The moon rose high above Avalon.
Paul emerged from the house behind me. As he dropped down the steps to join Pat, I took hold of his arm.
“Make sure your father stays out of their way.”
Paul nodded. I was not only asking him so that Pat might not see red and find himself locked into an altercation with the war vets; my hope was that if I burdened Paul with looking out for his father, he too might avoid a confrontation.
“We’ll be back soon, Mum.” Paul paused. “I promise.”
If only the promise had been within his power to keep, I might have believed him.
Pat and Paul climbed into the cab of one of the farm trucks, while Albert, Caetano, Jonathan, and some other workers climbed in the back. Then the engines fired and they wheeled away into darkness. The only sounds were the rumbling of the truck and the whisper of wind in the long grass.
I drifted back inside, where Gaydia sat with Granny Beryl, nursing a cup of tea.
I could not sit. I prowled the house, walking up and down the hallway, lingering on the veranda for long moments, squinting into the blackest night. An hour after they had gone, clouds drifted over, beaching the moon in a silvery reef before obscuring it altogether. Now the stars were gone. Somewhere out there, my husband and son stole through impenetrable night.
I clung to my mobile phone as if it were some totem, a symbol that Pat and Paul were still alive. The green display screen flickered, but there was no signal tonight.
Long hours seemed to pass, but the dawn did not come; the night only grew thicker.
I heard movement behind me. It was Granny Beryl, coming to check on me. “Have you heard from them?”
I shook my head. “Soon,” I said, willing it to be true.
Fleetingly, the moon broke through the clouds, shedding silver light onto the fields. And, at last, I saw shapes in the darkness. At first, they were mere shadows, different parts of the night—but soon those shapes began to have texture, definition. I saw eyes glimmering at me.
It seemed to be the charge of a ghostly cavalry. On either side of each groom two horses were roped, so that they came out of the mist four abreast, with a tiny man huddled in the middle. I saw no sign of Pat and Paul, but here was Grey, here was Fleur, here were Jade and Duke and Duchess and Marquess. Behind them came the foals, Brutus and Evita and all the forgotten foals who had come to us from the Crawford farm. I tumbled from the veranda and rushed to meet them.
Albert was the first groom to reach the boundary fence. As I hurtled to meet him, I saw that the white sticky label was still stuck to his chest. In his right hand he held the ropes to Grey and Fleur; in his left, he held ropes to Imprevu and Jade. I ran my hands through Grey’s silvery mane and took his rope, leading him along the bank, in front of the Avalon farmhouse, and toward the new paddock we had set aside. Behind me, Gaydia helped Albert and the grooms steer the first of the herd through. In the paddock, they stood looking around curiously, seemingly wondering if their journey was at an end.
“Albert,” I began, as he guided Fleur in to meet me, “where’s Pat?”
“He is coming . . .”
I turned. The herd had appeared en masse now, dozens of horses’ heads pushing forward, as if through a curtain of mist. The darkness swirled and, out of the vortex, there cantered Lady, Caetano struggling to keep hold of the boisterous mare.
At the opening of the paddock, I took her rope, then crouched and fussed over her until she had calmed down. Even then, she would not leave my side. As I stood and guided the other horses in—Brutus clinging meekly to Jade’s flank, Nzeve straining away from his ear-less mother—Lady pushed her head into my armpit, still eager for attention.
“Mum, where is he?”
Granny Beryl simply turned and pointed.
The night was filled with horses. There must have been a dozen in the paddock, but fifty more now crowded the yards, nosing out of the outer dark. There, among them, Shere Khan standing regally at his side as if to personally oversee the exodus of her people, stood Pat.
Damn him, but he was beaming. Positively beaming.
With some struggle I left Lady behind and weaved between several horses recently rescued from various locations—Tequila, Martini, Kahlua, and the sunken-backed Pink Daiquiri—until I could reach him.
“What happened?”
They had taken the long back road onto Biri Farm, parking the truck some distance from where the war vets were camped and venturing forward on foot.
