iKaap, 2043; (i) The Day Nonhle Wished to Be Gone.
You never get used to pain.
Nonhle was tired of it all.
Very tired.
Enough is enough.
She had woken from pain-broken sleep, with just one wish: To be gone.
Gone from the relentless weight of almost seventy or so blurring years, gone from the constant grind to accrue creds for food and energy for her and the youngster... But mostly gone from the painful burden of carrying The Snake, gnawing irascibly at her insides.
Shoosssh, shoooshhh, shoosshhh... the sea’s voice was louder outside their flat this morning, despite the dampening hiss, of the almost ever-present rain.
Their flat.
Gill’s too, the young one, always bouncy, busy, and sweet.
But Gill would not understand, so Nonhle had kept quiet and ensured the morning ritual was untainted, and the same, feeding Gill scrambled egg and putu pap.
The young woman had kissed her cheek before cheerily leaving for work, Nonhle managing a rictus smile in farewell.
This task needed aloneness.
Shoosssh, shoooshhh, shoosshhh – only the sea’s endless voice.
Where are you, Mama?
Nonhle fetched the box and bottle from under her bed and took it out onto the undercover stoep, placing it on the green, plastic table. Slowly and carefully, she counted out a toxic dose of painkillers.
Fifty should do it, she thought, spacing out a mixed batch of white and red capsules into ten discrete parcels of five on her balcony table.
She made ready to swig them down systematically with witblits.
This, at least, she could control.
The cool wind whipped spots of rain across her neck; she would need to be quicker, if she were to be dry, when she died. She wanted to die outside, facing the mountain and its flat peak, which she - and so many others - were forbidden to scale.
Was it the mountain top where the vanishing birds had gone, as the ‘nets whispered, trapped as food and stuffed displays for The One Hundred above, whose nightly parties flared the black sky with colour?
If I die now, will my spirit be doomed to wander this desolate Earth?
No, I don’t believe in the old ways and, and…
Gill must never know.
For, most of all, Nonhle wanted to die; with Gill well away, and gone.
A quiet passing, for an old woman. The box empty, no sign of any carefully and secretly hoarded pills, that had failed to stem the growth of the Pain-Snake inside her.
Hurry! The rain sweeps in.
“BawoMa,” she spoke to the air. “It is time for me to go.”
“Are you sure, Nonhle? What will Gill think?”
The voice was gender-neutral and Nonhle did not even glance at the locked Smart-Door, from where it had come.
Instead, she looked up the slopes of the cloud-clothed Table Mountain above her, the sacred Hoerikwaggo, where Lion’s Head reared off to the right. Incoming, greyer rain clouds swept in from over Table Bay.
One long, last look.
On the flat mountaintop – beyond the huge red wall that encircled it from Platteklip Gorge to the derelict Cable Car – the white glare domes of the One Hundred both swallowed and secreted the hot Cape sun, flaring in pockets of energy between the rain.
Flashing solar fingers to the masses below; forever out of reach. With a view like this, what better place to die, indeed?
Nonhle could feel Inyoka, the Snake, stirring inside her midriff, as if he were growing aware of his own pending danger.
We are the ninety-nine-point nine percent, she thought, staring at the pills lying neatly partitioned in front of her on the old wooden table. And I am just one; I will be long dead by the time Gill comes home from fixing Pirate Nets. She will understand; she is twenty-one and will inherit this place, for what it’s worth. This, at least, I have willed.
Inside her, Inyoka bit hard, a lacerating pain moving up her right arm and into her shoulder this time – the snake never stayed still – and nothing or no one could kill him…Neither tai chi, nor drugs, nor the isangomas, not even the mindful befriending suggested by the white doctor, who flew down from the Mountain Top to run her free clinics for the poor.
Nonhle scooped up her first handful of pills, readying the brandy bottle in her right fist. She sat down, glancing across at the bird feeder hanging off the wall. The birds and the animals were almost disappeared now, their own houses gone, as heat and humans took what they could.
What hope, then, for me?
Time. To. Go.
