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“Well, yes, otherwise we have no leverage ourselves, in case of an attack. But we don’t keep them for ever like the Almohad do, unless they want to stay with their host pack.” Fisi stretched his arms out in front of him, his palms upwards in a gesture of futility. “The Almohad imprison them and then just sort of forget about them.”

Ethan moaned under his breath. “Anyway, I don’t know how you expect me to help. I don’t even know how we are going to rescue Joe.”

“You have the power of the witch, Ethan,” Fisi said. “Tariro told me you kissed a witch. Not many have the courage to do that.” He whistled in disbelief, then picked up a stone and idly tossed it down the cliff face, following its progress all the way to the bottom. “A boy from my pack kissed a witch once and he drew power from her. He drove the whole pack crazy with it until he used it all up. They had been friends before – him and the witch – when they were children. Then the other witches took her away. They bumped into each other in the forest many years later, and she kissed him. After that he could make us do things we didn’t want to. Like you made me give Jimoh his hat.”
 

“It’s not only about kissing witches, Fisi,” Ethan told him firmly. “You made me give you my slingshot.”

“No, I was just looking very pitifully at you for the thing, like Jimoh does for the knife. You give up things too easily. You would not have given it to me if you really needed it.” Fisi hefted the slingshot in his hand as if he were going to give it back, but changed his mind. “No, this is different. This is more like bending someone to your will, so that they can’t help but do the thing.”

“I tried to make a fish eagle drop his fish,” Ethan volunteered. “He just ignored me. So did the Adze the first few times.”

“I know nothing about what frightens a fish eagle, but the Adze are not easily frightened. What did you threaten them with?”

“Well, bats, to start with. The Adze looked a bit like insects. Bats eat insects.”

Fisi guffawed. “Adze are not afraid of bats, or lions for that matter. I will tell you what my pack brother used to do. Look, you can try it out on me if you want. Take your knife and cut your finger, and while you are feeling the pain, think hard about how you would like me to feel the pain.”

Ethan opened the knife and sat poised to prick his finger. He concentrated hard on Fisi, and how much he would like Fisi’s finger to hurt. He thought he felt a warm crawling sensation ripple over his skin, but that could easily have been the rocky ledge, grown hot in the midday sun. Resisting the urge to scratch, Ethan pressed the knife into the soft pad of his finger, wincing as a thin trickle of blood oozed out.

Fisi shook his head in exasperation. “Such a small cut! Ethan, you are much too soft. That hardly hurt at all, but you see how you can do it if you try,” he said, holding his finger up for Ethan’s inspection. Ethan watched with wonder as a tiny drop of blood beaded on Fisi’s index finger. “Will you at least think about helping?”

Ethan nodded. Of course he would do his best. Fisi had saved their lives. Without thinking, he placed his own bleeding finger against Fisi’s as he had seen Jimoh’s friends do. Fisi’s face split in a delighted grin. Too late Ethan wondered what kind of a deal he had struck with the hyena youth. Well, he would worry about that when the time came. First he had to rescue Joe...

As creepy as this new skill was, it seemed like a useful skill to have. He wasn’t sure if he could summon enough evil intent to use it, or the courage to injure himself badly enough to have any effect on anyone else, but he would ask Salih.

“Why didn’t Salih tell me all this?” he wondered out loud, eyeing Fisi, suddenly wary.

“The leopard is a wily cat. He must have a devious reason of his own,” Fisi said gleefully.

With renewed energy, Fisi hefted the calf over his shoulders and started to work his way up the path. “Come on,” he said, “we have to catch up with the others.”

Ethan waited a moment before following Fisi. He was starting to wonder just who he could trust on this journey.

The forest gave way abruptly into a strange vineyard leading into a miniature village. Akin and Manu immediately fished around amongst the broad, domed leaves of the vines with their doily-like edges, to get at the purple, sausage-shaped fruit underneath.

“You try,” Manu said, extending one gelatinous-looking opaque fruit cautiously towards Ethan, careful not to burst it. It looked fragile, and when Manu bit into his own fruit with obvious relish, a sticky mess of purple splattered down his belly like a popped water balloon.
 

Ethan took a careful bite out of the end of his, and his face almost caved in on itself, the fruit was so tart. “Man, how can the Tokoloshe possibly eat this stuff?”
 

