Sekani Msachi

A tale from the jungle

A long time ago, the jungle was not just a place of trees and shadows. It was a living, breathing world , a city of fur and scale and wings, where every creature, from the smallest termite to the oldest elephant, spoke the same language. There were no misunderstandings. No one needed to repeat themselves. Peace was not merely a hope; it was simply the way things were.

At the head of this world sat the Lion. He wore his mane the way kings wear crowns , with a seriousness that made even the wind take notice. He was wise enough, however, to know that running a jungle alone was a fool’s errand. So he assembled a council. They called themselves the Big 6.

Beside the Lion sat the Buffalo, whose patience was his greatest weapon. There was the Rhino, built like a wall and roughly as flexible in his thinking, who served as enforcer. The Leopard handled affairs that required silence and speed. The Elephant carried the memory of everything that had ever happened, which made her both invaluable and occasionally exhausting at meetings. And finally, there was the Chief of the Human Community, who sat at the table with considerable pride, though he was the only one who required a stool.

Together, the six of them wrote the laws that kept the jungle from falling apart. The first law decreed that animals must breed only with their own kind , a rule introduced primarily to prevent the creation of a giraffe-elephant hybrid that nobody knew how to house. The second ensured that feeding followed the Circle of Life, so that no creature upset the balance by eating too much before midday. The third respected territory, with boundaries taken as seriously as any modern property deed. There were more rules, many more, but these were the ones that mattered most.

These laws were not suggestions. They were carved into the bones of the world. Mothers recited them to their young. The wind carried them through the acacia trees. For generations, the jungle ran like a well-oiled clock. Order was everything.

The human settlement within the jungle was a village called Limpopo. It was not a grand place by any measure , mostly mud walls and thatched roofs , but it had a dignity of its own, and its leadership had always been respected across the land. At the time this story takes place, the village was led by Chief Kenedu Limpopo, a man of great age and greater wisdom, though his domestic situation was a quiet source of gossip among the elders.

The Chief had three wives and nine daughters. Nine. Each one vibrant, each one capable. And yet, by the customs of his people, not a single one of them could inherit his chieftaincy. The throne passed to men only, and the Chief had long accepted that biology had not been kind to his ambitions for a son.

One evening, as the sky turned the colour of bruised plums, Chief Kenedu sat on his wooden stool and stared at the middle distance. He stroked his beard. He thought.

“Nine daughters,” he muttered to no one in particular. “Nine bright souls, and not one can carry the staff when I am gone. The ancestors were clear about this , the seat must go to a man. But if I cannot produce one by birth, then I must find one by other means. A competition. Let the men of Limpopo present their worth. The winner will marry Winosa, my eldest, and through that marriage, become the son I never had. It is not without precedent. It is, in fact, brilliance.”

He clapped twice. From the shadows appeared Kanema, his messenger , a man whose lungs were capable of carrying sound across distances that seemed to defy reason.

“Kanema. Every man in Limpopo must know this: there will be a competition. The one who demonstrates the finest talent will marry Winosa and inherit my title. Tell the farmers in the fields. Tell the women at the river. Tell even the ones sitting in the pubs pretending to think.”

“Chief,” Kanema said, looking slightly stunned. “To become Chief through marriage? It has never been done.”

“Then it shall be the first time. Go.”

And Kanema went. He ran through Limpopo like a man on fire, his voice shaking the leaves off trees, startling oxen mid-plow, interrupting naps and arguments and quiet meals. He announced the competition with the energy of someone who had been waiting his whole life to make this particular announcement.

The news spread fast. Ambition stirred. Strong men flexed. Clever men schemed. The village buzzed.

Zaithwa heard the announcement too. He was sitting under a baobab tree, watching a beetle navigate a leaf, when Kanema came screaming past about talents and chiefships. Zaithwa tilted his head. He sensed opportunity, in the vague way a person senses rain before they can see it.

Now, it must be said , Zaithwa was not what anyone would call a promising candidate. The village had given him a title years ago: the Most Useless Man in Limpopo. It was not a kind title, but it was, by most accounts, accurate. He lived with his parents and contributed nothing to the household. He had no trade. No muscles worth speaking of. No particular intellect. He spent his days at the jungle’s edge, eating fruit that fell close enough to require no effort, and thinking about things that concerned only himself.

But Zaithwa had one thing that nobody in Limpopo knew about. He had a friend.

His friend was a mosquito.

