“The only thing worth keeping,” he said. “We have love, freedom, and enough to eat in the Matobo Hills. That’s all we could possibly need.”
The evening star was sparkling over Elephant Rock by the time Martine and Ben made their way down to the retreat. With the coming of night, the intense silence of the Matopos that had so unnerved Martine on their arrival was settling over the hills and valleys, and she thought how much she’d miss it when she was gone. It was the most beautiful sound she’d ever known.
The change in Sadie’s fortunes and the decision to send the leopard to Sawubona meant that she, Ben, and Gwyn Thomas were leaving Zimbabwe earlier than planned. She’d have time to spend reading and riding Jemmy after all. She was ecstatic about that, but her heart ached at the thought of leaving the Matobo Hills. She was also wondering whether she’d ever see the leopard again.
“Of course you will,” said Ben. “Especially if he’s going to be living at Sawubona.”
“Yes, but it won’t be the same,” Martine told him. “I won’t ever get to fall asleep cuddled up next to him again.”
They were on their way to say good-bye to the six horses when they bumped into Ngwenya, who’d just finished feeding them.
“I wanted to wish you both a safe trip,” he said. “I am going to the far village with Mercy and Odilo and I won’t be back before you leave in the morning. Thank you again for what you did for Khan. And please convey our gratitude to your sangoma for providing the medicine that helped Emelia.”
“Come with us,” Martine pleaded. “Tendai’s always saying he could do with an extra pair of hands at Sawubona. Travel back with us. You’d love it.”
Ngwenya laughed. “I’m sure I would, but no matter how difficult things get in Zimbabwe, no matter how much we have to struggle, I will never leave the Matopos. My ancestors have walked in these hills.”
“I understand,” Martine said. She shook his hand in the African way—gripping his hand, then his thumb, and then his hand again. “Good-bye, Ngwenya.”
He smiled. “No, not good-bye. The Ndebele have a proverb: ‘Those who once saw each other will see each other again.’”
EPILOGUE
The leopard lay with his forelegs stretched out before him, his spotted coat gleaming like liquid gold in the early-morning sunlight. In the valley below, the dark shapes of buffalo and striped hides of zebra moved in slow motion across the plain surrounding the lake. Ordinarily the sight of so much food on the go would have made him think of dinner, but today he was only interested in the girl and her rather odd companions, an old woman and a white giraffe. The three of them were watching the sunrise over the lake, and the white giraffe was resting his head on the girl’s shoulder.
For reasons that Khan found confusing and nice all at once, his heart felt soft and full whenever the girl was around. Once, without realizing it, she’d been so close to him in his new den in the Secret Valley that she’d brushed his fur, but although she’d reacted as if she’d been scalded, she hadn’t seen him in the dark. She’d had a bright light with her, but she had chosen not to shine it his way.
He’d followed her into the cave with the pictures after that, and watched from the shadows as she’d met with an exuberant African woman of colorful dress and considerable proportions. After they’d embraced, they’d sat gazing at the pictures and talking. Neither of them looked around, but Khan sensed they knew he was there.
“You were right about what you said before I went to Zimbabwe,” he’d heard Martine say to Grace, although, of course, he didn’t know either of their names because names didn’t mean anything in his world. He judged both animals and people on their actions and the light in their eyes. “Any time Ben and I were separated, danger did seem to follow us.”
“Uh-huh,” agreed the colorful woman. “That’s because your destinies be as entwined as the branches of the tree that guards the Secret Valley. But ya listened to ole Grace and trusted in your gift, and your gift kept ya out of harm’s way.”
“But why?” Martine wanted to know. “Why are Ben and I connected? And how are we connected? And please don’t say that only time and experience will give me the eyes to see.”
“What else am I ta say, chile?” asked Grace. “You do not even have the half-closed eyes of a newborn lion cub. You are still blind to the truths of nature and the forefathers.”
“No I’m not,” said Martine, offended. “I notice lots of things.”
“Sure you do, honey. But you don’t always see tha big picture. Look at the wall in front of you. What d’you see there?”
“I see our own private African art gallery, with lots and lots of amazing little pictures of animals and San people hunting, feasting, or celebrating. Same things I always see.”
“Are ya sure?” Grace asked. “Come and sit in my place.”
They swapped seats on the bench-like rock. Martine looked at the paintings again. From this angle they seemed to waver, almost as if they were being viewed on a movie screen that had warped in the sun. There was something odd about them. She saw now that the paintings were arranged into groups so that they formed a sort of pattern.
Martine gasped. She reached for Grace’s hand and gripped it tightly. When seen from a particular slant the scores of little pictures made up a single giant mural that took up an entire rock wall. It showed a girl bending over a wounded leopard. They appeared to be in some sort of cavern. At the door of the cavern stood a boy. There was something protective about his posture, as if he were a kind of guardian.
“Ben!” breathed Martine. “Oh, Grace, it was here all the time. I was just looking at it in the wrong way.”
“Yes,” replied Grace, “but ya look at many things in the right way. That’s why you be on this path. There be many challenges still to come.”
Behind them, the leopard had raised his head and growled so softly neither of them heard it. On that occasion as on several others, he could have killed the girl with one bound. She’d trespassed into his territory. But the only urge he ever felt around her was a burning desire to protect her. She had, after all, saved his life. On the long night in the airless cavern, when he’d suffered ten kinds of agony and felt the strength ebbing from his limbs with every breath, the magic from her hands had been a balm. She’d done something to the wound on his chest (at one stage he was quite sure he smelled honey, which he loathed) and had sort of tricked him into swallowing the most revolting liquid he’d ever tasted.
