The Child's Elephant

by Rachel Campbell-Johnston

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘Throw your heart out in front of you and run to catch it.’ That’s what the boy’s grandmother always said.

  When a baby elephant is left orphaned on the African savannah, Bat, a young herdsboy, takes her home and cares for her. But Bat’s grandmother knows that Meya cannot stay with them for ever – the call of the wild will always be sounding in her soul.

  And there are rumours born on the wind; frightening stories of kidnapping and suffering and war. Bat and his closest friend, Muka, are catapulted into a new life of unimaginable terror. Now memories of their village world feel so far away. Will the bond between elephant and child remain strong enough to save them?

  A thrilling new novel which tells a heartbreakingly life-like tale.

  For Katya, and in memory of Bob Foulerton

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sound of the rifle shot rang through the air. For a few moments it seemed as if the whole world had stopped. The cicadas fell silent, a bush rat dived for its burrow, the cattle paused in their chewing and looked upwards with wide empty stares; and Bat, the lone herd-boy who up till then had been dreaming, swishing at bushes with a long whippy branch, let the switch fall and dropped suddenly down on his haunches. His head was quite hidden by the tall, yellow grass.

  He felt the slow, rolling shudder through the soles of his feet. It rumbled his bones like the beat of the big tribal drum. Something that mattered had just happened out there on the savannah. He could feel it: something momentous that he didn’t want to know about and yet knew at the same time he would have to find out. But not now, he thought, as he ducked even lower in the grasses. He let his breath leak through fingers clamped hard to his mouth. A lizard clung spellbound to a stalk right beside him. He gazed into the rapt gold-ringed bead of its eye. It stared back, unblinking, as if it had been stunned.

  It seemed like for ever before the last fading echoes were finally quieted, before the waiting cicadas picked up their old song and the lizard, as if some bewitchment had suddenly been broken, darted off with a whisk of its skinny brown tail. In the shade of the thorn trees, the cattle returned to their grazing. They pulled at the grasses with long, curling tongues. But Bat, still as a sandgrouse that keeps low in its cover, hugged his arms round his knees and stayed down where he was.

  He listened. Somewhere not so very far away he could hear people talking. The sound drifted like wood-smoke upon a slack wind: murmuring voices . . . then a clatter of laughter . . . the silence that followed it . . . then a sudden angry shout . . . then nothing again . . . then the bark of an order. The air carried the fragments in faint tattered snippets. They sent flurries of nerves stirring across his bare flesh.

  Who was it? He could feel his pulse racing. His heart jumped in his throat. Every shift of the breeze could have been someone approaching; every glint of the light could have been a stranger’s glance. Was someone even now stealing up upon him? Unable to bear the uncertainty, he rose to his feet.

  Nothing looked very different. The cattle were peaceable; a new calf was suckling; the scrublands that stretched all about him looked quite undisturbed. It was funny how hiding played tricks with your imagination. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to get so scared, he thought. He was seven after all: far too old to be behaving like some panicky chicken.

  Ducking his head low, Bat set off through the grasses. Their tall, feathered fronds brushed as high as his chest. His eyes darted warily as he slipped through the thorn bushes. When the branch of one snagged him he didn’t cry out. He just paused for a moment and watched the blood trickling. It dried almost immediately in the afternoon heat.

  After a while, he began to see traces; he started noticing places where the scrub had been squashed. Branches were broken and bushes were flattened. He slowed up his pace as he crested a ridge. The down-slope was stony. He would have to be careful not to trip. Flitting between boulders, half running, half scrambling, he arrived at a river-bed that had all but run dry. A basking snake slipped from a smooth sun-baked stone. Bat skirted the spot and it was then, in a patch of damp sand where the last buried moisture still lingered, that he spotted the footprint which brought him suddenly up short. It was huge! His heart thumped. It was truly gigantic, he thought, as big as the biggest circle that he could have made if stretching out both arms as wide as he was able he had then brought them round and tried to brush fingertips.

  Bat swallowed. He’d already come too far . . . far further than he’d first meant to . . . much further than anyone would have told him was safe. He cast a quick backwards glance. He could no longer see his cattle. The dry riverbed glittered and flashed in the heat. On the far bank was a thicket. Something had crashed straight through it. A bush was splattered with red. Perhaps it was a hibiscus, the boy found himself hoping; but he didn’t need to look a second time to know that it was not: it was blood.

  He scuttled for the cover of some rocks ahead. Beyond, he could now see a vast shadowy shape. From where he was crouching, it loomed high as a mountain. It blocked out the horizon. It blocked out, for a moment, all the thoughts in his head. But then, with a jolt, the full truth broke upon him. This mountainous form was a dead elephant.

  Hands pressed to the rock face, Bat struggled to steady his breathing. His heart was racing so hard it was outrunning his head. Who? How? Why?

