Shooting Butterflies (2 page)

Kirk took a step backwards. He pulled his hat off his head and crossed his chest. ‘God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost,' he said as he repeated the cross.

His other hand touched Mylani's back and she growled, her hackles standing up. He gripped the skin on her neck, more to steady himself than to stop her aggression towards the stranger. Mylani snarled.

But his eyes were no longer on the witch.

In the lower branches of the tree, just high enough not to be mauled by any passing hyena, were five children, not much older than him. Three boys and two girls. They were hanging by their feet like pigs in the smokehouse. The boys had fresh warrior marks carved in the skin on their faces. Across their young cheeks and over their chests the blood, red even on black skin, was akin to battle paint on a warrior. Bound to the side of each boy was an assegai and a small fighting shield.

The girls were also suspended by their feet, hanging like huge cocoons around the tree. Mummified animals were arranged on their skin skirts, which dangled around their necks like the lace collars the white ladies wore to church on a Sunday. The girls' chests were bare and he could see that each girl had just started to come into her bosom, the tiny nubs hardly visible beneath the patterns that had been painted on their bodies in the same white and red that decorated the
sangoma.
Their eyes were blank in death, the flies thick all over their lips and crawling inside their noses.

He closed his eyes to try to erase the scene and put his hands over his ears as the children called to him in his head.

‘Help us, help us.'

But when he opened his eyes, he could still see them. The image was real, but their earth-bound calls for help had long since been squelched.

Mylani took a step forward and her growl changed pitch. Kirk quickly looked back to the
sangoma.
She seemed afraid to come closer to the dogs but stood shouting and waving her knobkerrie around, gesturing at him. She began to sing. It was unlike any singing he'd ever heard, and he'd listened to lots of black people singing, in church, while they tended the garden, even when they were clearing trees in the forest. The singing quietened the children's voices in his head, but it made the dogs more aggressive.

The
sangoma
ignored the warning from his dogs and stepped closer. Kirk didn't see the knobkerrie swing, but Mylani dropped to the dirt and was instantly silenced.

Suddenly Impendla was behind him, pulling him away. As Kirk turned to run, his father's rifle slipped from his shoulder to fall in the dust.

‘
Mhanya
!' Impendla shouted as Kirk turned back to retrieve it. ‘Leave it. She's going to kill you!'

Kirk ran.

The boys fled back through the grass, the dogs with them, as if they realised their roles had changed from the hunters to those being hunted. The
sangoma
pursued them, wielding her deadly knobkerrie.

Impendla tripped and Kirk stopped to help his friend up. ‘Come on, come on,' he said. Now that he was running he didn't want to stop. He wanted to get as far away from the dead children in the tree as they could. Away from poor Mylani lying dead. Away from the
sangoma.

The boys ran for the safety of the mission station. The dogs ran too, their pink tongues lolling out the side of their mouths, saliva drooling.

‘
Mhanya
,' Impendla said as he hurried Kirk on when Kirk slowed. They could no longer hear the
sangoma
chasing them but they knew she was out there still.

At last the mission came into sight, the wood smoke from the donkey boiler curling into the green canopy of bushland around it. They could hear the sounds of men cultivating the vegetable field, the heavy thud of
budzas
as they dug furrows and removed unwanted weeds, an easy rhythm, as the steel scraped the ground and then returned to the air to strike the dirt again. Singing wafted up to them, the melodious sound of African voices joined in an age-old tune.

Kirk stopped and bent over to catch his breath. A stitch in his side pulled the muscles taut. He gulped air as he straightened and stretched his cramping stomach.

‘My father's rifle!' he panted. ‘I have to go back.'

‘No
mukomana
, you can never go to that place again. We have angered the spirits of the ancestors. Only bad things will happen if we go back.'

‘Maybe tomorrow she'll have gone away?' Kirk asked. He straightened and began to walk towards the mission at a slower pace, still holding his side.

