A Girl Named Disaster

30

Nhamo lay on the platform. The ruins of her belongings lay around her, but she didn’t bother to check them. The sun had passed over the trees once or perhaps twice since she had crawled to her present bed. She had drunk water—Rumpy hadn’t been interested in those calabashes. She had eaten nothing. What was the point? She didn’t even put her arms around the grain bag. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it.

Below, the baboons ransacked the smoking-platform. Nhamo turned on her side and watched a line of ants move up the tree trunk. Perhaps they had found their way to the kudu meat. What difference did it make?

Once she stirred enough to climb out onto a branch to relieve herself. She saw that Rumpy no longer lay on the ground, so he must have survived.

More time passed. It was dark, then light again. She saw Fat Cheeks with Tag draped over his shoulders, and Donkeyberry searching the remains of the calabashes on the ground. Rumpy appeared. His limp was far worse. He moaned to himself as he struggled along, and the other baboons seized the opportunity to bully him.

The water ran out. Nhamo’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her body smelled strange—not dirty, exactly, but old, like a musty cave where animals had laired for a long time. Her head ached. It doesn’t take long to die of thirst, she thought dully. She didn’t think she had the strength to climb down the ladder.

Darkness came, and with it a cooling breeze. The sound in the leaves was like water rushing across the sky. The moon was growing again, and its milky light spilled through gaps in the tree’s canopy.

I’m on my way, little Disaster, said Crocodile Guts. He had a string bag hefted over his shoulder. My relatives have brewed beer and my oldest son has bought a goat to sacrifice at the coming-home ceremony. It’ll be good to see them again.

Nhamo didn’t answer.

I suppose Anna will be there. I hope she’s forgiven me for dying first. Crocodile Guts scratched his hair thoughtfully. I would have liked a sacrificial bull, but times have been hard recently. My sons have promised me a bull as soon as they can afford it. I’ll probably have to remind them.

Nhamo watched him stride along the bottom of the lake as easily as a man on a forest trail. Just before he moved out of sight, the boatman turned and called, The njuzu might be lonely for a while. Don’t be surprised if they pay you a visit. And then he was gone.

First Mother, now Crocodile Guts has deserted me, thought Nhamo. She watched the cool moonlight slide along the platform. The baboons stirred on their rocky perches. An eagle owl called as it floated along the upper airs.

Sh sh. Something was moving in the grass below. Hhhhuh, came a sigh. Nhamo tried to ignore it. So what if something wanted to kill her? She wanted to die.

The sounds went on, sh sh. Of course, she wanted to die on her own terms, not some horrible beast’s. Her plan was to stay on the platform until her spirit was driven away by thirst. She had seen people die of cholera. Eventually, they fell into a fevered sleep that deepened until they simply let go. There were worse ways.

Nhamo put her eye to a gap in the platform. Two njuzu girls were weaving around the thorn barrier, looking for a way up. They lengthened their supple bodies until they were thin enough to slither between the thorns.

Nhamo felt a chill pass over her. She was too dehydrated to break out in a sweat.

Up they came until they reached the first foot hole Nhamo had carved into the tree trunk, before she made the ladder. Now the njuzu did a very strange thing. Instead of sliding around it, which they could easily have done, they searched until they found a fragment of wood. It might have been part of the storage platforms Rumpy had smashed.

One of the snakes carried the wood to the hole in her fangs and the other butted it into place with her head. In a moment the rift was healed. They went on to the next hole, and the next until the trunk was smooth again. Then they came to the ring of birdlime.

Nhamo had put it there to discourage the caracal. She watched to see how the njuzu would handle the problem. They slithered down the tree and gathered up dry grass. Back and forth they went, gluing the grass to the birdlime until it was covered up. When they were finished, they glided over it as smoothly as if they were rustling across a rock.

Nhamo had to admire their cleverness, but she realized she was about to have njuzu in her bed. She wanted to die, but she did not want snakes crawling all over her first! She crept to the other end of the platform. Her body trembled with the effort.

The njuzu coiled over the edge with their eyes glittering in the moonlight. One of them found a calabash Nhamo was certain was empty and dived her head inside. Water droplets twinkled as she rose again. Her mouth brimmed with water.

“No!” cried Nhamo, clinging to the trunk. “Go away!”

One snake twined around the girl’s body, ssuh, and came up by her face. She lightly caught Nhamo’s lower lip with her fangs and pulled the girl’s mouth open with surprising strength.

“Aaugh!” Nhamo gasped. The other snake bent over her mouth and poured the shining water inside. It was cold, cold! It sank into her body like a frog diving into a lake. At once the njuzu shook themselves loose, rippled over the rim of the platform, and disappeared.

Nhamo was shocked to the very depths of her being. She clung to the tree, shivering violently. She had swallowed something offered by the njuzu. Did that mean she was condemned to live with them forever? Or did the rule only apply to food? One thing was certain: Her determination to die had completely vanished. Now she passionately wanted to live. She only hoped she wasn’t too late to try.

Nhamo’s first chore, as soon as darkness lifted, was to get water. She was badly dehydrated. Her skin was loose and her ears buzzed, but she was filled with a kind of strength that had been missing the day before. She dipped the calabash—the one the njuzu had used—into the lake and drank repeatedly. She lay under a tree to let the water take effect.

