Chanda's Wars

by Allan Stratton

  “Even so, he wouldn’t have crossed then,” I say. “At night, it would’ve been hard to spot the crocodiles.”

  Nelson’s eyes twitch. “Crocodiles?”

  “Of course, crocodiles. The north Kenje River’s full of them. What did you think?”

  “I didn’t think anything.” He struggles to calm his voice. “I mean, of course there’s crocodiles. I know that, sure. It’s just, they live up here, I live down there. I don’t think about them. I—well—What do we do?”

  “Relax.” I wish I was as confident as I sound. “The river’s slow, but crocodiles like it slower. Like it says on the back of my map: ‘They like to bake on the banks of a lazy oxbow.’”

  “Well, they also like to eat. What if they’re underwater at the edge of the reeds? The water’s too muddy to tell.”

  My heart flips. “Look for little bubbles,” I say. “Check for the tip of a snout. Anyway, crocs can only stay under for five minutes. We’ve been here longer than that and nothing’s surfaced.”

  I march along the riverbank. Nelson holds back. I turn and put my hands on my hips: “Look, Nelson, don’t be a baby. According to Mr. Lesole, crocodiles go for weeks between feedings. There were rebels in the water this morning. Any hungry crocs have already eaten.”

  Nelson steps toward me gingerly. “That’s not too reassuring.”

  “Sorry,” I say, “that’s as good as you get.”

  A half mile downstream, we spot a series of sandbars. We take off our shoes, step into the water, and push through the reeds lining the shore.

  I always took notes in school, but never at the Lesoles’. How much do I remember? How much am I jumbling? How much did Mr. Lesole make up for the sake of a good story? I guess I’m about to find out.

  37

  WE EDGE OUR way through the reeds. The muddy water’s halfway up our calves. We part the last sedges. There’s a ripple straight ahead. Is it a ridge of silt or a crocodile? I don’t see any bubbles. It’s too late to run anyway. I step forward. The ripple shifts. Please let it be the current. My toe bumps into it. It’s not silt. It’s hard. Slippery. It’s—it’s—

  “Careful,” I call to Nelson. “There’s a half-sunk log or something. Don’t cut your feet.”

  Near the shore, the river’s shallow. We tread knee-deep, talking to keep our minds off what’s scaring us.

  “On the other side, there’s all these trails leading from the river,” Nelson says. “They’re bare to the ground. From the safari camps?”

  “No. Hippo highways.”

  “Hippo highways?”

  “Yes.” I give him a smug look. After all his teasing it feels good to know more than he does. “Hippos come to the water at dawn to stay cool. At night, they go inland, maybe ten miles, to graze on sweet grass. Each family makes its own path. They always follow the same route, wearing the trails to bare dirt.”

  Nelson considers this. “The hippos are a good sign, right?” he says. “They wouldn’t be in the water if there were crocodiles, would they?”

  I pretend not to hear. If that fantasy makes him feel better, good. The truth is, crocs leave hippos alone. “The hippopotamus is one dumb, ugly sonovabitch,” Mr. Lesole told us. “Mean, too, if you’re not careful. Those jaws can crush a croc in half. And lord, can they run—run faster than a sprinter. Get between a hippo and water, it’ll trample you to death. Folks don’t believe it, but hippos kill more people than anything else in the bush. More than lions, leopards, elephants, you name it.”

  We’re almost halfway across. The water’s deeper, the current stronger. Nelson’s up to his waist; I’m up to my chest. We hold our knapsacks over our heads. This would come up to the children’s necks. How did they make it? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe we’re at the wrong place. Or maybe the men stretched a line across, a rope maybe. How did they carry their gear? Do crates float? Did they make a raft? They would have had time. Not like us.

  Something catches my eye. It’s barely breaking the surface, heading our way from upstream. It’s hard to make out what it is, with the sun in our eyes and the light bouncing off the water. But it’s dark brown. I think I can see holes in it. Nostrils? A snout!

  “Nelson! To the west! It’s coming toward us! Hurry!”

  He sees it too. We churn through the water. Struggle to get to the other side. The croc’s getting closer. I lurch forward. There’s a break in the sandbar. Nothing under my feet. I can’t touch bottom. I’m underwater, except for my arms and knapsack. My legs flail. I burst through the surface. “Help!”

