The Elephant's Tale Read online

  Ben stopped. “Hey, I know that. Grace is completely amazing. I’m sorry, it was a stupid thing to say. I was trying to keep things light, that’s all.”

  Martine squeezed his hand. “Sorry I snapped at you. I’m just hungry and tired and I keep blaming myself for the mess we’re in.”

  Ben grinned. “That doesn’t sound like positive thinking to me. Come on, we can do it. Quick march, quick march, quick march . . .”

  Sunset brought a breeze so cool and soothing it was like being wrapped in silk. Martine and Ben used the last of their strength to climb the highest dune in the area, where they hoped they’d be out of reach of predators, snakes, and scorpions during the long night ahead. They were also hoping to catch a glimpse of a tourist lodge or some indication of water.

  Before they climbed, they removed their shoes again. The warm red sand slipped through Martine’s toes. Close to the top, they paused for breath. The sunset did not have the exotic hues of those Martine saw regularly at Sawubona, but the colors of the desert made up for it. Bathed in the pure light of evening, the great rippled dunes turned every shade of brick red, burnt orange, and chestnut brown.

  It was a sight so lovely, so lonely, and so ancient that Martine momentarily forgot their plight and felt lucky to be witnessing it. According to the guidebook, the Namib Desert was an estimated eight hundred million years old. In terms of evolution, she was about as insignificant as an amoeba. She lingered on the slope even after Ben began to climb again, only emerging from her reverie when he let out an agonized yell.

  Martine did the last few yards in double time. Ben was lying on the summit of the dune holding his foot, his face contorted with pain. Nearby was the cause of his distress—a thorn bush with vicious, curving thorns.

  “Typical,” he said through gritted teeth. “We walk for hours without seeing a single tree or blade of grass and the first bit of vegetation we come to is a thorn bush.”

  He let go of his foot and Martine saw five bleeding punctures on the sole. Before he could object, she’d unzipped her survival kit and was cleaning the tiny wounds with an antiseptic wipe. She followed it up with a dot or two of Grace’s wound-healing potion, and wrapped his foot in gauze bandage to keep it sand-free while the muti did its work.

  It was only when she’d finished and Ben was sitting up again and smiling that she noticed two things. The first was that there was a valley on the other side of the dune, spread with blond grass and a few trees. The other was that the thorn bush had yellow-green melons on it.

  “Is that a mirage?” she said croakily.

  “Is what a mirage?” Ben was examining Martine’s handiwork, impressed at how professionally she’d patched him up. The potion she’d applied had reduced the pain to almost nothing.

  Martine was examining the thorn bush. She tapped the forbidding cluster of thorns with her Swiss Army knife and several melons tumbled to the ground. She sliced one open. Inside it looked like a cucumber. She scooped out some of the yellow fruit and popped it into her mouth, grimacing slightly at its sour, burning taste. Next, she removed the shell from a couple of the seeds and ate the soft pellet inside.

  “Martine, has the sun fried your brain?” demanded Ben. “Have you any idea how dangerous it is to eat unidentified plants? What if the fruit is poisonous? What if you get sick out here when we’re miles from a doctor?”

  Martine popped another few seeds into her mouth. “These are yummy. They’re almost like almonds.”

  She cut open another melon and handed it to him. “This is a Nara bush. I’d recognize it anywhere. Grace is always going on about them. She says the San Bushmen love the Nara because it’s the plant with a hundred uses. The oil from the seeds moisturizes the skin and protects it from sunburn; the root cures stomach pains, nausea, chest pains, and kidney problems; and the flesh can be rubbed on wounds to help heal them or eaten to rehydrate you.”

  Ben took a bit of convincing, but he was so starving and thirsty that he couldn’t hold out for long, especially since Martine had dramatically revived since eating the first melon and was already tucking into the seeds of the second. Soon he was guzzling the seeds with equal enthusiasm.

  At a certain point, they looked at each other, juice running down their chins, clothes and bodies filthy, hair sticking up on end from a night on the floor of the plane and a day in the baking desert, and burst out laughing.

