The Sleeping Baobab Tree (15 page)

“Bul-Boo,”
I said.

“Yes?”

“We shouldn’t have let her go on her own.”

“She’s very stubborn. She wouldn’t have let us come with her. Anyway, it’s very close. We’d hear if anything happened to her.”

How was that supposed to be comforting? So, if Madillo’s bones were being crunched up, we’d hear? And then what would we do?

I shone my torch across at Bul-Boo. She was lying perfectly still and her eyes were closed.

“Are you going to sleep?” I asked.

“We always know when the other one is all right. It doesn’t matter where we are. She will be fine. If there was something wrong I’d know. That’s how identical twins are.”

“That doesn’t always work,” I argued.

“It’s worked so far,” she said, her voice cracking a little.

The tent went silent again. I kept waiting for the sound of returning footsteps but heard nothing.

Finally Bul-Boo spoke. “It’s been two minutes. Should we wait a bit longer or should we go out and look?”

“I don’t know.”

We waited.

“Three minutes.”

I think this was only the second time I had ever heard Bul-Boo sound scared, and she wasn’t even trying to disguise it.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We both jumped up, put our shoes on and crawled out of the tent.

The air felt clammy and warm against my skin as I stood up and looked around. It was dark and very, very still.

Bul-Boo reached out and grabbed my hand. “Fred, I can’t hear anything. Listen.”

We stopped moving. She was right. The air seemed empty of sounds. No cicadas buzzing. No nightjars. No snores.

“There’s something wrong,” she said, her voice a shaky whisper. “The night is never this quiet.”

“Let’s call her,” I said.

We both shouted at the same time, “Madillo … Madillo!”

Our voices sounded loud in the night, echoing into the silence.

We stood and waited.

Nothing. Silence again, apart from Bul-Boo’s breathing, which seemed to be getting louder every second.

“Madillo!” she shouted. “Where are you? Stop hiding – it’s not funny.”

Silence.

Then we heard a loud noise from Nokokulu’s tent and both jumped.

She crawled out and stood up. “Noise, noise, in the middle of the night. What are you doing?” she shouted.

“Nokokulu!” Bul-Boo said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Madillo’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know. She went to clean away the hyena’s footprints, because she … forgot to do it earlier. She said she would be quick, but she hasn’t come back. We called her.”

Nokokulu stared at Bul-Boo. “When did she go?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“You, Chiti, you didn’t go with her? You let her go outside into the night on her own?”

“Yes, Nokokulu,” I replied, not looking at her.

“Nooo!” whispered Nokokulu to herself. “This was not how it was supposed to be. They were not meant to be here. She was not meant…” She stopped.

Bul-Boo grabbed my arm and started shaking it. She was sobbing loudly now. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What’s happening? What is Nokokulu talking about?”

Nokokulu took hold of Bul-Boo’s other hand. “Don’t worry, little girl, I know what to do. We’ll find her.”

With that she disappeared back into the tent, leaving me and Bul-Boo outside staring at one another.

“What’s she saying?” Bul-Boo asked me. “Where’s Madillo?”

She was still crying. I felt sick in my stomach, as if someone had punched me hard. I didn’t know what to do.

“I’ll go and look,” I said. “Wait here.”

I left her there outside Nokokulu’s tent and started walking towards where the prints had been. I had never felt more afraid in my life, or more alone.

My eyes had got used to the darkness by now but it didn’t make it any better. There seemed to be shadows appearing and disappearing and I felt a small cold wind on my face even though it was such a hot night.

I began to walk faster and started calling Madillo’s name over and over again, my voice floating uselessly in the air. She wasn’t going to answer, I knew that. Each time I said her name it caught in my throat.

When I got nearer to where we’d found the paw prints I slowed down, looking at the ground as I walked. But all I found when I reached the spot was dust and dirt scattered all over the place. No paw prints. And no footprints. Just mad patterns in the sand, like a person with huge hands had sat down and played in it, spreading everything this way and that.

I didn’t want this to be happening.

“MADILLO!” I shouted at the top of my voice. “Madillo, can you hear me?”

