MOONFLOWER’S MISCHIEVOUS AND MAJESTIC ANIMAL CHARACTERS
Some of the animals that make cameo appearances in Moonflower are the eland (a large antelope),a
particularly sassy baboon and giraffe. I’ve always loved animal fables and have
written a few of my own.
The Sacred Eland
There were once
two men who grew up together. They were very close and swore they would always
be brothers. But the men had comfortable lives and their allegiance to one
another had never been tested.
Soon
their boast of brotherly love reached the ears of !Kaggen, the San Creator.
!Kaggen was also a trickster. He loved to transform himself into animals and
play tricks on people. The eland was the animal !Kaggen most liked to transform
himself into. So he sank to the ground and rose up as a beautiful eland with
majestic horns and a coat the colour of Kalahari sand, except for the
underneath where his heart beat which was white as an ostrich shell.
Now
the two young men went hunting one day and found the spoor of a great animal
they were unfamiliar with. Not knowing how to hunt this strange creature, the
one man said to the other, ‘You climb into the acacia tree and pretend to be a
bird as the creature comes by. I will lie on my belly like a snake behind that
scrub. This way we will both see it in its entirety and will make plans about
how best to hunt it.’
‘Or
whether we should hunt it at all,’ the other added.
They
did not have long to wait before the animal came walking along the path between
the acacia tree and the scrub. The men waited until it had passed before
scrambling out to talk excitedly about the creature. ‘It is the colour of the
sand,’ the man who had hidden in the tree said. ‘It is surely from around here
and will die by our arrows.’
‘What
are you talking about?’ the man who had lain on his belly said. ‘The creature
is white as an ostrich shell. I have seen no such animal from these parts.
Maybe we should not hunt it at all.’
The
men began to argue about what they had seen. One swearing the animal was red,
the other that it was white. Soon their arguing turned into a feud and they
began to pull and shove each other in their anger.
This
is when !Kaggen chose to intervene and said to the men, ‘Why are you fighting?
Can’t you see I am red and I am white.’
The
two former friends stopped fighting and screamed at the eland, ‘We have lived
side by side as brothers all our lives, and it is your fault we are fighting.
You have started a war between us.’
The
eland said, ‘Don’t blame me for the battle. I did not make you fight. Both of
you are wrong and both of you are right. Yes, what each saw was true. You are
fighting because you looked at my coat each from your own point of view.’
To
this day, a boy is considered a man only when he has killed his first eland.
When the animal dies much supernatural energy is released and its power
harnessed by praying, singing and dancing around the body. Then, when this is
done, the skin is spread out on the ground and the boy sits on the skin and
people dance around it making footprints all around using the eland’s hooves.
This means that whatever direction the young man may choose, he will move
across the path of the eland. It is believed the spirits of humans and animals
linger in their footprints. And today no human knows where !Kaggen is, only the
eland.
Baboon
Part of
growing up in Cape Town is learning to cope with baboons. Suburbs built on
mountain slopes have regular visits from these fascinating creatures who seem
to find us almost as interesting as we find them. Driving around the peninsula
it is prudent to keep your windows up and doors locked since they’ll spread out
along the road and as you slow down, some of the braver young males will take
the opportunity to grab that sandwich out of your hand or can of cold drink.
There
are many stories, passed into memory now, of settlers forming quite an
attachment to baboons and using them to drive wagons across the Karoo, helping
settlers to find edible food, and lending a helping hand in the feeding and
watering of dogs and cattle.
Giraffe
There is an African proverb: The teeth of a
man serve as a fence. It is impossible to say who first coined this phrase or
what event gave rise to it, but there is an interesting story about the Great
Eagle, first told so long ago you will not find it recorded anywhere; in fact
few remember it at all.
It is said that sometime before the
continents split, Eagle was the greatest of earthly creatures. He was one of
the largest with talons sharper than the shards of light that pierce mountain
gullies, a beak harder than arrowheads and teeth sharper and stronger than both
of these.
There was nowhere on earth Eagle could not
go. Silently he could swipe birds in midair, read dust spoor from a height no
other creature had flown, dive from mountain tops without the slightest change
of course to spear a fish beneath the water, while his wingspan, it was said,
would cast an entire village into shadow.
Because Eagle flew so close to heaven, he
learned some of God’s secrets and asked questions no other creature knew the
answers to. Swearing him to secrecy, God answered some of these, knowing he was
bound to overhear a thing or two. But Eagle had become careless with the gifts
given him and one day, when he overheard God mention the place by name where
the rain is born, he realised that with this knowledge he could become god of
the earth since he would be able to hold back rain from all living things or
know where to fetch it to break a drought.
Filled with a sense of his own power Eagle
boasted to the first creature he came upon – Giraffe, then the tallest of
earth-bound creatures – that he knew the place where the rain is born. Giraffe
did not turn away; out of cowardice or perhaps hoping to share the spoils of
this knowledge, he begged Eagle to take him along to the place.