“It’s what they drink!” Fisi laughed. “It is the fruit they use to make their ceremonial wine. They have ceremonies nearly every night.”
 

To Ethan, if he could ignore the fact that they were more sour than lemons, they did taste vaguely of grapes.

The tiny thatched houses in Lala Salama village were too small for him and the boys to fit inside, Ethan realised with a groan. He had been looking forward to a good night’s sleep in a proper shelter and something other than peculiar fruit to eat. At least the food situation seemed hopeful. As they entered the village, the savoury smell of stew hit his nostrils, making Ethan’s mouth water.
 

Rafiki had sent most of his men on ahead to alert Lala Salama to their coming, and although all the Kishi with the exception of Fisi and one of the sisters, Shenzie, had branched off to Maradzi, their own village, they had sent a hind-quarter of their sable on with Rafiki’s men to Lala Salama to prepare a feast. It looked to Ethan as if every table in the village had been dragged outside into the central square, where they groaned under the weight of all sorts of strange and exotic fruits. Root-like tubes with soft down on their skins were piled up next to a jumble of twisted stalks that may or may not have been dried mushrooms.

A pruny old Tokoloshe woman stood beside a well in the center of the village square. Apart from the usual animal pelt skirt, she had on the same hedgehog headband as Rafiki’s, which held her clay-orange hair up in a style that made her head look like a sucked mango pip.

“Water,” she grinned toothlessly, handing Tariro a furry looking gourd-like shell full of water from the well. Tariro took the water eagerly and gulped down a few swallows before spitting it out in a projectile spray, much to the hilarity of the assembled Tokoloshe.
 

“It tastes bitter!” he exclaimed, trying to rub the taste off his tongue with the back of his hand.

“Container taste funny, Tariro,” Jimoh explained. “Is only shell for baobab fruit.”

Other Tokoloshe women came forward with calabashes and helped the travellers with water from the well, which they drank warily at first, in case there was another joke forthcoming, but also because oily magic floated on the top. Ethan guessed it must have come via the underground stream Nuru the Sobek had thought they would travel down if they’d had enough time to learn to use the magic.

“Don’t mind Grandma,” Rafiki said to Tariro. “She likes her little joke. She says Gogo Maya is on her way and will be here before the sun goes down. But you must all eat now. She says she has seen the cousin, Joe, with that bossy tiger that the Almohad keep as a pet. She thinks the tiger may have beaten the boy up. He was so scratched. She would have given Hajiri a piece of her mind if Grandpa had let her.”

Ethan was on his second plate of the sable stew he had vowed not to eat when Salih’s ears pricked up and he slunk off into the forest to return a short while later with Gogo Maya and two teenagers. Gogo Maya was looking much better than the last time he had seen her, if a little distracted. She barely greeted them before hurrying to the well and hauling up a hemp rope with a sack full of small round ceramic beads attached.

She looked somewhat relieved, but she turned on the Tokoloshe with a stern look and said, “Okay! Who’s been at my beads?”
 

A woman stepped forward without hesitation, her eyes fixed bashfully on her hairy foot as she twisted it in the dirt in embarrassment. She withdrew a handful of ceramic beads from a small leather bag hanging from her squirrel tail skirt, and handed them to Gogo Maya.

Unexpectedly, Gogo Maya’s face split into a wide grin, and she patted the woman on the head, withdrawing her hand just as suddenly, as if she had been pricked by a pin, and sucking on her palm. Encouraged, a small group of Tokoloshe men and women clamoured to give up their stash, bouncing up and down to be next. They reminded Ethan of small children pushing their way to the front of the line at a tuck-shop.
 

“Right,” Gogo Maya said indulgently. “How long did you leave them in the well?”
 

“Long time. Long time,” the Tokoloshe assured her as they lead her towards the buffet.
 

One of her companions, a dark-skinned youth who looked a couple of years older than Ethan, stepped forward without waiting for an introduction from Gogo Maya, and put a hand out to Tariro who had been the first to jump up to meet them. He looked a bit like a genie in his cotton trousers and long, sleeveless vest with intricate designs sewn down the front. A Kurdish turban covered his head, with flywhisk threads hanging down.
 

“Hi, I’m Aaron,” he said in an American accent, “and this is Lewa.”
 

