Snowmaiden and Lionheart

Far to the north of all the Worlds, where it is winter all year long, is the Land of Ice.

A frigid and terrible Land it is, where the ice never melts and the snows lie heavy on the ground, and where the blizzards rage the year round. A terrible Land indeed, where the aurora glimmers in the sky and the rivers and seas cannot flow or rise in tides, and the trees are frozen iron-hard with the cold.

In the heart of the Land of Ice lived the Wizard Baraf. He lived in a castle whose walls were made of ice blocks, and whose windows were of ice sheets, and whose turrets were capped with cones of snow.

A cold and distant man was the Wizard Baraf. His hair and beard were the colour of the distant ice-fields, as was his skin, and his eyes were the blue of icicles; his robes were woven from the crystals of snow, and his shoes were made of the green ice of the glaciers. When he raised his hand, the ice sheets moved to obey his command, and the blizzard came down, and when he spoke, the icebergs moved out on the storm-tossed seas like live things, and made for routes where they could rip open the skins of passing ships.

The people of the Land of Ice brought the Wizard Baraf gifts, for such a great and terrible wizard must be kept happy. They brought him the frozen dew off the petals of iceflowers, and they brought him sealskin furs, and crystal ice of the utmost purity, clear as the air and beautiful as the stars. If the Wizard Baraf was pleased, he would spare them from disaster for the coming year, that was their hope. It was all they dared hope for.

Now this Wizard had a daughter, who was called Snowmaiden; a young woman as lovely as she was intelligent, as accomplished as she was gentle, and at the same time, as good as the nights of those northern lands are long. Snowmaiden’s gentle heart ached for the people, who lived in the prison of cold the Wizard her father had created for them, where it was winter all year round and the sun never shone. Snowmaiden’s tender mind brought her to tears, often, when she heard of the peoples’ hardships, and she asked her father to make things easier for the people, if only a little. But all the Wizard did was raise his ice-coloured eyebrows and tell her to stick to matters more suitable to her age and station. And Snowmaiden would go away sorrowfully, the pain of the people still in her heart.

Now the time had come for Snowmaiden to choose a husband; and the Wizard Baraf sent invitations all across the face of all the Worlds, that men might hear, and come for the Choosing, where the bride would select her mate. And one of those invites came to the Land of Summer, where the skies are like burnished brass.

Now the Wizard Baraf had no intention that his daughter should marry the son of the Lord of the Land of Summer, for Summer is the enemy of Ice, and there was no love lost between the rulers of the two lands. The invite came because Baraf wished to humiliate the son of the Lord of Summer. For if he should come to the Choosing, and Snowmaiden should – as she would, the Wizard Baraf would see to that – reject him, it would be a humiliation indeed.

But the fame of the beauty of Snowmaiden, and of her good nature, had spread to all parts of the Seven Lands; and though well the Lord of Summer knew the intention of the Wizard, and warned his son accordingly, it was to no avail. The Prince of Summer wished to go and see for himself, and win the hand of the maiden. And, because he was as headstrong as his Land was hot, he took leave of his parents, left his palace, and began on his journey across the Worlds to the Land of Ice.

The Prince of Summer was called Lionheart. He was lithe as the gazelle and strong as the rhinoceros, and headstrong as the wild boar. Dark as the midnight was his skin, and his eyes flashed like black diamonds when he raged, as he often did. Across his shoulder he bore his great broad-bladed assegai, and at his side his long oval shield of hide, on which the greatest magicians of his people had inscribed symbols to keep him from harm. He was brave and proud and arrogant, and he had a right to be, because never had any of the peoples of the Seven Lands produced such a hero before.

Since the calling of a Choosing also meant a Holy Truce across the Worlds, Lionheart went alone, striding through the Lands under the stars, and those who saw him marvelled, for he was a wondrous sight indeed.

Meanwhile the Wizard Baraf had, by his magical skills, caused a great palace to be constructed for the Choosing, a palace of ice and snow, where by marvellous skill the rooms were warm within for the comfort of those who would come to visit. In the palace were accommodation for all the candidates for the Choosing and more besides, and in the very centre was a vast Hall of incomparable beauty, with fluted pillars of ice and crystal chandeliers of snow, where the floor was carpeted with dream-soft snow plucked from the very clouds themselves; and this was where Snowmaiden received her suitors with all graciousness, and where she would, when the time came, choose which of them should be her mate.

And so the suitors came from all over the Seven Lands and perhaps from the Dark Worlds beyond the Rim as well, came with retinues laden with gifts meant to gladden the heart of Snowmaiden and win her hand. Snowmaiden met them all with the same reserved graciousness, and smiled at them with a beauty set to break all hearts, and conducted them to their quarters, which she had prepared with her own two hands; and then she went back to the Hall to await the next comer. And so it went.

And meanwhile the Wizard Baraf learned of the coming of the Prince of Summer, Lionheart, and rejoiced exceedingly. For plain he saw that the youth had not even come bearing gifts to charm his daughter, and he knew then that it would be a simple matter to humble him before the throng on the day. And so he went with happy heart to prepare the magical spells that would ensure Snowmaiden would reject the son of his enemy and instead Choose the one he wished her to take as mate, the tenebrous scion of the Land of Eternal Night.

And meanwhile, tall and proud as a young palm tree, bearing his great assegai and his invulnerable shield, Lionheart strode through the Lands, and at last he arrived at the doors of the palace the Wizard Baraf had set up, in the heart of the Land of Ice.

And when he came, the ice-lightning flashed and the aurora glowed overhead in curtains of green and blue, and the doors of the palace opened wider than they had ever opened before to other suitors. So it was that the hero Lionheart strode through the majestic corridors of ice, until at last he stood in the great Hall, with its fluted ice pillars and its carpet of snow, where ice-blue light rained down from the crystal chandeliers overhead.

There it was, then, that the daughter of the Wizard Baraf saw for the first time the son of the Lord of Summer; and across the great Hall they stared at each other, and from the face of the beauteous maiden the welcoming smile fell away.

How long they looked at each other it is impossible for mere measurement; for it was in another Time, set apart from the Worlds, that they stood silent, devouring each other with their eyes, and in that Time an instant may stretch over aeons that might see empires rise and fall.

And it was in that Time apart that Snowmaiden knew whom she would and must take as mate; and into the heart of the heroic warrior entered, like the shaft of an arrow, knowledge that his life had hitherto been incomplete.

So it was that Snowmaiden conducted Lionheart to his chamber, which the Wizard Baraf had made so as to be the smallest, least appointed and coldest of all, without a word, and left him without a gesture there; and the Prince of Summer watched her go, in her robes of iceberg green, without a trace of expression on his face.

And later that night, while the Wizard Baraf set his familiars on guard and laboured over his spells, readying them for the Choosing set for the morrow, Snowmaiden crept silently to the chamber where Lionheart waited, and took him by the hand; for she knew what her father’s plans were, and she knew she had to do as she were bid if ever the spells were cast over her. And she drew Lionheart after her, through narrow secret passages in the walls of ice, safely past the doorways guarded by the brooding familiars.

And out they came into the open, where the blizzard blew snow like a curtain across the Land. Journeying like wraiths under the stars, without word spoken to each other and with only the touch of their hands to keep them joined, they came out of the Land of Ice before the dawn of the day.

Meanwhile the Wizard Baraf had woven his spells and his magic, and went to his daughter’s rooms to cast them on her even as she woke, for magic is the strongest when the lonely soul ceases its wanderings and returns to the body which holds it prison. He went to her bed and reached to wake her, but found her not; and because he was a great and powerful wizard, he divined in a moment what she had done, and went in a fury to his chambers and set to work to find her. So he raised and sent forth seekers to track her down, and the Prince of Summer with her, but the questing spirits found but the trace of their shadow, for they had already passed beyond the Wizard’s realm. And when the Wizard knew this, he burned with impotent fury, and swore a great and terrible Curse on his daughter, that she should never be happy in the Land of Summer, where she was bound.

And so, journeying by night and day, across the Seven Lands and the Worlds between, Lionheart and his bride, Snowmaiden, came to the Land of Summer, where the sun blazes down, and the earth is hot as the blood of those who dwell there and consider themselves the most blessed of all the people in all the worlds.

So it was that Lionheart, before the Lord his father and before his people, took Snowmaiden daughter of Baraf for wife, and dwelt with her in a palace of sandstone, where the breezes of evening blew cool after the burning heat of the day. And they learned about each other there, the Prince and his wife, and as time passed they grew so close they could hardly tell, even among themselves, who was who.

But the heart of the young woman grew weary in that land of eternal heat and dust, where the sun glared down always from a brazen sky; and she began to wilt away like a flower that has been cut too long from the stem that gave it birth. Yes, she wilted away, and the mages and doctors of the Land of Summer came, and examined her, and discussed among themselves, and at last they went in a body to the Lord of Summer.

“The lady is ill indeed, your lordship,” they told him, “ill with an illness of the heart, for she is withering away in our climes. And if she cannot be returned to her own –“

“She cannot,” interrupted Lionheart, who was standing at his father’s right hand, “for the wizard her father has decreed a fate far worse than mere death if he should be able to have her within reach ever again.”

“Then, sire,” said the doctors and magicians, bowing, “the Lady shall surely die.”

But then, into the throne room of the Lord of the Summer, entered a strange and ancient figure, a sage so old that he looked like a statue of gnarled wood and dark leather, with hair like woven white silk and eyes that could no longer see. But he saw all things with his mind, the people said, for they knew him well, and feared him and revered him, this sage whom they called the Old Man of the Desert. And so fearsome was his countenance and so piercing the glance of his blind dead eyes that the court fell silent and the mages and doctors abashed themselves.

And the Lord of Summer rose from his carved throne of wood, and, with his crown of feathers on his head, came down to kneel before the Old Man of the Desert, and paid him proper obeisance; and even Lionheart the proud and arrogant Prince slapped his shield with his assegai in salute. But the Old Man of the Desert paid the homage no heed.

“There is a way to save the woman’s life,” he said.

“Which is that?” Lionheart leaned forward eagerly, and the members of the court as well. “How may we save her life, Old Father?”