  Nelson thrashes toward me. “Chanda!”

  “I can’t swim!”

  “Neither can I! Float!”

  “How?”

  The river pours down my throat. I choke. Need my arms. Go to pitch my knapsack. Can’t. Hands locked. Have to keep it dry. Under again. Kick like crazy. Break the surface. Nelson. Can’t see him. “Nelson?” Has the croc—?

  Nelson surges up from the water. He’s over his head too. “Cha—” He sinks back under. So do I. This is it. We’re going to drown or be eaten.

  My heels hit mud. I’m pulled by the current up the side of the next sandbar. Somehow, I find myself on my knees. It’s shallow, the mud floor pale under the water. I stand up. “Nelson?” He surfaces nearby. Staggers to his feet coughing.

  The crocodile. Where is it? Frantic, I search the surface. I see the brown snout. It’s ten feet away, coming fast, spinning in the current. Spinning? I look hard. It’s not a snout at all. It’s the rosettes of a rotting water hyacinth. It floats by harmlessly.

  The two of us stand apart, shaking, gasping for breath.

  “You!” Nelson explodes. “You almost got us killed!”

  “I didn’t make the gap in the sandbar!”

  “Well, you—you—”

  I raise a hand. There’s a pod of hippos standing in the water just downstream. I count twelve animals in the family, their dark ears, snouts, and backs barely breaking the water. The current’s brought us toward them. Our commotion’s got their attention. I can hear Mr. Lesole’s voice: “Those bastards are sneaky. Mean, too. They can stay submerged for six minutes, walk on the riverbed, then charge to the surface. They tipped a motorboat at one of the camps a few years back.”

  “Nelson,” I say quietly. “Be very still.”

  “What?”

  “We have company.”

  Nelson takes note.

  “Avoid their eyes,” I whisper. “Look off to the side.” He does as he’s told.

  After a few minutes, the hippos get tired of watching us. A few make a hoarse honking sound. Silence. A shake of the head from some, the massive jowls spluttering in the water. One of them rests its chin on another’s rump. They go still. It’s like they’re posing for tourists on a photo safari.

  Nelson and I inch slowly along the sandbar. We reach the far bank.

  “We’re alive,” Nelson says. He sounds surprised.

  So am I. But there’s no time for celebration. There’s only a few hours before dusk, and so much to do.

  “After he crossed, I’ll bet Mandiki took one of the hippo highways,” Nelson says. “It’d be a clear route, he could move fast, and once the hippos stomped over his tracks, his trail would be gone for good.”

  I nod. “Mandiki’s lived in the bush for six years. He’d know not to go up a hippo path until the hippos had come into the water. Who wants to get trampled?”

  “That fits with your idea that he crossed in the light.”

  “It also means that his tracks will be there till sundown, when the hippos leave.”

  I untie my knapsack. The blanket’s damp from splashes of water, but thank god I kept my hands out of the river; things inside are pretty dry. I take out my binoculars. We walk out twenty feet on the sandbar and scan the shoreline. There are hippo highways up and down the river. I give the glasses to Nelson. “Here, you see better than me.”

  He takes a look. “From here, I can’t tell if any of the tracks are human,” he says. “But
there’s a bit of garbage in the reeds down there. I’ve never heard of a hippo carrying a feed sack.”

  My heart skips. “What kind of feed sack?” I grab the glasses, focus the lens. The bag’s barely visible, dark green among the reeds. I run to the bank, snatch my things, and race downstream, nicking my legs on thorns. I leap over a hippo highway full of footprints heading inland.

  “Stop,” Nelson says. “This is it. The rebels’ trail. You’ve passed it.”

  “I know,” I say. The bag in the reeds is just ahead. I pull it from the water. There’s a draw string, snagged to a sedge root. At the bottom, two leg holes.

  Nelson catches up. “What is it?”

  “Soly’s diaper. It fit over his towel. He must have used it as pants. But now he’s left it.” I rip it from the water. “It’s a sign. A sign to guide us.”

  Nelson pauses. “Your little brother would think to plant a marker?”

  “Maybe not. But Iris would.”

