Read An Inconvenient Elephant for Free Online

borders ourselves, and then a plane has to be ready and waiting.” I felt a wave of resentment. If only Tom and I were still talking, he would have helped. I knew he would have helped. He had contacts and planes and had spent years orchestrating elephant rescues.
    Diamond bent over to lace up her boots, then stood. “Well, I’ve known Charlotte a long time, and I trust her to think of something that will work.” She pushed my bowl of breakfast sadza back at me. “You’d better eat, or you’re going to be very hungry later. There aren’t any vending machines in the bush.”
    I looked down at my breakfast, cold and unappetizing. “I don’t suppose there’s a spoon.”
    She laughed. “You carry your eating implements at the end of your arms. Finish quickly. We’ve got some tracking to do.”
    Â 
    â€œ Shamwari , you come here for elephant?” a voice asked from behind Diamond. We both whirled around to see a mandressed in the usual tan safari clothes, carrying a large backpack and a heavy-duty rifle. It was our guide. “ Shamwari ,” he repeated in a lilting accent, clapping his hands together, the traditional male greeting. “I was sent to help you. I have supplies.” He pointed to the backpack and smiled congenially. “Are you ready, shamwari ?”
    Shamwari meant “friend,” and I had found in Kenya that almost everyone was your friend—the people are warm and open, the word is used all the time.
    Diamond cupped her hands together and clapped them in response, the traditional female greeting. “Yes, thank you, shamwari ,” she replied. The guide clapped his hands at me, and I followed Diamond’s lead.
    â€œThank you for your help, shamwari ,” I said, then pointed to his rifle. “Please, no shooting the animals. No shooting.”
    He just patted the rifle and smiled pleasantly. “Until you grow big teeth, we will take this.”
    Â 
    We slipped easily through the lavender rushes, hiking along the curvature of Lake Kariba, leaving broken stalks of heather in our wake. From the edges of the lake rose half-submerged pale skeletons of dead trees, arms outstretched like graceful dancers, holding delicate white egrets in their hands as though offering up living ornaments to the azure sky. Beyond the flash of flaming orange bushes lay a backdrop of thick blue-green brush and dark blue mountains. “We make this lake,” the guide said proudly. “Many years ago. We make it from the Zambezi River, oh yes.”
    Hippos drank nonchalantly at the water’s edge, and several crocodiles floated close, their eyes studying the shoreline, watching the herons, the antelope, the impala that drank there, waiting for a sign of weakness. The guide led us away from the shoreline now, and inward, toward the forest.
    The smaller brush was gone, replaced by stands of mahogany trees reaching skyward, like heavenly supports. Animals peeked at us from behind the acacia trees, then fled as our guide led us deeper into the interior.
    With every step, every move, every turn of my head, I felt watched. The god of wild hearts was watching us, I knew. He would be cautious, hidden within the trees and thickets. Concealing himself within the deeper mopane woodland, where the trees had leaves like pale green butterfly wings that crushed easily under our feet, leaving behind the unexpected scent of turpentine.
    We walked forever. After a while, my legs felt separated from my body, as though they had taken on a career of their own, to walk and walk and walk. We waded over brilliantly clear streams that gurgled all the way down from the mountains, feeding pink hibiscus growing all in rows like schoolgirls in pretty dresses. We stepped across small yellow and purple wildflowers that sprang up in natural bouquets, and we carefully pushed away from the undergrowth that grabbed our arms like beggars, always making sure to turn