What a fool I was, I realized as I turned for home. It was late, far too late; in my petulant mood I had made one of the worst mistakes anyone can, especially a girl whose family assumes she's safe in a friend's hut. I had let darkness overtake me in the jungle.
My babakoto grandfathers, who sang deafeningly in the trees all morning, had long since quieted; the spirits of the dead, who had floated in iridescent colors through the lianas and great purple flowers, had gone to their ghost beds. All warnings to me, all ignored in my hopeless rage.
I hadn't eaten in over a full day; I could not pick fruit from the sacred trees. The night before I had had no stomach for my mother's supper of manioc leaves and rice, so upset was I by her siding with my father against my desire to start school. Had I not gone to the annual exhumation two days earlier, had I not fulfilled my traditional role by changing my ancestors' shrouds? Was it not my shirking brother Rakoto who would be visited in his dreams by our angry forebears, who would have to go to the sorcerer, the mpanaofanafody, to make terrible amends? I had thrown myself onto my sleeping mat, my mind full of angry protests that I could fulfill tradition and be educated, my empty stomach grumbling along with me. This morning I had fled into the forest, to spend the day at the sacred, white-sheeted rock whose name no one knows, asking the togny spirits for help, for guidance. But I had forgotten to bring an offering--no goat to slaughter, no money, not even a drop of rum--and I knew my request would go unheeded, although I danced until I fell down, exhausted.
My heart seemed too heavy to carry home with me; I could not face another night without hope. Yet there was no choice; so I dragged my feet as I turned back down the path, realizing only then that it was filled now not with light but with sound, the calls of insects, of frogs, of all my brethren on this great red island. Then despair turned to fear. Could I find my way home through the deepening darkness? Exhaustion had seemed to swath my mind in heavy cloth, and I could not think, could only manage to heft one foot forward and then the next. I heard the stream to the south, and knew that I must trust my ears and not my eyes to guide me back. I told myself firmly not to fear the zazavavindrano, for the mermaids craved only the blood of handsome men, and I was not strong or skilled enough a girl to be worth stealing.
Perhaps if I moved quickly, I would not lose the twilight--or be captured by the spirit-sucking kily and baobab trees all around me, dangerous at nightfall. I slipped and nearly fell as something slithered under my bare foot--and thanked my ancestors, for it was only a snake, no threat to me.
Then I raised my eyes again to the shadowed path, and--too late, too late; I had looked right at it.
The size of a small dog, it crouched on a limb directly ahead of me, evil darker than the shadows clinging to its rough black coat, its enormous bushy tail. Its pale snout seemed to glow green; its eyes, a yellow brighter than the heart of fire, glared demonically into mine, framed by great ears like the black wings of death. All fady, fady to look at. And then it uncurled an impossibly long, thin finger of one clawed hand, and pointed it at me.
The gesture was a sure harbinger of death. The only way to avoid the curse was to kill the ghastly thing and impale it on a stake by the road, so that some passing stranger would absorb the evil. But I had no weapons, nothing with which to defend myself. The damage had been done the moment I met its gaze.
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