39
I’M NOT SURE if my plan will work, but it’s the only one we have.
Nelson’s idea was crazy. “I’ll use my slingshot,” he said. “A rock to Mandiki’s temple, and he’s dead.”
“Then what?” I demanded. “There’ll still be all the rebels with machine guns and machetes. We’ll be caught and tortured to death. Brilliant.”
Nelson thinks my plan will end up the same. Maybe. But at least it gives us a chance.
We lie on the ground, looking up through the baobab’s core to the branches of the fig tree and the sky beyond. Dusk hangs in the air. The shadows of our hollow deepen. The bats rouse in a whisper of flight. I cover my face as they swoosh down around us, some flying out from the baobab’s base, most funneling up through the hole at the top, a tornado of wings.
The sky turns navy velvet. There’s a full moon to the west. Overhead, the branches of the fig tree are silhouetted against the stars.
From the campsite, sounds of a party. The rebels are getting drunk. Good.
We wait. And wait.
Finally, a sharp hand clap. The carousing stops. Mandiki’s voice pierces the night air. “Gather the new recruits. Fetch me my ebony box. My friend, the Skull, has greetings from the dead.”
I wish I could see what’s happening. Ah well, I’ll see soon enough. Nelson squeezes my hand in the dark. I squeeze back.
“Now?” he whispers.
“Now.”
Nelson wriggles out of the baobab. In a few seconds, I hear him murmur, “All’s clear.” He stays outside, guarding in case of patrols.
I take my cell phone, fumble it open. I haven’t used it much; it should be fine. Still, the way Mrs. Tafa used to bang it off her tree, who knows? I feel the sticky tape, press down on the buttons.
There’s a crackle in the connection, but Mrs. Tafa’s voice comes through loud and clear: “Who, in the name of the saints and ancestors, is calling at this ungodly hour?”
“It’s me, Chanda.”
“Chanda! Where are you? I’ve phoned a million times. We’re worried sick.”
“Shh, please, Mandiki’s only a few hundred feet away.”
“Lord Almighty!” Mrs. Tafa whispers hoarsely.
“I need you to do something,” I say. “I’m going to hang up. When I do, wait ten minutes, then call me. I won’t be picking up, so don’t worry. Just let the phone ring. Let it ring and ring and ring.”
“What are you up to?”
“I don’t have time to explain. Just do as I say. All right?”
“Whatever you want.” Mrs. Tafa’s voice chokes. “We love you.”
“I love you too.” I hang up and stick my head out of the tree’s entrance. “Okay, Nelson. We’ve got ten minutes.”
He slips inside, puts the cell between his teeth, and zips up the aerial root to the top of the baobab. He rests the phone on the lip of the rotten hollow and slides back down.
I check that the park map’s in my skirt pocket, then go over the plans for the last time. How I wish we could use the hippo highway, but it’ll be full of beasts and rebels. “Mfuala Lodge is the nearest safari camp. It’s twenty miles due west,” I whisper. “Once I get the kids—if—that’s where we’ll go.”
“Right,” he nods. “Aim for the jackalberry. It’s the tallest tree around, past the campsite. I’ll have caught up by then. If not, keep going, I’m dead.”
I seize up. “Don’t be dead. I’m not like you. I can’t travel far in the dark.”
He hugs me. “With the full moon, you’ll be surprised. Anyway, no more talk. We have to get into position.”
I’m about to say something stupid, but I can’t. His mouth’s on top of mine. We kiss. And he’s gone.
I’m off in the other direction. I stay crouched down, moving stealthily from tree to thicket. Nelson’s right. It’s amazing what I can see. Not just by the moon, but by the flickers of campfire glowing through the thornbushes. I move faster. Too fast. I trip over a stump. Pride, pride. Am I hurt? I can’t tell. Every inch of my skin is electric.
I’m at the end of the thornbushes. I peak through the branches. Mandiki’s pitched camp in a small clearing. There’s a firepit at the center, the low flames shielded from above by a canopy of acacia boughs. Two girls on their knees fan away whatever smoke remains; the skin and skeleton of an impala have been tossed to the side. Rebels are scattered throughout. Some of the men have passed out on the ground, empty bottles in hand. Others lounge against the tree trunks circling the clearing, stropping machetes or picking lice from each other’s scalps. I see an older boy, lifting a swollen foot to the light of the flames. It looks like he’s digging out chiggers with a penknife.
