Sunbird (12 page)

'Yes. We killed them,' they said. Locked in a modern gaol, like caged wild birds, they were dead within twelve months -all of them. The memory was chilling now and I thrust it aside.

'Now listen to me carefully, Sally. You must stay here. No matter what happens. I will go out to them. Talk to them. If ,' I choked on the words, and cleared my throat, 'if they hit me with an arrow I'll have half an hour or so before--' I rephrased the sentence, '--I'll have plenty of time to get the Land-Rover and come back for you. You can drive. You'll have no trouble following the tracks we made back to the Makarikari Pan.'

'Ben - don't go. Oh God, Ben - please.'

'They'll wait, Sal - until dark. I have to go now, in the daylight.'

'Ben--'

'Wait here. Whatever happens, wait here.' I shrugged off her hands and stepped to the opening.

'Peace,' I called to them in their own tongue. 'There is no fight between us.'

I took a step out into the sunlight.

'I am a friend.'

Another slow step, down over the twisted roots of the wild fig, holding the flattened leather case low against my hip.

'Friend!' I called again. 'I am of your people. I am of your clan.'

I went slowly down into the silent hostile grove. There was no response to my words, no sound nor movement. Ahead of me lay a fallen tree. I began sliding towards it, my guts a hard ball of tension and fear.

'I carry no weapon,' I called, and the grove was quiet and sinister in the hush of the afternoon.

I had almost reached the fallen tree, when I heard the twang of the bow and I dived for the shelter of the dead trunk. Close beside my head the arrow fluted, humming in the silence, and I went down. My face was pressed into the dry earth, my heart frozen with fear at the close passage of such hideous death.

I heard footsteps, running, from behind me and I rolled over on my side to defend myself.

Sally was running down the wild fig roots towards me, ignoring my instructions, her face a pale mask of deathly terror, her mouth open in a silent scream. She had seen me fall and lie still, and the thought of me dead had triggered her panic. Now as I moved she realized her mistake, and she faltered in her run, suddenly aware of her own vulnerability.

'Get back, Sal,' I yelled. 'Get back!' Her uncertainty turned to dismay and she stopped, stranded halfway between the cavern entrance and my dead tree-trunk, undecided on which way to move.

In the edge of my vision I saw the little yellow bushman rise from a patch of pale grass. There was an arrow notched to his bow and the feathered flights were drawn back to his cheek as he aimed. He was fifty paces from where Sally hovered, and he held his aim for a second.

I dived across the space that separated Sally from me at the instant the bushman released the arrow. The arrow and I flew on an interception course, two sides of a triangle with Sally at the apex.

I saw the humming blur of the arrow flash in belly-high at Sally and I knew I could not reach her before it struck. I threw the flattened leather case with a despairing underhand flick of my wrist as I dived towards her. It cart-wheeled lazily, spinning in the air - and the arrow slapped into it. The deadly iron tip, with the poison-smeared barbs, bit into the tough leather of the case. Arrow and case fell harmlessly at Sally's feet, and I picked her up in my arms and spinning on my heels, doubled up under her weight. I raced back towards the cover of the dead tree-trunk.

The bushman was still on his knees in the grass ahead of me He reached over his shoulder and pulled another arrow from his quiver, in one smoothly practised movement he had notched and drawn.

This time there was no hope of dodging, and I ran on grimly. The bow-string sang, the arrow flew, and instantly I felt a violent jerk at my neck. I knew I was hit, and with Sally still in my arms we fell behind the dead tree-trunk.

'I think I'm hit, Sal.' I could feel the arrow dangling against my chest as I rolled away from her. 'Break off the shaft - don't try and pull it out against the barbs.'

We lay facing each other, our eyes only a few inches apart Strangely, now that I was a dead man I felt no fear,,The thing was done, even if I was hit a dozen more times, my fate would be unaltered. It remained only to get Sally safely away before the poison did its work.

She reached out with shaking hands and took the frail reed arrow, lifting it gingerly - and then her face cleared.

