on the way back from Market Square Jan Cheroot and Ralph walked with their heads together, talking seriously.
'Why do you think they call him Bakela, the Fist?' Jan Cheroot asked, and Ralph grimaced painfully.
His face was lumpy and the colour was coming up in his bruises, deep plum and cloudy blue like summer thunderclouds. The horsehair stitches stuck up stiffly out of his eyebrow and lip, and the cuts were soft-scabbed like cranberry jam.
Jan Cheroot grinned and clucked with sympathy, and then asked the question that had burned his tongue since first he had learned the cause of Zouga's wrath.
'So how did you like your first taste of pink sugar?'
The question stopped Ralph in his tracks while he considered it seriously, then he answered without moving his damaged lip.
'It was bloody marvellous,' he said.
Jan Cheroot giggled and hugged himself with delight.
'Now you listen to me, boy, and you listen good. I love your daddy, we been together so many years I can't count, and when he tells you something you can believe it, nearly every time. But me, I have never in my life assed up a chance for a slice of that warm stuff, never once, old or young or in between, ugly as a monkey or so pretty it would break your heart, whenever it was offered and lots of times when it wasn't, old Jan Cheroot grabbed it, boy.'
'And it never killed you.' Ralph supplied the summation.
'I guess I would have died without it.'
Ralph started walking again. 'I hope Bazo will fight his fancy again next Sunday. I'm going to need ten guineas pretty badly by then.'
The moon was hpping the horizon, putting the stars to pale shame. It was still a few days short of full, but on the stoep of Zouga's cottage it was light enough to read the headlines of a crumpled copy of the Diamond Fields Advertiser that lay beside Zouga's empty riempie chair.
The only sounds were the distant baying of a mooncrazy hound, and the flirt of bats' wings as they spun high parabolas in the moonlight or came fluttering in under the overhang of the verandah roof to pick a moth from the air. The front door was stopped wide open to allow the night's cool to penetrate the inner rooms of the cottage. Jordan crept through it timidly.
He was bare-footed, and the old flannel shirt he wore as a nightdress was one of Zouga's cast-offs. The tails flapped around his bare knees as he moved down the verandah and stopped before the tall falcon-headed carving that stood on its pedestal at the end of the covered stoep.
The slanting moonlight lit the graven bird image from the side, leaving half of it in black mysterious shadow.
Jordan stopped before the image. The clay floor was cold on his bare soles, and he shivered not entirely from the cold, and looked about him surreptitiously.
Zouga's camp slept, that deep pre-dawn sleep.
Jordan's curls, bushed wildly from the pillow, sparkled like a halo in the moonlight, and his eyes were in shadow, dark holes like those of a skull. All night he had lain rigid in his narrow bed and listened to his brother's heavy breathing through his swollen nose.
Lack of sleep made Jordan feel light-headed and fey.
He opened the little twist of newspaper which he had hidden under his pillow when he went to bed.
it contained half a handful of rice and a thin slice of cold roasted lamb. He laid it at the foot of the soapstone column, and stepped back.
Once more he looked about him to make sure that he was alone and unobserved. Then he sank down to his bare knees with the book held against his chest, and bowed his head.
The book was bound in blue leather with gold leaf titling on its spine: Religions of the American Indians.
'I greet you, Panes,' Jordan whispered, his swollen eyelids tightly closed.
'The Indians of California, the Acagchemem tribe adore the great buzzard Panes.' The book Jordan held to his breast had become far and away the most precious of all his possessions. He did not like to remember how he had obtained it. It was the only thing he had ever stolen in his life, but he had been forgiven for that sin.
He had prayed to the goddess and been forgiven.
'The Panes was a woman, a young and beautiful woman, who had run off into the mountains and been changed into a bird by the god Chinigchinich.'
Jordan knew with all his being whom this description depicted. His mother had been young and beautiful, and she had run away to the black mountain of Death without him.
Now he opened the book and bowed his head over it.
It was not light enough to read the fine print of the text, but Jordan knew the invocation to the goddess by heart.
'Why did you run away?' he whispered. 'You would have been better with us. Are we not the ones who love you? 'It was better that you stayed, for now you are Panes. If we make you a sacrifice of rice and meat, will you not come back to us? See the sacrifice we set for you, great Panes.'
The morning wind stirred, and Jordan heard the branch of the camel-thorn scrape upon the roof before the wind touched him. It was a warm, soft wind, and it ruffled his hair.
Jordan clenched his eyes even tighter, and the little insects of awe crawled upon his skin. The goddess had
