Muto leapt to his right, stumbling and falling as the boar’s tusks swept past his skinny thigh and dug into the hardened bark of the Chima tree, splintering it and sending bits and pieces of wood flying onto his face. The animal was so close he could smell the mud and dung caked in its fur, and could see the green froth bubbling from the sides of its snout, its eyes almost glowing with yellow, murderous intent. Its grunts were strange and warbling, and its muddy fur seemed to be crawling and flickering with millions upon millions upon millions of tiny arachnids. It was a massive, terrifying mass of pitch-black hair and testosterone ─a gigantic frame of furry darkness and anger, and had he not seen it clearly just before it charged him he would have mistaken it for a hitherto undiscovered monstrosity. It spun around towards him, just as he hauled himself off the ground, dropping waves of little spiders onto the forest floor. It was a gargantuan male – probably two, three hundred kilos, and it seemed its only intent in this instant in time was to kill him.
Muto quickly realised that he could not run. The boar was too close. He postured himself like a street sparrer prepared for a duel and readied to throw as hard a hit onto the beast’s head as he could possibly muster. He steadied himself on his feet and faced it, instinctively balling his fists, as if this was another schoolyard bully he had to keep from his midday cornmeal.
The boar released another strange, warbling grunt and charged Muto again, evading his flailing fists and puncturing him in the groin. Immediately he felt thousands of tiny legs scurry up and down his arms and torso. Muto fell, grabbing the beast’s head, and tried to ignore the fiery pain below his navel. He held onto the monstrous head that was now so close to his face, the breath from the two barrels on its snout singeing his hair. Its eyes were dark abysses, and the two blood-stained pieces of ivory that curved robustly from the sides of the froth-filled snout were strangely beautiful: a crimson-tipped whiteness that contrasted magnificently with the dank, woolly, arachnid-infested night that clothed the spectacular beast.
The head was too massive for Muto to hold on to ─too powerful to be restrained─ so he quickly shifted his hands and desperately grabbed onto the animal’s tusks. If anything was going to kill him it was these tusks. He had to hold onto them until he couldn’t hold onto them any longer, until he was spent. The animal shook its head violently and smeared Muto all over the forest floor. His trousers were damp: he knew he was bleeding profusely from his groin. The animal’s strength, and the ease with which it shook him along the ground among the fallen leaves and twigs and branches made it frighteningly clear to him that if he did not do something quickly he was, with terrifying certainty, going to die.
With this chilling realisation, Muto screamed.
His shout was wordless but eloquent. Somebody help me, it declared. It was the blood-curdling trumpeting of a poor creature caught pathetically out of its depth and struggling to hold onto its life with two frail arms that were tiring by the second. Muto feared his scream would return empty-handed. When your time was passed you knew it. You felt it. Muto knew this was it.
He felt his strength wane as his stronger opponent slowly pulled itself loose. As it finally shook free of his surrendering grasp the terror and imminence of death came over Muto and he covered his face with his trembling hands, anticipating another blow, probably the last, from his conqueror.
The squeals of the beast roused him. He uncovered his face and looked towards his feet to see a man clasped onto the large, furry back with one arm, and with the other furiously stabbing the monster in the fat, quivering, writhing folds of the large trunk that was its neck.
The beast squealed as a fountain of crimson gushed forth from its hide. It shook violently, attempting to eject the man from its back, but with admirable strength he held on, relentlessly cutting and tearing and ripping at the thick fat and muscle. In a final attempt to loose itself of the man the boar turned and made off into the thick foliage of the forest, carrying him with it, leaving Muto alone, exhausted and bleeding and fading. Muto saw them disappear into the growing night and lay his head down onto the cold, leafy ground, finally allowing himself a rest that washed over him in a dark, deathly loss of consciousness.
*
The whispers of a cold breeze rustling through leaves and the gentle bowing and rising of the boughs of great trees created a chilly but cosy ambiance that Muto awoke lazily and painfully into, noticing immediately that there was a fire burning next to him. He tried to move but the sharp piercing in his groin made him wince and yelp and still himself. He turned his head towards the fire and noticed a man ─the man— seated on a rock on the other side of the flame, bare-chested, with his teeth gleefully stripping meat off a large, roasted femur. The man ate eagerly, his lips smacking against each other with the crude manners of a muhiri from the West.
“You can chew with your mouth closed, tikwe?” Muto said plaintively.
“Musigazi!” the man exclaimed. “You’re awake!”
“Where am I?” Muto inquired.
“Ihugo forest,” the man replied matter-of-factly, “Right in the middle of nowhere. I was beginning to wonder about you!”