  It was almost dark by then, so they built a small fire with the dry twigs and foliage beneath the thorn bush and spread the thin blanket from the pilot’s first aid box on top of the high narrow ridge of the dune. They covered themselves with the space blanket from Martine’s survival kit, which could withstand temperatures of minus sixty degrees. Or so it claimed on the wrapper.

  The evening star heralded the coming of the night. Before long it was as if a box of diamonds had been spilled across the heavens, so numerous and glittering were the constellations. A crescent moon rose into the deep blue sky.

  Ben and Martine lay with their heads resting on their packs, cozy beneath the space blanket, and gazed up at the Milky Way and Orion and the Southern Cross. From time to time, they heard the sounds of night creatures. It made them feel less alone.

  “You know something, Ben?” Martine said sleepily. “I believe we’re going to make it. I haven’t a clue how, but I think we are.”

  Ben yawned. “You know something, Martine? I believe you’re right.”

  They fell into the dreamless sleep of the young and the truly exhausted, innocent and, for the time being, uncaring, of what was to come.

  14

  They were woken by the rosy glow of dawn breaking over the red dunes. Ben sat up and declared the view to be the most breathtaking he’d ever seen. Martine, her voice thick with sleep, stayed where she was and moaned and groaned about the hardness of their sand bed and how freezing it was and how much she needed a shower and more sleep, as well as a breakfast of eggs, bacon, coffee, and orange juice.

  “Coming right up, your ladyship. Just let me dial room service.” Ben stood and pulled the blanket off her. “Get up, lazybones. I think you’re going to want to see this.” When she didn’t stir, he aimed a gentle kick at her ribs.

  Martine bolted upright and glared at him. “Boy, are you going to pay for that when we get back to civilization. Just you wait.”

  She shielded her eyes from the burning orange sun. “What’s so special that I have to get out of bed at five a.m.?”

  And then she saw them. In the valley below, scattered across the pale grass, were hundreds of Oryx antelope. They had extra-long horns, as straight and sharp as spears, and their coats and faces were patterned in fawn and black in such a way that they looked uniformed and regal, as if they formed part of some warrior queen’s elite guard. Martine had only ever seen them in photos, but she’d always considered them to be among the world’s most beautiful animals.

  Tiredness forgotten, Martine jumped to her feet. “Ben, we have to go nearer. They’re exquisite. A herd that size would need gallons of water to survive. Maybe we can see where they’re getting it from.”

  Her change of heart made Ben smile, but he thought the better of teasing her. They packed up their things and slid down the dune. When they reached the valley they worked their way slowly toward the herd. Half an hour later, they were behind a tree and not far from a bare patch of earth where two young bulls were mock fighting. They tossed their magnificent heads and rushed at each other with their sword-like horns, turning aside at the last minute.

  Martine couldn’t bear the thought that they might harm each other. Ben had to restrain her from going to stop them.

  “You shouldn’t interfere with nature.”

  “Of course I’m going to interfere with nature if it means saving an Oryx from ending up stabbed and bleeding,” Martine whispered. “Ouch, did you see that?”

  The bulls clashed horns. The mock fighting was turning into real fighting.

  Martine stepped from behind the tree. “Bad bulls!” sh
e cried. “Be nice to each other. What’s the point of fighting?”

  The bulls halted in their tracks. Their tails tossed as they pondered the apparition that had dared to intrude into their game. Then they galloped for the cover of the dunes, the herd stampeding after them.

  “HEY!”

  A young San Bushman rose seemingly from behind a tuft of grass. He was bare-chested and wearing khaki cargo shorts, and had a bow and sleeve of arrows slung over his shoulder and a professional-looking camera in his hand.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “Thirteen thousand square miles of desert out here and you have to ruin my shot.”

  For much of the year she’d spent in Africa, Martine had been preoccupied with the San Bushmen. Accounts differed as to whether it was a Bushman legend or a Zulu legend or even just an African one that said that the child who rides a white giraffe will have power over all the animals. Regardless, it was the Bushmen, she felt sure, who held the key to her destiny.