Ethan could see Tariro do a double-take. Tariro liked to adopt an American accent himself when he wanted to act cool, but it was nowhere near as good as this boy’s. He seemed at a bit of a loss for words. He turned to greet Lewa.

She looked almost as surprised as Tariro but she was staring at Ethan. She appeared to be absentmindedly counting the assortment of brass tubes, bird feathers, ceramic beads and seed pods that hung from a leather thong tied around her waist while she reached her other hand out and curled a lock of Ethan’s hair around her finger.
 

“Gold!” she said in wonder. “Aaron told me this was possible but I thought he was teasing.” She had a lovely singsong voice and spoke English with a West African accent, similar to but not the same as Gogo Maya’s. “You must let me braid it for you.”
 

Ethan frowned and pulled away from her. As dirty as he felt after all those days in the bush, he wasn’t quite ready to have some stranger’s fingers touching his hair.

“Er... I don’t think so!” he said. “I think I will leave my hair as it is.” Come to think about it, he couldn’t believe she just put her hands in his dirty hair. She was as bad as his cousins. Were girls the same everywhere?

Her own short kinky hair was pulled untidily into many plaits that radiated like antenna around her head. He guessed it would be hard to braid your own hair, but still, that was no reason to let her loose on his.
 

Aaron laughed and removed his loosely woven turban to reveal hair that was parted into a design of intricately shaped sections along his scalp, the end of each short twist decorated with a plain white cowry shell.
 

“You might as well give up,” he said. “She gets around to everyone she likes in the end – whether you want it or not.” With his wide mouth set in an easy smile, and his brown eyes gentle in expression, he could have been Jimoh’s big brother.
 

Jimoh, who’d removed his hat and was twisting the brim around in his hands, quickly put it on his head again at the mention of braiding. Not that his hair was long enough, but you could see he was not taking any chances. With a quiet signal to Rafiki and his Tokoloshe companions, he went off in search of a shady spot. He’d promised to teach them how to wind his strips of salvaged inner tubing onto forked saplings to make slingshots for the rest of them.
 

“Okay, but this is last one!” His voice drifted back as he tore a strip off the bottom of the Kanga he had got from the Sobek for yet another Tokoloshe child who wanted to wear the same as him. Ethan noticed as he went that Jimoh’s kanga was getting shorter and shorter as the day wore on, and the collection of strange dangly paraphernalia he had attached to the hemp rope around his waist was growing.

Gogo Maya and Salih settled down to trade stories about their return trips to Karibu, joined by the Tokoloshe grandma and a group of gnarly village elders, each with a decorated drinking horn full of fearsomely sour wine. Tariro sat and ate another bowl of food with Aaron and Lewa, fascinated to discover that Aaron actually was from America and wasn’t just putting on the accent.
 

“He just loves the attention,” Ethan said, to no one in particular, and then jumped when Fisi responded.

“She is the witch I told you about,” Fisi said. “You should warn Tariro not to kiss her. It could only cause trouble.”

Ethan noticed that Fisi and Shenzie had hung back, almost avoiding the witches. Unable to imagine Tariro kissing Gogo Maya, even if she drowned again, Ethan shook his head, and then realised the hyena youth was talking about Lewa.
 

She did not look much like a witch to him but he said, “Jeez, if I warn him he will be all the more determined to do it. He already thinks he has the healing power from drinking the water at Sobek Lake.” He was surprised to find himself just a little put out that Tariro had monopolised Aaron and Lewa. Especially Lewa.
He had bloody better not kiss her
, he thought.

“Here is what we have to do,” Gogo Maya said later, once everyone had eaten and they’d gathered round the well for the plan. “We will approach the city from the north, because that is the side where the menagerie is.” She drew a map in the sand with a stick, giving Ethan a long-suffering sigh that said she could have done without the added complication of rescuing hyenas. But he held fast. He had promised Fisi. They had exchanged blood over it.

“We will have to release the prisoners without being seen,” Gogo Maya went on. “This should not be difficult. I understand the Almohad are too lazy to guard their prisoners well. Then Fisi and Shenzie must strike out for the safety of the nearest Kishi village, which is Mudziku village, if I remember correctly. The rest of us will look for Galal in his reception rooms.”