Dear Mother,

I have a bruise the size of a kaffir lime on my back from when I fell off the path and into the valley. The color of the bruise has changed from red to dark purple to yellow, which Lottie says is a sign that the bruise is about to fade.

Other things have changed but in the good to bad direction. After the fire we were heroes, Mr. Vincent sent you a letter about that, and little girls carried our books from one classroom to the other. Final-year girls congratulated us. Boys smiled and winked. We were queens.

Nobody talks to us now.

We stayed with Darnell’s dead body in the valley and threw handfuls of dirt onto his coffin at the funeral. We live in Dead Lorraine’s room. We survived the fire not because God loves us but because the devil looks after his own. It was him who stayed the flames. We are witches and worse. And if you brush against our skirts, even for one second, you might die.

It’s cracked but that’s what the others believe. Mr. Vincent gave a special sermon on superstition. “Trust in the Lord,” he said, “only His word has the power to save you from false devils and spiritual corruption.” Nobody listened. Americans! If the Vincents talked to Swazis, even the white ones, they’d know that bad spirits are real.

My hands are unclean. Lottie and I are unclean.

All we have is each other and if we really were witches we’d fly far, far away from here, but we are just ordinary girls who stayed with a dead boy and helped to bury him. I don’t regret staying with Darnell. We did the right thing not to leave him there alone and to help lead his spirit away from the valley.

There is good news.

Lottie and I still get the Golden Sun Award for bravery. The ceremony and the celebration dinner have been pushed back eight weeks to the last Wednesday of term out of respect for Darnell’s passing and because, I think, Mrs. Vincent wants everyone to leave for the school holidays with good feelings about us. There’ll be roast beef and sponge cake with jam and cream at the dinner, so her plan might work.

It’s time to go now. The generator is down and the hour of grace candle is low. Shadows crawl over the walls and I dread the coming darkness. My mind won’t stop talking to me. Round and round it goes from the tall flames eating the trees, to Darnell lying so quiet in the valley, to the crack of the rifle shot over my head.

I’ve changed, Mummy. The daughter you know is different now. I slapped Delia on the face the other day and I was glad! She deserved it and I’d do it again. It turns out that behind my smiles and my good manners there’s an angry and confused Adele Joubert who might, without Lottie’s strength, have watched the school burn down.

Love,

Adele