  Time and time again, their paintings had forecast the challenges she would have to face and overcome.

  And yet in all these months it had never entered Martine’s head that she might meet a San Bushman in the flesh. Certainly not one taking photographs with a long-lens camera. She’d always imagined them to be living in some remote region of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana or in the far north of Namibia, too nomadic and wedded to the traditions of their ancestors to be touched by the modern world.

  But this boy, who looked to be about fifteen, was not enigmatic or far removed from the modern world. He was right here and quite angry.

  “Do you know how long I’ve been lying here, waiting for that shot? I’ve had to put up with cold, with cramps, with ants nibbling my toes, and a scorpion crawling over my leg. At one point a horned adder even came to inspect me. I survive all that, only to have two idiot tourist kids come by and start shrieking at the Oryx as if they’re pet donkeys.”

  “Look, I’m really, really sorry,” said Martine. “How was I supposed to know I was interfering with your picture? I was only trying to stop the Oryx from goring each other. Anyway, you were camouflaged behind a blade of grass.”

  To her astonishment, the boy let out a shriek of delighted laughter. He clutched at his stomach and laughed some more.

  Martine began to get annoyed. “What’s so funny?”

  “Camouflaged behind a blade of grass! I wish the elders of our tribe could hear you say that. They think I’m about the most useless hunter and tracker in San history. Which I probably am. Not that I care. All I ever wanted to be was a photographer, so I never bothered to learn any of that stuff. But then after my father . . . well, anyway now I wish I had, but it’s too late.”

  “It’s never too late,” Ben assured him. “I’m an apprentice tracker. I could show you some stuff if you like.”

  This brought on another fit of laughter. “You? What do you track—the Yeti when it makes midnight visits to your school playing fields?”

  He looked them up and down and Martine was conscious of what a sight they must be. “You’re quite funny for tourist kids. And quite scruffy. Don’t they have showers at your hotel? Where are all the other people on your tour anyway? I didn’t hear an engine.”

  “We have a slight problem,” confided Ben.

  “A tiny one,” Martine added supportively.

  “Yesterday morning, we flew in on a private plane from the Western Cape in South Africa. We were with some . . . friends. They stopped at an airfield a few miles from here and Martine and I went to climb the dunes. They didn’t realize we weren’t on board and flew away without us.”

  The boy raised his eyebrows. “Your ‘friends’ didn’t notice you were missing, even though there were only a handful of you on this plane?”

  “That’s right,” Martine said brightly. “They probably got carried away taking pictures of the scenery. Like you!”

  “Let me get this straight. You fly all the way from South Africa, stop at an airfield in the middle of the Namib Desert and decide to go off exploring on your own. Despite the dangers, nobody objects. While you’re gone, your ‘friends’ abandon you in one-hundred-degree heat, with no food or water, and continue with their holiday as if nothing has happened?”

  “It sounds worse than it is,” said Martine.

  “Oh, I think it’s already pretty bad. With friends like that, who needs enemies?”

  The boy looked at his watch. “All right, I’ll take you to the police station in Swakopmond. It’s about a six-hour drive from here, but lucky for you it’s on my way. Good thing for you that you ruined my shot, hey?”

  “We’d really appreciate a ride, but you don’t need to go to the trouble of taking us to the police station,” Ben put in quickly. “If you drop us in Swakopmond, we’ll be fine. We’ll make a few phone calls and have this sorted out in no time.”

  “Really?” said the boy. “I don’t suppose there’s anything you’re not telling me, is there? You’re not runaways or fugitives from the law, are you?”

  Martine gave him her sweetest smile. “We’re just ordinary kids having the worst vacation of our life.”

  “Right. If you say so.” He took some keys from his pocket. “Let’s go before it gets much hotter. My vehicle is parked behind those trees. Don’t look so worried. I know I look about fifteen because I’m so small, but I’ve just turned eighteen and I do have my driver’s license. I’m Gift, by the way.”