Not just any mosquito. This particular mosquito had a voice that made the ordinary world seem dull by comparison. It was not a buzz or a hum , it was music. Real music. The kind that could stop a storm mid-howl or bring a sick animal back from the edge simply by drifting into its ear. People said her singing could silence an entire forest with a single note. Zaithwa believed it completely, because every evening when he came to the baobab tree, she was already waiting, and when she sang, every difficult thing in his life became a little easier to carry.

In return for her songs, Zaithwa brought her the gossip of the village. The mosquito slept during daylight hours and missed everything. She was endlessly entertained by his reports of who was arguing with whom, which marriages were unravelling, and what ridiculous thing had happened at the market that week. It was a fair exchange: secrets for symphonies. Neither of them thought too much about how strange it was.

The evening Zaithwa heard about the competition, he arrived at the baobab tree carrying a heaviness the mosquito noticed immediately.

“They want talent,” he said. “Every man in the village is preparing something. Hunters, fighters, dancers, strongmen. And then there is me. What do I have? I am the man who watches beetles.”

“Surely there is something,” the mosquito said.

“There is nothing. I have checked.” He paused. “I wish I had your voice. If I could sing the way you sing, not even the judges could ignore me.”

The mosquito was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was careful.

“I could lend it to you,” she said.

Zaithwa stared at her. “That is yours. That is , you.”

“It is a loan. One day only. You use it, you win your competition, and before the sun rises the morning after, you come back here and return it to me. Those are the terms. The ancient laws are clear on this , a power like mine cannot live inside a human for more than one cycle of the sun. If you do not return it in time, the bond breaks. Humans and animals lose the shared language. Forever. And my voice,” she added quietly, “will be gone too. Reduced to nothing but a buzzing sound.”

“I understand,” Zaithwa said. “I will come back before first light. I swear it.”

“See that you do,” she said. “For both our sakes.”

That night, under the stars, the transfer was made. The mosquito sang , not for pleasure this time, but for giving. The music flowed out of her and settled into Zaithwa’s chest like something finding its proper home. She kept a small piece for herself, just enough to survive. When it was done, Zaithwa cleared his throat and spoke, and what came out was rich and full and startling even to himself.

He thanked her four times. He promised once more. Then he walked home through the dark, carrying a voice that did not belong to him.

The morning of the competition arrived with a sky full of colour. The Chief’s square filled early. Drums and conversation competed with each other. King Lion himself attended as guest of honour, seated with the particular stillness of someone who has seen enough spectacles to be patient about this one. Winosa, the Chief’s eldest daughter, sat nearby, adorned beautifully, and trying not to look like she had opinions about any of this.

One hundred men had entered. Ninety-nine performed before Zaithwa.

The day was long. Dancers who moved like startled antelopes. Fighters who demonstrated techniques that looked painful for everyone involved. Hunters arrived with yesterday’s game, which smelled like it. Strongmen split rocks with their bare hands. One man balanced on a very long pole for an impressive amount of time, though the crowd had largely stopped watching by then.

By the time the ninety-ninth man finished, the sun was low and the audience’s patience was thin. Then Zaithwa walked onto the stage.

The crowd stirred. Not with excitement , with amusement.

“Look, the sleeper wakes,” someone called from the front.

“Go home, Zaithwa! We have seen enough!”

“Did he bring his fruit? Is that his talent , eating fruit?”

The laughter was sharp and unkind, designed to send him off the stage before he had even begun. But Zaithwa did not leave. He stood at the centre and let the noise settle. He looked out at the crowd without flinching. Then he filled his lungs with the evening air and opened his mouth.

The laughter stopped.

What came out of him reached into every person in that square and rearranged something. It was not just beautiful , it was the kind of sound that makes a person feel briefly that everything is going to be alright. Feet began to move without permission. Eyes closed on their own. Even the King Lion’s tail, which had been flicking with mild boredom, went completely still.

Chief Kenedu raised his hand and stopped Zaithwa mid-note. The echo hung in the air for a moment before fading.

“Enough,” the Chief said. He was smiling and looked slightly dazed. “I have heard enough. No one else comes close.”

He stood and raised his staff.

“Zaithwa wins. He will marry Winosa and inherit the Chieftaincy of Limpopo.”

The crowd erupted. Some with joy, some with disbelief, and a few with the specific resentment of people who trained very hard for something and lost to someone who appeared to have done nothing at all.

