Shooting Butterflies

by T. M. Clark

  The fat pad of the cat print looked like a sub-adult lion. The print was nearly ten centimetres in total, and the smaller imprints of the toes were more rounded. No claws extended. There had been no lion in that area for many years, so that left just one animal to claim the print.

  A leopard, and from the size of the print, a big male.

  Sure, its claws were retracted now, but when it took down a kudu with skill and strength alone, they would extend in all their glory. One of nature’s best engineered killing machines, the leopard wasn’t too proud to go scavenging when it needed to survive. He had long held the mighty ingwe in high esteem.

  The spoor was fresh, not much wind to blow any sand over the print or distort it in any way. Still clear. No other tracks criss-crossing over it either. A perfect imprint. He would have been surprised to see any human prints this far inside the sangoma zone he’d created. Most of the black populations still respected the boundaries of the muti. Even muti that had been placed in the bush many years before. The ground became known as sacred, and the population learnt to avoid it, rather than anger the sangoma.

  Buffel slid the strap of his .303 off his shoulder, and repositioned his rifle. He pushed the rubber-padded butt into his shoulder and slid the safety off, then slowly he pulled the bolt back and loaded a bullet. He was ready to defend himself should the need arise. Only an idiot saw spoor like that and didn’t prepare for a charge, even from a usually elusive nocturnal animal.

  He looked up into the canopy of the trees that were scattered around him. Leopards were famous for their strength and ability to haul their prey up into trees to avoid losing it to the hyenas. He searched with practised eyes above him and in the grass.

  Nothing.

  He continued forwards, slowly picking his way towards his destination. Alert.

  Then he saw him.

  In the large tree, the leopard paced along the branch. Its yellow eyes focused, keeping its balance. Its tail acted as a counter balance behind him as he hopped nimbly from one branch to another. The spotted coat shone golden in the rising light of early dawn. He approached a large V in the tree and wrapped his supple body up into a ball, using the space to secure himself. He yawned, and Buffel could see his large yellow teeth and pink tongue as he slowly closed his mouth, took one last brief look around his perimeter, and tucked his head down into his body. He closed his eyes.

  Moments later, the leopard was asleep.

  Buffel looked to the lower branches of the tree. Where six bodies should have hung, preserved and mummified into skeletons, decorated as warriors and tombis, now only bleached bone fragments were scattered around the tree. The skeletons were once wrapped in skins. Rope had bound around then, ensuring that their weapons could shield them in death and into the afterlife, did not fall off when hung in the tree. He could see where the nylon ropes had been shredded as hyena or jackal gnawed on them.

  He looked at the leopard. At least he knew what had dislodged them from the tree in the first place for the other animals to scavange over.

  He watched the leopard as it slept, unaware that he’d intruded on its territory.

  No wonder Impendla was crying out to him. His butterfly escorts and warriors had been destroyed.

  With meticulous slowness he sat cross-legged on the ground, and began to plan how he was going to replicate the sacrifice.

  He damned Shilo to hell for bringing him to this place again.

  If he had not seen him in the brochure, he would have been taking his client crossbow hunting right at that moment. Instead, he had cancelled with him, postponed indefinitely.

  He couldn’t have anyone around him for what he needed to do.

  For waking the spirits of the dead.

  For waking the nightmares, so that they could communicate again with him, and show him once more that Mwari’s work was not completed.

  Impendla’s soul was still unsaved.

  He watched the leopard through eyes that closed into slits. His breathing was soft and heavy, he was ready to sleep himself as he relaxed in the presence of the majestic beast who slept, aware that he would bark or growl should there be danger. A calmness overcame him.

  He would not kill the ingwe that had adopted his tree into his territory, but he would ensure that the next time when he hung the sacrifices up, they would not be so easily dislodged. Leopard’s fur was soft and beautiful and for years had been used for ceremonial robes and coats, but Buffel wanted the leopard to remain in the tree’s territory. He wasn’t about to sell the creature’s valuable parts, the tail, claws and whiskers, as medicine to a muti-man or into the taxidermy trade for overseas fetishes. He wanted the leopard alive. Protecting his tree.

  A lone emperor swallowtail butterfly flew into his view and rested on his knee. The huge butterfly, as big as his hand, closed its wings, then quickly opened them again. The six eyes on the back of the butterfly all looked at him from their camouflage of yellow and dark brown. The wavy edges soothed him, as he watched the fragile butterfly with its strange hind wings that sported tails. The top of its body was black. Yet when it snapped closed again, he could see that underneath, the wings were more yellow, as was the body. He remembered a time when the sky had been filled with white butterflies, like raindrops all around them. He had collected the butterflies with Impendla, and they had pinned them to boards, so proud of their collection of dead animals that once flew free in the bush, but Impendla’s mother had thrown them away. She said that the white butterflies were their ancestors, those that were pure in heart, and they were now the angels of the bush, bringing blessings to those who struggled along their own path of life. They were the saviours.

  The butterfly flew away, up towards the tree, and rested near the sleeping leopard.

  It was a sign.

