Free A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer Page B

a red tile roof, and his garden was full of heavily laden banana and papaya trees. A boy passed them on the way, herding a flock of sleek nanny goats. Each one was fitted with a cloth bag over her udder to keep the milk from being stolen. Nhamo thought that was ludicrous, but she was far too worried to laugh.
    “ Takutuka chiremba ,” the adults shouted in unison before they entered the garden: “We have scolded you, doctor.” Nhamo didn’t know the meaning behind this strange saying, but Grandmother said it was the correct way to enter a muvuki ’s yard. The doctor was dressed in a gray suit like a picture in a magazine, and he was eating breakfast at a tableon the porch. Nhamo saw with fascination that he used a knife and fork instead of his fingers. Suddenly, he looked up and gazed straight at her. She felt as though her bones had turned to water.
    “ Vahukwu. Welcome,” he called. He put down his utensils, and a servant removed his plate.
    “I see you, Va-Nyamasatsi,” he said, giving Ambuya ’s real name. “And you, Va-Kufa.” Nhamo felt goose bumps on her arms as he singled out every person in the group. How could he do this? He had never seen them before.
    He then slowly and impressively listed all the people who had died. When each name was uttered, everyone cried, “ Womba! Amazing!” He pointed at a grove of trees at the far end of the garden and abruptly entered the house.
    “What happens now?” whispered Nhamo.
    “That is his vukiro , his sacred grove,” Grandmother whispered back. “We must wait there until he is properly dressed.”
    Everyone sat in a semicircle. Presently, the muvuki emerged, still wearing his suit but with two ceremonial cloths crossed over his chest and tied behind his back. He wore a leopard-skin cap and a necklace of small bones and glass beads. He carried a clay pot.
    Is that the pot where he keeps his son’s spirit? thought Nhamo with a stab of pure terror. But the muvuki unrolled a reed mat on the ground and removed four hakata , or divining sticks, from the pot. Nhamo shivered with relief.
    Following the doctor came a younger man who knelt beside him and waited. “I request my gogodzero , the opening fee,” said the muvuki. Uncle Kufa quickly took three trussedup chickens from the other villagers and laid them before the doctor.
    “I will keep them for you, baba ,” said the younger man. He removed the chickens to the shade of a tree nearby. So that’s one of the muvuki ’s sons, thought Nhamo. I wonder what he thought when his brother was sacrificed.
    Now the doctor took up two of the hakata sticks in one hand and two in the other. “These people have come to me, a son of an nganga , and want to be told who killed theirrelatives. Was it a mudzimu , a family spirit?” he asked. His hands opened, and the sticks fell to the mat. He quickly scooped them up, but Nhamo saw that two were faceup and two were down. She knew each stick had a patterned and a smooth side. Three of the designs were abstract. The fourth was the outline of a crocodile. She didn’t know what the symbols meant.
    “Is this diagnosis true?” asked the doctor, and he let the hakata fall again. This time three were up and one down. “ Zaru ,” he said. “The sticks disagree. These deaths were not caused by a family spirit.”
    He proceeded to ask whether the trouble was caused by a shave , a wandering spirit. He threw the hakata twice to see if they agreed. Again the answer was no. “Was an ngozi * responsible?” the doctor said. The sticks fell with three down and the fourth up, showing the crocodile. “ Ngwena. Bad luck. Is this a true diagnosis?” Again the hakata fell three down with the crocodile up. “They agree! An ngozi has done this.”
    “Hhhuuu,” everyone sighed. Now no one would be pointed out as a witch.
    “A man has been murdered,” the muvuki went on. “His spirit wanders. He has become an ngozi without a resting place, without heirs. He seeks revenge. He is the