Unicorn Tracks (2 page)

I scrambled out of the bronze tub as she handed me a fresh green towel, feeling resentful that I’d hauled buckets of water all the way from the river for such a short soak. The air was so heavy with humidity that the drops of water seemed to stick to my skin as soon as I climbed out. I hastily dried my body and hair, while Bi Trembla fetched a clean linen shirt and pair of trousers from the lone chest at the foot of my mattress. She shoved the items into my hands and began to roughly comb my hair back as I hopped into the trousers.

Her nimble fingers twisted my dark hair into tight cornrows. I pulled the shirt over my head, interrupting her progress with my stubborn hair. She huffed and yanked the narrow braids even tighter, while I stuffed my feet into my safari boots. When she was finished, she pushed me back to take a look at my appearance and sighed. “You’re a pretty girl. I wish you would stop this nonsense in the savanna.”

“I love what I do, Bi Trembla.” True, sometimes, but even on days I hated it, working here provided my escape. Stumbling over my untied laces, I made for the door. Bi Trembla seemed ready to launch into full-out lecture mode, and I didn’t want to get caught under her barrage.

“You won’t find love here!” she shouted after me as I ran out of the hut, waving back at her.

Tumelo waited for me in the center of the main camp, holding a wooden tray with two glasses full of cold apple cider. He pushed the tray into my hands. “They are in my office, waiting for you. I offered to show them to their accommodation, but they want to ride out today, before it gets dark.”

I already had a picture of the naturalist and his daughter in my mind. I imagined him as an academic in spectacles—a small man, with graying hair, unmuscled yet skinny in the way that only foreigners were. Once we got on the trail, he’d swap between swatting insects and talking a mile a minute about his research, desperate to find the creatures he’d only known on paper. His daughter would be typical of the women who came with me on the safaris—fragile yet demanding, unused to the exercise or the hot sun, armed only with a child’s dreamlike fantasies of exotic lands and a blank sketchbook.

As soon as I entered Tumelo’s hut, I realized the Harvings were like no tourists I’d ever guided before. Though their backs were facing me, I could see maps and charts spread out across Tumelo’s desk. Mr. Harving’s shoulders were broad, athletic, with muscles that showed through his practical, blue linen top. His daughter wore her long bright red hair tied back in a hasty ponytail, frizzy wisps standing up in the humid air. She too wore practical blue linen, light trousers and heavy black boots that I could see beneath the chair.

Usually, my efforts to make female tourists change clothes were met with a pitying sweep of the lady’s gaze over my own attire. None of the female tourists from Echalend had ever worn trousers before. It might have been pity, not generosity, that had driven Mrs. Dyer to buy a dress for me.

“Good afternoon,” I said, bringing the tray around to the other side of the desk and balancing it precariously on the only map-free corner.

Both Harvings got to their feet and extended their hands. Looking at him face on, Mr. Harving was older than he appeared from behind. His eyes were edged with deep wrinkles, but he had a smile so broad it almost ate up his face. A dark shadow of untrimmed whiskers framed his jaw.

Miss Harving looked about my own age. Definitely younger than twenty, with fresh, blemish-free skin. She had a fuller-than-fashionable figure, with soft, doughy curves rather than the waifish slenderness I’d come to expect from ladies in Echalend. Her eyes were impossibly ice blue, and they looked into mine with an intensity and excitement in them that made me suddenly want to study my shoes.

She took my hand before her father and wrung it with a man’s grip. “Hello! You must be Mnemba? We’re so pleased to be here and to have you helping us with our research. I’m Kara.”

Her father took my hand next, pumping it eagerly. He echoed her sentiments. “Our ship was a cramped, rusty little bucket… hit all the storms, latrines a mess…. We could not be more thrilled to finally be here. This trip is the culmination of years of work for us.”

Kara laughed, slapping her father’s shoulder. “You only hated the ship because the captain kept threatening to throw you overboard.” She looked to me with a conspiratorial wink. “It was fine. Our cabin was a bit small, but the crew were lovely.”