‘No, she's everywhere. She's a
sangoma
!
A
spirit medium for
Nehanda.
A
Karoi
—what you would call a “little witch”. You know the Chirorodziva Pool at the caves? The deep one with the blue waters? The
sangoma
is the person who calms the spirits that catch your stone if you toss one into the waters. If you throw a stone, you stir up and insult the Shona heroes who were killed by the Nguni raiders, you cause unrest in the ancestors' bones at the bottom of
the pool, where they are watching, still protecting their homelands. They come to get you while you sleep. They take you away and no one ever sees you again.'

‘No one believes in that stuff.'

‘
Aiwa
, do not say that,
mukomana.
It is true. The
sangomas
, they are the only ones that can take away the curse the ancestors put on the man who throws the stone. Only the
Karoi
.'

Kirk looked behind them then continued to walk towards the mission.

‘What else do your people say about the caves and the blue water?' he asked.

‘That there are many bones in the pools, not just those of the Shona people. But also some maybe from the great Mzilikazi's
amawarrior
, and some from the white people who came here long ago. They wait forever in the cave, trying to get out and go home to their own hunting grounds and
ikhaya
.'

‘But that was years ago. The Matabele wars—'

‘The ancestors, they never forget. The
Karoi
can choose to save you or she can choose to help the spirits if that's what she wants. If you want a person to die and they have not cast a stone, then you go see her and she can call those spirits.'

‘My father says that's all native superstitions. None of it is real,' Kirk said confidently. ‘We visited those caves on the way to Salisbury last month. My father stopped and we ate lunch there beside the blue water. The white people call it the Sinoia Caves. The only ghosts we heard were our echoes as we called out hello.'

‘The Reverend can say anything because he only believes in his one god that he says is more powerful, and is gentle, but that is not our way,
mukomana.
That is not the way in Africa.'

‘Kirk! Impendla!' Sister Mary called out loudly and waved to them from the mission.

Impendla turned to Kirk. ‘Come on, better get back and tell them that the dogs found nothing.'

‘But Sixpence will want to know where Mylani is. He'll go looking for her,' Kirk said.

‘Don't tell him about Mylani. If he asks, tell him she never came back to us when we called while hunting and we'll go look for her tomorrow. Even though we know she's dead, we can never tell him. We cannot return to bring her body home. The
Karoi
, she will find out and call the spirits!'

‘But what about my father's rifle?'

Impendla shook his head. ‘It is lost to you.'

Kirk was dressed in his hunting clothes as he entered the mission church. He had his large knife in its sheath and carried an assegai that he'd made with Impendla. The thick thatch of the building's roof cooled the interior and the wooden framework of the tall structure created a cathedral-shaped ceiling. Its low exterior whitewashed walls defined where the church was, and kept out the larger animals, but its open style ensured that the wind freely circulated through the building. His father stood tall talking with a group of black women, their coloured clothes bright against the red polished concrete floor as they sat, their legs stretched outwards. As always, some nursed babies on their laps or had them attached to their back with blankets, and small children sat quietly close to their mothers. Out of habit he looked up to check there were no bats hanging from the rough wooden rafters as he approached the circle. ‘Father, have you seen Impendla? I've looked everywhere.'

‘No. You spend too much time with him anyway. Remember that we're here to spread the word of God, not be converted to the native ways.'

Kirk pulled a face as his father ruffled his hair.

‘Cook says that guineafowl is better without the lead fragments, Father,' he said, but he grimaced as he spoke. The dread of having to tell his father about the loss of his rifle sat heavy in his stomach. He knew that when he did tell him there would be trouble and he'd probably receive a belting. Perhaps he could sneak back later and get it, when Impendla had calmed down.

His father smiled at him. ‘I agree with Cook. No, I don't know where he is, so off you go, keep looking,' he said. ‘Make sure you don't go into the bush without him, though. Understand?'

Kirk half turned to go.

‘Kirchman Bernard Potgieter, do you understand?' his father asked.

He knew his father meant business when he used his whole name, and there would be no going into the bush today without Impendla. He had to find him.