Muto’s mind suddenly flashed back to images of darkness and fur, warbles and grunts, a million tiny feet and a frothing snout…to beautiful, crimson-tipped tusks and gushing blood. His blood… to the image of imminent death.
His heart began to pound in his chest. He coughed painfully and tasted an abundance of iron in his mouth. He was still alive. He was still alive.
“What… what happened to…to…to the…” he stopped and coughed again and this time a trickle of bloody saliva escaped his lips.
The man smiled and his eyes smiled with him. He moved both his arms towards the fire in a manner of presentation, the half-eaten meaty femur in his hands. “Do you like pork?” he asked wryly.
Muto grimaced with revulsion. He moved his hands towards his groin and felt a tight wrapping around his waist. He turned towards the fire again and keenly observed the man. He was youngish, perhaps in his early or mid-thirties, with a balding head and a taut-looking frame. When he got up Muto observed with amusement the kinky, sparse hairs on his chest and was humorously reminded of his uncle Murozi.
The man walked over to Muto and squatted next to his side. He looked intently at the boy and pressed his fingers to the bandaged groin, forcing a squeal from Muto’s mouth.
“What is your name?” the man asked.
“Muto.”
“That boar had your number, Muto.”
Muto swallowed the iron in his mouth.
“How old are you?” the man continued.
“Seventeen.”
“Where are you headed to? What are you doing moving about in the middle of Ihugo forest at nightfall? Do you know the kind of things that happen to kids like you in a place like this?”
Muto shook his head.
“Well, you almost found out. But there are worse things than rabid pigs in this place.”
The man gazed intently again at Muto for a while and then the grin broke out again on his face, causing his eyes to slit in a childlike glee.
“My name is Ponde,” the man said heartily. “Are you sure you don’t want any?” He brought the femur close to Muto’s face and the aroma of roasted meat wafted into the boy’s nostrils, causing him to rethink his earlier refusal. He was hungry, after all, and what better meal than your would-be assassin?
Ponde pinched strips of flesh from the bone and fed the boy bit by bit. By the time Muto fell back into unconsciousness the fire had almost burnt out and the trees had begun to dance more fixedly in the rising wind, swaying in graceful waves, the leaves all around rustling with exhilaration in the growing breeze and chill of imminent rain. It’s going to pour tonight was the last thing the boy thought as he drifted back into a dark oblivion.
*
“It’s not over yet, my little one.”
The whisper that cut through the dark, through his consciousness, was sweet and soothing.
And dooming.
Muto had the impression that he was inside some sort of cave. He blinked in the dark and stared hard, perceiving gradually the faint green glow of the two slit-pupil eyes of a great big serpent. He couldn’t see the creature at all but it was as though he could feel its great big coils writhe and twist in the dark, and almost feel its forked tongue flicker with delicious pleasure, tasting the air for his scent and savouring the boy even before it had him.
“Who are you?” he quivered in reply.
A loud, self-satisfied, feminine laugh. The disheartening grunt and warble of a boar. The sound of a million scurrying arachnids.
The slow but sweet hiss of a gigantic reptile.
“The deep is beautiful, little one. Ija! It floods with the souls of the Bantu. The deep is terrible, musigazi. It awaits you. Ija!”
A bright fire suddenly flashed from the pale-green glow of the serpent’s eyes, turning them scarlet and illuminating the place, everything, in a wash of red. Muto could now see enough for him to make out the gradual opening of the serpent’s great mouth, revealing an interior of deep-pink flesh that widened to welcome him. He opened his mouth to scream but the giant mouth was on him in a flash, locking him up and sending him down into that great deep of water and lost souls.
His scream finally caught and woke him up, drenched in a cold sweat, Ponde’s face looming over him. The man was smiling, observing the boy with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. He kept his smiling face fixed on the boy as he raised his hands to reveal a long and slimy eel wriggling desperately in his grasp, its mouth gasping for air and its tailfin flapping hopelessly for freedom.
“Nightmare?” the man asked.
“Yes,” the boy responded.
“Nothing a nice grilled river eel can’t fix,” the man grinned.
“I saw…I saw… a big snake… a great big snake…”
“Aaah…” the man said, his smile fading.
“…with shining eyes and…”
“Uh huh,” the man’s face dropped, taking on a serious, solemn look.
“What?” the boy asked.
The man withdrew slightly and sat on the dewy, leafy ground next to the boy.
