Ancestor Stones Read Online Free Page B

would slow me down, but I agreed anyway. We walked in the shade of the coffee trees and entered the forest. Soon we passed the boulder marking the boundary to the village. We stayed away from the path. As we went we played a game we had played many times before. We made up riddles for the Trickster, in case he bounced down from one of the trees and refused to allow us on our way.
    â€˜How do you carry water?’ I asked Alusani.
    â€˜In a fishing net!’ He was quick as that. Then it was his turn to ask a question: ‘What do you pour on a fire to put it out?’
    I knew that one, I didn’t need to think. I replied straight away: ‘Oil!’ This was how we always began, posing the easy ones first. The next riddle was one I had been saving. I was certain Alusani would never guess the answer. ‘What do you give a thirsty stranger to drink?’
    I marched ahead, swinging my arms, certain of my victory. Behind me Alusani walked on. I knew he was puzzling over my riddle. One moment we were playing a game, the next I saw what I saw and I stopped breathing. I grasped Alusani’s arm. And I swear, if I hadn’t pulled my brother back he might have walked right into the man — right into the man whose skin was as white as day.
    The moon-shadow man didn’t see us. We slipped between the roots of a cotton tree and we hid ourselves there, as though we were hiding in our mother’s skirts. We waited and we watched. All I could hear was the singing of birds, sounds of the forest. The moon-shadow man moved about the clearing, in and out of the streams of light, appearing and disappearing before our eyes. I imagined that if I only dared to reach out I could put my hand right through him. People said the Trickster could make himself invisible. But even though I was just a child I did not believe the Trickster was more than a story.
    I wanted to whisper to Alusani, but my mouth was dry. I dared not close my eyes even to blink. I turned to Alusani. I felt my own eyes round with fear, but I saw Alusani’s eyes quick and bright as he watched that man.
    The man who was made of moon shadows was surrounded by boxes. Boxes made of sticks and bound with wire. They lay scattered on the forest floor. First I had eyes only for the strange man: the way his massive feet crushed the foliage beneath them; his hands the size of palm fronds. He was gathering up the boxes, stacking them one on top of the other. Sometimes he paused, wiped his face against his sleeve, another time he used a cloth. Once he stood and gazed up at the sky. While he worked, we watched him. The air was filled with birdsong, the sound of a thousand birds. And I saw that the boxes were not boxes, but cages. And birds were imprisoned inside those cages: sunbirds whose feathers shimmered like oil across the surface of water, bright blue flycatchers, dark-throated warblers, palm swifts as small as your thumb, doves vividly plumed as parrots, and in one cage an owl’s black-rimmed eyes watching us from inside a white face.
    I seized Alusani’s hand and we crept out from between the roots of the tree. We tried to be quiet, but the fear refused to be bound and scattered suddenly. And so we ran. I didn’t see him. I didn’t dare turn around. At first I didn’t even hear him, my heart thrummed in my ears. I felt him. I felt the moon-shadow man look up, begin to come after us. I scraped my shin on a fallen log; my footsteps crashed through the undergrowth; cobwebs snatchedat my face as I dragged Alusani after me. But in the end we were helpless as beetles at the mercy of a cat.
    He didn’t touch us, Alusani and I.
    He stepped in front of us.
    We stopped. We did not move.
    We waited.
    I looked at him and beyond him, for a way past. He crouched down; he put his hand into the folds of his trousers. From his outstretched hand he offered us a gift. At first I was transfixed by those luminous eyes, such a colour: the colour of