Switch! (11 page)

The witch paused, her pipe halfway to her lips. “We had no choice in the matter. It was a life or death situation,” she said indignantly.

Uncoiling himself from his warm place by the fire, the leopard padded softly over to the witch, butted his head against her hand, and then sat beside her, radiating disapproval.

The angry man was not intimidated by this display, but the other villagers shuffled back a little and watched the cat warily. Ethan felt a knot of tension grow in his stomach. Most of the villagers had relaxed around the cat once they realised it was her pet, but the animal still gave him a creepy feeling.

The witch relaxed her hand on the leopard’s back and his expression softened a little. “Your boy has been pulled into Karibu, where I come from,” she explained. “We were captured and feared for our lives, so we had to make a switch. Unfortunately, I believe, when we jumped into your world, your boy jumped into our world.”

An angry murmur rose from some of the men as this was translated to them, and they realised that the witch herself might have somehow caused Joe to disappear. The leopard bristled with menace, but Ethan seemed to be the only one aware of it.
 

“Do not worry,” the witch said quickly. “The boy will be quite safe. The ones who captured me have no fight with boys, only witches.”

“What if they think Joe is a witch who has changed herself into a boy?” one of the mothers said, pushing her bottom lip out in an angry pout. Ethan was shocked at how easily the villagers seemed prepared to believe that Joe had traded places with the witch. Then again, he had bought her story too...

“Witches in Karibu cannot change shape,” the witch reassured the woman.
 

“It was bloody irresponsible of you to take the risk,” the angry man sneered at her.
 

“I was drawn here by those crocodiles,” she snapped back at him, jabbing her pipe pointedly in the direction of Jimoh’s grandpa. To Ethan’s astonishment, the two crocodiles lounged like dark shadows in the firelight beside the old man, almost part of the circle of people. No one seemed to be afraid of them. Grandpa smiled at Ethan when he caught his eye.

“Then is prophecy,” nodded one of the mothers with satisfaction.
 

“Yes. Yes. Is prophecy,” the villagers murmured, poking each other on the shoulder or rocking back and forth in excited agreement.

The angry man glared around him as if he could not believe such stupidity.

Ignoring him, the witch cocked her head inquiringly at the mother, who in turn gestured towards the old man. Jimoh’s grandpa patted the crocodiles on their brow ridges and came forward carrying his upturned paint tin seat, which he set by the fire opposite the witch. Ethan hoped it had been cleaned properly. It would only take one spark to set any paint residue off and blow the man up like a firework. Grandpa sat down and cast a twinkling eye over the group. After a long pause which Ethan guessed was to ensure the audience were on the edge of their seats with anticipation, he cleared his throat and told the tale of the crocodiles. Tariro translated for Ethan and the witch and, although he didn’t know it, for the leopard too.

“When the first white man passed through the valley he shot and wounded a crocodile by this very pool,” Grandpa said. “As was often the way of white hunters in those days, he left it there to die and went about his killing ways further along the valley. Some children found the crocodile the next day and fetched their grandfather who was a powerful sangoma.” A sangoma was a witch-doctor, Tariro explained to the witch.

Grandpa paused for dramatic effect. “The sangoma patched it up and stayed with it for five days and six nights, never resting himself until the crocodile was well enough to survive on its own. By and by it swam away down river.” He gazed wistfully in the direction of the rapids. The villagers gazed wistfully too, and murmured agreement, as if they had heard the story before. All except the angry man who shook his head as if he had never heard such nonsense.

The old man lowered his voice. “Nobody knew what had passed between the sangoma and the crocodile during his long vigil, but sometime later, two very large crocodiles moved to the rapids below the crystal pool, and the sangoma said they had come to repay their debt. A prophecy grew up around this tale, that the crocodiles would stay here, keeping the people of Tjalotjo kraal safe until they were able to take their revenge for the shooting.” He let this idea sink in and then went on.

