Wait, a small voice in my mind says. Something’s not right.
My eyes snap open. “No,” I choke out, and push clumsily out of Michael’s embrace. “No.”
“Tina, wait . . .”
But I just stagger backward, turn, and run into the night.
THIRTY-THREE
Rule 15: A rule from my mother: run.
“Don’t come back. Don’t you dare even look back. Run like you do when you’re racing and you beat all the boys. Go in the forest and wait for me at our place. You remember? You will find it? Good. Go now. Run.”
And then she shoved me out the window.
? ? ?
Sprinting through the forest at night isn’t easy like they make it look in the movies. There are holes in the ground and trees fallen over and vines with thorns and invisible things that sting and claw. And if it’s dark and you’re just a little kid, it’s almost impossible. Unless there is the smell of gasoline and smoke behind you, and the only light is a faint glimmer of flame on the underbellies of leaves in the limbs above, coming from the direction of your home. Then light does not comfort you, and you run farther. You search out the dark and the thorns and the crevices in the earth, because they are better than what you’ve left burning.
? ? ?
I’m standing in the stupid rain, like a stupid stray dog.
I am dully aware of the stitch in my side and a stinging in my foot. The only reason I’ve stopped is because I am at the edge of a gully. I can’t see below the shine of the black water’s surface, but it moves in an angry boil, like eels. My toes curl in the soft mud at the edge, my legs toying with the idea of leaping in, not wanting to be stilled.
I’m in the forest, but I don’t remember getting here. I have been running. My lungs burn. There is nothing but this creek and dripping leaves and the shrill of insects. There is supposed to be a bridge here. My thoughts come slowly, like the mud that is breaking below my weight and splashing into the creek. How long have I been standing here? I step back. I am hot, dripping sweat, and now my feet are singing with pain and I remember a stony path. My head feels like a melon on a stick, pulling me sideways. There’s a clearing ahead, beyond the creek. A sweep of pale grass. The dark hut, barely visible. Nothing to see by other than a distant pulse of lightning.
There is movement in the bush behind me. Probably the mokele-mbembe, come out of the water on his scaly legs, swinging his dragon tail, licking his dragon teeth and ready to slurp me up. Let him.
At the same time my knees hit the ground, I feel a strong hand gripping my elbow. There is a too-bright light in my face.
“Mama,” I say.
? ? ?
Stumbling through short grass. It tickles my ankles.
A face in a window, surrounded by orange light. The mokele-mbembe? It has horns. No. Not horns, ears. A dog.
Water, very cold, splashing my legs and arms.
My mother says my name—“Christina”—like I’m in trouble, and I want to answer her—Yes, I’m here—but my mouth won’t move.
A smell I haven’t known in years: blankets dried in the sun on lantana bushes.
And then nothing.
? ? ?
I wake up alone in a sagging bed that creaks when I move. When I try to sit up, my head pounds, and for a few seconds my vision fades. I’m able to turn my head and blink, and when my sight comes back, I see walls made of saplings, covered in mud. The ground is laid with a tightly woven grass mat. There is the smell of wood smoke and dry earth.
The signs of a woman and a girl are in the things I can see around me—dresses hung on pegs and Sunday shoes arranged neatly beside the door. School books and a Bible, a calendar from four years ago showing white children ice-skating that hangs next to a photograph of a serious-looking elderly couple. An AK-47 sits above the couple’s heads, out of the reach of a child, on the ledge between the wall and the roof.
Sunlight comes in under the shutters and the door in crisp lines. Close by are birds, and farther away the sound of goats bleating and shaking their bells. I get up slowly. I’m still in my slightly damp clothes. Other than my aching head and very tender feet I seem to be okay. It takes me a while, but I stagger to the door. My mouth is bone-dry. I feel like a human balloon that’s been filled with sand.
I push the door open a crack and blink into the brightness. A red dirt yard, hatch marks showing it’s been freshly swept with a twig broom, and grass and the forest beyond. I step outside and the sun is immediate and hot on my skin.
I know where I am.
“Catherine?” I croak. I clear my throat and try again. Running up the path to her home last night comes back to me suddenly, like a fever dream. She picked me up off the ground, not my mother. My memory is hazy, full of gaps. I feel a sudden and intense wave of hot and cold, and rush to the edge of the yard, where I throw up.
“You were drinking last night?”