Escape Under the Forever Sky (16 page)

And then a teeny, tiny mouse voice whispered in my ear, “Psst, Lucy, who else lives near Lake Chamo?”

It was too scary good to even think about, but it was true:
Teddy
. Guge, his village, is near Lake Chamo. But that did
not
, I reminded myself sternly, mean I was really near his village.
Near
means “within fifty miles.” My foot would turn gangrenous and fall off before I walked fifty miles. But what if his village wasn't fifty miles away? What if it was just beyond that group of trees over there? It wouldn't be the first time Teddy had offered me a refuge in a hostile environment.

The first time was when we met, on my second day at the International School. I had noticed that not one single kid seemed to want to have anything to do with me, but I couldn't figure out why. After all, I had been the new kid so many times I was usually pretty good at fitting in.

I got lost on the way to English class that day, and when I finally got there, everyone was already sitting down. There were only three empty seats—all
clustered around Teddy, who was sitting alone in the back corner of the room. I sat down next to him.

“Welcome to the leper colony,” he whispered.

“Excuse me?” I whispered back.

“This section of the room is for the Untouchables, the lowest caste of International School society.”

“Oh really? I didn't know I was a member of that caste,” I told him, wondering,
Is this kid some kind of freak?

“You have not heard? At this school the only thing worse than being poor is being American,” he explained. “At least I am lucky enough not to be American,” he added with just a hint of a smile.
I get it—he's not a freak; he's funny. This is good. I like funny
.

“Why don't people like Americans?” I asked, opening
Romeo and Juliet
to the beginning of Act II.

“Not all of the kids. Just the Europeans. But at this school they are the ones who matter. Most of the Ethiopians will tell you they like American people but they do not like the foreign policies of your government. You have not seen the Osama bin Laden watches at the market?”

“Bin Laden watches? You've got to be kidding. No, I
haven't seen them. I'm not allowed to go to the market.”

“That is a shame,” Teddy said, nodding sympathetically. “But I am certain we can find a way around that problem.” He grinned at me, and I knew I had made my first friend.

All of a sudden I remembered I was still lost and alone in the middle of the Ethiopian bush, only now with a goofy smile on my muddy, sweaty face.

Enough daydreaming, Lucy. Nothing has changed! You're still lost and sick, and Psycho Markos is still out here trying to hunt you down. So get moving
.

And I did. I followed Moses while the day grew hotter and hotter, eating a fig now and then when I got really hungry and making bush stops when necessary, which was a lot. I couldn't stop thinking about the lions—how they looked, how they made me feel. And just the unbelievable, mind-boggling fact that they had saved my life.

My lion daydreams kept me going for a while, but finally it was too sweltering and I was too tired to keep walking. I needed a nap. I chose a ficus tree because it gave the most shade. Leaning my back against its broad
trunk, I fell asleep before I got to
four Mississippi
.

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that I felt cool for the first time since—well, since.
As long as I keep my eyes closed, there's a chance it never happened, that this is all a dream
. But I knew it wasn't a dream. Because if I had really been sleeping in my own bed, there wouldn't have been something
crawling up my leg
!

“Ech!!!” I screamed, too freaked out to care if anyone heard me, smacking the big brown spider off my leg and furiously kicking at the same time. I hopped up on my good foot and shook my whole body like some deranged punk dancer, making sure there were no more of them burrowing in my clothes—or under my skin.

Normally I don't mind bugs. In fact, I think bugs are the unsung heroes of our planet. Really. Think about how many insectivores there are, all those millions of creatures who wouldn't be able to exist without bugs to eat. Not to mention all the good things bugs do for humans. Like leeches that help repair veins in damaged skin or maggots that painlessly eat decaying flesh off burn victims. Where would medicine be without them? But that didn't
mean I wanted to play host to some hairy arachnid. Gratitude has its limits.

I checked my watch. It was almost three o'clock already—time to get moving. The sky had clouded over, giving me a lot of relief from the heat. Walking would be easier now, I told myself, trying to think positive.
I should be able to put a lot of distance between me and my three murderous abductors before I have to find another tree to sit awake in all night, totally defenseless and completely vulnerable to anyone or anything that might find me there
.

Sometimes it's hard to look on the bright side.

I hobbled alongside Moses for what felt like forever. After I figured out how to tilt my bad foot up and just walk on the heel, it didn't hurt nearly as much. I didn't see any mammals, but the birdlife was fantastic. It was easy to recognize a flock of vulturine guinea fowl by their electric-blue bellies, as vibrant as any peacock's. I didn't see any weavers, but I saw lots of their nests—it's incredible how they can live inside what looks like just a dense ball of twigs and grass. And every so often I'd catch a flash of brilliant color, rollers and bee-eaters darting from tree to tree.

