by Vered Ehsani
“Surely not,” Cilla said.
The Constable interrupted the doctor in his heavy Scottish accent. I strained to hear him over the multiple conversations around us. He was hard to decipher but I think he said something along the lines of: No bloody way.
Just as I kicked Nelly awake and turned her to go, I saw a familiar face in the crowd: Kam’s niece. I smiled at her but she didn’t seem to recognise me. Perhaps we Europeans all looked the same to her, but given that there were very, very few European women in or near the camp (an observation Mrs. Steward had made on numerous occasions in the hearing of her husband), I still thought it odd she didn’t at least acknowledge my smile.
I guided Nelly to the unguarded back of the cabin. Sliding off and silently handing the reins to Cilla, I approached a window. I pressed two of the fingernails on the walking stick’s fist and a slot opened, revealing a set of tools I refer to as my little door openers.
“You wouldn’t,” Cilla whispered loudly.
“I would and will,” I said as I jimmied the lock, pulled the wooden shutters out fully, placed my stick on the sill and, with a practised jump, swung up onto the ledge, my long skirt flapping about my ankles. “Go to the trading store. I’ll meet you there.”
“Oh dear,” Cilla said as she pulled the horses along with her.
Mr. Adams’s cabin was a one-room, wood structure that I was sure used to be tidy. At least, Mr. Adams had impressed me as such a person. Sadly, the current state of his cabin didn’t reflect this orderliness at all. Books were strewn about, pages torn out in furious chunks. Ripped bed sheets carpeted the wooden floor and the mattress was shredded with clumps of straw strewn about. Shards of a porcelain washing basin crunched under my boots. The small looking glass on the wall had received a hefty blow; several slivers of my reflection gazed back at me, wide-eyed.
The only item unscathed was a wood and leather chest in one corner. I opened it and found clothes folded and stacked in a precise, colour-coded fashion. His boots, so well oiled I could almost see my face in them, were placed neatly by the door, below where his jacket hung on a peg.
In less than a minute, I had ascertained two facts: Mr. Adams was indeed gone, but without his boots and jackets and the automaton was also missing.
Just then, the babble outside the door increased in volume and someone knocked on the windowsill behind me. I spun around, ready to throw my walking stick at that someone’s head.
“Bee,” Cilla hissed. “Get out of there. It’s Mr. Adams. He’s returned.”
I frowned. “And why aren’t you waiting at the store?”
“Do stop being so particular and get out,” Cilla said, her delicate eyebrows scrunched together. On her, it looked endearing. On me, it would’ve look angry and old.
Heavy boots thumped up onto the small patio. “If that’s Mr. Adams, he’s gained a bit of weight,” I commented as I scurried to the window and Cilla’s anxious face. I handed her my stick, clambered down (really, skirts are simply not suitable attire for performing an illegal entry into a premise), and hurried around to the front in as dignified a manner as a lady can manage after climbing out of a window.
As certain as the sky is blue over Nairobi and a possessed zebra has taken over the Steward’s front garden, there Mr. Adams stood, unharmed and sternly informing the crowd to mind their own bloody business.
Stern was never a word I’d have previously used to describe the camp superintendent.
“Thank the good Lord he’s alright,” Cilla said into my ear.
I rubbed my ear—it would have to be the one with a dog bite in it—and pulled my hat lower. Satisfied the ear was covered, I said softly, “I’m not sure how much the Lord had to do with it, or if He’s involved at all. Look at the man’s boots and jacket.”
Cilla stared at me with the expression I would reserve for flying pigs (they don’t exist) or purple dragons (the jury’s still out). “What has his attire to do with his reappearance or God?”
I sighed and wondered if I’d ever been this gullible. “Cilla, my dear, those boots and jacket don’t belong to Mr. Adams. His are still in his room, for a start. And the ones that man has on are at least three sizes too big for Mr. Adams.”
Cilla played with the reins and asked, “So?”
