The Elephant's Tale Page 4

  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.”

  8

  Martine 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.”

  There was a knock at the door. Tendai came in wearing a T-shirt and crumpled work trousers. He was very relieved to see Martine.

  “Thank goodness you’re safe, little one. When Ben told me an intruder had broken into the house, I imagined the worst—a lunatic with a machete roaming round outside your bedrooms.”

  “This is all my fault,” Ben told him. “I heard a noise but I thought it was nothing and I rolled over and went back to sleep. It was only when I heard the gate screech that I got up and investigated. If I’d listened to my instincts sooner, none of this would have happened.” He didn’t add that the real reason he’d gone back to sleep was that Martine had told him she was planning to go for a late-night ride on the white giraffe and he’d assumed it was her.

  “Don’t take any notice of Ben,” said Martine. “I’m the one to blame because I went out to see Jemmy and forgot to lock the back door.”

  The game warden ran a weary hand over his eyes. “It’s nobody’s fault and no one is to blame. If the back door hadn’t been open, the burglar would have broken a window or picked the lock. He was determined to get in and nothing would have stopped him.”

  “But where was Tobias?” Martine wanted to know. “Did he see anyone? Did he try to stop them?”

  “Tobias was knocked unconscious. He made himself a cup of tea at around three a.m., went to check on a suspicious noise near the main gate, and that’s the last thing he remembers. He has a splitting headache and a lump on his head, but he should recover in a day or two. Sampson is going to take him to the hospital to be checked over by a doctor. I must stay here and wait for the police.”

  “Knocked unconscious? Whoever broke in must have wanted something very badly. What do you think they were after?”

  “It’s impossible to tell. I’m familiar with the game reserve accounts but not, of course, with your grandmother’s private papers. This person left behind the petty cash, so it seems they were not after money.”

  “I’ve had a look around and nothing else seems to have been touched,” said Ben. “So he or she was after something specific.”

  “I can’t imagine who might be interested in getting his hands on my grandmother’s secret papers,” Martine said sarcastically.

  The game warden gave her a reproving glance. “You suspect Mr. James? Please, little one, you cannot be serious. I know you are bitter about him inheriting Sawubona, as I am at the prospect of losing my job, but he is a highly respected businessman and a millionaire many times over. Respectable millionaires don’t break into people’s homes and ransack their studies. And why would he want to do such a thing to a house he is about to move into?”

  Martine was just about to say that there was nothing respectable about millionaire businessmen who trick people into signing away their dreams, their homes, and the lives of vulnerable animals, when there was a cacophony of screaming engines and wailing sirens outside.

  They all ran out into the yard. A lone police car with flashing lights was flying down the long gravel road that led from Sawubona’s main entrance to the house, closely followed by an airplane that appeared to be using the road as a runway. The police car hooted at the gate just as the light aircraft shuddered to a halt in a mushroom cloud of dust. Behind the game reserve fence, a herd of springbok were springing for their lives.

  Tendai shook his head. “I will admit one thing,” he said. “Ever since Mr. James showed up, Sawubona has become a three-ring circus.”

  9

  That afternoon, Martine was mopping the kitchen floor and generally trying to rid the house of the dirty bootprints, fingerprint dust, and milk tart crumbs left by the police, who’d been “worse than useless,” as her grandmother would have put it, when she spotted the white giraffe at the game park gate. He seemed to be backing away. She went out onto the back stoep to see what was bothering him. At the far end of the garden, Reuben James was reaching up and trying to feed him through the fence.

  Martine was livid. She sprinted through the mango trees and prepared to confront her nemesis.

  Before she could get a word out, he said, “Ah, Martine. Nice to see you. Your giraffe—Jeremiah, is it?—and I were just getting acquainted. I hear there’s a legend around here that says the child who rides a white giraffe has power over all animals. That would be you, I suppose. Lurk was telling me the other day that a buffalo that appeared to be quite dead jumped to its feet like a spring lamb when you touched it.”

  “I’m surprised Lurk had time to see anything,” retorted Martine. “He was too busy trying to start a wildfire with his cigarette, being rude to Tendai, and frightening our elephants.”

  Reuben James chuckled. “I rather think that it was the elephant who frightened him. In my experience, elephants are much hardier than people would like to believe. Look at the one I gave to your grandfather. She was skin and bone and could hardly put one foot in front of the other when she arrived here, and now I’m told she’s as right as rain. Nothing wrong with her at all.”

  Martine wondered if he had made the connection that the elephant he’d given Sawubona was the same one who’d charged his chauffeur. She decided not to say anything in case he hadn’t. He might decide to punish Angel when he took over the reserve.

  Realizing he could do the same to Jemmy if she upset him, she said more politely, “Would you mind leaving my giraffe alone and not feeding him? He’s nervous of strangers and he only eats acacia leaves.”

  Reuben James craned his neck to squint at Jemmy, who was hovering near the fence to be close to Martine. “Oh, I’m sure he could be tempted with a treat or two.” He held up a sprig of honeysuckle flowers.

  The white giraffe leaned toward him, his mouth watering at the sight of such a delectable dish, but his terror of the man was too strong and he pulled back without ta
king any.

  Martine wanted to scratch Reuben James’s eyes out. Controlling herself with difficulty, she let herself into the game reserve, shutting and locking the gate behind her just to prove that she still had rights at Sawubona and he didn’t. Jemmy put his head down and nuzzled her.

  From the other side of the fence, Reuben James said smoothly, “I hear you had a break-in last night.”

  “And I suppose you had nothing to do with it?” snapped Martine, forgetting her resolution to be polite.

  He smiled. “Come now, Martine, you and I seem to have got off on the wrong foot. It’s hardly surprising that you’ve taken against me, given how much you love Sawubona, but breaking and entering is really not my style.”

  “Oh, and taking away people’s dreams and wildlife sanctuaries is?”

  Reuben James tossed the honeysuckle on the ground and wiped his hands on a monogrammed handkerchief. “Martine, you’re too young to understand about business, but ask yourself this. If your grandfather had cared, really cared about Sawubona, would he have overstretched himself financially and put his family’s future in jeopardy? I think not. I’m not the bad guy here.”

  She had to hand it to him—he was good. For a moment, he almost had her questioning what Henry Thomas had done. But then he went too far.

  He leaned against the fence and said, “I tell you what, Martine, I’m prepared to make a deal with you. Choose an animal, any animal, on the reserve, and it’s yours. You can visit it for free whenever you want to. Any animal, that is, except the white giraffe. Did I tell you we’re planning to change Sawubona’s name to the White Giraffe Safari Park in his honor?”

  At the mention of the safari park, a cold calm came over Martine. She saw that she and Reuben James were like chess players. He had made his move and now she had to make hers. An image of Grace navigating her way bravely through the catacombs of the Secret Valley entered her mind. She said, “You know, you really shouldn’t underestimate us. There are people at Sawubona who have powers you couldn’t possibly understand.”