“In the Land of Ice where she was born,” said the Old Man of the Desert, “there is, in a hidden valley, the Cave of Ice. If you pass through the five chambers of that Cave you will come to a crystal plain, and there on that plain grows the Snow Flower, whose leaves are icicles and whose petals are of driven snow. In the centre of the flowers lie ice crystals like glittering jewels, which gather the light of the aurora and turn it into rainbows the like of which the world has never seen. Gather the Snow Flower and bring it here to the woman your wife, prince, and as long as the Snow Flower shall endure, its power will keep her in health and beauty.”

“I shall set out immediately,” said the Prince Lionheart.

“Wait!” snapped the Old Man of the Desert. “The way is full of dangers beyond your comprehension, dangers of a kind you have never faced. For the Snow Flower is guarded by creatures of the Wizard Baraf, who treasures the Flower as a source of great and precious magical energy. And if you should get by the creatures and the Wizard’s own power, if you should be able to gather the Flower and make it yours, you still have to bring it back here to the Land of Summer without melting away, and you shall have to keep it here so that it will endure.”

“I shall do it,” promised the Prince of Summer. “For the Lady Snowmaiden is worth all the dangers and tribulations in all the Worlds that ever were or shall ever be.”

“Well then, young man,” said the Old Man of the Desert, “go, and return with the Flower, and she will be all right. But before you go, take this, and keep it on your person, and it shall protect you from harm and help you in your quest.”

Then Lionheart took the snakeskin amulet the Old Man of the Desert was holding out to him, and tied it round his upper arm, and before the eyes of everyone the amulet flowed and rippled and merged into his night-dark skin.

So Lionheart took up his assegai and his great oval shield, and dressed himself in war attire, and went out of his father’s palace without taking leave of Snowmaiden. He strode across the faces of the Worlds, passing like the wind from Land to Land, and those who saw him stayed far out of his way, for his countenance was grim as death and violence rode like a grinning skull on his shoulder. And so, leaving the various Lands behind him, he came alone and armed into the Land of Ice, where, in his palace, the Wizard Baraf waited.

But Lionheart did not seek the Wizard Baraf; leaving the palace to one side, he went on until the stars had revolved overhead in the night, went on until the Wizard’s palace had been left far behind and at last – following the directions given him by the Old Man of the Desert – he reached the hidden valley, and found the portals of the Cave of Ice.

And great were the portals of the Cave of Ice, strong enough to resist all the efforts of mere man, but the assegai of Lionheart tapped on them lightly, and those portals fell away and crashed on the valley floor, breaking into a billion pieces; and the warrior prince entered the Cave of Ice.

And it was when he entered the Cave of Ice that the familiars of the Wizard Baraf knew of his coming, and they roused from their slumbers the guardians of the Cave. And scarce had the Prince of Summer taken twenty paces into the first chamber of the Cave that the first of the guardians came, howling their wrath, with their fangs of icicles and their bodies of the substance of glaciers.

But the warrior prince reached out with his assegai and struck them, and they shivered to fragments at the touch, and fell to the floor, one of them and all; and Lionheart walked unmolested into the second chamber of the Cave.

And here in the Cave waited the Ice Serpent himself, rising in coils even as high as the roof, and moving his great heavy head back and forth as he waited for Lionheart’s coming, with hate burning in him. For the Ice Serpent was immured in walls of ice, so that he could never break free, and he hated those who could still walk abroad and breathe free air. And his head was large as an elephant from the prince’s own country, and his fangs, which dripped a venom the touch of which would melt flesh from bone, were each as large as one of the creature’s tusks. A formidable opponent indeed was he, and perhaps he might have been too much even for so great a warrior as Lionheart. But Lionheart struck the ice wall of the Cave with his assegai, and cut a passage for himself through it, and bypassed the Ice Serpent, who could only hiss in fury.

And in the third chamber of the Cave the roof and floor were hung with spears of ice, sharp as lances and hard as iron; and as the prince entered, they broke off and rained down on him from above and thrust at him from below. But Lionheart held his shield over his head and the ice spears that fell from above shivered to pieces on the mage-inscribed hide; while with broad sweeps of his assegai he cut off the spears of ice that thrust up at him from below, and unharmed passed he into the fourth chamber.

In the fourth chamber waited winged ice-demons, which flew down from their roosts on the vaulted roof and came at him from all directions and slashed at him with their claws and sharp hooked teeth. But Lionheart held them away with his shield and stabbed them through and through with his assegai, so that they fell broken to the floor, and flapped weakly there, unable to fly again. And one by one were they all thus destroyed, and came Lionheart to the fifth chamber.

And here in the fifth chamber he saw a cavern of surpassing loveliness, set forth with tinkling fountains and thrones and couches all of ice, covered with cushions of snow soft as the finest down, and there were tables too, set with dishes containing the finest viands anyone of the Seven Lands could ever have imagined. And into the chamber came women of loveliness far surpassing that of any mortal, dressed in nothing but their beauty; and they sang songs that brought delight to the warrior’s weary heart, and fed him wine and fruits with their own delicate hands. And then they drew him gently to the waiting couches, where they kissed and caressed him, and proceeded to undress him, promising him meanwhile all the carnal pleasures he could ever imagine, and more.

But then the amulet merged into the skin of Lionheart’s arm opened red snake’s eyes and spoke a warning, and the Prince of Summer saw the women for what they were, saw their burning eyes and sharp teeth; and he took up his assegai and cut off their heads before they could run. And then the beautiful chamber crumbled away to broken shards of ice, and the far wall dissolved, and before Lionheart was the crystal plain.

And there on the crystal plain grew the Snow Flower, singly and in clusters, grew in such numbers that the plain seemed to be covered in them; and their leaves were of icicles and their petals of driven snow, and in the centre of each flower were ice crystals that took in the colour of the aurora flickering overhead and turned it into rainbows unknown to mortal man.

So Lionheart the Prince of the Land of Summer bent low and with the tip of his assegai dug up a Snow Flower plant, roots and all; and putting it into a loop at the back of his shield, he turned to leave.

But there was no Cave of Ice behind him, only a wall of frozen rock; and there on the crystal plain, cold and terrible and majestic, stood the Wizard Baraf himself.

And the Wizard Baraf held out a hand, pointing; and the cold swarmed into Lionheart’s blood, and set his bones to freezing.

And then the Prince of Summer’s eyes grew dim and the breath froze in his lungs, and he felt his strength drain away, and he began to fall.

But the amulet in his arm glowed, like fire, red and orange with the heat of the Land of Summer; and the warmth flooded back into his bones, and his blood flowed again, and he recovered himself and raised his assegai, ready to strike. And when he saw this the Wizard Baraf began to spin, and in a moment was a pillar of ice, turning and turning where he stood, bridging earth and heaven. And Lionheart knew that even his assegai would not be able to cut through the roots of this pillar.

But then another idea came to his mind, and he walked through the crystal plain, smashing the Snow Flowers with his spear, and crushing them under his feet, cutting a swathe of destruction. And the pillar cried out in agony, and a moment later the Wizard Baraf stood before him once more.

“Let me go back unharmed to my Land,” Lionheart told him, raising his assegai, “or I shall kill you.”

“Kill me,” said the Wizard Baraf, “and you shall be trapped here till the end of time.” As he spoke, his words froze the air and sent it showering down as tiny crystals.

“In that case,” Lionheart said, “I shall continue to destroy the Flowers, until there are none left.”

For a long moment they stood silent and looked at each other.

“You stole my daughter,” said the Wizard Baraf.

“She was not yours to steal; and she came with me of her own free will.”

“That’s as may be, but it was still an evil.” The Wizard Baraf looked at Lionheart and then down at the shattered Flowers, and sighed. “Go,” he said.

And a cavern opened in the wall of frozen rock, rimed with frost; and on the far side of the cavern glimmered the open night, and the stars.

“Go,” said the Wizard again, “and take my curse with you. For you shall never walk again without my hate at your shoulder.” And he blurred and was gone.

And so the Prince of the Land of Summer strode over the chasms between the Worlds and came back to his own Land and his own people; and the Snow Flower still glimmered behind his shield.

And he went straight to the room where Snowmaiden his wife lay still as death itself, and he kissed her lips and spoke to her of his coming, and put the Snow Flower into her hands.

And straight the eyes of Snowmaiden opened, with wonder and delight, and she looked at the Flower, and felt her strength flow back into her wasted limbs; and the heart of the Prince brimmed with joy.

So they planted the Snow Flower in a special room, where the arts of the mages kept cold as ice, and the Flower lived; and each day Snowmaiden would go and renew herself, and she loved Lionheart all the more.

But times change and magic drains away, and the day came when the mages could no longer sustain the cold chamber in that land of eternal Summer; and the flower melted to a puddle and vanished in a wisp of evaporating mist; and Lionheart heard the Wizard chuckle with glee, and his heart knew despair.

And while he was still despairing, Snowmaiden put off her royal raiment and went forth in common garments, through the heat of the day; and she walked through the desert until she came to a kraal of dried mud bricks, where she knew dwelt the Old Man of the Desert.

And long they talked there, the ancient sage and the woman of the Land of Ice; and none but the two of them knew what was spoken, what talks passed between them. And there were strange lights and sounds there all through the night, in that kraal.

In the morning, when, still despairing, the Prince Lionheart went to his wife’s chambers, he was by no means sure that she still lived; but when he opened the door, she stood before him, smiling, and his jaw dropped with amazement.

For Snowmaiden was bright and beautiful as ever, and glowing with health and joy; but she was now as black as the night, and from the hair on her head to the soles of her feet was as much of the Land of Summer as the Prince ever had been. And she smiled and bade him rejoice, for the Wizard’s curse could harm her no longer, and when Lionheart turned away a moment, she quickly brushed away a tear.

And in that palace in the land of Summer they still dwell together, the warrior and his lady; but the Lady Snowmaiden no longer goes by that name.

Dark Rose they call her now, in all the Seven Lands and in the Worlds beyond the Rim.

Riding the Thundercloud

Blue skies on a bright spring morning, and in the west, towers of cumulus, promising all the lift a glider pilot’s heart could desire.

“It would be nice if the day of the competition would be like this,” I mentioned to the tow plane pilot. He grunted, rubbing his zapatero moustache with a nicotine-stained finger, and went over to his Cessna. He didn’t like me. None of them liked me, really. I’d long since learned to live with it. I didn’t have to be liked to do what I loved to do.