'Your collar, Ben, it's lodged in the collar of your jacket. It hasn't touched you.'

Relief washed through me as I ran my hands up the shaft of the arrow, and found that I was not dead. Carefully lying on my side while Sally held the tip of the arrow away from my flesh, I shrugged off my light khaki jacket. For a moment I stared in revulsion at the hand-forged iron arrow-head with the sticky toffee-coloured material clogging the wicked barbs, then I threw jacket and arrow aside.

'God, that was close,' I whispered. 'Listen, Sal, I think there is only one of them here. He's a young man, panicky, probably as afraid as we are. I will try to talk to him again.'

I wriggled forward against the reassuring solidity of the dead tree, and raised my voice in the most persuasive tones that would pass my parched throat.

'I am your friend. Though you fly your arrows at me, I will not war with you. I have lived with your people, I am one with you. How else do I speak your language?'

A deathly, impenetrable silence.

'How else do I speak the tongue of the people?' I asked again, and strained my ears for a sound.

Then the bushman spoke, his voice a high-pitched fluting, broken up with soft ducking and clicking sounds.

'The devils of the forest speak in many tongues. I close my ears to your deceits.'

'I am no devil. I have lived as one of yours. Did you never hear of the one named the Sunbird,' I used my bushman name, 'who stayed with the people of Xhai and became their brother?'

Another long silence followed, but now I sensed that the little bushman was undecided, puzzled, no longer afraid and deadly.

'Do you know of the old man named Xhai?'

'I know of him,' admitted the bushman, and I breathed a little easier.

'Did you hear of the one they called the Sunbird?'

Another long pause, then reluctantly, 'I have heard men speak of it.'

'I am that one.'

Now the silence went on for ten minutes or more. I knew the bushman was considering my claim from every possible angle. At last he spoke again.

'Xhai and I hunt together this season. Even now he comes, before darkness he will be here. We will wait for him.'

'We will wait for him,' I agreed.

'But if you move I will kill you,' warned the bushman, and I took him at his word.

Xhai the old bushman came to my shoulder, and heaven knows I am no giant. He had the characteristically flattened features, with high cheekbones and oriental eyes, but his skin was dry and wrinkled, like an old yellow raisin. The wrinkling extended over his entire body as though he were covered with brittle parchment. The little peppercorns of hair on his scalp were smoky-grey with age, but his teeth were startling white and perfect, and his eyes were black and sparkling. I had often thought that they were pixie eyes, alive with mischief and intelligent curiosity.

When I told him how his friend had tried to kill us, he thought it an excellent joke and went off into little grunting explosions of laughter, at the same time shyly covering his mouth with one hand. The younger bushman's name was Ghal, and he was married to one of Xhai's daughters, so Xhai felt free to josh him mercilessly.

'Sunbird is a white ghost!' he wheezed. 'Shoot him, Ghal, quickly! Before he flies away.' Overwhelmed by his own humour, Xhai staggered in mirth-racked circles giving an imitation of how he thought a ghost would look as it flew away. Ghal was very embarrassed and looked down at his feet as he shuffled them in the dust. I chuckled weakly, the sound of flighted arrows very fresh in my memory.

Xhai stopped laughing abruptly, and demanded anxiously, 'Sunbird. have you got tobacco?'

'Oh. my God!' 1 said in English.

'What is it?' Sally was alarmed by my tone, expecting that something else horrifying had happened.

'Tobacco,' I said. 'We haven't any,' Neither Sally nor I used the stuff, but it is very precious to a bushman.

'Louren left a box of cigars in the Land-Rover.' Sally reminded me 'Is that any use?'

Both Ghal and Xhai were intrigued with the aluminium cylinders in which the Romeo and Juliette cigars were packed. After I showed them how to open them and remove the tobacco, they cooed and chattered with delight. Then Xhai sniffed the cigar like the true connoisseur he was, nodded approvingly and took a big bite. He chewed a while and then tucked the wad of sodden cigar up under his top lip. He passed the stub to Ghal who bit into it and followed Xhai's example. The two of them squatted on their haunches, positively glowing with contentment and my heart went out to them. It took so little to make them happy.

