The Snow Angel Page 3

  Infected with some unspecified terror, his daughter stayed silent beside him.

  They moored on the far side of the lake. Her father took out his fishing rod. Makena set off to explore the shore. Lilies, herbs and blue delphinium lined the path. Proteas with velvety yellow flowers brushed her hands.

  Birds sang and flitted. The alpine chats were so tame they barely moved out of her way. Jewelled sunbirds drank nectar from the gladioli. Red-winged starlings hunted through the lobella for snails.

  It was every bit the mountain paradise Makena had imagined. She only wished that she felt better so she could enjoy it more. In a little while, she and her father would begin their two-hour hike up to Lake Alice and Ithangune Ridge. She’d waited for this day for so long. It seemed unfair that it had been tainted.

  Through the reeds, she glimpsed a narrow beach. She wandered down and kneeled on the fine sand. Cupping her hands, she washed her face in the freezing tarn. It made her feel alive. She smiled at her own reflection.

  A rustle of reeds set her pulse racing. The sunlight on the water cast dazzling shards of light. Through wet lashes, Makena saw a dark gold shape emerge from the greenery. A duck? A mongoose?

  Reluctant to move in case she scared it, Makena became a statue. She tried not to breathe. The creature dipped its head and drank.

  Makena blinked rapidly and her vision cleared. It was a bat-eared fox, backlit by the sparkling lake. There was no mistaking its bushy tail or the curving black ears that cupped its elfin, pointed face. Its golden brown fur was silky-soft. Makena was tempted to reach out and stroke it.

  The fox lifted its head and turned a fearless gaze on her. There were diamond droplets in its whiskers.

  ‘Are you there, Makena?’ Baba came trampling through the reeds. ‘We’d better go if we want to reach Lake Alice before the Gates of Mist come down between Batian and Nelion.’

  The fox fled and took the shadows with it. The most intense happiness Makena had ever known flooded through her.

  ‘Baba, Baba!’ She raced up the bank. ‘You won’t believe it. I saw a bat-eared fox. He was so close I could almost touch him. He was magical. Completely magical.’

  ‘A fox by the lake? I’m not so sure, Makena. I’ve never heard of any on the mountain. They tend to live on the plains, in dens with their families. Maybe it was a silver-backed jackal. They can look similar from a distance. Or perhaps a white-tailed mongoose.’

  For a second Makena was thrown. Could it have been a jackal? But, no, she was positive. The shining fox had stared right at her. It had banished the gloom and given her back her joy.

  ‘It was a bat-eared fox with water diamonds in its whiskers. I’m a hundred per cent certain.’

  He put his arm across her shoulders. ‘A bat-eared fox with water diamonds in its whiskers? If you say you saw it, that’s good enough for me. Seeing is believing, Makena. Seeing is believing.’

  THE DOOMSDAY GERM

  ‘We’ll be back in a week. You won’t have time to miss us.’

  Makena’s mother bent to enfold her in butter-soft arms. She smelled of Ponds Cold Cream and love. ‘Be good and do your best with your school essay. You have plenty to talk about after your Mount Kenya adventure. Neat handwriting, please – not that kind you do when you’re in a hurry so it looks as if a drunken ant has performed a gymnastics routine on the page. And no reading books with a torch after lights out.’

  Makena helped her zip up her old suitcase. There was a tear in one side, patched with duct tape. She missed her mama and baba already, but it seemed selfish to say so when they were only going because they wanted to help her sick Aunt Mary. In her entire life Makena had not spent a single night apart from at least one of her parents. At her school, where the majority of children had lone parents, divorced parents or no parents, that made her a rarity.

  Her father came into the bedroom, tapping his watch. ‘What’s taking so long, Betty? Samson says we will miss the flight. This Nairobi traffic, it’s too terrible. We only have an hour to get to the airport and it can easily take three.’

  ‘Haraka, haraka, haina baraka,’ his wife teased him in Swahili. ‘Hurry, hurry has no blessings. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me, Kagendo?’

  He laughed. ‘On an ordinary day, that’s my philosophy. But there will be no blessings if we miss the plane either. Your sister needs us. Makena and I will take your suitcase to the car. Check that you have our passports and tickets to Sierra Leone.’

