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Matapa moved slowly. Three days had passed since the night of the helicopter – three days in which the strength had drained from his body and the fever had returned. He was nearing the end of the gorge with the tree canopy thinning above his head and the light losing its friendly green glow. Soon the little stream he was following would pour itself into the larger river and spread across the grassy plains. The chimpanzees were far behind him, chattering in the tree tops, and ahead would be the world of the predators and prey, lions, and cheetahs, antelope and zebra – a world that was not in his blood as the forest had always been.
He was being followed. He had known it for several hours. The follower was skilled and stealthy, but Matapa still sensed his presence – not an animal, a man. His life was behind him now. His time as the legendary Mwene Matapa was over. He had been beaten by the white man’s cursed disease.
If he had only been able to make the sacrifice, then perhaps he could have survived. Possibly he would have allowed another man to take on the title, and he himself could have returned to his home.
The light ahead was now very bright – a world of sunlight on dry yellow grass. It was a world he could not enter. He would wait here in the green shadows for the man who was following him. He knew it was not the American. The old white man was dead. His pursuer was an African, skilled in the ways of the forest. He was as skilled as Matapa had been in his childhood when he was the witchdoctor’s apprentice, but where had such a man come from?
There was a time when Matapa would have been able to conceal himself among the dark green undergrowth and wait in silence for the follower to come into range. Silence was no longer possible. When the coughing fits came upon him he could not be silent, and the fits were coming closer together. His time was short.
He held the cough at bay long enough to take measure of the surrounding sounds. He heard bird calls, the rustle of small animals, the wind in the branches, and the snapping of a twig! He turned his head toward the sound and the man was there in front of him – an old man, tall, and thin, clad in a bark skin loin cloth and carrying a long spear. Matapa reached for the pistol he had tucked into his belt but the cough could no longer be restrained. His hand moved of its own accord to clutch his chest and ward off the tearing pain.
Thus it was that the spear pierced his hand before it pierced his chest. If his hand had not slowed it, the spear would have pierced his heart and he would have died immediately. Fate, his enemy since birth, gave him time to search the face of the man who had hunted him down, and to hear the words spoken over him.
The old man leaned in close, speaking in slow, careful English. “I am Erasto Okolo,” he said, “and you have disgraced our people.”
The old man leaned even closer, his eyes widening in surprise. “You are not of our people,” he said. “Where have you come from? Why have you done what you have done?”
Matapa looked up at the sunlight filtering through the trees, remembering another forest, and the light of his mother’s village.
“Why?”
The question echoed through his mind.
“Why?”
He remembered how his mother had pried open his clutching fingers, how the nun had spoken to him with no kindness in her voice, and how the old man had led him back into the forest and shown him its darkest secrets. He closed his eyes, reluctantly shutting out the last of the green light.
The boy from Congo was beyond thought and beyond feeling when Sergeant Okolo pulled the spear from Matapa Mwene’s chest and began the long journey back to his home village.
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The End
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