After wondering around in the kraal
with a bandage around his head Craig and his classmates
finally found the witch doctors hut.
When they arrived the hut had dull grey straw with
creepy spider webs covering the hut in
patches. A red rag stood at the entrance of the hut.
The students milled around the hut when
suddenly out jumped the witchdoctor. Black as night
he hunched over as he said mystical
words and threw down some bones onto the ground.
Every one stared in wonderment. The
witchdoctor looked up and straight at Craig!
“You!” he shouted as his eyes
glared bright white and his pupils went black. Craig looked in horror
as his friends parted away from him.
"COME!" He shouted with red
nailed fingers.
"Me?" Craig asked nervously
"Come! Dinfa! Come!" he
shouted again.
"Okay?" Craig said nervously
again.
He walked in his khaki baggies and
green shirt towards the witchdoctor. His classmates did nothing
to stop what they were seeing. He
walked slowly. The witchdoctor grabbed his hand from a knelt down
position and smiled a scarred faced smile with big bright white
teeth. He walked his crouch walk with him. They both went into the
darkness of the hut. Craig sat and when his night vision collected he
saw the inside of the small hut. It was dark and webby but it had all
strange herbs and all manner of dead things and bones and in the
middle of the compacted mud floor a wisp of surviving smoke
disappeared into the haze of the hut. The witchdoctor with red beads
in his hair
sat opposite him with his back against
the hut wall. He lend forward and laughed! A deep stomach laugh and
gave Craig a high five shake. The boy was so confused. The
Witchdoctor laughed some more and then explained.
"I saw you fight! Your not a young
fighter are you! Your an old and wise one? I could see the
calculations in your eyes, like a cheetah hunting a buck, but your
technique is bad! Eish!" He said as he giggled.
Craig was surprised.
"Do you want to be a warrior?"
Dida asked.
"Yes."He said smartly.
"Hmm...this is not for me to
decide. I must speak with the ancestors." Dida turned to his
little fire
and begin to grab all sorts of herbs
and dead insects and bones.
"Ancestors?" he asked loudly.
"Yes, we must speak with them."
Dida said.
"Okay? If you say so." He
said as he looked around aimlessly.
Dida crouched over a wooden carved
board and whispered and shouted and twisted. Until a flame started
within the crushed mixture. The purplish smoke curled and wispt into
the dark air of the hut. Dida quickly covered the front of the hut
with the red rag. The rag let bullet size sunbeams into the hut. The
witchdoctor picked up the board and breathed in the purple air and
exhaled it in an amazingly slow fashion where the smoke seemed to
twinkle in the fire light. He then leaned into Craig's face with the
board and slowly blew the purple twinkling smoke towards him. He
tried to hold his breathe but the witchdoctor blew slowly until he
could not hold his breathe any more and sucked it all in. The purple
smoked slithered into his lungs and transfused with his blood. He
became light headed, the buzz made him float and waves of calm arouse
in him. He looked at the witchdoctor through the little red light and
blurringly he looked up and fall onto his back. At first he didn't
understand what he was seeing then he looked in closer inside of the
hut which seemed to have opened up into a beautiful carpet of living
stars. That's when he noticed he was actually laying in long blue
mooned green grass as it blurringly swayed in the hazy night sky. He
jumped up and saw himself as a pastille coloured drawing, he ran
towards the moon. His motionless body ran down into the valley below
leaving a slur of his imagine in his wake. He reached the bottom of
the valley. He looked up and saw a silhouette of a strong man
standing on a rock against the big ghostly pastille coloured moon
pointing a spear. That's when he noticed a blurry imagines of a
cheetah running in the pastille blue covered savannah on his left. He
looked down the ghostly veld covered with random dark navy blue thorn
trees which contrasted the grey blue of the grass. A hand slammed on
his shoulder the gripping hand shifted like water coloured paintings.
A red beaded man stood next to him. He told Craig to kneel. He did so
and he watched the cheetah, while it was running, Dida commented.
"If you want to be a warrior, you
must defeat your enemies. You are lucky, the cheetah is your spirit
animal. His is fast, agile but delicate. Some warriors are elephants,
you should see there buts..." as he drifted off in light
laughter. Craig smiled as he leaned over a rock to get a closer look
at the cheetah. The cheetah ran with amazing agility after its prey,
which seemed to be some sort of buck human, but some how seemed
natural to Craig. The cheetah sprang in blocks of dirty yellow and
dark brown dots onto the thing and killed it. As it sat Craig peered
closer and it was the head of Jabo, his most hated enemy. Craig
repulsed and sat on the plain coloured grey rock.
"Do you understand the message?"