  He needed to complete another ritual, only this time he needed more than one blonde-haired sacrifice to help Impendla cross over. Perhaps if he changed the ritual again and collected all six white girls, all those butterflies would guide Impendla’s spirit home to rest.

  They would be the butterflies to help set his own soul free.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Gabriel

  Cape Town, South Africa

  1992–1993

  Gabriel looked over the copy of the police report on his desk. He blocked out the sounds from the busy Cape Argus newspaper office outside his door, and concentrated on the papers that had been assigned to him when his editor Stephen casually tossed them on his desk.

  ‘More of your black voodoo going on,’ Stephen said.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll take a look at it,’ Gabe said, but his boss had already walked out and into the next office.

  He opened the envelope. Another group of bodies had been found on the outskirts of District 6. As usual, there was to be no report in the paper about the ritual killings of the black children. There were so many kids who were killed for traditional muti. Most of them were chopped up. All the black children so far were unclaimed, as were many of those they found in a traditional ritual. Their parents too scared to come forward and claim those children who had been taken and mutilated.

  He looked at the photographs of the bodies. A shallow grave had been dug and the bodies had been dumped into one mass grave, as if the parts that they didn’t need for their ritual had no value.

  He grasped the edge of the table with both hands as he fought the anger that boiled inside and threatened to burst out.

  They were just children.

  Even after all these years, he still didn’t fully understand why these ritual killings still occurred in today’s society. What type of person still believed that human body parts would help to cure an ailment, or increase the potency of a cure? Or bring wealth to someone who wasn’t prepared to work hard to get it?

  He looked at the pictures. The hands, tongues, lips, genitals and hearts, essential items to the muti trade, were often removed, and in some cases even the head was missing. That was a newer occurrence that was happening
in South Africa, and it was a trend that was filtering downwards from Nigeria, as the people fled the genocide happening further north mingled with the accumulation of black people generally pushing south, and they brought with them their own versions of the muti trade. Human sacrifice was on the increase and it was a dangerous sign of the thriving muti trade that happened all over Africa.

  Lately, he was seeing more and more of this style of killing cross his desk.

  He dug in his drawer and pulled out another file.

  The pictures were similar. The same parts removed. Only this time they had been performed in a more rural location, and the hyena had got into the grave. Only the fact that a game guard doing a patrol in the area had recognised some of the bones scattered around had led the police to that gruesome body cache.

  He put the pictures side by side before pulling out his last file. It was a copy of an article taken from a microfiche in the archives, of an old ritual murder that he had stumbled across while working for the Bulawayo newspaper, and it had grabbed his attention. The case was from 1946. The sketch that had been done was an artist’s impression.

  What had fascinated him were the decorations adorning the murder victims. The dried animals, the skins, and the carefully assembled arsenal of weapons. The headline had caught his eye: ‘Native Ritual Murder Hanging Tree Found’. Having majored in African Studies at university along with his journalism degree, his interest was immediate.

  This was something that wasn’t well documented at all. The traditions of ritual human sacrifice were kept silent in Africa. The black people would never dare write down such a thing, in fear of their lives from the retribution of a sangoma, and the white people were so repulsed by the facts that they wouldn’t record them without a judgemental slant.

  The writer of this article had gone into no detail about the ancient traditional ritual, and had focused instead on the missionary family who had reported the find.

  He looked at the picture again and thought once more about how differently the lives of the black people and those of the white people were treated by the police. Second-class citizens back in 1948 and they still were treated as such in 1992.

  In his eyes, the sangoma involved in this ritual should have been charged with murder. It was the brutality of the murders, and the traditions behind them that kept his attention. He laid the last file on his desk.

  There was nothing in common between the newer murders and the older reports.

  ‘Hey, Gabe, nice piece on the aid money for the Cairo earthquake not flowing through to those who needed it,’ Andrew said as he flung himself into the visitor’s chair, then wheeled it closer to Gabe’s desk like a schoolboy would. ‘You know that you’re becoming the go-to journalist if you need anything in African affairs reported.’

  ‘I know,’ Gabe said. ‘Mushi hey!’

  ‘Mushi? After all these years here, you need to get it right, say baie lekker. Get with the times, your Zimbo terms are outdated, you live in South Africa now.’ Andrew laughed. ‘I’m heading to Durban this weekend to cover the cricket. India vs South Africa, the joys of being a sports reporter.’ He grinned.

  ‘Enjoy,’ Gabe said.

  ‘You got plans?’

  ‘Tara’s already working on her master’s thesis so I’ll be at home. Taking turns with Lucretia to keep Josha entertained and out of her hair while I try to work on Monday’s column.’

  ‘Your cousin’s so lucky to have you. When are you going to invite me around again so I can drool over her? She’s one hot babe!’

  Gabe laughed. ‘Never. Last time you were there you proposed to her and then to my mother.’

  ‘I was drunk. Surely she’s forgiven me?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t. Besides, you know she won’t date anyone. Her focus is on Josha and on her studies. Having her help on some of the profiles is a godsend, not long now and she will be a fully fledged clinical psychologist.’

  ‘Best-looking widow I ever met, and brainy too. I’m begging you to take me home to spend some time with her,’ Andrew said.