  Whenever Makena thought about the West African country where her Aunt Mary lived which, if she were truthful, wasn’t often, she pictured rushing coffee-coloured rivers in which diamonds floated like glittering fish. During the long civil war, children her own age and younger had been torn from their families, given automatic weapons and sent into the jungles to fight over the precious gems.

  These ‘blood’ diamonds were later sold to rich people in far-flung places where, ironically, they symbolised romance and eternal love. Some women wore blood diamond rings their whole lives without ever pausing to think of the empty-eyed children who’d scrabbled, fought and died in the mud for them.

  The war had ended in 2002. For the past six years Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, had been home to Betty’s sister Mary, an aid worker with a charity that provided villages with clean drinking water.

  At least, that’s what she normally did. A week ago, she’d fallen ill with malaria in a remote rural area. There’d been problems getting her to a doctor and now the situation was grave. Makena’s father had been granted emergency leave by New Equator Tours and a substitute teacher was going to take her mother’s classes. Their plan was to find Aunt Mary the best treatment they could afford in Sierra Leone then bring her back to Kenya to recover.

  Makena was struggling to take in the sudden turn of events. Two days ago she’d been on top of the world. Well, not the top, perhaps, but certainly on the second or third storey of Ngai’s mountain home. She’d stood on Ithangune Ridge and planted a flag made from a stick and a crumpled red T-shirt.

  It was more usual for mountaineers to erect a flag when they reached a summit but even Point Lenana, Mount Kenya’s most reachable summit, required acclimatisation and a five-day round-trip – not something that was possible for Makena.

  ‘Next time,’ her father had promised.

  It didn’t matter. Makena was content. On the hike to Lake Alice, she’d had a Verreaux’s eagle’s view of the Great Rift Valley, its plains speckled with zebra, wildebeest and giraffe. She’d seen the gleaming white peaks of Batian and Nelion and had a close encounter with a fox.

  The idyll had ended as soon as they came down the mountain and the first urgent message pinged on her father’s phone. To avoid altitude sickness, they’d had no choice but to spend a night in Nanyuki before speeding to Nairobi early next morning.

  And now Baba was leading Makena out on to the street, suitcase in hand. Her rucksack bulged with the clothes and books she’d need for the next seven days.

  ‘It’s really six and a half,’ her mother had pointed out. ‘Not even a week.’

  After stowing the case in Uncle Samson’s vehicle, her father took a photo from his pocket. It showed him clinging to a wall of ice by his fingertips. He wore a huge grin.

  ‘A client sent this to me. You can keep it. Don’t show your mama. It’ll make her nervous.’

  ‘Yes, you’d better not show her or else she’ll make you take up accountancy instead,’ retorted his wife, overhearing.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ accused Makena. ‘You like it that he’s heroic.’

  Her mother laughed. ‘I shouldn’t admit it but, yes, I do.’

  ‘You are cutting it fine to get to the airport,’ grumbled Mr Chivero. ‘If I could drive like Lewis Hamilton, that would be one thing, but Nairobi is so gridlocked it is not possible to exceed the pace of a bicycle with a flat tyre. Not unless you are a Matatu Madness taxi. Then anything is possible. If someone gets in your way, you just ramp over the top of them like 007 i
n a Bond movie.’

  ‘Relax, dear man, Makena’s lift will be here at any moment and we will go. Makena, did you pack your toothbrush?’

  ‘No, Mama, I’m going to use twigs and leaves.’

  ‘Don’t be smart.’

  ‘Sorry, but don’t worry so much.’

  ‘That’s what mothers do. We worry.’

  A car pulled up. Out stepped her mother’s colleague, Shani. She was a Kenyan maths teacher married to a Chinese man who had a computer business. They had four children – a baby, a toddler, and super-bright eleven-year-old twins, Li and Leo. They were the busiest family Makena knew. Every spare hour was devoted to running back and forth from Wing Chung lessons to Mandarin and piano. However, they were also very nice, and Li and Makena had a love of reading in common.

