The Sleeping Baobab Tree (4 page)

Apparently Nokokulu suggested he got a rat instead, and offered to train it to obey his every command. Nokokulu lives just behind Fred’s house in a small house with a tall bed in it. She has a troupe of rats in the backyard, which all obey her, she says. And are much cleverer than hamsters. Which is true. But I’d have to agree with Fred that you wouldn’t want a rat trained by Nokokulu. It could be unpredictable.

“You see,” he said patiently, as if we were idiots, “she didn’t kill him with her bare hands. She put a curse on him. The
Menshi
Curse. It made him believe he had to go into the water – and it was there that he died a horrible watery death.”

Menshi
means water in Bemba, but I think Fred just made up the name of the curse so we’d believe him. I clearly remember him once telling us how he had taught Hamster to swim. Very unsuccessfully as it turns out.

“Did she get mad when she saw the poster?” Madillo said.

“She didn’t get mad in her normal way,” said Fred. “She started laughing, and she laughed so loudly and for such a long time that I got quite scared and thought she was having a fit or a heart attack or something. But she was all right. She didn’t say anything about the poster after that. The worst part was that I couldn’t stop laughing myself, because when you hear her laugh like that it’s catching. So there I was, laughing with the chief murder suspect. Hamster would have been very upset, but he was dead so he couldn’t really hear me.”

There was a pause in the conversation. I looked at the two of them. Avoiding the subject was just going on for too long.

“Did you actually hear what Madillo said, Fred?” I said kindly. “Aunt Kiki is missing. We have to find her.”

Before he could answer we heard Nokokulu coming up the stairs. You always know it’s her because she wears really heavy boots. It doesn’t matter how hot it is. I asked Fred once if he’d ever actually seen her feet and he said no. Fred always adds a small exaggeration to everything, he can’t help it. So instead of just leaving it at that, he added, “Actually I believe she has hooves. That’s why she wears those boots, so none of us can see them.”

Madillo jumped up when she heard Nokokulu approaching. “Abducted by a wizard
or a witch
,” she whispered. “But we have to go now, Fred.”

Madillo has this fear/admiration thing going on with Nokokulu. She likes the idea of her being a witch but always thinks she’s about to turn her into a chameleon or a cockroach or something. Also, whenever Madillo sees Nokokulu, she bows to her. Even Nokokulu thinks that’s weird. I once asked Madillo if she thought that would save her from a terrible spell being cast on her, and she said no, it was because you should never look a witch in the eye. If you do, you could be sucked into their powerful web.

I told her that in fact it’s
animals
you shouldn’t look in the eye when you first meet them, because they feel you are challenging them and they may attack. Dogs are like that. So are gorillas and baboons. But that fact didn’t stop her bowing.

“Don’t go,” Fred said. His voice sometimes goes from deep back to squeaky when he’s worried. “Please?”

How could we leave after that?

Madillo moved to a chair under Fred’s windowsill, as far as she could get from the doorway that Nokokulu was about to walk through. I sat where I was, on the edge of Fred’s bed. Fred had flopped back onto his pillow and was looking as ill as he could manage.

The door opened and Nokokulu walked in. She looked at the three of us and shook her head.

“No good this, no good at all. My great-grandchild sick in bed, dying perhaps, and you two same-same girls come here looking for germs. No, we can’t have that.”

Nokokulu uses “we” when she means “I”. Mum does a similar thing, except she uses “we” instead of “you”. So when she says, “We really should try and keep this house tidier,” she means us.

“Are you listening to me, you twins?” Nokokulu said. “Am I not right? You have a house next door that has no germs in it. A house full of doctors. It’s time for you to go there and leave poor Chiti with his Nokokulu so he can get better.”

She calls him Chiti even though that’s his second name. It was Nokokulu who gave him that name when he was born, because she says Fred is a name better suited to a pet fish.

We didn’t need a second invitation. We left quickly, avoiding Fred’s eyes. We would have liked to stay and help him, but even though I don’t believe the whole witch thing, Nokokulu can be a bit scary. Mainly because you never know what she’s going to say to you.

“Come on,” I whispered to Madillo as we walked down the stairs. “I need to go home to continue my investigation.”