King Lion watched from his seat and said nothing. But his golden eyes were narrow. He had heard a voice like that only once before in his many years , coming from a tiny creature in the thickets. He did not interrupt the celebration. He was a diplomat before he was anything else. But he noted what he had heard, and he filed it away.

The village of Limpopo celebrated with the kind of recklessness that suggests nobody is thinking about tomorrow. There was food and drink in quantities that bordered on irresponsible. People who had never acknowledged Zaithwa’s existence were now pressing bowls of stew into his hands and calling him their oldest friend.

“Zaithwa! I always knew you had it in you!”

“We were blind not to see it sooner! Sing us another!”

He sang another. And another after that. The palm wine was strong , Limpopo had a recipe for it that was almost legendary in its capacity to undo a person , and Zaithwa drank more than he should have. The world began to soften and tilt. Somewhere between the third song and the fifth calabash, the night slipped away from him.

He did not make it to the baobab tree.

He was carried home by the King’s guard , two large men who deposited him on his reed mat like a sack of millet and left him snoring.

At the baobab tree, the mosquito waited. Minutes passed. Then hours. The moon crossed the sky. The horizon began to pale.

She flew to his house. She found him through the open window, flat on his mat, completely unreachable.

She tried everything. She buzzed in his ear. She nudged his cheek with her tiny legs. She hovered close and cried out , a sound that used the last of what remained of her great voice.

“Zaithwa! Please! The sun is coming! You have to wake up!”

He swatted at her in his sleep.

The first light touched the horizon. It was gentle and golden and entirely indifferent to the disaster it was causing.

The voice did not return to her. Instead, it settled permanently into Zaithwa’s blood, as though it had decided it preferred it there. The mosquito felt her own voice collapse inward , the songs, the melodies, the great healing arias , all of it folded down into a thin, high, irritating buzz. That was all that remained.

She hovered over his sleeping face for a long moment. Then she flew out the window into the morning light, and she made a decision.

She would find him every night. She would find his children, and their children’s children, and every generation that followed. She would take from their blood what had been taken from her. And she would buzz in their ears while they slept, so they could never fully escape the sound of what Zaithwa had forgotten to do.

When King Lion woke the next morning and opened his mouth to speak, the humans nearby heard only a roar. No words. Nothing they could understand. The shared language , that ancient, effortless bridge between species , had broken overnight.

The Lion had intended to call Zaithwa before the council, to conduct a formal hearing, to handle things properly. But there was no mechanism for a proper hearing when half the participants could no longer understand the other half.

His roar shook the leaves from the trees. Whatever its meaning in the old language, the humans heard only danger. They gathered their things and left the deep jungle, building their settlements further and further from the trees, from the animals, from everything they had once shared.

The animals retreated inward. The Big 6 became the Big 5 , the human seat at the council table left empty, then eventually removed altogether.

The separation was not dramatic. It happened the way most permanent things happen , quietly, over time, until one day it simply was.

As a form of restitution for the mosquito’s loss, King Lion granted her something in compensation. It was not kindness, exactly , it was justice of the jungle variety. She could no longer heal with her voice, so she was given the ability to carry malaria instead. Wherever she draws blood from a human, she leaves behind a memory of the unpaid debt. It is a petty sort of justice, but the jungle has always been honest about what it is.

Epilogue

Not everything that came from that night was loss.

The voice the mosquito lent did not disappear with Zaithwa’s death. It passed down through his bloodline , diluted, yes, but present. It is said that the people today who have truly extraordinary voices, the ones who make a room go quiet when they sing, who fill a church until the walls seem to lean in, who perform and leave people briefly unable to speak , those people are Zaithwa’s descendants. What they carry is the echo of a borrowed gift that was never returned. Beautiful, and a little stolen.

And the mosquito? She is still out there. Every night, in the quiet just before sleep, she finds a human ear and buzzes close. If you lie still and listen past the irritation, past the urge to swat, you might hear a rhythm in it , almost like a name being repeated. She is not trying to annoy you. She is trying to collect something. She is whispering: Zaithwa.

The smallest promises, she has learned, when broken, have the longest reach.

Did you know that in Chitumbuka, mosquitoes are called Sumu or Nyimbo , words that translate into English as “song”? That is what inspired this story.

Sekani Msachi is a 19-year-old chemical engineering student at the Malawi University of Science and Technology. As chairperson of the MUST Writers’ Guild, he pours his passion into Malawian novellas and short stories that capture the soul of his homeland. HIs writing blends cultural richness with emerging voices.