Edge of the Rain

by Beverley Harper

  Beverley Harper died of cancer on 9 August 2002. She rests at peace in the Africa she so loved.

  Her ashes lie by the Boteti River in Botswana, below a lodge called Leroo-la-Tau. It means Footprints of Lion.

  It is a special place.

  This simple plaque marks her passing:

  Also by Beverley Harper

  Storms Over Africa

  Edge of the Rain

  Echo of an Angry God

  People of Heaven

  The Forgotten Sea

  Jackal’s Dance

  Shadows in the Grass

  Footprints of Lion

  EDGE OF THE RAIN

  BEVERLEY HARPER

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  First published 1997 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  First published 1998 in Pan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

  1 Market Street, Sydney

  Reprinted 1998 (three times), 1999 (twice), 2000 (twice), 2001 (twice), 2003, 2004 (twice), 2006, 2007, 2009

  Copyright © Beverley Harper 1997

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  cataloguing-in-publication data:

  Harper, Beverley.

  Edge of the rain.

  ISBN 978-0-330-35981-8.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Typeset in 11.5/13pt Bembo by Post Typesetters

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  These electronic editions published in 2010 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd

  1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

  Copyright © Beverley Harper 1997

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This ebook may not include illustrations and/or photographs

  that may have been in the print edition.

  Edge of the rain

  Beverley Harper

  Adobe eReader format

  978-1-74262-685-7

  EPub format

  978-1-74262-687-1

  Mobipocket format

  978-1-74262-686-4

  Online format

  978-1-74262-684-0

  Macmillan Digital Australia

  www.macmillandigital.com.au

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com.au to read more about all our books and to buy both print and ebooks online. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events.

  this book is for Robert, Piers, Miles and Adam

  with thanks to my agent and friend Selwa

  Anthony

  special thanks to Jennifer and Peter Gill who

  found the time and patience to tell me about

  diamonds

  and to

  John Counihan, Peter McIntyre and Wally Vize

  in Botswana

  ONE

  The blood scent was fresh. Pungent and rich, the acrid smell of it stung her taste buds, bringing saliva. She stopped, turning her head until she caught it again. In the distance, a clump of trees. Years of fending for herself had her instincts honed to perfection. A light breeze floated the scent to her and she savoured it. It came from the trees. But she was wary. Along with the scent of blood, something else, something alien.

  Hunger ached in her belly. Cautious, for she could not identify the other smell, she made her way towards the trees, stopping every few seconds to sniff at the breeze. Her eyes flicked over the surrounding land. Nothing there. The blood scent was stronger. Like a wraith she slipped into the shade, moving with exquisite precision, all her senses alert. When she found the source of the scent she slid forward as close as she dared and settled down to watch. She would remain hidden until she was sure—such was her nature. Fifteen minutes later the lioness still lay, motionless as carved stone. Tawny eyes showed she was alert and focused. Invisible from all but the sharpest observer, she was cleverly camouflaged by the dappled shade of a low scrubby bush and the sparse dun coloured grass around her. Muscles tensed along her back and haunches, rippling beige, twenty-three stone of power and speed. Her concentration was total. She was very, very hungry.

  The little boy thirty seconds away from death was two, maybe three years old. His fair skin burned crimson from too much sun. Silky blond curls lay damp on his head in the intense heat. A cut on his leg was crusted with dried blood. Face grubby and streaked with recent tears, sobs still surfaced from deep inside him and shook his sturdy little body. He had done the unthinkable, the unbelievable. He was lost in the vast, barren, heat soaked sand that was the Kalahari Desert.

  For now, he was absorbed by what he had found on the ground and had no idea the lioness lay, no more than thirty feet away, planning to eat him. Even if he had known, there was nothing he could have done to stop her.

  Impending death stilled all sounds. Even the birds were silent, awed by the savage drama unfolding in a land where conscience has no meaning. They watched and waited. The little boy was just another meal but his death would be viciously spectacular.

  The lioness tested the child’s scent. Her mouth became a silent snarl as she drew her lips back, exposing large yellow teeth, sucking and blowing air over sensitive taste buds. Her stomach rumbled in its hunger, but she hesitated. The small creature before her was edible—she could tell by the blood scent—but it smelled like nothing she had eaten before, looked like nothing she had seen before and sounded like nothing she had heard before.

  The object of her interest was squatting beside the remains of a long-dead ostrich. Jackals, vultures and ants had eaten all but a few bones, and the gritty contents of the bird’s gizzard. The child was absorbed by a stone which shone with a thousand different lights in the fierce desert sunshine. When he held it up against the sky, and the colours danced and changed as he twisted it in his hand, he chuckled in pure enjoyment, his terror at finding himself alone temporarily forgotten.