It was now early afternoon but the windy chill was back. They were under a big Chima tree. Above them and beyond the trees the sun shone brilliantly, and glimpses of the bright blue sky appeared through the gaps in the leafy canopy above their heads. Muto kept staring at the patches of sky and sunlight that he could see through all the branches and leaves, up above, and listened serenely to the chirping of birds, the lively chatter of unknown creatures, the calling of monkeys in the bright and shady Ihugo afternoon.
“It’s the river,” Ponde said sombrely.
“The river?”
“It’s speaking to you.”
The boy sat up painfully, hissing and grimacing, his attention snared.
“Yes,” Ponde insisted, “The river. Ihugo river. It is speaking to you.”
“The river…is speaking…to me?”
“Yes. Specifically, the being called Museki.”
“What?”
“It is alleged to be an ancient monster that inhabits these waters. Some say it is a goddess, others that it is a great big eel that swallows whatever triggers its whiskers, and yet others that it is a great serpent, a snake, condemned by God to dwell eternally within the deep.”
“Well what is it then?”
Ponde smiled and looked a while at the fish in his hands that had already given up the fight.
“I should get that fire going,” he said.
“I can’t feel my legs,” Muto said, suddenly realising a dismaying reality.
“I’m not surprised,” Ponde said, almost nonchalantly. “That beast hit you pretty hard. It must have severed nerves.”
“I’m going to feel them soon, my legs? I’m going to walk and run again soon, yes?” the desperation in Muto’s voice was pitiful.
Ponde sighed. “No, not likely,” he said.
Muto’s face darkened, falling like a veil sliding off a dark mirror, revealing a void underneath. He went quiet, enshrouded in horror.
Ponde sighed again. “Where is your home?” he asked.
“Kyamakamba,” Muto whispered distraughtly, almost inaudibly.
“I’ve been there!” Ponde said. “Beautiful place. They need to do something about the hygiene in the town centre though. You can’t walk fifteen metres without stepping on rot.”
Muto remained silent. He was absorbed in a world of inexpressible fright.
“Is that where you were headed?” Ponde asked.
Muto nodded shakily.
“It is the middle of the school term. What are you doing here? I know for a fact that St. Gabriel’s is a fulltime boarding school. Yes, I saw the badge on your shirt.”
“My sister is very sick,” Muto replied, his voice breaking. “She’s with my auntie at home…”
“So?” Ponde probed.
“She might die. She was very ill when I left and…”
Ponde kept his stare fixed on the boy.
“…and I dreamt that she was going to die. I wanted to see her.”
“What’s her name?”
“Kente.”
“How old is she?”
“Nine.” Muto swallowed and continued. “She’s all I’ve got left.”
“Your parents?”
Muto shook his head. The dismay on his face deepened, as though a new realisation had occurred to him.
“I’m all she’s got,” he said, “And now… I can’t… I can’t walk.” He huffed mouthfuls of air, shaking like a tremor coursed through him.
He cried with a pain that wrecked. Ponde sighed and watched him awhile. He then got up and walked a few metres to the hearth he had set up the previous night. He got a fire going, loosely sliced the large fish, passed a sturdy reed through it and placed it atop the heat. He looked back at the boy: he was still sobbing but more calmly and levelled now, tired out and in pain from his wounded groin.
“There might not be enough for the both of us,” the man said. “I’m going down to the river, see if I can get one or two more.” And just like that he grabbed his brown, shabby, patched-up rucksack and ran back down to the rushing waters.
*
As the dry reeds snapped crisply in the fire he had made Ponde took a while to observe the boy carefully. The afternoon chatter of birds and monkeys had now become distant and echoey. The fishes, four of them, were roasting nicely and he thought it a good time to try and lighten up the boy’s mood. Muto ─he’d long stopped weeping─ was now engrossed in an encompassing gloom that Ponde was intent on abolishing.
“Your ancestors would have known many things about this forest, about this river, that are now lost in time,” he began. The boy stared blankly at his lap, breathing-in drawn-out, forlorn draughts.
“The ancient Bantu were a resourceful people,” he continued, “And were even known to fashion miraculous cures from the most unlikely sources.” The boy shifted a bit.
“Your forefathers are believed to have obtained a vast amount of knowledge from beings called bamariika – angel-like creatures. Some say they were fairies. The bamariika taught them various new things: smelting iron, fashioning ornaments from minerals, healing strange ailments.”
The man took two fish –now ready– off the fire and set them on large Chima leaves. He got up and took one to the boy, setting it onto his lap. The boy stared blankly at it.
“You should eat, get your strength up. Today might be a big day for the both of us.”
Ponde returned to his blazing hearth and sat down next to it. He took his fish and dug his fingers into its hot, bony flesh. He ate eagerly, savouring every morsel, until he had consumed nearly all of it. He then set it down and reached into his rucksack for his bottle of river water.
