this dust bowl with a useless cell phone in the pocket of his tattered shorts. He waved at the disappearing silver bullet. “Hello! Have a nice holiday! Don’t forget to send a card!”
He laughed at his own foolishness but quickly sobered when he saw!Koga looking at him with uncertainty.
“I’m sorry. It’s just too crazy for words. You understand?”
The boy shook his head.
“No, of course you don’t,” Max said. He felt slightly ashamed of his outburst and didn’t know whether he should make some effort at reverence for the desecrated graves, but he couldn’t think what form that might take.
Clearing his thoughts, Max suddenly knew what to do. He turned and headed for the dark mountains scarring the horizon.
“We go this way?”!Koga asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do,” Max answered. Something was pulling him, he did not know what, but it was that same deep instinct that had brought him this far. And there was something else that comforted him.!Koga was more than a guide and companion. He and Max had straddled cultural barriers, and this friendship was forged out of dangers faced and hardships endured together. Other than finding his father, there was nothing more Max wanted to do when this was all over than to help the Bushmen. He would make sure the world heard about their plight.
!Koga had told him how they were prohibited from the land they had always known and hunted; vast tracts of national parks protected animals that the Bushmen needed for food and clothing, and cattle farmers were taking most of the land that remained.!Koga’s people were being squeezed into ever smaller pockets. It just wasn’t right. Their way of life was almost extinct. He caught the thought and mentally chastised himself-he was making himself sound too important. There was no prophecy in those cave paintings, nothing that suggested he was going to help the Bushmen. That was a fantasy created by the Bushmen from his father’s drawings.
He was simply determined to succeed but, perhaps because of those cave drawings, the Bushmen had nursed him and given him some kind of power. The same memory now flashed before his eyes. The eagle in his mind had soared and found the hidden dove. He
14
Max was totally unprepared for the sudden onslaught when it came.
They had traveled all that day, rested through the night and set off again before dawn.!Koga kept checking the ground, and every few hours he told Max that the vehicle tracks definitely went towards the mountains. They reached the furthermost edge of the rising ground while it was still light. A dry riverbed gave them easy access to the foothills. Max could see the sparse forest of trees in the distance but!Koga kept warning him about the cloud that suffocated the mountaintop. It was now so black, it growled like a bear and the first few stinging raindrops raked them. A bitterly cold storm suddenly roared down the mountainside, as if angered by their presence. The wind hit them first, buffeting them so hard they almost fell, then a line of water, not deep enough even to cover their ankles, trickled towards them across the breadth of the riverbed.
“Let’s make for those rocks, in case this is a flash flood,” Max yelled, because now the wind howled venomously. Splashing through the shallow water, Max saw exactly where they should head for-the boulder was a slab of rock that stuck out like a massive diving board above the river. Within a couple of minutes they were clambering onto its broad back. Max looked behind him; where he had stood moments earlier, the water was now knee deep. Before he clambered any higher it was waist deep, and it surged around the bend, hitting the far bank, where boulders pushed it back directly towards him and!Koga. Max could see immediately what was going to happen. The water was already higher than a man, and the surge at the bend gave it a turbulent power that formed a wall of water that would strike their side of the bank, engulf the flat-bedded boulder and sweep them off.
He yelled at!Koga to run for it, but he was downwind and could not hear him.!Koga was already trying to stand on the boulder, his knees bent, a hand touching the rock face for support. The water roared and, combined with the increasing velocity of the wind, it became a maelstrom of swirling rain, competing with the wind and the river as to which would destroy them first.
Max surged up the rock face, desperation fueling his legs. He reached!Koga in time to see what was happening in the gully that channeled the water down from the mountain, above the rock they stood on. The ever- increasing volume of water churned mud and boulders in a helter-skelter ride. The bottleneck at the foot of the mountain, where it swirled around the corner to the opposite bank, increased its own resistance. As the water buffeted the bank below them, the water from that gully would take the line of least resistance. It would smash mercilessly across where they stood.
Max grabbed!Koga’s arm and pulled him, but the boy resisted. “We have to get higher!” Max yelled.
This was the first time Max had seen!Koga scared. The boy’s eyes were wide and his breath came in short, gulping sounds. He was frozen with fear, looking down at the water. They would be at least waist deep when they jumped for safety, trying to reach dry land less than ten meters away. But if they didn’t jump now, that distance would treble in less than a minute.!Koga shook his head. “No water!”
“Come on!” Max was stronger than his friend and he yanked him firmly towards the edge-he could see a muddy, froth-flecked wave rising up, ready to strike.
“I can’t swim!”!Koga shouted.
Max did not hesitate. “You won’t have to!” he shouted and dragged!Koga with him. They were in midair for a few seconds, then splashed into what, a minute earlier, had been the dry riverbank but which was now chest-deep water. Max kept a tight grip on!Koga’s wrist, surprised by his own strength. As they splashed into the confused undercurrent, it snatched them this way and that, but Max pushed his knees against it, ignored the bruising boulders that banged his shins, and hauled!Koga with him. As they clawed their way up onto dry ground, the wave broke behind them across the flat rock and drenched them in a curtain of water. They were wet, but now they were safe. The surging water would dissipate its own energy, the further away it traveled.
Max did not stop pulling!Koga after him until they were beyond the heaving water. Breathless, they stood and watched the water as it rolled by, now a steady stream. The rain stopped, the grumbling clouds quietened and, other than the gurgle of the water, it was quiet.
“The Mountain God,”!Koga said quietly.
Max nodded. There was no point arguing the case.!Koga had his beliefs and, after what seemed to be an intrusion on their part that caused the storm, Max wasn’t so sure!Koga was wrong.
“Well, he’s quiet now. Maybe he doesn’t like visitors. If someone climbed over my back garden fence and trampled on the flower bed, I’d turn the hose on them as well.” Max smiled but!Koga still seemed cautious, glancing nervously towards the darkened summit.
“It was a flash flood. Look.” He pointed to the riverbed. The water was lower now; somewhere downstream the ground had swallowed the river. Mud and debris scarred its path. “And we’re not going up there, so don’t worry.” He put an arm on!Koga’s shoulder. “Let sleeping gods lie.”
Once they had skirted the mountain slopes, Max saw the place he instinctively knew to be their destination: a flattened area between the high grass and the tree line. The savannah grass was high enough to hide a man, but a narrow strip had been pummeled by generations of elephants as they shuffled on their endless journeys, foraging for food and water. Max scanned the area. Animals probably moved from this flash-flood area to the wetlands further north. Somewhere down there was the captured dove he had seen in his mind’s eye; he didn’t like to call it a vision, it was still something he could not explain to himself. What he did know for certain was that this was where those images in his head had brought him.
An eagle’s screech snatched him from his reverie. He looked up at the circling bird that had swooped from the mountain’s sheer face. Gazing up at the eagle, he felt a chill squirm from his chest to his stomach-it seemed the eagle was calling to him, like one eagle to another. Or perhaps it was a warning? The bird was lifted away by an updraft and a sudden flurry of wind swirled dust, forcing them to turn their faces, hands covering their eyes against
