can use cross stitch or I can choose plain or purl. I needn’t stick to other people’s patterns. And that is how it happen today that when I get to Klaas’s Quick Turn up on the hillside beyond Poor Man’s Ditch, I decide to turn off to the Dark Blue Mountain that Ouma Nella first showed me and that no one else know about, just the two of us. It’s a long way to go, but it help me to stretch the time so that I can reach Zandvliet later than usual, and I’m really in no hurry to get home. It’s just walking and walking, downhill at first along the narrow footpath, the Cobra road where Ouma Nella and I once saw the big snake, down to the Thin Trees, and from there up along the opposite slope, the steep rise along White Thorns, across the Long Neck, past God’s Stream, and the lovely straight stretch to the Hollow Cliff where the Eye lies staring unblinking at the sky. Because that is where I want to get to.
This is where Ouma Nella first showed me the overhang of red rocks, and if one bends over to peer under it, because it’s very low down and you almost got to kneel to see: a long line of little people walking along the solid rock, or standing or jumping, small thin men with bows and arrows and knobbly knees and spiky legs and sticklike pricks. One of the men is thinner and longer than the others, with a big round head that always make Ouma Nella burst out laughing when she look at him and I can see why.
There are three elands too in the row of little men, elands with very big humps and long straight horns, two or three times as big as the little prickmen, and even a few elephants. Those must be some of the elephants that used to cross these mountains in the dawn-days of the world and that was the first storytellers in these parts. If you ask me, they must have been the storytellers that made these mountains happen.
Many of Ouma Nella’s stories tell about the little men under the overhang. And when on some afternoons all the slave women from the farms gather at the Dwars River to spread the shining clean washing white and wet over the bushes and low branches and the rocks where they stretch out their legs and tell the stories they brought from all the places they come from, then it’s the story of this long thin Prickman Ouma Nella tell most often.
He is the kind of man, she say, the kind of Godman who once threw all the stars up into the sky and who keep all the winds together until the time is right to set them free. And it’s he, say Ouma Nella, who bring death into the world. The people tell many different stories about this, but the one I get from Ouma Nella is the one where his father tell Prickman to wait until the LordGod’s wife is asleep, and then he must do the thing to her that will make her just as clever as the LordGod himself. So Prickman wait and wait until he see the woman is now fast asleep, so fast that after some time she throw her legs wide open because the sleep is so good, and that is when he softly crawl to her, with that thick round head of his stuck far forward, and he creep between her legs to where it is all dark and moist, and she moan in her sleep and open herself even wider, and Prickman take off the little
kaross
he use to wear around his hips so that he is now all bare-arsed, and he creep right into her, into the darkness and the moistness of her, until only his two thin little legs stick out between her lips down there. And all the birds in the whole wide world come flying closer to see, because that is a sight one do not see every day. But the LordGod, Prickman’s father, he warn them all very sternly not to make a sound: not a squeak or a peep, not a chirp or a burp, not a hoot or a toot, and most especially not to laugh or to giggle or to snigger or titter or twirp, otherwise there will be shit in the world. So all the birds of heaven sit quiet as death, watching and watching, while Prickman creep higher and higher into her, until he is as smooth and wet and slithery as
This is where Ouma Nella first showed me the overhang of red rocks, and if one bends over to peer under it, because it’s very low down and you almost got to kneel to see: a long line of little people walking along the solid rock, or standing or jumping, small thin men with bows and arrows and knobbly knees and spiky legs and sticklike pricks. One of the men is thinner and longer than the others, with a big round head that always make Ouma Nella burst out laughing when she look at him and I can see why.
There are three elands too in the row of little men, elands with very big humps and long straight horns, two or three times as big as the little prickmen, and even a few elephants. Those must be some of the elephants that used to cross these mountains in the dawn-days of the world and that was the first storytellers in these parts. If you ask me, they must have been the storytellers that made these mountains happen.
Many of Ouma Nella’s stories tell about the little men under the overhang. And when on some afternoons all the slave women from the farms gather at the Dwars River to spread the shining clean washing white and wet over the bushes and low branches and the rocks where they stretch out their legs and tell the stories they brought from all the places they come from, then it’s the story of this long thin Prickman Ouma Nella tell most often.
He is the kind of man, she say, the kind of Godman who once threw all the stars up into the sky and who keep all the winds together until the time is right to set them free. And it’s he, say Ouma Nella, who bring death into the world. The people tell many different stories about this, but the one I get from Ouma Nella is the one where his father tell Prickman to wait until the LordGod’s wife is asleep, and then he must do the thing to her that will make her just as clever as the LordGod himself. So Prickman wait and wait until he see the woman is now fast asleep, so fast that after some time she throw her legs wide open because the sleep is so good, and that is when he softly crawl to her, with that thick round head of his stuck far forward, and he creep between her legs to where it is all dark and moist, and she moan in her sleep and open herself even wider, and Prickman take off the little
kaross
he use to wear around his hips so that he is now all bare-arsed, and he creep right into her, into the darkness and the moistness of her, until only his two thin little legs stick out between her lips down there. And all the birds in the whole wide world come flying closer to see, because that is a sight one do not see every day. But the LordGod, Prickman’s father, he warn them all very sternly not to make a sound: not a squeak or a peep, not a chirp or a burp, not a hoot or a toot, and most especially not to laugh or to giggle or to snigger or titter or twirp, otherwise there will be shit in the world. So all the birds of heaven sit quiet as death, watching and watching, while Prickman creep higher and higher into her, until he is as smooth and wet and slithery as
Similar Books
