The White Giraffe

by Lauren St. John

  The sound of the men died behind them. After a while, Martine could hear nothing but the wind in her ears and the sharp cries of the night birds as they flashed by. Gradually, the trees gave way to open grassland and she could make out the shadows of the game reserve animals and smell the sweet smell of the bush at night. Zebras looked up blinking as they passed, a bush baby swung torch-like eyes on them, and a couple of lionesses bounded after them hungrily before stopping to lie in wait for easier prey.

  After about a quarter of an hour they reached the lower slopes of the mountain that marked Sawubona’s northern boundary and Jemmy slowed to a walk. His neck was wet with sweat and he was breathing hard, like a galloping racehorse. He seemed to be searching for something.

  Martine was so exhilarated by the experience of riding a giraffe that at first she barely took in her surroundings. It was awesome, if a little vertigo-inducing, to see the world from this height. When she did look around, she found that they were in a barren clearing, littered with rocks and shale, at the base of a granite cliff. An air of desolation hung over the place. Usually the African night was alive with the sound of cicadas, frogs, and nocturnal creatures, but this area seemed devoid of any life. Even the temperature seemed lower. Nothing grew here apart from a single, twisted tree, which had taken root in the cliff itself and was shrouded in a tangled mass of moss and parasitic creepers. Due no doubt to the gales that ripped around the mountain, it had grown stunted and misshapen over the years and now, Martine thought with a shudder, it stood among the boulders like a sinister sentinel. She couldn’t think why the white giraffe had brought her to this awful place, but he seemed very agitated. She began to feel concerned.

  Through the night came the rumble of an engine. It was heading straight toward them. A searchlight swept the slopes above their heads.

  “Jemmy!” Martine cried. “What are you doing? We’ve got to get away!”

  Beneath her, she felt the white giraffe’s hindquarters bunch as if he were preparing for a mighty leap. Martine put her arms around his neck and hung on for all she was worth. Until that moment, she’d been too full of the miracle of the ride to wonder where Jemmy was taking her or what would happen when they got there. Now reality was setting in. She dreaded to think how many bones she would break if she did crash to the ground, or indeed how she’d manage to crawl home and explain her injuries to her grandmother. Assuming, of course, that she wasn’t eaten, bitten, stung, trampled, gored, or shot by poachers along the way. But there was no time to think about that now.

  From standing, Jemmy took six breathtakingly fast strides and an enormous leap. In the instant before the jeep burst into the clearing and the world went black, Martine understood why Tendai had never been able to follow his tracks. The white giraffe had simply evaporated into thin air.

  15

  How they managed to survive this leap into the unknown, Martine later had no idea. One minute they were in the creepy clearing and the next Jemmy they were in the creepy clearing and the next Jemmy had launched himself directly at the cliff face, and Martine was being sucked at by gravity and strangled, mauled, and scratched by hairy vines and vicious thorny branches.

  At last they came to a trembling halt. They were in complete darkness. It was some time before Martine’s eyes adjusted to the light and she was able to take in the fact that she was still on the giraffe’s back and still in one piece. It was even longer before she was able to figure out a way to slide safely to the ground.

  Back on solid earth, she felt small and inconsequential again, but also elated. For the time being, at least, she and Jemmy had outwitted the poachers. She took her grandmother’s flashlight from the pocket of her Windbreaker and prepared to expect the unexpected. She had willingly climbed onto the back of a wild giraffe (even though there were probably very good reasons why no one else in history had ever attempted to ride one) and had been whisked away to a deeply unpleasant place with an even more unpleasant tree. Then, just when she thought things couldn’t possibly get any more surreal, the white giraffe had hurled himself at a mountain.

  They could be anywhere.