  The lioness was nearly committed. She knew this was easy prey. One flash of a heavy paw, one slice of razor-sharp claws, one crunch of jaws on that small head, and she could rip out the intestines, then feed to her heart’s content. Still she hesitated; caution and stealth had kept her alive till now. As one who lived instinctively, she had a deeply rooted f
ear of human beings. Her instincts told her to be careful.

  On his haunches, the boy hopped sideways around the skeletal remains of the dead bird looking for more shining stones. The movement took him closer to the bush where the lioness lay. She tensed, ready to strike out and bring him down, but he had seen something on the other side of the ostrich, rose and toddled over to it, remaining out of reach. Sobs still shuddered through him but, with the myopic concentration of the very young, he no longer noticed them.

  The large and hungry cat inched forward on her belly. Hunger rumbled again. She had not eaten in four days. A front paw throbbed with the poison from a suppurating abscess, caused by a thorn which had broken off and remained embedded. Hundreds of ticks itched as they feasted on her blood but she ignored them. Flies stung as they fed on the sunburned raw edges of her ears. She ignored them as well. Discomfort was as much a part of her life as her instinct to hunt.

  Then the little boy began to talk to himself. It was his high-pitched childlike voice which convinced the lioness she was safe. The strange hairless animal was defenceless. Completely committed now, she rose in one fluid motion, disturbing not so much as a leaf. Her tail twitched involuntarily. Tensing front legs she bunched herself, ready to execute her fast, low, deadly rush. The warning growl, something she was powerless to prevent, rose in her throat. It was time to eat.

  In that last, intense split second before she acted, her excellent hearing picked up a sound. Self-preservation is strong in those who live by their wits and hunting skills. Hungry as she was, the lioness slid silently from her covering bush and put as much distance between herself and the sound as she possibly could. So great was her ability to move silently, the little boy was unaware she had ever been there.

  TWO

  The family of warthog, mother, father and three half-grown babies, were busily foraging for roots, bulbs and tubers, using their long curving upper tusks to dig in the soft sandy earth. Trotting briskly from one clump of grass to the other, intent on their task, they were unaware of the two Bushmen hunters who watched and waited.

  !Ka reached into his reed matting bag and brought out a flea-beetle pupa which he rolled between his fingers to soften. !Oma chewed on a wad of acacia gum, sticking his tongue into it, then churning it around in his mouth to mix it with saliva. When both the gum and pupa were soft, !Oma spat the sticky mess onto a saucer of bark and !Ka squeezed the orange coloured fluid out of the pupa and mixed it with the gum. They worked in silence, knowing the keen sense of hearing of their quarry would send them scurrying for safety at the merest whisper of sound.

  !Oma nodded that the poison was ready. Dipping tiny arrow heads into it they rose quietly and, unseen by the warthog, moved to within firing distance. Without exchanging a glance both hunters sent their poisoned arrows to the same youngster. He was the biggest of the three piglets and some of the mud he rolled in earlier in the day had flaked off his flank, leaving the tough skin vulnerable.

  The lightweight reed arrows seemed impossibly fragile as they danced towards their prey and bounced, like twigs, off his side. But not before their tiny sharp heads cut the tough hide sufficiently to poison his bloodstream. The injured youngster screamed at the sudden sharp pain and he and his family took off alarmed. The two Bushmen returned to collect their hunting kits before setting off after the warthog. They were in no hurry. They knew exactly where the animals were going.

  The warthog sought cover in some old porcupine holes next to a dried-up waterhole, the boar being the last to disappear in a bottom-first, backwards wriggle. The hunters, who had followed in a deceptively easy lope which they could keep up all day if necessary, slowed and stopped. !Oma unstrapped an ostrich egg from his hip and offered it to his friend. !Ka sipped sparingly at the lukewarm water before passing it back. Then both men squatted down to wait, making no attempt to be quiet. They wanted the warthog to hear them and thus remain hidden.

  They knew the poison would work slowly. Ideally, they would have preferred to shoot the animal at dusk and return in the morning to collect it. But with so many lions in the area, this was impractical. Occasionally they had to drive lion away from a kill, something they did readily, with no qualms. But a flying mantis passing briefly by their cooking fires last evening was taken as an omen that something either very good or very bad was in the offing and neither man wanted to put it to the test. The Mantis was a good fellow more often than not but sometimes he used his supernatural powers to play tricks on his subjects. Some six hours elapsed before they considered the poison would have done its work.