“At first the people at the kraal were afraid of them, but as time passed they came to enjoy a feeling of safety around the crocodiles, and an odd feeling of happiness and good health whenever they spent time swimming in the pool. The descendants of the old sangoma had a special relationship with the crocodiles and some of them were even able to communicate with them.” The villagers nodded in agreement. After all, they were the very people he spoke of, and they all knew someone who knew a person who claimed to be able to talk to the crocodiles.
 

“About a hundred years ago,” Grandpa went on after the babble of voices had died down, “a white family moved onto the land west of the valley. When they started to camp on the other side of the pools, the villagers waited for the crocodiles to take revenge for the shooting. As they got to know them better, the Tjalotjo villagers even warned the white family of the prophecy, but they persisted in camping and swimming there. Rather than wreak vengeance upon them, the crocs seemed to include the white family under their protection.” The crowd shook their heads and tsk-tsked. Ethan couldn’t tell if this was at the stubbornness of the white family or the failure of the crocodiles to wreak vengeance.

“From time to time sangoma come from far away and take water from the pool,” Grandpa informed the witch. “We know it is because of the crocodiles.”

“Yes,” agreed the villagers. “We know it is the crocs.”

“Will they go away now that they have fulfilled the prophecy and taken Joe?” a young man asked the witch.

“No. They did not take Joe, and my leopard would know if they were planning to wreck vengeance on anyone,” the witch said firmly.
 

“Lucky for you,” Tariro said, poking Ethan in the ribs.

“No, boy,” the witch said. “Crocodiles don’t notice the colour differences in humans, much like we can’t tell one zebra from another.”
 

The leopard sat up and stared intently at the crocodiles, giving off a low throbbing purr that made Ethan’s scalp prickle. Then, just as suddenly, the tension in the air dissipated and the leopard stretched out once more beside Jimoh. “They have smell memories of the blood of the sangoma’s descendants, and bring magic from Karibu to protect them,” he told the witch, with a meaningful look at Jimoh.

Ethan looked around in astonishment to see if anyone else had noticed the leopard communicate with the crocodiles, and then shook his head. He was having enough trouble getting his mind around prophecies and switching witches without having to think about crocodiles with magic. And what was that meaningful look? Was Jimoh a descendent or was the cat amused that Jimoh stroked him?
 

“Can we get on with the scry thing?” Ethan said to the witch. If there was a chance that he could see where Joe was, however slim, he was anxious to find out. “Joe may be in danger if the people who were after you have him instead.”

The witch fished out a pendant from between her breasts where it hung on a leather thong. Light from the glowing red crystal slowly died away as she placed it in the plough disk. Taking a flat oval piece of wood from a skirt pocket she placed it beside the plough disk. Another pocket held a small leather pouch and a tiny glass vial containing a transparent liquid. She shook a pile of dark grey crystals out of the pouch onto the wood and made a well in the middle of them.

When everyone was quiet and she had their full attention, she hovered the vial theatrically over the crystals – making sure to jingle her bracelets, Ethan noted with a smirk – before pouring the contents into the tiny volcano. The small explosion gave off a whiff of burning metal, like the smell of welding, which floated through the air to compete with the scents of the citronella candles and pipe tobacco. A wisp of purple smoke curled up eerily, then dissipated in the dark.
 

The villagers expelled a collective breath.

“It’s just iodine and turpentine!” Ethan’s disappointed mutter was cut short by a glare from the witch. He was beginning to make sense of the angry man’s skepticism. If it weren’t for the creepy way he could understand the leopard, Ethan would also have suspected the whole thing was just a series of tricks.

While the purple smoke distracted them all, the witch pricked her finger and allowed a drop of blood to fall in the plough disk. “I need five people who know the boy well to come and put their hands into the water,” she said.

Ethan, Tariro and Jimoh crept forward and gingerly put their hands in the water. It felt warm and oily. Ethan hoped the witch’s blood did not carry hepatitis or anything worse. It would be a pity if he were completely free of asthma, only to fall prey to some blood-born disease. He wondered if his body would really repair itself as she’d said, then smiled at his own gullibility. Of course his body would heal itself – that’s what immunity was all about. The crocodile must have got a light grip on him coming out of the pool, that’s all.

