The Snow Angel Read online

  THE SNOW ANGEL

  Lauren St John

  Illustrated by Catherine Hyde

  Start Reading

  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  www.readzephyr.com

  About The Snow Angel

  Lauren St John’s stunning Christmas classic is about forgotten children, the power of nature to heal us and a girl who will climb mountains in search for a place to call home.

  Growing up in vibrant, crowded Nairobi, Makena has only one dream: to climb Mount Kenya like her hero, her mountain guide father. But when her beautiful world is shattered, she finds that in the city’s dark places there are a thousand ways to fall, each more deadly than any crevasse. In a world of strangers, does she dare trust Snow, whose ballet dreams are haunted by a past she’s still running from? And is the sparkling fox friend or foe?

  After a fresh start in the Scottish Highlands turns bad, Makena flees to the mountains. But will they betray her or be the making of her?

  CONTENTS

  Welcome Page

  About The Snow Angel

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Friends in High Places

  Bad Fairies

  How to Escape from a Buffalo

  Signs

  A Close Encounter

  The Doomsday Germ

  Wrong Number

  Shattered

  Sleeping Spider

  The White Lie

  Rubbish

  Snow

  Lords of Mathare

  Poppies

  The Reaper

  Shimmer

  Only Books Have Happy Endings

  A Land Fit for Nothing but Polar Bears

  Silent Night

  Lions, Foxes and Bears

  The Go-Between

  A Jar of Snow

  No Angel

  The Letter

  The Rules of Mountaineering

  The Boy Who Lived with Fishes

  The Fox Angel

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  About the Author and Illustrator

  About Zephyr

  Copyright

  FOR EMELIA & REYHANA,

  With love and heartfelt thanks

  for all the years of walks, cake,

  green mango chutney, support

  & wise counsel

  ‘Life is like mountaineering – never look down.’

  Sir Edmund Hillary,

  mountaineer, explorer

  and philanthropist

  FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

  Makena took a deep breath and stepped off the edge of the crevasse.

  In the glow of her headlamp, Mount Everest’s Khumbu Icefall was a beautiful nightmare: a frozen puzzle of chasms and ice towers. As the sun rose it would melt and shift, becoming more deadly still. The only thing between her and oblivion was a ladder. The first and second rungs held firm. The third wobbled beneath her boot. Terror shot through her but she forced herself on. If Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay could do it, so could she.

  ‘Tafadhali! MAKENA!’

  Makena didn’t respond. Soon she’d be safe. All she had to do was put one foot in front of the—

  ‘What’s up with you, Makena – do you have ants in your pants? How is Gloria expected to make a success of your braids with you wriggling and writhing in the chair?’

  Makena looked up from her book, eyes glazed, heart racing.

  Modern-day Nairobi sharpened into focus. She returned to reality with a bump, the silent snowfields of her imagination giving way to the yellow heat of Kenya’s dry season and the blast of dryers and Beyoncé. Her mother was leaning round the door of Blessings Hair & Beauty, her expression both exasperated and tender.

  Makena grinned. ‘Sorry, Mama, I was in a good bit.’

  Gloria tugged hard on a braid to get Makena’s attention.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Any more nonsense and I’ll take out my clippers and give you a buzz cut,’ the hairdresser warned.

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ Makena said cheerfully. ‘Baba has a buzz cut and it’s great. It feels like moss. He says it’s very practical for climbing mountains.’

  Her mother laughed. ‘Yes, but luckily all you have to worry about is getting to and from school. Do me a favour and try the braids for a few months. They suit you. If you’re not happy, Gloria can shave an image of Mount Everest on the side of your head. I won’t care.’

  Makena almost jumped out of her chair. ‘Cool!’

  Gloria snatched up her clippers, switching them on for added effect. Makena shrank into her chair.

  Her mother rolled her eyes. ‘I’m joking, Makena. Now sit still. You’re almost done.’

  ‘But we’ve been here for three solid hours,’ sulked Makena. She glowered round at the packed salon, raised to sauna temperature by the press of women who came to Blessings as much for the quality of the gossip as the weaves. ‘All this time I could have been practising climbing or reading a book on abseiling. Real mountaineers don’t care about their hair.’

