Chapter 1

Before William discovered science, he says, he was terrified of magic. His earliest memory is of a time when his father, Trywell, saved him from magic. When William was six, he ate some bubble gum given to him by other boys playing in the street. The next day, a man comes to William’s house and tells Trywell that someone has stolen a bag of bubblegum. William is scared that this man will send a sing’anga (witch doctor) after him for eating the bubble gum.

William goes to the forest and tries to force himself to vomit up the bubble gum so that a witch doctor won’t be able to blame him for the theft. When William can’t throw up, he runs back to his father and confesses his crime. Trywell goes back to the trader who originally owned the gum, explains that William didn’t know it was stolen, and pays a full week’s wages for the bag. That night, William feels as though he has been saved from certain death, but Trywell just laughs at the incident.

Trywell, William’s father, is a strong man who does not fear magic even though he still tells the traditional magic stories. One of William’s favorite magic stories tells of the Battle of Kasunga. A young princess of the Chewa people is killed by a black rhino, so the Chief of the Chewa people contracts a magic hunter named Mwase Chiphaudzu to kill the menace. Mwase kills the rhino and is awarded a potion of the Chewa lands as a prize.

Yet the Ngoni people, fleeing war in the Zulu kingdom of South Africa, settle in the land that Mwase now rules. The Ngoni decide to eliminate the Chewa so that they will no longer have to compete for resources. When Chief Mwase discovers this plot, he magically transforms his warriors into blades of grass and kills all the Ngoni warriors when they try to invade the Chewa mountain. The mountain was renamed to commemorate this battle, and William explains that the mountain looms just past his village and the town of Kasungu.

Trywell learned these magic stories from William’s grandfather. Grandpa is old enough that he remembers Malawi before farming cleared the dense forest and wild animals became scarcer. When Grandpa was a boy, his grandmother was eaten by a lion and the British authorities shot the lion so it would not eat anyone else. Another story tells of Grandpa finding a man who had been killed by a snake bite. Grandpa took a witch doctor to the body, and the witch doctor brought the man back to life long enough for the man to identify the snake who bit him.

Trywell used to go hunting with Grandpa and follow a sacred ritual before each expedition. Grandpa acted as the mwini chisokole, the owner of the hunt who plans when and where the hunt will take place and recruits other men to join the expedition. He was not allowed to sleep in the same room as his wife the night before the hunt so that he would be well-rested and free from distractions. Grandpa would boil a mixture of red maize and roots, then pass it out to all the men on the hunt. The men also told their wives to stay indoors while the hunt took place so that the animals would stay asleep.

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