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Updated: June 4, 2025
He is dead, but for days and weeks his spirit has been with my spirit, and now it draws me into the forest to die and find him." "Then that is an evil journey thou wouldst take, Zoola?" "Not so, Noie, it is the best and happiest of journeys. The thought of it fills me with joy. What said Nya? Follow thy heart. So I follow it. Noie, farewell, for I must go away."
"We mean, Teacher," she replied smiling, "that we have heard that Ibubesi is courting the beautiful Zoola, the daughter of your head wife, and we thought that perhaps you had come to arrange about the cattle that he must pay for her. Doubtless if she is so fair, it will be a whole herd." This was too much, even for Mr. Dove. "How dare you talk so, you heathen hussies?" he gasped.
All that night she sat there watching and listening, till at length the dawn came and she lay down also by the door and rested. The sun was high in the heavens when Rachel woke. "Good morrow to you, Zoola," said the sweet voice of Noie. "You have slept well.
"Have you anything to say, Sister?" she asked. "Yes, Zoola. Here is a little moss that I have found upon the stones," and she produced a small bundle. "Let us boil it and eat, it will keep us alive for another day." "What is the use?" asked Rachel, "unless there is more." "There is no more," said Noie, "for the leaves of yonder tree are deadly poison, and here grows no other living thing.
"What did she say to you, Noie?" asked Rachel presently. "I may not tell, Zoola," she answered. "Question me no more." Now the mutes brought forward a slight litter woven of boughs on which the withered leaves still hung, boughs from Nya's fallen tree. In this litter they placed her, for she could no longer walk, and lifted it on to their shoulders.
"Not so, Zoola, for then they must part with your presence. They wish that the priests of the Ghost-Kings should visit you, bearing with them the word of the Mother of the Trees." "Visit me! How can they? Who will bring them here?" "They wish that I should bring them, for as they know, I am of their blood, and I alone can talk their language, which my father taught me from a child."
"I wish it would speak to me and tell me when I can go home," said Rachel with a sigh. "It would if it could, Zoola, but it cannot because the curtain is too thick. Had all you loved been slain before your eyes, then the veil would be worn thin as mine is, and through it, you who are akin to them, would hear the talk of the ghosts, and dimly see them wandering beneath their trees."
"Yes, Zoola," answered Noie, shuddering, "for it is true. My father told me of it, and of what happened once to some wild men who broke into the sanctuary, and shot arrows at the Tree. No, no, I will not tell the story; it is dreadful." "Yet it must be foolishness, Noie, for how can a tree have power over the lives of men?" "I do not know, but it has, it has!
And now the Princess of the Heavens will go and set the supper, as Noie I beg pardon, Nonha is off duty for the present." Afterwards she asked Noie who was the old man with a withered hand who had spoken as the "King's Mouth." "Mopo is his name, Mopo or Umbopo, none other, O Zoola," she answered. "It was he who stabbed T'Chaka, the Black One.
For a moment they gazed at each other, then Noie, running forward, knelt before Rachel and kissed the hem of her robe, but Rachel bent down and lifted her up in her strong arms, embracing her as a mother embraces a child. "Where hast thou been, Sister?" she asked. "I have sought thee long." "Surely on thy business, Zoola," answered Noie, scanning her curiously. "Dost thou not remember?"
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