Child of Africa

by T. M. Clark

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  PROLOGUE

  A million years of evolution quivered, her instinct strong to kill. To survive. The cheetah mother crept forward, concealed by the tawny grass. Puffs of mist rose as she controlled her breathing in the cold morning. She dug her claws into the solid African sand, and exploded towards the unsuspecting impala. A baboon barked a warning as he spied her from a perch in a nearby thorn tree, but his alarm call was too late. The second it took for the impala to react was too long. The cheetah was already right up behind the buck, and despite its acceleration in speed to dodge the predator, the cheetah was faster, her lungs specifically designed for just this scenario. As the impala turned a sharp right, the cheetah used her tail as a rudder and adjusted her trajectory accordingly. The cheetah expertly closed the distance between the antelope and herself. One more zigzag to the left, and the cheetah extended her paw outward, tripping up the fleeing impala. In a second she had it pinned by its exposed throat. She hung onto its neck, her iron-clad bite cutting off its life’s air, suffocating the buck.

  Within moments, the kill was over, and the cheetah quickly pulled her trophy to a scrubby bush to recover. After the short exertion, she needed to cool down, fill her lungs with fresh air and regain her breath. Then she could feast. Once her belly was full, she would return to her cubs and call them from the bushes where they were hidden, and she would share her meal with them. At six weeks old, they were now grown enough to accompany her on her hunts, but were still very dependent on her for milk.

  Slowly, the African bush returned to normal, the hype of the danger over. The doves resumed their relentless cooing, wooing each other. The baboons continued to eat the soft tips from the tree they sat in, one grooming another as the sentry on watch picked at his yellow-stained teeth. The cheetah forgotten, the death of the impala was simply another passing within the bush. Survival of the fittest. This time, his troop were safe. They would continue their day.

  The cheetah chirped, calling the cubs to her from their hiding place. Three gorgeous spotted babies. Their white manes, which disguised them as ferocious honey badgers to any unsuspecting passer-by, acted as a temperature control, providing a sunscreen in the heat and warming them in the bitter cold of the early Highveld mornings.

  Chirping, she called the cubs again. A loud, high-pitched sound that carried across the grassland. They should have heard her, she hadn’t run so far away from them.

  But they didn’t come.

  She retraced her steps at a trot, chirping again, looking at the bushes, knowing they should burst out at any time, their eyes bright, and their fur as beautiful now as it would be when they were adults.

  But her offspring didn’t come.

  She ran into the bushes, her senses alert. And that’s when she smelt him. Man.

  The top predator of her food chain. The reek left behind saying that he had been there, and there was no sign of her cubs. Their scent had simply disappeared, and all she could now detect was the acid stench of the unwashed man.

  The mother cheetah searched in circles, scanning. She climbed on a fallen tree to see if she could spot her babies, and despite having perfect view for twelve kilometres, she could not see her cubs, nor the man.

  Her forlorn calls of distress disturbed the quiet hum of the Highveld, but she continued calling for her cubs.

  But they didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Cole waited for Mackenzie to appear. Soon she’d come around the corner and begin her race along the kilometre-long stretch of tarmac that ran alongside the fence line of nTabaGrequa Wildlife Rescue and Cheetah Conservation Centre’s exercise pens. He looked across the double cat fence on the roadside and single Bonnox square mesh fencing separating that enclosure for the next cats, giving them ample space to stretch their bodies and flex their muscles. The dust track inside was already well worn and no mountain grass was able to take root on the cats’ racing track along the fence line. Three extended length, large enclosures were on the right-hand side of the visitors’ centre, dotted with small shrubs. On the left were three smaller ones, being only two hundred metres long. All of them were a standard two hundred metres wide.

  The cats were rotated between enclosures four times daily. This ensured they never displayed unwanted captive behaviour and it helped to keep the intelligent animals from getting bored. A few of the enrichment pens had balls in them or long ropes with knots that were used to hone the growing cheetahs’ hunting skills. Boxes were a favourite toy, ripped apart in no time as the cats looked inside for the treats – meat, or feather dusters which could keep them entertained for an hour or so as they tore them to pieces feather by feather. Others simply had more trees and fallen logs, mounds and different natural features for the cheetahs to explore, and learn to use to their advantage.

  In another pen a similar track cut deep into the earth, where an area was cleared of bushes and grass from many claws eating deep into it for traction as the cheetahs chased bait attached to a quick-winding winch.

  Mackenzie rounded the corner and prepared to pit herself against the fastest cat in the world. Sasha, born on nTabaGrequa two years ago, bounded into action. Her agile body stretched to its maximum length, then bunched as her feet whispered to the ground. Her unsheathed claws created traction. Her oversized nasal passages allowed oxygen into her lungs, as her metabolism kicked into higher gear – zero to sixty-four kilometres per hour in two and a half seconds flat.

  Mackenzie pushed her bicycle to overdrive. Neck on neck they sprinted, a pure adrenaline rush. Cole smiled as he watched Sasha use her long, flexible spine to spring-load each stride, out-racing the bicycle. Sasha’s body was supple and majestic as it streaked ahead to its maximum speed of one hundred and nineteen kilometres. The Ferrari of the cat world.

  Mackenzie wasn’t bad either. But Sasha won with her three-hundred-metre sprint at the end.