“The Western Nilotes,” he continued, “had similar encounters too. But one story stands out in particular for both peoples. For the Bantu, their leader Mukomba’s youngest daughter was miraculously brought back to life after she was bathed in the bile of a large river serpent, probably a museki.” He cleared his throat. “For the Nilotes, Obongo’s blind boy regained his sight when ash from the charred liver of a mysterious water creature was rubbed into his eyes. What I’m saying is… we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on our hands. Do you see where I’m…”
The boy now stared proper at Ponde. He was clearly intrigued, without wanting his mind to stray too far ahead of him. He looked down at his lap and pinched his eel and put a morsel of its hot white flesh to his lips, tasting the river, and seeming to come alive. A small rock hit him suddenly on the face and he snapped up to look at Ponde, who was impatiently glaring at him.
“Do you understand where I’m going with this, boy?”
“No…not really,” Muto said mutedly, staring timidly back at the man.
Ponde sighed in exasperation.
“Boy, do you want to walk again?”
“Yes,” Muto nodded vigorously, his eyes now lighting up like a television animation.
“Good. Now all we have to do,” Ponde said, “is go down there…” he pointed towards the river, “…and get that thing’s liver.”
“What thing?” Muto said, the glow in his eyes now replaced with white suspicion.
“The museki, of course,” Ponde said matter-of-factly. “It is the only way you will ever run and hop and jump again, and help your sister.”
Muto’s mouth opened slightly, betraying his disbelief.
“We… we can’t… we…” he stammered.
Ponde smirked and snickered. “Well,” he continued, “it came to check you out in your sleep last night; we might as well pay it an unexpected return visit.” He smiled widely this time and laughed out loud. Muto was frozen solid. The memory of near-death was still fresh in his mind.
“You are not a mumariika,” Muto tried to debate.
“Your ancestors weren’t either. Nor were mine. But they were taught by bamariika and what they could do, so can we.” Ponde still smirked rebelliously.
“I… I don’t know… I…”
“You don’t know or you’re afraid?”
“I… I… I’m afraid.” Muto put the fish down by his side and stared once more at his lap.
“Well,” Ponde mused, “Take your rest. You’re lame so you won’t be of much use to me anyway. I’ll finish here and get moving.”
“Get moving to where?”
Ponde glared at him in disbelief. “To the river, you idiot.”
“You’re going to do it now?”
“Yes. While there is still light. It’s three hours to nightfall, that should be enough time for me. If I’m not back by then… then I’m sorry… tough luck, kid.”
Muto protested but Ponde was already gathering things into his rucksack. He finished what was left of his roasted eel, took a swig from his river water and turned to head back down to the river.
“Kid,” he said as he paused mid-stride, “This life is not worth living if you’re not going to take chances, like you did yesterday running out of school and getting lost in a great big dark forest. You let love blind your reason, and sometimes that is not a bad thing. Pray for me.”
“Wait,” Muto spoke up as Ponde turned to head down to the river.
“What?”
“I… I’ll come with you. Please take me with you.”
Ponde grinned. “Your ancestors would be very proud, kid. There can be no true courage, no true bravery without fear.”
He gently carried the boy off the ground – grimacing and hissing – and took him lying over his shoulder downhill through the trees that looked down on them, through the golden streaks of early sunset broken by branch and twig, over the green and yellow and orange leaves that carpeted the forest.
II
Muto had not been around water a lot. There had been that one time at Nsharo when he had gone with his uncle Murozi to see the fishermen, and he could remember the overwhelming smell of small silver fishes, known as mukene in the local tongue; the upper part of the shore was nearly all covered in large and thick white, black and blue polyethene sheets covered with drying mukene. He could remember the smell, the canoes, the nets…and the water. So much water. As far as the eye could see. Ripples upon ripples of a grey mass, reflecting the darkening sky.
That day he climbed onto a canoe with Murozi and another man, and they paddled out into the shallows. “We mustn’t linger too long, for it will rain soon,” the man said to Murozi. Muto lowered his tiny hand and dipped it into the cold wetness of the river, watching the waves lick his arm. “Careful now,” Murozi said to him. “In these places, things lurk underneath the water’s surface.” And he went on to tell Muto, for the first time, about the forest in the outlands and the great river that fed it.
Lying here at the shore, seeing the great expanse of the river known as Ihugo, so big it should have, must have, been closer to a flowing lake – if lakes could rush like it did – brought back faint memories of that dark and cloudy afternoon at Nsharo. Except now it was sunny, the early chill had faded and the river was as peaceful as it could be, notwithstanding the ambient rush that it made and had made since the beginning of time.