I spot Iris, Soly, and Pako among the newest and youngest recruits on the other side of the firepit with Mandiki. Mandiki’s in a loincloth, his body slick with the blood of the impala. At least I hope it’s from the impala. The spirit doctor’s skull is twisting on his outstretched fist, its shadow snaking up a backdrop of vines and creepers.
I circle wide, careful to stay hidden.
“Tonight we celebrate victory, my little friends,” Mandiki swaggers. “Tomorrow we’ll be in Ngala.” He wiggles two long fungal nails through the skull’s eye sockets. The children cower. Soly clings to Iris. Mandiki snuggles the boney puppet against Soly’s cheek. “Missing your family?” he smiles.
Soly sniffles.
“Uh-uh-uh,” Mandiki whispers. “Remember what happens to soldiers who cry?”
A flash of rage surges through me. Hurt my Soly, I’ll kill you, I think. No. Don’t lose control. Don’t. I race the alphabet through my head, and crawl through the night.
I reach the far side of the clearing. Slip through the vines. I’m behind Mandiki; he faces the children. I slide forward. As close as I can get. When the time comes, I’ll have to act fast. Closer, closer. Nothing between them and me now but a stretch of weeds and a fallen tree.
Something slithers in front of me. I rear back on my hands. For a second, my head’s above the tree trunk.
A child sees me through the weeds. “Ah! What’s there? Something’s there!”
Mandiki whirls around. I duck down. I feel his eyes read the bush. Hear his skeletal legs step toward me. Closer. Closer. Any second he’ll be on top of me.
Iris distracts him. “General!” she pipes up. “It’s a ghost crocodile, isn’t it, sir?”
Mandiki stops. His feet turn in the weeds. “Who said that?”
“Me,” Iris says. “I’m right, aren’t I, sir? It’s a ghost crocodile.”
Mandiki pauses. “Yes, my girl.” The words hiss through his teeth. “It’s a ghost crocodile. One of my spirit friends.” He chuckles. “What’s your name, girl?”
“Iris, sir.”
“Iris.” He makes a gurgling sound. “What makes you so brave, Iris?”
“I’m a soldier, sir.”
“A special soldier. I like special soldiers.” He squats to the ground and pats his knee.
Before I can think what he’ll do next—what I’ll do next—a stir from across the clearing.
“General!” a rebel shouts. “There’s something at the baobab.”
The camp falls silent. Then, cutting the night air, a ring.
“What the hell?” Mandiki leaps to his feet. “Who lost their goddam cell?”
Ring.
“It doesn’t sound like ours,” the rebel says.
“Then whose is it?”
Ring.
Mandiki waves the skull in the children’s faces. “Did that phone come from the dealer’s in Tiro? Did one of you steal it? Did you call out when you were getting kindling?”
Ring.
“Answer me! Who’s been playing with things they shouldn’t? Whoever it is, I’ll chop off your arms and legs. I’ll toss your stump to the hyenas.”
Ring.
“Don’t just stand there,” Mandiki yells to his troops. “Get it.”
Five armed rebels, two with flashlights, run behind the
thornbushes to the baobab. In seconds, flashlight beams run up the baobab’s trunk. They’re guiding a rebel climbing an outside aerial root. He’s high above the bushes.
Ring. Ring. Yes, Mrs. Tafa! Keep ringing!
Mandiki whispers in the skull’s ear, “Who’s the traitor? Hmm? Who do we kill?”
The climber gets to the top of the baobab. The spill from the flashlights lights up the fig branch above. The giant bees nest.
Nelson fires a rock from the dark with his slingshot. The rock breaks a huge hole in the nest. Bees everywhere.
The climber swats at his face. He falls to the ground screaming.
“What’s going on?” Mandiki yells.
The hive swarms the flashlights. The rebels holding them holler in pain. The beams flash in all directions. The rebels throw them high in the air. They hit the ground. The bush goes black. Stung in the dark, panicked, the rebels fire their automatic rifles into the air.