  She switched on her flashlight. Relief flooded through her. Nothing fantastical had occurred—at least nothing involving magic. And Jemmy hadn’t actually jumped through bare rock. He’d simply leaped through the veil of creepers into the crevice that lay behind it. Because the crevice ran at an angle almost parallel to the cliff itself and was disguised by foliage and the great twisted bulk of the tree, it was invisible from the outside. Martine marveled that even the animals had ever found it. Not that many of them had, if the silence was anything to go by.

  Drawing a wide arc with her flashlight beam, she discovered that she was in an exquisite little valley of perhaps an acre, surrounded on three sides by high sloping walls of sheer granite and on the fourth by massive chestnut boulders stacked five deep. The effect was of being on the inside of an uneven pyramid. The mountainside wall leaned at such an angle that it overhung the boulders like a ledge, creating a roof over the valley. Seen from below, it was obvious that even if someone were to climb the mountain and glance down, they still wouldn’t notice the valley. It was completely hidden.

  That wasn’t the amazing part, though. Judging by the rectangle of blue-black sky she could see, a fluke of nature had ensured that there was enough space between the ledge and the boulders to allow sunlight into the valley for at least part of every day. That explained the presence of several acacia trees, a favorite food of the giraffe, the lush carpet of grass, and the fragrant white orchids springing from the valley’s floor. There was also a pool of water in a hollowed rock, fed by a clear stream.

  Martine knew she was standing in the white giraffe’s secret sanctuary. Jemmy had everything he needed to survive here. Everything, that is, except love and company. No wonder he was so lonely. She ran a soothing hand over Jemmy and marveled once again that he stood still under her touch. If he would let her, she planned to give him all the love and company he could possibly want. He need never be lonely again.

  In the meantime, a million questions ran through her mind. Who had first discovered the Secret Valley? Had any other human being ever been here? Did anyone apart from the animals know it existed?

  She set out to explore the valley perimeter, combing the walls with her flashlight. That’s when she saw it—a black triangle between two rocks. It looked like some sort of tunnel. Immediately she felt an overwhelming urge to investigate. She was well aware that there were probably smarter things she could do in her present situation than go poking around in black holes, but try as she might, she couldn’t think of any. She checked on the white giraffe. He was over by the stream drinking deeply, his front legs spread wide, his silvery nose wrinkled against the bubbles.

  Martine debated what to do. What if she’d used up all her luck for one evening? But there was something almost magnetic about the space. She felt as if it were pulling her toward it—calling her, even. She had the oddest sense that going into the tunnel was what she was meant to do. That that’s what she’d end up doing whether she decided to or not.

  Retying her boot laces purposefully, Martine walked on uncertain legs toward the black hole. Her heart was in her mouth.

  It was a tunnel, one that smelled strongly of wet rock and animals that dwell in dank, dark places—spiders, baboons, and the like. Leopards enjoy those places as well, but Martine consoled herself with the thought that Jemmy would hardly have lived as long as he had if a carnivore resided so close by. After one last attempt to talk herself into staying in the lovely valley, she stepped inside.

  The tunnel was not much taller than she was, and even a small adult would have had to crouch, but gradually it widened and became less claustrophobic. After a while, it turned back on itself. She was beneath the mountain now. From there, the ground rose sharply in a series of steep steps, slick with froggy algae. Martine put the flashlight between her teeth and scrambled up in an undignified fashion. She made a mental note to sm
uggle her giraffe-fur, grass, and slime-covered jeans into the washing machine before her grandmother noticed them. The vegetable garden excuse was not going to work a second time.

  She was halfway up the last step when a hideous screech echoed from the chamber above her. Martine nearly flew over backward. Her light flashed around madly as she grabbed a ledge to save herself. Within seconds, the air was filled with a blizzard of flapping wings and high-pitched squeaks. She had unleashed a colony of bats!

  In England, Martine had known girls who went around saying that they had a phobia about bats, even though they lived in suburbia and had never encountered them outside Dracula films. She herself had never much cared for the idea of them. But since her arrival in Africa she’d come to realize that they were actually quite cute. Far from being blood-sucking vampires, they were just flying mice that enjoyed fruit. Until, that is, they got caught in your hair.