  A figure emerged from beyond the great carcass. Bat swallowed the cry that almost burst from his lips. It was a man . . . a bare-chested man . . . with dark skin. . . so dark that it shone almost purple . . . and he was tall, Bat noticed, particularly tall . . . he must have stood as high as a stem of grown maize. And now he was moving. Bat could no longer see him. Was he coming closer? Dropping down even lower, the boy peeped through another gap.

  There were two other people, both standing a little further off. A rifle was slung round the back of the nearest; the other was supporting what Bat realised with a shudder could only have been an elephant’s tusk.

  Poachers! These were poachers! The boy turned dizzy with fright.

  He had to get away! But how? He glanced frantically about. The dark man was squatting. Bat scarcely dared breathe as he watched him. He was fiddling with something on the ground at his feet; but
when he glanced up, eyes scanning the horizon, Bat saw for the first time the tribal scars that branded him. They ran straight across his brow: three lines like a frown cut deep into his forehead. Bat flinched from the menace embedded in that face.

  Wiping his palms on a pair of dusty green trousers, the man half rose and, putting one booted foot forward, gave a sudden hard tug. A chainsaw snarled into life. For a second it snatched all the silence from the air. Then it sputtered and stopped. There was a moment of stunned hush. The man cursed. His cry rang round the stones of the dried riverbed.

  Terrified, Bat tried to squeeze himself in even tighter underneath the boulder. He reached up for a handhold. A loose stone was dislodged. It rolled down the slope with a sudden loud clatter.

  ‘Stop! What’s that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That sound.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Yes, it was something. There’s someone there . . . someone watching.’

  The speaker grabbed at the rifle slung over his shoulder. The man propping the elephant tusk jumped quickly aside. His load slipped from its shoulder and hit the ground with a thud. A swarm of flies rose in a cloud of black buzzing. They bumped about like the thoughts that dashed round in Bat’s head.

  ‘Leave it. It’s nothing.’ The command grated like metal.

  But the man with the gun remained unconvinced. Raising his rifle, he began to move outwards. He was heading directly to where the boy was now crouching.

  ‘I heard someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Could be a ranger.’

  ‘What are the chances of a ranger being here?’

  Bat’s heart thumped so wildly he was sure they would hear it. Through a chink in the rocks he saw a blood-spattered face. Every step brought it closer. He listened to the slow crunch of boots.

  Should he run now, he wondered? Should he make a dash? He glanced at the riverbank down which he had stumbled. There was no way he would make it. He tried to pretend he was stone. A fly crawled over his lips. He didn’t so much as twitch: if he did he was dead.

  The footsteps came nearer. A shadow slipped past the rock. The man was so close, Bat could smell his sour sweat. Somewhere in the bush a francolin was singing. It’s clacketing call was so very familiar . . . and this would be the very last time that he ever heard it, the boy thought.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  The man with the rifle swivelled. A vehicle was approaching. A sudden silence fell as the poachers all strained to see.

  ‘I told you we’d come too far!’ Bat heard one of them crying. ‘We’re too close to the village. Anyone could have seen us.’

  ‘No one has seen us.’ The tall one remained calm. ‘Look! It’s only the jeep.’

  In the distance, a Land Rover was bouncing towards them, kicking up billowing clouds of red dust.

  ‘Still, I don’t like it here,’ one of the men was grumbling. ‘It’s time to get out!’

  ‘Get out?’ It was the driver of the still-running vehicle who was now shouting.

  ‘There was a noise!’ the man answered. ‘Anyone could be watching. They could be right over there behind one of those rocks.’ He nodded towards the boulders beyond which Bat was hiding.

  The driver slid out of the jeep. He was wearing a pair of dark glasses. The boy couldn’t tell where his eyes were looking. His gaze swept over the very spot in which Bat was now crouching. For one heart-pounding second, he thought it was going to stop. But then the man turned back. ‘For God’s sake! No one’s going until the job’s been done.’

  The next thing Bat knew, two figures were scrambling onto the elephant’s corpse. A third fetched the chainsaw. This time it ripped into life at first tug and, snarling, lunged forward, ferocious as a chained dog. Bat heard the long rising whine as it finally bit. Its blade spewed bloodied flecks. Surely they would leave soon, he prayed, as he clutched at the rock face. Surely they would go when they had the second tusk. The machine choked and stopped.

  One of the men dropped, half climbing, half tumbling, down the slope of the animal and was lost from view. Bat heard him grunting as he shouldered the weight of the tusk. An argument broke out but Bat couldn’t tell about what. Then the booty was loaded into the back of the jeep. It fell with a thunk that made the suspension rock. The chainsaw clattered in behind. Then the tailgate was slammed. The idling engine revved up. Bat could hear the gears grinding as the jeep ploughed off.

  Little by little, the silence washed back in its wake. But it was only after the first of the rock hyraxes had begun to creep from their crevices that Bat felt that at last for him too it might be safe. He scanned the horizon for a glimpse of the Land Rover but it was by now out of view. Clouds of red dust were re-settling. The hyraxes grunted and then, seeing him rising, edged back bottom-first into their holes again.

