The Elephant's Tale (5 page)

“Well, maybe she was angry at one of us.”

“But why? We’ve only ever been loving to her.” As she said it, Martine was reminded again of the hatred in Angel’s eyes as she mashed Lurk’s jacket into the ground.

Out in the yard, the game warden’s jeep roared to life. Martine sprang up and rushed to the door. “Hey, Tendai,” she called. “Where did Angel come from? I know she’s a desert elephant, but how did she end up at Sawubona?”

Tendai put the jeep into gear. He seemed surprised. “I thought you knew,” he said. “She was given to your grandfather by Reuben James.”

“H
ow ’bout offering an old woman a ride?” Martine nearly leaped out of her skin. As anyone would if an extravagantly large medicine woman with a mixed-up Afro-Caribbean accent suddenly loomed out of the darkness at three a.m.

Martine had not intended to be in the game reserve at such an hour. Her plan had been to go to bed at nine p.m., sleep for two hours, and then go to the Secret Valley at the fairly civilized time of eleven. But she’d overslept. It had taken a considerable effort of will to haul herself out of bed when she did wake, and she’d felt a prick of conscience when she eventually let herself into the game reserve. Not about oversleeping, but about disobeying her grandmother. Under normal circumstances she was banned from riding Jemmy after nightfall. But these, Martine told herself, were not normal circumstances.

“Grace!” she cried when she’d recovered from her fright. Jemmy had bolted out of range when the
sangoma
popped up from behind a bush, but he edged closer. The Zulu woman held out her arms and Martine ran into them for a hug.

“I’m so happy to see you. How was Kwazulu-Natal? Has Tendai told you what’s been going on around here? It’s a total nightmare. Sawubona is going to be taken over by this businessman who claims my granddad never repaid his debt, and we all have to leave on Christmas Eve and Jemmy—”

“Relax, chile, there’ll be time enough for all that later,” Grace interrupted. “Right now we mus’ be off to the Secret Valley.”

She put a hand on one massive hip and gazed up at Jemmy’s sloping white back. “Now how is old Grace supposed to get up there?”

Martine was rendered temporarily speechless. The idea of Grace, a woman who had eaten many of her own desserts, climbing aboard Jemmy, was alarming to say the least. It could do irreparable damage to the white giraffe’s back. And yet she could hardly wound her friend by saying so.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the decision was taken out of her hands. Jemmy, who was normally petrified of anyone other than Martine, made his musical fluttering sound and lay down on the ground. At which point, Grace stepped regally onto his back, settled herself as if she were relaxing into a comfortable armchair, and held a hand out to Martine. “Well, chile, are ya comin’?”

Martine couldn’t refuse to join her without being rude about Grace’s size, so she slipped onto the giraffe’s withers, grabbed a handful of mane, and said a silent apology to Jemmy and the giraffe gods.

Jemmy staggered to his feet. Grace clutched at Martine and started gabbling fervently in Zulu. She was either swearing or praying, Martine wasn’t quite sure which. At length, and going very slowly, they were on their way.

Martine’s usual method of entering the Secret Valley was to grit her teeth, hold her breath, and cling as hard as she could to Jemmy’s mane and back as he ran full tilt at the twisted tree and veil of thorny creepers that hid the narrow slot between the rocks. With Grace weighing him down, that was not an option, so the humans crawled through the undergrowth in an undignified fashion while the white giraffe followed more gracefully.

“The sooner ya grow up and get your driver’s license, honey, the better,” Grace said as she picked leaves, moss, and bits of thorn out of her headdress. “That giraffe-ridin’ business is for the birds. I’ll be walkin’ like a rodeo cowboy for days. As for comin’ into the valley through a thorn bush, it’s a wonder you ain’t tore all ta pieces.”

“I didn’t know there
was
another way.” Martine switched on her flashlight and shone it around the valley, an orchid-scented space between two leaning shelves of mountain. Above them, glittering with stars, was a rectangle of blue-black sky. “How do you usually get in here?”