She swallowed the first mouthful, the blitz burning her throat, so that she coughed briefly.
The wind swept even heavier rain in and Nonhle stood in her blue nightgown, crouching to shield the pills on the table. She swallowed another batch and coughed – the brandy would keep her warm, at least.
“Nonhle?” The voice was Gill’s, a loud shout from the locked balcony door.
What was Gill doing, back so early?
“Keep the door locked, BawoMa,” Nonhle instructed.
“Open, BawoMa!” Gill’s muffled shout came from inside the flat.
“I am legal House-Keeper, BawoMa, keep it locked!” Nonhle took another batch of tablets, but dropped a couple in her haste… No, she must slow down; there was no way Gill could get in, with the door secured.
BawoMa was hers to instruct.
Nonhle coughed again, even though only three pills made it down this time.
The door opened, and Gill stormed through.
Gill de Jong, white waif.
Nothing waifish about her now, though.
Gill stood facing her, tall and T-shirt plump, smeared with grit and grime from digging pirated Telkom cables and hacking server boxes.
Her usual cheery face was dark and clouded.
“What – in – hell – are you – doing – gogo?”
Nonhle kept herself cold and strong. “I am not your grandmother. How many times must I tell you? I have no family... And I am so tired of this pain that has no end.”
“But you have me,” Gill said.
It took Nonhle a moment to realise Gill’s body was shaking, not from the cold and wet, but tears.
Nonhle stepped towards her. “I’m sorry, Gill. There is no other way out.”
Gill shook her head, her eyes red. “You always told me stories open doors; Nkosikazi Ibali, my Story Queen.”
“Life is not a story,” Nonhle bit back, “and you never get used to pain. Never.”
Inyoka was gnawing her fingers now, but she ignored him as best she could, flexing her hands to try and abate the pain, keeping her words going in gasps.
“It – is – time – for me to go...” No reasons to go on. No family left, and ancestors who do not reply to my cries.
Gill stepped forward and, before Nonhle could close her mouth, Gill held her face with her left hand, plunging her right index finger deep into Nonhle’s mouth.
Nonhle gagged and bent, vomiting onto Gill’s hand and feet. The girl-woman did not look down, nor did she flinch at the acidic smell of semi-digested oats, medication and brandy.
Instead, she continued to hold Nonhle’s face gently between her hands, as rain soaked them both. “No,” she said, “you don’t get to choose your time. I am family, whatever you may call me.”
Nonhle felt the bite in her own eyes and stiffly straightened herself, despite the ongoing burn in her stomach. It was the first time she had ever seen Gill cry. She had not even cried when her father had left her, all of seven years ago, the girl barely fourteen years old then.
Nonhle sighed and took Gill's hands from her face.
“How – how did you know?” she asked.
“BawoMa told me,” she said.
“But BawoMa is just a Home-Help cloud avatar.”
“No one is ever just anything,” Gill said. “You taught me that, gogo.”
Nonhle laughed through her pain. Gill grasped and held her, while rain washed the stench and stain of orange-white vomit off them both.
Gill laughed too.
“What is it?” Nonhle asked her, turning as Gill gestured towards the table.
“Looks like Jesus is also saying it’s not your time yet, gogo.”
The table was spread with a dwindling sludge of orangey melting tablets; drip, drip, dripping onto cold concrete.
Despite her disbelief in Gill’s religion, Nonhle smiled.
Then she grabbed the bottle of blitz off the table and gulped a large and burning sip to clear her mouth.
Inside her, Inyoka only danced, as if relieved he had a reprieve.
(ii) The Day After Wanting to be Gone
Nonhle leaned against the corner of the balcony wall, looking up the Mountain in the early morning glow, as Inyoka chewed at her left rib cage.
Twenty-five years you have gnawed on my life, Snake.
Twenty-five years since you crawled into my guts, while I served the rich in their mountain mansions.
Twenty-five years, too, since Day Zero first broke this City apart, scattering the thirsty and the poor from its clasp. Two million parched mouths fleeing the relentless drought burning off the Mother City’s breasts.