  “Gift,” said Martine. “What a beautiful name.”

  A shadow passed across the boy’s face. “It was my father’s choice. I don’t feel as if I’ve been much of a gift to him so far. Everything that’s happened to him is entirely my fault. But that’s another story. A long story. What are your names? Ben and Martine? All right, Ben and Martine, let’s hit the road.”

  15

  Once he’d recovered from the disappointment of missing out on his photo of the fighting Oryx, Gift was very friendly and chatty. Martine found it difficult to hide how in awe she was at being in the presence of a real San tribesman, even though he didn’t fit her picture of a Bushman at all. Especially when he turned up the rap music on the sound system of his four-wheel drive.

  It took a while for her to recover from her initial shyness, but after that she couldn’t resist questioning him about the history of his tribe. He seemed surprised at her interest, but was more than willing to answer her. He told her how the San had been in southern Africa longer than any other indigenous people, and that their cave paintings dated back thousands of years.

  For centuries they’d been skilled hunter-gatherers, living a nomadic life in harmony with nature. Then came the invaders. In the 1800s, white Afrikaaners moving in from South Africa and migrating Bantu tribes, who regarded the Bushmen as cattle thieves and lowlifes, brought so much pressure and conflict into the lives of the San that they were forced off their traditional lands and into the deserts of Botswana and Namibia. Their fragile, contented community began to crumble.

  Many other things, such as the colonization of Namibia by Germany in the late nineteenth century, several wars, and the long struggle for independence, had contributed to destroying their way of life.

  “Now we’re scattered to the four winds and there are many social problems in our communities,” Gift told Martine. “That’s one of the reasons I went away to school. My father wanted me to have a better life than he and his father did. Instead that was the start of all the trouble.”

  He paused to slow his vehicle. It bucked and skidded as they descended into a rocky gorge. Martine hung out of the window, enjoying the coppery early-morning sunlight on her skin. The scenery had changed from red dunes to vast dry plains and hills ringed with terraces.

  The colors of the landscape were extraordinary. Sometimes the soil was so white it glowed beneath the blue sky. Sometimes it was a warm brown and dotted with yellow flowers. Sometimes it was black and striped with mineral shades like purple, blue, and even green. They saw birds’ nests as big as A
frican huts with multiple entrances and yellow birds darting in and out. Gift explained that they were the home of the community weaverbird and could weigh as much a ton. Some were so heavy they brought down trees or branches.

  “Why was going to school the start of all the trouble?” Ben asked Gift. “Didn’t you want to go?”

  Gift steered the four-wheel drive carefully along the winding, rocky trail. “I very much wanted to go. My dream is to become a famous newspaper photographer. Because of that, I wanted to get the best education I could.

  “The problems came when I went to high school in Windhoek. I had lots of cool friends and it made me see my family and old friends differently. When I’d return to our village in the holidays, everything looked so rundown and shabby. People, including my father, seemed ignorant; set in the past. They weren’t part of the modern world at all. I had big fights with my father, Joseph. One night we argued after he told me he was unhappy with my attitude and was going to pull me out of school. I accused him of destroying my dream. I ran off into the desert. He came looking for me.”

  He stopped. Martine thought she saw a tear roll down his cheek, but he swerved to avoid a bounding springbok and when she looked again it was gone.

  “Oh, forget it,” Gift said roughly. “What’s the point in me telling you this when I’m never going to see you again? And anyway, you’re just two weird kids who’ve probably robbed a bank or something and are on the run.”

  “If we were on the run, we’d have chosen somewhere other than a scorching desert wilderness,” Martine told him. “Look, we’ve still got a long way to travel. We might as well make conversation. What happened after you ran away into the desert? Did your father find you?”

  Gift’s strong brown hands gripped the wheel. “That’s the terrible part. I came home the next morning, when I was hungry, to learn that my father had gone out searching for me. I felt sure he’d be back in a few hours. So did everyone else. But he never returned.”