“Paul and I couldn’t get close,” Pat explained as, behind him, the truck reappeared, Paul hunkered over the wheel. “They’re everywhere. But the grooms went on and roped them up. We met them out on the trail, north of the dam wall. They just walked out of the mist like ghosts.”
I breathed out. Beyond Pat, Paul had brought the truck around and gently eased Princess down the ramp, the wound in her withers still bandaged up. There would be no stable for her tonight, but the grooms would tend to her in the paddock with her daughter, Evita, and the rest of the herd.
“Pat,” I said, “I think you deserve a drink.”
I tried to take Pat’s hand and lead him up to the farmhouse, but his feet were planted squarely in the earth and he would not be moved. When I looked at him, he shook his head and led me toward the truck. Above us, the night clouds shifted and came apart, revealing another sliver of moon.
“Pat,” I whispered, “what is it?”
“It’s Janey.” He paused, helping me swing up into the cab. “Something has got to be done about Janey.”
An hour later we were back on the road skirting Biri Farm, keeping our distance from the house.
“You see?” said Pat.
The war vets were everywhere. Makeshift camps had sprung up around the trucks from which they had poured onto the farm. In places along the main road, trees had been felled. The night was alive with drums. Occasional chants flurried up, only to die away. The sounds whirled together, an unholy chorus designed to inspire fear.
We pushed on until I could see the empty shell of Biri Farm squatting in the lights of the fires. Beside it sat Janey’s home. The war vets were ranged around the back of her house, dominating the fields where the workers’ huts and paddock used to be.
“Why wouldn’t she leave?” I whispered, cursing her for being so stubborn.
“What matters,” said Pat, “is how we get her out.”
We approached Janey’s house from the dam itself. With the waters fading in our rearview mirror, we came to the front of the house. There were no war vets camped here, for they were all out back, stoking their fires and sending up their chants. As Pat ground the truck to a halt we could still hear their drums and revelry from the far side of the house. I stepped out onto cold hard ground and was thankful, for the first time, that the clouds obscured the stars.
Pat climbed from the cab and Paul appeared from the back of the truck. The only thing separating us from the front of Janey’s house was a tall brick wall. Beyond, Janey was trapped with her parents, sitting among all their packed boxes and suitcases: on one side, a wall too tall to scramble over alone; on the other, the horde of war vets and their insidious din.
Pat stepped forward. There was no point trying to dissuade him. I squeezed his hand and told him to be careful.
“You know me,” he said—and, with Paul’s help, hauled himself up until he could see over the top of the wall.
He hung there for a second, peering into the darkness beyond, before scrambling his way up. Then, he turned to extend his hand. Paul took it, and as Pat dropped down the other side, my son found himself hauled up. In an instant he was at the top of the wall, and then they were gone.
I was alone, and suddenly the sounds of the war vets seemed so much stronger in my ears. I fancied I could make out words in the chanting, but they were singing in languages I did not understand. Perhaps if Jay were here, he would have translated for me, but listening to the terrible sounds invading my ears, I decided that I was happier no
t knowing. Beneath the chanting, drums played a demonic percussion. These, I realized, were nothing other than war drums. Their incessant punctuation forced the songs to greater and greater heights. The chanting reached a climax, ebbed away with the drums, and then flurried up again, as if led by a malevolent conductor.
For some reason, I could not climb back into the cab of the truck. It felt like a prison cell, as if I were trapped. Perhaps that had to do with the song of the war vets. I dreaded to think how Janey and her parents felt, surrounded by those sounds.
I propped myself against the cab and tried not to feel the cold of night. I seemed to wait an interminable time. After some minutes, the chanting of the war vets seemed to fade. It wasn’t that it had disappeared, only that I was so used to it that my mind seemed to be processing it out. I snapped myself from my reverie, listened to the terrible chanting come flooding back. The relentless, deafening pounding of the drums. I went to the wall, wanted to cry out for Pat—but, fearful of giving him away, I held my voice. Every shift in the darkness startled me. I found myself counting down each second that he was gone: ten, nine, eight . . . Yet, every time I reached zero, I remained alone.