But then, in the end, came the rains.
Without end.
And the wall to end all walls was built; to hold the poor – and the rising sea – at bay.
Yet you remain – how can I be rid of you, Inyoka, yet stay alive?
The One Hundred on top had taken so much from below, leaving only destitution and cheap labour to fire in needed resources, through the narrow pipes under their electrified wall.
Ruled from above, by the iron hand – of The Five of The Fist.
You can’t take my stories, though!
Nonhle’s nose was teased by the pungent smell of rooibos tea on the boil and for a moment she took glad relief inside her nose, a momentary refuge from Inyoka’s insistent fangs.
Nonhle sniffed again – not just rooibos, but a few traces of cannabis sativa leaves on the breeze mixed in too. Bless the girl; she must have had a private stash hidden somewhere, which even the DEA sniffer dogs had missed.
God knows where she went to get it, though.
Nonhle was too scared to ask.
BawoMa opened the door and Gill stepped through with a hot mug.
Nonhle smiled and took it – she’d indeed never seen Gill cry before, not even when her father had told her to effing stay, for insisting Nonhle come with them too, on their move up the Mountain.
“I’m not paying to take the fucking maid up there!” he’d told his young daughter; not caring Nonhle was ironing in the same room.
Gill crossed her arms and face and refused to move, in the face of her father’s wrath. “Now I know why mom left you all those years ago!”
Not a generous or forgiving man, Johan De Jong.
He’d said nothing, just left with his bags for the corporate chopper at Greenmarket Square – his hundred million. a ticket to the top.
Gone over the Wall – a man always on the up, so that he was now The Thumb, Security Chief of the Five.
For Gill, though, he might as well be dead.
Nonhle sipped her tea gratefully, noticing Gill watched her with an intense stare, shaking a little, but her eyes clear and blue-sharp.
“What is it?” Nonhle asked.
The tea was still hot, so she put it down on the cleaned table, a small pigeon poo in one corner.
Inyoka was beginning to gnaw at her left shoulder now; she sighed – so what was new?
“They’ve found a cure for CRAPS!”
Nonhle laughed then, despite the pain. Gill had taken her ironic acronym for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome on board. “They’re always finding a cure, my girl.” She must remember she was twenty-one now. “But they never end up working.”
“I hacked the Table-Top Pharm-Webs,” she said. “This one completely stacks up – they’re releasing it to The Elite.”
Nonhle knew Gill spoke truth. Big Pharma would not release anything to the wealthiest, unless it was watertight to legal-scientific scrutiny.
“How much?” She asked.
“Uh...” Gill looked down. “Five mill.”
Nonhle laughed again, bitterly, even as it started to rain, despite the wan sunlight breaking to the east of The Mountain.
Five million rand-creds…you better start getting used to this pain, old woman.
“God has given me a plan, gogo!” The young woman said, “I have arranged someone with enough money to see us... they’re on their way.”
“And?” said Nonhle.
BawoMa called from the front door: “We have a visitor downstairs, scan verified.”
Nonhle sighed, wondering what mad-cap scheme Gill had thought up now: “Let them in, if their scan is clean.”
Pain and nerves made her sit.
And then stand again.
Gill went across to pack pots and dishes, ready for washing.
A sharply dressed man in a dark blue suit and a straw boater stepped through the front door. He took the hat off and gave a bow.
Not a promising start, thought Nonhle, holding out a hand.
“I’m a big fan of yours, Mamma; never miss one of them old-time stories from your show.”
Nonhle glared across to Gill’s back. “I hope you pay well for it then, mister; we need every damn cent.”
The man stood up tall in his suit; boater held across his heart, mouth wide in shock. “I am a man of honour and virtue, I can assure you, mamma.”
She smiled. The hat served no purpose, but to impress.
She was not impressed.
“Can you get us the pain drug?” Gill barked over her shoulder, clattering a plate.
“Surely,” the man said. “But payment is non-negotiable.”
“I have little money,” Nonhle said.