Before I could respond, Mr. Adams stepped off the patio, ignored Dr. Cricket’s efforts to talk with him, turned to the Constable and said, “The hunt is permanently postponed until further notice.”
I missed the rest of the conversation as the crowd closed in around the two men, workers eagerly sifting through words for the day’s gossip while demanding recompense for missing (and presumed eaten) goats. But I didn’t need to hear more. My suspicion had been confirmed.
I marvelled at the power required to carry out the deed. I knew what had happened. Why it had happened, still wasn’t as clear.
“How odd,” Cilla commented. “I thought for sure Mr. Adams would organise another hunt after the last one was interrupted. And more big game hunters arrived on today’s train. They’ll be expecting one. Why would Mr. Adams of all people cancel the lion hunt?”
I turned to face her and in a firm voice, told her my theory: “Because he’s not really Mr. Adams.”
Chapter 24
I couldn’t sleep. Between a pesky mosquito trapped under the net and all the theories trapped in my brain, there was far too much buzzing going around.
I pushed off the blanket, swatted at the insect (and missed), and tugged on my colourless housecoat. I lit a lantern, blinking into the small flame, and left my room. I could hear snores and crickets, not the most melodious of combinations, and I hurried down the hallway into the living room.
Moonlight filled the room with a cool, pearly light. When I peered out the window, I could see the demented zebra, its white stripes whiter, the rest of it blending into the night. For the first time, I noticed its fur was mangy and a few bald patches showed raw, pink skin. I narrowed my eyes and the glowing snake-like head hissed at me, eyes bright red. Of the zebra spirit, there was no sign.
“Really,” I muttered and gazed farther afield. The camp’s fires were tiny flickers against the vast expanse of shadowy savannah. I could just make out a clump of darker shadow out near the horizon—a herd of elephants.
I continued to the kitchen, which was devoid of the warmth of the stove’s fire. On a whim, and since tea was clearly unavailable, I exited out the back and to the barn, where our ox and three horses were housed. Idly, I wondered if the spirit that had invaded the zebra could do the same with our animals.
The beasts in question shuffled nervously as I entered the small, dark barn. Shadows bounced around me as I held up the lantern.
“It’s just me, silly beasts,” I said soothingly. “I don’t eat horses, Nelly.”
Oddly enough, despite my calming tones, that didn’t reassure the ox or the other two horses, for they backed away into their stalls, eyes rolling, ears laid back, nostrils quivering. Nelly fell asleep.
I spun around slowly, my sliver of light only accentuating all the dark places where creatures scarier than possessed zebras could hide. I looked up to the hayloft and that’s when I smelled it: a musk filling the olfactory gaps between clean hay and warm horse. A memory flashed up, of Kam and me by the river, drops of glowing blood and a loud cough in the bushes.
There was no cough or heavy foot falls, only the ox pawing the ground and then it stopped. The scent faded back to memory.
“Just a smell in the breeze,” I told them. “Nothing to worry about.”
Which, of course, was why my heart was pounding and all I wanted to do was dash back into the house and hide under my blanket, pretending to sleep. With great restraint, I held the urge to run in check, although I intended to carry out that plan but in a less panicked state. As I turned about, light and shadow danced on the walls until each of them had a chance to caress the creature in the barn entrance.
“Good gracious,” I shrieked and realised only after my in
voluntary response that it was the girl I’d seen with Kam.
She smiled shyly at me, perhaps trying to compensate for nearly scaring me into an early demise. Her teeth were bright against the darkness of her skin and the night. She was almost my height—no great accomplishment there—and her hair was trimmed short against her scalp, leaving more space for her large eyes that glowed in the lantern’s light. She was wearing a long piece of fabric wrapped around her chest and reaching past her knees.
As I was temporarily devoid of the power of speech, the girl took it upon herself to fill in the conversational void. “Good evening, Madam Bee,” she said softly, as if to avoid startling me further.
“You know my name?” I asked, rather stupidly, since she had clearly just demonstrated her knowledge of that fact.
She nodded her head slowly a few times, her eyes still fixed on me.
