“Well, are they people or hyena?” Ethan was unable to see them, and he was not sure he would be able to recognise an impala from this distance.
“Hyena,” Fisi said, sitting up and scratching his groin, dangerously close to the edge of the ledge. He seemed to hold no fear of being sucked over the precipice. “We hunt in the wilderness below in hyena form, and we live in the forests above in our man form,” he explained.
Suddenly the herd of impala broke out from the cover of the undergrowth as tiny as ants, and Ethan saw several hyenas giving chase but even from this distance he couldn’t bear to watch them go in for the kill.
A scuffling noise coming from the cliff face above him made him jump and stagger awkwardly to his feet, the blood draining from his face. He fumbled to open a blade on his pocketknife.
Jimoh and Tariro both rose swiftly and stepped back, towards the precipice, nocking their slingshots. The air shimmered, and abruptly smelled dank. With a soft whoop sound, Fisi changed back into a hyena. Emitting a low growl, he stalked towards Ethan, whose heart skipped a beat before he realised Fisi’s eyes were fixed, not on him, but on a hole in the cliffs above his head.
Salih sat, perfectly composed, watching expectantly for something to drop out of the hole. Presently, a small hairy bushman-like man squeezed out, landing on his feet with a grunt of triumph.
“Aah!” he jumped back in fright at the sight of the crouching hyena, fumbling desperately to remove a quiver full of arrows from his back, almost garroting himself on the string of his bow, which hung diagonally across his chest. Managing to separate the two, he dropped the bow at his feet and shakily balanced the quiver on his head, sending a shower of arrows skidding across the floor. Ethan realised he was trying to make himself look more imposing.
“
Sheet
!” Jimoh swore, hopping up and down on one foot. An arrow had bounced off the floor grazing his ankle.
Another small creature dropped out of the tunnel, almost bowling over the first, followed by another and another, until there were a pile of them scrambling to their feet, dusting off their strange twisted animal hide skirts and straightening their head gear.
“What are you doing?” one said, staring in astonishment at the first one, now standing sheepishly with a quiver on his head for no reason. A quick glance at Tariro confirmed to Ethan that the other boys could understand the little man. Fisi, having taken advantage of the confusion to change back into a young man, leaned innocently against the wall of the cave, an embarrassed grin on his face.
“Hyena!” muttered the first one, pointing at Fisi with one hand, easing the quiver over his shoulder to settle in its place on his back with his other hand. He drew himself up to his full height of about two feet, and made a surreptitious attempt to shift his headband from around his neck, where it had slipped, to his head, taking care not to prick himself on its hedgehog spines.
“Riiight,” the second one said, unconvinced. He scratched absently at an old wound that ran from his bare nipple to his belly button.
“Tokoloshe,” Jimoh breathed in awe. He quietly replaced the slingshot around his neck so that it looked once again like a necklace, and returned the pebble to his pocket moving towards Fisi.
“What’s a Tokoloshe?” Ethan said, a little unnerved by Jimoh’s anxiety.
“Mythological creature,” Tariro whispered. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the ugly little creatures. “They’re supposed to have a penis so long they wear it slung over one shoulder or tied around their waists.”
Fisi let out a whooping hyena giggle. Not only was there no evidence of any penises, but these Tokoloshe didn’t look that scary to Ethan; if anything, they looked disorganised. Most of them carried primitive-looking bows slung over one shoulder and bark quivers full of arrows over the other, that didn’t look big enough to inflict much damage unless they were poisonous.
Salih smiled a wry smile and said in tones of molasses, “Boys, meet your new guides.”
~~~
“Nomatotlo sent us,” the leader said to Salih. He appeared to have no trouble understanding the leopard. After introducing himself to the boys as Rufiki, he gathered up a few of his clan and they arranged themselves sitting cross-legged, in a semicircle on the floor in front of the leopard. Salih was trying to hold their attention long enough to find out what was happening in the magic world above the cliffs by swishing the tip of his tail back and forth hypnotically. It was not working. Their eyes darted distractedly between the cat and the river. Ethan sat beside Salih watching the rest of the Tokoloshe splash about in the river above the waterfall, worried one of them would be swept over the edge.
