Rift

by Beverley Birch

  ‘What are you saying, man?’ Murothi roared, knowing, yet not daring to believe.

  ‘Hoi, Sir,’ shrieked the sergeant. ‘We send the helicopters down. Suddenly they are there!’

  ‘Anna and Silowa?‘

  ‘And Charly! Anna, Silowa, Charly. All!‘

  ‘Poof!’ a triumphant constable flung his arms up high. ‘They have risen from the stomach of earth! Alive!’

  Joe and Ella and Murothi emerged from the rift in the cliff, and paused on the ledge. The sun bore down directly, and Ella was assailed by the scorch of the rock at her back, the peppery brush of leaves against her legs, the lichen patterns below her hand as she braced herself. As if warmth and light and life fought to erase for all time the cold terror of the caves.

  Across the stream below them, a heady victory chant began, a mad pounding about, slapping hands: alive, alive, alive, alive. Birds fled the trees in disgust. Joe stepped from the ledge on to the broad, flat top of the boulders. And then, as if triggered from his state of shock by the tumult, he suddenly whooped and whirled Ella round, and she clung to him, yelling, and Murothi found himself with his arms round both of them, feeling for all the world like a proud father.

  Likon and Constable Lakuya, climbing up, met Véronique and Sergeant Kaonga and Tomis and Constable Lesakon scrambling down the gully, and there was a great deal more shoulder-clapping and hand-shaking and guffaws of laughter.

  ‘Out of the gully!’ ordered Otaka sternly. ‘With your great fat boots you will destroy the treasure of millions of years!’ But he sat high on the boulders, smiling down on them like a benign spirit of the rock. ‘Truly,’ he remarked to no one in particular, ‘this is the place of life.’

  ‘The nurse said that! Pirian,’ Ella shrieked. ‘In the hospital –’

  ‘Well, your Pirian knows Chomlaya,’ returned Otaka. ‘The place of birth, the place of life; the place of death and life,’ he went on, enjoying himself. ‘This is what Chomlaya tells us, eh? We are given the young ones back. Their time has not yet come.’

  As if in confirmation, the helicopter shot upwards from the summit of the rocks, swung in a wide circle, and flew away towards Nanzakoto and the hospital.

  ‘We will go now to Nanzakoto!’ declared Murothi. ‘To meet your sister. And Silowa, Anna, Matt. In Nanzakoto,’ he said again. ‘I will meet them all! Every one!’

  Had he ever had such a feeling of contentment in all his life?

  Ella and Joe scrambled down into the ferment of excitement, buffeted by the storm of explanation from the students.

  ‘Janey saw the cave! She climbed the tree!’ shouted Tamara, dragging Ella to admire the smooth, unclimbable trunk of the baobab. The first branches spread high, out of reach except to a giant. ‘Ant and Zak lifted her up on their shoulders!’

  ‘The tree of Africa,’ announced Ian Boyd. ‘Probably the oldest living thing in the world. Maybe 25,000 years old. Maybe it was here when those paintings were done! Maybe the artists walked right under this tree.’ No one was listening.

  ‘You see, Janey was meant to see the caves!’ declared Hilary. ‘It was destiny.’ Hilary was into fate and star signs. Janey rolled her eyes in mock despair.

  To Ella it didn’t sound so mad an idea, now.

  ‘Well, Inspector Murothi, success!’ Véronique called. Gingerly, he was making his way across the gritty sands of the gully. He had a picture of walking on uncountable treasures underfoot.

  He grinned at Véronique. He felt light – light and joyful, and ridiculously carefree. ‘A team effort!’ he called back. ‘Even the disapproving Miss Strutton could be proud of us!’

  The air was free of the incessant mutter of engines. Moments ago, this had dawned on him. The rock basked in the returning hum of insects. White clouds of butterflies rose from the reeds, and even wading birds had ventured out on to the mud by the stream.

  Murothi stood with Véronique, watching Otaka. The man worked carefully with delicate strokes of a small brush, clearing the soil round the skull. He’d already spotted other fossils embedded in the bank nearby, and marked these with small sticks pushed into the soil.

  With her head on one side, Véronique regarded Murothi.

  ‘You see! He will be oblivious to all, Murothi. He will bring Silowa back here. For months these two will dig, dig, dig in this place, to discover its secrets. There is happy work here for years!’ She took Murothi’s arm. ‘But you are a digger too! To find these little marks on these little maps and to know what they told us . . . ’ she flapped her hand, signifying something beyond her. ‘In another life, Murothi, you would be digging the sands of time, like us, I think?’

  Murothi was wondering about the creeper-covered bank and its cargo of footprints, still hidden. Who had walked there? When? What had brought them here? And the skull – was it man or woman? Was this the person who had walked on the volcanic ash that hardened to rock – or were the prints from others still sleeping below the land here? And who had left the ancient footprints Ella spied inside the caves?

  Such detective work – to see their stories in the marks and layers and language of the land!

  ‘It would be a good life,’ he said.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Tamara wanted to know. Everyone was gathering expectantly on the rim of the camp.

  ‘We’re going to Nanzakoto – Inspector Murothi and Joe and me,’ Ella told her gleefully. ‘Any minute the helicopter’s coming for us.’