“I don’t want your money; I want your stories.”
She sat down, on their one chair, at a bit of a loss. “What do you mean?”
The tall man leaned against the kitchen table. “The One Hundred love their entertainment, as you can see from their nightly displays. I’m sure they would be willing to pay a fair sum for your stories – archaic folk myths are making a comeback, I hear, especially in scam-rock concerts, held near the old Cable Car.”
“Five million – for my old stories?”
The Man with No Name shook his head slowly and bent to pick up the boater lying at his feet. “Not quite, mamma. Times are further ahead up there. The Special are now only entertained by the latest direct neural feeds. I will need to do a neural scoop. Five mill is fair price for such an operation.”
Nonhle looked down. “I have a lawyer who loves my stories too, and so you'd better be frank with me. What are the risks?”
The man hesitated, spinning the bowler between his fingers, tossing it from hand to hand. “Uh, it’s physically non-invasive, but might leave you with a headache for a day or so. Um, and you might never remember your stories again. It does have a proper dig at your hippocampus – but that’s only a one percent worry.”
A one percent worry.
She looked up, “That’s one hell of a potential price. It's my only livelihood.”
The man gave the faintest of leers, as he glanced across at Gill busy washing dishes. “Your – uh – daughter is partial to psycho-actives, as I’m sure you know – she may also be partial to something else, which could be potentially lucrative for both of you. And by the way, how long have you had your pain, mamma?”
Gill stopped drying cutlery; cloth clenched tightly in her right hand.
Rage surged through Nonhle. Lecherous shit… But the pain has been far too long – twenty, thirty years? I can’t remember what feeling well is like anymore. The Snake-monster is pushing up into my chest again – Complex Regional Pain Syndrome they'd kept calling it. Fancy words, but words with no power.
She needed to take back power for both her and her… daughter.
“Don’t even think about Gill!” Nonhle snarled. “I have one condition.”
The man stood up sharply: “Non-negotiable, I said.”
“Are you scared to barter with an old lady?”
The man grinned… and she was suddenly unsure as to whether she was talking to the devil himself. “Are you kidding me? I’ve bargained with the Best.”
“Strange you say that,” she said. “It just happens, so have I.”
Gill moved away, to put the kettle on. "Just remember," she said, "we are the 99.99 percent – and my gogo is the Story Queen."
They bargained, then, Nonhle and the Man with No Name – and she felt as if she was teetering on the edge of an unsafe space, Great Whites ready to tear at her falling body.
But she was no pussycat herself. Smart enough to handle a – devil, no I don’t believe - but what about the snake inside her?
In the end, they signed the deal with virtual fingerprints.
She’d been smart, like her own mamma had been – even though she’d disappeared north many years ago, leaving only a yellowing card, promising to return. At the bottom, a scribbled exhortation of her favourite phrase: ‘There is always work to be done.’
Nonhle just hoped she had been smart enough – it looked like everything rested on the agreed operation, which frightened her very much. One percent risk may be small, but it all depended on where you stood – and what ended up becoming.
Gill’s hug was enough to stop Inyoka’s bite, deep into Nonhle’s belly, from doubling her over.
You are my reason to live, child, but I do wish very much to say goodbye to this Snake, who haunts me inside, like an eternal curse.
(iii) Twenty Days After Wanting to Be Gone
Of her operation, Nonhle could remember little.
She knew it had happened down one of the little alleys amongst the higgledy-piggledy shacks that spread from the base of the World Cup Football Stadium in Green Point.
She also remembered the room was a shipping container that looked dirty, the brain device itself akin to a metal crown of thorns – attached to a Cloud PC, glowing blue with her life’s data, her stories.
And then she could only remember Gill bringing her home to lie on her bed, dripping tea down her throat.
It was some hours – or days – later that she woke, sluggishly and resisting, out of long and wary habit.
Without thought, she began to move her awareness around her body, exploring her toes first, moving slowly upwards, in a systematic body scan.
She’d not forgotten the Snake, though, bracing herself for the starting slithers of Inyoka inside her.
