The Last Leopard (2 page)

“Only problem was, the fence was electric!” reported Ben with a grin. “The hunter was hanging on for twenty minutes, sort of sizzling, before she got bored and went away.”

Martine, whose arms still ached from her own encounter with an exasperated warthog, laughed, but not quite as hard as her grandmother.

“What do the two of you have planned for the vacation?” asked Gwyn Thomas, pouring them each a glass of pawpaw juice. “Apart, Martine, from riding the white giraffe very, very slowly.” She gave her granddaughter a meaningful glance, indicating that she hadn’t forgotten what Ben had said but was prepared to let it go just this once.

Martine smiled gratefully. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll be riding so slowly that even tortoises will outrun us.”

When she wasn’t doing that she was hoping to brush up on her bushcraft skills and paint watercolors of the animals in Sawubona’s sanctuary, a hospital and holding area for injured wildlife and new arrivals to the game reserve.

Ben, meanwhile, had his parents’ permission to spend almost the whole vacation at Sawubona, studying under Tendai as an apprentice tracker.

When Martine first met Ben, he’d been almost completely silent, never speaking a word to anyone but her and his parents. Most kids at school had believed he was stupid. Some still did. But at Sawubona he seemed to really enjoy chatting with Tendai, Gwyn Thomas, or anyone else who happened to be around.

As she listened to him describe his morning in the reserve, Martine absentmindedly speared the last tomato on her plate and took in the scene in the kitchen. Eight months ago, her mum and dad had been killed in a fire in England on New Year’s Eve and she’d been shipped off to Africa to live with a strict grandmother she hadn’t even known existed. Martine had been convinced she would never be happy again. Yet here she was sitting contentedly at the breakfast table with that same grandmother who, after a rocky start, had become one of her very favorite people, and with Ben, her best friend in the world apart from Jemmy.

Through the open doorway Martine could see zebras splashing around the distant water hole. She would never stop missing her parents, but it definitely helped that her new home was one of the loveliest game reserves in South Africa’s Western Cape and that she could ride through it on her own white giraffe and get close enough to zebras and elephants to touch them. She preferred the weather in Africa too. It was early but already the sun was spilling orange across the kitchen tiles, and Shelby, the ginger cat, was stretched out in its warmth.

The telephone trilled loudly, making them jump. Gwyn Thomas checked her watch and frowned. “It’s barely seven o’clock. I wonder who’s calling us so early on a Saturday morning.”

She went into the living room to answer it. Evidently the connection was a bad one, because she had to speak very loudly.

“Sadie!” she cried, her voice carrying clearly. “What a lovely surprise. How nice to hear from you. How are things at Black Eagle Lodge . . . ? Oh, no. Oh, surely not. I’m very sorry to hear that. Well, if there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to let me know. . . .
Excuse me?
Oh. OHHH . . . !”

Ben and Martine looked at each other, and Ben raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like trouble,” he murmured.

“Uh, uh, yes, I understand,” Gwyn Thomas was saying. “No, no, it’s not an imposition. Please don’t think that for a minute. In fact, the timing couldn’t be better. We’re on our way. Try not to worry. We’ll see you very soon. Take care of yourself in the meanwhile.”

There was the sound of the receiver being replaced, followed by a long silence. When she returned to the kitchen, Gwyn Thomas’s face was sober. “Martine, Ben,” she said, “I’m afraid you’re both going to have to put your plans on hold. Martine, we leave first thing in the morning. We’ll be gone for a month. We’re going to Zimbabwe.”

M
artine stared at her grandmother uncomprehendingly. “Zimbabwe? What? Why? No, I can’t leave Jemmy. I just can’t. It’s the beginning of vacation.”

“I realize that this has come totally out of the blue and I’m incredibly sorry,” said Gwyn Thomas, putting her hand on Martine’s shoulder. “It hurts me to disappoint you both, and I know how you’ve looked forward to this time. I wouldn’t entertain the idea of tearing you away from Jemmy or Sawubona if I could see any way of avoiding it. It’s just that Sadie, one of my oldest and dearest friends, has had an accident and she desperately needs our help.”

