Daygo's Fury (13 page)

In the back of his head, he could hear the drum beat slowly start to pick up in the distance, signalling the end of the first picking. There would be one more after that. Emeka had stood up and started to walk away.

“Wait,” he said, but the word acted like a trigger, and she started to run for the main fire. “What other girls are in your tribe?” he shouted after her, but she was gone too far. He watched her for a moment as she scuttled back to the main light, but then he turned away, lost in his thoughts.

He decided not to return for another picking. Instead, he stood and walked into the darkness, hoping to find somewhere quiet where they would not find him and would not disturb his thoughts. He had too much to consider from the night’s revelations.

******

He spent the next day hunting in the forest. He killed twenty animals in twenty different ways. He sensed nothing. His anxiety grew. He didn’t understand. He needed to quiz Emeka more, but that night, at the picking, she didn’t pick him. Instead, he ended up with two girls from different tribes, neither of whom had seen a boy or girl taken by the priests and neither of whom knew anything more about the Walolang de Kgotia. He watched for Emeka as she left, but she was in thick company.

The next day, every time he went near to her, she turned in the other direction. Her friends told him to go away, that she didn’t want to talk to him. They called him a creep. Instead, he found others of the same tribe and asked them questions, but none were as forthcoming as Emeka had been, and it did not seem like a topic of conversation anyone wanted to take part in. Her two friends were the only other adolescent girls from that tribe. He didn’t know what to do. He needed more information.

His father approached him as he stood in the centre of the clearing, looking around for new people to question.

“What is all this I hear you asking about the Walolang de Kgotia?”

“Can you tell me anything about them?”

“Why the sudden interest?”

“I know that a priest will be coming this year to our tribe,” he said. “I want to know what the testing will be like, to prepare.”

His father looked at him for a long moment, his eyes slightly wide. “So that you can pass?”

Niisa thought it over. “So that I can fail,” he lied. “I don’t want them to take me away.” He felt unsure about the lie. It was a guess that his father might be more open about it if he explained it this way. But then he could not be sure that his father would not want him to pass and leave the tribe, and so he might only help if Niisa asked for those reasons. After all, he must know that Niisa was different to the rest of them, and he must then wish to be around people the same as himself. It was how Niisa felt about them. But some instinct told him that the opposite was true, that he feared losing Niisa, for some reason that he could not fathom. He sometimes thought that perhaps his father feared losing Niisa more to himself, as though there was some connection between them, even though there was not, no more than Niisa was connected to the trees and all things. Niisa wondered if it was, as time went by, that he pretended less to be like them, and his father confused this with a change to who he was.

His suspicion seemed confirmed as Dikeledi gave a small sigh and smiled. He stepped up beside him and grabbed him tightly across the shoulders.

“Don’t worry,” he said and placed his spare hand on Niisa’s chest. “Put your heart at ease. The priests have taken no one from our tribe in years.” He took a large breath as he looked out over the clearing.
“
I would not let them take you,” he said softly. “You are my son, Niisa. You will always be my son.” Niisa glanced at his father but he had his eyes blocked from view. When he turned his head back towards him, he was smiling. “Let me tell you what these fool priests do.” He stepped away from Niisa and crouched on the ground, but then he looked back sharply at him. “But I don’t like it,” he said with emphasis. “It is not a good thing to do.”

His father confirmed what Emeka had already said about the testing process. “He, or she, will open it up like this,” he said, crouched over an invisible squirrel and pulling his hands apart as though spreading the opened flesh of its stomach. “They will ask you if you sense something, if you sense a change, if you can sense the death of the animal, the shifting of its energies.” He looked at Niisa. “All you have to say is ‘no’. A boy from your mother’s tribe claimed to have sensed it once, but the priest took him aside and questioned him for close to an hour. The priest decided in the end that the boy was lying. Later they found out that he was.” His gaze was firm on Niisa’s. “If you lie, they will find out. I do not know what exactly they are looking for, I have never known anyone well who was picked, and when they are picked, they have left within the day, so there is not much time to say more than goodbye. But, Niisa, if you did, if you do … sense it … all you have to say is ‘no’, and they will leave you be. You can stay with us, stay with the Abashabi.”

Niisa gave a small nod. His father clapped him on the back. Dikeledi had wide grooves along the sides of his face, unusually apparent for a young man. Smiling lines, his mother called them. She sometimes placed a hand on the side of his face and rubbed them as she said what she did many times. “Most people smile with their mouths, your father smiles with his whole face.” He would laugh and clasp her hand. “I’ve a big head to smile with.” He would wink at Chiko and she would laugh. Then he would make himself busy with something. Niisa would watch him, walking about, moving things, examining the hut for holes that weren’t there, wondering what he was doing. Chiko and Fumnaya would carry on as normal, his mother sparing him a smile first. The same events, replayed before his eyes a thousand times in slightly different ways, and only he not knowing what was happening, what was going on, why they all acted so strangely.

He walked away from his father.

He took a seat underneath a small tree five hundred steps south of the centre of the oval-shaped clearing. The bustle of noise never ceased; everyone was moving and talking and playing. He thought. He searched for the answers to his problems. But the answers were human ones, social ones, things that he knew nothing about. He had to ask those who would know better, those who would help him.

It was vital that he convinced Emeka to talk to him again. She was friends with the boy who had been taken. She had talked to him before he had left. She might be the only person who knew the key to passing the test, the only one who would speak to him.

He rose, enjoying the breeze as he walked. He found Chiko with a group of friends, pretend dancing around a few sticks they had arranged to look like a fire. Chiko waved her arms loosely in the air as she twirled around the fire, stopping at times to crouch and roar at the imaginary flames, her tongue out over her bottom lip.

