"Beyond the dark. I tell you, sonny, when the ghon-ya cries he ain't
bothering himself about any glass-eyed beetle-hunter who's just
hankering to label all the critturs in this yearth; he's not thinkin'
about you nor me, but he's jes' wailing in that shudderous voice to the
shadders that pass by in the night; whether it's to comfort 'em, or to
put 'em on the right track, or to warn 'em of danger, I can't say. One
night I had taken the short cut past the big krantz, being late from the
shop where I'd been for a tin of o' black sugar, and thinkin' of nothin'
at all when I yeard the ghon-ya's cry passin' overhead. There was
nothin' more'n ordinary solemn in the wail of it, but when I came to the
thick of the wood it seemed to me there was a queer whisperin' going on
among the trees. Have you ever marked a bee against the shadder? Of
course you have, and you'll know how he moves like a drop o' light as
the sun strikes on his wings against the dark of the hill behind. Well,
I happened to look back over my shoulder to the other side of the valley
where 'twas as black as black, and in the glance of my eyes, with the
blue and red light snapping from 'em as it does sometimes when you
blink, in that very moment of turning, I seed a passing of a many
shadders."
"Tree shadows?"
"Shadders of dreams, sonny, I tell you. Jes' in a flash I seed 'em
moving up, and then all was black groups of trees; but I knowed where
that whisperin' come from. Yes, a many shadders hurryin' on up that
valley with the cry of the `ghon-ya' pealin' out ahead. Well, I got
outer that valley pretty quick, and were hurryin' by the top of the
krantz overlooking the big kloof when the `ghon-ya' cried jes' ahead o'
me. A locust! Lor', sonny, right afore me there was a something
shaddery--a darker patch on the blackness, standing on the brink of the
krantz overlooking the deep kloof that lay below stretching towards the
sea, and the `ghon-ya,' loud, long, mournful as the solitary toll of the
death-bell, went out on the air, an' I jes' went to the ground as if the
bones had all been drawed out. Looking along the top, with my eyes to
the light that was in the sky over the sea, I seed them shadders from
the valley file down into the kloof. A many shadders, sonny, come out
of the valley--passed by that dark patch, and jes' floated down into the
kloof--whispering as they went. What sort o' shadders they were I
couldn't tell you, my lad; but they belong, sure enough, to the other
world beyond the dark. Many a time I yeard them same things in the
kloof, when the dead quiet has been broken by a movement in the air, and
a sort o' creepin' sound 'sif somethin' were peepin' at you from behind
a tree. You've felt it, too, of course. The dogs they know, 'cos
they're not so cock-sure as we are about knowin' everything jes' bekose
we can make a cast-iron reaper."
The ghon-ya from the darkness called again, as if the sorrows of the
world were in the cry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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