“And you are…?” I prompted her.
“I am called Badilisha. But most people, they use my other name, Nyambura.”
“Right,” I said, breathing in, breathing out. As Prof. Runal was fond of reminding me: if you can breathe, you’re still alive, so congratulations.
“You’re Kam’s niece,” I said in an effort to make polite conversation, but really what I wanted to know was what she was doing in my barn in the middle of the night.
Nyambura cocked her head to the side—a movement very reminiscent of Kam—and repeated, “I am Nyambura, daughter of Nyarvirazi.”
I breathed in deeply. The musk of lion still lingered but faintly. Most humans with an olfactory sense considerably less sensitive than mine wouldn’t even notice it.
“By any chance,” I asked, “did you notice a lion on your way over?”
Nyambura laughed, her cheeks shiny and her eyes bright. “Not here, no. The lions, they are nearby though.”
At the time, I didn’t think to ask where she might have seen one, an oversight I would later regret.
“Don’t worry about lions,” she continued.
“Oh?” As far as I could tell, it was the one thing almost everyone was worrying about.
“There is no danger,” she said matter-of-factly.
“That’s all very well to say,” I retorted, “but I doubt the construction workers agree with you there, especially those who’ve been eaten.”
She cocked her head to the side again. “Those lions that eat men, they were hunted. They are dead.”
I frowned. “Yes, that’s a point, but apparently, they’re back in some form or other, or so people believe.”
“And you?” she asked. “What do you believe, Madam Bee?”
I breathed in deeply. I could still catch a whiff of lion. “Well, I don’t for a minute believe they’re ghosts, that’s for certain. But what, I’m still not sure.”
Nyambura stood silently for a moment, her large eyes serious and contemplative. Then, “That Englishman, he knows.”
“Which one?” Even as I asked, my heart sped up slightly, for really, how many were there who would be interested in paranormal lions?
The girl nodded her head as if answering the question. “Mr. Timmons, he knows.”
My shoulders stiffened. “I’m sure he does, and I think I shall need to chat with that Englishman sooner than later.” I straightened up, as if preparing to charge down to camp, barge into the man’s cabin, and interrogate him. “Come on, I’ll escort you back to… well, where do you stay? Surely not in the camp.”
She shook her head but said nothing. I walked her outside and turned to slide close the barn door. When I turned around, Nyambura was gone.
Chapter 25
Needless to say, I didn’t fall back to sleep, and as soon as the first morning birds begun their chorus, I hurriedly prepared myself and breakfast.
Jonas joined me in the kitchen and was rather leisurely about starting the stove fire. He was right not to hurry really. The Stewards were only just waking up and it would take them a while to make it to the table. But once there, they’d expect breakfast to be laid out.
“Come on, Jonas,” I scolded. “You need to hurry up a bit.” Then on a whim, I asked, “Did you notice any lion tracks this morning?”
Jonas peered up at me from where he squatted by the large metal belly of the stove. “Miss Knight, you and me, we are in Africa. The lions, they are everywhere.”
I huffed. “I mean by the barn, Jonas. Last night, I smelled lion.”
“You?” Jonas said, his face wrinkling up. “You smell the lions?”
“Yes, and there was a child in the barn…”
“A child in the barn?” He interrupted incredulously.
“Yes, Jonas, in the barn,” I said, irritably. “She said her name was Badilisha Nyambura,.”
“Hm,” Jonas said, returning his attention to the kindling sparkling in the stove. “Badilisha? Strange name, too strange.”
I ignored him, since for me, all these names were strange. I waited for the stove to heat up while I pondered what to do next.
I was no lion hunter but when it came to stalking paranormals, I was somewhat experienced and I say that with what little humility I have. In fact, the only motivation I had that morning to push myself out of bed (apart from eating breakfast, which was hardly inspiring) was the compelling need to find both Kam and Mr. Timmons and to extract some answers, with my walking stick if need be.