“It’s not my fault the man couldn’t lose at poker,” Mr. Harving mumbled.

Kara cleared her throat and exchanged a smile with her father. “Anyway, we are so pleased to be here. The trek will all be worth it for our research.”

The way they talked about their research made it sound like something they did together, when I’d assumed it was Mr. Harving’s occupation and she was just along for the trip.

I gestured to the tray. “Welcome to Nazwimbe. I have cold cider here for you. Tumelo—Mr. Nzeogwu—said you might want to go out this afternoon already? Are you sure you wouldn’t rather settle in, have a rest, a bath? We can visit the—I’m sure Tumelo would love to show you some of our native games? The rides can be intense, especially after such a journey.”

I prayed they might change their mind. I was scrubbed, reasonably sweat-free, and the sugar-buzz from the chocolate had started to wear off. Let Tumelo entertain them for a while. All I wanted was to climb into my bed and sleep the afternoon away.

“No, no. We’ve been traveling for
weeks
and spent months preparing for this before we left,” said Mr. Harving. He gestured toward the maps. “We’ve been studying your geography. We have theories relating to the terrain and the breeding habits of the Kardunn. I can’t wait to get out in the field and find some.”

“The what?” I’d been a guide for Tumelo for over a year, and in that time, never heard of an animal called a “kardunn” before.

“Unicornalis Kardunn,” Kara explained. She picked up a sketch of two animals. The drawing lacked the practiced refinery I’d seen in many of the ladies’ sketchbooks, but I could make out the equine form of a unicorn and a smaller, two-horned beast that I couldn’t distinguish. “That’s their official name. We have this theory that the abada might also be a subspecies of unicorn, so we’ve classified them as a family.”

My brain skipped over most of what she said, focusing in on a single word: unicorns. I almost sighed out loud. Of course Tumelo would assign me to this group, knowing that the unicorns were one of the hardest animals to track in Nazwimbe. What a bastard. The creatures lived a solitary existence, deep in the wooded brush, with prints indistinguishable from those of a common horse. They made no noise, moving with a feline grace, their whinnies a whisper on the air.

“How many days are you here with us in Nazwimbe?” I asked, moving Tumelo’s box of cigars from his chair so I could sit in it. “Unicorns are difficult to track. We may have to go out several days just to see one.”

“Mr. Nzeogwu assured us this area hosted one of the largest populations,” Kara said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye with obvious suspicion.

“We’re here for three weeks. Plenty of time! We understand they are elusive, part of their mystique that makes them so intriguing to us,” Mr. Harving cut in quickly, taking a long drink from his glass of cider.

Great. Tumelo had all but guaranteed them I would find unicorns for them to study, even though he knew how difficult they were to find. He had been too happy to offer me four days off. I should have suspected something. Curses in two languages flashed through my mind. I’d known him for years. I should have realized that his generosity wouldn’t come cheap.

“When can we be ready to go out?” Kara asked, wringing her pale hands. She began to repack the maps into long wooden tubes.

“I’ll go prepare the horses,” I said, taking a deep breath. I was so tired that heaving myself out of the chair seemed like an adventure in itself.

As Kara packed up the documents, one of the long carrier boxes knocked into the tray, spilling cold cider into my lap. I leapt to my feet with a yelp, the liquid soaking my trousers to the skin.

“I’m so sorry!” Kara was at my side in seconds, trying to mop up the mess with a white sweat towel, but only succeeding in pushing the stain deeper into the fabric. Her cheeks went pink with embarrassment, and she bit her lip.

I sighed; those were my last clean pair.

I moved away from her, trying not to grimace at the feeling of the wet fabric against my thighs. Schooling my face into a reluctant smile, I said, “It’s fine. I’ll change. Meet me at the stable block.”

