Switch! (8 page)

Absentmindedly selecting a fallen berry from the ground beneath her shady tree, Gogo Maya peeled away a section of the tough reddish brown skin and tasted the yellow brown pulp. It had an orangey flavor, almost exactly like the mahobohobo at her village, only smaller. She spat the familiar torpedo-shaped pip out into her hand and inspected it closely.
 

“Look at this fruit, Salih. It’s almost exactly the same as the ones at home,” she said. “We can’t be that far from Karibu. Perhaps we can get the one who drained the amulet to go to Karibu and fetch the other one.”

“He won’t be able to find Karibu from here.”

“He would if he knew what he was looking for,” she said, and then adopted a slightly wheedling tone, adding, “and if he had someone to guide him.”

Salih ignored her clumsy attempt to manipulate him. He gave her, and the pip, a noncommittal glance, and then settled down on his haunches to watch the drama with the half-drowned boy unfold.

The drenched one rolled over and retched into the sand, then shot up and scrambled away from his friend, whipping his head around in fright.

“Where is the crocodile?” he croaked, patting himself on the chest and wheezing. He pulled a piece of water hyacinth out of his hair, stared at it in disbelief, and retched again.

“You look like a drowned rat,” his friend grinned. Oddly, he seemed quite smug about that.

“Thank you. I hardly hurt at all,” the drenched boy huffed. Then he peered at his leg as if he’d lost something. “It must have grabbed me through my pants.”

Gogo Maya leaned back against the tree trunk, crossed her arms over her chest and grinned. She was prepared to enjoy the boy’s discomfort. Things would have gone much more smoothly if he had done what he’d been told instead of draining her amulet. She could have healed both of them if she’d had control of it, and she would still have had enough power left in the opal to switch home.

“What the hell did you think you were doing stalking into the water all creepy like that, Ethan?” the handsome one shouted at the drenched one. “You were down there so long I thought you had drowned.” He stabbed an angry finger in the direction of the rapids. “You were lucky that croc pulled you out.”

Where the boy pointed, Gogo Maya saw a small girl squatting on her haunches between two enormous crocodiles, patting them on their snouts and talking to them in soothing, clicking tones.

“Well, that’s disturbing!” she said to Salih. “Is she a witch? Do I need to explore the minds of those crocodiles? Because I don’t think I have the energy.”

“No need,” Salih said. “I can pick up on their thoughts.”

Gogo Maya watched with interest as the leopard cocked his ears and twitched his whiskers, all the while gazing steadily at the crocodiles. Although she felt the little cold prickles of his awareness spread out to include the crocodiles, Gogo Maya was worried to discover that she could not quite understand what the crocodiles said to Salih. Perhaps the switch had made her a little weaker than she’d expected.

Salih gave her a quizzical look when she failed to respond to the crocodiles’ information, then shrugged and told her what they’d said. “The little girl has a particular fondness for the crocodiles, but they are not her familiar. More... friends. Friends of the whole community, I understand. They have lived here for some time. They feel most anxious about the drowned boy.”
 

Back in her youth, Gogo Maya had lived in the crocodile-infested Louisiana swamps. As an expert on these matters she felt compelled to argue. “I’m pretty sure you can’t tame a crocodile,” she said. “They don’t have the memory for it. Just when you think you’ve made friends, they forget who you are, and bite you.” On the other hand, she couldn’t help wondering if the crocodile had been trying to help the boy. She prodded Salih on the shoulder. “Delve a little deeper,” she said. “See if they are strange... or different. I have a feeling we were drawn to this place by something, and it sure as hell wasn’t that boy, even if he does have a bit of magic of his own.”
 

The drenched boy, Ethan, the other one had called him, obviously didn’t see the crocodiles as suitable companions either. “Get her away from those crocodiles!” he croaked, trying to rise up and go towards them, but another boy planted a hand on his chest to stop him, speaking rapidly to the handsome one in a language Gogo Maya did not recognise.
 

“No, apparently they won’t hurt her, they’re some kind of a pet,” the handsome one told his friend with a dismissive shrug. “So, why did you go into the water like that? We were worried about you. You could see Jimoh’s guys already dredged the pool.”

