and it was not long before the bonds on Lulinda’s and Chikongo’s wrists and ankles were cut. Then the brown-haired blue-eyed one cocked his curly head to one side and looked questioningly at her. She and Chikongo led the way through the forest towards the village of Lumbedu the witchdoctor.
It was one of the strangest and most fantastic processions of all time that wound its way through the great forest that morning. First came Lulinda, walking proudly in front. Then came Chikongo, whose nerves seemed to grow more and more taut with each step. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead like morning dew on a leaf, and he was as tense and as agitated as a kudu bull which has just caught the faint scent of a marauding lion.
Behind him came the shining company of the Strange Ones – twenty in all, some of whom had been in the other huts of the village during the long discussion between the Strange Ones and Lulinda. Their tall crested helmets hid half of their finely carved features, except their eyes, noses, firm thin-lipped mouths and square chins. Only three of them wore beards, besides the heavily armoured full-bearded giant who was their leader. They moved through the forest like a serpent of living, shimmering bronze, each as alert as an angry lion, cold deep-set eyes scanning the forest with the lofty contemptuousness of gods – as if they were ready for anything that might try to attack them, and all too happy to strike it down.
There was one man in whom Lulinda and Chikongo had become very interested indeed; this was the one at the very end of the glittering line of armed men. He obviously belonged to a race totally different from the Strange Ones, whom he resembled only very slightly. His skin was much darker and even his dress was totally different from that of his companions.
While the Strange Ones wore under their armour short tunics of what looked like cloth, this man wore nothing save a green and black striped loin-cloth. While the Strange Ones had long flowing hair, this man’s head was clean-shaven and he wore a tight-fitting green leather cap on his head. He was totally unarmed; the only item he carried was a big leather bag containing rolls of what seemed like calfskin, small clay jars of medicine of different colours, ranging from white to deep blue. He also carried many pointed reeds and strange sticks with tiny tufts of animal hair at one end. This odd man walked with a slow step and an expression of unfathomable bitterness on his face and Lulinda wondered about him greatly; was he one of the Strange Ones or was he a captive, or slave? But she was to find out very soon.
Lulinda saw the village of Lumbedu in the distance, sitting like a circular scar on the domed forehead of an ancient hill. Chikongo, who had also seen the kraal at the same time, drew Lulinda to him, swiftly kissed her forehead and nose, and vanished in the forest. But the two young culprits knew nothing of the fact that a pair of eyes had seen them from the bush, the eyes of the last person on earth whom Lulinda would have wanted to discover her secret love affair. They were the eyes of Ojoyo, the First Wife of Lumbedu no less, and that boded ill for the lovers.
Lumbedu, the witchdoctor, was lying on a pile of leopard skins in his hut, pretending as usual to be very sick. He groaned and whined and writhed whenever one of his many wives entered his hut, but laughed and chortled and patted his greasy stomach when he was alone. It was while his Third Wife, Vunakwe, was holding a bowl of milk to his spatulate and blubbery lips that Ojoyo’s strident voice crashed through the hut, edged with great fear and urgency.
‘Hide the children; take them out of the kraal into the forest. Lulinda is coming – she is bringing the Strange Ones with her,’ she cried. ‘The Strange Ones are coming!’
Tumult, and confusion twice confused, burst like a violet poisonous flower through the kraal; screams, bawls, shrieks and the yapping of dogs tore the astonished skies apart. Women and howling children ran hither and thither like frightened goats among the huts. The fat ebony-black Second Wife, Taundi, grew so wild with fear that she threw her youngest child into a great bowl of ground corn and ran squealing fatly out of the kraal. She ran like a woman gone mad, down the hill and straight into Lulinda and her glittering companions.
The astonished Strange Ones saw a black mountain of a woman come tearing down the footpath and then leap high into the air with an unearthly, smothered shriek, and fall like a great female hippopotamus into a very prickly thornbush, as unconscious as the dreams of yester-year.
Lulinda paused and placed her small hand on her unconscious rival’s fat chest. On finding her alive, she beckoned to her foreign companions to follow her. As they passed into the distance, Taundi slowly recovered consciousness and staggered to her feet, to start running again, faster than before, farther away from her husband’s kraal, deeper and deeper into the dark forest.
Midday found her still running, sobbing hoarsely and bathed in sweat – but still running. She ran until she burst through into a clearing in the centre of which stood a village whose gate and stockade were lavishly decorated with human skulls, ribs and thigh-bones. Taundi recognised the village as that of Dimo, the Dreaded One, King of the Cannibals. With a loud scream she turned and stumbled back into the forest, but it was too late.
A crowd of slim and very beautiful female cannibals came running out of the village with Dimo himself bringing up the rear. With loud squeaks and giggles of unspeakable joy they chased the panic-stricken Taundi through the forest until she dropped from sheer exhaustion. They seized her and frog-marched her back into the village with loud shrieks of laughter. They took her to a roofless hut where three great pots were already filled with water at the boil. The last thing Taundi saw on this earth was an incredibly beautiful young cannibal woman with filed teeth and heavy copper ornaments that blazed in the sun. A wicked-looking copper knife was clutched in the young cannibal’s small hand.
‘We see you, oh breakfast,’ said the cannibal girl quite sweetly. ‘We see you and are thankful for your having come to feed us.’
Lulinda entered Lumbedu’s silent kraal with the Strange Ones close behind her. She raised her voice and called out, but nobody came. Then she began a systematic search through the kraal, finding nothing but broken pots and calabashes, spilt sourmilk and a sick dog lying behind a hut. She was about to give up her search when a muffled sneeze exploded within one of the great round sisulu granaries. She looked into the basket and there, crouching fat and monstrous and terribly afraid, was the great witchdoctor himself, bathed in sweat and quaking like a bowlful of sour porridge. ‘Don’t tell them,’ he whispered. ‘Please don’t tell them I’m here!’
Like the disloyal and disobedient wife she was, Lulinda went to the gate of the kraal and beckoned to the Strange Ones to follow her. She calmly indicated the basket in which her fat lord was hiding. Lumbedu let out a loud scream of fear as he saw three bronze helmeted and pink-faced heads looking down into his basket. He uttered a loud scream as the basket was hacked to pieces by the giant leader of the Strange Ones, who then sheathed his big sword and hauled Lumbedu out by one arm.
Lumbedu wetted his loinskin and the Strange Ones roared with laughter. While the red-bearded giant and the brown-haired young man held the quaking witchdoctor forcibly erect, Lulinda explained the situation to him and when she had finished the young Strange One turned and snapped a few words to the odd man with the green striped loincloth and skull cap and concluded by kicking him soundly in the buttocks.
The odd man picked himself up out of the dust and sat down on one of Ojoyo’s grindstones. He then opened his bag and, spreading its contents on the ground before him, he selected one of the rolled sheets of what looked like calf-skin and one of his pointed reeds. This reed he dipped into a small jar containing a black fluid and began tracing patterns and what looked like human figures on the roll of skin. Before the astonished eyes of Lumbedu and Lulinda, the odd man was making a long series of drawings on the calfskin roll – he was