“Do you mind if I ask what happened?” asked Ben.

Martine could tell that he was just as crushed as she was, but he was doing a much better job of hiding it.

“Not at all,” replied Gwyn Thomas, sitting down and pouring herself another cup of coffee. “Sadie runs a hotel called Black Eagle Lodge in the Matobo Hills, one of the most remote regions of Zimbabwe. Matopos, which is the name for the area in which the hills are situated, is famous for its extraordinary rock formations—great boulders that balance on top of one another—and also for its history. Many people believe that the lost treasure of Lobengula, the last king of the Ndebele people, is buried there.

“Unfortunately, a week ago Sadie slipped and broke her leg very badly. She has a cast from her ankle to her thigh and is hobbling around on crutches. Zimbabwe is going through a hard time and life is very difficult for people there, what with crop failures and political problems. Last month Sadie had to lay off most of her staff. This accident means she’s struggling to cope. Black Eagle used to be a popular riding center, but now Sadie has only one man to exercise the horses and nobody to do the cooking or cleaning if any guests do show up. I thought that since Martine is a good giraffe rider and I’m a reasonable cook, it might be nice if we eased her workload for a month.” She gave Martine an appealing glance.

Martine pretended not to see it. She sat silently in her chair, arms folded, tears burning the back of her eyes. It seemed as if everyone and everything was continually conspiring to take her away from Jemmy. If she wasn’t getting stranded on desert islands or being banned from riding him, then poachers were trying to steal him. And now this. She couldn’t recall hearing her grandmother even mention Sadie before, but all of a sudden she was claiming that Sadie was one of her oldest and dearest friends. Why couldn’t Sadie find someone nearby to help her out? Zimbabwe was hardly down the road. It was over a thousand miles away.

There was no doubt that the Matobo Hills sounded intriguing, what with exotic rock formations and the Ndebele king’s missing treasure, and Martine had always longed to ride a horse, but given a choice she’d rather stay at Sawubona with Jemmy.

Ben, who knew how much it meant to Martine to be with her precious white giraffe, said, “Is there anything I could do? I mean, maybe I could take Martine’s place and come to Zimbabwe and do some work around the retreat. I’ve never ridden a horse before and I’d have to ask my mum and dad, but I’m sure I could learn, or at least feed the horses and muck out their stables or something. Then Martine could stay here and be with Jemmy. Umm, that is, if you’d like me to . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Ben, that’s extremely generous of you, but Martine can’t possibly stay here on her own,” Gwyn Thomas told him. “Tendai’s much too busy to take care of her. And I’m not sure that your mum and dad would want you coming with us to Zimbabwe for four weeks—not to such a troubled country. But if they do agree, we’d love you to have you with us, wouldn’t we, Martine?”

Martine was torn. She didn’t want to leave Jemmy, but nor did she want Ben going off on an adventure without her.

“Martine,” said her grandmother warningly. “Remember your manners. We’d love Ben to come to Zimbabwe with us, wouldn’t we?”

“Ben knows that without me having to say it,” muttered Martine.

Normally Gwyn Thomas would have told her off for being so rude, but under the circumstances she just sighed. “Martine, the last thing I want to do is make you unhappy or take you away from Jemmy. But I’m really worried about Sadie. I had the feeling that . . .” She hesitated. “Maybe it’s my imagination.”

“What?” Ben pressed.

“It’s probably nothing, but I had the feeling that there was something Sadie wasn’t telling me. She’s the proudest, most independent woman I know, yet she practically begged me to help her. That’s not like her at all. It made me wonder if something else is going on behind the scenes.”

She took Martine’s hand. “I just feel she needs us. Do you understand?”

