Switch! (39 page)

Laughter broke out around a patient to the left of him, whom he realised, without much surprise, was Ethan. Ethan always went to pieces in an emergency, Joe grimaced. Then he noticed the leopard lying on the pallet, cuddled up beside his cousin.

“Take the animal away from Ethan,” he groaned, protectively. What was it with that boy? Any cat within a hundred yards would automatically home in on Ethan. They must sense that he hates them, Joe supposed. Well, technically, Ethan hated the vermin that live on them, but he avoided them nevertheless.
 

“’Sokay, Joe, Ethan he like leopard,” Jimoh told him, and when Joe propped his head up on his elbow, he saw that Ethan was actually stroking the leopard weakly, with a silly, self-depreciating smile on his face. He looked more than a little disheveled, but perhaps that was because of the flotsam and jetsam he had in his hair.

Tariro sat on a low stool, chatting excitedly with Ethan, which was a surprise in itself since he had not taken to Joe’s cousin. He still wore just as much rubbish dangling from his hair as Ethan did. With Ethan so picky, and Tariro so fastidious with his dreadlocks, Joe wondered what on earth could have sparked off a competition between those two for the stupidest hair.

“You should have been there, Ethan,” Tariro said, and laughed. Laughed! It was a friendly laugh, not the usual derisive snort Tariro reserved for Ethan. “We went back to fetch Aaron and Lewa, and all those Almohad were standing around acting nervous,” Tariro said. “The dragon just sat there looking at them. He never said a word. They kept coming forwards with more and more jewels, thinking that’s what he wanted, and then suddenly the dragon took off, ignoring the pile of jewels in front of him. Jimoh says he probably only wanted his own jewels back. He thinks the dragon may just have been resting before flying home again.”

“The most hilarious part was the Almohad trying to sort their jewels out afterwards,” a boy with an American accent chuckled. “All that scrabbling and lying about who owned what.” Joe could not see the boy’s face. Like Tariro, he had his back to Joe. He wondered who the boy was and where he had come from. Or how they had all got here in the first place.

A wisened old Tokoloshe crone came onto the balcony, followed by some of her unmanageable crew, who all fussed around Ethan. Joe recognised the one he had seen the first day in the forest, and the one with the scar on his chest. The crone jumped up on Ethan’s pallet, squeezing between him and the leopard, and poked him in the ribs till he sat up with a groan. Joe grinned. The old Tokoloshe started to feed Ethan with something so pungent, Joe could smell it from where he lay. Well, that’s what you got for putting on all that hypochondriac charm, he thought. Amazingly, Ethan ate it without complaining. Ethan! The pickiest eater alive! Even more amazingly, he tried to tug the leopard towards himself. The leopard stood up, stepped daintily over Ethan, and settled on the pallet on the other side of him, seeming to show the utmost caution not to disturb him. Neither Tariro nor the American boy seemed to find this odd. Joe wondered if the Almohad had beguiled the lot of them.

Apparently not. “It is all sorted out,” the American boy said. “Gogo Maya is negotiating with Galal to take most of the captives back to Waheri village, so that they do not take the magic into the kingdoms. We don’t know what Tacari will say, but she says it is about time she came clean with Tacari anyway. He is the leader of Waheri village, a very powerful magician. Even more powerful than Lewa, I think.”

At the mention of her name, the girl with the surprised hair stood up and went over to Ethan. Sitting cross-legged beside his pallet, chin in her hand, she spoke to Ethan in an admiring voice. “It was a very big risk you took, Ethan, but it is just as well,” she said. “Galal seems to have been shocked out of his stupor at the thought of losing his daughter. If she had died he may have given up and gone back to his lazy bao-playing addiction and left the city on its path to ruin.” Joe wondered what risk Ethan had taken. It was not like him to take risks.
 

“One of the captives, a man called Iniko, is going to stay and take over the neglected education of Kitoko,” the girl went on. “A bit awkward, bearing in mind the treatment the man received at Kitoko’s own hand, but he does not look like a man who would carry a grudge.”
 

Joe stifled a smile. That Kitoko was in for a surprise, a few others too. Iniko was the man from the menagerie, intent on taking magic across to his home and overthrowing the king of his own kingdom.

“Fisi said to give you this,” the girl said, handing Ethan a slingshot that Joe could have sworn had Tafadzwa’s trademark hornbills carved on it, and his cousin clutched it to his chest as if it were the latest cell-phone.

“Is Fisi okay?” Ethan asked anxiously.

“He has gone to make his peace with Tabita and her pack, and to persuade the Kishi to stop taking hostages. But it is for sure that Mesande is in for a surprise sometime soon,” the girl laughed.

“Mesande?” Joe groaned; he would have to warn them about Mesande.

Ethan reached out a slightly shaky hand and put it on Tariro’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about tricking you... You know... about drinking the blood,” he said weakly, “I should have told you.”

“Yeah... Jimoh told me... you sneaky little weasel – I could have got myself killed busting heroics all over the place.” Tariro tut-tutted. Tut-tutted! They
must
have been beguiled, Joe thought, it was not like Tariro to tolerate a trick. And was that blood they mentioned? He was almost as shocked to find out what a dark little brute Ethan was underneath that angelic exterior.
 

Nandi woke up and groaned. “Joe?”
 

“I’m here,” he said, pulling himself up and staggering, still a bit groggily, to her pallet. As much pain as she must have been in, she managed to smile at him bravely.
 