  The boy slipped through the boulders. There, right before him, loomed the dead animal. It rose like a mountain from a lake of purplish blood. Flies stumbled drunkenly about on its surface. They sunk into deep sticky pools and drowned. And for a long while Bat could do nothing but stand and stare numbly. He felt as if his whole mind had been swept away by force. He gazed at the baobab, a vast solitary mourner.

  Soon the vultures would come. The first pair had already settled. They were shuffling impatiently in its silvery branches and Bat could see several more circling greedily above. As soon as he had gone, they would glide down to feast.

  A marabou stork paced to and fro at a distance, its pink gizzard swinging, its black shoulders hunched. The boy rushed at it angrily, flapping his arms. ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ he shouted. ‘Get back! Go away!’ It fluttered onto a fallen branch and rattled its bill. A jackal yipped in alarm and slunk a little further off.

  Bat did not pursue it. What would have been the good? It was already too late. Taking one last slow look, he turned and set his step homewards. The sadness was so deep that it made his bones ache. Above him, in the depthless blue spaces of an African afternoon, he noticed an eagle. It inscribed its great circles upon the sky’s emptiness.

  ‘Only the eagles know everything in this country,’ his grandmother had told him.

  The bird gave a thin scream. It sounded more like a wail.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The next morning, Bat drove his cattle out of the village to graze. By the time the sun was touching the tops of the acacias he was already well on his way: a small, lithe figure with a light, easy gait jumping through the undergrowth and leaping over branches, chivvying his cows outwards with whistles and high piping calls. In one hand he clutched his steel-bladed panga. He used it to cut the forage that he would later bring home. His other hand he kept free to flap and wave at the cattle or to hitch at the waistband of his pair of too-big brown shorts. A small sisal satchel with some lunch in was slung over one shoulder, along with a length of rope. A gourd to scoop water bumped against his hip. But, although he did own a pair of twisted hide sandals, his feet, as so often, were bare. He preferred it because he could run faster like that.

  Sometimes, on his way along the paths that led out to the pastures, his cattle would stray onto somebody’s crop. They would snatch greedy mouthfuls of maize leaves and uproot millet stalks. If the owner was there, they would yell out and scold them; but if they were not, Bat was likely to pinch something too: a small plump banana or perhaps a ripe avocado. He would eat it later once he was out of sight, his black eyes sparkling with pleasure through their fringe of thick lashes; a big gap-toothed smile brightening his small round face.

  The cows moved ahead of him, their pace gradually slowing until he caught up with them when, with a burst of new energy, they trotted briskly on. They wove this way and that, their gaunt hipbones jutting, their long curving horns borne aloft like great crowns on their heads and, although now in the dry season their spines poked up like ridges, after the rains when the grasses swiped their bellies, they would soon grow sleek and fat. Then their hides would shine like polished wood.

  Bat had eight c
ows in his herd, eleven if you counted the trio of still suckling youngsters that jostled along, nudging at their mothers’ flanks. But he wouldn’t have told you that if you had enquired. When anyone asked him how many cattle he looked after, he would just smile and say: ‘As many as I looked after yesterday’. And yet he knew each of the animals as well as if they were part of his own family: he knew their names and their characters, their habits and their moods, their strong points and their failings, their preferences and dislikes. He knew that Kayo was inquisitive and could easily get into trouble; that Leko was a daydreamer with a tendency to lag; that Toco always slouched, head low and back sagging, unlike Tara, her chestnut twin who stood upright and foursquare with her muzzle stretched out. He knew that the pale freckled Anecanec had a scar under her belly from the time when, as a heifer, she had met a bush pig; and when he found watercress, he would always call Bwaro because she, more than any of them, relished its damp bitterness; but he knew that black Mutu would also slip in beside her because, wherever the restless Bwaro chose idly to wander, Mutu would slide along like a shadow at her side.

  But Bat’s favourite cow was the silvery Kila with her deep curved horns and her dark violet eyes. They had been born on the same day and had grown up together. Bat couldn’t remember a time when she had not been there by his side and often, down by the water, they would lean contentedly together, the boy’s arm draped companionably across the cow’s sun-warmed back, gazing dreamily outwards as if lost in some land of shared memory. The water that dripped from the cow’s lifted muzzle would fall through the air in sparkling droplets of light.

  The boy was proud of his herd. Cattle are like their owners, his grandmother always told him: thin, wretched beasts had thin, wretched handlers; listless creatures belonged to those without direction to their lives; dishonest men owned the sort of sly animals that would steal from the cattle that stood right beside them; and ill-tempered cows would lash out because they themselves had been beaten by someone too ill-tempered to be trusted to bring them up. But Bat’s animals were all good-natured and lively and strong. He had inherited his grandmother’s eye, the villagers said; he had that inborn ability to detect hidden traits, to know when a calf would blossom into maturity, to tell whether a puny animal would eventually flourish and fatten or if it would only further sicken and fail. They would always back his judgement when they wanted to buy.