Short story – Tears of our ancestors

For years, water tankers skipped Omusarakuumba, but luckily a sprinkler-like rock spat litres of water. Soon stories about a tap-like rock dripping water out of a hole, the size of a needle’s eye, spread beyond the mountains.

Months later, visitors arrived like a flock of vultures on a skeleton tree and bribed the grass-skirts’ men with stone-hard sweets. Yet, the locals tricked the visitors by escorting them to a chalk-sand borehole drilled before the beginning of time.

For now, the hidden spot where the water trickled puzzled the tourists, until the sweet-tooth Zakueeua spilt the beans.

“We’ll give you lollipops,” said a traveller, whose elbows had been peeled by the blazing sun. “What’s a lorry-pa?” asked Zakueeua, drooling saliva on his chest.

Instantaneously, a visitor with green veins around his legs placed a blue lollipop on the tip of Zakueeua’s tongue.

First, Zakueeua snapped his neck and peered through the thorny branches waving in the whistling wind.

“Only the pale-yellow birds are snooping on our secret!” hissed a pink-faced man, as a swinging monkey laughed at his remarks. Afterwards, Zakueeua tiptoed towards the water-vomiting rock as camera-flashing travellers stalked him. Meanwhile, the scissor-sharp rocks poked holes in the visitors’ sandals before Zakueeua squatted near a rock that gushed water. “This rock breastfeeds on rain-milk,” said Zakueeua, snapping his index finger, as grey pigeons repeatedly cooed his remarks. The travellers filmed the tap stone, while a pencil-sharp nose man poked his pinkie finger into the rock. His finger got stuck, and the travellers chopped it, serving a finger snack to the gurgling rock.

Fast forward, the cameras revealed that the crooked-finger rock widened a few footsteps from the entrance, and they squeezed more blue lollipops into Zakueeua’s hands. Afterwards, they raced to a car parked near the dolomite rocks.

However, when they reached the Stone Cruiser, they spotted feet-stomping elephants buckling the car’s bonnet and spoonbill birds pecking their sleeping bags.

In a blink, red-eyed baboons snatched the visitors’ cameras and binoculars, leaving them with river-deep scratches over the blood-spurting arms. First, Zakueeua licked the lollipop and later picked a knife-sharp rock so he could remove the wrap from the second lolly. Unfortunately, he missed the stick-mounted sweet and minced his thumbnail.

Soon he hopped towards the Omumborombonga tree, where the stick-waving men quizzed him about his sky-blue tongue. By now, the sweets had dyed his tongue ocean-blue, and the tongue had stretched over his naked chest.

Thus, the stone-necklaces wearing men flogged him with a horsewhip, and he sobbed with hiccups. This time, he confessed that he’d spoken the language of stones with strangers, while the snitching birds sang the live drama in the canopy of the tree. Finally, Zakueeua counted the white stones, while the rain poured tears of the ancestors, filling up the borehole with salty water.

-Mungambue@gmail.com

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