A Girl Named Disaster

15

Nhamo was walking in a strange place. It was very beautiful, with trees full of fruit. Cattle grazed in thick grass that rippled about their legs, and goats with fat udders wandered with clanking iron bells tied about their necks. On either side she saw hillocks covered with pumpkin vines, while beyond stood row upon row of ripe mealies.

She, herself, felt unusually light. Her feet barely brushed the ground, and when she jumped, her body moved through the air in a slow, dreamy fashion.

Is this Zimbabwe? No wonder Mother was sorry to leave, she thought. Nhamo followed a path that wound through the hillocks. The earth was soft beneath her feet. Presently, she came to a cluster of huts in a clearing: fine huts that looked as though they had been built yesterday. The thatching was evenly trimmed, the walls freshly plastered, the ground smooth without the print of a foot.

Two girls sat on a bench outside. Nhamo’s spirit leaped. People! And what wonderful ones! They were even lovelier than Masvita before her illness. Their skin shone with oil. Their hair was woven into an intricate pattern, more like the scales of fish than like any style Nhamo had seen. They smiled at her with even, perfectly white teeth.

“Masikati! Good day!” said Nhamo.

“Masikati!” responded the two beautiful girls.

“Have you spent the day well?”

“We have done so if you have done so,” they answered politely. Around their necks and looped over their arms were many, many strands of black beads. These rippled like drops of water when the girls moved.

“Your village is very fine,” Nhamo said, uncertain how to strike up a conversation.

“Come and eat with us,” they called. Nhamo needed no second invitation. She quickly settled herself on the ground. The girls produced plates of sadza, white as gardenias, and pots of steaming relish. Nhamo clapped in thanks before accepting a bowl.

She dredged a morsel of sadza with relish, lifted it to her mouth—and sprang to her feet, knocking everything to the ground. Crocodile Guts suddenly stood in the doorway of the dark hut!

“Maiwee! A ghost!” she cried. The girls twined around her; their long arms held her prisoner. “Please don’t hurt me,” Nhamo moaned.

“As if I would hurt you, little Disaster,” Crocodile Guts said cheerfully. He sat down on the bench and helped himself to the food. He smacked his lips and scratched his neck with long, dirty fingernails. Even in death, his hair swarmed with lice—or ghost lice.

The fisherman belched satisfyingly. “I see you have my boat, little Disaster. Well built, isn’t it? You have to remember to bail it out every morning, though. I never did get all the cracks filled.”

Nhamo felt tongue-tied. What was the polite way to address a ghost?

“I carved it out of mukwa wood,” Crocodile Guts continued. “That’s the best. The termites won’t touch it. But after many years, even a good boat gets cracks. I used to plug them with sap from the mutowa, the rubber tree. Most of the time it was easier to bail the thing out.”

“Baba…,” Nhamo began uncertainly.

“Yes, little Disaster?”

“Forgive me, baba, but aren’t you…dead?”

The fisherman roared with laughter. “Of course! Why else would I be in this fine place with two beautiful njuzu girls to wait on me?”

Njuzu! Water spirits! Nhamo felt the long arms of the girls twining around her—or were they arms? She was afraid to look.

“Most people wander on land between the time they die and the kugadzira ceremony, when their family welcomes them home,” the fisherman explained. “I was so fond of water, I came here instead.”

“I—we—are underwater?”

Crocodile Guts pointed up.

For a moment Nhamo didn’t know what she was seeing. The sky rippled as though the wind had become suddenly visible. Above hovered a small, dark shape.

“The boat!” moaned Nhamo, struggling against the girls. They slithered around her with a whispering, rustling sound. Their faces were still those of beautiful humans, but their bodies had turned into long, black snakes! Nhamo screamed. The njuzu shrugged themselves off and rippled over to Crocodile Guts.

“You mustn’t be afraid of njuzu, child. They taught me everything there is to know about water.”

But Nhamo screamed again and again, and stretched her arms toward the distant boat.

“I’m drowning!” cried Nhamo. She flailed wildly, and the sky rocked back and forth. Mother’s jar rolled on its side. In spite of her panic, Nhamo automatically grabbed it before it could fall into the water—

—in the bottom of the boat. She was still in the boat! She wasn’t drowning. It had only been a dream. Nhamo was flooded with relief. She had been soaked by the water that seeped in overnight, and that must have been what gave her the nightmare. “It was so real, Mai,” she told Mother. “Those girls…and Crocodile Guts…”

The sun was nearly overhead. “Maiwee! I’ve slept a long time!” she said, shielding her eyes from the glare.

She lay on the soggy grass bed and went over all she had heard about njuzu. They lived in bodies of water and kept these from drying out. They were far wiser than humans. For this reason, they often instructed ngangas in their craft. Occasionally, they pulled unwilling people into their pools. Sometimes they took the shapes of humans, and sometimes of snakes or fish or, if they were bent on evil, crocodiles. They could melt from one form to the other.