Grace smiled enigmatically. “I have my way, chile, and you have yours.”

No matter how often she visited it, the Memory Cave never lost its magic for Martine. Its charged air, as dense as that of a frankincense-scented cathedral, filled her lungs with history and carried her back to a time when San Bushmen painted their lives on its granite walls. Images of giraffe and men with lions’ heads and great hunts and feasts chased each other in fiery shades across the cave.

She and Grace sat down on a low, flat rock that formed a natural bench. Martine was aware of Khan, the leopard she’d helped save in Zimbabwe, stealing up behind them, though she heard no sound. She could picture him stretched out on the rock behind them like a Sphinx, his golden coat with its rosettes of onyx-black shining in the torchlight. She knew he’d be watching her with an expression that was somewhere between love and confusion. Confusion—because what he felt for her went against every one of his predatory instincts.

Martine, on the hand, simply loved him.

Tears filled her eyes. Soon all of this would be taken from her. There was some satisfaction in knowing that Reuben James was unlikely ever to find this place, but that was offset by the agony of knowing she would have to say good-bye to Khan and Jemmy. Worse still, she would lose her links with the ancestors who’d written her story on the cave walls.

Grace handed her a tissue. “Tell me everythin’, from the beginnin’. Leave nothin’ out.”

So Martine did. She told the woman she’d come to think of as a mentor, guide, friend, and earth-mother about her unsettling first encounter with Reuben James, about Henry Thomas’s debt and the changed will, about Angel’s attack on the chauffeur, about the discovery of her grandfather’s letter with its plea for forgiveness, and about her grandmother flying away to England.

“So you see, Grace, I don’t have the time to wait for experience to teach me how to read the paintings. I need an answer now.
Tonight.
We have ten days left to save Sawubona. In ten days, everything we love will be lost.”

Grace took her time replying. The silence stretched out until Martine, whose nerves were at their breaking point, wanted to scream with impatience. Finally the
sangoma
heaved herself off the rock bench. She went over to what looked like a splotch on the wall and stared at it for several long minutes. Martine went to Grace’s side and they studied it together.

“Surely you can’t read any significance into that?” Martine said. “They probably just spilled some paint there or made a mistake.”

Grace shook her head. “The forefathers did everything for a reason.”

She moved off across the cave, her large palms roaming over the rock, searching for other clues. Halfway across they halted. Etched into the granite was something that looked a bit like a compass.

At once, she became agitated. “Come, chile,” she said, “we mus’ go.”

“Go where?” Martine asked, but Grace’s only answer was to reach over and switch off Martine’s flashlight. Darkness descended like a shutter.

Much as Martine adored Khan, she was wary of being in a labyrinth with the world’s largest leopard when she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. But the
sangoma
had no such fears. She took Martine’s hand and led her through a warren of tunnels that twisted like snakes beneath the mountain—tunnels Martine had always been much too afraid to explore on her own.

How Grace found her way in the blackness Martine had no idea, but the
sangoma
walked as if she knew these caves like she knew her own home.

The air became soupy and oppressive. Martine was beginning to feel claustrophobic and short of breath, when a sky full of stars suddenly opened up before her and sweet night air bathed her face.

They were on the mountainside above the Secret Valley. Martine was astonished to see that Khan had come with them, following at their heels like a faithful dog. His yellow gaze focused on Grace as she picked her way across the slope in the moonlight. She stopped and switched on the flashlight.

“Now do you see?” she asked.

Martine went over to her. At the foot of a large boulder, lying in a slight depression, were two great elephant’s tusks. They were encrusted with dirt, as if some force had uprooted them from their usual resting place beneath the earth. Their tips were touching. They were pointing northwest.

“I see, Grace, but I don’t understand. Where have they come from? How did they get here?”

