Nyumbani Tales

by Charles R. Saunders

  INEXORABLY, THE SWALLOWING-monster made its ponderous way toward the Lubaga River. There, five young girls from Mwandishi were filling large, earthen pots with water for the village. They chattered and laughed happily as they occasionally splashed each other.

  Then the girlish laughter turned into shrill screams as a shapeless shadow reared high above them. It was so huge that it nearly blotted out the sky. Transfixed by terror, four of the girls were quickly absorbed into the creature’s substance. The fifth, shrieking hysterically, splashed wildly toward deeper water and started to swim toward the other side. Then a large, scaly shape flashed toward her, and she moaned in despair. Crocodile!

  Turning from the jaws of the huge reptile, the girl stumbled and fell into the waiting mouth of the swallowing-monster. The crocodile stopped short, a shaft of surprise penetrating its dim brain. The swallowing-monster’s pseudopod extended a few feet farther ... then the crocodile was gone, too.

  Slowly, the mighty bulk withdrew from the river. As it lurched toward Mwandishi, only flattened reeds and the shards of five water-pots remained on the riverbank.

  TEN MWANDISHI WARRIORS practiced spear-casting in a field outside the palisade of their village. Their target was a lion-skin stuffed with straw. On stalwart young man, whose name was Njemja, threw harder and more accurately than all the rest. After one cast that would have pierced the heart of a living target, one of Njemja’s comrades tossed a jest.

  “Too bad Ayoti wasn’t here to see that one.”

  Njemja smiled good-naturedly. Ayoti, his wife, was great with child, and it seemed that any day now, the ancestor-spirits would see fit to bring a new life into the tribe.

  Then Njemja’s smile changed to a gasp of dismay and disbelief, as did those of the others. Filling the horizon like an advancing fogbank was the titanic thing that had swallowed Maputo, his flock, the five girls and the crocodile. It rolled toward them like an unstoppable juggernaut.

  Like Maputo, the young warriors’ first impulse was to hurl their spears into the body of the onrushing monstrosity. But their hard-flung weapons had no more effect than that of the goatherd – they were easily deflected by the creature’s resilient surface.

  Rendered nearly mindless by fright, some of the warriors broke and fled for the safety of the palisade of Mwandishi. Others, including Njemja, drew their daggers and attacked the swallowing-monster at close quarters. When the vertical mouths opened, Njemja was the first to be engulfed. The others followed soon after, slashing futilely with their puny weapons.

  THE PEOPLE OF MWANDISHI had little warning other than the incoherent cries of the warriors as they frantically shut the gates of the palisade. There was only time for a few garbled words of explanation before the walls fell flat, as if they were made from straw rather than thick poles of wood. The swallowing-monster’s mass had surrounded the entire village. Then it flexed its boneless bulk like a gigantic muscle, demolishing the palisade.

  Then the creature attacked. Men, women and children ran screaming in all directions, only to be confronted by thick, cylindrical pseudopods with widening vertical slits waiting to envelop them. Sturdy dwellings of wood and thatch were smashed like toys beneath the feet of a giant. There was no escape – the swallowing-monster was everywhere, absorbing everything that lived, from adult warriors and women to the scrawny chickens that infested the village. Soon all were gone ... except one.

  In the first moments of chaotic madness, Ayoti, wife of Njemja, had fled in directionless panic like all the rest. By sheer chance, she had run toward the charred remnants of the dwelling of Mchumu, which had burned down the day before. Following some instinct for survival lodged deep in her brain, the pregnant woman crawled into the burnt ruins and began to cover herself with handfuls of ash and blackened sticks of wood. Within minutes, Ayoti had buried herself beneath a pile of debris.

  Ayoti’s heart stood still as she felt an extension of the swallowing-monster slither toward her. It stopped. Then it slid closer, questing with senses that required neither eyes nor ears. At last it withdrew, for it had sensed only a mound of lifeless rubble, not the woman lying motionless beneath it.

  IT WAS THE DANGER OF suffocation that finally forced Ayoti to dig her way through the ashes back to open air. As she emerged from hiding, a scene of utter devastation greeted her eyes. The swallowing-monster was gone ... and so was everything else in Mwandishi. The thatched dwellings were all in ruins. The cattle-pens were smashed and empty. Not a stick of anything manmade remained intact. Ayoti was alone.

  Tears welling in her eyes, Ayoti raised her face to the metallic blue sky, spread her arms, and cried out to Nyame, God of the Sun, Giver of Life.

  “O Nyame, Nyame ... why has this terrible thing happened to my people?” she asked. “Why has this ... thing come to take them away? What can I do to bring them back? I will give my life. I will give the life of my child-to-be. What must I do? Please tell me, Nyame!”

  But Nyame’s only answer was the initial pain of childbirth.

  HOURS LATER, AS THE sun set in a crimson blaze, Ayoti sat cradling her boy-child in her arms as he suckled hungrily at her breast. Her mind was numb; the trauma of giving birth so soon after the attack of the swallowing-monster would have driven a lesser woman to madness. As it was, only the birth-rituals she had learned since childhood provided the anchor to which her sanity was attached.