What could Martine say? Her grandmother had done so much for her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, giving Gwyn Thomas a hug. “It’s a bit of a shock, that’s all. Of course I understand. I’ll miss Jemmy terribly, but it’ll be great to see another country, especially if we can help Sadie and ride a few horses at the same time.”

“Wonderful,” said her grandmother with evident relief. “In that case we should start packing immediately. We’ll make a vacation of it. It’s a long drive, so we’ll break it up with a night or two at Rainbow Ridge and other attractions along the way. Come with me, Ben. Let’s call your mum and dad.”

She gave Martine’s hand a squeeze. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

Martine kept a smile on her face until her grandmother and Ben had left the kitchen. Then she walked out of the house and along the track to the animal sanctuary, past the owl’s cage. She sat down beside the caracals’ cage and burst into tears.

She really did understand why her grandmother wanted to go to Zimbabwe to help a friend in need; she was quite sure that if she had a friend who was hurt or in trouble, she’d react the same way. She just didn’t see why she should have to go to the Matobo Hills as well. It wouldn’t be so bad if Ben was allowed to join them, but if she had to be without both of her best friends for four whole weeks it would feel like a life sentence. Surely there was someone she could stay with right here in Storm Crossing. Someone like . . .

Martine stopped feeling miserable immediately. Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? She could stay with Grace, Tendai’s aunt. Grace was a
sangoma,
a medicine woman and traditional healer with Zulu and Caribbean origins. Since she’d arrived in Africa, Martine had had a special relationship with her. It was Grace who’d first told her that she had a secret gift that would shape her destiny. “The gift can be a blessin’ or a curse. Make your decisions wisely,” was her advice to Martine only hours after she’d gotten off the plane from England.

The gift was a mystery even to Martine. She knew it had something to do with healing, and with a Zulu legend that said that the child who could ride a white giraffe would have power over all the animals. However, Martine was quite skeptical about that particular detail.

Twice her future had been eerily mapped out on the wall of a cave. The paintings were hidden deep inside the Secret Valley, the white giraffe’s sanctuary. On each occasion they’d made sense only after something had happened to her.

“That’s not fair,” Martine had complained to Grace. “If the Bushmen—the San people—knew so much about my destiny, they should have made their paintings a lot easier to read. That way, I could avoid any bad stuff happening to me. For instance, if I’d known what was going to happen on the ship in June, I would have refused to set foot on it.”

“Exactly,” Grace retorted. “If you could see your future, you’d only choose the good stuff, the easy stuff. Then you would never learn and never experience the important things in this world because oftentimes they’s tha hard things. If ya’d never gone on that boat, where’d those dolphins be now?”

“Ohhh,” said Martine. “Oh, I see what you mean.”

Martine loved being around Grace, who was wise, funny, and full of fascinating knowledge about African medicine. She liked Grace’s eccentric house, which had chickens wandering in and out, and she especially liked her banana pancakes. The only thing about staying with Grace was that Gwyn Thomas would probably return from her travels to find her granddaughter three times heavier than when she left. Then again, she might see that as a positive because she and Grace were always trying to fatten Martine up.

The more Martine considered it, the more of a good idea staying with Grace seemed. Grace was Gwyn Thomas’s closest friend in Storm Crossing and she saw no reason for her grandmother to disagree. All that remained was to convince Grace herself.

The plan had hardly finished forming in Martine’s mind when a voice with a pronounced Caribbean twang declared: “I was jus’ drinkin’ tea with my nephew when I hear this terrible weepin’ and wailin’. I says to myself, there ain’t no reason for a chile, livin’ on Sawubona under God’s sweet sun, to be cryin’ like the world is gonna end at midday. Let me see what’s goin’ on. And now I find ya smilin’ and wit’ mischief in your eyes. What’s up wit’ you, chile?”

The
sangoma’s
sudden appearance at the exact moment she was thinking of her had the effect on Martine’s mood of sunshine bursting through storm clouds. “Grace!” she exclaimed, jumping up to embrace her. “I was just thinking about you.”