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tried to eject the mango pip by wiggling her tongue vigorously back and forth, but it was no use. Her eyes glinted, though, when her searching fingers fell on the icy cold surface of the small eerie opal of her amulet. Pausing only for a moment to absorb the magical shadowy darkness of it, she felt along the length of the leather thong to see if her precious amber was still attached to the other end. It was. It gave off a low vibration as she took the warm stone between her hands. The healing power of it crept slowly through her body and the numbness in her hands began to recede.  
    Peeping through slit eyes, Gogo Maya watched the little creatures settle down on a small mound in front of where she lay. They chewed on globs of the glutinous substance, and it seemed, the more they chewed, the more transparent they became, until she was able to look right through some of their little faces. It was quite unnerving the way she could watch the toffee shift from cheek to cheek. She wondered what sort of powerful new magic was in the innocent looking treat. It was definitely not forest magic.
    “Morathi,” drawled the stranger’s cool voice.
    “Yeeees,” Morathi breathed nervously.  
    Gogo Maya knew that name. That bloody lunatic, Morathi, from Kapichi village. They were Tokoloshe, she realised, even if they did not look much like it at the moment. What sort of trouble had he got his clan into now?
    “Morathi,” the voice said. “You will find out how much the witch knows, and you will find out if she can hear my thoughts. Then you will get rid of her.”  
    Gogo Maya’s eyes flew open in astonishment. What did he mean, “ get rid of her ”? Did he mean for them to kill her?  
    Bristling with indignation, Gogo Maya tried to sit up and protest, but she might as well have saved her breath. No one could understand a word of what she was saying around the mango pip, and the air of relief emanating from the Tokoloshe told her the owner of the voice had disappeared back into the forest.  
    Morathi rounded on his men. Some looked keen to carry out the voice’s orders but most shuffled about, looking embarrassed.
    “You, you and you, drag the old crone over here, and you, go and fetch my bow,” he ordered.
    “I don’t want to,” whined an almost visible Tokoloshe.
    “Yeah, fetch your own bow,” another said, folding his arms across his bare chest and frowning.
    “Look, you fools!” Morathi was now puffing himself up to his full height. “We made a deal. He gives us the nzuri thana and we do what he says.”  
    “You mean like slaves?” an invisible Tokoloshe said, from beside Gogo Maya’s ear.
    “No, more like someone who has accepted something from someone, and now owes that someone something in return,” Morathi said to a spot somewhere to the left of where the invisible Tokoloshe stood.  
    The rest of the Tokoloshe whispered anxiously amongst themselves.
    “Please,” a stumpy old Tokoloshe took the toffee out of his mouth and went to hand the sticky mess back to Morathi. “We thought we were just stealing it.”
    “Um,” a small voice beside Gogo Maya said. “It seems altogether less risky if we just sort of... go home.” Already, quite a few of them were edging their way in the direction of the woods.
    Well, that served him right, Gogo Maya snorted to herself in approval. Usually the Tokoloshe did not have the sense they were born with, but one or two at least were showing an instinct for self-preservation.  
    However sinister their nzuri thana supplier was, Gogo Maya had not survived in this jungle for over fifty years without a trick or two up her own sleeve. She tightened her fist around her amulet. If push came to shove, she could use the power of the opal to make herself disappear and reappear someplace else, and the Tokoloshe would be left holding some small forest creature. Although she shuddered to think of the terrible ramifications if that particular trick went wrong again. Last time...