In Kam’s case, the man had the uncanny ability to appear just when I was thinking of him. So I didn’t have to race off to camp to find him, for he showed up at the front door just as I was sitting down with the Stewards for the usual breakfast of toast and tea.
“Miss Knight,” Jonas near shouted, “that man, the porter, he…”
I rushed over, shoved Jonas aside when I saw who it was, and slammed the door shut before the rest of the family, startled out of their sleepy breakfast state, could notice who my visitor was.
“Good, you’re here. Your niece visited me last night,” I blurted out before Kam could so much as raise an eyebrow at me, which he proceeded to do as I talked. “Those lions aren’t the ones from Tsavo and they’re not ghosts.”
I paused. Kam said nothing so I pressed on. “But they are paranormal. That’s what bothered me about them that night you almost had me killed. And by the way, I’ve not quite forgiven you for that yet but since I’m still breathing, we’ll discuss the issue another time. Oh, and Mr. Adams is gone. So what do you have to say for yourself?”
Kam’s eyebrows had been gradually creeping up his wide forehead during my spiel until they reached his bald head, and his mouth quirked in a bemused way. “May I speak now, Miss Knight?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, ignoring the hissing zebra that had been watching our interaction. “You may.”
“You like my niece?” he asked.
I frowned. Of all the questions. “Yes and what has that to do with the time of day?”
Kam stared at me as if I had started conversing in Latin mid-sentence. “It has nothing to do with the time. It has everything to do with my niece. They need your help.”
“They?” For a moment, I thought he’d confused his grammar. His English was good, but it was more than conceivable that he mixed up his pronouns from time to time. But this, I realised, was the first time I’d heard him make such a mistake.
I thought back to the times I had met Nyambura. She’d been so friendly and sociable, except that one time when I’d seen her near Mr. Adams’s cabin. It was as if she hadn’t recognised me.
Or hadn’t known me at all.
“Nieces,” I said softly. “They’re two of them. Twins, I’ll wager.”
Kam nodded his great big, bald head.
“What does Badilisha mean?” I asked, thinking about Jonas’s comment.
Kam smiled, a tight, controlled movement of his mouth. “Change. The name means change.”
“As in transform? As in change into…” I paused. “They change into lions, don’t they?”
Another nod, but this was not accompanied b
y any sort of smile. Rather a wary, cagey glint beamed at me from his dark eyes. And I rather suspected my continued existence would depend on how I reacted to this revelation.
“How can I help?” I asked, even as I wondered if I should. Were these the real man eaters of Tsavo who had slipped through the traps, leaving a pair of innocent lions to become a hunter’s wall decoration?
“They aren’t killers,” Kam said in response to my unspoken question, his voice low and rumbling but without a hint of the threat I had feared. My shoulders, which had tensed up involuntarily, relaxed.
“So…?” I prodded.
“One of them is less able to maintain her human form and mind,” Kam explained wearily. “She spends more time as a lion and is becoming like one.”
That explained why the niece hadn’t recognised me, the one who had glared at me so violently.
“Their mother, Nyarvirazi, is a lioness,” he continued, filling my silence. “She can only take human form when she eats fresh meat. Her daughters have inherited some aspects of this curse.”
I clucked in sympathy and couldn’t help wonder what kind of fresh meat Nyarvirazi preferred. “The one who remains more as a lion is the one responsible for the attacks,” I guessed.
Kam nodded his head. “Nyambura and I are trying to convince Ooma to go with me back home, where the elders can help her.”
“But she prefers it here?” I suggested.
He smiled slightly. “Ooma likes the goats.”
I snorted. “Who doesn’t?” I paused on that. “Actually, I don’t. The animals smell abominably and the meat’s even worse. So what can I do?”
“She likes to hide within a nearby lion pride,” Kam said, his every fibre tense with the urgency of his emotions. “You see the difference between things, don’t you?”
I nodded. “You’d like me to point her out to you?”
“Yes.”
That sounded simple enough. Deceptively so. In my experience, the simpler the job sounded, the more complicated and dangerous it became. And Kam was as simply complicated a man as I’d ever met.
