1.1 Moon language  (Page 3/5)

He flew with a whirr and click of wings to the foot of the baobab, which stretched up its mighty branches to tangle with the stars. The mantis started up the trunk – a long journey for a small creature. But when he reached the cradle of the tree the moon had climbed ahead and was anchored to the branches high above him. The mantis flew at it – determined to catch it before it broke loose. When he got there it was gone, moving on, smaller and swifter and very far away.

As the moon waned it rose later each night. The mantis was drowsy with watching and too slow to reach it. There were times when there was no moon at all and the desert creatures were uneasy – for although the moon always returns to light their grazing grounds, perhaps, one night, it will just keep on falling into the great wastes of sky below the earth and never turn and rise again over the desert: slim and curved and supple as a hunting-bow.

The mantis tried to catch that new young moon but it was lithe and swift and even the acacias could not hold it with their sharp white thorns.

“I shall make a trap,” declared the mantis and he wove a rope out of dry grass and tied it in a noose around a stick. He hid among some rocks on a high ridge where he was above the moon when it rose – full and orange and as heavy as a calabash of thick, sour milk. When his noose was silhouetted against it, he tugged – for surely the rope would tighten round it long enough for him to scramble up. But the noose knotted on itself and fell empty to the ground and the moon rose higher, undisturbed.

The mantis crept into a bush to think and there he pondered, brown as the dead leaves caught in its tangled stems. Somehow he must catch the moon and ride on it. How else could one so small be a god? There was no other way to be noticed and praised by the animals.

He cut a stake, sharpened it, and set it on the hilltop. It would pierce the moon and hold it, like a big white baobab flower caught on a thorn.

Again the mantis hid as the moon rose above the ridge of hills. It moved slowly towards the stake.

“Oh foolish moon!” he cried. “Now I have caught you! Oh wise and cunning Mantis!” But the stake only traced a shadow on its face and the moon was gone, climbing higher, up into the night.

The mantis shouted with rage and broke the stake in two. He went to plan another way to outwit the moon.

He made a djani* - a length of reed and a partridge feather tied to a short twist of sinew, weighted with a stone. Tossed into the air, it would spiral to the ground – fast as a falling star. Surely it would twist itself around the moon and bring it down?

djani* - A toy made by Bushman children.

When the moon was new – a small sickle he could easily capture – he took his djani up into the tallest baobab and waited. When the rising moon was level with his hiding place he flung the djani at it. It flew like a whip, curling across the curve of the moon. Then it dropped gently, the feather fluttering like a small, falling bird. The mantis ripped the stone off the djani and threw it on the ground.