to us. He read the article quickly, and then shrugged non-commitally.
“OK,” he said, sounding less than impressed.
“It’s exactly how Josh described them,” I pushed him.
He looked at me blankly.
“Oh, you were inside already,” Josh said, proceeding to fill Luke in on the physical description of the fish-people he’d given me.
Luke was thoughtful for a few moments. “It doesn’t explain the Talita story though,” he said. “I mean, why would they want to take her?”
“So you’re saying you believe they exist?” I asked.
He grinned. “Believe is a strong word, but I’m more convinced than I was.”
“This is so cool.” Josh was bouncing on his toes. “Dude, you have mythical creatures living on your doorstep!”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Luke replied.
Josh suddenly clutched the back of my chair, spinning it around, while grabbing Luke’s arm at the same time.
“We have to go and look for them.” His face was alive with excitement.
The minute he’d suggested it, it was all I wanted to do.
“I thought you were scared of them?” I asked playfully. “You know their appetites are ferocious.”
He laughed. “Please, those stories are just to scare little kids away from the water so they won’t drown.”
“Guys, have you forgotten the ‘adventure zone’ restrictions?” Luke turned and pointed at the mountains. “Last time I checked those were a lot further than one kilometre away.”
“We could leave without telling the adults,” I suggested, clapping my hand over my mouth as soon as the words had left my lips. I couldn’t believe I’d just suggested that.
Never in my entire life had I ever even thought of sneaking out, even to go to a party. Now I was seriously considering running away from the farm, for what? To go on a wild-goose chase looking for fish-people in the mountains?
The more I tried to reason with myself that the idea of running away into Injisuthi was crazy, the more I wanted to go and look for the fish-people, wanted to do it with every cell in my body. Not just because I wanted to break out of the carefully constructed safe activities and emotions I’d created for myself since Brent died, but because something about the legend Josh had told me had made me feel more alive than I’d felt in the last three years, and I didn’t want that feeling to go away.
Josh laughed at me. “Wow, Alex, I didn’t realise you were so bored here.”
I grinned at him, relaxing a little. Josh didn’t think I was crazy, I could see by the light in his eyes that he was all for it.
“Guys, we can’t just run away.” Luke told us, looking incredulously between us. “My folks will go nuts.”
“So tell them we’re going to your youth camp thing,” I suggested, the opportune alibi turning the adventure into a real possibility. “With your Mom away, your Dad will be so busy he probably won’t even check up on us.”
Josh high-fived me, “Great idea, Alex!”
Luke was looking between the two of us like he was watching a tennis match.
“Come on, Luke, don’t be a wimp.” Josh punched him lightly on the arm. “You can’t go to the youth camp anyway, so why not do something fun this holiday. Unless you want to be stuck on the farm doing chores…”
Luke sighed and shook his head, grinning at his friend. “I am going to be in so much trouble if they find out.”
“We’ll be gone for the exact number of days and remember lots of details from the last two youth camps we’ve been on,” Josh promised. “That way when your folks ask questions we’ll have the story sorted.”
“When do we leave?” I asked, excitement fizzling through my veins.
“The camp starts tomorrow, so I’ll call Dad and let him know we’re going,” Luke promised.
We spent the rest of the afternoon packing backpacks and finding bits of food Luke didn’t think would go amiss.
Josh and I stood watching anxiously as Luke told his Dad about the youth camp, and asked if he and I could join it.
“Well, they said that one or two kids pulled out.” He’d answered a parental question.
Silence as he listened.
“No, there’s a whole group of people going, Dad, and lots of activities and stuff, we won’t wander away from the group.”
More talking from his parents.
Luke had nodded and made all the right obedient child noises before confirming that we wouldn’t see Allan before we left because the camp was due to start at eight and he was only due home at eleven.
He clicked the off button on the phone, checking carefully that the call had been disconnected, before turning to us and whooping excitedly, high-fiving as he went.
“Injisuthi, here we come!” he yelled.
I laughed, feeling happy for the first time in a long time.
Chapter 4
Beginnings
I opened my eyes a split second before I hit the water. It closed over my head sucking me under, my eyes stinging and lungs burning. A thumping noise echoed strangely in the absolute quiet of submersion. I started to panic, my arms and legs flailing as I imagined all sorts of explanations for the sound. A searing pain shot up the sides of my head and launched a deluge of black spots behind my eyes, as I broke through the surface of the water gasping for air.
Awkwardly treading water I tried to make sense of where I was. My panic only increased as I dove beneath the surface, searching through the murky water for something incredibly important, the memory of which kept slipping from my mind.
It took a couple of seconds to realise that I was at the farm and a further few seconds to recognise the Van Heerdens’ swimming pool, the sinister thumping, merely the throb of the creepy crawly cleaning the pool.
As I hauled myself shivering out of the pool, relief and utter annoyance flooded me. It was still dark, although the sky was starting to lighten in a rim along the eastern horizon, and a few overly enthusiastic birds had begun to sing.
I’d end up killing myself if I went sleepwalking while we were camping, I thought angrily as I slipped into the house, quickly ducking into the bathroom to avoid unwanted questions from the boys who were already stirring.
Half an hour later we left the house, a flock of geese winging their way across the dawn-tinted sky the only witnesses to the beginning of our great adventure.
The scrunch of our hiking boots on sun-crisped grass fell into a comfortable rhythm as Josh found the path that would take us out of Injisuthi’s skirts and into her waiting arms. Night’s melody of creaking crickets and croaking frogs soon gave way to the morning song of waking birds as the farmhouse became a dark spot on the distant horizon.
The mountain rose in softly rolling foothills at first as we followed the river upstream, but as the sun’s heat intensified so did the climb; the landscape became rockier, the grass raked short on wind exposed land.
The sky was a perfect turquoise with spider-web wisps of white cloud. Delicate flowers raised their beautiful faces to the sun between tussocks of grass, gracing the landscape with jewel-like shades of brilliant pink, purple and yellow. The clean air permeated every cell of my body as I gazed nature-struck at the beauty around me, imagining the huts of the tribe that had once lived here dotted just ahead of us in the traditional circle I’d