This particular dark night had Munoda feeling like the world was coming to an end. Expecting to find a plate of hot food waiting for him, after a protracted day laboring in his maize field, he had found his lazy wife snoring lights out on a small mat, besides the dying fire in their hut.
She had not even bothered to wake up and warm his food; after all it was only around past eight. During his bachelor days, his solitary mother always made sure he had a hot plate of food every night. Munoda decided to pay her a visit; it was only about a quarter of a kilometer from his resident. Besides he seldom visited her these days as he tried to adjust to marriage life.
Jacket on, machete bound to his thigh, the tall, dark, well built and daring man headed out. The darkness embraced him like one of its own as he took the road that was parallel to the ten adjacent fields that belonged to Old man Manyika who happened to be his mother’s neighbor. It was pitch black, they were no stars shining tonight and even the moon had decided not to show up according to its principle. An edgy feeling crept into his spine distributing a chilliness to his bones. He couldn’t shake off the bad premonition.
Striding steadily on his way, Munoda got lost in his thoughts indulging in the happy memories of his childhood. He was approaching the small bush hill that had been gossiped to be an ancient grave yard, besides old man Manyika’s seventh field when he first heard the cracking sound. Munoda was far from superstitious and believed that ghost stories were just fables, told to scare children from venturing at night.
The sound was inescapable, he listened more carefully and it repeated. He suspected it might be someone fetching firewood. What puzzled Munoda was, who could possibly be out at this dark night looking for firewood and what were they doing all day long. Either the hunger was playing tricks on his senses or
there really was someone fetching firewood out there. He moved closer to the source to investigate but the darkness and surrounding shrubs didn’t make it any easy.
‘Who is there’, he said loudly as he braced himself for the reply. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness but he still couldn’t see anything an inch from his face
‘’Maka’, came a little girl’s reply. The name didn’t ring a bell. Puzzled and yet intrigued, he moved closer until he could indeed make out the silhouette of a little girl. In this closely knit community, you could rarely meet a stranger and yet here he was at an ancient grave yard talking to a child that seemed like one.
‘Who send you to fetch firewood’, he asked her quietly. She didn’t answer him; instead she kept on groping for more firewood.
‘It’s dangerous out here, let me escort you home, I can’t leave you out here alone’, he said more to himself than to her when she kept ignoring him. A part of him didn’t want to believe that he was really talking to some strange kid at a grave yard.
‘I am not alone’, she answered innocently as she went on groping for fire wood.
Munoda looked about him, expecting to see someone but the darkness made it impossible. Questions swirled in his head trying to figure out the predicament he had landed himself into. Why wasn’t she scared as he was?
‘Who are you with’; he waited tersely for the reply expecting a ghost mother to appear instantly. Pathetic, now he really had lost his mind.
‘I am with you’, she said as she came to stand before him. ‘Do you know me’, he asked puzzled with her confidence.
‘I was praying for an angel but you will do,’ she said jokingly. To that Munoda was baffled but his heart broke a little as he stared down at the naive little girl. What drove a child to a grave yard at night. His only answer was, he really must be hallucinating.
‘I am not an angel, but I can take you home. Where do you stay?, he asked as he crunched down to her eye level. He never forgets what he saw in that girl’s eyes for as long as he will live. Vacant eyes that had known a great deal of sorrow stared back at him but he also saw determination and the will of a Viking in those same eyes.
‘At uncle Manyika’s house’, she muttered.
Instantly, Munoda recalled his little sister telling him about a strange girl she had seen at the local primary school where she was doing her grade four. She had mentioned that the weird girl was Manyika’s niece and she was doing grade 3. Gossip had it, that old man Manyika had brought his niece to live with him after her mother committed suicide a month ago. The old man had taken the girl from her father’s house so that he and his wife could look after her but all they had done so far was to put the poor girl through hell.
As he studied the child, Munoda wondered what sort of people could send a girl that age out to fetch firewood at this ungodly hour. He wanted answers and he was keen on getting them. He couldn’t bear to think what might have happened if he had not found her first. His brotherly instincts kicked in and he knew he would fight for this little girl’s life.
‘ Leave the firewood, I will bring it tomorrow,’ as he said, he holstered her up onto his shoulders without a struggle placed her on his shoulders as she held on to his forehead. The girl was as light as a feather and when he had picked her, he could swear that he felt like he was touching only bones wrapped with a thin translucent skin, no flesh whatsoever. Honestly, how can anyone do this
to an innocent child? Munoda wondered as he walked purposefully towards, old man Manyika’s house to give him a piece of his mind. On his shoulders, Maka was humming and sniffing quietly, probably crying with relief but still wandering how she was going to face her angry aunty without the firewood.
This was to be the night Maka would remember for the rest of her life. Up to this day, she believed the man she met that night was an angel, he became her night and shining armor of her troubled childhood.