  Now she remembered that she must find a spirit-switch, with which she must gently strike her child to rid him of any evil ghosts that might seek to possess his helpless young body. Such a stick would not be difficult to find now, Ayoti reflected grimly. She knew it would be safe to leave her infant in the shelter she had hastily constructed while she went to get what she needed.

  Only a few moments passed before she returned. And, for the second time that day, her eyes widened in amazement. The spirit-switch dropped, unnoticed, from her hand. For as she looked into the shelter, she saw that her infant son was gone. But someone else was there ...

  Standing tall beside the shelter was the most magnificent warrior she had ever seen. Pantherish muscles rolled lithely beneath his smooth, ebony skin, and the hide of a leopard girded his loins. From a leather thong around his neck hung the ditaola, a pair of bones from the hand of a baboon that only a great chieftain was permitted to wear.

  His hand gripped a spear the like of which Ayoti had never seen before. Its shaft was made from a glistening, silver-white metal, and its point shone with the brightness of the sun.

  “Who ... who are you?” Ayoti choked out. “Where is my son?”

  The warrior’s teeth flashed in his dark face as he smiled.

  “I am Moshanye,” he replied.

  Ayoti gasped in shock, and fear as well. No one, not even her husband, had known that if her child was a boy, she intended to name him “Moshanye.” In a sudden flash of insight, she realized who this warrior truly was – and she prostrated herself before him.

  Strong hands raised her to her feet, and she found herself staring into dark, compelling eyes.

  “Sleep now,” said Moshanye. “I will see that no harm comes to you. Tomorrow, I will go to seek Khodumodumo.”

  “Khodumodumo?” Ayoti repeated dazedly. “But he ...”

  Against her will, Ayoti’s eyes grew heavy. The last thing she recalled before slipping into slumber was the glow of Moshanye’s spearpoint penetrating the darkness into which she slipped.

  When she awoke the next morning, Ayoti was again alone in the wreckage of Mwandishi. Unmindful of the painful glare of the sun, she raised her eyes and whispered a prayer of thanks to Nyame. She could not know that her gratitude was premature.

  MOSHANYE STOOD AT THE edge of a low valley of flattened grass. The valley had been made by the crushing weight of the swallowing-monster as it heaved its way east of Mwandishi. It was an easy trail to follow – if one dared.

  Shading his eyes against the fierce sun, Moshanye peered across a wide stretch of territory. Of the teeming herds of zebra, antelope, and w
ild cattle that usually roamed there, he could see no sign. All the animals had been swallowed by the relentless creature.

  And, on the other side of the valley, the warrior could see the monster itself. Vast beyond belief, the shapeless thing was caught in the pass between the two mountains that marked the boundary of Mwandishi territory. So huge had the creature grown that it could not squeeze its bulk beyond the crevice. Still, as it expanded and contracted its resilient substance, Moshanye could hear the grind of breaking rock, and see boulders bounce like pebbles from its glistening surface.

  Moshanye knew he needed to act at once. Raising his shining spear high above his head, he sprinted the length of the valley – an anomalous vision of motion in a landscape otherwise devoid of life.

  Soon, he was standing next to the swallowing-monster. Tall and powerful though he was, Moshanye was reduced to ant-like insignificance beside the towering mass of the creature. Even so, before the slit-mouthed pseudopods could lash out at him, Moshanye plunged the glimmering point of his spear into the quaking flesh.

  Where weapons of iron had merely bounced off the rubbery substance, Moshanye’s spearpoint sliced through it. A rent that was not of the monster’s own making appeared before him. Then he leaped into it, gripping his spear tightly in both hands. Behind him, the opening closed again, without leaving a trace of its existence.

  INSIDE THE MONSTER, the warrior blinked incredulously at a scene out of the nightmare of a madman. The inner substance of the creature was like a mixture of water and mist. It seeped into his nostrils ... yet he found that he did not suffocate. It clung to his limbs like creepers in a dense forest. But he found that he was able to move in a half-walking, half-swimming manner.

  It was what he saw around him, however, that nearly caused his courage to depart him. Floating aimlessly through the filmy substance were the people of Mwandishi. Some of them thrashed their limbs in feeble protest. But most simply hung passively, like flies caught in a gigantic web.

  Beasts of all kinds also wafted through the eerie milieu, frozen in stiff-legged, unnatural postures. But in the strange, other-worldly interior of the swallowing-monster, humans and animals alike bore the same expressions: primal, mind-sapping terror. Only their rolling eyes and silently screaming mouths provided evidence that the creature’s captives were still alive.

  Moshanye’s spearpoint blazed like a beacon in the gloomy half-light. The weapon seemed to tug at the warrior’s hands, and it was this encouraging sign that banished the fear that had begun to creep into his mind, as it had in all the others’. Resolutely, he began to push his way through the vaporous fluid, following the insistent pull of his glowing spear.