  ‘Not going to happen any time soon,’ Gabe said, but he softened the blow to Andrew’s overinflated male ego a little by adding, ‘It’s not you, it’s everyone. She just doesn’t date.’

  Andrew pushed up from the chair. ‘Seriously, if you weren’t such a moffie, I’d have to beat you up for living with her.’

  ‘Hey, it’s my house, she lives with me. Keep your mind out the gutter about my cousin! Or at least around me anyway,’ Gabe said, and then he frowned. ‘And who are you calling a moffie?’ He reached across his desk to grab at fresh air as Andrew jumped out the way of his muscular arm.

  ‘Yeah, you,’ he said. ‘See you on Monday.’

  Gabe saluted his friend, and sat back down.

  He tried to concentrate on the file on his desk. When he’d started at the Cape Town paper, he’d just been an intern, and it had taken two years to get his first real story, an exposé on the corruption of the supposed cleaning up of District 6. That first article had secured him a desk and a permanent telephone number on it. Luxuries any journo wanted. The assignments had continued to cross his desk and he wrote constantly. He had soon moved to a cubicle, then an office. Not that he needed an office much these days, it seemed that he was more often out on assignment than he was in it.

  He’d just delivered his latest foreign report, having arrived home that week from a whirlwind two weeks in Cairo investigating how much of the foreign aid raised by the world for relief from the devastating earthquake was actually getting through to the 500,000 homeless there. Although he had seen a lot of the aid was getting to the people who needed it, he had heard rumours that a large portion was being diverted by corrupt officials, and that some of the aid was being intentionally delayed. People were sitting outside the rubble of their homes, waiting for the government to accept that they were destroyed before they got help. He had hated seeing those big brown eyes of the children, begging in the streets amongst the rubble that had once been their homes. He’d thought of Josha in Cape Town and been so thankful that he had been able to provide Tara and Josha a home to live in.

  He smiled.

  Well perhaps not him, but thanks to his mother’s support he’d been able to. She had gifted him a house when he went to university in Stellenbosch, which he’d sold in 1984 to buy a place in Camps Bay, the year he and Tara had moved to Cape Town together so that he was closer to the city and the paper’s offices, and Tara had a new start, for her and Josha.

  He loved that kid, make no mistake about it.

  He wasn’t Josha’s dad, but he knew that this was as close to his own child as he’d ever get. He carried his picture with him in his wallet, and had a picture of Tara and Josha on the corner of his desk. Those who knew him, knew who she was. His young widowed cousin, Tara Simon, who had married her childhood sweetheart who had then been killed in the SADF. So many men had died that their story had never been questioned. No one knew that she had taken Wayne’s middle name, and used that instead of her own.

  But he knew the truth, and he still protected Tara’s secret for her, despite being unhappy with her for keeping Josha from his biological father.

  He loved Tara as his own sister.

  He could not remember a holiday that they hadn’t spent time together. He was the older cousin pandering to her every wish, but still ensuring that she didn’t get into trouble along the way. Until that fateful day when her father was murdered.

  He should have been there. He should have been riding that day, not driving with Maggie in the bakkie.

  That day had changed both their lives.

  The man he kept on a pedestal as his mentor, who he most wanted to be like, had been murdered, and a cataclysmic ripple of effects had occurred because of it. He’d had his best friend ripped from his life, taken away to another country, and he had been powerless to do anything about it as Tara’s place was with her mother and sister, and he had university to finish.

  Soon after
that day, his drunken father had raised his hand to his mother, and she hit back. His parents had at last divorced after all their years of bickering, and his mother had moved to Cape Town to be near him.

  That day had also put Tara on a path so different to what she’d have been on if she had remained in Zimbabwe. Gabe knew she was studying clinical psychology so that she could understand her father’s killer, and what had motivated him to kill the brothers. Her focus was on what made a killer tick. She was still wanting to go back to Zimbabwe one day, and find the murderer of her family, but she was going to do it with a full clip of ammunition, not rush in there half prepared.

  Gabe knew that when she was younger, she had wanted to be a veterinarian, and help horses and other animals. She had such a soft heart, wanting to heal everything.

  So much had changed that day for both of them.

  December 10, 1993, and Gabe had never been more proud as he watched Tara graduate from Cape Town University. Standing in her black gown and cap with her sash telling the world that she now had an MA in Psychology. She glowed more than he had ever seen her before.

  She was such a focused person.

  She’d earned some income by tutoring other students at varsity who needed help in their social science classes. She always said that one day she’d pay Gabe back for all his help and for believing in her, and not letting her down. He always said that there was no need. She believed differently. It was a stand off. So Tara had started helping him research his articles. What had started as a way of paying him back with free labour had become a route to a profession.

  Soon she had become an intern at the paper, and that had changed to employee status when they recognised that with Tara as a full-time clinical psychologist on their personal staff, they could ensure that their staff were looked after, evaluated and got the help needed to not burn out from some of the horrors they witnessed in their violent country on a daily basis.

  The fact that she was good at research and could help on many of the stories was a big advantage too. If someone needed to talk to her about the angle they were targeting, she had an open-door policy.