Waiting is the most terrible thing. There was nothing I could do, and time seemed to stretch on. I pictured Pat and Paul creeping into the front of the house. I pictured them confronting Janey and her parents, coaxing them away. I pictured them sneaking across the garden, approaching the wall—but every time I conjured up the images, another one broke through: war vets tumbling into the house, realizing what was going on, and dragging Pat and Paul out to face one of their dramatic kangaroo courts.
Then, at last, I heard the hissing of my husband’s voice.
“Pat?”
“Mandy, get over here!”
There was desperation in that voice, and I rushed to the wall, just in time to see Pat’s face cresting the top. With help from the other side, he heaved himself up, perching precariously there while he reached back down and hauled Janey up. As he steered her over the other side, I took hold of her hands and helped her down. For a second she was shaken. Then, she seemed to whisper to herself and she straightened, forcing all the tension out of her body.
“Mandy, start the truck . . .”
As Pat and Paul helped Janey’s elderly parents scramble over the wall, I rushed back to the truck and started the engine. As the rumbling kicked in, I froze, wondering whether they might hear it on the other side of the house. It was too late to care. Janey’s parents dropped down the wall, shaken but still holding themselves defiantly, and Pat and Paul tumbled after.
We took the same road back along the dam, going east toward Avalon with the chanting of war vets fading behind us. By the time we reached the farm, the first lights of dawn were breaking. We rounded the Avalon workshops and came to a juddering halt outside the paddock. As we climbed down, the herd seemed to turn to us. Grey was contentedly grazing the long grass. Princess stood in the corner of the field, with Albert still re-dressing her wound.
The sun burst, suddenly golden, over Avalon Farm, spreading fingers of color across the land, setting the msasa trees alight with rich green and burnished red. At the side of the truck, we watched as the sunlight reached the paddock, dappling the horses one by one. They, too, seemed to sense it, turning in unison to soak up the sudden warmth.
“Where now, Pat?”
He didn’t answer. For the moment, waiting for those fingers of sunlight to reach us, it just didn’t matter. We had escaped again, and without a second to spare.
Chapter 11
THE PEAKS OF the Bvumba and Penhalonga were lost in low clouds. No wonder they were called the Mountains of the Mist. Beneath me, Grey shivered, silvery as the mist through which we rode. On each side, the steep escarpments were covered in thick woodland, with leaves of rich gold and red. Clouds billowed in low gullies, swirling in the grasslands where the forest thinned. We wound between walls of dense pine forest, at last reaching the highlands where the trees grew more sparsely and the crags were covered in smaller scrub, succulent aloes, and the gentle mauve sugarbushes with their feathery faces and razor-edged leaves. The valleys around us were home to small coffee plantations, and when the wind blew in the right direction, their scent filled the air. We rode on until at last we broke out of the tendrils of cloud and we could look down through the shifting reefs: the ravaged farmlands of Zimbabwe on one side, the lush green bush of Mozambique on the other.
It had been two years since we had fled Biri Farm; now we rode through these mountains plotting yet another move. This one was to be bigger than the many we had made before; this time, we were not merely going to another farm but plotting our way out of the country itself. Beside me, Pat was riding Shere Khan, her regal eyes looking first at one country and then at the next; behind me, Kate and Deja Vu brought up the rear. The Bvumba had been a good home, a place of peace in which we could regroup and consolidate our herd as well as take in many new horses—but we had known from the very first that, like all good things, it wouldn’t last. In the east lay the wild, virgin bushlands of Mozambique, a nation just recovering from a bitter twenty-year civil war. We had come into the mountains searching for a way to herd the horses through without facing the tyranny of the official border crossing; that we were even contemplating such a move was proof, if ever it was needed, of the madness consuming our own country.
