Again, Ayoti sat alone, her words of the day before echoing bitterly in her mind: “I will give the life of my child-to-be ...”
And in the shelter of Moshanye, the people stared in silent shock at the body of a newborn boy-child, eyes closed and limbs relaxed in the endless sleep of death.
MBODZE
THIS WAS THE SECOND adaptation of a Southern African folktale that I wrote for Stardock. It appeared in the magazine’s second issue, in 1978. Again, I felt some concern over arbitrarily placing my own story in a publication of which I was the arbiter. Despite that concern, it was easier to do the second time around ...
If Marimira had not been the best pot-maker in the village of Nyange, it is unlikely that she would ever have ventured so far from the lands her people knew, on a search for a finer grade of clay for her work.
And, had she not found a hillside that yielded a particularly fine deposit of the yellowish-gray earth, she might not have stubbed her toe on a rock of decidedly peculiar appearance.
As she rubbed her hand across her aching foot, Marimira glared at the piece of stone over which she had nearly tripped. Aside from its color, which was a deep blood-red, there was little to distinguish it from any other rock lying on a hillside. There was, however, something strange about its shape.
Marimira reached down and picked it up. Slowly, she turned it over in her hands. An ordinary rock, yes, she said to herself. One that just happened to be in her way at the wrong time.
That last thought brought her attention back to the dull pain that spread from her toe to the rest of her foot. Angrily, Marimira tossed the red stone away, paying little attention to where it might land. Then she took her wooden trowel and began to scoop clay into her basket. When she was certain she had collected enough of it to make a fine vase for her mother, she lifted the load. Although it was heavy, she was certain she could carry it back to Nyange before nightfall.
She turned to leave the hillside ... and the basket dropped onto the ground as she clutched her hands to her mouth to stifle a scream. For where the red stone had landed, there now loomed a gigantic boulder, shining scarlet in the dying sunlight.
Marimira tried to fight down the wave of terror that surged through her. She knew there was a zimwe – an ogre – nearby. Nothing else could have caused the small stone to grow so huge so quickly. Marimira feared zimwe-kind even more than she did lions.
There were, however, ways to reason with demons.
Summoning up her courage, Marimira sang: “Stone, let me pass. I am sorry I threw you away. Stone, let me pass. “I am sorry I threw you away.”
Then she took to her heels in an attempt to run around the side of the boulder. But of its own volition, the gigantic rock slid across the ground to block Marimira’s path. She skidded to a halt only seconds before she would have crashed into the crimson surface.
Now she made no attempt to disguise her fear. It was obvious that the zimwe was not impressed by her apology. It wanted more ... but what? Bargains between humans and ogres, Marimira knew, did not often conclude to the advantage of the human. Still, her fate was in the unseen hands of the zimwe.
Again, Marimira sang: “Let me pass, O Stone, and I will do as you want. Let me pass, O Stone, and I will do as you want.”
At that invitation, the red boulder roared and rattled and shook the ground so violently that Marimira was thrown off her feet. It was, perhaps, fortunate that she fell face-down, so that she did not have to witness the awful transformation the stone was undergoing ...
When Marimira looked up again, her eyes widened in horror. What she beheld was far more frightening than the manifestation of the boulder. Towering above her was a gigantic, manlike form, colored blood-red and massive as the rock from which it had taken shape. This was the true shape of the zimwe: a hairless, naked creature standing half-again as tall as a man and bulking three times as thick, with coarse, brutal features and skin that was pitted and cracked like the side of a mountain.
Even as Marimira stared speechlessly, the ogre threw back its head and laughed. The laughter was far from reassuring.
“What could you do, human-child, that would be greater than what you already have done?” the zimwe roared. “It was your maiden’s touch that freed me from the spell with which the witch Chitsimbakazi imprisoned me long ago. What more could you do for Mbodze?”
Mbodze!
At the mention of that name, Marimira’s misgivings increased tenfold. Mbodze was the name of the ogre that had terrorized Nyange and its neighboring villages in the past, carrying off people young and old to satisfy its voracious appetite. The villagers might have been forced to vacate their rich lands for less-hospitable country, had it not been for the intervention of Chitsimbakazi, a sorceress who had no love for zimwes, nor they for her.
But those events had occurred many rains ago, when the great-grandparents of Nyange’s elders were children. Yet here Mbodze stood, glaring down at Marimira and flicking a snake-like tongue over crimson lips. A bright glow kindled in the ogre’s eyes as he regarded the young woman cowering before him.
As any of the young hunters and warriors could have attested, Marimira was very attractive. At sixteen rains, she had reached the proper age for marriage. Beneath a close-cropped bush of wooly black hair, her face was prepossessing despite the terror now stamped on her features. The bark-cloth skirt and shell-decorated upper garment that clothed her left much of her polished-jet skin