“They have the attention span of a gnat,” Tariro grumbled irritably. One had been explaining to Tariro that the pelts that hung from the thong around his waist were those of the giant golden mole, and that the assortment of seed pods and rodent sculls intertwined with them were hunting trophies, when, without warning, he was overcome with the urge to swim. He had sprung up, mid-sentence and hurtled into the water, followed by most of the rest of them.
A whiff of catnip floated up off the Tokoloshe. It was so strong when you got near some of them; it smarted in Ethan’s nostrils. He shuddered to think what effect it was having on Salih. Jimoh lay fast asleep, propped up against the wall of the cave. The Tokoloshe arrows, whilst not poisonous, were tipped with a powerful sleeping draft. According to Fisi, they preferred to capture their prey and hold them for ransom, rather than actually killing them. Since they wouldn’t eat any of the creatures in the magic forest, for fear of overdosing on two lots of accumulated magic, this turned out to be more agreeable to all concerned.
It was Fisi who marshalled their attention in the end. He dug the tin of sweets out of Tariro’s backpack and, with an apologetic look at Tariro, banged it loudly.
“Damn!” Tariro muttered, obviously reluctant to give up his power over the tin. He had guarded the treasure so possessively since the hippopotamus pools, eking out a daily ration of one sweet each. The Tokoloshe erupted out of the water and swamped Fisi almost immediately upon opening the tin.
“It’s as if they can smell the chocolate,” Tariro wailed.
“Tariro, I think you are right.” Ethan drew in a sharp breath at the sight of one Tokoloshe who was beginning to shimmer and shake in a disturbing way. The long hair on his back seemed to thicken and started to bounce as he moved about.
“That’s it!” Salih exclaimed. “Stop them eating the sweets!” He jumped into the fray, hauling Rafiki and a couple of others away from Fisi. Some Tokoloshe backed away of their own accord once they saw some of their friends shimmer and shake and become almost translucent.
“Someone has been feeding Morathi’s tribe sugar,” Salih panted. He tried to round up a handful of unaffected Tokoloshe into a corner of the cave. “I think it is reacting with the magic to make them hyperactive. And stronger!” he added, struggling against them.
“Like they weren’t hyperactive before!” Ethan tried to pull one back and then jerked his hand away with a yelp when the creature bit him on the arm.
“I haven’t got any stronger,” Fisi puffed, trying to pry the tin away from little fingers.
“More!” a Tokoloshe shouted, climbing up the back of Fisi and perching on his shoulders.
“More! More!” others took up the cry.
“No!” Fisi growled, snatching the tin away. The lid flew off, showering the cave floor with the remaining sweets.
“So much for that,” Tariro sighed after Ethan had explained Salih’s theory of the sugar to him. He flopped down on the cave floor between Ethan and the still-sleeping Jimoh. The sweets had all been eaten and the resulting chaos had died down. Ethan noticed that Fisi had managed to rescue one or two sweets for himself, and then smiled as the hyena youth handed one to Tariro. Rafiki, who hadn’t got any, shot him a resentful glare.
“What?” the hyena said to him. “They’re not making me go crazy.”
“Who knows how the sugar is affecting you Fisi,” Salih laughed. “Perhaps it is turning you more pleasant in your ways.”
Most of the Tokoloshe had had to take a nap after all the excitement and were lying flat on their backs snoring. One cuddled a rat scull close to his chest.
Salih quickly became more serious. “It was good to observe our Tokoloshe friends because now I know what was making Morathi’s clan so crazy as to attack Maya Gogo,” he said. “We don’t have much time for this lot to sleep it off. We have to climb down the escarpment before sundown when the Adze come out, otherwise we have to spend a night here.”
“What if it doesn’t wear off?” Rafiki said. He was one of only two Tokoloshe remaining unaffected by the sugary treats.
“I’ve seen it wear off Morathi’s men,” Salih said. “Now try and sit still long enough to report on the boy Joe.”
“Ah!” Rafiki said, suddenly remembering his mission. “We were sent to guide these boys down the escarpment and up again by another path to go and rescue a boy from the Almohad. We know where the vine is hidden. We use this route from time to time.”
“And are you sure the boy we seek is with the Almohad and not with one of the packs?” Salih asked, eyeing Fisi.