  “Ugh,” spluttered Martine as she tried to disentangle their scratchy feet and clammy wings without being bitten. “Ugh!”

  When the black whirlwind subsided, she picked up her flashlight, dusted herself off, and saw that she was in a cave—one the height and size of a small church. But what struck her as strange was that the feeling in the cave was different from that of the tunnel, which was simply damp and cold. The cave had a distinct atmosphere. Martine took a lungful of its dense, heavy air and was immediately swamped with the same light-headed, time-travel sensation that she’d felt in some of the cathedrals and historic buildings her parents had taken her to in England—Leeds Castle or the Tower of London. There, too, she’d had a real sense of the generations who’d occupied them before. It was almost as if certain people in certain eras made their mark on a place so thoroughly that their spirit never left. But why should she feel that here?

  Moving cautiously so as not to alarm the bats, Martine shined her flashlight around the cave. What she saw next made her cry out in wonder. Every wall and every rock was covered in paintings! Some of them were nothing more than crude charcoal line drawings, faded with the years. Some were stick figures. And some were so rich in texture and hue that they seemed to leap from the walls like naked flames. But every one of them lived and breathed. They spoke to her from across the ages as clearly as if their creators were standing in front of her, telling her of battles lost and won, feasts and famines, times of pestilence and times of plenty.

  Martine sank down onto a rock. Half of her felt like a child at Christmas; the other half felt dizzy. What was happening? What was this all about? Jemmy, the kudu, and now the cave pictures . . . ? What did it all mean? Oh, if only she’d been able to have a proper conversation with Grace on that first day in Africa. Martine was sure that Grace held the key to at least some part of the mystery. She had, after all, known about the gift.

  So much was happening so fast. Martine tried to remember her life with her mum and dad. Already bits of it were fading. One thing she did recall was being petrified of the dark and spending sleepless nights convinced that something monstrous lurked under her bed. Several times she’d even crept into her parents’ room. Yet here she was, alone in a cave in the dead of night, and she felt completely unafraid. Confused, yes, but not afraid. Nor did she feel alone. It was as though her mum and dad were watching her, as though they knew about her and Jemmy. She smiled to herself in the dark.

  She knew that she owed much of her newfound confidence to the white giraffe. Loving Jemmy had given her a reason to smile when she was sure that she’d never smile again, and being brave for Jemmy, as she’d had to tonight, had made her reach deep inside for some strong, steady part of herself that she hadn’t even known existed until then. In return, the white giraffe had overcome his fear of humans to save her twice and allow her to ride him. If he hadn’t trusted her, he wouldn’t have brought her here. She vowed that as long as she lived she would never tell anyone about the Secret Valley. If the paintings were ever found, Jemmy’s sanctuary would be flooded with reporters, scientists, and tourists. The ancient spirits would be chased away. The world would come trampling in.

  Martine stared at the paintings. One of her mum’s books had contained pictures just like these. They’d been painted by the San people, as the Bushmen were known, centuries before the white man ever came, using iron ore, china clay, and oxgall. She wondered if these pictures, too, had been painted by the Bushmen, or if some other tribe had done them—perhaps Tendai’s tribe, the Zulus. She got up off the rock and went over for a closer look. Her head was still spinning and she still had millions of questions, but mostly she just felt lucky to be able to witness this.

  Holding the flashlight above her head, she walked around the cave. The red, gold, and black images unfolded before her, like scenes from an old sepia-toned movie. Martine was entranced. Despite their simplicity, they conveyed lives of great beauty and sorrow. There were fantastic scenes of animal migration, tribal dances, and men confronting rhinos and elephants armed only with bows and arrows. She was halfway around when she noticed a painting of a giraffe. It was one of a series, most of which featured herds of giraffes surrounded by men with spears. In each new picture, the herds became smaller and smaller, and more and more bloody giraffes lay on the ground. Soon there were just two left. Then they, too, were on the ground and a man lay on the ground with them. But it was when she saw the next painting that Martine’s head really started whirling. It showed a white giraffe suckling from an elephant. At first, she was sure that the coloring of the giraffe was merely a trick of the light, but when she compared it to the previous images, it was definitely paler. She traced the giraffe with her fingertips. The rock was cold to the touch but somehow it, too, had a kind of energy.

