the old people's company alternating with blacker moods when she felt like a life prisoner in the valley.
They have come here to die, she realized as she saw F how the old San had settled into an established routine, i but I don't want to die, I want to live, to live! H'ani watched her shrewdly until she realized it was e, and then told Uwa, Tomorrow Nam Child and I tim are going out of the valley. Why, old woman? O'wa looked startled.
He was entirely contented and had not yet thought about leaving.
We need medicines, and a change of food. That is no reason to risk passing the guardians of the tunnel We will go out in the cool of the dawn, when the bees are sleepy, and return in the late evening, besides, the guardians have accepted us. O'wa started to protest further, but she cut him short.
It is necessary, old grandfather, there are things that a man does not understand. As Hlani had intended, Centaine was excited and happy with the promised outing, and she shook H'ani awake long before the agreed hour. They slipped quietly through the tunnel of the bees, and with Shasa bound tightly to her back and her carrying satchel stung over one shoulder, Centaine ran down the narrow valley and out into the endless spaces of the desert like a schoolchild released from the classroom. Her mood lasted through the morning and she and H'ani chattered happily as they moved through the forest, searching and digging for the roots that H'ani said she needed.
In the heat of the noonday they found shelter under an acacia, and while Centaine nursed the baby, H'ani curled up in the shade and slept like an old yellow cat. Once Shasa had drunk his fill, Centaine leaned back against the trunk of the acacia and dozed off as well.
The stamp of hooves and horsey snorts disturbed her, and she opened her eyes, but remained absolutely still.
With the breeze behind them, a herd of zebra had grazed down upon the sleeping group, not noticing them in the waist-high grass.
There were at least a hundred animals in the herd newly born foals with legs too long for their fluffy bodies and w th smudged chocolate-coloured stripes not yet set into definite patterns, staying close to their dams and staring around at the world with huge dark apprehensive eyes, older foals quick and surefooted as they chased each other in circles through the trees, the breeding mares, sleek and glossy, with stiff upstanding manes and pricked ears, some of them huge with foal, milk already swelling in their black udders. Then there were the stallions with powerful bulging quarters, necks arched proudly as they challenged each other or snuffled one of the mares, reminding Centaine vividly of Nuage in his prime. Barely daring to breathe, she lay against the acacia trunk and watched them with deep pleasure. They moved down still closer, she could have reached out and touched one of the foals as it gambolled past her. They passed so close that she could see that each animal was different from the others, the intricate patterns of their hides as distinct as finger-prints, and the dark stripes were shadowed by a paler orangey-cream duplicate, so that every animal was a separate work of art.
As she watched, one of the stallions, a magnificent animal standing twelve hands and with a bushy tail sweeping below his hocks, cut a young mare out of the main pack of the herd, nipping at her flanks and her neck with square yellow teeth, heading her off when she tried to circle back, pushing her well away from the other mares, but closer to the acacia tree, before he started to gentle her by nuzzling her neck.
The mare bridled flirtatiously well aware of her highly desirable condition, and she rolled her eyes and bit him viciously on his muscled glossy shoulder so that he snorted and reared away, but then circled back and tried to push his nose up under her tail where she was swollen tensely with her season. She squealed with a modest outrage and lashed out with both back legs, her shiny black hooves flying high past his head, and she spun around to face him, baring her teeth.
Centaine found herself unaccountably moved. She shared the mare's mounting excitation, empathized with her charade of reluctance that was spurring the circling stallion to greater ardour. At last the mare submitted and stood stock-still, her tail lifted as the stallion nosed her gently. Centaine felt her own body stiffen in anticipation - then when the stallion reared over her and buried his long pulsing black root deeply in her, Centaine gasped and pressed her own knees together sharply.
That night in her rude thatched shelter beside the steaming thermal pool, she dreamed of Michael and the old barn near North Field, and woke to a deep corroding loneliness and an undirected discontent that did not subside even when she held Shasa to her breast and felt him tugging demandingly at her.
Her dark mood persisted, and the high rocky walls of the valley closed in around her so she felt she could not breathe. However, four more days passed before she could wheedle H'ani into another expedition out into the open forests.
Centaine looked for the zebra herd again as they meandered amongst the mopani trees, but this time the forests seemed strangely deserted and what wild game they did see was mistrusting and skittish, taking instant alarm at the first distant sign of the upright human figures.
There is something, H'ani muttered as they rested in the noon heat, I do not know what it is, but the wild things sense it also. It makes me uneasy, we should return to the valley that I might talk with O'wa. He understands these things better than I do. Oh Rani, not yet, Centaine pleaded.
Let us stay here a little longer. I feel so free. I do not like whatever is happening here, H'ani insisted.
The bees- Centaine found inspiration, we cannot pass through the tunnel until nightfall, and though H'ani grumped and frowned, she at last agreed.
But listen to this old woman, there is something unusual, something bad- and she sniffed at the air and neither of them could sleep when they rested at noon.
H'ani took Shasa from her as soon as he had fed.
He grows so, she whispered, and there was a shadow of regret in her bright black eyes. I wish I could see him in his full growth, straight and tall as the mopani tree.'You will, old grandmother, Centaine smiled, you will live to see him as a man. H'ani did not look up at her. You will go, both of you, one day soon. I sense it, you will go back to your own people. Her voice was hoarse with regret. You will go, and when you do there will be nothing left in life for this old woman. No, old grandmother, Centaine reached out and took her hand. Perhaps we will have to go one day. But we will come back to you. I give you my word on that. Gently H'ani disentangled her grip, and still without looking at Centaine, stood up. The heat is past. They worked back towards the mountain, moving widely separated through the forest, keeping each other just in sight, except when denser bush intervened. As was her habit, Centaine chatted to the sleeping infant on her hip, speaking French to train his ear to the sound of the language, and to keep her own tongue exercised.
They had almost reached the scree slope below the cliffs when Centaine saw the fresh tracks of a pair of zebra stallions imprinted deeply in the soft earth ahead of her. Under H'ani's instruction, she had developed acute powers of observation, and O'wa had taught her to read the signs of the wild with fluent ease. There was something about these tracks that puzzled her. They ran side by side, as though the animals that made them had been harnessed to