Muttering something unintelligible about having pit bulls as pets, the boy, Ethan, said, “The leopard made me.” He sounded unconvincing, even to Gogo Maya, who knew it was true. “I was supposed to fetch the witch’s amulet.
 
Well, the leopard says she’s a witch... Anyway, the amulet’s a sort of jewel. I should have it here somewhere,” he added, patting his pockets.

“Just because she’s old doesn’t make her a witch...” began the handsome one. “What do you mean, the leopard made you?”
 

“What a nice boy,” Gogo Maya chuckled, with a touch of approval.

The boy, Ethan, pointed a finger at his temple. “It told me, right into my head,” he practically wailed. “It threatened me.” They both looked over at Gogo Maya and Salih. The leopard lounged beside her, preening and fluffing up the white tip of his tail, looking as harmless as a domestic cat.
 

The handsome one laughed. “Don’t be lame, Ethan, you are making this up. It was just protecting the woman. It must be her pet.”

“Familiar,” corrected Salih mischievously, getting a smothered laugh from Gogo Maya.
 

The boy snapped his head around and glared at Salih with open animosity. “You see?”

“What?” said the handsome one.

A group of scruffy, barefoot boys picked their way past, careful to avoid going too close to Salih, and joined the two others. They were led by a scrawny youngster in a red shirt and a filthy hat pulled low over his eyes.
 

“Ah, you are feeling better, Ethan.” He placed a hand on the forehead of the drenched one and held it there, even when the boy recoiled. “I will send some of my men to fetch my dad.”

“Will your dad fetch my uncle?”
 

Before she could stop herself, Gogo Maya leaped up, almost choking on a pip, and cried, “No! No! Don’t fetch him! He will not believe! Things will get too complicated! I will get trapped here!”
 

She clapped a hand over her mouth.
Drat
, she thought, she was going to have to help now. Past experience had led Gogo Maya to be wary of grown-ups. They usually came armed with the authorities and awkward questions, and she felt in no shape to take them on, weakened as she was.
 

“We have to fetch men to help us find Joe,” a boy explained to her. He spoke kindly enough, but Gogo Maya was not about to trust him just because he was smaller than her. He had a vicious-looking machete dangling from a rope around his waist. It had dried blood on it.

“I will help you find the boy, Joe,” she said quickly. “I know where he is. Well, nearly.”

The boy gave her a puzzled frown. “How do you know?”

“I just know in my bones,” she said, as evasively as she dared.

“You mean in your
bones
bones or
throw
bones?” The boy, Ethan,
 
was a bit too quick off the mark for Gogo Maya, and not the most polite. He shot his friend a self-satisfied look, then said, “See, I told you she was a witch.”

Gogo Maya glowered at him. She did not hold with rudeness, even if he
had
blown some sort of life magic into her. Any point in pretending to be a kindly old woman had disappeared with the mention of grown-ups. “Well, you’re perfectly right, young man. I am in fact a witch,” she told him. “Now don’t get all huffy, we’ve had a sort of... accident. I have exchanged places with your friend.”

Ethan’s eyes darted from the red-shirt boy to the boy with the wild hair to see if they had heard her, then fixed on Gogo Maya with an incredulous stare. “How?”
 

“I switched, using the amulet.”
 

“What do you mean,
switched
?” Now he looked close to tears.

Having expected him to be smug once she admitted she was a witch, Gogo Maya felt a vague stirring of guilt that he looked so unhappy. “Well, it is difficult to explain,” she said in a more conciliatory tone. “I hold the amulet and hope to be someplace else and the opal moves me. Of course, wherever I land, the thing occupying that space will be where I was before I switch places.” She still did not hold out much hope that he would believe her.

Surprisingly, he did. He straightened his shoulders, narrowed his eyes and went straight for the weakness in her story. “And it didn’t occur to you that whoever you changed places with might not be happy with that?”

“Usually when I switch, Ethan, I am replaced by a rock or an animal or something,” she offered by way of an excuse, “and I never move far, but this time I seem to have been drawn by this place. Perhaps by those crocodiles.” She glared at the crocodiles. It wouldn’t do any harm to her cause to deflect some of the blame.