But the birds weren't enough to distract me
completely, and as the sun traveled lower in the sky, worry turned to fear. Salvation wasn't happening today. I was going to have to spend another night in the forest.

Dusk meant it was time to look for a sleeping tree, or at least a hiding-for-the-night tree, since if the night before was anything to go by, I doubted I would do much sleeping. I was getting better at tree selection, and I actually felt pretty proud of myself when it took me only a few minutes to locate the perfect candidate: a medium-size ficus.

Easy to climb? Check. Lots of leaf coverage? Check. No snakes? Check. Comfy branch? Check. Well, sort of.

I went back to Moses, “cleaned” and rewrapped my bandage (miracle of miracles—still no infection), brushed my teeth, and had a long drink. One last bush stop and up I went. There would be no five-minute rest under any umbrella tree tonight.

Which was pretty ironic, because it rained. No, it poured. It deluged. It
monsooned
. Really, I shouldn't have been surprised. This was April. April is usually the start of the rainy season.

And all of a sudden the whole thing struck me as hilarious. I mean the
whole
thing. Wandering around the bush, hanging out with monkeys, getting saved by lions, and now, most of all, hiding all night in a tree, absolutely completely soaking wet. I laughed so hard I almost fell off my branch, the kind of laugh where you can't even breathe anymore but you can't stop, either. I shrieked and cackled and wheezed with laughter, not caring who heard me or what heard me. Not caring about anything at all.

T
HE MORNING WAS
sunny again, and my fit of insanity seemed to have passed with the rain. I was starving, but my last few figs were a glob of mush in my soggy pockets. I tried to clean my pockets out, without much success. Rainwater had pooled in the tree's long oval leaves, and I tipped leaf after leaf into my mouth until I wasn't thirsty anymore.

Grabbing my walking stick from the foot of the ficus where I'd left it the night before, I headed back to Moses. After months of dry weather, the ground had soaked up all the rainwater and was surprisingly solid, not muddy at all. I was actually happy about my damp clothes, because I figured they'd feel good
when the day got really hot again.

I was still walking through trees, but I could see tall grass to the west. Moses was headed north, so I was too. Even though I hadn't found any people or villages yet, following the stream was still the best plan I could come up with.

After an hour or so I needed a five-minute rest. I wasn't sleepy, just bone tired, and I needed to give my muscles a break. So I picked my way around a bunch of small holes in the ground, making my way toward a tree I could lean against.

Just before I reached the tree, the ground collapsed beneath my good foot. I was ankle deep in the earth before I realized I had stumbled into an aardvark burrow. And it took me several more seconds after that to realize a warthog was glaring at me from one of the holes!

I know I said I love warthogs, but I was just talking about how they look. Even though they usually run away from anything they consider threatening, they have been known to kill people—by goring them with their long pointed tusks. I cursed myself for not paying closer attention to the holes. It's not like I didn't know that sounders—that's what groups
of warthogs are called—usually live in abandoned aardvark burrows. Just like I also know that warthogs can run really fast, and even with two good feet on my best day there's no way I could outpace one.

But that didn't stop me from screaming my head off like a lunatic and running away—which, by the way, was exactly the wrong thing to do. You're supposed to back away slowly from a dangerous animal, but my flight response kicked in, and I forgot everything I'd ever learned about how to behave in the wild.

I ignored my poor foot and ran as fast as I could, craning my neck around to see if I was being followed. Which is why I slammed right into the two girls who had just appeared out of nowhere and I landed on my back in the dirt.

“Ya barra!”
said one of the girls, who had fallen on top of me. I had no idea what her words meant.

“Oh my God,” I said, staring up in disbelief.

One girl looked about my age, and the other one was probably seven or eight. They wore leather skirts, short in front, long in the back, open at the sides, and decorated with beads and shells in patterns along the edges. Their hairstyle was amazing: hundreds of tiny braids cut short around their faces and coated with
some kind of paste or oil that gave their hair a reddish sheen. Equally incredible was their jewelry. They both had on little shell earrings, stacks of narrow gold bracelets around their wrists and silver ones around their elbows and below their knees, plus two necklaces, a long beaded one and a silver metal choker. The younger girl had a whittled toothbrush stick in her mouth, and she carried a plastic water jug strapped to her back with a piece of twine. It was full, so I guessed they were on their way back from getting water.

They stared at me, and I had to give them credit for keeping a straight face. As exotic as they looked to me, what must I, the raggedy mud girl, have looked like to them? Awkwardly, the little one and I struggled to our feet. I pressed my hands together, and bowed.
“Ashama,”
I said, using one of the only Oromo words I know. Hello.