The Butterfly Heart Read Free Page B

she’s in your shoulder and not mine?” I asked.
    “I feel her presence, a small tingling presence.” This was all said in perfect Madillo style, whispery with a “no further discussion” kind of sound to it.
    “Madillo, don’t talk nonsense,” Mum said, as if it hadn’t been her who had planted the idea in the first place.
    This got me thinking about being a twin. It is almost all good being a twin, mainly because I always have someone to talk to. There are a few downsides, like being referred to as “the twins”, as if that explains everything. (We do have names; we are not, as Dr Seuss might have had us, Twin One and Twin Two; we are, in fact, very different from each other.) But I am glad Madillo is my twin, even though I didn’t have much choice about it. And I am glad that Mum and Dad are not horses, because knowing my luck I would have been the one to have been pinched.
    I decided that after supper I would ask Madillo about Winifred, to see whether she had noticed her strange behaviour too. So when we had done the washing-up and were left in the kitchen – that’s where we do our homework – I asked if she had noticed anything strange about Winifred recently. Madillo leant forward. “Strange? What kind of strange?” she said.
    “Well, she doesn’t put her hand up any more, she’s been late for school … and I think she’s getting thinner. I can see it in her face.”
    Madillo closed her eyes briefly. “Probably spirit possession. What else could it be, with those symptoms? That must be it. Come to think of it, her eyes have been looking a bit odd recently…”
    All this from someone who had not noticed anything until I pointed it out! Madillo sat back, waiting for me to agree with her.
    Generally, agreeing is the best thing to do with Madillo. The easy route would have been to nod and say something like “Mmm, it could be… You never know”, as if spirit possession was one of a normal range of possibilities. I do not usually take the easy route. So I raised my left eyebrow and said, “Really?” to give her the opportunity to expand. She needed no second invitation.
    “Well, three things have happened, according to you, in the space of a week: she’s stopped putting up her hand, she was late and she’s getting thinner. Have you noticed what she actually does when Sister asks a question?”
    “She just sits there with her head down,” I answered.
    “I think if you looked a little closer, you might see a silent struggle going on between her and her spirit occupier. You’d probably see her trying to put her hand up but not being able to. I think her spirit is evil…”
    Madillo was in full swing now.
    “That’s rubbish and you know it,” I said, knowing I would be ignored.
    “And her face getting thinner? You have some other explanation for that, Bul-Boo?”
    “Weight loss? Tapeworm? Worry?” I said. “Three million reasons that would be better than yours.”
    She shook her head and said solemnly, “No, I think the spirit is eating away at her.”
    It seemed like a good time to end the conversation. Evil spirits aren’t really my thing, and no matter what I said, nothing would change my sister’s mind anyway.

Bul-Boo
    I didn’t think about the Kongamato much last night because my head was too full of Winifred. I was remembering the time Madillo and I became friends with her.
    It was after we discovered that she also knew the Snake Man, Ifwafwa. One day in class we were doing English and Sister asked us to make up a story about trees. I couldn’t think of anything but Madillo was the first to volunteer. It’s quite something to watch Madillo tell a story because she’s pretty dramatic about it.
    She went and stood at the front of the class, even though she could have stayed at her desk. And then she started.
    “This is my story of the Kondanamwali – the tree that eats maidens. It is the biggest baobab tree known to humans, and it stands proudly in the Kafue National