Kirk nodded, then ran over the polished cement floor, jumped nimbly over the low wall that was the outer structure of the church, and headed towards the compound, the only place he hadn't looked for Impendla. He'd already searched all the mission buildings, the orchard, the field of maize they had planted, where he had run his hands over the tops of the green plants that now grew almost to his waist, but he hadn't located him.

He entered the compound and inhaled the aromas. The smoke of the cooking fire, the fragrance of slow-cooked meat in a broth. The
kaalnek
chickens leapt out his way as he ran past, their feathers ruffled and their protests loud. But they soon returned to scratching and pecking in the dirt, searching for something tasty to eat.

He rounded a corner and looked at Impendla's
ikhaya.
The kitchen hut was the centre of Impendla's home, for many meals they had sat around the kitchen fire eating
sadza
and gravy from the enamel plates. There was always food to eat in Impendla's kitchen. Its neat thatched roof was trimmed in a pattern, and smoke clung to the thatch like a baby monkey to its mother. The top half of the building was whitewashed, and the bottom half was smeared with a black mixture of mud and dung. Next to the round kitchen was the sleeping
ikhaya.
Made of mud and cow dung, it wasn't as neatly decorated as the kitchen, but it was always in order and the floor well swept.

Impendla's mother worked in the hospital section of the mission. She tidied the beds and washed the floors, and it was her job to put the mosquito nets down over the patients. But today she wasn't in the sick bay. She was sitting in the doorway of the
ikhaya
holding a bunch of colourful feathers. Kirk looked closer. Among the feathers, he could see the mummified head of a rodent, and then he noticed that the skin it was attached to was the same colour red as the markings on the
sangoma
's skin the day before.

A cold snake crept along Kirk's spine.

‘
Mhoroi
,
amai
,' he greeted Impendla's mother. ‘I'm looking for Impendla.'

She glanced up at him and he could see there were tears in her eyes, her face wet with those that had already run down her cheeks and onto her white uniform that was now brown from sitting in the dirt.

‘He is taken.'

‘Taken?'

‘He is taken.' She nodded and sniffed, unconsciously turning the colourful package in her hands. Kirk stared. Constructed exactly like the muti bag he had cut from the tree, the crude leather pouch was decorated with bright feathers that had been sewed roughly onto the raw leather with
riempies
, and then wrapped in the pieces of skins with the heads attached, their eyes sunken in and dried. The package had a single drawstring, closing it at the top, but not sealing in the odour. He'd smelt the same vile stench just yesterday. Kirk's stomach heaved and he dry retched.

Terrible dreams of the mutilated children had woken him during the night and he'd screamed into the inky darkness. His father had rushed into his room with a candle to check on him. He hadn't told his father anything about the incident, about losing his gun, or about the dead children who had called to him to help them while he ran away and abandoned them to the witch.

He'd almost told his father.

Almost.

But as he opened his mouth he'd remembered Impendla, shivering, the sweat pouring off his forehead. Real fear. Impendla had been terrified.

Impendla had made him promise not to tell. A promise was your word, if you were black or white. It was your oath. So he'd kept his promise to his friend.

Impendla believed in the bad medicine.

Maybe it
was
real, and she would come for them. So he'd said nothing.

‘We're cursed,' Impendla's mother said and she held the bag out for him.

He looked at her.

He looked at the bag from the
Karoi.
And he ran screaming.

‘Father! Father! The
Karoi
has taken Impendla! Father!'

He barrelled into Sister Mary as he ran around the corner, still screaming, and saw his father rushing towards him.

‘Whoa, Kirk. Slow down. Talk to me.'

‘The
Karoi.
The witch. She had these bodies hanging in a tree and I didn't mean to disturb her when we were hunting. Then she killed Mylani with her knobkerrie and we ran. Then I lost your rifle, and now she's taken Impendla and his mother has the bag of bad muti from the tree. Father, the
tokoloshe i
s real!'