Ponde was squatting a few feet from him, pulling a huge eel out of his rucksack.
“Just exactly how many of those did you catch?” Muto wondered aloud.
“Enough,” Ponde replied, “Bait.”
Muto looked back at the river and his mind wandered to Kente, his sister, at home. Ponde began to whistle a tune, loud and solemn, as he stuck the fish onto an improvised hook and rod he had made from sticks and twigs. He turned and cast the fish into the water as he whistled the tune. The tune lulled Muto into a bizarre daydream, and he could see people, legions of them, walking in large and wide files across the shore, stretching back over the hills and beyond.
A migration.
Hundreds of thousands of people. Women carrying babies on their backs, dressed in bark-cloth and carrying sticks and branches and Chima leaves; men with walking sticks, some with clubs and bolases, some with spears, some with large baskets tied to their backs. A song. It starts with one old, tired, croaky voice. Another reluctantly joins in. Soon the song is on all their lips. All of them. Singing and chanting in unison to keep the morale up, to keep the hunger and fatigue away. They sang and shouted and clapped and chanted, and the river churned at their incantations.
Ponde’s whistle grew calmer, sadder, more entreating than encouraging. As if in response, the rush of the river slowed, slowly but steadily, until it came to a standstill. Muto could see the Bantu gathered at the shore, in awe, wondering, gazing, gaping, pointing and gesticulating. There was something beneath the surface of the river.
When the tentacle broke the surface and flew out like a large, black, rubbery arm it was too late for the nearest man to act. He was gone in a flash, spirited from the shore and plunged into Ihugo river. The migration dispersed in a frantic panic.
Ihugo river now came to a perfect and serene halt. Ponde whistled more quietly now, expectant. What happened next Muto could only compare to one other event in his life. Muto had once seen an eclipse happen right before his eyes when he was six. He had stood, transfixed, gazing up at the sun as the villagers banged on their drums and looked deeply into buckets and pots of water. He had seen, with a great, unforgettable terror, the dark shape of the moon slowly invade the magnificent orb in the sky, its rounded darkness slowly eating up the surface of the sun until all that was left was a dark eyeball gazing down at him ─ a horrifying and indelible image in his mind as a six-year old. This was the only feeling Muto could compare to what he now saw before him. As the calm surface of Ihugo river slowly bulged, the whole world going dead-quiet, the birds’ chirping ceasing, the monkeys’ chatter falling suddenly to a terrified silence, the water bulging slowly, expectantly, until it split in a mighty roar, opening into two halves at least twenty metres apart, parting to release the inhabitant, who ascended vertically in a gigantic and terrifying wall of wet, slick, brown fur, slimy and matted, covered all over in small silver fishes – mukene – river weeds and algae; in the setting sunlight its infinitely large trunk casting the shadow and silhouette of an eel-like dinosaur onto the entire expanse of the Ihugo shore.
Muto let out a scream that even he couldn’t hear for the blood and pounding in his ears and head. He looked to his side but Ponde was gone; he looked up again at the tower of wet and slick fur, the great big leviathan, that algae and fish-covered dinosaur that was climbing towards the clouds in a mighty ascension, and sure enough there was Ponde, up there dangling from the rod caught in the beast’s whisker-lined mouth, his feet flapping drunkenly like the tailfins of the unfortunate eels he himself had snared before. In later years Muto felt he could remember this scene from the top down: a view from the clouds above the river with water parting on account of the large, dark abyss that came into view below the surface. Ascending from right below Ponde’s eel-bait, taking fish and man together, its whiskers were each about the length of four well-forged Kyamakamba spears; thin and wiry and shiny –springing erect from the water’s surface tension as the head emerged. The two small fins on either side of the monstrous trunk flapping vigorously like the wings of a hummingbird, gave the illusion that it was they that propelled the beast high above the water into the late Ihugo afternoon.
The beast, covered in river-life, having achieved the maximum of its trajectory towards the sky, then descended regally and majestically in a rainbow-like semicircle back into the river, water raining off of its fur and fins and plopping onto the river’s surface: a revolving crescent of brown flesh and hair, spotted and glittering with millions of tiny silverfish and green patches of moss and algae, breaking the surface of the river again with a splash more deafening than the one that had announced it, descending in a virtual but terrible slow motion back into the deep whence it had come, returning there where the souls of the Bantu still languished for freedom.