God heard Giraffe’s begging response to
Eagle’s proud and loose tongue and struck Giraffe on the top of the head,
shortening his neck considerably and rendering him dumb. To this day Giraffe
utters not a sound.
God warned them that a fearsome creature had
been set to guard the place where the rain is born and when Giraffe had run
away in terror, God removed all of Eagle’s teeth, leaving not even one.
Now this may seem a strange punishment to
earthly creatures but time does not tick in the heavens as it does below.
Without a tooth in his beak, Eagle could not devour prey of the size he had
been used to and was forced to eat smaller creatures with less meat on their
bones, or go completely hungry from time to time.
When Eagle found a mate, his offspring grew
into smaller creatures as a result of such a reduced diet. And their progeny
were still smaller until the Great Eagle was but a shadow of the greatest of
earthly creatures he had once been and could no longer fly anywhere near
heaven.
Moonflower
by
Leigh Archer
@LeighArcherBook
EXCERPT
Clutching at the tyre iron, the baboon screamed defiance at her. A
moment later, he scooted along the branch and was lost in the foliage. He
reappeared suddenly and before Sophie could blink, something exploded against
her chest—a large, over-ripe guava. Juice, pips and flesh soaked into her shirt
and dripped down her front.
With a shout of triumph, the baboon disappeared along
the branch, still clutching the tyre iron. Sophie decided to give up. She’d go
back to the truck and radio for help, after she’d changed her shirt. She had a
spare in her vehicle.
She took the shirt off to avoid the sticky mess
seeping through to her bra and stomped off across the grass. She was several
metres from the vehicle when she noticed a man standing beside it. He was in
tailored chinos that sported perfectly pressed seams. His shirt was pale blue
and the shoes were probably Italian leather.
Sophie tried with as much finesse as possible to
unfurl the shirt scrunched into a ball in her hands as the veld began to run
out between herself and the vehicle. She pressed the material to her chest,
ignoring the squelch of guava flesh against her skin.
A more pragmatic part of Sophie’s brain said: not your fault, can’t be helped. She
strode towards the man, doing her best to carry off her approach with as much
dignity as her white, lacy bra would allow.
When she got within a couple of feet of him, her heart
began to jump up and down like that crazy baboon. The man waiting at the
vehicle was Reuben Manning. Sophie groaned.
She recognised him from the photos she’d seen on the
internet. If he’d been handsome in photographs, in person he was devastating.
For one thing, those pictures hadn’t given the full effect of his broad
shoulders and height of at least six foot three. And it wasn’t his height alone
that was impressive: it was also the high forehead, sculpted cheekbones, square
jaw, thick dark hair; the early morning sun glinting off an undulating wave. No
wonder he’d done so well in business. She didn’t think there was a man or woman
alive who could possibly say no to him.
But it was the eyes that started a pounding in her
chest: they were the closest to navy blue she had ever seen. There was an
unusual intensity to them as they slid towards her chest, narrowed and lingered
there. Her chest!
Sophie pressed the shirt to her sternum, trying to
control the breathlessness that made her full breasts even more noticeable as
they moved up and down, up and down.
Neither spoke. His eyes met hers and Sophie quickly
looked away from the energy that flashed from them. Not a man to be trifled with. The thought flitted through her mind
as she watched the breeze ruffle his hair. She glanced at the sensuous mouth,
now drawn into a hard line, the strong jaw. Everything about this man exuded
power and success. She hoped he wasn’t cruel.
You’re a
professional, Sophie told herself. You’ve worked hard for this, so show him who
you really are.
‘Hello, Mr Manning. My name’s Sophie Kyle. I’m your
new conservationist.’
BLURB AND BUY LINKS
Conservationist,
Sophie Kyle, takes up a position on a private game farm outside Cape Town in
the hopes of paying off her student loans, adding a glowing reference to her
resume and indulging her passion for wildlife conservation.
Reuben
Manning is a British businessman who has bought a game farm in Africa which he
intends to use as a venue to entertain friends and business associates.
With
the suddenness and intensity of a bushfire, a powerful attraction ignites
between the conservationist and the tycoon, but Sophie has only ever wanted to
spend her days in the African bush while Reuben’s life is corporate London.
As
the sensuous bond between the two grows, they must find common ground or they
are doomed to spend the rest of their lives a continent apart.
AUTHOR BIO AND LINKS
Leigh
writes romance novels set in her native South Africa. She has always had a love
affair with Africa’s wild open spaces, the intensity of its people and sunsets.
Her love of storytelling began as a child when she spent every spare moment
playing barefoot in golden grass, watching wild creatures, learning to track
spoor and dreaming up heroes and heroines dynamic enough to stand out in all
the beauty and drama of the African landscape.
Always
in search of adventure, Leigh’s journey as a writer has taken her from
journalism through communications, to working as a novelist.
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