I heard something. It sounded like a voice, a very faint voice. I felt a little tingle run down my arms.

“Madillo! Madillo!” I called again, sure now that she could hear me.

I listened. The voice came back, quieter.

Then nothing. Dark, deep silence.

I
stood there making promises to myself: if Madillo comes back safely I will never be horrible to Joseph again; I will stop making up stories about Nokokulu; I will tidy my room once a week and never, ever complain about anything that is put on my plate. I’ll do anything. Anything.

The moon suddenly came out from behind the clouds, and it felt almost as bright as daylight. Now I could see everything around me: the car in the distance, the tents next to the Sleeping Cow tree and Bul-Boo standing completely still where I had left her.

I panicked at the suddenness of the moonlight, like a torch shining down from the sky, and began to run back to the tents.

Bul-Boo didn’t move. She looked almost like a statue, as if she was afraid to move even one muscle.

I stopped in front of her.

“I think I heard something, Bul-Boo, a voice. It sounded like Madillo.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice catching in her throat. “Where did you hear it? Is she close? Let’s go, Fred. Come on.”

I wished I hadn’t said it: I didn’t even know if it was a voice. It could have been an owl. I can never seem to stop myself exaggerating, even when it’s a situation as bad as this was.

“Wait,” Nokokulu called from inside the tent. “Don’t go anywhere. Stay there, I’m coming out.”

She sounded different somehow. Her voice was deeper than usual. It was as if someone else was speaking through her mouth.

We waited.

Inside the tent she was obviously moving about. We heard rustling and clinking, then deep mumbling words that I couldn’t understand.

We waited some more. Bul-Boo’s fingers were hurting my arm she was holding it so tightly.

“Please, Nokokulu,” Bul-Boo said, her voice shaking. “Please come out now.”

The tent unzipped and Nokokulu appeared. She looked at Bul-Boo and a different tone came into her voice. It was almost kind.

“I know. I know what you are thinking, little girl, but don’t think that. We’ll find your sister. I will find your sister.”

“But the hyena…” Bul-Boo began. “And Fred heard a voice answering him.”

“It wasn’t a voice. It was his own voice echoing off the waters of the Kariba Dam, fooling you into thinking that. The river never wanted to be a dam and it mocks us if we make sounds around it. Did it sound like a girl, Chiti?”

“I don’t know.” I had never felt more miserable in my whole life.

Nokokulu stamped her foot. “Don’t say anything if you don’t know, boy. Now, you two have to do exactly what I tell you. I don’t want arguments,” she added, looking straight at Bul-Boo. “You understand me?”

Neither of us answered.

“I will find your sister and I will bring her back to you. I want you to stay here, both of you. You are to light the fire and pack away the tents. I have packed my suitcase and locked it. You, Chiti, must put the suitcase, the tents and everything else into the car. But do not wait in the car. Wait here next to the fire. If you talk, then you must talk very quietly. Can you do this?”

“But Nokokulu…” Bul-Boo said.

“But nothing, child. You must do what I say and do it properly.”

“Why can’t we come and help you?” I asked.

“I don’t need help, especially from you. Was it me who let the little mad one go out on her own in the night to where the hyena had been?”

The kind tone in her voice had disappeared very fast.

That was the end of the conversation. Nokokulu, with no torch or stick or anything, walked off. I watched her and suddenly she seemed to me to be just a tiny old lady hobbling away, an old lady with no powers whatsoever. How could
she
find Madillo?

Bul-Boo and I started taking the tents down without speaking. All you could hear was the rustling of the tent material and our breathing. We carried everything to the car then locked it.

Bul-Boo lit the fire again and it burned bright against the dark sky. I sat down and she came to sit beside me. It’s funny how things happen. I’d been wanting her to sit next to me, to hold my hand, to do anything that showed that she liked me – and now she was, and now I didn’t care, because all I could think about was Madillo. I could feel Bul-Boo beside me. She’d gone so sad she’d stopped saying anything. It was like her words were trapped inside her. I felt like a useless clumsy thing sitting next to her.