The
sangoma
motioned for her to sit. Khan came and settled beside Martine, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to put her arm around him. It was the first time she’d touched him since she’d saved him in Zimbabwe and it was as magical as it had been then. Warmth radiated from his golden fur. He sheathed his claws and let out a deep, contented purr.

Grace took a leather pouch from around her neck. She scattered its contents—an assortment of tiny bones, porcupine quills, a hoopoe bird feather, and fresh herbs—around the tusks, and lit a match. Her eyes closed. A spiral of incense filled the air with the scent of African violets and musk. She began to mumble loudly. Martine couldn’t understand a word. It sounded as if Grace was having an argument with someone—perhaps the ancestral spirits. She was pleading with them. She crossed her arms over her chest and rocked back and forth, clearly in distress.

Martine was unnerved. She clung to Khan, unsure whether to try to wake Grace from her trance, or if that would be interfering in some sacred ritual. Khan began to growl.

Grace’s eyes flicked open. She looked straight at Martine and said, “The four leaves will lead you to the circle. The circle will lead you to the elephants. The elephants will lead you to the truth.”

“What
truth?” Martine asked, and was swamped by a feeling of déjà vu. On her first morning in South Africa, she’d asked Grace that exact question. She’d been asking it ever since without ever learning the answer.

“What truth?” Martine asked again because Grace was watching her with an unreadable expression.

“Your
truth,” Grace answered. She brushed the hair from Martine’s face. “When a thorn is in your heart you must pluck it out, no matter how far ya have ta go ta find the cure that will remove it.”

She refused to say any more, only hugging Martine and urging her again and again to be strong. Martine rode back to the house, deep in thought. She’d offered Grace a lift on Jemmy, but the
sangoma
had turned it down, muttering something vague about having a couple of other tasks to attend to. Martine dreaded to think what tasks Grace could possibly be attending to at four in the morning in a pitch-dark game reserve, and she didn’t ask any questions. Like Ben, she’d learned that some things were better left unsaid.

She was riding slowly through the game reserve, mulling over Grace’s prediction, when she noticed a flare of white light on the horizon. She glanced at her watch. It was only 4:30 and still dark, but every light in the far-off house was ablaze. Either Tendai or Ben had discovered she was gone and panicked, or a drama was unfolding. Holding tight to Jemmy’s mane, she urged him into a flat-out gallop.

Ben was waiting for her at the game park gate. “Go in the front door,” he said quickly. “I’ll keep Tendai and the guard distracted in the kitchen while you change into your pajamas. Tendai doesn’t know yet that you’re missing. I told him that once you’re asleep it would practically take a bomb to wake you.”

“Thanks,” said Martine, “but if he doesn’t know I’m missing, why is the house lit up like a Christmas tree?”

Ben pulled the gate shut and locked it behind her. “We’ve been burgled.”

M
artine stood in the middle of Gwyn Thomas’s not very organized but mostly fairly tidy study and stared around in disbelief. Every drawer, box, and file was open and their contents spilled, torn, and scattered around the room. It looked as if the paper shredder had gone berserk and chewed up Gwyn Thomas’s filing.

“As soon as I realized what had happened, I ran to look for Tobias,” Ben was saying. “When I couldn’t find him, or you, I went to Tendai’s house and raised the alarm.”

“This is my fault, isn’t it?” said Martine. “I left the back door open when I went out riding Jemmy. It didn’t enter my head that someone might break in, especially since Tobias was watching the house. I was creeping through the mango trees, thinking I’d done a really good job of evading him, when he popped up in front of me. I put my finger to my lips and he grinned.”

She sank down onto the swivel chair. “Oh, Ben, what am I going to say to Tendai? I’ll have to admit that I went out riding Jemmy and left the door unlocked, and he’ll tell my grandmother. She’s going to be livid that I’ve disobeyed her when she’s on the other side of the world trying to save Sawubona. She’ll be so disappointed in me. She’ll never trust me again.”