The Broken String

Nuing-kuiten my father’s friend was a lion sorcerer and walked on feet of hair. People saw his spoor and said: “The sorcerer has visited us. He is the one who treads on hair. This big animal prowling was Nuing-kuiten.” He used to travel by night— he did not want to be seen for people might shoot at him and he might maul someone. At night he could go unseen, after other lion sorcerers who slink into our dwellings and drag out men. The sorcerer lived with us hunting in a lion’s form until an ox fell prey to him. Then the Boers rode out and shot my father’s friend, but he fought those people off and came home to tell father how Boers had wounded him. He thought father did not know he was wounded in his lion form. Soon he would have to go for he lay in extreme pain. If only he could take father and teach him his magic and songs, father would walk in his craft, sing his songs, and remember him. He died, and my father sang: “Men broke the string for me and made my dwelling like this. Men broke the string for me and now my dwelling is strange to me. My dwelling stands empty because the string has broken, and now my dwelling is a hardship for me.”