But afterward the bleeding had stopped, the pain had gone away, and the hole in his chest had vanished as if by a miracle.
Then something most peculiar had happened. She’d dared to lie beside him and snuggle up to him as if he were her pet cat. She’d even put a hand on his paw. And much to his own bewilderment he hadn’t just tolerated her presence because he was too weak to do anything about it, he’d cherished every moment, because the energy that flowed from her was pure love.
It was a strange kind of heaven, sleeping with a small human, but it was heaven nonetheless.
Now they were connected and would be for all their lives. Whether she turned to look at him or not, he knew that she was aware of him. A smile would play around her lips whenever she was close to him and he sensed that she was proud of her part in bringing him to this place of safety.
Since he’d come to Sawubona, the fear that Khan endured all his life had almost gone. There was no reason to be afraid here. It was a wildlife paradise. Still, he would always be wary. The girl apart, he’d learned the hard way that humans were not to be trusted. The old woman and the Zulu man who ran the game reserve appeared to be good people and on the side of the animals, but he would always be suspicious of outsiders.
Recently, though, he’d spotted one of his own kind—a female leopard with two cubs. In the coming days he planned to make her acquaintance. He was tired of being alone.
Khan stood up, stretched, and prepared to make his way to his hidden sanctuary for his daytime snooze. As he did so, he dislodged
a rock. That rock dislodged another rock, which in turn exposed two elephant tusks that had lain undisturbed for more than a thousand years. They tumbled crookedly down the mountain and came to rest with their tips touching, like the head of an arrow.
The leopard saw them land. He paused to sniff them as he moved fluidly down the slope toward his den. They were pointing northeast, beyond the boundary fence of Sawubona, to a place of hot, dry winds, red rippled dunes, and skies like billowing blue canopies.
They were pointing to the land where it all began.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The inspiration for the last leopard of this book comes from a real leopard, also named Khan, who, for the past four years, has resided at Bally Vaughan Bird and Game Sanctuary in Harare, Zimbabwe. Like the fictional Khan and his father Ingwe, he is, at nearly 165 pounds, one of the largest leopards ever recorded. Khan was orphaned when his mum and dad died of Anthrax poisoning, and he is taken care of by Sarah Carter, Dr. Vin, and other dedicated volunteers who battle against near insurmountable odds to keep Khan and the other precious animals at the sanctuary safe and out of the hands of hunters.
Khan is one of the lucky animals in Zimbabwe. In 2005, when I first came up with the idea for The Last Leopard, it was as a reaction against reports I kept hearing about the rise of “canned” hunting in Zimbabwe, the wicked and widespread practice of putting lions, leopards, and other dangerous and hard-to-hunt animals in small enclosures so that “hunters” are guaranteed a “kill” or a trophy to hang on their wall. I imagined a worst-case scenario: that the day might dawn when there would only be one last leopard in Zimbabwe. Now, just three years later, the unthinkable is in danger of becoming a reality.
When I set off with my father on a road trip to the Matobo Hills in March 2007 to research this book, I have to admit that I was a little concerned I might have made a mistake deciding to send Martine, Ben, and Gwyn Thomas to such a scary place in The Last Leopard. On the drive from Harare to Bulawayo, we were stopped at numerous roadblocks by police brandishing machine guns, demanding to know if we were carrying smuggled diamonds—“I wish!” was my dad’s response—or any other contraband. Like Gwyn Thomas, we struggled to find gas, and the whole of Zimbabwe was stricken by chronic water and electricity shortages.
Entering the Matobo National Park was like entering a totally different country. Martine’s first impressions were my first impressions. I had the same sense she does that I’d reached the end of the world. The silence is awesome. The immense, balancing rocks and granite mountains, streaked with jade lichen and chestnut water stains, are both humbling and breathtaking.
Reviewers of The White Giraffe and Dolphin Song have described them as magical realism, meaning that they have elements of fantasy and the supernatural in them but also lots of real life and fact. Doubtless the same is true of The Last Leopard. But for many people in Africa, and perhaps particularly in the Matobo Hills, cave spirits and the prophesies and healing powers of witch doctors and sangomas are not the stuff of fantasy, but part of everyday life—as real as you or I.
For many residents of the Matopos, the cave spirits and guardians of the shrines I’ve described in The Last Leopard, including the one about the girl who lived underwater with crocodiles for seven years, are incontrovertible truths, not fiction. And in Zambia, the sending out of baby tortoises with miniature coffins or toy ambulances on their backs as a warning or curse is a favorite method of witch doctors.
What struck me most about the Matobo Hills is that, in spite of the fact that Zimbabwe is in crisis, the gentle, likeable people of this special area seemed almost untouched by the problems in the rest of the country. Life continued much as it did a hundred years before. Peace reigned. Every day, we came across laughing girls, some as young as five, walking four miles through the bush to school as if nothing could be more enjoyable or normal.
Yet even for this remote, lovely region, time is running out. The Matobo Hills has always had one of the highest concentrations of leopards in the world, but illegal hunters have moved in and recently one was caught trying to smuggle leopard skins into America. Cheetahs, lions, and hippos, animals we thought would be around forever, are moving onto the endangered list, and the leopard, one of the world’s most elusive and beautiful creatures, is in danger of being wiped out. Unless we act soon, we’ll wake up to discover that there is only one last leopard.
Lauren St. John, The Last Leopard
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