Rift by Beverley Birch

creepers, and emerged a half-mile along, on to a plateau of rock – large slabs sloping in smooth, flat steps down from the base of the cliff. Here the stream pooled below the blue shimmer of dragonflies, and shrill screams of alarm rang from a horde of frantic brown shapes skittering away from Ella’s feet.
    Tomis caught her, steadying. ‘Rock hyrax. They will not harm. They will watch us up there and be angry that we invade their place!’ He pointed and Ella looked, but could see nothing against the dark bulk of Chomlaya, only massed shadows and leaning summits, and above it all, the high white gleam of sky.
    Now the path crossed the water towards the cliff. It took them on to rock greened and slippery with lichens and mosses; then over higher slabs, where they picked their way through fresh animal spoor scattered on the pocked, ridged surfaces. The droppings were still hot, reeking and steaming in the warmth. ‘A very small antelope,’ Tomis informed her softly. ‘A klipspringer. It likes the rocks. It is now hiding above us, close by, and peeping at us.’ And a few steps further on he tapped her arm to alert her to other presences in the thinner woodland spreading to their left towards the plain: buffalo ambling amongthe trees, silhouettes against the paler grasses beyond; the telltale twitching of antelope flicking their tails. ‘Gazelle, impala, a few waterbuck, too.’
    His whispers interrupted her increasingly anxious scrutiny of foliage and rocks, and she was grateful. It had all been searched before, and then searched again and again. But she couldn’t help hoping that her eye would catch an out-of-place colour or jerk of movement.
    Beyond the rocky plateau, the path split into two tracks. One held close to the base of Chomlaya onward into a marshy stretch of giant rushes bordered by yellow-trunked fever trees. The other track folded back in the direction they had come from, and rose steeply to a broad ledge against the cliffs. At the lower levels it was thickly canopied by stunted trees, so that the path seemed to enter a luminous green tunnel. Above, jagged rock stabbed upwards, thronged with big, dark, raucous birds swirling away from the crags like storm clouds boiling against the sky.
    Sergeant Kaonga had stopped where the tracks divided. All except Tomis were panting with the intensifying heat and the exertion of climbing. Ella lifted the water bottle on its strap round her neck, and drank deeply. Tomis took hold of Joe’s, unscrewed the cap, handed it to him, instructing himto drink in short, frequent sips.
    ‘This is as far as anyone from the camp may go in that direction.’ The sergeant indicated the lower path straight on through the rushes. ‘That leads on to the drinking place where many, many big animals are gathering. We do not go closer! That way,’ indicating the path curling upward through the leafy tunnel, ‘goes high on the rocks. I am told people from the camp were allowed to go up there if they stayed in groups of at least four. When you get along a little way, you can see the camp from above –’
    The inspector put a hand on his arm, silencing him: Joe was moving up this track. Instantly, they fell into step behind.
    The path, bound by gnarled tree roots eroding out of the stony soil, was broad and easy to walk. But the drop to Ella’s right, glimpsed now and then through the mesh of twisted tree trunks, was increasingly sheer, and the thick foliage arching above her head quivered with the unseen antics of monkeys. Hearing their chittering, chattering commentary, she was suddenly afraid. Joe was now moving fast, and she had the terrifying premonition that he had remembered something, that the monkeys knew it and were leading them there, that beyond this green tunnel, something would be waiting for them. Her heart raced and her mind filled with a blankingpanic; she jumped involuntarily at a swinging tail whipping past her head and a small, bright-eyed face, poised, peering