‘You’re good with potatoes and cabbage. Boil it in a little salted water. Better still, kill one of those old cocks.’

‘It’ll take hours to boil one of those cocks, and we only have five chickens left.’

Wynand was already bent over his shovel, ready to resume work.

‘Twelve potatoes, five chickens. Ever since that teacher and his timetables, it’s two of this, six of that. Kill one of them, I said.’

Roeloff smiled at Neeltje.

‘It’s all right. Show me which chicken and I’ll do it.’

Neeltje straightened her dress and walked quickly up to the house, mumbling under her breath.

Roeloff turned to the farmer to thank him.

Wynand spat on his hands, rubbed them together, then started digging.

‘Someone’s out there, chopping wood in the rain. At this hour. The oubaas isn’t back, is he?’ Roeloff got up from the bench and went to the door to look out.

Zokho lowered her eyes to the work in her lap. Roeloff had been restless ever since the oubaas had gone on his horse and left him in charge, worried about the girl left alone in the house for three days. What was he worried about? She, Zokho, had slept alone under the stars. Heard the cough of a leopard. Seen the night eyes of hyenas. Women were afraid of other things, not silence. They were afraid of a man not coming back. Of losing him. Neeltje had courage. The problem wasn’t the emptiness of the house. Zokho knew what ailed her.

‘It’s Neeltje chopping out there. That be one stubborn girl, to be out in weather like this.’

Zokho watched him pull on a jacket and go out. She took her time sewing on a button the way Neeltje had shown her, straining her eyes in the dim light. The farmer had given them a lamp, but there wasn’t much fuel and the small flame flickered like an old man unsure of his step. She got up and watched for a moment from the doorway. She couldn’t hear what was being said, but the continuing crack of the wood signalled determination. She closed the door and sat for a few moments watching the shadows on the wall.

Roeloff stood outside, his boots in the mud, watching the axe smack into the wood. Neeltje knew he was there, but she didn’t look up. Her long hair was plastered down her back, and the wet dress outlined the strength of her arms.

‘It’s storming, Neeltje, why are you doing this now?’ There was something annoying in her wilfulness.

‘There’s no wood for the fire; the house is cold.’

‘You’ll catch your death in this rain. Why didn’t you tell me this afternoon? I’ve told you before that there’s no need for you to chop wood—Twa or I will do it. And your father’s asked me to watch over things.’

‘My father’s left me before for a week. Three days is not a long time.’

‘He’s left you here by yourself for a week?’

‘How else would he trade with other farmers?’ She was soaked to the skin, but continued chopping.

‘Here, let me do it. Go inside.’

‘I’m almost done,’ she broke her momentum to move the chopped wood out of the way with her foot.

He stepped forward.

‘I said I’ll do it.’

It was the authority in his voice, the touch on her arm. She let go.

‘Tomorrow I’ll chop enough wood for winter.’

She threw down the axe and walked off.

‘Neeltje!’

Inside the buitekamer, Zokho sat naked on the coir bed, hearing him call out the name. The chopping had stopped and there was only the drumbeat of rain on the hard ground outside. She went to the door and saw Neeltje walking to the house in that determined way she had. Roeloff following with an armful of wood. It was the game of animals, she thought. A lion circled and sniffed, and circled and sniffed. Eventually the pull was too great and the female succumbed. Living with him, she’d come to know something about herself. She liked Toma—he was one like her, after all—but hadn’t wanted to be his wife. She wanted Roeloff, but feared the differences between them, differences that had widened. She was caught between conflicting feelings. She liked Neeltje, yet feared her. Neeltje had shown her how to make teewater and coffee and darn clothes, and she had taught Neeltje how to look for roots and berries and honey in the veld. She would have welcomed the white girl talking to her about Roeloff the way Karees had, but Neeltje asked and said nothing. The girl didn’t know her own power.

The chopping started again, harder, faster, and she got into bed, pulling the sheepskin up to her chin. How long would he stay out there? Where would his concern end?

When he came in, dripping water into a puddle around him, she got up and peeled off his clothes, holding her body next to his to warm him up.

‘Mijn, Eyes of the Sky?’

He kissed her mouth and moved so that they were both under the heady warmth of the sheepskin.

‘Yours, Smoke in the Eyes.’

Zokho fitted snugly into his arms, but there was unrest in her heart. He spoke the truth as he knew it but, he, too, like the oubaas’ daughter, didn’t know all about himself.

‘Elephants!’ Twa came limping down the row of tobacco plants. ‘Two of them by those rocks near the stream!’

Wynand looked at Roeloff.

‘That’s them, the ones I told you about. They’ve come back. What were you doing out there, Twa? That’s quite a distance from here.’

‘Looking for ostrich,’ Roeloff said. ‘He has a mood for wild meat. We don’t have to wait for the elephants to show up; Twa and I can steer them the other way. I haven’t had any experience with elephants, but it’s better than just waiting for them to get here.’

‘I agree.’

They left on Dorsbek and arrived downwind of the beasts. There were two of them: a majestic bull with tusks reaching almost to the ground, and an emaciated cow with loose, wrinkled skin and deep hollows above the eyes. An old wound in her trunk was dripping pus. Wynand’s gun must have done its work, Roeloff thought, because she was riddled with infection, dying.

The plan was to fire over the heads of the elephants and frighten them so that they headed north, but Roeloff was touched by the bull’s loyalty to his mate.

‘Kill it!’ Twa whispered.

Roeloff knew he would do the cow a kindness if he were to shoot her, but he couldn’t. And the bull also knew they were on the boulder.

As they watched, the cow got progressively weaker. Then the bull did something that surprised them. He attempted to mount her in a mock mating ritual, not really doing anything. This went on for an hour, with the cow offering no resistance, until finally her struggle against the poison ended in a rumble that shook the earth as she collapsed, raising a cloud of orange chalk to the air. A snort of defiance rolled out over the hills. Then the dust settled and the silence of the Cederberg returned.

Roeloff and Twa sat quiet as vultures. The beast was intelligent: he’d shown feeling, stayed with his mate. He could have knocked them off their boulder and trampled them to death. Instead, with a sorrowful air, he inspected the fallen cow, then worked his trunk and tusks under the body, trying to prop her up. The weight was too great and there was a loud crack as the carcass dropped to the ground, snapping his left tusk close to the lip, and trapping it under the cow.

‘Kill him, Kudu. Kill Broken Tooth!’

‘No.’

The elephant had lost his mate and now his tusk, leaving a bloody pulp in its place, giving him a lopsided appearance. Roeloff watched as the bull collected a trunkful of dry grass and stuffed it clumsily into the cow’s mouth. When this failed to revive her, he stood near the carcass mourning. Quietly, forlornly, the formality impressive in its silence. Roeloff was moved by his grief. Finally, the bull uprooted a nearby bush and placed it on top of the cow, sprinkling dust everywhere.

Roeloff didn’t want to look at the little hunter for fear of being laughed at. Twa laughed at everything, especially someone else’s discomfort. Roeloff remembered once, out in the veld, when he’d forgotten to shake out his boots in the morning before putting them on. He’d slipped in his foot and been stung by a scorpion that had taken refuge there. Twa had held his sides as he laughed, watching the foot and ankle swell up. When he’d finished laughing, he had removed the scorpion’s tail at its base, using the tip to make a series of overlapping cuts over the site of the sting. Taking the decapitated body, he’d mixed it to a pulp, and applied it to the puffy wound. The swelling went down and the pain drained away, but not before Twa had had his amusement.