I hurry to the entrance, ashamed to remember tiny Eoin Colfey, with his shaved head and snotty nose. Eoin, Alan Brownlow, Janice Pistorius, and Melody Pine come from the Fairview Orphanage, a long concrete building with a tin roof weighed down by bricks and car tires. Mr. and Mrs. Vincent raise money from overseas to cover the cost of their education, because Fairview orphans have no parents to pay their school fees and no parents who wish to claim them. No-fee students get smaller portions of food. Their stomachs are always empty, and that’s not how things should be. I wish there was a way to make things different.

“Follow me.” Lottie ducks through the low entrance and stands awhile to breathe the clean air. The cave is on a high ridge, and far below it is the river. A line of girls and boys wades through the water, calling out, “Darnell, Darnell” in flat voices; the novelty of searching for him is already starting to wear off. Soon, one of the bad boys—Lazy-Eye Matthew or Richard D, who lives with his uncle in Manzini and rides his rusted-out bicycle from one end of town to the other with a slingshot stuck in the waistband of his shorts—one of them will change Darnell to Dumbbell or Bumsmell, and the others will laugh.

“Should we catch up with them?” I block the entrance to the cave with the dried branches.

Lottie says, “There’s one more place that Darnell might be.”

Of course there is.

21

The Village

A group of grass huts sits in a stony field, and stray goats wander across our path. Lottie is sure-footed and confident where I am nervous and slow. As we approach the native compound, my bravery deserts me. We walk up a slope into the sun, and the silhouettes of ramshackle huts rise against the sky. A tall boy lopes across the path. A dog follows him, stops, turns to bark at us, then trots away. It was a mistake to accompany Lottie on her personal search for Darnell, but I will not give in to fear. I realize something about me is different since the fire.

Don’t stray from the road, Mother warns me when we leave our house in Manzini, and I never have. Till now.

“That’s Mama Khumalo’s place.” Lottie jerks her chin in the direction of a hut built in a clearing. A tall, dark-skinned Swazi woman with angular features and a wide, smiling mouth stirs a pot of maize beer in the dirt yard. She greets Lottie in a familiar way and points to a grass mat under the shade of a corrugated iron lean-to attached to the hut. The lean-to is made from rusted iron sheets and wooden planks held together with mud.