  ‘Give my best to your sister,’ Shani told Betty. ‘I hope she makes a speedy recovery. You’re sure it’s malaria she has and not the Doomsday Germ? That’s what they were calling it on the news this morning.’

  ‘What’s the Doomsday Germ?’ asked Makena.

  Her mother gave her a squeeze. She was annoyed with Shani for mentioning it, Makena could tell. ‘If you are talking about the Ebola virus, Shani, then, no, Mary does not have that. She’s been diagnosed with malaria. There is a small Ebola outbreak on the border with Guinea, but it’s been contained. We will be many hundreds of miles from there, near Kenema. As soon as my sister is well enough to travel, we’ll return to Nairobi – possibly even sooner than Sunday.’

  Her husband came over. ‘Betty, we must go.’

  He gave Makena’s braids an affectionate tug. ‘See you later, alligator.’

  ‘In a while, crocodile.’

  ‘Nakupenda! Love you,’ her mother said, cupping Makena’s face with her palms and kissing the tip of her nose.

  ‘Love you too. Give a big hug to Aunt Mary. I’ll say prayers.’

  Shani opened the car door and Makena squeezed in beside the twins.

  ‘Hey, see what I’ve got.’ Li thrust a mystery novel into her hands. ‘It’s the latest one in the series.’

  As Shani put the car into gear and moved off down the road, Makena was absorbed in reading the blurb on the cover of the book. That’s the thing that haunted her afterwards. She never looked back.

  WRONG NUMBER

  ‘Why can’t we watch TV?’ whined Leo. ‘We always watch TV on a Saturday.’

  ‘Because we have a guest,’ said his father. ‘It’s not sociable. Why don’t you play a board game with your sister and Makena? Scrabble or Monopoly?’

  ‘Because they’re boring games for old people. Why can’t I play Minecraft or go on the Internet?’

  ‘What has happened to your manners? I’ve told you ten times that the Internet is down. We’re waiting for the engineer. He can’t come till next week.’

  ‘You’re in IT. Can’t you fix it?’

  ‘I don’t work for the broadband company. I can’t repair a cable under the street. Why can’t you let this go? You’re like a dog with a bone.’

  ‘Because I saw you surfing the web earlier.’

  ‘That was a video I’d already downloaded. Anyway, you shouldn’t be so nosy. Go and fetch the Sudoku book. Then you’ll be improving your brain. When I was your age, my mother used to tell me: “Flowers may bloom again, but you will never have a chance to be young again.” Don’t waste your time.’

  Makena sat silently, pretending to read. Her stomach churned. Something was wrong. She too had seen Mr Ting on the Internet and knew for a fact the Wi-Fi wasn’t down. He’d slammed shut his laptop as she went by but not before she’d seen the first few frames of a news report showing men in white biohazard suits and goggles. They were spraying the hut of a woman who lay comatose in blankets in Guinea on the coast of West Africa.

  Makena’s parents were hundreds of miles away, safe in Sierra Leone. If there was nothing to worry about, why were Shani and Mr Ting acting so weirdly?

  Her parents had messaged twice. Once to say they’d arrived in Freetown and a second time to say that they were near Kenema with Aunt Mary, whose condition was worse than they’d feared. Five long days had passed since. Makena hadn’t expected to hear much. Phone calls from rural Sierra Leone were expensive and the signal unreliable. But it didn’t stop her from pining for them.

  Li and Leo were squabbling about Sudoku. Makena read the same paragraph over and over, willing the hours to whizz by and bring her parents home on the five-forty a.m. flight on Sunday. When Shani’s mobile pealed, her pulse quickened with hope. Shani picked it up and left the room before answering it.

  She was gone a long time. A rash of nerves crawled beneath Makena’s skin. The twins were sniping at each other and the toddler was demolishing a Lego castle with a toy sword. She’d hoped the call might be her mother.

  A snatch of conversation reached her ear. ‘Don’t add that to your worries. Makena’s happy and having a great time with Li.’

  Makena sprinted down the passage and into the hallway, skidding to a halt in her socks and banging her knee on a table. ‘Is that Mama, Aunt Shani? I have to speak to her. Please, I must speak to her.’

