When they reached the spot where they had left their paint stones, the girls picked them up one by one with their nimble toes, passing them to their hands.
When they got to their kraal, Nomusa and Sisiwe left the water in their huts. Then they sat in an open space near the huts, with their piles of stones before them. With a hard stone they pounded the soft red, black, and white stones, putting the different colors in separate piles, on leaves. Umpondo, Sisiwe’s little brother, only a few days older than Themba, sat between his sisters, picking up the little pieces of soft stone as they pounded away. Nomusa said to him, “You may have some of the stones if you wish, little brother,” and she pushed some of them toward him.
The soft paint stones crumbled to bits easily as Nomusa crushed and pounded them. After the pieces were small enough, she ground them until they were fine as dust. Nomusa and Sisiwe worked silently for a time. Then Umpondo said, “Nomusa, Themba said you know good stories. Do you know about Uthlakanyana?”
“Oh, yes,” said Nomusa. “Mdingi has told me many stories about that dwarf and his magic. I don’t know which one to tell you.”
“Any one,” begged Umpondo.
Without stopping what she was doing, Nomusa began, “Za puma zenke izilwane, za li dhla; la ngobuhlunga bezinyoka, nezinyosi, naofezela neninyovu. La kala, lakala ke, la ze la fa.... Once upon a time Uthlakanyana took a bag to the forest. Inside of it he had a giant cannibal whom he had fought and defeated. As he walked along he found a snake, then a wasp, then a scorpion. All these biting and poisonous things he put into the bag with the giant. The giant said, ‘Let me out, let me out. They are biting me.’ They bit and bit him until he died. So he died.”
“Do you know any others?” asked Umpondo eagerly.
“Yes, but not now.”
Nomusa had now finished grinding her stones. She looked at her three little mounds of red, black, and white powder. “That’s done,” she said to Sisiwe. “We shall have enough to paint our whole bodies.” Then she called out, “Look! Our brothers are already returning from the pasture. Hau! Mdingi, Kangata!”
Her own brothers were the last of the boys leading their mothers’ cows and calves into the cattlefold inside the kraal. This was fenced off from the circle of huts by a thick wall of boughs and twigs. All the drainage from the huts flowed down to the cattlefold which was on the lower side of the sloping hill where the kraal was situated. In this cattlefold were also the mealie and grain pits where the corn was stored by the various wives after it had been stripped from the cobs. Nomusa’s mother had told her that the fluids from the cattle percolated into the ground and turned the corn and grain sour. This prevented the weevils from eating it up.