“What?” asked Madillo when we were back safely on our side of the hedge. “What other investigating do you need to do? We already have the culprit. It’s Nokokulu. Are you blind? Why else would she have barged into the room just as you were mentioning Aunt Kiki, who coincidentally just happens to be her granddaughter? She’s probably killed all of them. You could see that’s what Fred thinks too.”

“Fred didn’t say anything at all about it. You don’t conduct investigations by jumping to ridiculous conclusions. You examine the facts and you ask the questions. You investigate.”

“You know full well that she heard you, Bul-Boo. So why wasn’t she upset? Why didn’t she ask us anything about it? I’ll tell you why – because she doesn’t need to. She already knows. You
know
that she heard.”

I had to admit, that part was a puzzle. Although not enough of a puzzle that we should jump to a ridiculous conclusion. There was no doubt Nokokulu had heard. Fred’s dad says she has 20/20 hearing. Which, by his definition, means that she hears what she wants to hear from twenty miles away, but miraculously can’t hear the things she’d rather not hear – even if they’re shouted into her ear – from twenty millimetres away.

But I had other things on my mind. Something was bothering me about my search results. Why had the guys with their clinic in New York come into the results when I had definitely included Zambia in my search string?

When Mum got home I asked her innocently, “Have you ever heard of men called Ratsberg and Wrath from New York? Do they have some connection with Zambia?”

“
Ratbag
, you mean?” Mum said in disgust. She’s not very good at hiding her feelings. “No, thankfully, neither of those
genocidaires
has anything to do with Zambia. They did enough damage in South Africa for ten lifetimes. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, just a school project,” I said quickly. “It’s nothing.”

“A school project on what? Don’t tell me Sister Leonisa has put you onto them? It’d be the kind of rubbish she’d believe in. God Almighty, what goes on in that school?”

I should have known not to raise it. I’d just thought that in her current mood she might not have the energy to ask me why I wanted to know. I should have known better.

“We were doing stuff about orphans and their names came up. I just thought they sounded funny.”

“Funny, all right. Funny
evil
,” she said under her breath, stirring the pot of soup as if it was the enemy.

“Anyway, I’ll just go and finish my homework now,” I said, trying to adopt Madillo’s breezy tone.

She didn’t answer, just carried on stirring like a crazy woman. Now I had a new word to look up:
genocidaires
. It sounded like “genocide”, so I supposed it had something to do with mass murder and war. Not that that really helped, because if they were in New York, I would not really put them on a list of suspects.

I thought I should have a list, though, and even though I was most definitely not ready to put Nokokulu on it, I did scribble “N” down, in pencil. It was a start.

My
Great-granny Nokokulu is an unusual person. To put it mildly. She is full of powers. They’re all stuck in a spindly skinny body that creaks around the place like a rusty bicycle. She complains that soon she’ll die and there’ll be no real witch left in our family.

She is wrong about that. First of all, of course, she is never going to die. There is no hope of that at all. Secondly, certain other people in this family have powers. And she knows that. That is why she is always trying to teach me the values she thinks I’m losing.

“Chiti,” she says, “what’s the point of sitting in front of a screen where little idiot characters run around shooting each other? One day you’ll forget what real people look like, then what? Silly little voices, chirping and squawking like chickens with sore throats. That’s not life. I’ll show you what life is really about, then you’ll forget all these computer things.”

She calls me Chiti rather than Fred. It’s my middle name and nobody else uses it. Today, after the twins had left (and after she’d given me her medicine, which might have made me feel better if I’d been sick in the first place), she sat down on my bed and made an announcement.

“You and I – the Great Nokokulu and her great-grandson Chiti, named after the most powerful chief in the whole of Zambia – are going on a journey. You are growing big now, and I can see that you may have some of my powers running through your body. Not as many as I have, nobody has that many, but a few. They’ll do for the moment.”

“We’re going on a journey?” I said, my voice giving that irritating squeak it seems to have all the time now. “I can’t go anywhere. I’m sick.”

It wasn’t really much good telling her that, because she never listens. But it was worth a try.