Muto remained transfixed to the spot where he lay even long after the apparition had disappeared and the river had closed up and begun to flow again as it always had, lying to him that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred within it, that he had not seen anything of the sort that he thought he had seen. But the loud absence of Ponde on the shore, and the lonely brown rucksack that was a few feet from him testified to a different truth. Muto turned in a white horror and began to crawl frantically back towards the edge of the forest, several feet opposite the river bank. He broke into loud and frightened wails, his face soaking in tears and mucus and despair.
He paid no attention to the complaints that emerged from his groin, and did not notice the reddening of the bandaging around his waist. His legs were limp and lifeless so he dug in with all the might he had in his arms until he felt them tighten with lactic acid and exhaustion. His torso was covered in blood and sand by the time he reached the buttress roots of the mangrove-like trees that separated the forest from the shore, and when he finally grabbed onto the first robust tuber he let himself go, having no life left to fight for, having had all of it seep out of him in a crimson mess that covered him from the waist down to his feet, his bandages torn and useless and the gash in his groin suddenly open and alive. It was evening when Muto felt he gave up the ghost to the ether of Ihugo and closed his eyes in a final, hopeless surrender.
*
“In the sandy depths the man will feel his way, towards the darkness below the man must cut, cut, cut.” – A song of the Bantu.
Ponde’s eyes were constricted to slits. He had to see, but down here the river was one big watery murk. The water tasted as bad as it looked; he thought he could feel and smell soil inside his nostrils. There were river weeds, twigs and fish making contact with his face. Bubbles from his mouth floated before him. His hands were still gripped around the stick-rod he had made and, just in front of his face, cutting through the blurry water, he could make out part of the shaft of the seven-metre long black protuberance that he recognized as a whisker; he noticed quickly that he was going deeper alongside the behemoth, and it was getting darker, murkier. He didn’t have much time, he had to act. Now.
He released his right arm and held onto the stick-rod with his left. He reached into his right trouser pocket and took out a short knife. He released the grip of his left hand and immediately the slick fur and wriggling silver speckles began to rush past him. With a strong and sure strike he stuck the knife into the body and immediately he was swimming in a cloud of crimson. Cloudy wisps of blood, like a red smoke, floated past him. He grabbed a handful of slimy fur with his left hand, for purchase, and began to slice and tear with the knife in his right. Soon the gaping, red hole was large enough for him to crawl through.
*
“Am I dead?”
“No,” the man replied.
Muto smiled when he saw him. Finally, a beautiful dream. Unless it was about to turn swiftly into another night terror with some new monstrosity emerging from behind Ponde, consuming them both.
Muto knew he was still alive because dead people don’t have dreams, unless of course he was now in the otherworld.
“Are we in the otherworld?”
“If this were the otherworld,” Ponde said, “You wouldn’t still be lame, I reckon.”
Muto looked at his feet and, indeed, he still couldn’t feel them.
I’m dreaming again, Muto thought with relief. I’m still alive!
“You’re not dreaming, my dear boy,” Ponde said. “You are very much awake. A bit delirious, but awake.”
“I can’t be awake,” Muto countered, “because I saw you eaten by the god of the river.”
“Nobody eats Ponde,” the man said. “I’m too feisty. Ponde always around.”
… it can’t be… Muto thought. He tried to sit up but realized he had no strength for it.
He suddenly became aware of everything around him. The blazing hearth, the smoke that accosted his nostrils, and the large, slime-coated, grey-green tissue that sizzled over the fire and bloated out the glow of the embers. Bubbles were popping all over its slime-covered surface. Muto turned and gawked at the man. The man looked back at him and smiled, and, once more, Muto became aware of the smoke and its pungent smell. Some part of his mind suddenly cleared up and some inner region of his body cracked and he was suddenly under the river, looking at the surface from beneath, drifting downwards, his limbs flailing, weeds and twigs and fish drifting across his line of sight. The water tinged with pink. Blood. Whose? His.
Now two powerful arms suddenly grabbed hold of him and violently pulled him out of the river and he gasped for air and opened his eyes and saw that he was back in the forest. The place was dimly illuminated by the filth-covered hearth. There was a pungent smoke in the air. The liver, the liver of the Museki, was hissing and popping and sizzling on the fire. He drew its black smoke into his lungs with an overwhelming relief. Muto saw that he was in a standing position, Ponde anchoring him on the side.
“Move the legs,” Ponde said, “Move your legs.”
