The Child's Elephant by Rachel Campbell-Johnston Page B

beyond him, the familiar bulk of Meya. They were hanging about expectantly just where they always did. She smiled as she at last slowed. It was the running that had done it. It whipped up your thoughts. She lifted her arm and gave a light-hearted wave.
    Usually, in the lazy heat of the late afternoon, whilethe drowsy cows were chewing the cud, Meya would be taking a dust bath, blowing great sighing clouds over her belly and back. It kept the biting insects away. Then she too would doze. But she would always be the first to know that Muka was coming. Her rumbles of greeting would roll through the air.
    But today she was silent. A faint lick of worry flickered up in Muka’s stomach again. Then she saw another figure hunkered down beside them. There was someone else there. That would explain it. But who? Muka wondered. She strained to see. With a jolt she realized that this stranger was Lobo. What was he doing there? It had been quite a while ago that she had left him drinking. She had assumed that he would stay in town. But now here he was. He had returned home ahead of her. And how had he got there so fast anyway? A bulky black bicycle thrown down under the tree soon explained it.
    ‘I’m going to be the first person ever to ride an African elephant,’ Lobo cried eagerly as he saw her approaching and, jumping up from the root on which he had been squatting, he swaggered towards her. Muka just scowled.
    Lobo returned to his perch and examined his foot. A jigger had lodged itself in the tip of his toe. With a frown of concentration, he set about extracting it, piercing the blister with the point of a thorn. He impaled the curled parasite and then, carefully removing it, flicked it playfully at Bat. The boy brushed it away. He looked sullen and miserable, Muka thought.
    An amulet hung round Lobo’s neck, she noticed. Shehadn’t remembered him wearing it in the bar. It looked like the skull of a rodent and it was all knotted up with some long wiry hairs. He must have bought it from the witch doctor, she thought, remembering how only that morning he had tried to sell her just such an amulet. Lobo, brought up by the medicine woman, probably believed in the magic of spells. She wondered if he had bought it in the hope that he could make people like him. Perhaps he had heard what the villagers muttered behind his back.
    Lobo interrupted her reverie. ‘Why pedal an old bicycle when you could ride an elephant?’ he cried, aiming a kick at the black machine he had brought.
    He was drunk, Muka realized. She could smell the sourness on his breath. The acrid smoke of the bar still clung to his skin.
    ‘Imagine if that animal could be turned into something useful . . .’ Lobo mused, casting a look of derision at Meya, ‘if it didn’t just hang around idly like some pointless pet.’
    Meya slapped her ears indolently against her neck. Clouds of flies danced in the currents of stirred air.
    ‘It would be great, wouldn’t it?’ the boy persisted, determined to provoke some sort of response. ‘Then your grandmother wouldn’t have to slip-stump along all higgledy-piggledly,’ he cried. ‘Like this!’ and, jumping up, he began imitating the old woman’s limp. He laughed. Bat clenched his fists but still he said nothing. Muka looked stubbornly down. She was willing the bully just to go away.
    ‘Hey, you! What’s your point?’ The frustrated Lobonow turned his attention to the elephant. Meya watched him warily through the fringe of her lashes. Reaching down for a bit of dirt, she slung it over her back. It was a threat, the children knew. The elephant was uncertain. She didn’t understand what this boy wanted either.
    ‘She makes us happy,’ Bat ventured. ‘That’s point enough.’
    ‘You’re just a coward! You’re too frightened to ride her.’ Lobo’s voice had turned nasty now. His eyes glittered with malice. ‘Well, I’m going to prove that your great elephant is just a tame farm animal.’
    ‘Don’t,’