The Bvumba was the eastern highlands, running down the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique like a jagged serpent’s spine. We had been living among the mountain peaks at a cottage called Partridge Hill, clinging to a steep escarpment with rich green forest on every side. Partridge Hill hung above the beautiful border town of Mutare, where the wide streets were lined with trees heavy with blossom and the people were so peaceful it was easy to forget the ravages Mugabe was wreaking on the rest of our country. Our new home was small, just big enough for Pat, Kate, and me, with some workers in the grounds. Granny Beryl had stayed with us for a time, until we were at last lucky enough to find her a home back in England, but there had been absolutely no space for the horses. It felt strange not to have them near, but we had found grazing land for them on several smallholdings and farms dotted around Mutare itself, as well as the fields of a game park where they could roam with antelope and giraffe. They’d had to be separated into smaller groups, but though it was sad to see them divided, we knew it was a good thing. If one of those farms was to fall, we would always have a backup onto which we could take its horses.
For a time, we had found peace. For a time, we had been able to forget. Then, the reality of the new Zimbabwe caught up with us. One by one, the farms at which the horses were kept began to fall. One by one, we had to find new homes for the horses. Now, every last smallholding or farm around Mutare was gone, taken by some crony from Mugabe’s inner circle. The herd, vast and unwieldy, had been brought together again. They were all holed up on the grounds of Kate’s school, but they could not stay there long. We were running out of food, we were running out of space, and we had been living on borrowed time for too long.
I turned in the saddle and looked over my shoulder, realizing that I had pushed some way ahead. Through the mist, Shere Khan’s muzzle appeared, her head held high as if she considered herself queen of the mountains. For a moment she hung there, as if suspended in the swirling gray mist, before Pat appeared, sitting tall in the saddle.
“Which way?” I began.
Pat shook his head. “Back the way we came. There isn’t a pass this high.”
We coaxed the horses to turn and dropped back down a gully, entering a clearing between tall gum trees.
“Nothing?” Kate asked, bringing Deja Vu around.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
At once, Pat hauled Shere Khan to a halt and lifted a hand to wave us down. Behind him, I squeezed Grey with my thighs and guided him to a stop. Kate and Deja Vu drew alongside.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s been army here,” said Pat. “L
ook . . .”
In the roots of one of the tall gum trees lay a ragged backpack. There had been a camp here; I could see the circle of stones and charred earth where somebody had lit and then quickly doused a wood fire. It was not the first time we had seen such a thing. We were not the only ones who had dreamed of jumping the border, and army patrols on either side of the frontier knew how tempting it was to try. Whoever had been here had been waiting for the most opportune moment to pass, unseen, over the invisible line between nations. A patrol must have stumbled upon him, and, ditching his worldly possessions, he had fled.
A terrible shiver ran down my spine. I wondered how close we were, even now, to watchful eyes.
“Dad . . .” Kate began, as if about to voice the same fear we all had. “What if there are border patrols when you try to take the horses through here?”
I tried to imagine what it might be like: more than a hundred horses herded through these mountains, only to come face-to-face with some opportunistic border patrol.
“The border patrols are the least of it,” Pat responded. “A border guard you can buy off, if you’ve got the right mind and money.” He looked back, as if he might see some wily Zimbabwean border guard watching us from the mountain range. “It’s the Mozambican authorities I’m worried about. Once the horses are in Mozambique, how will we be able to account for them?” He stopped Shere Khan. A strange look ghosted over his face. “Damn it, Mandy, we just can’t take them through here . . .”
“Pat,” I said, coaxing Grey closer to Shere Khan, “we have to. You said it yourself. We can’t stay in Zimbabwe any longer.”
It was the reason we had come to the Bvumba in the first place. Those first nights after fleeing Biri Farm had been terrible, but we had known we had to make a decision. It had seemed like a prophecy: one day, we would be fleeing Zimbabwe and taking our horses with us. In anticipation of that, we knew we had to head for a border, find a place to stay, and organize ourselves. Wherever we went, our new home had to be a place from which we could very quickly escape. The nearest border to Biri Farm had been the Bvumba, the nearest nation the poor Mozambique, still reeling from its bitter civil war. That was why we had headed into the east.
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