Ponde was alive, and so was he. The boy looked down at his lifeless feet. He painfully jerked one leg forward, and then the other. He felt a rush of blood and warmth into his groin and down into his limbs. Now he was fully awake, and fully alive. He tore himself from Ponde’s grasp and ran. He ran like he would never run again. He plunged into Ihugo forest and ran. He tore past large, yam-like plants that glowed purple in the dark, he ran under Chima boughs with scurrying two-headed lizards all across their barks, he ran into horizontal Bayo branches with glittering lichens on them, he fell but he got up and ran again. Insects struck his face head-on and strange creatures chattered as he rushed past the bushes that hid them. He ran over dry and crispy leaves. He leapt over tiny anthills. He stepped into slimy ditches and crunched small, decaying skulls under his feet, stopping momentarily to peel the thin sheets of bone off his heel. He ran into the frigid night of Ihugo. He screamed with delight. He laughed. He shouted. He ran.
A shaft of light at the far end of the forest brought him to a panting halt. It seemed as if the trees where the forest came to an end had parted to form a kind of doorway, exposing a light beyond. A horse carrying a man came into view, walking almost past this tree-made door, but then it stopped and turned, facing the boy. Muto stared in befuddlement as the horse began to trot towards him, increasing its speed steadily until it was in a full-on bolt. It was then as though Muto awoke from a dream and found that there was no door and no light, the forest being as dark and endless as it had been before, but, to his fright, there was indeed a man and a horse.
The creature cantered to a halt next to him. It was a great big black horse with a rough mane, and its rider was dressed in a robe whose colour was impossible to tell in the dark. Muto could see, also, that the man’s head was hooded.
The two, man and boy, stared at each other in a silence only broken by the horse’s misty, rasping breath. By the time Muto got the idea to flee, a fire had appeared from behind him and was illuminating the foliage all around, and a hand had fallen upon his shoulder, startling him into a shout. Muto turned and his insides almost vanished with relief when he saw Ponde. He was holding a burning Chima branch and had a smile on his face.
“Kidega,” Ponde said, raising the burning branch to illuminate the horseman’s face.
“Ponde!” the man on the horse replied.
Muto saw now that the man’s robe was maroon in colour, and that he was wearing trousers underneath. He had a dark face and his accent, when he spoke, betrayed a Northern dialect.
“What’s going on?” Muto inquired.
“Boy,” Ponde said, “my job here is done. This is Kidega, a ranger from the North, and he will take you home.”
“But…” Muto began.
“There’s no reason for you to linger here with me. You can walk again and, as you can see for yourself, I have no horse to sprint you back to Kyamakamba.”
Muto was still bemused as Kidega reached his hand downwards to him.
“Come,” the Northerner said.
Muto reluctantly put his hand into the large, dark palm and, with what felt like a preternatural effort, the man swung him onto the beast’s hind.
“Go and see your sister, young man,” Ponde said, “And don’t worry about me, Ponde is always around!”
With those words, the horse turned around and raced away. Muto turned and looked back at Ponde who was still standing in the same spot with the burning Chima branch in his hand, the yellow flame illuminating his kinky-haired chest and damp trousers. Muto raised his hand and waved, a tingling pricking at his eyes.
“Be good!” was the last shout that came from the man’s mouth as the flame faded into the eternal darkness of Ihugo.
III
When Muto awoke it was about noon. Somehow, during the night, he had fallen asleep and the man in maroon had shifted him from the rear of the horse to the front to keep him from falling off. He came to slowly and realized they were still moving fast, vast landscapes of green plains and rolling hills sliding past.
“Where are we?” Muto asked.
“Kemishego,” the man replied. “About twenty kilometres from Kyamakamba. You are almost home.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Kidega, as Ponde said. A ranger from the North.”
“I thought the rangers were myths…”
“Myths? No.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Because Kente needs you.”
“How do you know my sister’s name?”
“Rangers know many things.”
“Is Kente okay?”
“Right now, no.”
“What’s happening with her?”
“Let’s just say the Museki is not done with you…”
“What does it want with my sister?”
But the man went quiet and they rode on in silence until they passed through Kyamate and finally into the rubbish-littered town of Kyamakamba. Many of the townsfolk came out of their bars and shops when they heard the horse’s trot, and Muto suddenly recalled that horses had vanished from these lands centuries ago, and that what the people were now witnessing was something akin to an apparition.
“Where did you get this horse?” Muto asked the man.
“Rangers possess many things,” was the man’s nonchalant response.
They arrived below the banana plantation on the hill of Muto’s family home at around one in the afternoon and suddenly the man became impatient.
“You must go now,” he said.
“What’s the matter?” Muto asked.
“Kente needs you.”
Muto disembarked and looked up at the man. The man looked back down at him and his dark face smiled encouragingly.
“Go,” the man said. “Don’t worry, you are her mariika. You will not fail her.”