  When the sun had passed its zenith and was halfway towards its journey into darkness, !Ka and !Oma rose and walked towards where the animals had assumed sanctuary. They stood atop the hole which the big male disappeared down and stamped their feet hard on the baked earth. The boar charged up and out of the hole like a shooting star which sometimes flashed over the night sky, snorting in anger and fright and, without looking back, took off at a fast canter with his tail held high. !Ka relaxed the tight grip on his spear. They had taken a calculated risk the boar would not attack and it had worked.

  The sow was less obliging. She had her injured baby in the same hole as herself and, although she wanted to flee, maternal instinct held her back. Her head bobbed in and out of the hole as she changed her mind several times. Acting from instinct more than past experience, and from a deep understanding of wild animals, !Ka and !Oma stopped stamping on the ground and rapidly climbed a stunted acacia tree as the sow finally took a decision, boiled out of the hole, turned with incredible speed and charged. There was nothing there. Confused, she stopped dead. Then, calling her babies to her, she set off quickly in the same direction the boar had taken.

  The poison, because it had been freshly made, was working well. The injured warthog, already unsteady on his feet, lagged behind, falling occasionally. The rest of his sounder milled near some distant bushes, waiting for him. The young warthog stopped, sniffing and disoriented, then set off in the wrong direction. Unpredictably, his family simply vanished, deserting him.

  !Ka and !Oma jumped out of the tree and followed, spears held ready. The distress calls of the warthog would be heard by predators who would come quickly to take advantage of an easy meal. However, the young warthog did not manage to get very far. The poison, the heat of the porcupine hole, the weight of his mother sitting on him, had rendered him defenceless. He was lying on the sand breathing quickly and then, just as quickly, he died.

  The two hunters took a minute to apologise to the dead animal. The old people had taught them that all animals were once people and, although it was permissible to kill for food, or in self-defence, all the animals belonged to the Great God and their lives could only be taken with due respect. Satisfied they had not angered the Great God, they set off towards camp, happy in the knowledge that their inner compulsion to hunt was blessed with good fortune on this day.

  !Oma, being younger, carried the heavy animal first. After half an hour, !Ka took his turn. Chattering to each other, their conversation interspersed with a collection of clicks and loud pops, !Ka asked !Oma if his wife’s birth blood had stopped running.

  ‘No,’ !Oma replied morosely.

  ‘Can you wait?’

  ‘I must wait.’ To touch a woman at this time, or even during her monthly bleeding, made a man thin and took away the power of his hunting tools.

  ‘Do what the buck do. Go and rub your horns against a soft bush.’

  ‘Do not think I haven’t thought of it.’

  Both men laughed.

  !Ka shifted the dead weight of the warthog on his shoulders without breaking the rhythm of his steady half-run, half-walk. It had been a long day. Starting shortly after daybreak they had travelled thirteen miles before coming across the family of warthog.

  Their conversation carried far in the hot, motionless air. They made no effort to be quiet; their natural love of spirited debate had them laughing and shouting as they walked. After all, no-one lived out in
the desert but the San people and the two hunters had nothing to hide from their own kin.

  They had covered more than half the distance back to camp and were near where they had seen the skeletal remains of an ostrich when they heard an astonishing sound.

  !Ka stopped dead in his tracks. His small black eyes, brightly bird-like, scanned the way ahead. They heard it again. A baby was talking.

  ‘Over there,’ !Oma said, pointing to a clump of trees.

  !Ka lowered the warthog to the ground and, very quietly, like stalking leopards, the two Bushmen advanced on the sound. They were intrigued by it. They knew no other clan lived in the vicinity. Besides, the child’s voice did not sound like one of their own. Living as they did, as instinctively as the animals they hunted, both men would have known of the presence of strangers in their hunting territory. This young child, they were sure of it, was quite alone. And yet, they knew this would be impossible.

  As they entered the shade !Ka caught the dreaded scent of lion. ‘Si’isate.’

  !Oma nodded and glanced quickly about.

  Then they saw the child, dressed in blue towelling shorts with a nappy trying to escape down one chubby leg. He wore no shirt or hat but, on his feet, a pair of once white takkies without laces. The boy had, as yet, not seen them. He held a stone in his hand which sparkled and shone, flashing like a sunset one minute and a deep blue sky the next. The Bushmen had seen such stones before in the gizzard of ostrich. They always threw them away; pretty as they were, they had no useful purpose.

  The boy hopped sideways, looking for more stones.

  ‘He is like !ebili [the water bug],’ !Ka whispered.

  The little boy heard him and looked up at the two San men, unafraid. !Ka and !Oma advanced slowly, reluctantly. They had seen no signs of others but they were still cautious. The white man was a species about whom they knew very little. The little they knew made them distrusting.