“I’ll plan carefully, and then we’ll go,” she said. “You and I, to the place where the Man-Beast has returned. The Man-Beast who thinks his powers will protect him. He is wrong. He has been sleeping for too many years – his memory has left him. A beast with a bad memory is no beast at all. You will come with me, and watch. And learn.”

She looked at me. I was probably looking confused, because that’s exactly how I felt. What was a Man-Beast with a bad memory?

“Ah, Chiti. You won’t remember, your mind is also like a big sieve, but your grandmother was taken from us. Before you were even born. On the day your father and Kiki came into this world.”

I sat up, forgetting I was supposed to be weak. “Aunt Kiki and Dad are twins? No one ever told me that.”

“Twins, brother and sister, what’s the difference?” she said, waving her hand around. “The point is, this creature has to be stopped before he kills again. Once every forty years he comes, before the rainy season. Now is his time. So, you and I will go. Just us alone. Not your father. Not your mother. And most certainly not the
mpundu
from next door.” She says
mpundu
as if it’s a dirty word, when all it means is “twins”. “It is you who must come with me, because it is only you who will understand, only you who will not fear him.”

Even the word “Man-Beast” was terrifying, so I wasn’t sure why she thought I wouldn’t be afraid of it, whatever or whoever it was. Looking on the bright side, at least she’d admitted out loud that I possess magical powers. If I went on this trip, perhaps it would move me up the rankings of People with Special Powers and Bul-Boo would finally believe me.

But maybe not.

Maybe I should have just listened to Bul-Boo’s voice in my head saying, “Stop being a twit for one minute and use your brain.” And my brain was telling me loud and clear that this trip was going to be bad news. Whatever Nokokulu had in mind, it would be something that only she understood and it was ninety-nine per cent likely to be bad.

“But, Nokokulu,” I said, “I’m so sick that my stomach feels like it’s caught between the jaws of a giant crocodile. So sick that I don’t know if I would even make it as far as the car.”

I closed my eyes to make her believe that I didn’t even have enough strength to keep them open. And of course I hoped I could make her disappear, that she would be gone in a puff of smoke when I opened them again, but I doubted I had that much power yet.

“Sick you may be, or not, but we are going,” she said, unfortunately still there. “To Ng’ombe Ilede where the bones of my ancient forebears lie. This trip will finally make you, the inheritor of my powers, into a good and proper member of this great family.”

“But if I die while we’re travelling in your car, what will Mum and Dad say?” I asked her. “And anyway, it’s the Tonga-speaking people who are from Ng’ombe Ilede, not our ancestors.”

“Be quiet if you have nothing sensible to say,” she said. “Our ancestors travelled far and wide. They were like me. Powerful. Not for them one village for life. All of Zambia was their kingdom. We will leave on Saturday morning after the sun has risen high into the sky.”

“I have schoolwork and I’ve got things arranged with Bul-Boo and Madillo,” I said, trying to sound decisive. “I can’t go. Sorry about that.”

“Lying again, Chiti? I don’t mind that. All children tell lies. As long as they are not big lies that sit in your stomach and eat away at your body until there is nothing left but a pile of bones. But you know there is no point trying your lies on me, big or small. I always know.”

She stood looking at me and I suddenly remembered what Bul-Boo had said about Aunt Kiki.

“Nokokulu, you know you were talking about Aunt Kiki? When is she coming to visit us again?” I asked.

“Why, all of a sudden, do you want to know about Aunt Kiki?” she said, raising her voice. “You leave her alone. Don’t be asking me.”

With that she turned and stomped out of the room, banging the door behind her.

Perhaps the twins were right. Perhaps something terrible had happened to Aunt Kiki and they weren’t telling me. And now I was being forced to go on some trip to who knows where. Everything was going wrong. My Prophecies of Doom are always right, and this one was only heading in one direction. Aunt Kiki, even when she was really sick, has always been the kindest person I know.

My only hope was that my parents would for once stand up to her and refuse to let me go on this suicide mission. That hope faded fast. She met Mum in the garden and announced her plan. I could hear because I have 20/20 hearing, just like her. Also, in this particular instance my window was open and Mum was just outside it, by the rose bushes.