Ama by Manu Herbstein Page B

stepped through the doorway into the empty courtyard. Far away a dog barked. It was bitterly cold. She rubbed her arms in turn and wrapped herself tightly in her own old cloth and the one that Damba had given her for the Na's inspection. Then she made her way silently towards the entrance hall. The brass bells which hung around the necks of the tethered horses made a tinkling sound at every slight movement. A guard lay stretched across the outer doorway, asleep. Slowly, step by step, she picked a way across the room. A horse whinnied and she froze, her heart pumping. The guard turned over in his sleep. She took a careful step. Her bare foot landed on a pile of fresh horse shit. She cursed. Another step. She heard snoring: there was at least one more guard lying hidden in the dark recesses of the room. She wondered whether these sleeping guards would also have their heads chopped off when her escape was discovered. Then, at last, she had stepped over the form at the door and was free of the prison compound.
    Only the drone of the cicadas and the horses’ bells disturbed the silence of the sleeping town. Like a wraith she moved through the shadows. As she reached the last compound, a dog rushed out at her, snarling. She took to her heels and ran. Reaching the limits of its territory, the beast stopped and stood in the pale moonlight, barking after her. She ran without stopping until she reached the dawa-dawa tree at the edge of the thicket where they went to cut firewood. There she collapsed on the ground, her chest heaving and wet with sweat in spite of the night chill.
    When she had recovered her breath, she sat up and listened. An owl hooted nearby. An ill omen , she thought. The bird sat on a high branch, staring down at her.
    â€œWhoo, whoo,” she whispered.
    She collected her hidden treasures: an iron cutlass, presumed lost by a firewood party; and an empty drinking gourd. There was no time to lose. She looked back at the sleeping town, taking her bearings. At the well she stopped to drink and fill her gourd. Keep the town at your back and the moon on your right , she told herself. Keep going straight and in three or four days' time you will walk into your father's compound.
    * * *
    She had not come far, yet she was already exhausted.
    She could find no tracks in this bush, not in the dim light. She had started to hack a way through with her cutlass, but that was hopelessly slow. They would laugh at her, think she was mad, if they captured her, cutting traces through the scrub from nowhere to nowhere. “Where did you think you were going?” they would ask her.
    But they must not capture her. They would surely kill her if they did.
    The gourd was barely half full: much of the water had spilled. She stopped to take her first sip. Then she set off again, using her slight body as a ram to force a way through the long dry grass, changing course, even sometimes retracing her steps, when she met an obstacle. The brittle reeds tore at her cloth and scratched her skin. If I step on a snake , she thought, that will be the end of me . She struggled on. It was hopeless, she knew it was hopeless. She had no idea where she was or in what direction she was going. She came to a small clearing and lay down on her back to rest. The sky was dark. There were no stars. Only the pale moon had the strength to penetrate the dust of the harmattan. The cold night chilled her through and through. I must decide what to do , she thought.
    The rasping cough of a leopard came floating through the night air. She sat up in alarm. There it was again. Fortunately, she judged, the beast was off her track and up wind and would not have picked up her scent. But if she continued to force her way through the bush, it might well hear her. Leopards have extraordinarily acute hearing, Itsho had once told her.
    Then a thought occurred to her. It was the leopard, so Tabitsha had taught her, which in ancient times had brushed the path of the fleeing