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Two hyenas slunk forwards from a shady spot and sniffed at him. One licked at the thin trickle of blood running down Joe’s face, but he did not flinch. There seemed to be nothing threatening in its stance. The creature behaved more like a pet than a wild animal. He guessed that was what they had in place of dogs. Vicious kicked it and the hyenas slunk off to their shade like dogs do.
 

While Vicious hung her snake up on a hook dangling from the roof, Joe looked around her shelter. Rough tree trunk posts stood on the four corners, with supporting beams of twisted branches in between to hold up a crudely thatched roof. The walls, which were made up of a motley collection of hides, thrown over some thinner poles, only reached chest height, leaving the top half of the walls in full view of the rest of the village and open to the elements.
 

Vicious had hold of a vine rope, which she threaded between Joe’s hands and threw over a support beam, hoisting him up; his arms stretched out behind him till he was almost doubled over. She tested it to make sure it was just tight enough that either he would have to go up on his tiptoes, or put painful pressure on his arms. Once satisfied that she had achieved the maximum point of discomfort, she tied the rope.

He yelped.
 

She smacked him hard across the face.
 

A group of women sitting in a circle stringing an assortment of beads and feathers into the baskets they wove glanced at him furtively, but looked away again at Vicious’ glare. She left him, slumped forward, facing a wooden carving of a double-headed warthog in amongst the ostrich eggs and antelope horns on her dung floor. The warthog had nails bashed into its torso between its two heads that stuck up like a hedgehog. He wondered if that was her idea of an ornament or if it represented something sinister to do with witch doctor medicine. If he managed to escape from his bonds, he would hit her over the head with it, girl or no girl.

In no time his arms and neck were ablaze with pain. Even his toes ached from trying to relieve the pressure on his arms. He clenched his teeth as his chin sank to his chest. Sweat and blood dribbled into his eyes, and flies hovered around, trying to get at the moisture.
 

A pile of pebbles, scattered near the doorway, would make good ammunition for his slingshot, but what use were they if he couldn’t reach them? At least she hadn’t realised his slingshot was a weapon or no doubt she would have taken it away. She probably planned to strangle him with it. Surely this could not be right. Why did no one do anything about her? Surely they should give him a chance to explain that he was just trying to find a way home? They couldn’t all be bad. The other girl had been almost kind, once he was safely tied up.

A loud whoop, more a beast sound than human, caught his attention, and Joe found if he strained his head painfully upwards he could just peep over the hide wall to see people gathering in the yard. A group of musicians played thumb pianos in an open shelter on the far side of what probably passed as a village square. Their thumb pianos were not inside tortoise shells to catch the sound, like the young girl’s had been, but just short planks of wood with metal tines attached.
 

A man carried a marimba over, made of a row of rough-looking planks arranged along a frame from smallest to biggest. The gourds attached below did not range from smallest to biggest, resulting in a random, discordant noise when he drummed on the planks. Soon, a variety or rattles, sticks, gongs and bottles joined in to produce a horrible din.

An argument broke out in the yard. Joe pushed against the floor with his toes and craned his neck as far as he could without crying out in pain. A grizzled old woman stood in the middle of the clearing, arms akimbo, her short-cropped hair flattening in her rage, like the pet hyena that stood rigidly beside her.

“You are malicious and cruel, Mesande,” she growled. “He is just a boy from one of the villages in the valley. Lost.”

“He is a demon!” Vicious said in her low gravelly voice. “We found him right where my boyfriend should have been. Fisi is at least a day late, and this demon has something to do with it.”

“Nonsense. Fisi has found out what a manipulative little trollop you are and has changed his mind. He’s probably back with his pack by now.” The old lady hawked and spat something red on the ground between their feet, before snorting. “As for this lost boy, he is no demon. You just want to vent your spite, or use him for your own dark medicine. You will not get away with it.”
 

Two wiry-looking girls, one with a slash mark across her cheek, took up positions on either side of Vicious and glared at the old woman menacingly.
 