  She had to force herself to look at the final picture and when she did, the emotion was overwhelming. The hue of the image was different, almost as if it had been created with a metallic paint. In it, a child was riding a white giraffe. To the left of them was a fire and to the right was a line of animals of different species.

  “The child who can ride a white giraffe will have power over all the animals,” Tendai had told her when she arrived. And although some dreamy part of her had entertained fantasies about riding Jemmy, she’d never really thought about what it meant because she had never believed for a second it might come true. Why would she imagine she’d be able to ride a giraffe? Nobody else in the world ever had.

  The child who can ride a white giraffe will have power over all the animals.

  For the second time that evening, Martine’s knees gave way and she had to sit down on another rock.

  Grace had been right. The forefathers had known she was coming.

  16

  In the excitement of the night, Martine had forgotten about the poachers and the fact that she was miles from home with dawn rapidly approaching. Even supposing she was able to steer Jemmy—who was not, after all, a schooled horse—in the general direction of the house, there was no way she could allow him to leave the Secret Valley if there way she could allow him to leave the Secret Valley if there was any possibility that the hunters were still out looking for him.

  After a last bemused glance at the giraffe paintings, Martine ran to the cave exit and slipped and slithered back down the rocky steps, adding a fresh layer of moss to her jeans. The tunnel seemed longer than she remembered and she was very grateful to reach the tranquil valley and hear the welcoming call of the white giraffe. She rushed over to Jemmy, put her face against his velvet fur, and cuddled him for several minutes. Only then did she switch off her flashlight and grope her way to the valley entrance. Standing on a rock, she peered over the edge of the crevice. The dense foliage of the tree blanketed out most but not all of the view. A stamp-sized gap showed a patch of sky, which was that brilliant blue that precedes first light. Martine could also make out the front half of the poachers’ rusting Ford pickup. It was empty.

  Seeing the truck gave her an idea. Like a lot of her ideas recently, it was a bit crazy, but if it worked, it would be the perfect s
olution. She was going to get the poachers to give her a ride home!

  Martine ran through the dark valley to Jemmy’s side. She stood on tiptoes and he put his head down and nuzzled her affectionately. “Stay safe, my beautiful friend,” she said. A little self-consciously, she added, “I love you.”

  She returned to the valley entrance, climbed cautiously over the sharp rocks that guarded it, and began to wriggle through the tangle of sticky creepers. Lying on her belly beneath the sinister tree, she waited and listened. Twin points of light were bobbing through the trees. The poachers were returning to their vehicle!

  For a second Martine’s limbs were filled with the same helpless weakness she’d felt on the night of the fire, but she propelled herself forward. If she hesitated now, it was over. Tearing herself free of the vines, she sprinted for the truck and flung herself on the back. A tarpaulin lay in a heap near the cab. Martine dived under it, gagging at its rotten-meat odor. Then she lay still. She hardly dared breathe.

  Footsteps crunched across the stony ground. The truck rocked as the men got in and the doors slammed with unnecessary force. They weren’t speaking. Despite her predicament, Martine managed a smile. She pictured them seething, each blaming the other for a wasted, torturous night among the creepies and crawlies. With any luck, it had put them off hunting for life.

  The old truck gave a harsh metal wheeze and jolted into action. Martine’s plan was to wait until the poachers slowed down to open a gate or cut the fence and then jump out. Assuming that she didn’t injure herself in the fall, she should then be within easy walking distance of the house.