“Ah... the boy is definitely with Galal,” Rafiki said. “We found him in the forest, but then Hajiri came and captured him, then Grandma Wanyika said they came together to Lala Salama village to fetch water. She said the tiger must have beaten him. There was dried blood all over his face.”
Ethan exchanged a worried look with Salih. Was it just that Salih did not want to believe Hajiri was bad because he was a cat?
“Also,” Rafiki pointed at the thickset Tokoloshe with the chest scar, now fast asleep on his back, “Jelani has met with his relative, the spy, from Kapichi. He says that Jabibi heard from his friend, Ali, that a guy called Ziwa saw the boy enter Almoh city with the tiger at sundown last night.” He shuddered at the thought of the tiger, and then remembered something else, “Um! You had better hurry up if you want to rescue him, Ziwa said the Almohad are planning a game of Jendayi.” He said it in an ominous voice, nodding with satisfaction at Salih’s sharp intake of breath.
“How many days have we got till the full moon?” breathed the leopard in alarm.
“Not many,” Fisi giggled nervously.
“What’s Jendayi?” Ethan asked, his throat suddenly dry with fear at Salih’s alarm.
“It’s a really stupid and dangerous game the Almohad play sometimes, around the time of the full moon,” Fisi said. “We usually stay hidden in the upper forest till it is all over. We don’t go hunting for days afterwards. Everyone gets upset.”
“Well, we cannot waste a night here then. You had better wake your men and hurry up,” Salih sighed, prodding a nearby Tokoloshe with his paw. “If they make the boy play, he may be in greater danger than we thought.”
At a signal from Fisi that they were moving out, Tariro shouldered his bundle and followed the leopard.
“You don’t think Joe would play this game, do you?” Tariro said over his shoulder to Fisi. “Joe wouldn’t do anything stupid.”
“You do not know the Almohad, Tariro. If they get bored enough they can persuade anyone to do anything,” Fisi said, “except maybe a witch.”
Ethan hovered momentarily beside Jimoh, not quite sure what to do. Fisi shrugged as if it was no problem. He hauled the sleeping boy up into a fireman’s lift as if he weighed nothing and bound him to the end of the vine that lay coiled on the north side of the waterfall, as promised.
With the help of the sugar-strengthened Tokoloshe it only took an hour or so to lower the sleeping boy to the valley below, with a small group of Tokoloshe clinging on to him as he went, to guard him till the others could catch up. They lowered Salih in the same way, although Ethan was sure the leopard could have managed the steep path more easily than he could. After pulling the vines up and re-coiling them the way they had found them so that nobody from the valley below would gain access to the waterfall, Fisi, Tariro and Ethan eased themselves onto the path leading down to the valley floor, their backs pressed flat against the cliff wall, a string of strong but sleepy Tokoloshe in their wake.
“Don’t look down,” Fisi advised, a moment too late. Ethan almost succumbed to the pull of the sheer drop to the valley floor way down below. Soon his muscles strained and ached as they continued their climb. All thoughts of Jendayi were put aside while he kept one eye open for snakes or venomous insects. He shivered violently. As invincible as he felt with the magic, he did not like to imagine the result of a couple of thousand years of magic exposure on a tarantula or a snake.
Everyone was tired, dirty and very hungry by the time they staggered off the last boulder into the valley below.
“That was a nightmare!” Ethan said, knuckling the base of his back and flopping down under a msasa tree beside Jimoh, who’d been awake for a while. “You should have seen us. Even Tariro came dangerously close to falling off the cliff a couple of times.”
Tariro shook his head and clicked his tongue, “Those Tokoloshe are incredibly strong,” he told Jimoh. “Also more stubborn and independent than my grandpa. They pick the steepest and most dangerous path down, and then fight anyone who suggests a more sensible route.”
Ethan grinned. It would have gone easier on Tariro if he had not tried to boss around the Tokoloshe as if they were his younger brothers, but he nodded in agreement. He also suspected his guide of deliberately taking the more difficult paths. “I wonder if that is the way they always behave, or if they are still under the influence of the chocolates. Speaking of influences,” he said, turning to Jimoh, “are you feeling better after your sleep?”