“Not right in like that,” directed the witch. “Just the tips of the fingers on the edge of the disk.”
 

Jimoh’s dad leaned forward and added his hand as instructed. The angry man pushed his way forwards and grudgingly added his hand. “I do this against my better judgement,” he said under his breath. “We should be calling the police.”

“Now close your eyes and concentrate hard on the boy, Joe,” the witch said.
 

She hummed in a deep bass voice while the leopard made a rumbling sound beside her. For a long time nothing happened. Then one of the women screamed and Ethan’s eyes shot open. It was not quite like television, but there was a clear, slightly rippled, vision on the water surface, of a blonde boy walking out of the ocean, holding a surfboard.

“He’s at the sea?” Ethan gasped, splashing water all over the place. He’d thought Karibu was just over the immediate mountain range. The nearest ocean was over a thousand kilometers away. The image disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. The witch glared at the angry man but it was Tariro who looked embarrassed.
 

“Sorry, wrong boy,” Tariro mumbled and then, in reply to Ethan’s snarl, “What! I didn’t think it was actually going to work, so I wondered what Darryl was up to... from school.”
 

Some of the villagers hadn’t believed it was going to happen either, Ethan noticed. They scrambled up and moved away, clicking anxiously, no longer wanting to take part in this sinister thing. Others moved forward curiously. The angry man’s composure vanished, to be replaced by a slightly wild-eyed look, but he added his hand to the disk with the other four and the witch resumed her humming. Ethan squeezed his eyes shut, thinking about Joe with all his might. He willed the disk to reveal to them where Joe was.
 

Jimoh nudged him softly and he peered through his eyelashes. A wavy image passed over the water in the disk and settled there. The witch exhaled sharply.

“Karibu is somewhere in India?” Ethan whispered, not wanting to disturb the image a second time. India was even further away than the ocean. The boy he saw was Joe. Still in his electric blue board-shorts, short blonde hair and his bare, peeling shoulders, only he lay fast asleep in a forest, cuddled up against a tiger.

“No, he is close by,” the witch said, “and he will be safe with Hajiri, but not for long. Hajiri is a kindly tiger but he is the pet of the Almohad and inevitably he will lead the boy there.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Drat! This is going to get complicated.”

The Almohad enslave their captives!
 

Ethan intercepted the warning between the leopard and the witch. Neither of them said it out loud, or even thought it. The information was just there without having to think. Like how to make your lungs inhale, or your heart pump. He wondered if they were aware he had received it. More importantly, though, he wondered if these Almohad would enslave Joe.
 

Peering more closely at the dish to see if Joe was tied up, Ethan caught a glimpse of dark shadows moving stealthily in the jungle behind where the tiger slept, and for a split second another image of Joe flashed into his mind. There was blood on his face! But when Ethan peered closely at his cousin it was as if he had imagined it. Joe looked perfectly peaceful sleeping against the tiger.
 

Glancing from Jimoh to Tariro, Ethan wondered if they had seen the blood too. Tariro shook his head and rubbed his eyes as if he could not believe them. Jimoh shook his hand in the water, trying to bring the image back, but the witch had lost focus. From the expressions on their faces, Ethan was sure none of them had seen it. A cold shiver ran through his body. Had he imagined the blood on Joe because he was spooked by the shadows? Was the tiger as safe as the witch said it was?
 

Suddenly he noticed the leopard, Salih, staring at him. “It is what may be,” purred the cat. “Gogo has been working on her powers of seeing into the future, but so far she has proved to be terrible at it. Sometimes she flashes. It’s probably inaccurate.”

~~~

The witch would not allow the villagers to stay and watch her switch back to Karibu at midnight. It would be upsetting for the little ones and too many witnesses would put her off her stride, she’d said firmly.

But she had not been as firm with the camping boys. Tafadzwa, Simba, Tendayi, Tekeramayi, and many whose names Ethan did not remember, all stood around her in bright-eyed anticipation. Giving her leopard one last hug before pushing him away, she clutched the opal, screwed up her eyes and muttered something that sounded like a curse.