  ‘Yes, and it shows,’ her mother retorted. ‘Some of those people are only one step from the cave.’

  ‘Looks don’t matter when you’re climbing the Ice Window route and watching out for avalanches. Baba says the only thing that counts when he’s guiding clients up Mount Kenya is keeping his head when everyone else is losing theirs. And, of course, willpower and good lungs. That’s what I’ll be thinking about the day after tomorrow.’

  Makena snapped shut her book and bounced in her seat. ‘Oh, Mama, I cannot wait. I’m afraid I might die of excitement before we ever get there.’

  ‘I give up!’ Gloria whipped the towel from Makena’s shoulders. ‘They don’t pay me enough for this. You can go as you are with your hair sticking up. If anyone asks what went wrong, tell them you were mowed down by an avalanche. This is the result. Don’t you dare mention Blessings Hair & Beauty. We will be ruined.’

  Makena waited on the steps of the salon as her mother paid, adding a large tip to soothe Gloria’s nerves. The January sun was slow-cooking Kenyatta street market. Sweating customers haggled over cassava, tomatoes and barrels of smoking corn. Chickens protested from a basket on the back of a bicycle. A trader chased a goat intent on gobbling all his spinach.

  On the road beyond, battered cars, listing buses and rickshaws struggled by like a ramshackle circus. Their hooting and braying assaulted Makena’s eardrums. Nairobi traffic was infamous. Not long ago there’d been an eleven-hour jam.

  Gloria’s teenage daughter joined her in what passed for shade beneath the salon awning. Nadira smiled and her lips moved.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Makena was back on Everest with Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing in 1953. She returned to the present only reluctantly.

  ‘I said I liked what you were saying in there, about climbing. How you defended it and were so passionate about it. You make it sound as if the mountains are your friends.’

  Makena’s mother emerged from the salon, stuffing her purse into her bag. ‘Let’s go before Gloria changes her mind and comes after you with the clippers.’

  As they dodged commuters and bicycles on the rush-hour streets, Makena couldn’t stop thinking about what Nadira had said. Without knowing it, she’d summed up something Makena had felt her whole life but had never been able to put into words.

  The mountains were her friends.

  BAD FAIRIES

  Makena had been born and raised in the city and yet whenever she left it to go to Nanyuki, an elephant climbed off her chest.

  It wasn’t a real one (obviously) and only very tiny (an elephant’s toenail, perhaps), but in Nairobi it was always there. The traffic was so snarled up and everyone was so squashed up that Makena freque
ntly felt as if she was being flattened one molecule at a time by an unseen force. She was familiar with molecules because her mother was a science teacher and Makena knew off by heart that a molecule was a group of atoms bonded together and an atom was the smallest particle of a chemical element in existence.

  As Nairobi’s gap-toothed skyline shrank behind Mr Chivero’s Land Cruiser, Makena breathed easier. The road ahead was ruler-straight. Concrete and crowds gave way to lush plantations of coffee, tea and bananas. Beneath a dizzying blue sky, roadside vendors beamed behind colourful pyramids of pineapples, tangerines and avocados.

  Makena squinted at the horizon, stretching her seat belt to its limit. She wanted to be the first to see the ripple of mauve that would hint at a distant Mount Kenya.

  In the front seat, Mr Chivero slurped noisily from a plastic cup and sighed with satisfaction. ‘Kenyan AA coffee and condensed milk – the driver’s best friend. Two mugs of this could jump-start a car with a flat battery.’

  ‘Can I try some, Uncle Samson?’ asked Makena, eyeing the treacly brew. Mr Chivero was a Zimbabwean colleague of her father, Kagendo Wambora, at New Equator Tours. He was not a relation, but in keeping with local tradition she respectfully addressed friends of her parents as aunt or uncle.

  ‘Please,’ said her mother.

  ‘Please, Uncle Samson…’

  ‘Check with your mama.’

