Fiela’s Child

On Barnard’s Island, Elias is cutting wood beams, but the plans he’s making distract him. Barta asks him why he’s moving so slow. Elias can’t make beams as quickly as usual, and now another man in the community is also starting to make them.

Dawid Olwage returns to Barnard’s Island from the Forest with a story. He says that he was walking around a footpath near Stinkwood Kloof and Brown’s Kloof when he saw six elephants (or “bigfeet” as the locals call them) walking near the edge of a cliff. Dawid Olwage expected the elephants to fall off, but to his surprise, they navigated the narrow space cleverly, holding on to a tree with their trunks. Elias is in the audience for the story, and at first, they don’t believe him. As Elias thinks about the story more, however, he realizes that maybe he can use this information to kill an elephant without a gun and sell its tusks for money

Elias makes an excuse to Barta so that he can go over on a five-day trip to where the elephants are, pretending that he’s going over to look at trees to potentially cut. Barta seems suspicious of Elias’s plan.  Just then, their daughter Nina comes over to them. Elias scolds Barta for letting Nina’s hair get so long. He realizes Nina is about 10 or 11 years old and that he heard recently perhaps some English families living nearby might be willing to hire white girls to watch their own children.

Elias heads to the footpath near Stinkwood Kloof. He finds some week-old elephant dung and figures the elephants must be close. He sets a trap, making plans about to get his sons to help him to avoid having to share his elephant tusks with any of the other families. He partially cuts the tree that the elephants use to pass through the narrow area so that when the first elephant tries to use it, it will break the tree and fall off the edge.

Elias sets up camp and waits for his trap to go off. He hears the elephants at one point, but they don’t go toward his trap. Then one day, Elias happens to see a local woodcutter with his team of eight men. The men spot Elias and are surprised to see him in the area. While they seem to suspect that Elias is hiding something, they ultimately go away and leave him in peace.

Elias begins to get impatient, but on Friday, the elephants finally come. They wait by the tree for a long time, as if they’re about to grab the tree to take the narrow path. But after an hour, they turn around and go back. When Elias finally gives up and goes back, he finds the elephants waiting for him and has to throw down all his possessions and run for his life. He gets home to Barta and tells her about how elephants chased him, but he promises to get revenge on them.

The next day, another forester visits Elias with a message from the magistrate, Mr. Goldsbury. It turns out someone may have found Elias’s son who disappeared many years ago.