Ancestor Stones Read Online Free PDF Page A

water. When I did look down I saw in his hand a peeled egg. The man reached into his pocket and brought out a packet, of paper instead of leaf. He opened it and sprinkled a little of what was inside on to the top of the egg. Salt. Just salt. The man held it out in front of him and uttered a sound like the noise a donkey makes — though not so loud as that. Still, it caused me to jump backwards. He pulled his lips back and showed us his huge teeth: ‘Hee-ah,’ he said, ‘hee-ah!’
    I tried to warn Alusani. But he was less fearful than I, although I had never once thought so before. He reached out his fingers and he took the egg from the moon-shadow man.
    It has been such a long time. In all that time I never spoke to anybody about what happened that day. Except now. Except to you.
    Sometimes, when I used to remember, when I thought back to the beginning of what happened next, there was only one thing of which I was sure. That everything started with the man whose skin was like the shadows of the moon. The man who was busy filling cages with the souls of children.
    My mother beat me for failing to deliver her message. I returned to her empty-handed long after the spit had dried on the ground. Worst of all I had taken Alusani with me into the bush. My brother tried to beg for me, but my mother was deaf, her anger like a whirlwind inside her skull, going round and round, her mouth pursed and tight as though someone had sewn it shut and pulled the thread.
    Maybe in time, when I had acquired some wisdom, I would have come to laugh at my childish fantasies. Perhaps I would have thrown away the memory of the moon-shadow man along with all the other unimportant thoughts I never bothered to cherish. Maybe. Who is there that knows the answer? As it was I came to hold myself responsible, to believe what happened next came as a punishment. I took Alusani there. Alusani took the egg and I could not stop him. The memory stayed with me for ever.
    Alusani began to visit the place of the spirits.
    It was dawn. I ran to fetch my grandmother. I did not bow my head or greet her respectfully first. There was no time for it, no time for her to be angry either. She followed me to where Alusani lay on the cot we shared. His eyes rolled backwards into his skull. His back was arched, his body vibrated like a plucked string.
Karabom
heated water to prepare a poultice. My mother held Alusani on her lap and massaged his limbs until his joints unlocked and the light came back into his eyes. In time he drifted into a deep sleep.
    In those days there were those people who had ‘four eyes’ — two to see the human world and two eyes on the backs of their faces, eyes that can see beyond what is here. People said twins had four eyes. Ours was a spirit so powerful it required two bodies. Sent by the ancestors, they said. Only, I didn’t have four eyes. I never saw a devil or a spirit or a ghost, though there were times I was afraid I might.
    At night I pressed my ear against the inside wall of the house, imagining I could hear the spirits of the dead trapped in the space between the inside and the outside wall. That’s how we built our houses in those days: with two walls and two doors. The doorways were offset — to confuse spirits who wanted to come back inside into the warm. The blacksmith’s uncle died: a dried-out old man with a wheezing cough and a voice like a cracked flute. My mother and grandmother went to cry at his funeral. Late that night I listened for him, for the sound of his woman’s voice calling from the other side. And I pictured his sightless ghost wandering from house to house, trying its luck, banging into the walls and groping for the door.
    Maybe Alusani really did have the gift. To this day I can’t tell you. I only know that once he started to visit the underworld he kept going back. Pa Yamba, the diviner, went into a trance and followed him as far as he could into the land of