ECHOES OF THE DUNES - THE MANTIS AND THE HARTEBEES

 

While out searching for gambroo (a wild plant resembling a cucumber) a group of sisters of the desert came across a wily old Mantis. Knowing that children are curious and could possibly try to capture him the old Mantis used his magic powers to transform himself into a Hartebees. The Mantis also knew that these children would not be carrying knives and therefore would not be able to dismember his body with the flint knives that they knew how to fashion out of stone. 

However, when the children straw him stretched out on the sand they saw that his horns were turned backwards. They jumped for joy at the sight of this great animal just lying there and knew that there would be great celebration that night if they took home the meat. The older children had learned how to strike the stone in just the right way to make a knife and they set about it with great fervour.  As they were skinning the Hartebeest the Mantis snatched back his skin and the children had to work together and hold the skin very tightly in order to get the skin removed. All the time the Mantis kept snatching back his skin and one of the children cried that the hartebeest skin was trying to pull her.

Her elder sister examined the hartebeest more closely and observed that there were no wounds on the beast. She told the group, “The hartebeest has no wound and must have died by itself. But, the hartebeest is fat”. This puzzled the sisters.

The elder sister managed to cut a shoulder of the hartebeest and put it down on a bush to prevent it from getting full of sand. Suddenly the hartebeest’s shoulder lifted itself up and sat down on the other side of the bush. The elder sister continued to cut up the hartebeest into pieces and as she placed each piece on the bush the piece would rise up and move to a place where it was more comfortable as the bush was thorny and was pricking the flesh.

Another elder sister cut off the other thigh but as she did so, she felt the flesh of the hartebeest move. It was moving in the same way a man’s flesh moved. And so they dismembered the whole animal. Then they organised who would carry each piece back to their home. The biggest of the elder children was selected by the group to carry the head all the while they felt the flesh of the hartebeest moving.

All the children helped to put the head of the hartebeest on the elder sister’s back as it was very heavy. Then they all set off home each girl carrying a part of the hartebeest. Suddenly the hartebeest’s head slips downwards because the Mantis’ head wished to stand on the ground. The hartebeest head was squirming on the back of the girl trying to loosen the ropes that were holding it tight. It whispered to the elder sister, “O Child, the rope is covering my eye, please take the rope off so that I may see”. The girl turned around and the Mantis winked at her. She whimpered and her elder sister admonished her and hurried her along so that they could get home and their father could roast the hartebeest for dinner that night.

The child exclaimed “the Hartebeest’s head is able to speak”. But her elder sister accused her of lying and trying to deceive them.

But the little girl insisted that the hartebeest winked at her and asked her to remove the rope. She turned around and as she looked back the hartebeest opened and shut its eyes. She declared “The hartebeest’s head must be alive, for it is opening and shutting its eyes”.

As they trudged through the sand heading home the child loosened the rope and the hartebeest’s head fell to the ground. The Mantis berated the child “Oh! Oh! my head! Oh! bad little person! hurting me in my head.”

The sisters ,all amazed at the talking head, let go of the other parts of the Hartebeest. Suddenly the flesh of the Mantis sprang together. In a flurry, the legs and arms joined themselves to the spine and the head fixed itself back onto the top of the spine.

The  petrified children, seeing the Mantis in its real form, went hurtling off home. The Mantis now took on the form of a man and started chasing after the children.

When the Mantis saw that the children had reached home he quickly turned around and descended into the nearby river. He descended onto the river bed, his footsteps could be heard in the soft sand. He then passed in front of his own house and emerged from the river on the other side of the house.

The out of breath and distraught children found their father and recounted to him the strange story of the hartebeest and its talking head. The wide eyed child who had seen the hartebeest talking asked her father if she had been imagining things.

The father sat contemplating while surrounded by his daughters. He said to them “Did you go and cut up the old Man, The Mantis, while he lay pretending to be dead in front of you?”

The frightened children assured him that they had seen a hartebeest, as they had seen the horns and the hair. But they did see that the hartebeest did not have a wound. Then after they had cut it up while the flesh kept moving they had carried the pieces home. But along the way the Mantis had reappeared, his body parts had welded themselves back together and then he had transformed himself into a man and chased them all the way home.

The children, who had been so deceived by the wild old Mantis, decided that they would never more go in search of food but would stay at home with their parents as they had been scared to death by this evil being.