David Gilman - The Devil's breath

The boy nodded, he knew that. But there was still a sense of abandonment. The temperature dropped below freezing and Max felt it keenly. The cotton shirt and trousers he wore offered little protection. They needed a fire, and quickly.

Max had a bruise the size of a baseball from his fall, but it was the loss of the plastic lighter that concerned him more: it had been shattered when his thigh hit the rock. He showed the fragments to!Koga, but the boy seemed unconcerned. From his pouch he took out a small cross of softwood and a narrow stick with a notch cut in its end. He secured the wooden cross on the ground under his foot, then, holding the stick between his palms, twirled it until the base smoldered.

Max had tried this once or twice when he went camping, and it needed dry moss or lichen to get a spark going, something he always struggled with in the dampness of Dartmoor.!Koga’s finger went back into the pouch, and fluffed out a small piece of tinder, what looked to be part of a bird’s nest-dry leaves and grass. Holding this to the base of the stick so it caught the heat, he gently blew on it until there was white smoke. Easing it under the bits of stick Max had foraged from the hillside, the fire crackled, putting a smile back on!Koga’s face.

It was only when the fire was well and truly alight and!Koga had buried pieces of the springbok beneath the hot embers that Max realized where he was. He was standing in a domed cave which stretched back another twenty-odd meters into darkness. Ridges of granite of a similar length ran along the floor of the cave, almost like stepping stones, to reach the flat surface of the walls.!Koga had said nothing, but when he nodded at Max’s realization, Max knew this was where the boy had planned to bring him all along.!Koga gathered a fistful of burning twigs and held them up so the light crept into the recesses of the cave.

The shadows from the flames danced across the walls of the cave, illuminating rock paintings: swathes of ochre-painted animals, hunters and their stories. It was the place of the ancestors, the place of the spirits of the dead.

The prophecy.

The walls showed the story of the First People. It was their beginning told in pictures, an unfolding tableau of the creation of the Bushman and the hunt for the mighty eland whose horns, even in its death throes, could impale a man. The reverence for the eland, the biggest of all antelopes, was at the heart of the Bushmen’s existence-and their survival. It was the subject of their dance, their music and their paintings. One of the Bushmen’s creation stories was that the insect-god Mantis created the world, and it was the eland he chose first to inhabit it: eland, the most noble of antelope with the strength of a giant, tender with its family, caressing them with lips and tongue, confirming and reassuring, like a mother with a child.

As Max followed the story,!Koga was at his shoulder, holding the burning sticks, pointing to the drawings, explaining in his own language what the pictures meant. And although Max could not understand the words, the soft incantation of the story lulled him, allowing the drawings to take on a life of their own. The shadows gave them energy, making the tableaux move along the wall. Lion and giraffe, antelope and baboon, hyena and snake: the family of the wilderness was there.

The ghostlike hunters ran, killing the eland which would give them life; they danced in praise and thanks. Through!Koga’s lilt Max could almost hear them chanting. Figures twisted and turned, some lay down, ochre-colored blood coming from their noses, in the trance dances that emphasized the supernatural link between Bushman and eland.!Koga was telling him all of this with small gestures and rolling eyes. He curled his fist in front of his stomach, twisted it, showing it like a knot of energy that crept up out of the body. The pictures and the mime made simple sense.

Bushman mothers suckled their children; more men, themselves like stick insects, gave chase after another antelope. Max heard the words Gauwa and Gao!na; images explained their meaning-the setting and rising sun.

The embers flickered, the shadows drew a curtain across the scene. Max caught a glimpse of something at the back of the cave, a drawing that did not belong with the others. It was of Anubis, the Egyptian jackal god of the underworld; but this time the figure was more in keeping with the others on the wall-like the Bushman drawings. The jackal’s body pointed to the left, deliberately directing the viewer to look deeper into the darkness.

“Max,”!Koga whispered. As if his name was a statement, a matter of simple fact. There was still enough light to see the drawing of the boy, a white boy, shown in white pigment, with yellow hair.!Koga pointed at the drawing and at Max. “Max,” he said again. Like the images of the ancient hunters, he was shown running. To where? The frieze went on-carefully etched drawings, painted and shaded on the granite, became another story. A crocodile’s jaws, blood-tipped-these were the mountains Max had seen. A stumbling figure-no spear-wielding hunter this, but a ghostlike man, leaning on a staff. At the end of the man’s pointing finger was a multipointed star, highlighted in charcoal and chalk. As Max traced the figures on the rock wall, a flurry of scratches symbolized a tangle of thorn trees, brittle and stark, but they sheltered what looked like a dove, its wings extended, lying on the ground. The next drawing showed him a gaping hole, swirling like a whirlpool, and what seemed to be a cloud hovering over it. Now Max was confused. The simplicity was lost on him. But he understood the final figure. Its image stabbed pain into his chest as he reached out and touched it. The figure of the man with the shining star at the edge of his hand now lay on the ground, an etched line of red drawn from his leg. With awful certainty Max knew this was his father and that he had been injured. Was he lying out there, helpless? “Oh, Dad,” he whispered, “where are you?”

The burning branch!Koga held dimmed as the flames died down. He touched Max’s arm, wary of disturbing his thoughts.!Koga gestured to the final scene depicted on the rock face. The fair-haired white boy’s wraithlike figure seemed to leap across the void, and with him came a dozen or more Bushmen with women and children. It looked as though they were leaving a group of others, who lay prone. Its meaning seemed clear: Max was leading Bushmen survivors away from some kind of great danger, and clearly something Max’s father knew about.

Max had often watched his father unfold a field book and sketch his surroundings, then use a small box of watercolors to capture birds on the page. It was not that unusual for field scientists to be proficient artists, sketching flora and fauna, and Max was convinced that this is what had happened here. This was no prophecy, daubed hundreds or thousands of years ago, this was painted by his dad only weeks earlier.

!Koga smiled and nodded. To him, the drawings were the prophecy.

He gestured that they should return to the light and warmth of the fire and eat. Max nodded, hoping!Koga could not see the tears in his eyes. He signaled!Koga to go back and, as the boy’s shadow blocked the fire’s flames, Max hunched down in the darkness, and silently wept. Not since his mother had died had he felt such helplessness and despair. He lingered inside his own dark place for a few moments, then gritted his teeth until he felt his jawbone ache. This wasn’t grief, he told himself. It was self-pity-either get rid of it or go home. Turn around. Get!Koga to lead you all the way back, climb on a plane, return to friends at Dartmoor High, tell the police about Peterson and then leave it to them. If that was the option, he would have no part of it.