“Mind your manners, Darnell.” Lottie pulls him back, firm but gentle. “Adele is with me. Where I go, she goes.”

I blink in surprise. Lottie has claimed me and, strangely, it feels good. Darnell glares at me through his unswollen eye and takes a straight path through the trees, guided by a map of the land that only he understands. He drops into a sudden crouch and points to a heap of dried grass and leaves. I hold in a sigh. So much for diamonds and gold. Lottie crouches next to him while I kneel. Crouching in a skirt is awkward, and I’d rather not flash my panties, even by accident.

“Show us,” Lottie says.

Darnell pulls the leaves and dried grass away to reveal a man-made nest built from twigs and dried mud. The nest is filled with different-colored bird feathers, smooth river stones, a pair of blue butterfly wings, and more that I can’t make out in the long shadows.

“Brown mamba.” Darnell holds up a see-through snakeskin. “Brown mamba.”

“Darnell loves animals,” Lottie says by way of explanation. “Even snakes.”

I nod. The mamba skin is interesting, but it’s hardly pretty or new. Darnell smiles and offers me the skin. A gift. He expects me to touch it and admire it. I hesitate, and Lottie nods at me to react. Darnell has offered me the first look, and to refuse him would be rude.

I hold out my hands, and Darnell drapes the mamba skin over my palms. It weighs almost nothing. He indicates with his hands that I should lift the skin to my eyes. I hesitate again. Lottie gives me a firmer nod.

I lift the skin to my eyes, and I see the late afternoon world, different and new, through the patterned scales. Smudged tree trunks rise up to the sky, and the broad leaves turn emerald in the last rays of sunset light. My heart stills, and beauty pours into me.

“Darnell.” Lottie’s voice brings me out of my daze. “Tell me who hit you. Was it Bosman or one his sons? Did you steal eggs from their chicken house again?”

Darnell takes the skin from me, and I murmur, “Thanks. That was my first time holding a brown mamba.”

“Good. Good.” Darnell tucks the skin into his treasure nest and ignores Lottie’s questions. He covers his hiding place with grass and twigs, and smiles at Lottie. It’s a smile of pure joy.

“Bye-bye, Lo-Lo. Bye-bye, Adi,” he says. “Bye-bye.”

Adi? I guess that’s Darnell’s name for me.

“Where are you going, Darnell?” Lottie asks, though it’s obvious that he’s about to run away from school.

“Purple. Yellow,” he says. “Far down and away.”

The words make no sense to me. Only Darnell understands Darnell.