ADVENTURE JOURNEY EPISODES
by Jeremy Russell

Episode 6: Mali, Fall 2001
This is one episode in a developing story. Links to PRECEDING EPISODES at bottom.

As Charlie lazed against his pack not far from a large flat rock on which the bloody liver of an old ram had been placed, two women dressed in brightly colored robes and balancing ceramic jugs on the crowns of their heads walked by in the direction of the grass-thatched mud huts of some unnamed Tuareg village. Nearby silhouetted camels grunted amongst themselves.

The sun was finally setting on the makeshift camp at the edge of the Sahara and the scent of roasting mutton was overwhelming.

Charlie's guide kept his yellow-brown scarf up over his nose to block the smoke as he rotated the spit. The ram's hide had been pegged behind him, and four disembodied hooves rested beside it. These would be carved for jewelry.

The flayed head hung in a nearby tree, grinning. Its exposed jawbone would someday ward off evil spirits. Today, however, the red skull's empty sockets glared with a vague malignancy from within a cloud of such noisome insects that it made Charlie think for the first time since perhaps high school of the staked pig's head in Lord of the Flies which had spoken of the normalcy of evil.

He would remember this the next morning when a child waving a decrepit transistor radio came running and shouting from the village and his guide, listening intently, translated: "He says, in New York City, a plane, a building ... (he clapped his hands to indicate an impact) ... and--not on accident!"