men came and shot. And a month later, again. This time the nursery was choked with carcasses. The herd of twenty-three was reduced to eleven: two bulls – one was Nosibanzi, old and cunning – four cows and five calves.
That day they sheltered in a deep pool, under the shadow of an umbrella thorn. Their old haven was no longer a refuge but a place of terror.
That night they disappeared from the river valley for ever.
Seven
Nosibanzi led the remnant of the herd down the river. At night they moved with the flow of the water. When hunger gnawed, they stumbled ashore to graze but never ventured far from the river.
Driven by their terror of men, they huddled by day in backwaters, lurking under the dark shade of fig and thorn trees.
At last the river brought them to a tidal estuary, half brackish, that was of no use to the sugar industry. Nosibanzi carved out a place for them on a sandy spit. Here the cows and calves wallowed and basked, protected by him and the young bull. At night they wandered ashore to graze.
Two new calves were born to the herd, and Novikela’s calf was growing into a strong young female. The curiosity of her calf days was tempered now by new knowledge. She had learnt that to survive she must remain hidden from humankind, that when threatened by them she must move on to where they were not.
She was just past her twentieth month when the flood came.
Since midday indigo thunderclouds had been building inland. The storm broke at night and rain drummed over the hills. The water rushed in torrents down dongas until streams became rivers and the big river swelled into a flood.
After the night’s grazing, Nosibanzi led his herd back into the river. The water felt strange. Choppy waves were rising, slapping against their bellies, the sand was shifting under their feet.
Suddenly Nosibanzi saw a wall of water seething towards them. His bellow of warning was drowned as a dark tide lifted them all and swept them out through the river mouth into the sea.
Hours later, when rays of sunlight broke through the clouds, Nosibanzi had fought his way back to the shore. He stood in the lee of a dune, waiting, calling his cows.
One by one they dragged themselves out of the sea and collapsed onto the sand beside him. The young bull came last. But the newborn calves never appeared, nor did two of the cows.
And there was no sign of Novikela’s calf.
That evening, many miles south, she was swept ashore by a current that had held her in its grip all day. She dragged herself up a deserted beach in the twilight and stumbled inland to shelter behind dunes.
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