‘My bones are starting to hurt.’

Koerikei looked hopeful.

‘Your bones have never been wrong.’

‘There are no clouds. There must be clouds for rain to come.’ He shifted on his heels. ‘I will not go with you when you leave.’

The brothers looked at him. They knew what he meant. He was old, holding them up. He would stay and let nature take its grim course. And it wouldn’t be long, with the jackals.

‘These legs will not carry me any further. I can stay till I’m stronger, then follow.’

‘We’re not so poor that we have to leave you behind, and so wise that we can do without your counsel, old father. We’ll carry you, if we have to.’

Limp Kao stuffed his pipe with a clump of foul-smelling leaves, then passed it around. The matter was settled.

‘We’ll see if there are clouds in the morning. Then go up to the river.’

‘There are sheep in the Hantam,’ Kabas said.

Limp Kao nodded. ‘And people with smoke in their sticks. We have not been attacked by them yet. I think we will go to the river, if we get rain. The others will know we have gone there.’

The next day, like the days and weeks and months before that, erupted in a wave of torrid air. Limp Kao’s aching bones and rain talk forgotten, Tau and Karees set off early with their digging sticks in an easterly direction. The women walked for hours in the heat, closely inspecting the ground, but found nothing. They were thinking of returning to camp when Tau, squatting behind a thorn bush, saw a tiny vine winding around the trunk. She pulled gently at its base to see where it led, then with her digging stick tried to work it loose. The stick was useless in the hard ground and, using both hands, she sat back on her heels and scratched and scooped until a deep hole revealed a huge bi root tightly wedged in the packed earth. She took a stone, scraping around the root, then reached in with both hands and pulled. Her face creased into folds as she strained. The root suddenly came loose, sending her flying back into the bush. She rocked back on her heels, the root still clasped in her hands.

‘It’s a big one,’ she laughed. ‘Perhaps there’ll be others.’

But a thorough examination revealed nothing more, and after painstakingly scouring the area, they collected twigs for firewood and returned home. The others saw them coming and waited eagerly under the tree.

‘Karees!’ Kabas’s youngest daughter came running up. ‘My father’s killed a snake.’

Karees wrinkled her nose.

‘Snake? We’re not snake eaters.’

‘We have eaten it before. Come see how my mother’s roasted it. Have you found anything?’

‘Only this,’ she opened her kaross and showed off the bi root her mother had found.

Tau was invited to her brother-in-law’s hearth with her family where Kabas and his wife offered everyone generous portions of meat.

‘It’s not bad,’ Koerikei said. ‘Tasty.’

‘My belly’s full,’ Tau rested her hand on her abdomen, paying her hosts a compliment.

Nani smiled. She had been greatly honoured.

Later on, at her own hearth, Tau took the root she’d unearthed and scraped it into thin slivers with a stone. Dividing it into three portions, she, Koerikei, and Karees held the scrapings over their mouths, and squeezed until thick drops of juice trickled down on their tongues. It didn’t amount to a swallow, but at least changed the taste in their mouths. When the last drop was squeezed out, she mixed the scrapings with grass and sand and built it into a pile. Koerikei urinated over the mixture and scooped out a hollow grave with his hands. Tau and her daughter eased themselves into the pit, and packed their faces and bodies with the spongy waste, leaving only their noses exposed. Closing their eyes to the intensity of the sun, they remained in their moist graves until dusk. The pit offered a brief ­respite from the heat.

Roeloff was in the yard with Twa trying to get the captive to speak when his father and Jan Joubert rode up with a Bushman girl on the back of the horse. Naked except for a small leather flap dotted with beads over her private parts, antelope strips round the elbows and knees, she had slanted eyes in an almost flat face with high cheekbones, and a full, delicate mouth. Her head was small and round, with tight balls of hair, her dusty skin the colour of ripe apricot.

‘That’s him, there,’ Willem Kloot pointed. ‘You can have him.’

Jan Joubert jumped down from his horse and examined the boy’s shoulders and back, peering into his mouth. There was a scar running from the boy’s left brow across the forehead, and he felt this to see how old it was.

Roeloff watched. He didn’t like Oom Jan even though he was the only farmer whose company his father sought regularly. Oom Jan was a man of three words—schiet hom vrek—and murderous actions. Roeloff knew of his raids with the kommando and his brutality towards the Hottentots on his farm. His wife, Elsie, was a religious woman with thin lips that rarely smiled, and his daughters made Roeloff think of frogs whose eyes seemed ready to pop from their heads. Diena wasn’t too bad with her constant references to God, but he disliked Soela, the prettier one. He blamed Oom Jan for his father’s actions the previous night. His father would never have killed a human being in his mother’s time. Oom Jan liked no one, especially not the brown-skinned people. The other day when Twa brought wood into the kitchen, Oom Jan said he stank up the air. Had he smelt himself like others smelt him? Twa’s odours were not of the mouth and the body, but of fire and tobacco and the rich scent of the land.

Jan finished his examination of the boy and turned to Willem, satisfied.

‘He’s insolent—you can tell from his eyes—but strong.’

‘Tell Sanna to give her clothes,’ Willem said to Twa. ‘She’s to help in the house.’

The men went inside and Twa helped the girl off the horse.

‘What’s your name?’

She put one dusty foot on top of the other, and looked up timidly.

‘He doesn’t bite,’ Twa laughed, sensing her apprehension of a white boy. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Zokho.’

‘Smoke in the Eyes,’ the male captive blurted from the other side.

‘Smoke in the Eyes?’ Twa’s eyes twinkled. ‘I can see why. I’m Twa, and this is Kudu,’ he pointed to Roeloff. ‘We call him this because he blends in with the veld and is fast as an eland.’

‘Roeloff,’ Roeloff said quietly. He was immensely taken with the girl.

‘You know this boy, Smoke in the Eyes?’ Twa asked.

‘He’s Toma.’

‘Where did they find you? Where are your people?’

Zokho dropped her head and started to cry.

Roeloff looked at Twa. He had no knowledge of girls, but from her mutterings made out that her mother and father were dead. Moved by her distress, he came forward and touched her arm. She pulled away.

Twa laughed at the hurt look on his face.

‘Don’t worry, she’ll get used to you. Sanna will take care of her. She has no girls of her own.’

‘And him?’ Roeloff turned to Toma. ‘He knows her. Maybe they’re family.’

‘Are you family?’ Twa asked Zokho.

Roeloff caught the look between the girl and the captive. He knew they weren’t.

‘They have played together,’ Twa said.