Chapter 189 - Zenzele, My Love part 8

We travel north when morning comes. Just as he said, there is a river. It is nearly dried up, brown and sluggish, but I get down on my hands and knees and scoop the muddy water greedily into my mouth. The face that peers up from the surface of the pool does not look like a human face. It is misshapen, one eye swollen shut, lips grotesquely bloated. I sweep my hand through the water. Go away, ugly face! Onani hunkers down and drinks as well. When he has drank his fill, he sits back and smiles at me, breathing rapidly.

"We can only rest for a little while," he pants. "We have a long way to go today. There is a cave just on the other side of that far hill. No, that one. See? We will make camp there tonight."

"Are you taking me to the village of the Msanaa?" I ask.

He quirks his face as if he is confused by my question. "I am not Msanaa," he says. "Some of my cousins are Msanaa. My mother and your neighbor Bobangi are brother and sister, but I am Zul. My father and I were staying with Bobangi when he came to visit you, so we followed along. Bobangi told us your father had many attractive daughters."

"Where is your father now?" I ask.

"He has gone back to stay with Bobangi. My mother is mad at him. But I am returning home."

I open my mouth to ask another question, but he waves his hand at me. "You ask too many questions! We need to continue on, or we will never get to the cave before dark."

He takes my wrist and swings me across the muddy water like a child, then leaps across himself. He waves at me and lopes forward. I watch him run, staggering behind him, and I wonder how I could have ever thought that he was attractive. He is too skinny and he has pale scars on his butt. He stops and turns back and gestures for me to hurry. What else is there to do? I know the four directions, but I do not know in which direction my home lies now, even if I managed to get away from my captor.

And without his protection, I will die.

We race our growing shadows, but we make it to the cave that he spoke off well before dark. The cave is small and damp, but there is wood already put aside, and Onani quickly gets a fire blazing. He has also speared a meerkat. He killed it shortly after high sun, so we have fresh meat to eat. I am grateful when he shares with me. I even speak the word: "Ziwazi."

No! I think. I am not grateful! I hate you!

But it tastes so good!

He assaults me again that night, sawing his pele between my thighs, but after he is satisfied, he pulls me to him so that my head lies on his chest, and he falls asleep. He keeps his knife in the pit of his arm so that I cannot kill him in his sleep, but I do not think long about murdering him. I am too tired. I fall asleep, listening to the whooshing sound of his heart beating inside his chest.

When morning comes, he rubs his pele between my thighs again, and then we rise and continue on.

He does not seem to be in such a hurry this day, and he talks about his family as we walk north. He has a large family, with many brothers and sisters. He says that I will be happy there. I think that I will never be happy again, but I do not disagree with him. I just nod. Nod-nod. All day long. It is easier that way.

In the middle of the day, as the sun squats on my head, he pauses to turn over a log and finds a great spider lair beneath it. A large hairy arachnid leaps at him boldly, but he runs it through with his spear. Holding it up proudly, he asks if I know how to cook the creature. Its mouthparts are still twitching.

"Of course," I say. Mother often prepared borosaabudoros for my father. It was one of my father's favorite meals. Onani is still looking at me, and I say, "You just have to sear off all the hair when you cook them. I know how to cook! My mother taught me."

This makes him happy, and he tucks the dead spider into one of the small pockets sewn into his sash.

Later that afternoon, we have a good scare when a cheetah bolts from the high grass not far from where we are walking, but the sleek spotted cat flashes past us without so much as glancing in our direction. We watch as the predator runs down a baby antelope. I look at Onani with a shaky smile, and he laughs. "Come," he says, gesturing with his spear, and I follow close behind him, watching the grass and low, tangly bushes with a wary eye the rest of the afternoon.

That night, I cook the spider for him, searing it the way my mother cooked them for my father. Onani nods in approval as he devours it. He does not share it with me, but I do not mind. I have gathered some berries and edible roots along the way. Besides, I've never cared much for the taste of borosaabudoros-- the hairy eight-legs.