Forest of the Pygmies(9)
"It can cure broken bones and lots of other things, Kate, and it wards off arrows, knives, and bullets," her grandson had assured her.
"In your place I wouldn't have put it to the test," she replied dryly, but she had allowed him to rub her chest and back with the artifact, growling all the time that they were both losing their minds.
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That last night around the campfire, Kate and the others of her party felt sad that it was time to say goodbye to their new friends and to the paradise where they had spent an unforgettable week.
"It's just as well we're leaving; I'm eager to see Timothy," Joel said to console himself.
"We leave at about nine tomorrow," Angie instructed, tossing down half a can of beer and inhaling a cigarette.
"You look tired, Angie," Mushaha remarked.
"These last days have been hairy. I had to fly some food supplies across the border. People are desperate there; it's horrible to see hunger right in front of your eyes," she said.
"That tribe comes from a very noble race. They used to live a dignified life; they fished and hunted and planted a few crops, but colonization and war and disease have reduced them to misery. They live off charity now. If it weren't for those food packages they receive, they'd all be dead by now. Half the people of Africa live below the subsistence level," Michael explained.
"What does that mean?" asked Nadia.
"That they don't have enough to live on."
With that statement the guide put an end to the after-dinner conversation, which had already lasted well past midnight, and announced that it was time to go to the tents. An hour later peace reigned over the camp.
During the night only one guard was assigned to keep watch and feed the bonfires, but soon he, too, drifted off to sleep. As the camp rested, life seethed around them: Beneath the magnificent starry sky roamed hundreds of animal species that came out by night to hunt for food and water. The African night was a true concert of voices: the occasional trumpeting of elephants, hyenas barking in the distance, the screams of mandrills frightened by a leopard, croaking frogs, and the incessant song of the cicadas.
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Shortly before dawn Kate suddenly woke with alarm; she thought she had heard some noise very close by. "I must have dreamed it," she murmured, turning over on her cot. She tried to calculate how long she had slept. Her bones creaked, her muscles ached, and her legs were cramping. She felt every one of her sixty-seven hard-lived years; her frame was battered from her adventures. "I'm too old for this kind of life," the writer mused, but almost immediately retracted that thought, convinced that any other life was not worth living. She suffered more lying in bed than from the fatigue of the day. The hours in the tent passed at a paralyzing pace. Then again she heard the sound that had waked her. She couldn't identify it, but it sounded like a scraping or scratching.
The last mists of sleep dissipated completely and Kate sat straight up on her cot, her throat dry and her heart pounding. No doubt about it; something was out there, just on the other side of the cloth tent. Very carefully, trying not to make any noise, she felt in the darkness for her flashlight, which she always kept nearby. When she held it in her hand, she realized she was sweating with fear; her fingers were too moist to switch it on. She kept trying, but was diverted when she heard the voice of Nadia, with whom she shared the tent.
"Shhh, Kate! Don't turn on the light," the girl whispered.
"What is it?"
"Lions. Don't be afraid," Nadia answered.
The flashlight dropped from the writer's hand. She felt her bones turn to mush, and a scream from her gut lodged in her throat. A single slash of a lion's claws would rip the thin nylon tent and the cat would be on them. It wouldn't be the first time that a tourist had died that way on safari. During their treks they had seen lions so close that they could count their teeth; she had decided that she didn't care to meet them in the flesh. An image flashed through her mind: early Christians in the Roman coliseum, condemned to be eaten alive by the beasts. Sweat ran down her face as she groped on the ground for the flashlight, by now entangled in the mosquito netting that hung around her cot. She heard the purring of a great cat and new scratchings.
This time the tent shook, as if a tree had dropped on it. Terrified, Kate dimly realized that Nadia was purring back. Finally she found the flashlight and with wet, trembling fingers she switched it on. She saw Nadia crouching down, her face against the cloth of the tent, enthralled, engaged in an exchange of deep purrs with the beast on the other side. The scream that had been stuck inside Kate escaped as a terrible howl that took Nadia by surprise, literally knocking her off her feet. Kate swept up the girl in one arm and began trying to pull her. New screams, this time accompanied by the chilling roars of the lions, shattered the quiet of the camp.
Within a few seconds, staff and visitors were outside, despite the specific instructions of Mushaha, who had warned them a hundred times of the dangers of leaving their tents at night. Kate was still tugging at Nadia, dragging her outside as the girl kicked and struggled, trying to get free. Half the tent collapsed in the tug of war, and one of the nettings broke lose and fell over them, enveloping them completely. They looked like two larvae trying to break out of a cocoon. Alexander, the first to arrive, ran to them and tried to untangle them from the netting. Once she was free, Nadia pushed him away, furious because her conversation with the lions had been interrupted in such an uncivilized fashion.