I follow artist Andrew Baker’s RSS feed and received this stunning (but frightening) piece of a Tokoloshe last week.
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| "Tokolosh" by Andrew Baker |
This reminded me of a story I did a while back. I tried my hand at a story incorporating local folklore and I used an amalgam of beliefs about the Tokoloshe and it turned out as quite a dark piece. But I guess it is a gory subject!
Doctor’s Visit
“You’ve come too late.”
The old woman who had spoken sat on a bed near the back of the hut. It was quite dark inside, but I could make out her deeply wrinkled face, faded red dress and that the bed she was sitting on was raised above the ground on a couple of bricks.
She sat with her legs stretched out in front of her, her feet bound in cloths that were once white. Her arms were folded beneath her breasts as she stared at us. I moved my first aid kit from one hand to the other and cleared my throat.
“Too late for what?” I enquired.
She squinted. “You haven’t been here before. Where’s the other doctor?”
“He went back home. I’m new at the clinic.” I held out my hand. “I’m doctor Smith.” She did not take it but her wrinkled face cracked into a smile. “New, eh? I hope you can do something better for my feet, they’re hurting something awfully.”
I looked at my partner, but he shook his head. “You do it.”
I placed my kit on the dirt floor and knelt down by her feet before asking my partner to get me some light.
“You have very good English,” I said, making small talk. “I was worried I wouldn’t be able to speak to you.”
She harrumphed. “I finished school,” she said. “Worked all my life like an honest person in the city. I came back here to help my daughter look after her children. Her husband’s at the mines, you know, up north. She was left behind here.”
“Where is she now?”
“She passed on. A year ago now.”
“So you’re looking after your grandchildren?” It was a story I had become all too accustomed to.
“They also moved on.” She pointed a gnarled black finger at the far rounded wall where four identical pots stood. “Their dust,” she said.
“Ashes? You cremated them?” I wondered how far the closest funeral home was from this rural village.
“Dust,” she insisted and I left it there.
I started unwinding the blood-caked bandages from her feet and searched for something to say in the stillness while trying not to breathe through my nose. For a doctor I couldn’t handle the smell of blood that well.
“You said we are too late?”
She nodded and cringed as I touched her foot. “He took another one,” she said. “My neighbour only returned with the bricks. The ones we make here are not strong enough for the beds, you know.” She shook her head sadly. “No one cares about the rural people – if this happened in one of the cities the newspapers would be all over it, but here…”
I carefully unwrapped her foot. If she had been in one of the cities she wouldn’t have had to wait for us to travel nearly 100kms to give her new bandages and pain medication in a van that broke nearly every 10km.
At last the bandage came off and I stared in horror at her foot. Where five toes should have been, only three were left. The other two were ragged stumps, one partially healed, the other bleeding again after I had removed the bandage.
“What happened?” I asked, focusing on the wall so as not to gag in front of a patient.
“He came again last night and took another one.”
“He?” I stared at her other foot. “How many?”
“Also two gone,” she said and turned her face away from me.
“Who does this to you?”
“I can’t say or he’ll come back. Can’t say. She looked at my partner and said something I didn’t understand.
I looked at my partner, but he too turned his face away.
I cleaned and bound her feet as well as I could and gave her pain medicine.
“You could go back to the city,” I said, but she shook her head.
“He got what he wanted and I have the bricks now. Nothing can hurt me now.”
I said my goodbyes and stepped outside into the bright sunlight. Around the cluster of huts the hills seemed to undulate forever. Here and there in their green folds there were other settlements with a dozen or so huts. There were no electrical cables to be seen. Nothing modern but our van stood here.
I looked at my partner.
“What happened to her?” I asked, knowing that he had been there before.
He waited until we were locked in the car.
“Her daughter stood up to their healer after he mixed the wrong muti to give to someone. He wanted to keep her quiet so he made a Tokoloshe. She stood up to him and the grandmother told the others about the healer’s deeds.”
I looked back at the hut with unbelief. “But it couldn’t- that’s just folk tales.“
“Where do you think the tales come from?” He sighed and started the car. “She stood up to him and died, that’s why her children turned to dust.” His voice sounded far-off. “That’s what happens.”
I swallowed hard a few times.
“How can she be sure it’s over – it’s just a couple of bricks!”
He shook his head and pointed to where two or three people stood at a new grave.
“The healer was not liked, he was evil. He is buried now. The bricks will keep it away from her.”
As we pulled away and I looked back to the road that would lead us back to the city, I could’ve sworn I saw a fleeting black shadow out of the corner of my eye, darting away from the houses, but when I looked again, there was nothing.
Some writing news
I’m working on a couple of fiction pieces some which just needs a bit of a spit and polish, but also one (The Dragon Seeker) that ended up needing almost an entire rewrite now that I’ve taken it out of the drawer again. I’ve also finished an Afrikaans translation and partial rewrite of one of the NaShoStoMo stories, now called “Sirenesang” (Siren’s Song). I’m hoping to get it in one of the local magazines, but will first send it to a Top Secret Reader...
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