“Who’s out there?” Mandiki shouts. “How many are there?”
The men at the baobab don’t hear him. They’re too busy screaming, firing. “Help! Save us! Help!”
Everybody dives for their weapons.
The men from the baobab run around the bushes into the clearing, the hive on their tail. Firebursts.
“Attack! We’re under attack!”
Bullets fly through the air. The children at the firepit press themselves to the ground. The bees swarm toward them, but swing away when they get near the smoke.
Some circle wild, striking anything in their path. Others regroup, a deadly mass of stingers. They have a target: Mandiki—slick with the sticky sweet blood of impala. The hive dives at his head.
“AAA!!!” Mandiki shrieks. “AAA!!!” He lurches in circles. Bodyguards throw him a blanket. But he can’t see. His face is covered in bees. His neck puffs up. His eyes swell shut. He swings at his head with the Skull. “AAA!!!” Mid-scream, he coughs. Chokes. Claws at his throat. He can’t breathe. Can’t even gasp. He staggers blind. Drops to the earth. Convulses. Bodyguards drag him to the bush. His head bounces off rocks.
Now everyone’s running, howling, from the camp. The rebels shoot at god-knows-what. The children cling to their friends.
I look to the firepit. Iris has Soly and Pako by the hand. She’s nodding in my direction. The boys’ eyes bulge. It’s as if they’re living a dream. They scramble toward me, keeping low with the smoke. I wave them through the curtain of vines. We flee toward the jackalberry, the shouts and screams of the rebels disappearing in the bush behind us.
Nelson’s waiting for us when we arrive. But he was right. We don’t need him to see. The moon is large and luminous. It lights a thin cloud floating across it. Against the night sky, the cloud looks like the outstretched wings of a giant stork.
We rush toward the moon. The stork. Mama.
Part Five
40
IT’S DAWN. WE’VE run all night, scared to death, no time to think. Now we’re far, far from the rebels, at the edge of a large floodplain. In the distance to our right, a herd of Cape buffalo, still as statues; to our left, a makeshift road. According to the park map, that road should take us to Mfuala Lodge.
We stagger to a halt. The children drop to the ground. Nelson, too. They roll on their backs and gasp the clear morning air. Me, I throw my arms to the sky and laugh for joy. “Hello world, we’re alive! We’re alive!”
The others look at me like I’m crazy, then start to laugh too at the sheer wonder of it. I flop down beside them and hug Iris. “You were so brave,” I say. “When the General came toward me, I thought I’d die. Then you spoke up. You saved my life.” Iris grins so wide I think my heart’ll break. “As for you boys,” I continue, “who knew you could run so fast? And you!” I give Nelson a playful poke in the ribs. “That shot of yours was amazing. Bees everywhere. I never guessed there’d be so many.”
“But Chanda,” Soly whispers, “what if the General finds us? He’ll chop us into bits.”
“The General can’t find us now,” I whoop. “He and his men ran all over the place. By the time they get back together, they won’t know who’s gone where.”
“The owls know,” Pako murmurs. “The night things. They’ll tell.”
Nelson cradles his brother in his arms. “The night things are in bed now. They can’t hurt you. And when the sun goes down again, I promise, I’ll be there. I’ll be there forever and ever. You’re safe.”
Pako looks away. “I’ll never be safe.”
Something flashes through the far brush: the sun off a windshield. At first I think it’s tourists on a morning game drive. I wave.
“On your knees, hands in the air,” a voice booms over a megaphone.
“They must be rangers,” I say. “Maybe they think we’re poachers.”
But they’re not rangers either. They’re soldiers in a jeep. As they approach, more troops emerge from the bush around the plain. The government’s not just guarding the highway and northern villages. It’s protecting the safari camps as well.
The children are scared. I tell them not to worry. “For all these soldiers know, we’re rebel scouts from Mandiki. After all, we sure don’t look like tourists.”
I tell our story to the officer in charge. At first, he’s suspicious. But when I show him the rebels’ position on the park map and give him Mrs. Tafa’s cell number in Bonang, he pays attention. As final proof, Nelson takes off his shirt: He doesn’t have a brand. The officer radios the rebels’ coordinates to his commander and orders reinforcements for the lodges and camps in the immediate area.
