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ALSO BY BIANCA MARAIS

Hum If You Don’t Know the Words

Dedication

For Poodle

(Please forgive me for what I did to Sodom and Gomorrah. You can’t win ’em all but at least you got “orc” and “Faloolah.”)

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CHAPTER ONE

Zodwa

21 November 1993

Sterkfontein, Transvaal, South Africa

A thread of smoke snakes up into the cloudless sky and serves as Zodwa’s compass needle. She trails it until the sandy path dips suddenly, revealing a squat hut nestled in the grassland below. A woman sits waiting at the threshold. She’s hunched over like a question mark, her headdress of white beads partially obscuring her face. A leopard skin is draped over her shoulders and the sight of it reassures Zodwa; the gold-and-black-spotted pelt ibhayi signifies the nyanga is a healer of great power.

The woman chews tobacco, which she spits out when Zodwa reaches her. “What took you so long?” she gripes, rising up on arthritic knees.

“How did you know I was coming?” Zodwa herself hadn’t known she’d be making the journey until the early hours of that morning.

“The ancestors told me.” The nyanga holds out her palm.

Zodwa reaches into her bra and withdraws a few crumpled notes. They are everything she has. “How much will it be?”

The nyanga’s knobbly hand shoots out and snatches it all away before Zodwa can protest. She disappears into the gloom and beckons for Zodwa to follow. Inside, it looks like a regular hut with its circular walls, thatch roof, and dung floor, but Zodwa knows it’s imbued with the spirits of the clan members who have gone before; the ndumba is a sacred place.

The healer motions for Zodwa to sit on the floor. “How many years do you have, child?”

“I’m seventeen,” Zodwa replies. “Almost eighteen.” She knows she looks younger and blames it on her rounded cheekbones, which lend her face a childish quality.

The healer’s eyes inspect Zodwa from head to toe and Zodwa flushes, knowing that the old woman disapproves. Her pleated black skirt is hemmed to just below her knees, but still it’s too short for traditional wear. The white blouse is a fraction too tight, but this is because Zodwa has outgrown it, not out of choice.

The nyanga holds up a gourd. “Undlela zimhlophe,” she explains before swallowing its contents. She limps to her mat and kneels down.

It’s past midday and the powerful root has to be consumed on an empty stomach so that it can induce the lucid and prophetic dreams that will help her hear the ancestors’ voices. The old woman must be hungry. Zodwa’s hungry too, though not because she’s been fasting. Her hunger isn’t the temporary kind that will soon be satiated; it’s the gnawing kind that takes up residence in a stomach that has been empty for too long. It’s a hunger born of poverty.