  After what seemed an endless journey, Moshanye came to the center of the monstrosity. The mist-fluid was thicker in this place, and there were not quite so many floating bodies in sight.

  In the midst of the mountain-high mass, a single figure hovered. Like Moshanye, the figure moved freely through the mist-fluid. Unlike Moshanye, however, the shape at the nucleus of the swallowing-monster possessed no discernible outline. It was a man ... naked and hairless, with eyes that glowed with more-than-human vitality. The flesh of his body appeared to merge with that of the monster, so that the darkness of his skin shaded almost imperceptibly into the grayish murk of the mist-substance.

  “You are Khodumodumo,” Moshanye said.

  “Yes, that is who I am,” the man sneered. “I was driven from Mwandishi more rains ago than you can count ... driven away for spreading the Word of the Mashataan, the Demon Gods. The fools! They clung to the worship of pitiful Nyame. They did not heed my message to look to the south, where the True Worshippers dwell. ‘Witch-man,’ they called me, and they drove me away at spear-point.”

  “You are mad, Khodumodumo,” Moshanye said.

  “Mad?” the witch-man cried. “Was it madness led me to the deeps of the caves at Land’s End, where the last of the Mashataan dwell? Was it madness that caused me to surrender my soul to them, so that they could fashion this invincible form around me, made from the substance of life itself? Am I mad to keep my part of the bargain: to collect as many lives as I can, then return to Land’s End with new slaves for the Mashataan? Once I pass through this accursed mountain, nothing will stand in my path!”

  “Nothing?” Moshanye said in a voice that rang like thunder. “Do you not know who I am? Do you not recognize this?”

  He held forth his spear to that its light blazed fully into Khodumodumo’s face. The witch-man shrank back, fear flickering suddenly in his eyes.

  “No!” Khodumodumo shrieked. “I will destroy you!”

  From the substance of the mist-fluid surrounding Moshanye, python-thick tendrils of pseudo-flesh formed faster than the eye could follow. With lightning speed, they whipped around the warrior’s body and constricted with crushing force. Moshanye’s ribs cracked; the breath was forced from his lungs; his eyes bulged grotesquely from their sockets.

  But his right hand still gripped the shining spear. Straining his thews to their utmost, he used the incandescent blade to slice through the pseudopods that were squeezing the life from him. Falling away, they returned to the substance from which they came. With a final surge of strength, Moshanye hurled his weapon straight at the heart of Khodumodumo.

  The witch-man had no time to dodge. The spear flashed through the mist-fluid as though it were flying through empty air. As the weapon plunged halfway through Khodumodumo’s body, the witch-man bellowed in pain and despair. Then the mist-fluid began to evaporate ... as did Khodumodumo. As the swallowing-monster lost more and more substance, the witch-man screamed terrible imprecations even as his outline became tenuous to the point of invisibility.

  Within moments, the entire bulk of the swallowing-monster was gone – vanished like the smoke of a cooking-fire, or the steam from boiling water. And the mid-afternoon sun burned hotly on a mountain pass filled with slime-streaked humans and animals, all slowly regaining their senses.

  NJEMJA WAS THE FIRST to rise and gaze with wonder upon Mwandishi’s savior. Soon after, the other villagers were pulling themselves to their feet, and gathering around the warrior. All, from Maputu the goatherd to the last person to disappear down Khodumodumo’s maw were alive, if somewhat disoriented.

  Once their legs had steadied, the animals bolted for the open plain. Later, the Mwandishi would recover their livestock. For now, they could only stare with reverent awe at Moshanye.

  Finally, Njemja spoke.

  “What is your name, Warrior, that we may sing the Song of Triumph for this great deed you have done?”

  Moshanye looked haggard, and his spear no longer shone like the sun. Still, in a kindly tone he said: “Let us not stand in this place until the sun sets. Come, let us return to Mwandishi. There is much rebuilding to do.”

  Then, like a herd of cattle just rescued from the attack of a lion, the people followed Moshanye back to their village. No further questions were asked.

  IT WAS A FEW HOURS past dawn of the next day. The people of Mwandishi had risen early from the shelters they’d built from the ruins of their village. One shelter stood taller and more substantial than all the rest. It was the one that had been erected for Moshanye. Once he had told them of his battle against Khodumodumo, the villagers had offered Moshanye everything that remained to them: the fattest cattle, the keenest weapons, the most beautiful brides, the chieftainship of the tribe.

  But Moshanye declined it all. He was weary, and wanted only to rest. The people of Mwandishi acceded to his request.

  Now, with the passing of the night, the people went to Moshanye’s shelter to pay further homage to their hero. All except – once again – Ayoti.

  The people’s minds had been too encumbered with the events of the previous two days to inquire as to why she had not been swallowed by Khodumodumo, or why her belly was now flat. But a meaningful glance had passed between her and Moshanye the night before. She heeded his silent message, and said nothing of what she knew about his or
igin.

  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.