They stayed with us that night, cooking on our fire a meal of bush-rats threaded on a stick like kebabs, and grilled over the open coals without gutting or removal of the skin. The hair frizzled off in the fire and stank like burning rags.

'I think I'm going to throw up,' murmured Sally palely as she watched the relish with which our two friends ate, but she didn't.

'Why do they call you Sunbird?' she asked later, and I repeated her question to. Xhai.

He jumped up and did his celebrated imitation of a sun-bird, darting his head and fluttering his hands. It was convincingly done, for bushmen are wonderful observers of nature.

'They say that's how I act when I get excited,' I explained.

'Yes!' Sally exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight as she recognized me, and then they were all laughing.

In the morning we went to the cave together, all four of us, and in that setting the little men were completely at home. I photographed them, and Sally sketched them as they sat on the rocks by the pool. She was fascinated by their delicate little hands and feet, and their enlarged buttocks, a recognized anatomical peculiarity named steatopygia, which enabled them to store food like a camel stores water, against the contingencies of the wilderness. Ghal remarked to Xhai on the activity in which Sally and I had been engaged beside the pool when he discovered us the previous day, and this led to much earthy comment and laughter. Sally wanted to know the source of it, and when I told her she blushed like a sunset, which was a pleasant change, for I am usually the blusher.

The bushmen were enthusiastic over Sally's sketches, and this enabled me to lead them naturally to the rock paintings.

'They are the paintings of our people,' Xhai boasted. 'This has been our place from the beginning.'

I pointed out the portrait of the white king and Xhai explained frankly, without any of the reserve or secrecy I had expected.

'He is the king of the white ghosts.'

'Where did he live?'

'He lives with his army of ghosts on the moon,' Xhai explained - and my critics accuse me of being a romantic!

We discussed this at some length, and I learned how the ghosts fly between moon and earth, how they are well disposed towards the bushmen, but care should be taken as the common forest devils will sometimes masquerade as white ghosts. Ghal had mistaken me for one of these.

'Have the white ghosts ever been men?' I asked.

'No, certainly not.' Xhai was a little put out by the question. 'They were always ghosts, and they have always lived on the moon and these hills.'

'Have you ever seen them, Xhai?'

'My grandfather saw the ghost king.' Xhai avoided the question with dignity.

'And this, Xhai,' I pointed out the drawings of the stone wall with its chevrons and towers, 'what is this?'

'That is the Moon City,' Xhai answered readily.

'Where is it - on the moon?'

'No. It is here.'

'Here?' I demanded, my blood starting to race. 'You mean on these hills?'

'Yes.' Xhai nodded, and took another bite of his five-dollar cigar.

'Where, Xhai? Where? Can you show it to me?'

'No.' Xhai shook his head regretfully.

'Why not, Xhai? I am your brother. I am of your clan,' I pleaded. 'Your secrets are my secrets.'

'You are my brother,' Xhai agreed, 'but I cannot show you the City of the Moon. It is a ghost city. Only when the moon is full and the white ghosts come down, then the city stands upon the plain below the hills - but in the morning it is gone.'

My blood no longer raced, and my excitement cooled.

'Have you seen the Moon City, Xhai?'

'My grandfather saw it, once long ago.'

'Grandpa was a big mover,' I remarked bitterly in English.

'What is it?' Sally wanted to know.

'I'll explain later, Sal,' I said, and turned back to the old bushman. 'Xhai, in all your life have you ever seen such a city as this? A place of tall stone walls, of round stone towers? I don't mean here at these hills, but anywhere. In the north, by the great river, in the desert of the west - anywhere?'

'No,' said Xhai, 'I have never seen such a place.' And I knew that there was no lost city north of the great Pan or south of the Zambezi, for if there were, Xhai would have come across it in seventy years of ceaseless wandering.