“Stay still,” I mutter. “Stop moving or you’ll die.”

Lottie turns her stony blue gaze onto me. It’s chilling.

“Let him fall,” she says. “He killed the cow and he could have killed us, because he was too important to wait. He deserves to drop.”

She means it.

• • •

Lottie’s harsh judgment stuns me. Nice girls don’t wish death on anyone, and if they do, they keep it to themselves. They smile and stay sweet. Lottie doesn’t understand the rules. She says what’s on her mind . . . just like that.

There’s no time to reflect on the truth of Lottie’s words. The driver’s bloody palm slaps the broken window again and then again. The car rocks. The bus driver, the conductor, and the teachers from the Cross of Nazareth scramble from the Ocean Current and run for the blue sedan. They grab a tire, a sliver of fender, a door handle: any part they can reach and hang on to. A few of the older boys from first, second, and third class rush outside to help right the car.

“Umuntu omkhulu,” the bus driver calls out in Zulu.

A great thing.

“Siza naye,” the ticket seller and the baggage handler respond.

We come together.

The rescuers breathe in and breathe out in time. Muscles strain. Arms tense. My stomach knots. The men and the academy boys chant, “Umuntu omkhulu. Siza naye. Umuntu omkhulu. Siza naye” in unison. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle to hear them singing together, working together. One breath. One mind. One body. I’m terrified that the sedan will slip from their hands, but another part of me is thrilled by the ancient chant that echoes against the mountainside and down into the deep valley.

Delia and Sandi Cardoza, her new best friend, cling together and sob loud enough for me to hear them all the way at the back of the bus. I will never admit to Delia or to anyone else that the native voices touch a place deep inside me. When I hear them, the dreams of England we are taught to have in school are a million miles away and I cannot imagine why anyone would leave my country’s lazy rivers and the bright mountain aloes bursting orange against the hard rocks.

For a rare minute, I am at home in my brown skin, at home in Swaziland. The ceaseless chanting and the smell of rain on the wind holds me exactly where I am: caught between terror and the aching beauty of the land.