Blonde Roots

Doris wakes up after a long and refreshing sleep to find dawn breaking over the River Temz. She is still stretching and relishing her freedom when, silently, another ship emerges from the morning mist beside her. Bwana has tracked her down, apparently with the help of Ezinwene, who is standing on the deck of Bwana’s ship, looking like she’s been roughed up quite a bit. She refuses to meet Doris’s eye. On instinct, Doris flees. She plunges into the water and swims desperately for the far bank.

Doris scrambles out of the water and dashes into the undergrowth of the jungle, so desperate to flee that she barely notices the rocks cutting her feet or the briars scratching her legs. She runs until she can’t run any longer, expecting every minute to hear men and dogs at her heels. Eventually, she climbs into a tree and falls into an exhausted sleep.

Black ants are swarming Doris’s body, biting her skin, when she wakes in the morning. Her legs and feet are painfully swollen. She climbs down from the trees and continues picking her way painfully through the forest. Eventually, she comes upon a settlement. She’s leery of approaching but eventually her desperate hunger outweighs her caution, and she shows herself. An elderly Ambossan woman guides her to the shade of a tree where she dresses Doris’s wounds and offers her food. Doris falls into a fitful sleep. She knows she should run on, but she’s too broken and exhausted to move.

Hours later, Doris wakes to the sight of Bwana towering over her. Promising to punish her severely, he directs the two Ambossan hunters by his side to tie her to a tree under which she had been dozing.