Ethan raised an eyebrow doubtfully and glanced over at the crocodiles, but shook his head. “Well, where were you then? Before you... switched."

“In the magic Kingdoms of Karibu, where I come from.”

Pandemonium broke out. The boy with the machete had been interpreting for the other kids. Some of them fell about laughing at Ethan’s gullibility, but some argued vehemently that it was perfectly possible to have a magic kingdom. The handsome boy, who had been lounging up against a log with a half-bored, half-distracted expression, stood up and glared at Ethan.

“Okay, the joke’s over, Ethan,” he said. “You are scaring the little kids.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled out, “Joe! You can come out now!”

The others stared at him, taken aback, but a couple of them looked around as if the boy, Joe, might come walking out from behind a bush.

Gogo Maya exchanged glances with Salih. Handsome was an odd boy. Perhaps Salih was a better judge of character than she’d thought.
 

“And where is Karibu, exactly?” demanded Ethan, after the boy, Joe, had failed to materialise and the handsome one had stormed off in a huff.

“Somewhere beyond those mountains.” Gogo Maya gave an expansive wave because she was not exactly sure.

Ethan pushed out his lower lip. “How will Joe get back?”
 

She hadn’t thought she would have to come up with a solution quite so soon. “I will try and get him back by reversing the switch,” she said. “If you can find me a dish, I will put water in it and scry to see where your friend is. Then I will aim for him and try to exchange.”
 

Gogo Maya improvised as she went along. She knew the whole business of switching was too inaccurate for her to exchange with the boy, but confusing them with a scry would buy her time to think of a plan, and had the added advantage of showing her where the boy, Joe, was. Now that she thought about it, she
would
feel bad if the Tokoloshe had abandoned him and he had fallen into the wrong hands, especially if those hands were her village headman, Tacari’s.

After a heated discussion amongst the children, two girls set off reluctantly down the road.
 

“They get dish,” nodded the boy with the red shirt and the dirty hat. “But they say no more stories till they get back, please. Is not fair if they miss out.”

“Don’t rush back. I can only scry after dark,” Gogo Maya called after them. She had already threatened to disappear the way she had come if anyone brought any grown-ups. The longer they took fetching the bowl, the more time her amulet would have to recharge, and the more likely it was that she would be able to switch.

Back in her shady spot beneath the mahobohobo tree once more, she flopped down on the ground, while Salih went to speak to the crocodiles. Most of the children wandered off and took up with various swimming games, but some followed her, begging for more stories about Karibu. They introduced themselves with lovely exotic names: Tendayi, Tafadzwa, Tekeramayi, Jimoh... and one girl, Happymore, but you could hardly tell. She wore the same khaki shorts that everyone else did. Ethan, had been dressed much more smartly. He took off his wet clothes and shoes and laid them out to dry. Even the underpants he had on smacked of rich boy and Gogo Maya noticed how awkwardly he seated himself in the dirt.
 

Salih came back, having established that they were indeed not too far from Karibu as the hawk flies, but that the only way in was to follow a dangerous river that ran through the mountains to the east and enter Karibu through the underground water system.

Gogo Maya pursed her lips. If this river ran into Karibu from underground, could she really send the boy that way? Goodness knew what kind of raging torrents swirled around the caves under there. It was rumored in Karibu that Sobek gods lived there. She wondered if these crocodiles were aware of that.

Amazingly, Salih assured her that the crocodiles had passed that way before and would help the boy to navigate there. She thought of mentioning the gods but decided not to spoil the plan; surely Salih knew what he was doing.

“If I cannot make an exchange, you will have to go down the river to Karibu to get your friend,” Gogo Maya began.

Ethan’s eyes were already as wide as saucers. “What, on my own? With those crocodiles?”

Gogo Maya gave a sharp intake of breath. She hadn’t realised the boy could read Salih unless the leopard deliberately channelled thoughts straight at him. Another thing she would have to investigate.
Darn
, she realised,
to be able to do that he must have some very powerful magic of his own
. Where on earth had he got it? Well, it couldn’t be helped; she and Salih would just have to watch what they said to each other while the boy was around. It would make it a little easier if Salih did not sidle up to the boy like that, she thought. Couldn’t he see the boy was trying to pull away from him?