After a while she returned to the lucky-beans and ate some of the dried meat. The whole day was spent drinking and eating. She noticed that the tree trunk was still scarred by foot holes and the birdlime barrier was still intact. Was the njuzu visit only a dream?

But that night they were back, filling the holes in the bark again and gluing grass to the barrier. This time they didn’t force Nhamo to drink. They murmured to each other as they rustled through the branches. Nhamo couldn’t understand what they were saying, but the sound was oddly comforting. She fell into a deep sleep and when she awoke, they were gone.

Nhamo couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She was sitting by the mukwa log, trying to shape the outside of the boat, when it came to her that something had subtly changed about the forest. The light was different. The sky remained as cloudless as ever, and the heat was even more oppressive than usual. Her body was covered with sweat that wouldn’t dry.

Then she realized what had happened: Buds were swelling on the branches of all the dry trees. New leaves were forcing their way out. A subtle green hue hung over the forest. And that meant…

The rainy season was on its way.

During the dry season many of the forest trees lost their foliage. But unlike the vines and grass, they didn’t wait until the first rains to start growing again. They knew somehow that the storms were about to arrive. Nhamo had seen it happen before. In two or three weeks towering clouds with swollen purple bottoms would rise out of the east. Branchcracking winds and thunder that shook the bowl of the sky would descend on the island, along with torrents of life-giving rain.

She hadn’t a hope of finishing the mukwa log by then.

Nhamo was appalled. She couldn’t possibly cross the lake during the storms. She would have to stay on the island until the next dry season. Alone.

Nhamo stumbled back to the platform and lay in the shade of the lucky-bean canopy with her chest heaving. She wanted to cry—or scream—or throw something hard. So many emotions ran through her, she couldn’t decide which one to feel. All she could do was lie there and pant. Alone.

The baboons returned full of complaints. Hunger and heat made them irritable. Nhamo watched Rumpy creep from one to another, trying to beg a grass root. They all shouted at him. He was again the scrawny bag of bones she remembered from the little island. Poor Rumpy, she thought. The high point of your life was when you knocked me down.

Nhamo lay back on the grain bag and tried to think. The grinding hunger that tormented the animals would go away when the rainy season arrived. Antelope would have young, and birds would build nests. Perhaps the leopard would return to its cave.

She wouldn’t be able to build fires on wet days. She wouldn’t be able to work on the boat. And all those months alone…

But look on the bright side, she told herself. The island will be full of food. The streams will run again, and the fish traps will become usable. This year she could plant her garden at the right time, although rising lake water might make it difficult to reach the little island.

By evening Nhamo was almost reconciled to the situation. She munched a strip of dried kudu meat and choked down some of the horrid, tasteless water-lily bulbs as she made plans. She would rebuild her platforms and make a watertight shelter.

The full moon rose as the sun set. It was going to be one of those restless nights with the baboons awake and the dassies foraging.

Rumpy tried to climb the cliff and failed. His foot was swollen. Perhaps he had fallen on it when he tumbled out of the tree. He managed to reach a low shelf, where he ensconced himself in a crack.

The njuzu hadn’t visited since the two nights after Crocodile Guts left. Nhamo was frankly relieved. She hugged the grain bag and considered telling a story to pass the time until she felt sleepy. Tell who a story? she thought sadly. Rumpy wasn’t going to listen. He had cowered from her since she had thrust the burning branch in his face. She could hear him groan even now as he fidgeted under the bright moon. Anyhow, an animal wasn’t the audience she wanted. She wanted people.

Oh, fine, she thought. If I can’t get through one night on my own, what am I going to do in three months?

Cough-cough.

Her mind went blank.

Cough-cough.

That sound. She remembered it from the banana grove outside the village.

Cough-cough.

Silence.

What was it doing? Was it standing under the tree? She remembered the leap the caracal had made to pluck a dassie from a rock. How high could leopards jump?

Cough-cough.

Farther away now, it was moving toward the cliff. Nhamo let her breath out carefully. The baboons were absolutely still. Not a single infant whimpered. The troop might have vanished off the face of the earth. The dassies, who had been twittering to one another, had turned to stone. The whole grassland held its breath.

Then, a scream.

It was a terrible, wailing shriek, so much like a human that Nhamo stuffed her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out. It went on and on in ghastly agony. From her earliest childhood that scream came, with a memory of flowing, spotted skin and rending claws, and later of Ambuya tearing out her hair when they brought Mother’s bones home from the forest.

And then it stopped.

The grassland waited.

The bright moonlight shone through the leaves, and waterladen air pressed on Nhamo’s skin.

After a while a baboon infant whimpered. Its mother grunted softly in response. Whow-whow called a nightjar in a breathless voice. One by one the inhabitants of the grassland came alive. They were no longer in any danger. The leopard had selected its prey and they, with heartless ease, returned to their usual activities. The dassies twittered. A ground hornbill uttered its low, panting call.

But something had been subtracted from the chorus of night noises. Rumpy’s characteristic moan as he moved his injured foot was no longer present.