A Spear of Summer Grass. Deanna Raybourn

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      I did steer the ship, and very nearly ran her into an island, but the captain was most understanding and we parted as friends. When I disembarked with Dodo – still looking a bit worse for wear – the crew assembled to wave us off and even fired a salute. I blew kisses to them until Dodo jerked my arm nearly out of the socket.

      “Delilah, must you always make such a spectacle out of yourself?” she hissed. I tried not to take it personally. She still looked peaky and clutched her basin fervently.

      “It’s not me, darling. The boys gathered to see us onto shore. It would be rude not to acknowledge them.” I waved one last time as I climbed into the car waiting to transfer us to the station. Dodo heaved into her basin while she juggled my jewel case and a strap of books the crew had given me, all inscribed with thoughtful messages.

      The town of Mombasa was just as strange and wild as I had expected, the air damp and heavy with the scent of spices and smoke and donkeys. I lifted my nose, sniffing appreciatively, but Dodo just moaned softly until we were safely ensconced on the train and pulling away from the city.

      I lowered the window, letting in the fragrant spices and the tang of the woodsmoke that poured from the engines. “Here, Dodo, sit by the window and stick your head out like a dog. The fresh air will sort you out.”

      She did as I told her to and soon her colour came back, although that might have been the red dust blowing into her face. She sat back after a while and we passed the next hours peacefully. Dodo dozed and I watched Africa reveal itself. First came the mangrove swamps with their sinister-looking roots. They reminded me of the bayous back home, the branches twisting out to catch at a person and hold them fast. The roots thrust up through the muck, looking as if the trees had gotten up and walked around when no one was looking and had just come to rest.

      After the mangrove swamps, there were acres of orchards thick with tropical fruits – coconuts and mangoes, bananas and papayas, all ripening like jewels as monkeys frolicked through their branches, plotting and pilfering like highwaymen. Beyond the fruit trees, the country opened up to wide prairie, tilting upward like an angled plate and each mile carried us higher. We crossed a few bridges I didn’t like the looks of, and I liked the sound of them even less. Each one swayed and creaked in protest, and I held my breath until we made it to the other side.

      We stopped at every small station on the line to fill the boilers of the steam engines, and at every station women peddlers with sleek black skin wrapped bright calico fabric about their bodies and sold wares from baskets on their heads. I bought bananas and mangoes and devoured them, licking mango juice from my hands as Dora continued to moan.

      I pointed out one bridge from my guidebook as we crossed it. “This is the Tsavo bridge, Dodo. When it was built, a pair of man-eating lions spent nine months gobbling up the crew. It says here they ate more than a hundred men.”

      She gave a delicate hiccup and fixed me with a hateful look. “What are you reading? The Ghoulish Guide to Kenya?”

      I waved the book at her. “It’s the guidebook the captain gave me, his own personal copy. Baedeker’s. Ooh, and it says that the lions would creep into camp and carry off victims, staying just close enough that their companions could hear the beasts crunching into the bones in the night.”

      “Stop it, Delilah. You’re just as bad as you were when we were children, always reading those horrible ghost stories out loud just to frighten me.”

      “Don’t be stupid. I read them to you because you never owned you were frightened. If you’d shown the slightest fear I would have stopped.”

      “I used to lock myself in the bathroom and sleep in the bathtub. Of course I was frightened,” she argued. “You just liked to torment me.”

      “Possibly,” СКАЧАТЬ