If the njuzu offered you food, you must refuse it or be doomed to stay forever in their watery realm. Nhamo shivered. She had come that close to eating the sadza and relish.

She sat up and looked around. A mist lay over the horizon. Only a few yards away, the river faded into a haze. She dipped her calabash over the side and noticed that the water didn’t look quite the same. The stream by the village had been clear. The Musengezi was dyed the color of tea, although it tasted perfectly clean. This water was blue-green. Or perhaps it was only the hazy light.

Nhamo remembered tying up to the reeds the night before. She crawled to the stern and pulled on the rope. It came up easily. The loop at the end had a single broken reed still attached.

Nhamo stared at the rope and then at the water. She was drifting! The motion had been so gentle, she hadn’t noticed it. I must have crossed the sandbanks into a side channel, she thought. She began to paddle against the current, but the movement was so slight she couldn’t keep track of the direction. For all she knew, she was traveling away from, not toward, Zimbabwe. “It’s better to wait until I can see the shore,” she decided.

Nhamo drank water and munched a few of the fish she had dried at the guinea-fowl camp. The clear area around the boat gradually widened out, and still she couldn’t see the edge of the river. She listened for birds, but there was only the light slap of water against the hull. The air was empty of the smell of plants or flowers. Nhamo became uneasy.

Presently, a breeze stirred. The haze dispersed, and Nhamo realized she was in a far worse situation than she could ever have imagined. The shoreline had completely vanished. This was no side channel. This wasn’t even the Musengezi. The boat had been scooped up and dropped into a boundless ocean. It had to be the country of the njuzu. “I didn’t eat the food. I didn’t!” she told the water spirits. But perhaps by merely accepting a bowl from them, she had fallen into their power.

As the breeze freshened, small ripples became wavelets; the wavelets grew into swells. Nhamo yelled when the boat began to sway. “Oh, njuzu, I didn’t mean to insult you by screaming,” she cried. “I’ve always been afraid of snakes. Please forgive my rudeness!” She begged and wept, but the boat continued to pitch, with Nhamo clinging to the sides.

When the craft leaned over, she could see right into the water. It was deep, so deep! The njuzu girls were coiled up in the depths, watching her with bright, human eyes. Mother’s pot rolled; the mealie bag shifted. Nhamo desperately opened the bag with one hand as she clung to the boat with the other. She retrieved the pot and stuffed it inside.

“I think your pool is beautiful, Spirits of the Water. I am so lucky to be allowed to see it. Please don’t drown me!” she cried. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask permission to use your boat, Va-Crocodile Guts. I didn’t know how.”

You mustn’t be afraid of njuzu, child. They taught me everything there is to know about water.

“You’re already dead,” Nhamo wailed. “You don’t have anything to be afraid of!” But her mind began to work very fast. What would Crocodile Guts do in this situation? He must have encountered it. People said he went everywhere, even Lake Cabora Bassa. She grabbed the oar. Every time the boat tipped, she tried to push it back. This didn’t work very well. Eventually, she discovered she was in less danger of capsizing if the prow faced into the waves.

Now she could slide up and down the swells without tossing the contents of the boat around. It was hard work, and the waves made her queasy. If she tried to rest, the craft swung sideways with a terrifying seesaw motion. On and on Nhamo forged, not knowing where or for how long, only that she had to keep going or die. Her head swam with fatigue; the sunlight glittering off the water made her eyes ache. She noticed a patch of whiteness ahead.

A dip in the waves revealed the top of a rock. Ah! She veered away before it could rip out the bottom of the boat. Suddenly, white foam frothed all around her as other rocks made their presence known. Nhamo was bewildered by so much danger. Directly in front of her was even more whiteness, a ring of it, and in the center a low shelf of land almost hidden in the glare of sunlight. It was an island!

Nhamo discovered she wasn’t quite out of energy. She made for the island, and when her oar struck bottom, she jumped out and dragged the craft onto shore. The boat wasn’t light. Nhamo had no idea she was strong enough to lift it, but terror gave her supernatural strength. She pulled the boat away from the foaming water and collapsed on the warm stone. Then she must have fainted, because the next thing she noticed was the sun, lying very low in the west. All around her was the slap-slap-slap of waves.

“Thank you, Va-Crocodile Guts,” she whispered. “Thank you, Va-njuzu.” She didn’t know whether they had anything to do with her rescue, but it was safer to be polite. She watched the shadow of the boat lengthen and the sunlight creep away from the rock. She sat up.

It was a very small island, hardly a man’s height above the waves at its tallest point. As far as Nhamo could see, there was not another speck of land in any direction. And her new home had not a bush or a tree or a blade of grass.