  “Why here?” he asks gently. “Why not before?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s got proper pants now. It doesn’t matter. The point is, he left us a sign. It drifted a bit. But we found it. Nelson, they’re alive. They haven’t given up.”

  “Chanda…” Nelson’s face is pained. He might as well have kicked me in the gut.

  “What?” I yell. “Why are you being like this?”

  “It’s just…” He hesitates. “Chanda…you know what we’ve seen.”

  “Yes, I know what we’ve seen,” I say, hurt and mad. “I know exactly what we’ve seen. I know what else this bag could mean too. But don’t you dare say it. Or even think it. Don’t you dare—dare—take away my hope!”

  “When Mandiki first came through, you told me: ‘Dreaming a lie makes the truth hurt more.’”

  I can’t speak. I can’t breathe. I clutch the feed sack to my chest and sob. “Soly. Soly.”

  Nelson goes to say something. He can’t. He stares at his feet. “I’m sorry,” he whispers at last.

  “Never mind.” I wipe my face with my arm, bury my heart. “Let’s get up that trail before the hippos destroy Mandiki’s tracks.”

  I throw my things together. I swear, before I sleep tonight, I’m going to reach the rebel camp. Whether Soly and Iris are dead or alive, I’m going to know the truth.

  38

  IN NO TIME, the hippo highway takes us far from the river. The weight of the beasts has made deep grooves on either side of the path. The rebels’ prints stand out in the loose soil kicked to the center.

  We trek through scattered woodland. Clusters of dead and dying trees, the bark of their trunks gouged and ringed, tell tales of passing elephants. Old baobabs invite us to cool off in their hollow cores. But who knows what’s lurking inside?

  We’re making good time, gaining confidence, when a twig snaps behind a thicket. We freeze. Is it rebels? Before we can breathe, an antelope bounds in front of us. Nelson yelps and scrambles up a tree. The antelope leaps into the air, kicking its heels, wiggling its rump, and disappears into the brush.

  “It could have been a leopard!” Nelson exclaims.

  My heart’s in my mouth, but I pretend I’m Mr. Lesole. “If it’d been a leopard,” I say, “you’d have been in real trouble. Leopards are climbers. They leave carcasses hanging from the branches.”

  “Don’t talk down to me.” Nelson drops to the ground. “In the old days, predators came through the posts. Grampa went on hunting parties. He killed a lion once.”

  “I’m sure he did. Once. In the old days.”

  Nelson kicks the dirt. “I’m just saying, there’s predators in the park. Anything can happen.”

  I picture the children sitting on Mr. Lesole. “Leopards wouldn’t go after the two of us,” I say gently. “Lions might, but not likely, unless they’re sick. And hyenas are scavengers. They attack if you sleep unprotected.”

  “Right. Then they’ll rip off a chunk of your face.”

  “That’s why you make yourself a little hyena hideaway. A circle of thorn branches, and you’re fine.” I’m not sure why, but saying out loud what I’ve learned from Mr. Lesole seems to relax Nelson. It’s almost as if he thinks I really am an expert. Who knows, if I can fool him, maybe I can fool myself.

  We carry on. As we walk under a marula tree, a family of baboons pelts us with fruit pits. For a second, we’re ready to dive to the ground. But we catch ourselves.

  “Baboons,” Nelson says sheepishly.

  “Well done.”

  The hippo highway bends right, toward the scent of sweetgrass, but the rebels’ tracks continue north. Something’s new along the path. Tufts of fur. Blood. My insides tighten. Blood. That will attract predators.

  “The rebels must’ve killed something in the grasses back there,” Nelson whispers. “They’re dragging the carcass to their campsite. We must be close.”

  He’s right. Soon footprints fan out from the main route. The trail breaks up. The air fills with the smell of roast game and a ripple of voices. To our left, a fig tree towers over an ancient baobab. Their massive ground roots intertwine. Aerial roots from a baby fig, growing in the rotted crown of the baobab tree, hang to the ground, some strangling the baobab’s bulbous trunk. We take cover.

  “Mandiki’s near enough to touch,” Nelson whispers. “If we’re not careful, we’ll stumble right onto him.”

  “How could we be so careless? If we’d looked to the sky, we’d have seen smoke from their firepit.”