IN TWO
hours of scouring the red earth for tracks, I’d managed to locate a lone, undersized bull elephant. I searched the riverbanks for hogfish and crocodiles, the tree lines for leopards and
mngwas
and prodded the bushes as we rode along with the end of my rifle, hoping to draw out the
malaxas
and jackals. For once, even the phoenixes stayed hidden. As we turned back to take the path home, I felt sticky with defeat, sweat, and tree sap.

The Harvings praised the beauty and diversity of the flowers, the tremendousness of our vast, open spaces. Both were good riders, and rather than ignore me and chat to each other, they actively scanned the horizon with their binoculars. Their cheerfulness annoyed me. I almost wished they had spent the afternoon whining or trying to throw things at the elephant while it cooled itself in the mud, grasping leaves from above with its dexterous trunk. Then I could have resented them, instead of my own failure.

We rounded a corner in the path, passing alongside the riverbank. The water was high from the spring rains, brown with silt. A twitch in the bushes across the water drew my attention, and I squinted toward it.

“Look, look!” Kara said, standing in her stirrups and pointing. “A crocodile, there’s a crocodile on the bank!”

I followed the line of her finger to a moss-covered log, bobbing in the current along the shore. I snorted. “That’s a log, Miss Harving.”

Kara flushed, twisting the dials on her binoculars. “No… it’s moving….”

I reached over and plucked the instrument from her grasp, adjusting it myself. When I passed the binoculars back to her, and she peered through the focused lens, her blush deepened. If it was possible, the redness of her cheeks made her eyes even brighter.

“I just got these,” she muttered.

Suddenly, Mr. Harving’s horse let out a squeal and bolted. Tail held high, the horse put its head down and ran, long strides eating up the ground. My mare reared on her hind legs and fought to free her head from my iron grip. Even Kara’s mount, a swaybacked, elderly gelding, pawed at the ground and grunted nervously.

As soon as Elikia’s feet were on the path again, I saw what had set them off. An enormous griffin paced toward us, beak snapping open and shut. The animal’s yellow, catlike eyes had narrowed into slits. Sunlight glinted off her silver feathers, making her appear covered by chain mail. Her tail twitched and her hind legs bunched beneath her body as she stalked us.

I looked to Kara, expecting her to be shaking with terror or crying. In my time as a guide, I’d seen my share of sobbing tourists. Instead, her rifle was cocked, and she stared at the creature down the barrel.

“Hold, don’t shoot it. Not yet,” I said, looking the griffin in the eye. One of the first things I’d been taught by Tumelo when I started guiding tours was that prey run. Alpha predators always stood their ground. To a griffin or a lion, humans who ran were no different than the impala and buffalo they hunted. Standing to fight could earn the hunters’ respect.

The griffin made a warbling sound deep in her throat, like a disgruntled farm goose. She looked away from us, gazing into the brush behind her. The bushes rattled, and a flurry of tiny griffin babies swamped their mother’s legs, winding in and out of her feathers and playing with the tuft at the end of her catlike tail.

Kara chuckled and put her gun up. We started laughing, and I felt the tension in my body gradually flood out. The griffin fluffed her gray feathers and lay down, the babies burrowing into her and tucking themselves under her protective belly. Tiny beaks and feathered heads popped out from under her bosom, peering up at us. Two of the bolder infants wobbled toward us, imitating their mother by clacking their beaks. The mother stretched out her paw and tucked the wanderers back underneath her.

“Aww, look at them! They’re kind of cute,” Kara said, patting her horse’s neck. “In a monstrous kind of way.”

“Where did you learn to use a gun?” I asked. When she’d requested a gun at the camp, I’d been shocked. And kind of suspected she’d asked just for show. Instead, her unwavering grip had demonstrated experience. The barrel had made a perfect line to the space between the griffin’s eyes.

She shrugged and brushed her sweaty hair back out of her face. “My father thought I should practice before we came here. I set my old dolls and stuffed toys up in the hedgerows and practiced shooting them.”

I imagined a row of smiling child’s toys with bullet holes between their eyes. The morbidness of it made me chuckle.