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!