  Betty sloshed a little into the lid of the flask, blew on it to cool it and passed it between the seats to her daughter. One swallow of its smoky-sweetness and Makena’s eyeballs almost exploded.

  Mr Chivero let out a delighted cackle. ‘Eh heh! What did I tell you? It has a kick like a giraffe. Too strong for children, but perfect for me. I myself shall never have to worry about sleeping at the wheel and winding up in a ditch like that unfortunate taxi.’

  He tapped his window. They were passing the rusting wreck of a Matatu Madness cab, so nicknamed because many of their drivers were speed-merchants and vagabonds. The way the minivan’s ribs curved out of the long grass reminded Makena of a dinosaur she’d once seen in the museum. She shivered. Were the occupants of the taxi now extinct like the Allosaurus?

  ‘Beware of too much caffeine, Mr Chivero,’ cautioned Makena’s mother, taking the cup from her daughter’s unresisting hands. ‘It is not good for your health.’

  There was a snort. ‘Better a hundred litres of coffee than to rely on a Tokoloshe to take the wheel, as some lorry drivers do in my home country, Zimbabwe.’

  Makena leaned forward. ‘What’s a Tokoloshe, Uncle Samson?’

  ‘Some say that, in the beginning, it was a friendly fairy who loved children. But for many years now it has been nothing but a mean and mischievous water-sprite.’

  ‘Does it still have wings?’

  ‘It does not, but that’s all anyone knows for sure. One man will tell you that the Tokoloshe who wrecked his house was a wrinkly dwarf with porcupine hair. Others swear that when Night throws his cloak over Zimbabwe the Tokoloshe becomes a baboon with eyes like cooking fires. Those are the ones most popular with long-distance lorry drivers. When the driver wants to sleep, he lies down and lets the Tokoloshe take over.’

  Makena giggled. ‘You’re making up stories.’

  Mr Chivero did not laugh with her. ‘In my country, there are villages where every bed is built on bricks because the Tokoloshe is afraid of heights. When I am in Zimbabwe, that is the only bed I will sleep in. But lorry drivers who make a deal with one cannot escape so easily. If they think they can bribe the creature with beer or sweets, they are mistaken. Once you are in league with the Tokoloshe, it is insatiable.’

  ‘What’s insatiable?’

  ‘It’s what you are, Miss Makena, once you open a box of chocolates. You want more, more, more.’

  ‘Tradition is important but don’t fill the child’s head with superstition, Samson Chivero,’ chided Makena’s mother. ‘You know very well that there is no such thing as the Tokoloshe. It’s a myth. These goblins are the favourite excuse of lazy drivers, untidy teenagers and husbands who have drunk too much or gambled away the family grocery money.’

  Mr Chivero overtook a donkey cart. Makena twisted round to catch a glimpse of the animals’ patient, dark eyes. Their ears flopped like the leaves of an umbrella tree after a storm.

  ‘Shamwari,’ he said, using the Shona word, ‘I admit you have a point – some shirkers and bad husbands use the tales of the Tokoloshe for their own wicked ends. But even you, a modern woman of science, know that some things cannot be explained.’

  ‘I know nothing of the kind. I choose to put my trust in the scientific method. Everything can be explained by physics in the end and if it can’t be explained it’s not the end.’

  ‘What about Lucas, your childhood friend – the one who lived among the fishes? What does physics have to say about him?’

  Makena’s mother went stiff. For a long moment no one spoke. The silence was so thick you could have eaten it with bread and butter.

  The suspense was too much for Makena. ‘Who’s Lucas, Mama?’

  ‘Someone I knew before you were born, my dear. So long ago, I can barely remember him. The only other person who knew his tale is your father. It seems he unwisely shared it with Samson.’

  Samson protested and Makena begged to be let in on the secret, but her mother refused to budge.

  She pointed ahead. ‘Makena, look!’

  In the distance was a smudge of powder-blue with a fluffy mawingu (cloud) on top. A sort of mountain cake. Makena had spent hundreds of hours dreaming about great mountains of the world though, for her, none had the pull of Mount Kenya. She could feel it now, calling to her.

  Her heart corkscrewed in her chest, straining to be free.

  But the mountain was still some way off and she was dying to hear about Lucas who had lived among the fishes, the more so because her mother was set on evading the subject. Nobody could live underwater. What could Uncle Samson mean?

  Before she could press her mama further, something unexpected happened.

  ‘Take the next turning on the right, Mr Chivero,’ instructed her mother. ‘I have a surprise for Makena – a special visit to Tambuzi Rose Farm.’

  Makena’s face fell. Surprises were wonderful and a rose farm did sound fun, but the mountain was waiting. Her mama caught her expression before she could rearrange it.

  She smiled. ‘You’re always in such a hurry, Makena. The mountain is not going anywhere. If all you do is run, run, run, you can miss what is right in front of you.’

  HOW TO ESCAPE FROM A BUFFALO

  Makena took a sip of mango juice and relaxed against a rhino. No real, red-blooded rhino would have put up with a girl using it for shade. However, this one was made of wood and, as such, was indifferent. It gazed serenely over Nanyuki Civil Airstrip, gateway to Mount Kenya, from the lawn of Barney’s Restaurant.

  The focus of Makena’s attention was her father. He was on the runway, seeing off a group of bearded, grizzly-sized Canadians. From a distance, he looked slight by comparison. In reality, his tight, lithe frame was as hard as the volcanic rocks on the mountain he loved.

  Once the tourists were aboard the eight-seater Cessna, he assisted in the loading of their luggage. His movements were sleepy but somehow sleekly efficient. Rarely could he be made to hurry, but his daughter and clients knew that in the event of an emergency he’d be a blur of well-oiled action, like a revolver only ever used once.

  He watched the plane lurch into the blue with a tractor roar before coming over. Makena ran to greet him and he whirled her round.

  ‘Ready for your first attempt at climbing the mountain, Makena? Are you strong like a lion?’

  She giggled. ‘No, Baba. Strong like Tenzing Norgay.’

  ‘That strong? Hmmn, I’ll need to keep my eye on you. Next you’ll be after my job.’

  ‘How has this happened?’ cried his wife, giving him a hug. ‘How have I ended up with two mountain goats?’

  ‘Just luck
y, I guess,’ Makena piped up.

  ‘Is that right? Well, can you keep some luck for yourself? I want the two of you home safe and sound.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in luck? It isn’t scientific.’

  Her mother laughed. ‘That’s true. I don’t. But I do believe in miracles. I got you, didn’t I?’

  The mountain was no longer a smudge on the horizon. It filled the windscreen. Makena tingled with adrenaline and awe. She couldn’t decide whether to leap out of the 4x4 and plant her second-hand hiking boots on Mount Kenya’s volcanic rocks, or run away in case she wasn’t the bold and gifted climber of her dreams.

  An hour or so earlier they’d exchanged the tarred road for rough dirt. Now they followed the winding track through the rainforest. Mint-fresh air patterned Makena’s arms with goose-bumps.

  It was early afternoon but already there was a bite to the breeze. The mountain’s plunging overnight temperatures often caught tourists off guard. ‘But it’s Africa!’ they’d croak as they were stretchered away with hypothermia. ‘Mount Kenya straddles the Equator!’

  ‘Look at Batian,’ her father would tell his clients, indicating the highest of the mountain’s three peaks. ‘What do you see up there? Those white patches – they’re not decorations. Whether you’re on Everest or Mount Kenya, snow falls when ice crystals stick together in clouds and the temperature is lower than two degrees Celsius. There’s not one temperature for snow in Nepal and another in Kenya.’

  After his last technical climb – those were ones where he led experienced mountaineers on ice and rock climbs up Batian and Nelion – he’d brought Makena a jar of snow from the Lewis Glacier. She’d been fascinated by snow since she was tiny. It wasn’t snow when it reached her; the African heat had seen to that. It was just an old jam jar filled with water. But Makena knew it had been born snow, at over five thousand metres. To her, that was all that mattered.