Dancing Towards the Blade and Other Stories Read Free

care of children.
    He thought about telling Rose this, but instead told her about what had happened in the first village they’d visited that day. Something funny and shocking. A distant cousin of his father’s had been discovered hiding in the fields on the outskirts of the village. Trying to dodge the handover of a gift was a serious matter and not only had the offering been taken from him by force, but he had brought shame upon himself and the rest of his family.
    ‘Can you believe it?’ the boy said. ‘That man was Grade A! Cowering in the tall grass like a woman, to avoid handing over a bowl. A bowl for heaven’s sake.’
    Rose pushed her shoulder against his. ‘So, you think you’re going to be Grade A? Grade B maybe? What d’you think, boy?’
    He shrugged. He knew what he was hoping for. All he could be certain about was that this was the last time anybody would call him ‘boy’.
    The one with the bottle stood a foot or so forward from his two friends. He reached over his shoulder for the lit cigarette that he knew would be there, took three quick drags and handed it back. ‘What team do you support anyway?’
    ‘Fucking Man U, I bet.’
    For a moment, Vincent thought about lying. Giving them their own team’s name. He knew that he’d be caught out in a second. ‘I don’t follow a team.’
    ‘Right. Not an English team.’
    ‘Not any team,’ Vincent said.
    ‘Some African team, yeah? Kicking a fucking coconut around.’
    ‘Bongo Bongo United FC!’
    ‘ “Kicking a coconut”, that’s classic.’
    ‘Headers must be a nightmare, yeah?’
    The skinny one and the one with the shaved head began to laugh. They pursed their lips and stuck out their bum-fluffy chins. They pretended to scratch their armpits.
    ‘You know what FC stands for don’t you? Fucking coon.’
    Vincent looked away from them. He heard the monkey noises begin softly, then start to get louder.
    ‘Look at him,’ the one in the cap said. ‘He’s shitting himself.’ He said something else after that, but Vincent didn’t hear it.
    Dawn, at the river, on the final morning.
    Dotted for a mile or more along the flat, brown riverbank were the other groups. Some were smaller than his own, while others must have numbered a hundred, but at the centre of each stood one of the boy’s age-mates. Each ready to connect with the past, to embrace the future. Each asking for the strength to endure what lay ahead of him.
    The boy was called forward by an elder. As he took his first steps, he glanced sideways, saw his age-mates along the riverbank moving in a line together towards the water.
    This was the preparation.
    In the seconds he spent held beneath the water, he wondered whether a cry would be heard if he were to let one out. He imagined it rising up to the surface, the bubbles bursting in a series of tiny screams, each costing him grades.
    He emerged from the river purified and ready to be painted with death.
    The sun was just up but already fierce, and the white mud was baked hard within a minute or two of being smeared across his face and chest and belly. The mist was being burned away and looking along the bank, the boy saw a row of pale statues. A long line of ghosts in the buttery sunlight.
    He watched an old man approach each figure, as one now approached him. The elder took a mouthful of beer from a pumpkin gourd and spat, spraying it across the boy’s chest. The beer ran in rivulets down the shell of dried mud, as prayers were said and his uncles stepped towards him.
    The group that had been nearest to him jogged past, already finished, and he looked at his age-mate, caked in white mud as he was. The boy had known him, as he’d known most of them, for all of their sixteen years, but his friend was suddenly unrecognisable. It was not the mask of mud. It was the eyes that stared out from behind it. It was the eyes that were suddenly different.
    The boy was nudged forward, was handed his knife, and the group began loping away in