She had a round face typical of the tribes. Her hair was braided and tied into four separate tails that climbed down her back. She wore a small wooden cross-piece through the centre of her nose, which was small and buttoned slightly at its tip. Her smile was wide, like her father’s, and seemed to climb highly up both of her cheeks.

“Brother,” she said when she saw him, directing her dance over to him. She opened her eyes wide. “Have you come to dance?”

“No. Can you talk to me?”

“Yes, Brother.”

Niisa stepped away from the other girls, and Chiko followed him on light feet. “I need to get a girl to pick me tonight,” he said.

“Who?”

“Emeka, from the Kororofawa.”

“Did you talk to her, brother? Did you ask her to pick you?”

“No. She picked me once before, but she will not talk to me anymore, even when I approach her out here.”

“Oh,” said Chiko. “I’ve played with her sister.” She sat down on the grass, and Niisa sat beside her. “I can go and talk to her.” She looked over the gathering space as she thought, picking at the grass absentmindedly between her feet as she did. “You go and talk to mother,” she said suddenly, “she knows these things. I will ask Nala to talk to Emeka.” Chiko smiled at him. Her eyes seemed to catch in the light, streaks of yellow shining through the brown, echoing the excitement emitting from her every pore. “Don’t worry, Brother. When we are done, she will love you like I do.” She suddenly jumped to her feet and ran off, her arms flailing behind her as she went, leaving the other two girls by their fake fire, glancing after her in confusion.

His mother was sitting with three other women under the shade of a cashapona tree. Niisa stood in front of them, wondering how to approach his problem.

“What’s wrong, Niisa?” asked his mother, looking up. The three women silenced and followed her gaze. “You are not yourself lately.”

“Who else have I been?”

The women laughed, and his mother smiled. “Should I say you have been acting strangely?”

“I have a problem,” he said.

“What is it?”

“I want to make Emeka pick me at the picking, but I don’t think she will, and she won’t talk to me.” There was a moan of sympathy from Nikechi, his aunt, as the women turned smiling to one another.

“Is that it?” she asked, smiling at him.

Niisa nodded. She stood up, walked over to him and pressed him against her chest in a hug. “Come with me,” she said and stepped away from the women, a hand resting gently against the back of his neck. “What was all this about the Walolang de Kgotia?”

“She told me about them.”

Fumnaya looked at him. “What did she say?”

“She told me they took a boy from their tribe last year.”

His mother sighed. “Is this what you have been worried about? That they would take you too?”

Niisa looked at her, frowning. Was this what she thought? He nodded.

She gripped him along the shoulders. “Do not worry,” she said. “You spoke to your father? You know … what the test is?”

“Yes.”

“You are not worried any longer?”

“No.” He could not trust what his mother might say of the test. She had already lied to him.

“But you still want to talk to this girl?”

“I like her.” His mother watched him from the corner of her eye for a moment before she broke out into a wide smile.

“You do? So you do.” She seemed as excited and happy as Chiko had been. “And you want her to pick you.” They walked in silence for a moment. The sun shone brightly. There were people everywhere walking, talking, sitting, lounging, laughing and smiling, playing, joking, showcasing their everyday skills. There was noise in the Rutendon, human noise. His mother walked him slowly through the huts and the crowds, content in the moment. “You must be yourself, Niisa. If you are going to spend the rest of your life with a woman, then you need to show her who you really are. But that does not mean that you should not be nice, or show an interest in what she likes, to everything about her. Ask her questions. Be nice to her, Niisa. It’s not all about you. Think about how she is feeling, and … consider that before you talk. Sometimes you can be too stuck in your own head. Do nice things for her. Maybe get her a gift, some flowers on a bracelet, some sweet calapa nut. If you think you can do her a favour, then do it for her. Then she might do something nice for you in return.” She smiled at him and rubbed the back of his neck.

They stopped as they saw Chiko running in their direction, weaving her way through the huts, trees and what remaining brush escaped the clear-out four days before. She slowed to a stop in front of them. They waited, but she seemed to hesitate.

“What is it, Chiko?” said Fumnaya.

She looked up at Niisa. “I know where Emeka is. She’ll talk to you now if you go to her. I talked to her sister.”

Niisa felt sudden hope. “Where is she?”

Chiko turned and pointed to the far side of the clearing. “Do you remember where the drooping tree is at the edge of the forest?”

“Yes.”

“She is there with her friends.”

“Okay.” He stepped away from his mother.

“Wait, Brother,” said Chiko. He looked at her. She seemed to hesitate again, then reached behind her hair. “Take this,” she said, as she unhooked the wreath of dried flowers that hung there. His mother placed a hand to her mouth.

“Give her this,” said Chiko, handing him the wreath. Niisa took it softly in his hands, careful not to mark its beauty.

“Chiko,” said Fumnaya, stepping over and placing a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure?”

“He is my brother,” she said, glancing up at Fumnaya. “She will love you like we do, Brother,” she said to him.

He nodded and set off for the drooping tree.

“Niisa!” said his mother. He looked back to see her watching him from where she hugged Chiko. The warning in her eyes was command enough.

“Thank you, Sister,” he said, bowing his head slightly, and continued on his way. He could feel his heart beat a little faster than usual. After two days with no progress and no further indication of why he was failing, there seemed to be a chance now to find out more before the gathering came to an end.

He found her close to where Chiko had said, chatting with three friends towards the outskirts of the forest to the north, small underneath the trees and the mountain climbing above them.

He walked straight towards her. This time her friends only looked at him sceptically and did not try to send him away. Emeka watched him, her chin slightly turned and untrusting. He stopped in front of her and raised the wreath up between them.