The cockpit of the Hibati Z23 was, as always, snug around my body. Even by sailplane standards, the cockpit was small and cramped, and the instruments primitive. Each time I strapped myself into it I wished I could afford a better class of glider, like one of the beautiful DG or SZD Diana sailplanes the others would be flying on the day of the competition. In my primitive little Hibati, I didn’t stand a chance, they all said, and so I should step aside and leave the field open for serious flyers.

Not a word about the fact that some of them would be in gliders even more basic than my third-hand Hibati. Not a word about the real reason, which was, of course, that I was a woman.

Up ahead, I watched the Cessna’s propeller begin to rotate, and through the canopy and my headphones I could dimly hear the engine. It sounded like one of the bees buzzing over the grass on this spring morning. The tow rope flicked across the ground and tightened, I released my brake, and began bouncing across the ground in the wake of the tow-plane.

This would be my last chance at a real practice flight before the competition, a week hence, so I had already decided I would make it as much a full-scale rehearsal as possible. The terms of the contest were to get to the designated turning point, and back to the airport, as fast as possible; and that, in turn, meant I had to find good thermals and climb high, and keep climbing, because the Hibati had a pathetic glide ratio compared to some of the better sailplanes I’d be competing against.

Ahead, the Cessna was now on its take-off run, the propeller a blurred disc, and I eased back the control column. Suddenly I was airborne, floating centimetres off the ground, but flying. It always felt a magical moment for me, the instant when I left the handicap of my land-bound existence behind and became a bird.

One day, when I was a little girl, I’d watched a hawk fly slow circles far above my family’s garden. The hawk’s wings hardly stirred, unlike the frantic flapping of the sparrows and pigeons I knew. I’d watched that hawk and made up my mind that one day I’d soar like that.

Unlike most of my other dreams, I’d kept this one.

The Cessna’s wheels cleared the ground. Automatically, my feet danced on the rudder pedals, and my hand moved the control column back and forth, maintaining position. The tow rope tightened and slackened, an umbilical cord that could not be allowed to get too tight or too loose, and I climbed behind the light plane, my eyes fixed on it, staying where I would be safe.

Someday, I would have a self-launching sailplane with a motor; someday, I would no longer need a pilot with yellow fingernails and a bandit’s moustache to help me fly. Then I could really be a hawk, free to soar, free to be what I wanted to be.

“Why do you ever want to learn to glide?” everyone had asked. “All right, an aeroplane pilot, now that’s something we can understand. Pilots make a lot of money flying for the big airlines, and these days there are woman pilots, aren’t there. But why do you want to glide?”

In the beginning I’d tried to explain. I’d told them of the hawk. I’d even described the incredible sensation of being free in the air, dependent only on wind currents and thermal lifts like the hawk. I’d described the joy I’d felt the first time I’d ever gone up in a two-seater for a demonstration flight. All I got was incomprehension, but I’d tried anyway, ignoring the amused glances and the half-heard muttered comments behind my back.

One day I’d come down after a training flight in an ASK 21 two-seater, and as we’d come to a stop my instructor had turned round in the front cockpit and said, “Well done.” That was the best praise he had ever bestowed on me, and I’d just begun to feel the glow of it when he continued, “...for a woman.” And I realised why he’d insisted on staying in the front cockpit, with its better view and easier flying.

Yes, I’d learned a lot in those days, and not just about how to fly a glider, either.

The Cessna was beginning to bank into the wind, levelling off at six hundred metres after the take-off run, and I calculated the moment for slipping the tow. The moustached pilot’s voice crackled in my headphones, reading off his height and distance from take-off. I acknowledged, moved my hand on the lever, slipped the tow rope, and was free.

Silence. The pure joy of silence in the air, only the distant hush of wind over my long white wings, and as always, I relaxed a moment, exulting in the freedom of drifting along. Then I turned away, banked, and made for the great stone hump of the ridge in the distance, like the back of a sleeping dragon.

Reclining in my seat, I took a leisurely look around through the enormous bubble of the canopy. If the Hibati Z23 had one positive feature, it was the canopy, which was big enough to give the best pilot view of any glider I’d ever been in. The huge canopy extended so far forward that I could feel the sun warming my feet and legs, while in similar conditions in the trainer gliders I’d probably have had to wear fur-lined boots to keep myself warm.

If it had been the competition today, I’d have been surrounded by other sailplanes, all heading for the same ridge; white fibreglass gliders all around me, and climbing the invisible spiral staircase of the thermals to the clouds above. I would have had to concentrate much harder, and think of what others were doing as much as what I was, banking and steering to avoid ramming some clueless pilot intent on his own affairs. Competition flying is work, not pleasure, and sometimes I wondered why I’d ever decided to go in for it.

As I approached the ridge, it towered above me, and my instincts screamed at me to turn away, because I was about to fly right into its side; and then the rising air current caught me and lifted me up in a smooth arc, over the stones and scrubby bushes and the picnic area where the judges would be stationed on the day of the competition, their eyes fixed on our competition numbers through their high-powered binoculars. The ridge slid below me and fell away, and I was high over the plain, soaring like the hawk back from the days of my childhood. A road snaked below me, broad and grey and dotted with cars and heavy trucks, moving slowly along. An hour ago I’d been driving on that road, my window rolled down to catch what I could of the morning breeze.

Banking, I turned to look for a thermal. Yes, today was perfect gliding weather, for I found one almost at once, a column of hot rising air that took my glider and pushed against its wings, sending me spiralling upwards towards the blue sky and the white clouds. The road below shrank at every spiral, from a grey snake to a thread, and then to a thin line, almost invisible in the brown and green mottled land.

One day, when I’d just got my licence and begun gliding as regularly as I could afford, another glider pilot had come up to me. He’d watched while I readied the Hibati for the flight, silently, hands on hips. I’d ignored him as best I could. Then, as I’d made the final checks, he’d come over and leaned over the cockpit.

“Why?” he’d asked.

I’d looked at him, wondering what he meant. “Why?” he’d repeated, gesturing at me and at my glider. “What are you trying to prove?”

“Prove? I’m not trying to prove anything. I just love gliding.”

He’d shaken his head. “I’ll bet you’re a feminist,” he’d said. “A feminist,” he’d repeated, and stalked off, leaving me staring after him.

I had been called a feminist before, even by women, and it was never a complimentary term. I’d also never understood quite why – all I’d ever done to deserve this reproach, it seemed, was to want to do what gave me happiness, no less and no more.

Ironically it was my father, a man, and not particularly liberal in his views of the world either, who’d always encouraged me to do what I wanted. He was the only person who had never laughed at my talk of learning to glide, had always sympathised with my desire to be like the hawk, and when the time had come, he’d even paid for my training. Yet my father would never have called me a feminist. He would never even have thought of the word.

Slowly, reluctantly, the thermal cooled and began to give up its lift. I left its embrace, and instantly the variometer began to unwind as the Hibati began to sink. I wasn’t worried yet – I’d already found my next thermal, a column of cumulus that started off dark at the base with its own shadow and reached dazzling white heights high above me. Raising one wing and dipping the other, I glanced down at the earth whose bonds I’d slipped for these brief moments, and turned towards the base of the cloud.

It turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated. The Hibati’s awful glide ratio meant that I began to lose height quickly as soon as I left the thermal. Halfway to the cloud base I was already dipping dangerously low, and soon afterwards I realised I wouldn’t make it at the rate I was going. I had no desire to turn back and land back at the field to the smirks of the tow-plane pilot, and if I couldn’t make the thermal that was what I’d have to do.

And so, knowing I was probably doing something stupid even as I was doing it, I vented the after water ballast.

As the weight of the water fell away, the rate at which I was sinking dropped dramatically. I was still dropping, of course, but not nearly so fast now as earlier. As I swooped down towards the plain, I managed to catch enough of the tail end of the thermal to begin climbing, and clawed back height metre by metre. And then I was at the bottom of the cloud, and the thermal had me in its grasp, and was carrying me up and away.

I’d never been too comfortable inside a cloud. Since one couldn’t see anything outside except the white of the cloud, it was all too easy to get so disoriented that one literally forgot which way was up. It was possible to fly entirely by instruments, of course, but the Hibati’s instruments were primitive compared to more expensive gliders and I was never sure of their reliability.

In competition I’d never have entered a cloud like this, nobody would, because of the extreme risk of collision when you have some tens of gliders jostling for the same limited space, each pilot unable to see even as far as the red-painted tips of his – or her – long narrow wings. I’d have relied on someone else finding a thermal in clear air and following him up. But it wasn’t the competition today, and I was alone.

I planned to hop from cloud to cloud, from thermal to thermal, building up some height each time until I was high enough. Then I’d make for the turning point, navigating over open country by the map on the board strapped to my right thigh, and turn round it and head all the way back to the airport in a fast straight downward glide going as fast as I could go. But first I had to build up the height.

Being in a cloud always reminded me of a day, long ago, when I was a very young girl and I’d been lost in a heavy fog. I’d been visiting relatives with my father and had gone out for a walk when the fog rolled in. I’d been not just alone but unfamiliar with the locality, and it was a deserted and heavily wooded area. I’d absolutely no idea where I was going – and yet I’d had the conviction that my relatives’ home was only just round the next corner. Ultimately, I’d got so tired that I sat down on a large rock by the roadside, and it was there that my father, finally, had found me quite by accident while out searching. I’d not called out even once because of fear – I hadn’t told anyone that I was going out – and because of a mulish determination to see the thing through. Afterwards I found I’d walked several kilometres and was headed in a directly opposite direction to where I was supposed to be going. It was that kind of fog.

As I rose, spiralling, the colour of the mist outside lightened as the mass of vapour above lessened and cast a lesser shadow. The sun reappeared, a vague, diffuse glow far above. I checked the altimeter, and found I was already at two kilometres, and still the thermal let me climb it. For the moment I let it take me as high as it would. Once I got out of this cloud I’d have a long glide to the next thermal, and it was a hundred and fifty kilometres to the turnaround I’d set myself. On the day of the competition, it might be twice that.

