The old man stood on the foothills of Kilimanjaro, looking out across the Serengeti. He could smell it in the air, the yellow. The aka. He saw it as a haze to the north.

And he knew that it was time.

"And I am saying to you, Old Man, that this is superstitious nonsense. It is like the tales your women tell around the water hole. Laughable except to children."

The old man shook his head, slowly. "Listen to you speak! 'Superstitious nonsense'. 'Your women'. You have been away too long, that the camps of 'reason' would rob you of your sight."

"Perhaps not long enough." Mtumbe sighed. "You will travel a hundred miles of near-starvation, losing tens of lives, because of your fear of the yellow. Why not stay here, with no loss of life or limb, and taste of the fruit as it comes to ripening? Think of the children, at least, man!"

The old man hummed for a moment. "I said something like that to your mother when she sent you to the missionary town with the jesusman. I wish she were here today to see what she has wrought."

"She would be, curse you, if you hadn't dragged her away from the fires of her home on your terrified scamper away from the yellow!" And there were tears of anger in Mtumbe's eyes to match the mask of frustration he wore.

The old man took this without flinching. "Perhaps. But I have led the souls of these people since your father was just a secret conjured in your grandsire's breast. And I know that keeping them away from the yellow is worth the cost of some lives. Even the life of your mother."

Mtumbe walked away, then, too incensed to speak, and the old man watched him go.

"Your life is your own, since you renounce the tribe. But you have no right to take these. To kill these." The old man gestured to the group of young men and women who stood apart from the rest.

Mtumbe was unsmiling, but there was triumph in his eyes. "Old Man, they stay here of their own will. They do not fear the yellow. They are with me."

"You will not." The reply was sharp, commanding, but the age shone through, to be mistaken as weakness.

"I will." Now the young man was smiling, unabashedly. "What will you do? Stay and drive us off? Or drag us away with you? There's nothing that you can do, even a hundred strong as you are. We stay."

The old man scanned the faces of the young people-- so young! There was fear there, but resolve, too. He was proud of their spirit, though they should die of it. He had been doing this for enough years that tears would not well, but the ache he felt at seeing his flock suborned and needlessly dying was almost too much to bear. It was then that he felt the first pangs of his own mortality, in a way he had not even when the viper's venom had flowed dark in his leg. He would not live five years more, he reckoned, absently. He must accelerate Jaalah's training. Especially now that Pok was staying with this betrayer of souls, this Mtumbe, this traitor to his creed.

"Pok," he implored of the short man, "think of what it is that you do. When you die (I do not say 'if') you will carry down the river with you all of the knowledge I have bestowed upon you. Wasted, wasted ... Come with us, boy. Hurry!"

Pok looked as if he might waver, but glanced aside at Bethut, next to him, and he gripped her hand fiercely. "Bethut will stay, and I will stay. And we will show you that there is nothing to fear."

"Then you are a fool, like that one." The old man rose, and grabbed his walking stick and his bag. "Well, we go. May the ancestors watch you and ward you, and may the yellow come not to this place." He laughed, bitterly, a spectre of his youthful self, and walked away from the fire pit. He turned back one more time. "You should have stayed with the jesusmen, 'Tumbe. Now you will die, and take these poor deluded ones with you. Farewell!"

And slowly, turning away, the rest of the tribe followed him, out into the world, away from this danger.

"Pollen!" Mtumbe said, a laugh in his throat. "The seeds of flowers as yet unborn! The yellow is pollen!"

Three days before, a light, almost smoky golden hue had begun to permeate the air. That was when Fibad and Droussh and Sif had fled, following on the heels of the rest of the tribe, the color too much for them. The color had intensified, bringing with it mild sneezing at first, and a smell which reminded him of the orchids in the missionary greenhouse. Five of the six who remained with him were no longer having problems with the irritation in their lungs. Cham had a worse reaction, and was reduced to coughing fits in one of the huts, but Mtumbe had given the boy some of the antihistamine tablets he'd brought with him, in what he called his "medicine bag". Cham would be all right.

Now, the small village was covered in a light layer of bright yellow dust, and Mtumbe laughed until he choked on the winds which carried it in.

Zefra came to him, now. She was wearing the dress he had brought. She was clumsy in it, unaccustomed to its shape and feel, but the fact that she wore it for him made it beautiful. He stroked her back through the thin material, and looked very frankly into her eyes. She looked back, the same in every way.

He took her before the hut door even closed. Took her like an animal, on the ground, cool dirt on her knees, gripped by her hands. He thrust into her harshly, and she screamed his name as she pushed back.

Mtumbe thought it was odd that Pok and Bethut had not returned, yet; they had gone to the stream a day ago, and were not yet back. Perhaps they, too, had fled. The old man had filled Pok's head with irrationality for many years, he acknowledged, perhaps more than could be washed away with common sense and the love of a good woman. The wild dogs cried out in the night, plaintively, and he wondered if they'd fed on the young couple.