She rolled into a cocoon, but…
… Nothing?
Her body felt light, ethereal, as if unreal.
It was also both warm and welcoming, without the drill of pain sapping her.
Nonhle wept.
“What’s wrong, gogo?” Gill was standing by the open door, alarmed.
Nonhle got up, slowly and carefully, moving into Snake Creeps Down position.
No Snake.
Her body stretched, painless – she felt as if she was a floating head.
Gill frowned. “What’s wrong, gogo?”
“Nothing,” Nonhle said. “Nothing!”
And with that, she started to cry again.
Her body was warm, comfortable, like an old forgotten slipper.
Gill readied the VR box as Nonhle stood to act her story.
Stories should be performed, not just spoken.
“How the honey-guide bird punished the greedy man,” Nonhle announced, fluttering her hands to emulate bird-flight. “The honey-guide has always been the friendliest of birds, fetching men and women from their fields and leading them into the forest, to show them where to find honey…”
Gill fed in buzzing sounds recorded from the now extinct hive that had been near Camp’s Bay.
Nonhle’s hands froze in midair, her face horrified.
Gill cut the connection.
Nonhle desperately flapped her hands, as if they could coax words from her mouth. But there were no words.
Gill said nothing; standing up, to hug the old woman.
Nonhle did not return the hug.
“Gone,” she whispered. “All gone.”
A tingling prickled inside her stomach. She was wrong. Not everything had gone.
He was back, flicking his tail.
Without a story, she could not sleep.
Empty, hollow, old memories of her own mother reading something to her, but those words were gone too, eviscerated and evaporated over time. Nothing left but the Monster of pain, returning in undulating waves, as if slithering around inside her, with scales of razor blades.
Nonhle cried, despite being tired of crying, knowing it would help little.
No stories. What is the point?
Gill.
She sighed; her pillow was wet and salty, sharp to her nose. A distraction, at least, from the clawing Monster within.
What shall I do with you? Why won't you leave me?
There was no answer.
Gill.
Yes, Gill had made a new story for herself, when she’d challenged her father. A harder story in many ways, but a new one.
So, what? If she can’t remember the old, what was to stop her making new stories too? Somehow, the Pain Monster was part of her – and if it was part of her, she could place it within a story.
A completely new story.
How do you transform a Monster, that feels as if it's slicing your body apart?
How do you transform a Snake?
No good friend would ever hurt you like that.
Family?
Maybe, but still not quite right.
Ever-present, unshakeable.
The Pain stepped outside of her, for the barest of moments.
Watching her, flickering between empathy and dispassion.
Then it was back inside her, a painful, strange angel.
She did not believe in angels. An ancestor, maybe, searching for something too?
“What are you?” Nonhle asked, before finally falling asleep to silence.
Her door creaked. A giant snake was slithering in, a Cape Cobra, brown-hooded, wet fanged, rearing.
Nonhle screamed.
Smash. She winced at the flash of pain across her face.
It was Gill, bent beside her in alarm, broken shards of a tea-mug beside her on the floor.
“What the hell, grandma?”
“S-s-sorry child, a bad dream. You frightened me.”
“Nonhle.” Gill sat next to her on the bed and she could sense a tingle in her voice. The young woman dabbed a spot of blood off her cheek with a teacloth. “Our account has gone crazy; we’ll be hitting fifty million by the end of today – your gamble has paid off.”
Nonhle laughed, sitting up to take hold and press the cloth against her face.
The Man with No Name had thought he’d won, when she had asked for a royalty cut in addition – and then she had allowed herself to be pared down to zero-point zero one percent of all Mountain Top earnings on her stories. But Nonhle knew the value of her stories – and the terrible expenditure gap fissuring a divide far harder than that giant red wall, between the Top few and the Bottom many.
A very small fraction of so very much can still be a relative lot.
The No Name Man’s parting look had carried a veiled accusation that she had overvalued her stories – but they were not just hers, they were from her family, her clan –
and a deep history.