I came out of the cloud at nearly three thousand metres. The transition from whiteout to dazzling sunshine was so sudden that it was almost painful, and I squinted my eyes momentarily against the glare. Cautiously, I opened them again to see where I was going.

I was above a city of clouds; low humps of cloud, domes of cloud, tall spires resembling church steeples, an entire architecture of cloud below me, of white and grey and all shades in between. And across a gulf of clear air, on the other side of that cloud-city, were great columns of cumulonimbus, dark with water vapour, rising pillars of heated air, laden with promise of as much lift as I could ever want.

It was a strange feeling, gliding over that cloud city. I’d seldom flown over an actual city, because the thermals were uneven and dangerous, hot air rising from the tarmac of parking spaces and from metal factory roofs, and the ride was always rough and uneven at best, but even so it was always far more interesting than flying in a powered aeroplane. One could feel exactly what a hawk like those I’d watched in my childhood would have experienced in similar conditions. Now, above that bizarre and unexpected cloud architecture, I found myself wondering what kind of beast might inhabit those vaporous constructions, and almost expected to see a flip of tentacle or the pulsing of an airborne gas-bag, as of some creature made of light and air.

As I fell across the cloud-city in my long descending glide, I saw a distant flicker of lightning over on my right, among the cumulonimbus. That wasn’t good; it was far from good. But the lightning was many kilometres away, and I had to get among the clouds again for lift, like it or not. I’d just about finished thinking this when I plunged into the bottom of the cumulonimbus.

It was like walking from high noon into a dark room with the curtains drawn. The dark, clammy cloud closed around me, heavy with unshed rain. Then I hit an unexpected pocket of cold air, and the sailplane sank like a stone.

It was only a brief descent. Once, back when I was in school, we’d been on a class picnic. I’d been climbing down a hillside when the ground had collapsed under my feet in a shower of pebbles and loose earth. I’d begun to slip, like this, helplessly, hearing the alarmed cries of a couple of my friends; and, unthinkingly, automatically, I’d thrown myself to the side, off the slipping earth and onto the hard ground. All I’d suffered was a bruised knee and a slightly twisted ankle. Afterwards I’d just gone on climbing again.

So it was now. As I fell, I pulled sharply at the stick and banked the Hibati to the side. It was like hitting a wall, as I left the air-pocket and slammed into the thermal that sustained the cloud, an impact that pushed me against my harness until it bit into my shoulders and thighs hard enough to make me wince. And then the thermal had me.

Giant hands caught the sailplane, hands full of gentle and irresistible force, holding me and taking me aloft, so quickly that I felt as though I was in an express elevator, my insides left some way behind. The altimeter needle was crawling along the dial like a live thing, and the variometer told me that I seemed to be going almost straight up. Around me the cloud was a dark slate-grey, and tendrils of it slipped into the cockpit through the ventilation openings, dark fingers of mist that vanished instantly in the still relatively warm air inside.

There was something weirdly hypnotic in that ascent, so much so that it was a very long time before I realised that I was in very serious trouble. The first indicator was when I began to feel cold around my feet and legs. I had no warm clothes on and the Hibati didn’t have the luxury of a heated cockpit. Even as I realised this, the darkness outside turned blazing white as an enormous fork of lightning slashed through the air to my right. The crack of thunder that followed was so loud it vibrated through my sailplane.

Frantically, I tried to turn the glider away to port, away from the lightning. It was of no use at all; the updraft was a malevolent entity, an evil dragon that held me in its jaws. It carried me upwards, into the heart of the storm, up to where its haunts were, where the air was too thin to breathe and the cold would freeze the marrow in one’s bones.

Lightning began to pulse all around me. It was as though I was climbing up the centre of a cone of lightning, and as I spiralled upwards I began to expect that at any moment one of those gigantic discharges would strike me. And it finally began to rain, too, hard drops smashing into the canopy like bullets.

By now I had lost all sense of direction, and I could no longer trust the compass or my other instruments to tell me where I was heading. It was time to swallow my pride.

“Pan, pan,” I called, and twisted the tuning knob of the radio, running through the frequencies. Pan was the second-highest level of emergency. I got nothing – only static. Another lightning flash, so close I could smell the ozone, and the crack of thunder was strong enough for me to fear that my wings would snap right off the slim fuselage. And still I was rising into the heart of that storm.

“Mayday,” I screamed into the radio, to be rewarded by static or silence. Either the conditions had wrecked radio reception, or my radio itself was shot, which, given the Hibati’s primitive instruments, was perfectly possible. So I wouldn’t even have the doubtful benefit of communicating my plight to someone, anyone, somewhere, anywhere. I was on my own.

“It won’t be for the first time,” I muttered to myself, aloud. My feet, in sneakers and nylon socks, were almost numb, and my bare forearms covered with goose pimples. I had begun to shiver uncontrollably. The rain was a deluge now, crashing down from the towering layers of cloud above, smashing into the glider, breaking up the thermal, pushing me from side to side. And, yet, I was still rising.

If I’d had the extra water ballast now, I thought, I’d have been that much heavier and I could have beaten the updraft. It was a bit late to think of that, and late to curse myself for having dumped it, but at least I had the other tank. If I got down in one piece, I vowed, I’d think long and hard before dumping ballast prematurely again. But that was a big, big if. And at least I still had the forward tank.

“What should you do if you’re in an impossible situation in the air?” an instructor had asked once. “One should consider bailing out, shouldn’t one? After all, one’s life is slightly more important than the possible loss of the craft.” All very nice and well said, I wanted to tell the instructor now, but the problem was, of course, that I wasn’t carrying a parachute. And if I had been carrying one, that thundercloud might well have sucked me up in its vortex, parachute and all, until I’d have frozen into a block of ice. It had happened to people many times before.

Finally, then, I began to consider the possibility that I was going to die. Without heat, without an oxygen supply, and unable to break out of that deadly spiral, I could only last so long before I’d freeze or black out. And then, when the updraft would finally give out, down I’d come in an uncontrolled dive, falling unconscious like a dead bird through the kilometres of air, until I’d slam into a field or hill or house like a winged meteor and scatter my shattered sailplane and broken body over the landscape. I’d probably rate a mention in the eight o’clock news on TV, unless of course some actress had got married again or a hedge fund manager was arrested for large scale financial fraud. My demise wouldn’t be a catastrophe or even a disaster. It would be filler news.

And with the realisation that this might actually be it, came a surge of emotion. No, I did not begin to pine for the lovers I might have had whom I’d never sleep with, or the countries I’d never visit, or the books I’d never read. I didn’t think of the will I’d kept putting off making, and I didn’t cry for myself, about to die, young and alone and helplessly due to a blunder utterly of my own making. The emotion I had was steely, cold anger. I thought of the instructor who had said I’d done well “for a woman,” sitting in the front cockpit so he could take over if I should suddenly forget how to fly. I thought of the glider pilot who’d spat “feminist” at me. And I thought of the tow-plane driver with the moustache, and I imagined his nicotine-stained teeth exposed in a sarcastic grimace as he talked about how my death proved that women should never be allowed in gliders. No, I thought, that is not going to happen. I am not going to give them the satisfaction.

Suddenly, the thermal gave out.

It had been weakening, of course, as I rose and the air cooled, and it had been cooled further by the rain. Even so, its abrupt end took me by surprise. The rain was still coming down, and the lightning still flashed to starboard. I began to sink, down into the cloud, where the thermal waited to catch hold of me and bring me right back up again.

Trying to get as far from the lightning as I could, while I still had the luxury of the slack air, I banked to port, throwing myself into a turn so sharp my attitude indicator showed that the sailplane was almost standing on one wing.

In another instant I erupted out of the cloud into open air.

Incredulously, I gasped at what I was seeing.

It was like an immense pillar, a cylinder of clear sunlit air surrounded by a roaring, spinning vortex of cloud. I was spiralling down the inside of that pillar, sinking earthwards while staring open-mouthed at the sight before me. The eye of the storm was whirling all around me, carrying me along with it, and if there was one thing that made the whole ride worthwhile, it was that sight. I wasn’t going to die, but if I did, at least I’d have seen that and the morons mocking me wouldn’t have.

Unbidden, a memory flashed into my mind; a visit to a small visiting circus with my father, back when i was still a schoolgirl. We’d stood at a railing over the Wall of Death and watched a motorcyclist roar round and round the inside of that cylindrical well, coming up right below us, and even though my father had explained the physics that kept him safe in his seat I was white-knuckled with fear for that young man. But he’d got down safely, merely by reducing throttle. It would be a bit different where I was concerned.

Then, far below, I saw a mottled patch of green. I leaned, resting my forehead on the canopy, and stared. Yes, there was a patch of brown and green, formless and hazy, but it was there, and I was spiralling down the side of that funnel of cloud towards it.

It grew as I watched, turning from a haze to dark green vegetation and dark brown earth, still a long, long way below, but I knew now that I would live. That was something, that knowledge. I would get out of this, and my corpse wouldn’t feature on some TV bulletin.

I fell out of the cloud at three thousand metres, into a world of driving rain, rain that blurred vision and rammed into the Hibati’s fibreglass fuselage so hard that the entire glider shuddered with the force of it. But I was out, I was out of the storm, and quickly I tried to find out just where I was.

The map on my thigh was utterly useless since I had long since lost my bearings. I didn’t know what to look for, and the storm could have carried me a fair distance in the time I’d been inside it. I turned the glider in a wide circle, looking for a landmark – any landmark. Anything would do to orient myself. And as I turned, there was nothing.

I could of course set down in any of these fields in an emergency landing, After that I’d have to collect the glider and pay to have it transported back to the airport, of course, and endure the same sneers and innuendo that I’d been afraid of when I’d thought I was going to crash; only this time it would be untinged with even the faintest trace of sympathy. The stupid bitch would have deserved what she got, and what do you expect if women mess about in a man’s sport.

Then – in the distance, just as I was completing my circle – I saw it, a sprawl of huge white buildings with red roofs. Incredulously, I banked the glider towards it, peering downwards, but there was no mistake. I could even see the tiny yellow and white oblongs of the containers left outside the warehouse complex. The storm had brought me to the turning point I’d planned on all along.