  Shani held up her phone to show the call had ended. ‘Sorry, Makena, your mother’s phone ran out of credit. She’s gone.’

  Makena stared at her, aghast. Furious tears filled her eyes. She wanted to scream at Shani for using up her mother’s airtime when it was she, Makena, who so badly wanted to speak to her.

  But before she could say anything, Shani was sitting her down and explaining gently that she had bad news. Aunt Mary had passed away. There were funeral arrangements to be made. Makena’s parents would be in Sierra Leone for another week.

  Makena was sad about her aunt and especially upset for her mother, but she had difficulty coping with the idea that it would be seven more days before she saw her mama and baba.

  ‘So they’ll be back on the twentieth?’

  ‘Or the twenty-first. Depends when they can get a flight. Your mama wanted to speak to you herself but her phone started beeping and cut off. She said to tell you she loves you and misses you. Maybe we can try her in a couple of days. It would be better for you to speak to her another time anyway, when she is not so upset and doesn’t have a headache. She has a lot on her mind.’

  In the early hours of the twentieth, the nightmare she’d had on Mount Kenya returned. Makena was caught in the grey coils of an enormous snake. It was squeezing the life out of her.

  She awoke in a snarl of bedclothes, gasping for air. Li, whose room she was sharing, was standing over her.

  ‘Are you sick, Makena? You were moaning and you’re very hot. Shall I get Mama?’

  The last thing Makena wanted or needed was Shani making a fuss so she smiled, made an excuse and pretended to go back to sleep.

  Soon the waiting would be over. Her parents were due home in twenty-four hours. Life would go back to normal. Apart from when her father was climbing mountains and her mother was teaching science, Makena had no intention of letting either of them out of her sight ever again.

  That day at school was pure torture. The hands on the cracked clock in her classroom crept forward with such lethargy that at one stage Makena was convinced time was moving backwards.

  After netball that afternoon, she raced to the school gates to wait for Shani and Li. She was going to beg the Tings to take her to the airport that night so she would be there when her parents’ flight got in at five-forty next morning. She’d sleep there if she had to.

  As she paced up and down, she caught sight of the Daily Nation lying on the security guard’s chair. The front page screamed: BREAKING NEWS: EBOLA OUT OF CONTROL. The photo showed villagers washing their hands under a red sign emblazoned: EBOLA KILLS!

  The guard had his back to her. He was leaning into a car at the school gates and making notes on his clipboard. Makena snatched up the newspaper and hid behind his booth. She turned the pages in growing horror. One photograph showed a chalkboard planted in the yard of a g
rubby house. On it someone had scrawled:

  No one in the picture paid any heed to the notice. Chickens pecked in the red dirt. A toddler lolled beside a washing bowl full of suds on the porch. His mother hung washing on the line as if it were a day like any other. As if she hadn’t been barred from entering her own home because a friend, neighbour or relative had died of a deadly disease in there.

  Over the page, health workers in billowing white biohazard suits and elbow-length turquoise gloves carried a shrouded corpse on a stretcher. Dozens of crudely dug mass graves were lined up among the palms in what the reporter called the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak: Koindu, Eastern Sierra Leone.

  Makena’s breath torched her throat. If the virus was in Sierra Leone, that meant it had crossed the Guinea border and was moving like wildfire through the mangroves and red ironwood forests. Her parents and Aunt Mary were in its path.

  Beneath the photo was a box of facts about Ebola.

  EBOLA – A viral haemorrhagic fever causing internal and external bleeding

  TRANSMITTED BY:

  Bats, apes and body fluids

  SYMPTOMS:

  Show two days to three weeks after being infected

  SIGNS TO LOOK OUT FOR:

  Fever, sore throat, muscle pain, headaches

  FATAL IN 50% OF CASES

  She threw down the paper. Her mother had had a headache when she phoned. Makena staggered to the road. The security guard caught her as she fainted. She came to with Shani pressing a damp cloth to her forehead.

  ‘It’s all been too much for you, baby, first time without your mama and baba. I hope for all our sakes that they’re home in the morning.’