“You think I don’t feel it?” he whispered, under the curtain of my hair. “Every beat of my heart is taking you away from me. I want to stop here forever. This tent, this kiss, this moment.” His fingers sunk into my hair as he pulled me to his lips.
I was drinking in the sweetness of his kiss when my stomach growled.
“I think your stomach wants in on the action.” Jack slid down and put his ear to my belly. “Are you talking dirty to me?” He proceeded to have a makeshift conversation. “What? No shit.” He came up and gave me a grim look. “Good news or bad?”
“How bad is it?” I played along.
“Death threats. If I don’t feed you, I’m done for.”
“And the good?” I laughed.
“You get a bite to eat, and then we get to pick up right where we left off.”
“And what about you?”
“Oh, I plan to eat my fill, sweetness.” He bit the slope between my neck and shoulder and held it between his teeth before soothing it with his tongue.
I fidgeted with a bag of milk chocolate squares while he rummaged through his backpack.
“This can or this one?” He held out identical tins.
“Both.” I popped a piece of chocolate into my mouth and grabbed another one. Apparently, sex made me hungry.
“Do you hear that?” asked Jack, sitting up straighter.
There was a faint, metallic clanging coming from outside.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Sounds like . . . cowbells.”
We got dressed and pushed the tent flaps aside. The rain had stopped, but a thick mist rose out of the damp, heated ground.
“Why would anyone bring cows to this godforsaken place?” Jack stepped outside.
I crawled out after him and squinted into the dense, colorless haze.
“They may not see us,” said Jack, picking up the two cans he’d just emptied for our lunch. “We need to keep them from trampling over our tent.” He hurried ahead, striking the cans together as an alert.
The cowbells got closer but seemed to still as the other party heard us. We stopped and peered through the humid vapor. Groves of monumental rock rose on either side of us. The mist gave everything a fey-like quality, like we were standing at the threshold of an otherworldly place, still and suspended, except for the muted clink of the odd cowbell.
A figure appeared through the fog, shrouded in veils of phantom gray. He planted his spear in the soft, sodden soil and stood before us like a velvet-black shadow. A checkered sheet hung around his shoulders and loops of silver jangled from his earlobes.
“Olonana.” Jack stepped forward as the chief came into focus.
“Kasserian ingera.” He lifted his spear in greeting. How are the children?
Jack was about to reply when the ribbons of mist around Olonana shifted. Moon white faces appeared soundlessly, one by one, around the chief’s dark figure. I watched breathlessly, as they materialized, like silent notes summoned by a conjurer’s symphony. One, two, three, four . . . they kept stepping out of the mist, until they were all standing, like a line of vapor-cloaked wraiths on either side of Olonana.
Thirteen albino kids, flanked by a pair of red-garbed Maasai warriors.
My hair stood on end. Against the backdrop of distant, blurry mountains, the group stood before us with an air of expectation. Behind them, cows sniffed the wet, barren ground, searching for whispers of grass.
“Jack Warden,” Olonana prompted him for a response. “I have come a long way to bring you these children.”
“What . . . ?” Jack paused. “How . . . ?”
“The last time we met, you told me you would be in Magesa, end of the month. I am glad I caught up with you. I cannot go any farther with the cattle, so I leave them with you.” He gestured toward the children that were huddled around him. “Where are the other kids, the ones you were transporting to Wanza?”
“It didn’t work out, but you . . .” Jack scanned the faces before us. “How did you end up with all these children?”
“We found them in the back of a cargo van, not far from the town of Bunda. The car was parked outside a restaurant. We heard thudding from the inside, so we stopped to check it out. Salaton here—” he pointed to one of the morans with him “—he jiggled the lock with his spear. We found them bound and gagged inside. Some of them have been abducted from their homes, others traded. They tell me there were more kids, but . . .” Olonana shook his head. “The men who had them are dangerous people. They trade in black magic. They are delivering these kids, one by one, for sacrificial rites. It won’t be long before they track us down. We made the children walk between the cattle to hide them and distort the footprints. The rain hasn’t helped though. We’ve left a trail in the mud. A good tracker will be able to find us. And they will. These kids are worth a lot of money to them. You must get them to Wanza as soon as you can.”
Jack did not respond. His face was like a blank slate—emotionless and expressionless. Silence loomed, gray and heavy as the mist. The gravity of the situation was not lost on me. Neither was Jack’s predicament. We weren’t prepared for this. We had no car, no supplies, and no way of safeguarding thirteen kids against whoever was chasing them down.
“The van you found the kids in—” I said to Olonana. “What did it look like?”
“It was white,” he replied. “And yellow.”