  Nelson shakes his head. “I doubt it. They’re probably waving palm leaves to break it up. That’s what cattle rustlers do.” He grabs hold of a thick aerial root. “I’m going to climb up, see what I can see.”

  “Wait!” I say quietly. “You’ll be in the open. Check for a way into the baobab.”

  We circle around it. Like the others we’ve passed, the baobab tree’s over twelve feet across, with an opening near the base of its trunk. We look through the narrow entrance. A shaft of light beams down from above; the core is hollow from top to bottom. “Climb up from the inside,” I say. “You’ll be invisible.”

  Before we enter, I toss handfuls of dirt into the opening and step aside. If there’re animals in there, better to find out now. The earth sprays against the far sides of the hollow. Silence. The baobab’s empty.

  Nelson squeezes inside. I follow. The sky is visible through the rotten treetop. Three aerial roots, tough as vines, dangle down from the hole. Nelson tests his weight on the thickest. It holds. He’s about to climb, when I grab his arm. “Nelson, above us!” High over the baobab, a giant beehive hangs from a branch of the neighboring fig tree.

  “Who cares?” he says. “It’s getting dark. The bees’ll be settling in for the night.”

  I shiver all the same. I hate bees. I hate something else, too. As my eyes adjust to the shadows, I see a colony of bats, hanging upside down in the gloomy upper crevasses of our hollow. If only I’d thrown the dirt higher. “Bats,” I whisper. “Dozens and dozens of bats. What’ll we do?”

  Nelson snorts. “Are you an insect?”

  “No.”

  “Then relax. At least I worry about things that can eat me.”

  He hoists himself up, one hand over the other, his feet pressed into the thick aerial root, securing his weight. His head comes level with the bats. The hollow is six feet across. Nelson passes up the middle between them. They stay sleeping. He pokes his head through the rotted hole, gives a quick look around, and slides back in a rush.

  “We got inside just in time,” he says. “The camp’s only fifty yards away, behind the next row of thornbushes. Most of the men are resting; that’s why we didn’t hear much.”

  “What about the children?”

  He motions me to the ground. Outside, a crunch of twigs. And another. We lie on either side of the baobab’s opening and peer out. Child soldiers are all around, collecting kindling. I see a girl hunched over in a soiled nightie. She turns my way. It’s Iris. I almost don’t recognize her. Her face is puffe
d. Her beautiful hair dirty, matted, the braids undone, the beads stripped away. But she’s alive.

  My eyes race for Soly. Where is he? Is he alive too? I spot Pako, just off the path. There beside him, nursing a stubbed toe—it’s Soly. He lifts his head. Looks around. Can he tell I’m here? Or is he just scared of the bush?

  “Keep moving.” An older boy gives Iris a shove with the end of his rifle.

  Iris trips face-first into the dirt. Scrambling at ground level, she glances in our direction. She opens her mouth as if to cry out. Nelson seizes. I put my finger to my lips.

  The older boy gives her a kick. “I told you to move it.”

  “I’m moving, I’m moving,” she says. She gets up with her kindling and disappears with the other children behind the thornbushes.

  “Can your sister keep a secret?” Nelson asks nervously.

  “When she wants to.”

  “Meaning?

  “We’re safe.”

  Together, we guard the opening. Mandiki must be proud, I think. After weeks of marches and raids, he’s escaped to the wild with child slaves and plunder, far from even the nearest safari camp. No wonder he’s having a feast. All at once, I’m hit with an idea. Mandiki thinks he’s escaped? Well, he’s in for a surprise. I burrow into my knapsack, fish out my map and cell phone.

  Nelson cranes his neck. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting the army. We’ve found Mandiki’s camp. I’m calling in his position.”

  “What?” he says in disbelief. “They won’t believe you.”

  “So? I can try.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Your phone won’t work anyway. We’re in the wilderness.”

  “Let me tell you something,” I say evenly. “Safari camps like Mr. Lesole’s need mobiles for their customers. They’ve got transmission towers all through the mountains. There’s better reception here than on the cattle posts.”

  I turn on the cell. I press Talk. Then a horrible thought. I turn it off fast.

  “What?”

  “Nelson—if I get word to the army, if they listen—they’ll attack with mortars, missiles, and grenades. It won’t just be Mandiki who’s hit, it’ll be the children, too. Before I call, we have to free them.”