She took a deep, sad breath. “I will not let them do that to you again,” she said. “It is a stupid game. I will make Daddy send you to the witches. You will be safe there.”

“Joe’s friends have come to fetch him,” the beautiful healer said, patting Nandi on the arm. “Although I am surprised they can recognise him. He has become a lot more handsome since last I saw him.”

“He was always handsome!” Nandi said, sitting up weakly and eyeing him through half-closed eyes. Then she hugged him.

“Hello, I am right here!” he said, suddenly all self-conscious. “Besides, get off, you should be resting. That was a very bad injury you took.”

Nandi laughed at him. “Witch magic, you silly boy. I am as good as new,” she said, although she lay back against the pillows gingerly. “Somewhere there is a witch lying, twitching, trying to recover from the healing. I know how these things work. They will never tell you which one did the healing though, or how.” Then she hugged him again, fiercely. “I am going to miss you, Joe,” she whispered into his ear and when she pulled away her eyes shone with unshed tears.

Gogo Maya sat on her verandah overlooking the village, her pipe in one hand and a mug of Grandma Wanyika’s sour wine in the other. Luckily Lewa did not want to share the wine, even though she had offered. The girl was probably too young for wine anyway.

“Aaron’s going to miss them,” Lewa sighed, following Gogo Maya’s gaze down into the village where Aaron sat cross-legged on a mound beside Salih, shooting pebbles at a row of calabash targets with the slingshot Jimoh had made him. The young man’s heart was not in it. He missed more targets than he hit.

“And Salih,” Gogo Maya said. The cat looked almost as depressed. It was funny how that made her feel just slightly uncomfortable. Salih had really taken to the boy, Ethan. She had not been certain if the two of them could still communicate after that last bloodletting, and Salih would not tell her. Even though Lewa had been in time to prop the boy up with her energy while he completed the healing on the Almohad girl, he had given up a lot of blood by the time she got there, so Gogo Maya was not sure how much of the power he was able to cling on to. At first she’d suspected he had very little, but he had politely declined her offer of a healing amulet to take home with him, saying there were proper doctors where he lived and he had no need for it. Gogo Maya was convinced it was because he still held plenty of the power.
 

However much he had, no amount of persuasion would make the boy kiss her – or give her CPR as he liked to call it – so she was unable to take it back. She’d even tried pretending to be in the throes of a heart attack as the handsome boy, Tariro, had suggested. In the end, Tariro had taken the amulet for the other boy, Jimoh, who he said did not have good access to these proper doctors.

“Thank you for covering for me with Tacari,” Gogo Maya said after a long companionable silence. Well, a long silence, anyway. One in which Gogo Maya wrestled with her conscience about thanking the girl. “And for sending the boys back safely.”
 

Lewa had shown her how to make a tear in the fabric of the world by pushing the four boys through to the pool where they’d come from. At least she hoped that was where the young witch had sent them; she only had Lewa’s word for it. The tear had been nothing like Tacari’s, where you step into a gel-like doorway and walk out the other end. The boys had gathered together with all their things and Lewa had pushed them somewhere. Just like that. They were there the one minute and gone the next, like a pricked bubble. It was a one-way push, Lewa had explained, so thankfully they had gone without switching places with anything unpleasant or awkward to explain. Gogo Maya wondered how long it would take her to build up enough magic to test the trick on Salih, or Aaron perhaps.
 

Gogo Maya was very pleased with Lewa even though she had had to share the secret of the mgobo roots with the girl in exchange for the secret of the tear. But with two of them refining the magic through the root, and with Salih’s power, who knew what they may be able to concoct? Two heads were definitely better than one, she decided. She hadn’t even known that with the power from her opal she could do that thing with the nerve endings till the boy had explained it to her. Not that she would like to cause that much pain, exactly, but you never knew.

“I hope that boy Tariro passes the healing amulet on to Jimoh so that his village will have something to fall back on without the Sobek there,” she said to Lewa conversationally.
 

“Now why would he withhold the amulet from his friend?” Lewa said.

“Because he is a wily boy, and he is too eager to dabble in the magic for his own good.”

“Oh, well, in that case he doesn’t need the amulet,” Lewa said with a knowing smile, “because I kissed him.”

Gogo Maya, who had just swallowed a mouthful of wine, wheezed violently, and stared wide-eyed at Lewa. “So you chose the handsome one then, did you? It won’t do you any good. They won’t be back.”

Lewa arched an eyebrow at Gogo and said, “No, I think I like the other one actually, there was something about him... but the handsome one chose me. He was very persistent. I’m not sure if he liked me or if he was after the magic.” She grinned wickedly. “He sure was desperate for that magic... and so envious of the other one, I thought, why not let him have it? He was a good kisser. And you said yourself, we won’t be seeing them again.”

Gogo Maya wasn’t sure if she was more shocked at Lewa’s cavalier treatment of the boys or her casual attitude towards passing on the magic, but she supposed the girl was right; whatever mischief the boy planned to get up to was beyond their control anyway, so she settled down in her chair with a contented sigh to enjoy the faint whiff of burned cookies that wafted overhead as the Nomatotlo settled in to the thatch for the night.

End of book one.

Thank you so much for reading Switch! I hope you found it entertaining. If you did, please consider leaving a review on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Switch-ebook/dp/B009H28446/
 

or on Goodreads
 
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16051548-switch

For interesting African and fantasy snippets, find me on my website at
karen-prince.com

If you are writing a book. Here is a clip showing the top 5 reasons why you should try Scrivener, which is my favourite writing software:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TmgMFsFkhx4