Turn, then. Steeply and fast, and now I knew where I was, straight and as near level as I could manage. The Hibati, for some reason, going smooth as glass now, ignoring the rain that was still beating down, and we, my glider and I, were as one now, our wings spread and flexing slightly in the air currents, our control surfaces tasting the air, racing across the green fields and the stands of trees.

And there below us now, the black rain-washed cord of the road, traffic crawling along in the torrential rain which the weather people hadn’t forecast. We’re going so fast that the road whips by underneath, and there is the ridge, still far enough below us that we aren’t going to scrape ourselves off on it. I pull the Hibati’s nose up slightly to make sure, and she responds wonderfully, like a thoroughbred, and we are over the ridge and there’s the airport to the east, and I’m high, too high to get down in time in a straight glide, but not so high that I can come round again and land.

No, I’m not going to crash and give anyone the satisfaction. Not now, and not ever.

I cross the controls, hard, opposite stick and rudder, and the sailplane sideslips like a dream, skipping downwards toward the grass landing strip. Here we go, on the final approach, and the rain is down to the drizzle, the storm now far away. I vent the forward water ballast tank in a cloud of spray. The spoilers are up on the wings, and my speed bleeds away, the grass below turning from a blur to a carpet drifting past, and I lower the undercarriage and pull my nose up for landing.

Oh the sweet touch of the landing gear on the grass, the sailplane running true, and I put on the brakes, and we are slowing, slowing, men watching from near the yellow and white Cessna, the Hibati moving slower and slower until we stop and the right wing slowly tips down until brought to a halt by the wingtip skid.

We’re down, my glider and I. We’re home.

Encantado

The forest was deep and green and silent, save for the croaking of frogs and the occasional call of a brightly coloured bird.

Then, so distant at first that even the tiny lizard sitting on the bark of a tree did not turn its head, came another noise. It was so soft and indistinct that even when it came closer it was difficult to tell what it was. And then it came closer still, and now there was no doubt, and with a quick motion the lizard scuttled away.

The girl was running.

She came panting through the jungle, her lungs gasping desperately for air, sweat streaming down her face. As she went, she threw quick glances back over her shoulder, and although there was no sign of pursuit she kept running as fast as she could. Occasionally, she stopped, looked around quickly, and changed direction.

She was about fifteen years old, tall for her people, with a round open face and lank black hair. All she wore was a loincloth tied around her waist, and a small leather pouch hanging on a beaded string round her neck. She held her small breasts with her hands to stop them from bouncing as she ran. Blood trickled from a gaping wound at her shoulder.

Her name – the name she went by – was Belita.

It was not her real name, of course, nor was it her secret name; that was known to her, and to her alone. Her real name was hardly used anymore. Even her parents called her Belita, just as the parents of the other youngsters called their children by the Portuguese names. They had thought this a way of opening themselves up to the Portuguese, who had the power of guns and medicines and everything else they needed. By teaching their children the language of the Portuguese, by trying to adopt their ways, the parents had thought they had made a future for themselves and their children.

It had not been enough.

Belita paused once again. In her panicked flight from the village, she had lost sense of direction, and now she tried again to orient herself. The river, she reminded herself, she had to find the river. She fingered the leather pouch at her neck as she tried to catch her breath.

Behind her, she knew, the village burned, and the Portuguese trampled over the corpses of those who had not been able to get away or had been captured alive. She remembered her mother pushing her away as the shooting started, asking her to run, gasping already as blood poured from a bullet wound in her breast. Her mother had told her to run for the river, and to call to the encantado; to call to him with her secret name.

She had always been terrified of the Portuguese, even though she had learned their language and some of their ways. She had been terrified of the trader, Agostinho, and his men, who had leered at her openly as they came to offer their wares. She had listened with rising fear to the Portuguese jabbering about their need for the tribe’s lands and how they would take them by force if they couldn’t get them any other way; they had not considered that she might be listening or be able to understand. Ah yes, she had told her father, and her father, who had believed the Portuguese, had laughed and said she must have misunderstood.

Misunderstood! The proof of her understanding lay in the burning ruins of the village.

Belita was too frightened for tears, and aware, too, that there would be a pursuit. Most especially she feared Agostinho’s agent, Camilo. Camilo, thin and long-faced and with a short beard, had always looked at her as if, she thought, she had been a piece of meat for the taking. And she had seen him, too, at the time of the attack, shouting and firing in the air. Yes, Camilo would be after her, just as soon as he knew she was not among the dead or captured. He would probably be after her with dogs, and her blood would tell him just where she was going. That thought spurred her on; taking a deep gulp of air in her starved lungs, she began running again.

In the leather pouch was her juju, made of sticks and cloth, but full of ancient power and magic. A long time ago, when she was a baby, the shaman had made his spells over her and had declared her totem. It was in search of the protection of that totem that she ran now.

Far in the distance, she thought she could hear the baying of the big Portuguese dogs. The sound, if she had not imagined it, terrified her more than anything else had done so far. If she had run desperately before, she was utterly reckless now. Turning to the right, where the land dropped in a gentle slope, she plunged into the jungle.


In the rainy season, the great river overflows its banks, and floods the forest on either side for far beyond its own limits. In the rainy season, fishes swim among the branches of submerged trees and crabs dig holes among their roots. And in the rainy season, the season of flood, they come too, the kings of the river, the encantado, curling among the trees and seeking their own inscrutable purposes.

When the waters recede again, when the river shrinks back to the dry-seasonal limits of its banks, the banks lie muddy and desolate, marked with driftwood, rotting vegetation, and the corpses of stranded fishes. In the dry season, the river seems shrunken and pacified, and the encantado have returned to their river, awaiting the moment of their next coming.

Belita was a girl of one of the peoples of the river. She knew the river, knew its rise and fall, knew its moods and its dangers. More than most, she had an organic link with the river, because of who she was and because of what her totem was. Even now, lost in the forest, she had a sense of where the river lay, and it was this sense that she used when – slipping in the leaf mould of the forest floor, covered from head to toe in sweat and dirt, and panting with the last of her energy – she arrived at the riverside.

By then she had heard the baying of dogs again, and she had heard, too, in her spirit-mind the admonitions of her mother; proof, indeed, that her mother was dead, translated into the spirit-form, and strangely enough this was a comfort to her, because she knew her mother was with her as she ran. And so she paid no heed to the cough of a jaguar or the snorting of peccaries. They had nothing to do with her totem, it was stronger than they were, and it would keep her from harm.

But the totem would not protect her from the Portuguese bullets, nor from the fangs of their dogs.

Thinking this, she scrambled round the trunk of an immense tree and stopped. She had found the river.

Here, among the forested banks, in this the dry season, the river looked a puny thing in the last of the day’s light, slow and turbid and bordered by reeking belts of mud. It looked forbidding and full of dull menace, and she hesitated, suddenly unsure, unwilling to trust her life to its sluggish flow. It flowed by, parting where a low humped island broke its flow, and joining again, looking inimical suddenly, full of ancient hostility and magic.

Then, suddenly, the dogs bayed right behind her.

They were fearsome, those dogs, long-legged and frightening with their wrinkled muzzles and huge yellow teeth. And they were fast, darting silently through the forest, finding their way from the least trace of blood on leaf or twig, from the impress of a bare foot on leaf mould. They had tracked her down more swiftly than she could ever have imagined.

In the very last light of the day, she saw them on the slope above her, three of them, their ears erect and muzzles wrinkled back. And – behind them – there were Portuguese hats and the sudden excited shouting of Portuguese voices.

With a quick breathed invocation of the spirit of her totem, the encantado, calling to it with her secret name, Belita plunged into the river.

The water closed over her head, plunging her instantly into blackness, and the current pressed on her body, pushing her away to the side. She raised her head, gasping for breath, and again heard the excited Portuguese shouting. Something large plunged into the water behind her, swimming strongly; whether dog or man she could not tell. It was swimming faster than she, with her wounded shoulder, and it would have her in a moment.

Then the water around her seemed to explode.

She felt it like a wave, a great powerful wave that swept by under her, raising her on the crest of it, a wave that erupted behind her in a detonation of spray and violence. Whatever was following her cried out, turning desperately for the shore, and again the wave flowed by under her, bearing her along for a moment, and she felt something else, a suggestion of smooth skin and immense power. It was only for a moment, and she could not be certain she had felt it, but it was enough. With the last of her flagging strength, she struck out, and her toes found the soft mud of the river bottom. A few moments later she stood on the island.

Staggering away from the water, she collapsed at the bottom of a tree, trying to catch her breath, knowing she had to keep going, because the Portuguese would not give up now.

Little by little, her exhausted breathing deepened, and she went to sleep.


When Belita came awake, the darkness was profound. The night was like a blanket round her; it flowed like the river, curling around her, almost tangible. She sat up, turning her head side to side, positive that she had heard something. Thinking it was the Portuguese and they had crossed the river somehow in the dark, she tried to crawl between the roots of the tree, seeking a place to hide. Then she felt the unmistakable touch of a hand on her shoulder.

Rolling over convulsively, terror searing through her being at the touch, she looked up.

He stood above her, looking down with a slight smile on his face. Despite the darkness, she could see him clearly, could see his stern handsome face and his lithe muscular body. He bent, reaching down, and gently pulled her up by the hand. Wordlessly, he drew her with him, until they were on the other side of the island, and she went with him, unable to turn away.

There on the other side of the island, he took her to him, and removed her loincloth and made love to her in the night, and the cry of her ecstasy reverberated in the forest canopy and set the Portuguese dogs to barking; and the new moon seemed to grow full a moment in her course to illuminate the scene.

Afterwards, the darkness cloaked the night again.


Camilo, those who knew him had often said, had many faults, but more than them all he had a stubborn determination to have his way, a determination that often led him to take stupid risks for quite minor gains. He knew that they said this, but he thought this was one of his strengths, and he thought anyone who disagreed with him as being beneath contempt anyway.

Since the first time he had seen the native girl, with her pretty face and long limbs and small high pert breasts, he had wanted her; wanted her body to ravage as he wanted and wanted her soul, to make her tremble at his whims, wanted her, this illiterate chit of a savage, more than he had ever wanted a woman before. Something in her excited him, lit a fire in his brain, and made him want her with a desperation that grew more intense every time he had seen her, walking around her village, naked like the savage she was. That she was obviously frightened of him and looked away if he even glanced at her excited him even further. Yes, he had long since decided, he would have her. The time would surely come.

