A Girl Named Disaster

22

The lake water softened the clay Nhamo had so carefully applied. She had to paddle furiously after the crack opened again. She managed to grab an overhanging branch when she got close to shore, but the baskets got wet and even the mealie bag was dampened. It was nearly empty, anyhow.

Nhamo scrambled onto the large island and pulled out her stores before they were ruined. She guided the boat along the shore until she was able to drag it up a sandy beach. Then she rested under a musasa tree to consider the situation.

“At least I’m not in as much trouble as the baboon,” Nhamo said to Mother. She could see him going over her campsite on the little island. He smelled the ground where she had prepared food, and devoured the pumpkin skins ravenously.

Nhamo’s new home was able to support a baboon troop, monkeys, and many kinds of antelope. It could support her, too. The problem was what else lived on the large island. Something had frightened the baboon over the treacherous rocks.

“Maybe it was a snake,” she said hopefully. Baboons went into screaming fits if they saw a snake. Nhamo was capable of going into screaming fits herself, for that matter, but she did have common sense. Snakes left you alone if you didn’t upset them. Most of the time they ran from you just as fast as you ran from them.

“I might have to live here until someone visits the island,” Nhamo decided. She couldn’t possibly attempt a long trip with the boat in its current condition. The thought of the crack suddenly opening out of sight of land made her feel sick. She had seen no one fishing in all the time she was on the lake, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

“Or I could make a boat,” she said.

“Now you’re talking,” said Crocodile Guts from his seat by the njuzu hut at the bottom of the lake. “You make a boat out of mukwa wood. It’s so strong, even the termites won’t touch it.” He scratched his hair, and ghost lice crept over his fingers.

Nhamo shook her head. She was on friendly terms—so far—with the spirit world, but she found its presence frightening. For a moment she actually saw the fisherman as he lounged in his watery kingdom. An njuzu girl poured him a pot of beer.

“Thank you. It’s good advice,” Nhamo said politely as she made sure she was surrounded by real trees and real sunlight. She had a panga and Uncle Kufa’s broken knife. Surely, with careful work, she could fell a mukwa tree and carve it into the shape of Crocodile Guts’s boat.

She felt immensely cheered by the plan. All she had to do was survive until the craft was finished. It might take a long time, though. To be on the safe side, she ought to plant her uncooked pumpkin and mealie seeds.

She balanced the baskets in the branches of the musasa tree. It wasn’t a good storage place, but it would have to do. She needed to find a campsite and shelter before dark.

Nhamo cautiously made her way away from shore. Now and then she stopped to memorize her surroundings. The lake quickly became hidden behind trees, only occasionally appearing when she climbed over a boulder. She picked a large fig tree near the water and an oddly shaped pillar of rock as landmarks.

The farther she got from the lake, the more nervous she became. The place was too quiet. She flicked off a few ticks that had brushed onto her dress-cloth. They were large and hungry, probably left behind by antelope. She could see more of them clinging to the grass, waiting for dinner. She found a game trail that meandered until it met a wide grassland divided by a stream. Beyond rose a sizable cliff, topped by trees. She made out the prints of kudu, waterbuck, and duiker, the splayed mark of guinea fowl, the looping trail of a burwa lizard. Nothing dangerous.

The stream, lined with bushes and small trees, rushed along with a lively chuckle. The water was too shallow to hide crocodiles, so Nhamo sat down for a drink. It was clean and surprisingly cool. She washed her face and arms.

When she got closer to the cliff, she saw it was pitted with small caves. Many crevices and cracks, filled with plants, ran down its face. She found much evidence of baboons, although they were absent at the moment. In a clearing between the stream and cliff were two enormous mutiti, or lucky-bean, trees growing close together. Heavy branches stretched out almost at right angles to the thick trunks and gave Nhamo the idea of making a platform. Lucky-beans didn’t attract animals, because their seeds, although beautiful, were poisonous. The trees would make a fine refuge.

The platform would take days to build, though, and Nhamo needed a place right now.

She set about exploring the cliff. Everywhere was the stink of dassies. They perched on boulders and squealed at her furiously before retreating. Their favorite places were painted with a thick coating of urine. She climbed farther up. She could camp inside one of the caves and watch the grassland for predators.

Predators.

What had frightened the baboon to the little island?

Nhamo couldn’t hope for the luck she had had on the njuzu island, where she had found so much food. This place was too large. One excellent reason for living close to dassies was that they would give a swift warning of anything dangerous in the neighborhood. And provide an alternate meal for whatever was hunting.

