It turns out that hunting for a Popobawa
is considerably more strenuous than one would imagine, what with swatting at
sweat-loving flies and avoiding piles of elephant dung. Jonas and I trekked (or
rather, he trekked while I stumbled) across endless kilometres of African
plains, but all we saw was a herd of zebra and one giraffe
with
a confused expression on its spotted face, as if it didn’t quite believe we’d
survived this long.
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By midday, I called for a break and we
rested beside a delightfully mosquito-infested creek in the shade of a thorn
tree. I was just nodding off after eating a packed lunch when a most peculiar
smell assaulted my highly sensitive nostrils.
For a moment, I assumed that Jonas’s pig
fat had gone rancid (or rather, had putrefied even further), until I heard a
scratching noise above me. I ever so slowly stood up and backed away from the
tree. Glaring down at us with its one large eye, its wings just fluttering into
visibility, was a bat-type beast that must’ve weighed at least three hundred
kilograms and stood two metres tall. Except it wasn’t standing; it was
crouching in the way that predators crouch right before they attack.
The creature emitted a vulgar noise and a
horrendous smell, both of which were barely suitable for the inside of a water
closet, never mind in public. Fortunately, we were neither in an outhouse nor
in polite society, ourselves excluded, and the Savannah was quite empty of
offendable ears, aside from Jonas’s and mine.
“Really the things I must put up with,” I
muttered and pulled up my gloves a little higher.
Jonas wisely remained silent, handed me
the antique rifle, and strummed the string of his bow with a thumb, most likely
contemplating how best to sink an arrow into the beast’s bulbous head. And
possibly into mine too, poor fellow, seeing as how I’d dragged him into this.
At that moment, the bat-like creature
puckered up its thick, dark lips. Good
gracious, I thought. What is it doing
now?
Jonas collapsed onto the ground, covering
his head with his arms. Now what was he doing, I wondered?
And that’s when I remembered the bit of
rather critical information I had previously forgotten: the Popobawa’s third
power. It can spit poison. And I was straight in its line of fire.
What should I do? Would I be
blinded by poison and snatched up for dinner? And would Jonas ever wash off the
smell of pig fat? Stay tuned.
On an exciting side note: Christmas Lites II is out! This lovely
collection of short stories will raise funds for the charity ‘National
Coalition Against Domestic Violence’ (www.ncadv.org). Buy and read! For more info and
purchase links, go to:
