying a porcupine strung up on a pole. Ethan wasn’t sure he would be able to eat it with that little wet face hanging down all cute.

  “Don’t touch it!” Jimoh said when Ethan went to pluck out a quill. “Spikes can still stick you, even when animal is dead. Then stick there like hook for fish. Cannot take out without tearing your flesh.”

  “Ouch!” Ethan said, testing Jimoh’s theory with his thumb against a quill. Microscopic barbs scored a graze across his skin, making it bleed. He put his thumb in his mouth and sucked it, then folded it into his fist to hide the small wound, and the fact that it had started to close already.

  “You just don’t learn,” Tariro laughed. He lifted Jimoh’s dad’s hat and flicked the rainwater off it before settling it back on his head, then handed Ethan the water bottle he’d borrowed from him because he’d forgotten his own at the spring. “You should have seen Jimoh!” he said. “Just before the rain came, he had the beast cornered outside its burrow. It stuck out its tail quills and spines, and started grunting and rattling them and stamping its back feet.” He stamped his own feet in imitation and then lunged towards Jimoh who ducked out of the way.
“Then suddenly it ran at him sideways like that! So fast. Eh! Ethan. Don’t be fooled by those stumpy little feet. It was as quick as lightening, but not as quick as Jimoh. He stabbed it with his stick. Did you know they do not shoot their quills?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “The Tokoloshe were kind of cowardly though. They scattered and ran.”

  “Tariro, you know how they have a sleeping potion on their arrows? I am not convinced they are cowardly – I think they just have a problem actually killing things,” Ethan whispered back.

  The porcupine was delicious. Jelani took charge of the plucking and skinning, carefully polishing the microscopic barbs off the ends of the quills and distributing them amongst the tribe to use as decoration. Once the rodent had been staked and roasted it looked almost like supermarket meat, so Ethan ate it.

  Jimoh built an A-frame structure with a pole across it, to hang their nets on in case the Adze came back. He and Tariro set it up near the entrance of the cave, away from the smoke of the fire, and everyone took shelter under the nets as soon as it grew dark.

  For a long time, Ethan struggled to get comfortable on his back on the hard rock floor. He couldn’t sleep on either side without gemstones digging into him and if he lay on his back, the buckle of his headlamp dug into his head. He had been wearing it on his head since the incident with the Adze. “I made the fire all by myself,” he boasted, but there was no one awake to be impressed.

  ~~~

  A piercing scream woke Ethan out of a deep sleep, followed immediately by a blow to the head. Dazed, he struggled to sit up, but seemed to be pinned down by something. It’s only the mosquito net, collapsed on top of us, he realised with some relief. He reached for his headlamp, but it must have been knocked off his head.

  Everyone else was awake and stumbling about in the dark yelling by the time he’d disentangled himself and staggered to his feet. He found his headlamp dangling around his neck and switched it on with shaking fingers to see what Tariro was screaming about.