Halfway up, Nhamo found a low cave partly filled with a drift of sand. She poked the panga around inside to drive out anything that might be lurking. The only thing she dislodged was a large scorpion, which she hurriedly flicked down the cliffside with the knife.

Well pleased, Nhamo returned to the musasa tree by the lake. Termites had already found and attacked the baskets. She knocked them off, getting several bites from the soldiers in the process, and hauled her belongings to the cliff. When she had everything stored at the back of the cave, she built a fire, boiled pumpkin, and toasted a few soldier termites she cornered in the baskets. It gave her a melancholy pleasure to eat the creatures that had so recently tried to bite her.

Nhamo spent the rest of the day scouting around the area she had chosen for her camp. She found several other small streams—they had been much larger, but the rainy season was already two months past. She noted a number of mutowa trees with rough, scaly bark. Their sticky sap could be used to trap birds. She found gourd vines to make more calabashes.

Food plants close to camp had been picked clean by the baboons, but she could forage in the woods as they did. And unlike them, she could fish and trap game.

That afternoon Nhamo cooked the last of her mealie meal. It was damp and would spoil anyhow. She would have to conserve as much of her other stores as possible for the dry season, which was coming. It made her sad to empty the sack. Aunt Shuvai and Aunt Chipo had grown this grain; she and Masvita had ground it. It had been made with the many, many hands of the village, and when it was gone she would have no more food that had been touched by her people.

But the bag had been woven by them. Nhamo stuffed it with dry grass and took it to the cave to use as a pillow. She could wrap her arms around it and bury her nose in its smell.

She gathered a heap of rocks by the cave mouth because she could hear the barks of the baboons in the distance. She backed into the opening and watched the forest on the other side of the grassland.

The baboons straggled out from under the trees in the slanting golden light of late afternoon. In little groups they came, talking and shouting. The young bounced around the adults, ambushing one another, rolling in mock battle, and shrieking for protection when an older animal lost patience and bared its teeth. Little black babies clung to their mothers’ stomachs while older, brown ones rode on their mothers’ backs. There were so many of them! Nhamo couldn’t count that high!

They paused to drink at the stream. They jumped over the water and passed the lucky-bean trees. They found the cook-fire and stopped short. Nhamo held her breath. A large male shouted a challenge. His eyes flashed white and his big fangs yawned. The message was perfectly clear: Come out, whoever you are, so I can rip you to shreds!

“Oh, Mother,” whispered Nhamo. She had expected the baboons to nest in the far trees. It was clear from the gathering below that they intended to climb the cliff. They would pass right by her cave. Nhamo had a sudden vision of the male baboon discovering her presence and deciding to remove the intruder.

Nhamo wriggled out and stood on the narrow ledge at the mouth of the cave. The troop down below reacted instantly. Several males gave the loud threat call: Oo-AA-hoo! Females gathered up babies with cries of alarm. The large male by the cook-fire puffed out his fur until he looked twice as big. Oo-AA-hoo!

“Go away!” shrilled Nhamo. She looked frantically for a quick way up the cliff. She hurled the stones she had piled at the mouth of the cave. One caught a male on the face. Wah! he barked, jumping back.

The baboons milled around, obviously upset by the strange creature in their sleeping place. They swayed back and forth, eyeing Nhamo. Then, as the sun went down, they suddenly made up their minds and headed for the trees at the edge of the grassland. Their outraged barks floated back on the evening air.

She had won! She had driven off a huge baboon troop. She slid back into the cave and let her pounding heart settle down to its natural rhythm. She felt like vomiting, so great had been her fear, but she had won! “I, Nhamo, have taken this cliff for my own,” she said. “And the island. This is Nhamo’s Island. I am the boss of all baboons.”

Later, when she listened to the hoot of an eagle owl, the hiss of a genet, and the hrrr-hrrr grunt of a foraging honey badger, she didn’t feel quite as confident. The night was full of activity—some harmless, some not. A dassie screamed as it was killed by some unknown predator in the dark.

“I’ll get started on the tree house in the morning,” she promised. The cave wasn’t really comfortable: The ceiling was too low, and she hated the feeling of being trapped. Something kept crawling over her body, flickering its antennae as it puzzled over the addition to its home. Nhamo didn’t fall asleep until the first streaks of dawn appeared in the sky.