Thank you, mother, wherever you may be.
Stories of survival.
“Pack your bags, Gill,” said Nonhle. “We are heading up the Mountain, after all.”
And, as she spoke, a new story was forming inside her, as if words were knitting together from internal puncture wounds and her scarred innards, the Snake gnawing frantically at her throat and tongue, still trying to silence her.
The old woman smiled. Our words will not be stopped.
(iv)The Day Nonhle Wished to Stay
The helicopter trip up the Mountain was terrifying.
Neither Nonhle nor Gill had ever flown before, carbon taxes curbing only the richest. Nonhle was stunned at how far the Mountain threaded its rump to the distant horizon, far beyond the table-top plateau. She clutched the new BawoMa close in front of her, despite them being strapped together. It had cost her quite a bit, but she always knew she had to take the avatar with her somehow – eventually settling for a Wi-Fi chip within a gravity-resistant, walking staff, for her unsteady legs.
The ‘chopper’ – as the surly white pilot referred to it – circled in towards the flat peak, buffeted increasingly side to side in the busy breeze as it moved in towards an open flat space of rock marked with a bull’s-eye target, adjacent to a small building.
The domes of The One Hundred and the spire Of the Fist sprawled towards their left as they approached the landing mark – it was only then that Nonhle noticed a small crowd cordoned off from the site.
The chopper landed with a jolt, but BawoMa cushioned Nonhle by lifting her slightly, hovering her above the point of impact.
As they stepped out of the helicopter the pilot said: “Welcome to your story fans, Mamma.”
He smiled.
Nonhle smiled back – he was warmer than he’d appeared - very little stayed, as it initially seemed. The air itself changed all the time.
But, as she moved, she had to suppress a gasp of pain.
Some things don’t change.
The crowd – forty or fifty people – tried to move towards them; but were held back by electric-cordons. They shouted and cheered, as the pair walked past and into the small terminal hut.
A bored official waited behind a desk, leaning against the wall behind, as if she had forgotten how to stand. “Welcome to Table Mountain, one of the Twelve and a Half Wonders of the World. We need you to read and thumbprint residential rules before you go.”
A screen behind the official began to roll a numbered list of regulations: 1. No crossing The Wall without formal permission from The Five; 2. No fomenting of troublesome behaviour; 3…
Nonhle wondered if there would be ten rules, but there ended up being thirty-five.
“Frown into the camera,” instructed the official to both in turn. “For your ID chips.”
“Hello dad,” waved Gill, as if knowing it was a live security feed too.
There was no response, from either the camera, or the official.
“You have a meeting with The Five at seven tonight,” the official said eventually, “and don’t be late.”
Gill and Nonhle thumbed assent at the end of proceedings – by the time they had completed the screen-work, the crowd had dissipated, the helicopter long gone, as the clock tilted towards five p.m.
The sun was hanging low over the swelling Atlantic Ocean.
“What now?” asked Gill.
“Now we foment some trouble,” grinned Nonhle.
“Rule Two,” said Gill.
“Indeed, and that’s just the beginning.”
“But how? We’re just two newbies and The Five will be watching us like hawks.”
The sea breeze shifted, as the sun sank, carrying chirps and alien chattering on the wind.
They looked at each other and Gill turned, running off ahead along a less used path, obscured partly by mountain fynbos. Nonhle followed painfully, as quickly as she could.
Gill was waiting for her, pressed against one of two large wire enclosures in front of them: one was roofed over, with a tweeting shrieking mass of wild birds, of all shapes and sizes. The other that Gill was leaning against, faced across the rear of the escarpment, peering into the deep valley spine of the Mountain marching south. This cage was open to the sky and housed several medium dog-sized grey animals, rooting amongst tumbled rocks and vegetation.
"It’s true; they’re catching the animals. What for? And what are they?" Gill asked, stock-still.
"Dassies," Nonhle whispered, "rock rabbits... Gorgeous. Did we pack my wire-cutters?”