And when the time had come, when the decision had been made to clear the savages off their land, he had reacted with energy and foresight. They could do what they wanted to the rest of the village, he had told the members of his band, but there was a girl that he wanted, the daughter of the chief of the tribe, and he, and he alone would have her.

He had all but had her, too, in those first moments of the attack, when the savages had been milling, confused, and his men had shot them down like target practice. He had seen her, and shouted at the others to leave her for him. But one of them – the idiot – had fired, and she had fallen. He had thought she was dead then, but she had risen, blood flowing from her shoulder, and run off through the trees. Pausing long enough to make sure the operation was going according to plan, Camilo had taken the dogs and followed with a couple of the men.

She had led him a hard chase, that savage, despite her shoulder wound, made him run after her for hours. Anyone else would have given up long ago, but not he, and he had the dogs, and the other men, for all they grumbled. And in the last light of the evening they had found her, trapped her on the riverbank, and Camilo was sure that he had her; but the savage had jumped into the water and tried to swim away.

What had happened after that was a mystery to Camilo. He had seen the girl’s slow, exhausted splashing, and known that he could easily catch her, known that he had to catch her before she drowned and foiled him utterly and finally. So he had jumped into the water, still dressed, and swum after her, and come close enough that he could feel the water displaced by her weakly kicking feet.

But then something had come in the water, something unseen, and had smashed into him with appalling force, had sent him scrambling back to the shore, doubled over with pain. The thing, whatever it was, had struck him so hard that he had lain, shuddering with agony, the entire night. Only the knowledge that his quarry was on the small island a short way across the river had kept him going, and now, in the first light of the morning, the pain had receded, and he could go on again.

“Keep the dogs with you,” he ordered his men. “I’m going to fetch this little savage back alone.” He stripped to his shorts and slipped into the river, swimming easily in the morning light, seeing with satisfaction that the savage could never have made the far bank in her exhausted and wounded state. No, she was certainly on the island, and trapped beyond all chance of escape, and in daylight nothing would be able to get at him. He grinned fiercely with pleasure and trod water a moment, feeling with his hand to ensure the big knife was still in the waistband of his shorts. A few moments later he was on the island. Drawing the knife, the grin still on his face, he went looking for her.

A quarter of an hour later, baffled and incredulous, he was back where he started. She had certainly been on the island – he had found traces of blood, and her loincloth, and the prints of her small feet – but she was no longer there. He went back again, over the same ground, raging, but there was no sign of her, nor any place where she could be hiding. Furiously, he screamed imprecations across the water.

In the distance, something breached the surface, a humped back, bright pink in colour. A long beak rose, and plunged under again, and a flat tail slapped the surface. A moment later, another river dolphin came up to breathe, this one a female, a delicate pearly shade of grey. It must have been a trick of the light that made it seem as though she had a leather purse round her neck on a string.

And then the dolphins were gone, back in the world where they dwelt, and the river rolled on, in its journey down to the distant sea.




Note to reader: The encantado, according to Amazonian mythology, is a male Amazonian river dolphin, Inia geoffrensis, which at night assumes human form, seduces and impregnates human women, and at daybreak goes back to his dolphin shape and returns to the river, to his golden underwater world.

Malaka

One day before her fourteenth birthday, Malaka’s mother called her aside.

Malaka had a kind of vacation, because the school had closed down a week ago when the one remaining teacher had finally fled. She had been out on the red earth playground of the school, playing football with a few of her friends, when her mother had come and taken her home. She went under protest, bitterly arguing, her shorts and oversized T shirt flapping around her bony limbs as she gesticulated. But her mother had not even turned her head until they were both back home. She had even made Malaka change from her mud-stained clothes into a clean dress and wash her hands and feet properly. Then she had suddenly broken down.

“Listen,” she said urgently, that gracious lady, kneeling on the floor before her daughter, tears in her eyes. “Listen,” she repeated. “Tomorrow, we’re sending you to live with Aunt Koral in Keke.”

“Why?” asked Malaka, astonished. “Tomorrow is my birthday. Why do I have to go to Aunt Koral? I don’t even like Keke.”

“Don’t argue, baby, please.” Her mother only called her “baby” when in the grip of powerful emotion. “It’s not safe for you here.”

“Why? Is it the war?” The war had been coming closer for weeks, and the people were frightened and worried. Some of them spoke in hushed whispers about the atrocities the dreaded Karibu rebels were inflicting on the civilians they captured. Others had scoffed and said nothing like that ever happened. Everyone waited, unhappy and uncertain, for the fighting to reach them.

Her mother nodded, now. “Yes, the war. You don’t have to worry about it. You’ll be all right with Aunt Koral.”

“But...what about you and father?”

“Well, we’ll be coming, just as soon as he can arrange leave from his job.” Malaka’s father was an overseer at the tin mine near the town. It was an excellent job. Malaka’s mother had been told many times over by various people how lucky she was to be the wife of a man with a job like that. It was not a job that could be lightly abandoned, even with the war. Besides, the victors – whoever they might be – would want the mine and would need people who knew how to run it. Malaka’s father had explained this to her mother in great detail, over and over, during the last months.

“It’s just that your father can’t get leave right away,” Malaka’s mother told her. “But we’ll be coming soon enough, don’t worry. Or if things settle down here, we’ll just fetch you back.”

“I don’t want to leave you!” And for all her fourteen years and the maturity that came with being a teenager, Malaka burst into tears.

“I know, baby,” her mother said unhappily. “I know.”


The bus to Keke was overcrowded. It was always overcrowded, even at the best of times, but now it was so full that there were people riding on the roof and hanging on to the window bars. It was an old bus, for all that it was brightly coloured in green and blue with a yellow hood, and its ancient engine wheezed and groaned and made a grating pained noise when the driver changed gear. Inside, Malaka sat on one of the hard wooden benches between a fat old woman carrying a box in her lap and a thin man with a grizzled beard who coughed continuously into a grubby blue handkerchief. The driver was sharing his own small seat with a passenger and had to lean over between the man’s legs to reach the gear lever.

Malaka’s mother had put her on the bus. Her father was on a double shift at the mine, so she had not seen him since the previous day. Her mother had given her a small bundle, containing her good new dress and the football shorts and T shirt she played in, and a little food. She had also given Malaka some money, enough to pay the driver for her trip to Keke. Malaka had thrust the tattered orange and brown Bisarian shillings into her socks to keep them safe.

The crowd at the bus was so great there wasn’t a chance to say goodbye. Malaka’s mother had thrust her through the door and was instantly pushed away by more people frantic to climb on. Malaka had caught a glimpse of her mother over her shoulder, looking lost in the crowd for all her height and majestic carriage, and then she was inside the bus and lucky to find a little space to sit.

“Can you move over a bit, girl,” the fat old woman said. “I need some space to breathe.”

Malaka tried to oblige and pushed against the coughing man with the grizzled beard. He glared at her and pushed back at her with his bony shoulder. His eyes were red-rimmed and there was purulent matter caked at the corners. “Get away from me,” he hissed and began coughing again, his body shaking. After that, Malaka sat very still.

Across from Malaka was a family she knew vaguely, the parents, wife and children of a colleague of her father’s at the mine. The old couple looked as though they were trying to sleep, while their daughter-in-law glared at Malaka across the aisle for some reason with concentrated hatred. Her lips moved, muttering something. Malaka tried not to look at her. Only once, as the bus drove away from her little town, did she wipe the tears away.

The road to Keke was bad, potholed in numerous places, with deep ruts where the tyres of hundreds of passing vehicles had worn the exposed earth away. On either side were sparse forests interrupted by scattered farms, the fields mostly lying fallow in this, the dry season. The heat was suffocating, and inside the bus, with the passengers crammed together, there was so little air that Malaka began to feel dizzy. She leaned her head as far back as she could in an effort to catch what little wind was coming in through the window behind her, and closed her eyes, swaying back and forth as the vehicle rattled and bounced.

Suddenly the bus stopped, so suddenly that Malaka fell forward into the aisle. For a moment she thought there had been an accident, as there had been once when she had been riding a truck and it had tipped over. Everyone seemed to be scrambling up from their seats at the same time, so that Malaka was almost trampled on the floor before she could somehow get to her feet. Someone outside was shouting, the voice all but drowned in the noise of the bus engine. Then there was a sudden loud banging noise and the bus engine stopped.

“Everybody out!” the person outside shouted, in heavily-accented Kudu, Malaka’s language, and then again in Sambar. “Everyone out. At once!”

Muttering and craning their necks, the passengers disembarked. As she followed the others, Malaka saw the driver still sitting behind the wheel, his hands held up by his ears. Then the people just in front of Malaka stopped. Some of them tried to push back into the bus.

“Out!” shouted the man outside again, his voice high and angry, and fired again into the air. “Out, quickly.” The passengers fell silent at once. Slowly, one by one, they left the bus. Malaka was one of the last.

She felt hands grab her and push her to one side. “Here’s another.” She was in a line of young people and children, both boys and girls. Older people had been pushed into a second and larger line. The driver was now getting down from the bus, in front of which the road had been blocked by a barrier made of old boxes, oil drums, the branches of trees and piles of rubber tyres. Around the bus and the barrier were a group of boys and young men, in shorts and dirty T shirts, most of them carrying guns. A few carried machetes with gleaming blades. One of these grabbed the driver by the scruff of the neck and threw him to the ground, saying something in a language Malaka didn’t recognise.

A thin, very tall man came round the back of the bus. He was dressed in a kind of military uniform, comprising dark green trousers with a khaki shirt and a cap with a blue and red cockade on it. He had a pistol in his hand and brandished it in the air and shouted. His voice was thin and high, almost like a woman’s.

“You lot,” he was shouting, “were running away, were you? Enemies of the revolution.” Malaka could understand enough Sambar to recognise how heavy his accent was. “You,” the man shouted, kicking the driver, “you were helping them. Traitor!” He shouted something else and suddenly shot the driver, who shivered and lay flat on the ground. A dark red circle began to form round his head.

