CHAPTER 36

The cricket chanted its song as the night grew slowly into an adult. Somewhere on a tree, in the veil of the night where the eyes of light feared to tread, the hooting of an owl could be heard as it mellowed the cricket’s noise into a duster of goose-bump.

“Tufia” The chief of maids spat and poured out the water in the calabash. Smoke of dust rose and disappeared almost immediately. The parameter of the earth where the water had touched, sizzled in hunger as they drank, and if you listen closely you will hear them begging the chief-of-maids to quench their taste by pouring more water.

“O metelu vuru (let evil lives with the evil doer),” The chief of maid circled her free hands over her head and clipped her fingers. She gathered her mattress and hurried into her hut, as if afraid to spend one more minute outside.