Muto looked up at the plantation but when he turned back the man had already set off, racing at an almost unnatural speed in the direction whence they had come. In a few moments, man and horse had faded into the distance.
Muto turned and climbed the hill into the plantation, walking briskly. He smelt it before he saw it. The smell of burning wood. He broke into a sprint. He ran through the footpath between the tall and robust banana stems, a footpath that had been made by thousands of feet going back generations. He was aware enough of his surroundings to notice that weeds had begun to grow among the stems and that many plants had dying, browning leaves, with a few drooping from the weight of yellowing and rotting bunches of fruit on their heads. The plantation had not been catered to for days, maybe weeks. He ran past the latrine, its stench welcoming him home, and arrived at the end of the footpath into the compound of their homestead, emerging right next to the large granary that kept millet and sorghum during the dry months.
There were three buildings in the homestead: the hut to his left was the kitchen, the mud house to his right was where the help lived, and further up, opposite him, was the house that used to house his parents and now housed his aunt and sister.
It was this house that was burning.
The smoke billowed from the grass-thatched roof in dark, pulsating clouds of soot. Muto shouted at the top of his voice and ran towards the fire. Even as he ran he was aware of the deafening silence around the homestead, only broken by the cracking of the burning wood and the popping of the grass thatching in the blaze. It was as though some force had run everybody off.
He called to Kente but she did not respond. He ran to the front door and tried to kick it down but it would not give. He ran to the back window and tried to jiggle it open. An image came to his mind: Kente wrapped within the coils of a huge serpent, her hand reaching out to him, a dark cloud of smoke slowly hiding them from his sight.
Muto called to Kente again and once more there was no response. He backed away from the window and then charged at it with all his might, leaping off the ground and shadow-kicking its wooden frame wide open, his right leg passing right through the shattered, wooden shards of the aperture.
He manoeuvred himself into the room and was immediately embraced by smoke and spider webs. He coughed as the fumes invaded his nose and throat. The multitude of spider webs made the hair on his skin tingle with the remembrance of a million little scurrying arachnids. He looked around and saw through the smoke Kente huddled by herself in a corner, nestled in the space between her bed and the wall. She was still in her nightdress and her face was buried in her lap.
“Kente!” he called to her.
She shivered and let out a whimper. Just then a huge, glowing strut cracked loose and released itself from the ceiling, falling in a slanting position between Muto and Kente with a terrible thud. Sparks of red flew off its glowing wood and Muto protected his face with his arms. His heart began to race within his bosom. He rushed under the burning strut, over the bed and in an instant was pulling Kente by the arm.
“Get up!” he roared at her.
She refused to budge. He placed one arm under her knees and with the other under her arm and around her back picked her up off the floor. She was worryingly light. He could tell she had lost a lot of weight. He leapt off the bed on one side of the now-flaming strut and ran to the window with Kente in his arms. The truss above him cracked in the fire and gave way. Muto threw Kente through the window in terrified haste as the massive wood crashed all around, sending tiny missiles of red fire towards him.
He leapt head-first through the aperture and landed on the grass on the other side as the entire house began to crack and constrict in on itself like an external hand was crushing it. A black smoke rushed through the window after them, like a sooty exhalation, as the whole building collapsed to the ground in a burning heap. Muto grabbed Kente and carried her, running towards the plantation. He passed the granary and took the footpath between the banana stems, descending past the stinking latrine like a rush of wind. He looked back towards the burning house and could have sworn that it looked like a dead, smouldering giant spider whose abdomen was covered in a grey soot, hairs sticking out here and there, an appendage writhing lazily in the ashes; a dying, smoking hiss rising up from the ashes.
Muto’s body was covered in goose pimples when he emerged from the bottom end of the plantation. He walked into the middle of the road that had brought him and the ranger, turned – facing the hill, and the house – and sat in the dirt with his sister lying across his lap. He couldn’t see the house from here but the black column of smoke that was ascending from beyond the banana plantation was enough for him to look at.
He looked down at Kente and found that she was staring at him.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
She nodded her head.
“Where is everyone else? Auntie, Bena, Kirabo?”
She stared at him.
“Where are they?” he shook her.
“A man came over yesterday,” she suddenly whispered, her gaze fixed on him.
“What man?”
“The nice man. Before the darkness came.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He said everything would be okay. That you would come in time. That the darkness would not take me.”
“Kente?”
“He told me to tell you…” Kente coughed. “…that you never know where you’ll find your mariika.”
Muto stared incredulously at his sister.
“He told me to tell you,” she coughed again and continued, “that Ponde is always around.”
THE END
An older version was first published on the author’s blog.
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