Malaka stared, fascinated with fear, at the driver’s body. One of the boys laughed uproariously and scooped up some of the blood on his fingers and licked them clean. Another pointed his gun at the line of older people and fired. A woman screamed, lying on the ground and kicking with her legs. It was Malaka’s father’s colleague’s wife, who had been glaring at her on the bus. The boys laughed and a couple of them clapped. There was almost a festive air. Then the man in the military uniform shouted and they fell silent, except for the woman, who was still moaning.

“Here.” The tall man pointed at one of the younger boys in Malaka’s line. “That’s your mother there, isn’t she?” He pointed at the moaning woman. “You kill her.” He gave his gun to the boy and pushed him gently towards the injured woman. “Go on, point the gun at her and pull the trigger. Do it!” The boy, staggering with the heft of the revolver held at arm’s length, fired, and almost fell with the recoil. The older people moaned in horror. The woman stopped screaming and kicking. The armed boys cheered happily.

“That’s the way,” the tall man said, and took back the gun, slapping the boy on the back. “You’ll make a fine warrior.” He turned to Malaka’s line. “I am General Kadimba,” he said, in his heavily accented Sambar. “You all understand Sambar, don’t you?” He pointed at the boys with the guns. “These are all National Front warriors. You all will learn to be like them.” Then he said something in the unknown language to the armed boys and pointed. A couple of them came over and began pulling the girls out of the line. They were pushed along the road to where an old truck waited, forced onto it, and driven away.


Malaka awoke. Her entire body felt as if it were covered in bruises. Every movement was an agony. She gently touched herself at the centre of the pain, between her legs, and her fingers came away wet. When she held them up to the strip of moonlight coming through a chink in the wall, she found them to be black and sticky with blood.

“You’re awake,” another of the girls said. Like Malaka, she only wore the tattered remnants of her dress and was sitting with her chin on her knees. In the darkness, it was difficult to make out her features. “How’s the pain?”

Malaka ignored her, as she did the six or seven other girls in the small room. She got up and walked over to the little bathroom and washed herself. Afterwards she returned, found a spot in the corner, and fitted herself into it. When the waves of pain came, she bit her lip and was silent.

In the days that came, Malaka was moved around a lot. The General’s little army of boys were always on the go, and swollen with its new recruits, it needed food and shelter and drugs. The boys were all on drugs, and soon most of the girls were getting some too. It helped with the pain.

By now Malaka was beginning to learn the rudiments of the Karibu tongue used by the General’s men. They all had to learn it because speaking in Sambar was an offence that could get one beaten, and speaking Kudu was worse. Speaking Kudu could get one killed, because if there was any people the Karibu hated above all others, it was the Kudu.

Little by little, Malaka formed a friendship with one of the other girls, who was also a Kudu, like her. This girl was not from the group taken prisoner on the bus. She had been working as a farm labourer when the Karibu had come. Her name was Sifaka and she was slightly older than Malaka, a typical country lass, as large-boned and wide-hipped as Malaka was slim and tall. They made an odd couple, having absolutely nothing in common except their status as Karibu property.

Then one day the General met them. They were on a farm then, and the girls had been sent to wash clothes at a hand-pump that was still in working condition. The day was hot and sunny and the girls stripped down to as little as possible as they worked, and the General had stopped and watched.

“Come here,” he said in his high voice, pointing to Malaka. “Come here, girl.” And he had taken her with him without a further word.

At first it was slightly better being the General’s personal property. Malaka had a little better food than the other girls, and usually a place to sleep, and only had to do one man’s cleaning and cooking. Also, most of the time the General scarcely noticed she was even there, and treated her as part of the furniture. But it was only most of the time. As for the rest, it didn’t bear thinking about.

But time passed, and Malaka began to become more experienced at being able to hide who she was, and she became more used to controlling her emotions. Time passed, and she could watch limbs severed without a qualm. Without pity she learned to watch babies skewered on stakes beside their mothers’ heads, and when the victorious boy soldiers would lick the blood flowing from their victims, she even managed to fight down her nausea. In time she scarcely felt anything at all.

But time passed, and the moons grew and shrank, and Malaka grew to dread even the shadow the General’s elongated frame threw on the ground. The scuff of his shoes on the hard earth sent a thrill of terror through her body, and each night she would lie in fear, awaiting his coming, and doze off only when she could hear the strident noise of his snoring. Once he began snoring she knew she was safe for the night.

But time passed, and the fortunes of war turned against the Karibu, and the General’s mood turned worse, and the beatings and the rapes Malaka endured turned more vicious still. Every day they retreated now, back across the country towards the Karibu Nation, and every day the rapes and beating got worse, until Malaka learned that she had underestimated her own capacity to tolerate pain.

One day, Malaka met Sifaka again. The General was meeting some of his officers, and Malaka was loading his belongings into a captured civilian pick-up truck, when she saw the older girl passing by. A quick look around showed that they were unobserved, so she trotted to Sifaka, who watched her coming expressionlessly.

“How are you?” Malaka asked, speaking Kudu. Sifaka shrugged. “Why should you care? You’re fine now, aren’t you?”

“It’s not what you think, Sifaka.” But even as she said it, she knew that it was useless. Sifaka’s eyes were dull and expressionless, her mouth pinched and turned down at the corners. “Leave me alone,” the girl said and turned away. “You have a good time with the General. You aren’t one of us anymore.”

And then Malaka discovered she was pregnant.

She had missed periods before, several times, in the last months, and no wonder, too, given what she was going through. But this time there was no doubt. She waited until she was absolutely sure, and then she decided to tell the General.

That time they were camped in a little village, whose inhabitants had fled so long ago that the huts were beginning to crumble. The General had kept the village chief’s house for himself, of course. It was the rainy season now, and the downpour was so strong that it trickled through the roof and dripped here and there from the ceiling, but even so it was the least uncomfortable house in the village. The General’s boys had found a few oil lamps and a couple of them were burning in the old chief’s living room, the light flickering on the damp walls. The General was moodily eating the dinner Malaka had cooked for him.

She told him then, simply, that she was carrying his baby.

He looked up at her, his yellow eyes expressionless, his sharp teeth still ripping at a piece of roast mutton. He said nothing for a long time, and then went back to his food. Malaka finally decided he wouldn’t say anything, and turned away.

The blow was so sudden that it caught her by surprise, and so strong that it sent her sprawling. She rolled over just in time to receive the General’s first kick, which was meant to hit her spine, in the side of the hip. Her leg seemed to go numb with the force of it. The second kick hit her somewhere in the torso, and then the General reached down and dragged her up by her woolly hair. Throwing her down on her back on his bed, he knelt on her, his hand rocking her head back and forth with slaps. Malaka began to lose sensation in her face. Her vision was dimming and she could no longer feel the pain of the slaps. Only her head rang with each blow, like a bell.

Frantically trying to defend herself, she hit back at him with her hands. With his free hand, he easily swatted her blows away. Dimly, she heard a high gasping sound and realised the General was laughing.

Then the laughter turned to coughs and the General stopped hitting her. Slowly, like a toppling tree, he fell on her and rolled to the side. Malaka shook her head and tried to push herself away from him, and fell off the bed. The sharp agony of her knee hitting the floor brought her back to her senses. Slowly, wiping her eyes, she sat up.

The General lay on the bed, trembling. The haft of a knife protruded from his side, and dark blood had stained his uniform black in the lamplight. The General’s hand was uncertainly trying to pull at the knife.

There was a noise behind Malaka. She looked around, quickly. The door to the house was wide open, and for just a moment she saw a face looking in, a face streaming with rain, eyes glaring white in the black skin. Then the face was gone, and scurrying footsteps faded away in the hiss of the rain.

Malaka had recognised the face, though. It was the farm worker girl, Sifaka.

There was clearly no point in going after her. Nor could she stay here with the General, who was still fumbling at the knife. He would kill her if he recovered, and if he didn’t, his men would; and she had seen enough deaths at their hands to know what she could expect. Hardly taking a moment to think, pausing only long enough to snatch up her shoes. In the toe of one of them, she still had the Bisarian shillings her mother had given her on the day she had been put on the bus. It had been her birthday, she remembered suddenly, as she slipped in the mud outside the house, the rain beating down on her. Everything that had happened to her since then seemed a strange birthday present indeed.

The darkness and the rain made it impossible for her to see where she was going, but at the same time they were her shield, her protection. Although she was soaked to the skin within moments of leaving the house, she welcomed the rain, and let it wash the pain and blood from her. Slipping ans sliding in the mud, she trotted through the night, making her way along the path until she was too exhausted to go much further. By then the rain had faded to a drizzle, and she went off the path and into the forest. Orienting herself by the touch of her fingertips on the trunks of trees, she walked until her legs were buckling under her, and then she lay down under a tree and fell almost instantly asleep.

Dull and throbbing pain woke her, seeping up from her hips and torso. Her head ached too, from the blows. Touching her front teeth with her tongue sent a shaft of agony through her, and she realised that some teeth were broken. Her eyes were swollen shut, too, and it was difficulty that she prised them apart far enough to see.

She was lying by a riverside. The river was sluggish, narrow, and winding, and the banks and water muddy and turbid. On the far side low humped hillocks were covered by forest. The sun had come up and was baking the steam off the mud and the leaves.

Slowly, using a tree trunk for support, Malaka stood. When she tried to walk, she tottered and nearly fell. After some time she went down to the river, stripped, and washed herself. After that she felt better and – slowly, staying in the shelter of the forest – began to walk down the river.

She walked through the forest for five days before she reached the road. For most of those days she kept as close to the river as she could. The river gave her water to drink and to wash her bruises. It kept her from getting lost and wandering in circles. And a few times she waded into it and managed to catch a few small fish, which she ate raw and still half-alive, since she had no means to cook or clean them. It was nauseating but it was the only food, apart from a few fleshy brown mushrooms she found, that she had.

Each day she would start walking just after dawn, and walk until she could no longer. Then, she would rest under the trees until she felt strong enough to go on again. She would walk until the dusk began to close in and then she would find a place to sleep for the night, a hollow tree or an overhanging rock.

She had no real idea where she was going. All she wanted to do was to get as far away from the General’s people as possible. If at all she thought of it consciously, she hoped to find people some time, someone who might tell her how to get back to her parents if that was possible. If not, she was looking for a place she might be reasonably safe. That was all.