  The cat used her tail as a rudder to perform a fast-paced turn when she reached the end of her enclosure and pranced back a step or two as Mackenzie zipped past, then stared after her. Triumphant. Waiting for the rematch she knew was coming in about half an hour.

  Watching Mackenzie on her daily exercise routine from afar was always exhilarating. Cole wondered if she noticed that he’d switched the cats again, that she didn’t race just one cheetah, but half a dozen of those closest to full rehabilitation on a rotating basis.

  It had been Nama’s change in behaviour that had brought the cyclist to his attention at first. Usually his most foul-tempered cheetah, his unexplainable character transformation was remarkable. His spiteful behaviour had shifted to that of a happier cat. He’d become more approachable, less moody and not as mean. Cole soon realised Mackenzie was responsible. He’d made a mental note of the time she was riding past his farm, and had watched her movements ever since. When Mackenzie showed signs of keeping pace with the old cheetah, he’d switched the cats. Sasha, who’d been watching Nama’s daily race through the fence, and mimicking it in her own enclosure, was moved into the outer one. Sasha had immediately taken up the cyclist’s challenge.

  Soon a rotation with the cheetahs had begun, with Mackenzie helping to exercise all the cats without even being aware of it.

  He watched Mackenzie as she cycled away, pushing her body to its limits. She’d done well today. He wished he could tell her how well she raced. He wished he could stop her in the street in Crystalberg, look right into her velvet-blue eyes, and tell her how beautiful she looked racing his cheetahs, streaking across the earth, so free, so full of life, but he couldn’t.

  Although they had a kindling friendship, she was as skittish as a newborn zebra foal. The entire town spoke of the American on the hill, an artist, they said, and a loner. How she let no one close, such a city-girl trait, and when she hadn’t changed in eighteen months, the talk became more about the snobby American or the eccentric artist on the hill.

  But he knew there was more to her.

  A single white Am
erican woman moving to Africa. Buying the old Joubert house, which had been for sale for so long and overpriced by its deceased estate, yet the distance with which she held herself from that community didn’t add up.

  Almost a year ago, she’d warned him off trying to deepen their friendship into anything more. He respected that, and knew how much courage it took to admit you wanted to be alone. Hell, he himself lived by that same rule.

  No attachment. No commitments. No strings.

  If he was being honest, she scared him. Made him want things he didn’t have the right to have. So he’d kept his distance after that, a platonic friendship, a wave here and there. A coffee at Duduzo’s Kofi Shop, looking over the majestic Sani Pass, its craggy grey stone sometimes covered in snow in the winter, sometimes green with sweet tufts of veldt grasses in spring. Not that he looked at the scenery when he was constantly distracted by her long dark hair that she had a habit of pinning up with a pencil or a paintbrush in a makeshift bun, which would then slowly escape with each movement, loosening more, until it begged him to reach over and pull the pencil out completely. But he never did.

  Her coffee was always a strong black with no sugar, with Duduzo constantly present as a chaperon, his big face sweating into his pristine white chef’s hat, and he was always hawking his pastries and cakes. Cole often bought more and took them home in a ‘doggy box’ for his staff. Mackenzie always refused with a polite smile, sticking to a single buttered croissant. He died a little every time he watched her pink tongue lick the flaky pastry crumbs off her fingers.

  Even then he could see that when she smiled it didn’t reach her eyes, she was simply being polite. Perhaps it was that inner sadness that attracted him to her, or the fact that he was known for collecting strays. Perhaps he just wanted to fix her and remove the haunting, replace it with laughter. Help her make her life better, but she wouldn’t let him closer.

  Who was he kidding? For the first time in a long time, he felt a real attraction to a woman. He was pulled to her, like a butterfly to nectar. Except she reminded him of everything he still wanted and could never allow himself to have.

  Cole sighed as he watched her end her first race of the day, and turned around on the tray at the back of the bakkie.

  ‘She’s getting better,’ he said.

  Siphiwe grinned, his teeth shining in his dark face. ‘Aw, Baas. She’ll never catch your cheetahs, they are too fast for her.’

  ‘She’s giving it a good try. We’ll see how her rematch goes.’

  The two of them jumped off the bakkie to the ground and began unloading the heavy bags of lime onto the dam wall.

  Cole wiped his forehead with his khaki sleeve. ‘Dammit, it’s hot. Tell me again why I’m doing this instead of one of the workers?’

  ‘You love your trout, Baas,’ Siphiwe said, ‘and your water test said lime was needed.’

  ‘Smart mouth!’

  Siphiwe laughed.

  Together they worked for another half hour before all the bags were unloaded. Cole called a stop and threw down his soft leather gloves, then checked his watch.

  He walked to the back of the bakkie and hopped up. ‘Show time.’ He looked for the cyclist, but the road was empty. He could see Sasha sitting patiently, waiting, and Cole knew she chirped expectantly, poised for flight once more. ‘Strange, she’s normally like clockwork on the return journey.’

  ‘Look,’ Siphiwe pointed to the section of the road further away.

  Cole’s body chilled.

  * * *

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  ISBN: 9781489241269

  TITLE: CHILD OF AFRICA

  First Australian Publication 2017

  Copyright © 2017 T.M. Clark

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