“I am not afraid of you!” the old woman added, shaking an elephant tail fly-whip at the three of them, her voice quavering slightly. Joe hoped that was from age, not fear. It would be good to have a friend in the camp. If only she wasn’t the oldest and weakest one here, he thought. He didn’t want to be used for medicine, dark or otherwise.

“Look at his skin, and he has hair the colour of lion grass. Where in the valley kingdoms did you ever see such a thing?” asked the girl beside Vicious.

“And he was naked when we caught him,” Vicious said. “You can ask Chuki. She saw him. He must have been doing a ritual just before we came upon him.”

“It is true, Gogo Nagesa,” one of the musicians joined in the argument, his arms folded across his chest defensively, every bit as if he had been there when she had captured Joe. “The demon was naked, as if he had changed shape. There have been some strange happenings in the Forest. Fisi is nowhere and the witches have been searching for one of theirs too.”

“Rumor and gossip,” the old woman snorted angrily. “That witch is probably up to some mischief of her own. I know that Gogo Maya, it wouldn’t be the first time. Maybe the boy was just taking a piss.”

It was a good thing no one went in search of Chuki to confirm this story. At the sound of her low hiss, Joe turned to see her creep cautiously into the shelter where she squatted in front of him, one hand covering her mouth in a sign indicating the need for silence, the other hand holding a shard of gourd filled with what looked like stew, some twisted stalks and a rough-skinned fruit.
 

“Aw... Boy,” she said softly. He could hear a slight crack in her voice.

Only then did Joe’s composure break. He started to weep quietly, and wished he could hide his face in his hands. He could see she was also close to tears as she hunkered down awkwardly on the floor and tried to feed him, the gravy running down her fingers and dripping on the floor. She made no move to untie him but she did not seem to mind the mess.

“Why didn’t you run when you heard my music?” she whispered.

Joe was so shocked; the food in his mouth went momentarily unchewed. “I waited for you. I did not think you would attack me. Why did you attack me?”

“That was Mesande,” she said.

“You helped her tie me up.”
 

“I had to, or she could accuse me of failing to help capture a demon.”

“Untie me now, then.”

“Later. If I untie you now she will know it was me. I am also a hostage here, but not like you,” she whispered. “My people live far to the north. I, and the other hostages, cannot leave Malamulu village except with one such as Mesande. They will not let us escape, but they may not harm us or our people will kill their own hostages and attack this pack.”

Joe took a bite of the twisted stalk she offered him. It was tough and irritating against his mouth. Bitter starbursts of flavour set his tongue tingling and his eyes narrowed as he spat. Could she be feeding him some sort of poison? No, she really was upset, and she
had
tried to help him on the track.
 

“Why are you helping me now then?” he said uncertainly.

“I do it to annoy Mesande,” she said with a wicked grin, “because I like Fisi, the one she is planning to mate with. I play the music to warn the others that she is coming and she knows it but she dare not stop me. She is cruel. You see what she does with the snake.” She ran a hand soothingly down the length of the snake’s back and tut-tutted. “Poor creature, all its blood has gone to its head. I am sure she means to set it on someone. If it lives long enough.”

“Well, I am not an animal,” Joe said. “I expected help.”

She wiped the side of his mouth with her thumb and sucked the gravy off. “And you shall have it,” she said, patting his cheek kindly. “I cannot help you but my friends will come for you as soon as it is dark. I will create a diversion with the snake, and I will make sure the villagers in the yard see me in the square while my friends cut you down. You must take off the strange clothing and put on the pelt that they bring you, and then follow them. The others must think you are a shape-changing demon when they see the empty clothing.” She laughed softly. “It will delay them from going out to search for you.”

After she snuck out again, the time dragged by. Joe’s arms ached so badly he wanted to cry. His bladder grew so tight it was painful, but he was damned if he would give Mesande the satisfaction of seeing him wet himself. The argument in the yard went back and forth, but he was too miserable to look over the wall.
 

Shortly after the sun went down, a long shadow detached itself from a nearby shelter and slid silently in beside Joe. A stocky young boy, clutching a rusty knife in one hand, gave Joe a nod, gripped the snake gently around its neck, unhooked its tail and slid it cautiously out of its prison, then tiptoed out into the night with it.
 