We’re piled into the rear of the jeep and driven toward the army base in Mfualatown. As we exit the park through the heavily guarded gate, a surveillance plane and two Apache helicopters roar toward Mandiki’s encampment. Moments later, we hear the sounds of heavy bombardment.
Mfualatown is an old trading post that’s become a major center thanks to the tourist trade. In addition to its bus depot, there’s a regional airport a few minutes past the outskirts. Gas stations, restaurants, discos, hotels, bars, rental stores, and souvenir shops stretch out in all directions along broad, unpaved streets. Our jeep meanders through an open-air farmer’s market, avoiding bicycles, stray chickens, and potholes deep enough to drown a goat.
The children press against me. “Are the soldiers going to kill us?” Soly whispers.
“Of course not.”
Iris digs her fingers into my arm. “The General said if we were caught, we’d be shot by a firing squad.”
“He was just trying to scare you. Firing squads are for bad people.”
“I know,” Iris says, “I know.” She clings even tighter.
“Soly, Iris, you haven’t done anything wrong. You’re fine. You’re with me. Forget the General.”
The three-story district hospital is the tallest building in sight. As we approach, I notice four rocket launchers on its rooftop. Across the road is a trailer park and campgrounds. Normally it’d be used by budget tourists taking day safaris into the park by minibus. Now it’s commandeered for a tented barracks; soldiers with machine guns patrol the perimeter. Our jeep navigates through a wall of tanks into the hospital’s parking lot.
How does the government explain this to the world? I wonder. Training exercises?
At a desk inside the main doors, a sergeant in shirtsleeves fills out an identification card for each of us. He reeks of cigars; there are sweat stains around his armpits.
“Is there a phone?” I ask. “We have people in Bonang and Tiro worried sick about us.”
“The phone’s for official calls only,” he mutters, swatting at a fly that keeps landing on his forehead. “You can find one in town when we’re through with you.”
He waves us off to a pair of hospital attendants. They take us to men’s and women’s shower rooms to get cleaned up. Nelson stays with the boys; I stay with my sister.
Iris looks scared when she’s asked to take off her clothes. Our attendant, an older woman, smiles an
d promises not to look. Iris has never been shy around older women before. What’s happened? From the corner of my eye, I watch as she scrubs herself. Even faced to the wall, she keeps one hand planted firmly over the left side of her chest.
All of a sudden I understand. Mandiki branded her. She’s ashamed. How do I tell her I know? How do I tell her it’s all right? How do I tell myself that?
I dry off and step into a coarse cotton hospital gown smelling of bleach. Our own clothes have been taken away for incineration. The attendant leads us to a small examination room. We sit on a pair of metal folding chairs opposite a table cluttered with boxes of medical supplies.
“The doctor won’t be long,” the attendant says. “Before he gets here, let’s deal with those lice.”
Lice? I don’t have lice, do I? But it’s not me she’s talking about. It’s Iris. With the shock of things, I hadn’t noticed before. But under the bright fluorescents, I see them clearly, little parasites wriggling through her hair, hopping around her ears.
The attendant puts on rubber gloves and hands a pair to me along with a plastic bag. “Hold this open, tight under the hairline,” she says, and pulls an electric clipper and a straight razor from a drawer. Iris’s eyes go wide.
“Please,” I say. “Can’t you just rub in Kwellada?”
“Not with matts like that,” she says. “I’d never find the nits in a month of Sundays. That head’s got to be clipped and shaved.”
“My hair,” Iris says in a small voice. “My hair.”
The attendant turns on the clipper. The buzz is hard. Cold. Iris’s fingers tremble over her knotted clumps. Tears spill down her cheeks.
I touch the attendant’s arm. “Wait. Before you shave my sister’s head, shave mine.” I take Iris’s hand. “There’s nothing to it,” I say gently. “You’ll see. We’ll be like twins. Okay?”
The doctor arrives shortly after. Iris has drifted into another world. When he lowers her hospital gown from her shoulders, she covers her brand wound with a hand. But she offers no resistance when he moves the hand away. Instead, she hums vacantly, gazing at the ceiling with empty eyes.
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