  ‘Matt’s conscious,’ added Joe. ‘Just when Anna and Silowa and Charly got to the hospital, he woke up!’

  ‘Tell them hi from us,’ Janey said.

  ‘Yeah, and –’ Zak didn’t finish, shrugged, charged off on another tack. ‘So, you remember, Joe? Why you went off, all secret?’

  ‘Hey, don’t!’ Janey’s elbow dug Zak in the ribs, and she frowned meaningfully.

  Joe laughed. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘Yeah, it’s OK.’ He did remember it. But he couldn’t put anything in words. After the snakes, in Charly’s tent: Matt sick with stumbling into the sad shreds of them, with being afraid to go out and rinse off the bloody bits. They’ll just find us here, you know they will, Anna. Joe, won’t they just do something else? We’ve got to tell – And Anna, vehement, Who? Tell who, Matt? Charly’s the only one who listens, and she’s not here. No, we’ll show them. Joe? Silowa’s going to win that competition, right? Silowa? We’ll go and dig out that skull you’ve seen, and we’ll stay out there till Charly gets back, and we’ll tell no one, not one single person except Charly –

  ‘You coming back, Ella?’ Tamara was asking. ‘With Charly?’

  Ella looked round at the rock, the tents, the arid, yellowing plain stretching away. How strange, the speed of everything! Nothing coloured by terror any more. Even Sean’s violence was a distant memory. His friends seemed caught up in the elation along with everyone else, though Sean was nowhere to be seen. As if he had no place.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When Charly’s OK, we’ll come back –’

  ‘And this I told you!’ Samuel’s voice boomed happily in her ear. ‘Your sister will return to ask more questions. Have I not said this? And was I not right?’

  ‘The walls of the house do not tell what is going on inside,’ Samuel said dourly to Murothi. He was looking at Miss Strutton. ‘When the newspapers come, she will be in charge! So that when people ask who has done this rescue, she can scoop from the pot!’

  ‘Who cares!’ Ian Boyd retorted lightly. ‘May she enjoy her own little competition without us. The rest of us will go to Kasinga tomorrow to help build that schoolroom – get on with something useful.’

  ‘Murothi, we expect to see you back,’ shouted Véronique, arm in arm with Otaka.

  In response, Murothi raised a hand, and to Likon and Tomis, standing with them.

  Constable Lesakon and Constable Lakuya had pushed their caps back to a daring angle. The sergeant walked with a spring in his step.

  ‘DC Meshami will meet you, Sir,’ he declared. ‘He is very happy.
Mungai is very happy too. I have given orders to take him to Nanzakoto hospital straightaway to see his cousin. You will see him there. And I am to tell you that the families from England will reach Nanzakoto tonight. A good job, Sir! The Minister will be very pleased.’ He put his sunglasses on; they flashed merrily.

  ‘A very good job, Sergeant Kaonga. We make a good team, all, eh?’ Murothi shook the sergeant’s hand energetically, then the constables’. In mock solemnity, they stood briskly to attention, saluting. Murothi laughed.

  The pilot swung the helicopter along the full sinuous length of Chomlaya. Ella had asked if they could, and Murothi wanted to say goodbye. He was thinking about his first sight of the rock, how he’d felt its unchanging watchful presence. How he’d wondered about its stories.

  He knew the answer now. He had encountered some of its secrets. But what of others, as unfathomable as the caves and tunnels of the rock themselves? Joe still could not tell him why they’d left the skull and climbed to the caves, could not say how they’d known those caves were there. And for all Murothi’s policeman’s instinct, it was not a question he wanted to probe too deeply. He’d felt it himself – that precision of light, that resonance of sound. Had he not felt his own gaze drawn to the rock moments before the cleft was seen?

  But the children, all of them, had been the ones to see.

  Now the rock slept in the sun. People dwindled; antelope and zebra and giraffe became strokes of shadow, like charcoal on a sweeping yellow canvas.

  Joe was thinking that in all the questions he would have to face, there were some things he couldn’t ever explain. We didn’t follow Silowa. We all walked separately into the caves. Separately. And together.

  He was not stupid enough to try to say it. But it was true. In the caves he’d heard the murmur of water, bubbling through rock, just as Véronique said. But he’d heard other music too.

  No way could he try to tell anyone!

  Well, maybe Ella. She sat in front beside the pilot. He thought of his first sight of her, propped in the window of the hospital room. Pale and scared. Obstinate. He knew that look on her face now. Obstinacy. No, he wouldn’t get away without trying to explain it to Ella.

  Resting her forehead against the window, a kaleidoscope of pictures was spinning through Ella’s mind. The caves, the camp, returning. Joe.

  And Pirian. The nurse’s kindness. I’ll go to the clinic again, and help her, Ella thought. When Charly’s resting.

  Her notebook lay on her lap like a remnant of another time. Charly, she imagined writing, we’re flying to you, as fast, as fast as we can. In an hour I’ll be there, where you are. I’ll see you, see you, SEE YOU!

  She felt Joe’s gaze and looked round. She smiled. He smiled back. And Murothi, seeing the exchange, smiled at both of them, but they were too absorbed to notice.