There were about seven or eight, congregating around a pile of rocks, with a small hole at the base. Some distance from the group, close by the wire fence, a particularly large one was sunning itself on a flat sandstone ridge.
"City food!" said a drone, hanging silently in the air behind them and Nonhle jumped. "Now move; you have no business here."
But it was too late.
The dassies were fast disappearing down their hole, squeaking in alarm. The fat one roused itself and starting scrabbling to get through the wire, as if it had spotted another hole nearer by, but tragically outside the still locked cage.
There was no way through the wire, though, and the squeaks grew louder, more terrified.
"What is it?"
Nonhle looked up, screening her sore eyes from the sun's glare, with her spread left palm.
"Eagle," she said. "Black eagle."
“More than that,” said the wooden staff, Bawoma. “Everything is always more than that.”
The eagle stooped from out of the sky, a bursting flurry of feathers and beak and poised talons, latching onto wriggling grey fur.
Then they were gone.
Blood on stone, waiting for rain.
“Move!” barked the drone.
They walked, shaken, threading their way through vegetation and low bush towards the raised ‘finger’ of the Tower of the Fist.
The drone vanished on ahead of them, as if finally satisfied with their compliance.
“They’re watching us like eagles, not hawks,” said Nonhle, “but, in the end, we will be the hunters. Got to find our own safe bolt-hole too, though.”
“What will you tell The Five, gogo?”
Nonhle stopped then, some way short of the residential area, under the screen of an alien thorn tree. A large green head stood on a grey concrete plinth, marked CJ Rhodes.
“They’ve resurrected part of Cecil John, I see,” smiled Nonhle.
“Who’s he?”
"Who’s he indeed? I need to first find out what the living, the Five, want to hear," Nobhle said, looking at Gill. "Every audience is different, every story unique." Subtle tales of slow revolution, of breaking walls and a just spreading of food, wealth and water.
Much, then, still to live for. Almost one million people on the other side of The Wall.
One million reasons to live.
The Fist must open its fingers – or else they will be forced open.
Finger by finger… story by story.
First, though, she must capture her audience.
Nonhle smiled, remembering the crowd that had awaited them – open to her – and open to new stories too, milling, as if they were caged too, and in waiting.
“I am coming to meet The Five too,” said Gill.
Nonhle grasped her elbow. “But your father is Thumb,” she said. “Why face him now, given how bad things were between you both, when he left?”
“To show him I am grown and no longer under him, I am my own woman,” Gill said, “and I’m sorry, gogo, both for what he has said, and who he is.”
Nonhle shook her head, wincing at the increased bite of familiar pain within. “We’re not responsible for our families, ntombi.”
Gill smiled tearfully; perhaps at being called daughter?
Is this really the first time I have told her this?
Daughter.
Nonhle crossed her arms against the internal scratching of Dumisani the ichelesi, the Honey Badger – she would need to feed him more compassionate, sweet thoughts soon, to ease the pain. Still, he was kinder than the Snake had been – fierce too, but this may be useful, should battle come – as it always did.
“As for you, Dumisani, you must learn some manners, if you continue to use my belly,” Nonhle snapped, clutching her stomach.
Gill laughed, knowing at whom the words were aimed. “What about buying the cure for CRAPs?”
Nonhle hesitated, feeling the lure of cure, the call of painlessness. But there is so much to do first…
“All in good time,” she said. “I know some pain will always remain, whatever I do, while that wall still stands. First things first, we see the Five and then find a way to blow up that fucking wall, story after story.”
“We have Jesus on our side too,” Gill laughed. “They won’t stand a chance.”
“Let’s go then,” said Nonhle. “There’s always work to be done – those waters just keep on rising.”
“Now that’s my girl,” said BawoMa.
Mama?
Nonhle swung her staff with one hand, cupping the pain in her belly with the other hand. “Let’s go,” she said, again.
They left the head of Rhodes, under the thorn tree.
Both women were braced to face the Fist.
No, you can’t change pain. But still, you can cup it with love.
Already, Nonhle could feel that the Badger inside her was softening and changing – into her mother?