It was all my fault this had happened. I knew something was going to. I knew it from the moment I woke up on Thursday morning. I knew it all day yesterday and all day today. But still I let Madillo leave our tent and go out by herself into the night. If she’d been taken away by the hyena I might as well have murdered her. If that was the case, I didn’t want to be alive, because it would live with me for the rest of my life. Every morning when I woke up, even before I opened my eyes, the first thing I’d think would be that I’d killed her.

And the worst part of it was that the cloud of doom that had been over my head was now gone. It had just vanished. Which could only mean one thing – the worst possible thing had happened.

When I was very small I used to cry a lot, if I fell out of a tree or banged my head. Stupid sore things. And I didn’t mind who saw me or heard me. Mum said I cried louder than anyone she’d ever met. But I’d not cried for a very long time. I think since I was ten.

And now I couldn’t help it.

I was sitting there with Bul-Boo, staring into the fire feeling as if my head was going to explode, and it started. Big stinging tears rolled down my face and there was nothing I could do. I could feel Bul-Boo turn her head to look at me and then her hand got hold of mine and we just sat there, the two of us crying and crying. It felt like we would never be able to stop.

I kept putting more wood onto the fire just so I would have something to do. Just so I’d feel useful.

Every time we heard a sound we’d both jump. I knew there couldn’t be snakes because they don’t like fire, but some of the noises came from the tree, almost like something was running around on the trunk. Sometimes I heard the sound of a nightjar. Dad told me once that the noise they make is called churring, and it sounds like that – like a long drawn out
churrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
. It would have been a nice sound to hear if we had just been in the garden back home. But not there. There the only sound I wanted to hear was the sound of Madillo’s voice.

No
time ever passed as slowly as that night. I felt as if Fred and I had been sitting there for our whole lives. As if days had passed since we’d watched Madillo crawling out of the tent. Hours since Nokokulu had walked off into the night. Now it was just us – me and Fred alone in the shadow of the sleeping baobab tree. I couldn’t even phone Mum and Dad because I wouldn’t be able to find any words to say to them. And they were so far away. I tried thinking about anything else, about the investigation into Aunt Kiki’s disappearance, but I couldn’t. Nothing else seemed to matter now.

Fred kept trying to talk to me, but the only person I wanted to talk to was Madillo and she wasn’t here. I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t know anything any more.

The moon had got brighter and brighter as the hours passed and the clouds all disappeared, but I didn’t care about that. I just felt like an empty person, as if there was a huge hole in me where I used to be.

Fred started confessing something to me and even though I heard some of the words, nothing much made any sense. He was trying to say it was his fault because he had known something bad was going to happen, he had known since yesterday or the day before. I didn’t want him to talk about it: I didn’t care whose fault it was. I just wanted Madillo back. Nothing else.

Suddenly I felt it. Something was moving.

I held onto Fred’s hand as tightly as I could. “I can feel something,” I whispered. “Can you?”

“No, what?”

“Someone is near by. I can feel it.”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a shiver go through me.

“Fred,” I said, “look.”

Two human-shaped shadows stretched out from behind the tree. They were moving. A long one and a very short one.

My heart sounded like a drum beat in my head. I felt as though I wouldn’t be able to stand up. And then I heard a scream, but it was my own.

I couldn’t stop. It was as if I had no control over my voice, screaming out into the night.

Then suddenly I heard a familiar “Aiyeee!”

That stopped me. It was Nokokulu.

Fred and I jumped up from the fireside. “Nokokulu.”

The shorter, Nokokulu-shaped shadow came out from behind the tree.

She was alone.

“Where is she? Where’s Madillo?” I shouted.

“She’s all right,” Nokokulu said. “Nothing’s wrong. She’s just asleep.”

I didn’t answer. I just ran past her to behind the tree. Then I stopped as I saw a tall thin man walking slowly towards me. He was carrying a bundle, and as the moon shone down on it I could see Madillo’s curly brown hair. I stood still, my legs as heavy as concrete.

The man carried on walking. Slowly and carefully.