  Now they had reached the eastern end of Chomlaya. The pilot looped the helicopter round and began its return. They reached the camp, swung lower in a final farewell, and turned for Nanzakoto.

  Murothi’s memory flashed to Likon. Burukanda people will come to look at the caves, the ranger had said. And the newspapers will come. And then the visitors. Chomlaya will get a headache!

  Let me say this, Tomis had answered, Chomlaya is old and wise enough to give them the headache.

  Murothi could almost hear the groan of the settling rock. In the wake of the helicopter, the eagle soared from the crags and vanished against the white brilliance of the sky.

  To Ella and Joe, Murothi said, ‘It is told that the souls of men return in the form of birds and snakes. Perhaps we have been led in all things by the soul of Silowa’s father.’

  He did not really mean it. And yet, at the same time, he did.

  Postscript

  TEENAGERS’ ORDEAL REVEALS PREHISTORIC SECRETS

  From our science correspondent

  Four teenagers have discovered prehistoric paintings estimated to be nearly 30,000 years old in deep caves in Chomlaya Ridge. They have also found ancient hominid fossils taking us millions of years back into our prehistory.

  The students and an English journalist have been the subject of an extensive ground and air search since they disappeared without trace from their camp almost a week ago. Two of the youngsters had reappeared, days apart, in different locations. In an extraordinary turn of events, the explanation for the disappearances materialised at the same time as the last two students and the journalist struggled to the surface. It appears they were led out by following the vibration of helicopter engines, which had been directed to the right location by the searchers inside the caves.

  Remarkably, everyone is unhurt, except for shock and the ravages of hunger and dehydration.

  ‘This discovery must be laid entirely at the door of these young people,’ said palaeontologist, Dr Otaka Ngolik, one of the party who entered the caves in search of the missing students. ‘And its rediscovery to their schoolmates who detected the rift in the rock that led us to the caves.’

  It is still not known what prompted the students and the journalist into the caves in the first place. The entrance is a climb of some thirty metres from the ground, and completely hidden by rock falls and foliage growth. Nor is it understood how they became separated inside. Memories remain patchy and confused. Doctors are blaming the scale and trauma of their ordeal.

  PREHISTORIC TREASURE TROVE

  The caves and long decorated galleries pass deep into the rocks. Hominid fossils from widely different periods have been found both inside and on the immediate approach outside.

  Archaeologist Véronique Mézard, also one of the first into the caves, told us, ‘Preliminary investigation of the rock strata and sediments where fragments of three skulls have been found – as well as rib pieces, teeth, jaw bones, vertebrae and pelvis, which appear to come from six individuals – suggest they are each of widely different prehistoric periods. One is very similar to a find made in Chad, dating from between six and seven million years ago. And one at least is possibly even older, taking us much closer than we have ever been to our common ancestry with chimpanzees – somewhere between seven and eight million years ago. It will be a long time before we understand the sequence of these finds, let alone how such layering of hominid history has become concentrated in this one place. Analysis of the paintings alone, which are much more recent, will keep everyone busy for many years to come. And who knows what else may be spread through the caves. But all this will undoubtably immeasurably enlarge our conception of the evolution of the human family tree, and this continent as the birthplace of all humankind.’

  The caves are already yielding a tantalising horde: stone tools, lamps, hearths, painted pebbles, and much more recent artefacts, including bone flutes and other musical instruments, some in very remote nooks and crannies. Dr Peter Koinege, Director of the National Archaeology Foundation and an expert in prehistoric artefacts, said, ‘People walked, ran and danced in these caves. And perhaps they sang. There is an extraordinary resonance inside, as you find in the highly decorated deep-cave systems of Ice Age Europe.’

  Dr Otaka Ngolik told us, ‘It is like a wonderful gift to us, such knowledge of our universal human heritage. We will speculate for many years as to how single individuals from widely differing times, have left their bones here. Perhaps, as the legends of Chomlaya say, our ancestors truly did come here when the time of their death-call came. Strangest of all, perhaps, is that in the floor of one cave are the footprints of four children, overlaid by those of an adult. They are very old prints, set hard in ancient sediments, but one cannot help but compare the events of these past few days, when four young people and an adult walked right through the heart of Chomlaya to emerge the other side.’

  LOCAL STUDENT WINS MAJOR BURSARY

  Silowa Asumoa, 14, leader of the group of students who discovered Chomlaya Caves, has been awarded an education bursary by The National Archaeology Foundation. It will cover six years, to allow him to continue his secondary education and subsequent traini
ng as a palaeontologist. The foundation has also announced that the other young people involved, Joe Wilson, Anna Benham and Matt Fisher, will be brought out from England later this year to take part in further exploration of the cave system they discovered. The invitation has also been extended to Ella Tanner, the younger sister of the English journalist, for playing such a significant part in the rescue.

  The English journalist, Charlotte Tanner, who endured the five-day ordeal lost in the caves with Silowa, said, ‘From the beginning Silowa was fascinated by the myths around this rock – particularly the widespread legend of a god’s footprints on the rock. He has such a passion to know – he fired up all of us to share his search for answers.’