The effect of the snake was satisfyingly electric. A piercing shriek split the air and pandemonium broke out. Villagers and hyenas scattered in all directions.

Joe felt his hands released from the beam and his knees buckled under him. He fell to the floor, writhing in agony as the muscles in his feet and his arms adjusted.

“No time!” a boy hissed, dragging him up to his feet and hacking at the ties that bound him to the divining rod with a knife, while another struggled to remove Joe’s shorts and replace them with a skirt-like pelt.
 

With trembling hands Joe grabbed a handful of pebbles from beside the doorway and stumbled out behind the boys as they ducked into the shadows, crouching low. Joe followed his rescuers as silently as possible under the boma down to a stream that ran beside the settlement.
 

“Walk in the middle of the stream as long as you can to hide your scent,” one of the boys said, pressing a water skin, and some dried meat into Joe’s hands. “We must go back and cover your tracks.”

Joe hesitated. He was still unsteady on his feet.

“The witches are that way.” The other boy pointed south-west, back up the plateau, the way the girls had brought Joe.
 

“Thank you...” Joe whispered, wondering why they would be directing him towards witches, but before he could ask, the two boys had melted into the shadows.
 

He would worry about that later. For now, he was free, but he would not be for long if Mesande could weasel her way out of her demon lie.

Joe ran downhill beside the stream for about twenty paces to throw her off track and then waded into the water, making his way upstream as fast as he could, trying not to splash water as he ran. He could see his way quite clearly in the moonlight. Of course, it meant she would be able to see him too. Not that she needed to; she would set her hyenas on him. She could probably smell him out herself, the vicious brat. What he would have done for a can of pepper to put her off the track.
 

As soon as he reached the top of the plateau, he relieved himself, drank as much water as he could stomach, refilled the skin the two young boys had given him from the stream, and set off at a brisk trot, heading towards the distant mountains.

Ethan fought the urge to run as the hippopotamus stood eyeing him on the bottom of the pool. It was barely two meters away. Its massive grey head scythed slowly from side to side almost level with his. The skin around its eyes and the sides of its face was an unexpected salmon pink and single spiky whiskers stuck out of crater-like pores all over its broad muzzle. One lone bubble escaped in slow motion from its closed nostrils, and drifted to the surface. He wasn’t sure if it could open its mouth underwater without drowning, but he knew it had enormous tusk-like incisors inside that could cut a human in half. The rest of its giant barrel-shaped body was hairless, and looked nearly as big as a rhinoceros.
 

He’d read in his survival manual that hippopotami were extremely aggressive and were responsible for more human fatalities than elephant, rhino and buffalo combined. Any sudden noise or movement may be all that would be needed to trigger an attack. Barrelling into the water at speed had not helped his cause. The manual had told him to jump off the path and stand dead still, but there had been no advice for the eventuality of meeting one in deep water.
 

Rotating his hands slowly by his sides, trying to keep in the same spot under the water, Ethan struggled to remember what other advice the manual had given. It claimed that hippopotami do not swim but walk along the riverbed, and Ethan wondered if it was as simple as pushing up to the surface, out of the creature’s reach. There had been nothing about how far or how fast a hippopotamus could push off from the bottom, but it definitely had mentioned that hippopotami were faster than people both on land and in the water.

Staring at the creature in horror, he knew he would have to make up his mind quickly. His lungs were already burning and he thought the hippopotamus could hold its breath for at least five minutes.

“Don’t bite me,” he prayed, as he slowly bent his legs in preparation to push off. An overwhelming surge of hostility swept over him from the beast as it hovered indecisively between savaging him and walking away.
 

It was not as if he were reading the thoughts or emotions of this creature like he could with Fisi and Salih. Anyone could have picked up the hostility from the animal’s body language, but, on the other hand, he could have sworn the feeling radiating off it went deeper than that. Sulkiness immediately came to mind, and a feeling of having been cheated. If he could feel all that from the animal, Ethan wondered if it could feel anything from him. It seemed almost too much to hope for but he glared at it with all his might and thought, “Go away!”