on fire with passion and desire for another man’s woman and who was willing to risk his life by keeping an adulterous appointment in an abandoned village on the bank of the Zambezi.
Chikongo, the son of Mburu, was the name of this man. He was actually risking his young life to keep an appointment with another man’s wife – and that wife was Lulinda, the youngest wife of Lumbedu, the most feared witchdoctor in the land.
The heart of Chikongo pounded like a mad thing within him. He reached the abandoned village deep in the forest, the village which he and Lulinda had been using as a ‘place of secret appointment’ for one month now. He stood waiting just outside the fallen gate, his stone axe firmly gripped in his right hand, ready to deal with any animal that might emerge from the village to attack him. He stood thus for a long time until just as the moon rose above the trees in the east a low call sounded from the bushes close at hand. Lulinda! His stolen Lulinda had come . . . she had come!
Chikongo threw down his axe and jumped into the bushes with his hungry arms outstretched before him. Lulinda met him with a ferocity only a shade greater than his own and the love-demented pair went sprawling into the prickly embrace of a thornbush.
Chikongo picked himself up ruefully and helped Lulinda to her feet. Once more the lovers sought each other’s arms, though in a more dignified and less violent way. Lulinda pressed herself fiercely against her lover’s muscular frame, her nails digging deep and painfully into Chikongo’s broad back, drawing blood. She kissed his pulsing neck, his ears, his forehead and his chest. Then she rubbed her nose fiercely against his. Then she broke free from his iron clutches and danced away with a low husky and musical laugh. The moonlight danced in her great big eyes like a silver ghost over a stream.
‘Oh, my stolen one,’ sighed Chikongo, ‘I thought you were not coming.’
‘I very nearly did not come. I think that bloated female crocodile Ojoyo is getting suspicious. She kept on peeping into my hut to see if I was there, but I tricked her. I do think that this should be our last appointment.’
His arm about her slender waist, they walked into the deserted village, unaware that many eyes were now watching them. Cautiously Lulinda and Chikongo entered the largest of the huts which happened to have a big hole in its grass roof, through which moonlight streamed, making a big splash of silver light on the pitted mud floor of the hut. It was here that the young man did an incredibly foolish thing – he did not explore the great hut first to see if it was really as empty as it seemed . . .
* * *
Lulinda woke very slowly and found to her surprise and horror that she had slept so long that dawn was breaking. The sky was red in the east, and soon the sun would rise in all its glory, bringing with it a new day. Her heart beating faster than usual, Lulinda tried to sit up, but found to her great astonishment that she was securely bound hand and foot – and so was Chikongo, who was still fast asleep beside her. Nor was that all . . .
Standing around them in a semicircle were six of the fantastic pink men whom the dead boy Mulumbi had seen and now they were in full battle dress. Tall and handsome in an unimaginably alien and fantastic way, the terrible Strange Ones towered above the frightened girl and her sleeping partner like colossal statues of pink flesh and shining bronze armour.
Each of them now wore a cuirass of heavy bronze scales and a helmet with one or three crests and what was obviously the hair of some animal. Two of them wore shining bronze leggings, and all of them carried shields either of leather studded with iron or bronze, or of iron with bronze bosses. All carried heavy iron-headed spears and all wore at their sides what were obviously deadly swords.
‘Now I am dead,’ thought Lulinda. ‘Now we are both as good as dead.’
It was just then that Chikongo woke up and an expression of great surprise spread across his face. His mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. He looked as surprised as a fish that had just discovered its parents were a frog and a lizard!
The Strange Ones roared with laughter at this and Lulinda was astonished to discover just how human their laughter was, and how warm and genuine it sounded. This was not the hollow laughter of Evil Spirits, but that of very amused men, differing in colour, features, hair and form of dress from Chikongo’s and Lulinda’s race – yes, but human beings none the less. Then the one who seemed to be the leader of the Strange Ones put a question to Chikongo in a strange language that reminded Lulinda of a clear stream murmuring in the cool depths of a forest.
But they could not understand one another and eventually the voices of the red-headed Strange One and Chikongo became aggressive in tone.
It was the youngest of the Strange Ones who saved the situation. He came forward and looked down at Lulinda and beckoned her to look at him, which she at last managed to do. He pointed to himself, then to his companions – and then he pointed to his own mouth and stomach. Then, from his leather pouch he took out a piece of meat and glared at it in a most menacing way, bit off a piece and then spat it out in great disgust. Again he pointed to himself and the rest of his companions, then eastward once more. He then counted his fingers and toes and raised his hands with all fingers extended to indicate ‘ten times twenty’.
A smile budded and burst into flower on Lulinda’s lovely face and she nodded vigorously to show she understood. Then the brown-haired, blue-eyed Strange One counted fifty times on his fingers. He indicated on his bronze-scaled chest the breasts of a female and he counted twenty-three on his fingers and made a gesture showing ‘little person’. Again Lulinda smiled and nodded rapidly.
‘What are you both here grinning about?’ Chikongo demanded. ‘You seem to be getting quite friendly with this dangerous beast, Lulinda.’
‘I understand what they want; he says there are two hundred of them in the east down the river and fifty of them are females and twenty-three of them are children. He says they are tired of eating meat and are hungry for other food. I think they are human beings of a sort – I am quite sure they are human.’
‘Listen, Lulinda,’ growled Chikongo, ‘these things here are no more human than I am the son of a web-footed rhinoceros with seven tails. I am positive they are some form of evil spirit come to destroy our people. Do not let them get you under their spell.’
‘Do not bother your great and all-knowing brain on my account, beloved one,’ smiled Lulinda. ‘The only spell I have fallen under is the spell of understanding. I think we should take these people to our Chief Chungwe.’
‘You mean you should take these people to him, Oh pleasure of my veins,’ smiled Chikongo. ‘You forget that if I go with you, people will start asking a lot of embarrassing questions, my love. They will want to know just what we were doing in the forest at night to begin with and, as you know, our tribe has a very unpleasant way of dealing with boys and girls who commit adultery and I have no wish to be shorn of my manhood and flung to the nearest crocodile, you know.’
‘I know,’ said Lulinda. ‘I do not need you to remind me of that.’
Meanwhile the Strange Ones were also engaged in animated conversation amongst themselves, a conversation in which the giant red-bearded leader and the brown-haired youth talked loudest. Once or twice the tall red giant took a step forward and half-drew his sword, snarling threateningly at the younger man, who only threw up his arms and laughed impudently at the infuriated giant.
At last the red-bearded