On the third day, she noticed smoke rising in the distance, and soon afterwards she saw debris floating by on the river, half-burned wood and pieces of charred paper, and later what she thought might be corpses. It was difficult to be sure because it was raining by then and the water was muddy, and the objects were out in the middle of the stream. Whether they were bodies or just logs of wood, the river bore them away, and after that Malaka was very careful and stayed far in the shelter of the trees.

The day before she reached the road, Malaka heard voices, and instantly lay on the ground, pressing herself flat to the earth. The river was quite narrow at that point, and on the other bank she saw a flash of red. A moment later a boy in a red T shirt and khaki shorts strolled out of the forest and stood, a rocket launcher over his shoulder, watching the stream. After a while some more boys came out of the forest, talking, and sat on the bank in the sunshine and passed cigarettes back and forth. Malaka could smell the marijuana smoke. She stayed very low, listening to the boys talking, unable to make out most of what they said, but hearing frequent references to the General. Which General they meant, she didn’t know, of course. The civil war was full of generals on both sides. But each time she heard the word her throat went dry with fear.

A long time after the boys had gone, Malaka got up and went on. Now that she knew there was at least one army somewhere near the river, she moved away from it and went up through the forest, away from the boys. At times she swayed, dizzy with hunger, and twice she fell. Each time it took a while before she could get up again.

She began to see things. The trees, it seemed to her, reached for her with their branches and gibbered at her with fanged mouths that dripped blood. Great birds with iron beaks flapped by overhead, waiting for her to drop, and she could hear a great roaring noise, which she decided was a fire come to burn the world.

That night, while she slept, her body shaking with fever, she dreamed that she was back home and that her mother had come running to her with open arms, and behind her, her father, too, stood smiling, and they told her it was all a bad dream she had had and everything would be all right now. It was a cruel dream because the waking from it was such agony.

When she found the road, at first she decided it was another part of the delirium. It lay before her, full of people hurrying along, bundles on their heads and leading children or livestock. Once in a while an ancient car or truck, grossly overloaded, drove slowly through the throng.

Once Malaka had finally decided that the road was real, she wiped her feet with grass, put on her shoes (which she had been carrying round her neck, tied with the laces) and, hobbling because of the shillings still tucked in the toe of one, went down to the road.

She approached an old woman who was pulling along a barrow loaded with sacks. The woman glared at her suspiciously out of eyes that were milky with cataract, and kept going. “Grandmother,” said Malaka, speaking Sambar because she knew many Sambar resented the Kudu and blamed them for being the cause of the war, “can you tell me, where does this road lead? Where are you all going?”

“Keke,” said a man walking behind the old woman. “Most of us here are going to Keke. Where are you going?”

He was a thin man with a scarred face. Malaka fell into step beside him. “I wanted to go to,” she named the mining town where she had grown up, “Harada. How do I get there?”

“Harada?” The thin man peered at her. “But the town was destroyed in the fighting months ago.”

“Are you sure?” Malaka felt a knot forming inside her. “You’re sure it was destroyed?”

“Positive. Just about everyone was killed, and the few who survived ran away. Where have you been that you don’t know that?”

“Nothing...it’s not important.”

“Are you ill? You don’t look right.” The thin man was still staring at her, and Malaka knew that if anyone suspected her to have been part of one of the rebel armies she would be in serious trouble. So she fell back, sitting down on the grass at the roadside, and retied her shoes. Only after a long time did she feel able to go on again.

That evening there was shooting from somewhere near the road, and explosions. Many of the people left the road and fled into the forest. Malaka, feeling too weak to go back into the jungle, stayed on the road, and was rewarded by finding a bag of dried meat which someone had abandoned. The strips of meat were salty and tough as leather, but it was the first real food she had eaten in days.

Later on, after the shooting ended, she passed through a little roadside village which was still burning. Corpses lay everywhere, some of them headless or naked. There was not a live person to be seen, and Malaka did not linger.

Just after darkness she came across a truck which had broken down by the roadside, its hood open. The driver was trying to make repairs by torchlight, but he was having a hard time focussing the torch with one hand and working with the other. He looked up when he saw Malaka coming, and seemed to decide she was harmless. “Here,” he said, holding out the torch. “Hold this a moment, will you.”

For the next few minutes he bent over the engine compartment, occasionally telling Malaka where to focus the torch. Finally he grunted and slammed the hood closed. “There,” he said, “now that should be all right.” Stepping into the cab he turned on the engine, which ground to life. “All right,” he said. “Get in.”

“What?” Malaka was taken by surprise, but the man was obviously waiting impatiently for her, so she got in on the passenger side. The interior of the truck’s cabin was full of stale cigarette smoke, and the driver was already lighting up again. “We’ll be lucky to get through to Keke,” the driver said, puffing away, “what with the fighting coming back this way.” He glanced at Malaka. “You sleep if you can,” he told her. “You look ready to drop.” And, snuggling into the corner of the truck cabin, Malaka slept.

She was woken by a terrific noise, a blast so loud that it seemed to her that her eardrums had been ruptured. A huge hand plucked her up, threw her into the air and smacked her down, so hard that it drove the breath from her body. White hot things came raining down too, and where they touched her, they burned. Rolling frantically until she stopped burning, she fainted.

When she opened her eyes it was dawn. She was lying on the roadside. A short distance away was the wreckage of the truck. It was charred and surrounded by a huge blackened circle on the road. The driver’s body lay in a tangle of broken metal, burned black as coal, his hands still grasping the steering wheel.

“Don’t go along the road,” a boy called to her when she sat up. He stood in a nearby field, watching the smouldering wreck, a goat on a rope beside him. “It’s mined. Soldiers came yesterday.”

“How far is Keke?” asked Malaka, rubbing the dust off her arms and legs.

The boy pointed. “That way...it’s a couple of hours’ walk. My father used to work there.” He was very young, six at the most, and his eyes returned with fascination to the wrecked truck and the dead man. Malaka left him and went on, every step an agony of pain.

It was early afternoon before she reached the outskirts of the city. On the way, she had met almost nobody. In the distance, now, she could see the tall buildings of the city centre, and nearer, a tangle of plastic and tin on a huge stretch of open ground. She would have to pass it to get to the city.

A green military jeep drove up and stopped a short distance down the road. There were five or six soldiers in it, and they watched her curiously. One, tall and fat, got down and sauntered over to her.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Keke.” She indicated the city behind him.

The fat soldier grinned. “From the provinces, are you? Refugee? Then that’s your place.” He pointed at the tangle of plastic sheeting and tin. “Off you go.”

Malaka stared. What she had taken to be a garbage dump turned out to be a refugee camp, the sheets of plastic and tin makeshift tents and shanties. “There?”

“Where else?” The fat soldier pointed impatiently. Slowly, Malaka changed direction. Then the fat soldier called her back.

“One minute. Forgetting something, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“What do you give us, for our trouble? We keep you nice and safe in that camp from the Karibu hordes, so what do we get?” He studied her face and figure, and shrugged. “No, forget that...you’re too dirty to fuck. Diseased bitch.” He looked down at her shoes, which she had only been wearing since the previous day and which were still clean and undamaged. “Those shoes. Give me those shoes.”

“No, I...” The soldier held up a huge hand, ready to slap. “Give me the shoes,” he repeated. “Or I might just change my mind about the other thing.” Slowly, reluctantly, Malaka squatted and unlaced the footwear. For a moment she wondered if there was any way she could grab the shillings inside, but the fat soldier was watching too intently. He grabbed the sneakers and shoved her with his hand in the direction of the camp, making her stagger. “Where are you from, by the way?”

“Harada.”

“It was destroyed, wasn’t it?” said the fat soldier indifferently. “Mind you, I think there are a few of the rats from there in the camp. You might get along together in the same filth.” Laughing, he got in the jeep, and drove slowly away.

Malaka hobbled into the camp. It was very large, and very filthy, the ground covered with refuse, and flies buzzed everywhere. A few people stared at her apathetically.

There was a tap in the distance, at which an old woman was filling a bucket. There was only a trickle of water, but Malaka suddenly realised how thirsty and exhausted she was. She walked over to the tap and waited. The old woman glanced at her, removed the bucket, and motioned her to the tap. Malaka nodded gratefully and splashed the water over her head and arms, and scooped up a little to drink. Then she stepped back from the tap and replaced the bucket under it.

“I thank you, Old Mother,” she said formally, as she put the bucket down. “I’ve come from Harada. Can you tell me if there is anyone here from those parts?”

“Harada?” The old woman craned her wizened neck towards her. “You’re from Harada?”

“Yes,” Malaka turned round. “I’ve been away from there for months, though. Do you know anyone from Harada here?”

The old woman looked at her for a long moment. “You’d better come with me,” she said at last.


“There were many from Harada,” the old woman said.

Malaka and she sat together on low wooden stools in her shanty, which was little more than a tin-walled shed with plastic sheeting stuffed into the cracks to keep out the weather. In the corner was a rolled-up mat which evidently served the woman for a bed at night. A few cooking utensils stood by the opposite wall.

“Yes,” the old woman continued, “there were quite a lot of them, mostly from the mining families. They came here just before the war reached them, and they were all put into the camp. It was a smaller camp then, and cleaner.”

“So what happened to them?” Malaka asked. “Are any of them still here?”

“No,” the old woman said. “They went away...they were sent back.”

“Sent back?”

“Yes, the army came after they recaptured the mines and told the people from Harada they were needed, and it was safe there. They were all loaded into trucks and sent back. Some of them didn’t want to go, but they weren’t given a choice.”

“But then they must be there still!” Malaka jumped up with excitement. “And I was told the town had been destroyed.”

“No...they aren’t there, unless there are really ghosts. The town has been destroyed.”

“I don’t understand...you just told me the army recaptured the town.”

“The war came back,” the old woman said. “One of the rebel armies came, and the army – the real army, you know, those men outside in green uniforms who had told the people it was safe – well, they just ran away. And then the rebels destroyed the town and killed everyone.”

“But then – where is safety? I have a baby inside me. Where can I give birth to it in peace and safety, Old Mother? Where?”

“Nowhere,” said the old woman, and the word was a primal cry of despair. “Nowhere.”