The Butterfly Heart Read Free

it’s not an insult to be called a snake name, because he loves them.
    He sat down on the grass and we sat down next to him, me the furthest away from the snake bag, and he began.
    “This is the story of the Bangweulu Swamps, the place where the water and the sky meet and become one, the place where the lechwe live: the red deer with the legs that can leap in the water. It is not near my home, it is in the place of the Kaonde people.”
    When the Snake Man tells us a story, he tells it in a very quiet voice so it is hard for us to hear him. He is clever like that; he makes us listen. Sister Leonisa does the opposite, shouting and waving her arms around, sometimes even jumping up and down. With her we have no option but to listen, but with Ifwafwa we want to.
    “A long time ago a small child, only a little bigger than you,” he said, nodding his head towards me, “was playing down by the river. She was with her mother, who was drawing water. A black shadow fell across them and the mother looked up into the sky, as they had been waiting for the rains for many months. Then she heard her small daughter scream and turned around.
    “The Kongamato, the one they all dreaded meeting, was swooping down out of the sky towards the little girl. Its long beak was wide open and the mother could see its teeth. Its huge wings blocked the sun. It was almost upon them when the mother reached up and grabbed hold of its tail. She held on tight – she did not want her little girl taken from her – but the Kongamato was too strong for her and grabbed the child and flew up into the sky. The mother managed to keep her grip and the creature flew away silently, carrying them both as if they weighed no more than a flake of ash.”
    The Snake Man looked at Madillo and me. “Do you know of the Kongamato? The overwhelmer of boats?”
    We shook our heads, hardly daring to breathe.
    “It is a bird without feathers. A lizard with wings. A creature like no other, with a beak and teeth. It flies slowly and has lived on this earth since time began. Its skin is like a snake’s, soft and smooth. No one knows where it goes to rest, but it always flies around the Bangweulu Swamps. It causes floods by stopping the river and there is no boat in this world that can resist it; no person either, for to look into its eyes is death. The Kaonde people make a potion to protect themselves against it, only this poor mother and her child had forgotten to use it. No one ever saw them again. The Kongamato returned alone.”
    Ifwafwa sat back on the grass in silence. Then he opened the top of his sack slightly to check that his snakes were still well. He smiled then closed it again. That’s the downside of him not telling lies: he doesn’t have many stories with happy endings.
    “Is it real?” Madillo asked.
    He looked at her. “Do you think it is, my dear? People have seen it many times. They all speak of the same thing: of the wings that are wider than I am tall, of the beak that is longer than the tail. It is real when you have seen it, yes. I hope you never will.”
    Madillo shivered but did not look worried. She likes getting scared. These kinds of things fly out of her head as quickly as they arrive, but they stay in mine. I will have to try and think very hard about something else, otherwise the Kongamato will visit me tonight in my dreams.

Ifwafwa
    It is a long life when you are one. One on your own. That is why I tell stories. When I tell stories, my head is filled with other people who talk to me and know me. When I tell stories, my mother and grandmother come back to me. My grandmother scolds me and sends me off to look for eggs. I hear my mother laughing. People whose names have gone from my head appear again and I can look into their faces and know them. I like it when my head is busy like that.
    When I was smaller than Bul-Boo and her sister, I started listening to people when they couldn’t see me. I cannot explain why. Crouching low, I sat outside