Dida said to him in a friendly way. The black block image shrugged
"No. There is a message in that?"
He asked in confusion.
"Yes, do you know what it is?"
the witchdoctor asked patiently.
Craig looked through his eyes onto his
fuzzy painting like hands.
"I think I must kill Jabo!"
he shouted in disbelief!
"No! No! Dinfa! No!" He
shouted back in light laughter.
"You must defeat him. Meaning a
fight like you had before, first one to bleed loses."
"Okay! but but..."Craig said
quietly to himself.
"But what! Dinfa!" the
witchdoctor shouted in excitement.
"I am scared!" He said
sheepishly.
"Hibo! Dinfa! HIBO! Did you not
see the cheetah take out that that thing?" he shouted as he
stood as a blur on the rock pointing down at the cheetah.
"The cheetah has taught you how to
defeat your enemy, with speed!" He shouted down to Craig as the
boy looked up through his pastel blue eyes.
"Yes, I do. I must become quick
and fast if I am going to beat him."
"That's it Dinfa!"he said
excitedly as he jumped down crashing into Craig. He next said as his
ever shifting pastille black face followed slowly behind his words.
"Look!" as a black log
pointed at the moon again. This time the masculine silhouette turned
and pointed into the various dark and light purples and pinks of the
dawny morning sky. Over the young dawn he looked above into the dark
sky. At first he saw the stars slowly merging into one and became
cows, many cows, a herd of bright yellow starry light cows. They
moved through the night sky and into the nothingness just like they
first appeared. He craned his neck over to the same spot before. the
motion drew beautiful pictures of slurred purples and reds in stringy
lines. He peered again into the darkness where the stars aligned and
fashioned an image of a beautiful black girl with biggish lips. As he
peered closer he saw who it was.
"That's Mbali!" that's when a
brilliant display of hot red and orange light surrounded the imagine
of the girl push the imagine into a new figure of a huge ruby
coloured rose petal which was outlined with the golden display of the
stars. Suddenly the first sun rays cut up the beautiful display and
it shone on a valley below from where they stood. Where two tribes in
black and white stood opposite each other like a chess pieces. The
silhouette man was revealed in the dark orange of the morning sun.
His strong dark arms held the spear he then pointed at the pieces.
Craig looked on through the slur of the vision. The pieces seemed to
be moving into a position like a bulls head. The black pieces spread
out and formed horns and the white block in the middle stood
defensively still. Slowly the horns came together and turned the
white block into a white ball which seemed to bounce like a beach
ball between the two paddle like black horns. But the ball did not
grow smaller that's when another signal was given by the man standing
on the rock. The horns slowly parted and created a wedge behind the
ball and pushed it into a white Zulu shield wall. The ball like a
gob-stopper was slowly devoured by the monster below. That's when the
ever shifting hand grabbed him and walked with him to the dark
transparent man that floated slightly off the rock.
"Good morning oh mighty one! This
is the boy you called for you!" the witchdoctor droned as he
fall to the ground. Craig looked down at his feet. The ghostly dark
voice spoke to him.
"Dinfa! Come to me."
The boy slowly moved towards him.
The ghostly figure drifted onto him and
put his strong arm over his shoulder.
"Dinfa. Do you want to become a
warrior?"
"Yes. I do."he said shyly.
"Then you must prove yourself."
"How?"
"You must complete the three
challenges of a warrior. The first is to beat your enemy!
The second is get a girl and the third
is to beat one of my chiefs in a mock battle." as these words
were whispered out the sky became alive with images of cheetahs,
Mbali running and the chess pieces of before.
"I will do it!"
"Good, I believe in you." he
said in a dark mystical way.
"Now go!" he shouted at him
as he raised his shifting arms.
Craig got up and started to run down
the emerald green hill when he stopped and ran back to the figure.
"Wait! One thing, why me?"
"Because.. " he said
dramatically as he turned around to reveal the magical green valley
where brown dots seemed to move in herds across the ground and birds
flew as a lion roared from the valley below that's when he became
aware of a slow heart beat. The sound became stronger.
"In you, is the heart of an
African. A man of the red and brown earth and gentleness of the
softest rain. A leader of men and swayer of girls dreams. The proud
heart of an African! Strong and PROUD!" as the word leapt of his
tongue the heart beat turned into the sound of slow low drum beat.
With every slow beat an new lighter sound would start to alternate
the drone of the lumbering beat. Each time the drum beat became more
and more frantic and crazy to an amazing climax of all calamity. When
Craig awoke in the middle of the chiefs hut surrounded by all manner
of people, Zulus and classmates peered down on him in awe. He
breathed deeply, in his sweat soaked clothes over the silence!
