I hear the wild boy come crouching in after me. “Pasop jou kop, mind your head,” he says. It is the first half-friendly thing he has said to me for while. The dark tunnel opens up into a large cavern. I’m going to have to describe what I see carefully here, while it’s still fresh in my memory.

It’s a house. Well, sort of. The main space is lit by paraffin lamps on stands made of stone. It looks like something out of a children’s book. There is a long table, which is a long slab of flat stone propped up by four square-ish boulders. At the ‘table’ are a number of ‘seats’ – which are tree stumps, carved and smoothed on top.

On the table I can see pots and bowls. Some I recognise as the tin plates you can buy at a spaza, but there are also some that look like they have been carved out of wood. A candle sits glowing in the centre.

There is a little boy seated at the table, spooning something that looks like porridge into his mouth. He can’t be more than six years old. His head is shaved except for a long curl in the front. His clothes are similar to the boy with the crossbow – a mismatched quilt of cloth, rough stitching and stains.

Not knowing what to do, I sit at the table, on one of the tree stumps. The little boy looks at me with large, liquid eyes. His eyes are like Bambi’s.

“Wait here,” says the boy with the crossbow. “Stompie, as sy prober wegjaag, roep my. Hier’s my wapen, if she tries to run, call me. Here’s my weapon.” He unhooks the strap of the crossbow from himself, puts it on the little boy, then disappears down a tunnel to my left. Stompie comfortably hitches the bow up to eye level, and points it at me, staring down the arrow. A six-year-old with porridge on his chin, holding a crossbow! I’ve definitely seen it all now.

I wait, staring at this tiny guard. He is wearing a necklace. Attached to the necklace are beads and what I think are shark teeth. This is the weirdest situation I have ever been in.

I hear footsteps coming from the small tunnel the older boy went down. It must lead to another section of the cave. The boy who caught me is back.

After him trail a selection of children – all boys – all in the same hand-made clothes, all filthy. I count four come in, each one shorter than the next. I can’t help but think of the Seven Dwarfs, which makes me want to laugh, but I don’t, just in case they think I am mocking them.

At the end of the line is a boy older than the others, and taller. He is wearing a loose vest, some denim shorts that have been bleached to white by age, and an enormous necklace. The necklace is made of feathers, stones, and what I shudder to think might be a bird’s foot. He’s also wearing a watch, I notice. A cheap Casio, the kind you can get at Clicks.

He is thin, but agile-looking. His jaw sticks out in a way that suggests arrogance. His head is shaved. I guess he must be about fourteen.

He sits at the head of the table and observes me. The smaller boys arrange themselves in various nooks and crannies of the cave, all of their fierce little eyes on me. I feel like I’m being looked at by a pack of hungry meerkats. The eldest boy, who I figure must be some sort of ‘chief’ to them, stamps his foot.

The twittering of the boys subsides to an expectant silence. He then looks at me, and speaks. He speaks to me in Afrikaans but I’m going to write it in English here so that you can understand.

“I am Black Cat. Who are you? What are you doing on our turf?”

My first instinct is to lie, to protect myself. I’m amazed when what comes out of my mouth is the truth.

“My name is Olive.”

“And what are you doing on our mountain?” A murmur of agreement about ownership ripples through the boys.

“I wasn’t aware the mountains belonged to any one person,” I say.

“Don’t try to be clever,” he says, in a serious tone that suggests I have upset him.

I just look back at him, my stare uncompromising.

“Who knows you’re here?” he demands.

“Nobody,” I say.

The older boy with the crossbow, who later I find out is called Yster (Iron), butts in. “When I found her she was running away from a policeman.”

“Which one?” asks Black Cat, his tone as commanding as a king’s.

“Never seen this one before,” says Yster.

I can’t figure out what they’re about. I want to leave. I don’t want to take part in this weird costume drama, this lost-in-the-forest vibe they’ve got going on. These boys are lunatics. They could be on drugs.

“Let me go. I don’t want to be here,” I announce.

The boy who calls himself Black Cat is starting to grow wisps of hair on his upper lip. I bet he’s proud of it. He thinks he’s a man, but he’s just a kid.

“You don’t like it here?” he says, and makes a spreading gesture with his arms, indicating the living space.

“No,” I say steadily. “It smells funny, it’s dark, and it gives me the creeps. Plus, you guys are out of your minds. You can’t just kidnap people on the mountain. This isn’t a cowboy western.”

The smile goes from his face instantly. He leans forward and stares at me. His upper lip lifts in a sneer. There is a gold tooth there. The flickering shadows in the cave make him look sinister.

“We are The Unwanteds. We keep our own law. Your society threw us away like litter. We live here because we are not welcome anywhere else. We are rough, we spit, we fight. We grew up rough for a reason – we always had to defend ourselves. None of you city people understand what it is like to live in a family of eight children all hungry, trying to kill a rat in the yard, anything to take the hunger away. Our parents didn’t want us, or couldn’t keep us, so they gave us away.”

I look away from his hypnotic, intense eyes and look at the huddle of boys behind him. One boy has a twig ‘earring’ through a hole in his ear and a burn scar on his cheek. One of the others has a thin dark brown scar running down his entire right arm.

“Yes. I can see you looking at the proof. And you have already met Stompie here, who was cut across his face with a knife – by his own father.”

The six year-old who guarded me while Yster was down the tunnel steps forward.

“Why?” I ask, noticing the jagged scar.

“He was drunk, and he hated me,” says the boy, as if this is the most normal thing in the world. I am too shocked to reply.

The boy with the feather necklace motions for another boy to step forward. “Finkie here was abandoned by his family. He woke up one morning to find them all gone. They just left him there, in his bed, sleeping.”

I look in horror at the boy, but he looks very normal to me. He has a broad nose that looks like it has been broken once. Still, his light brown eyes are kind.

The chieftain (for that is what I know he is, now) speaks again, and his voice is heavy with passion.

“Nobody loved us. Nobody cared for us. That’s why we ran away. We look out for each other because nobody else ever bothered to.”

I think of some of the farms in our area. I know that the kids often run away. Sometimes they are starving, sometimes they are being beaten, sometimes they are being molested. Nobody can work out why. I know it has to do with alcohol, and some evil farmers paying their workers with drink. I think to pay your workers with drink is probably the single wickedest thing in the world.

“I ran away too,” I blurt out. I don’t mean to be so honest and upfront with these total strangers, but my heart is affected by their situation. They’ve all escaped from something unbearable. Like I have.

“From what?” asks the chieftain.

“From … something bad.”

He nods, like he doesn’t need to know the details.

“I want to go. I have to go.” He must be made to realise that I do not intend to stay – thanks for the visit, interesting cave, but I’ve got to be going kind of thing.

He leans back in his chair and plays with his necklace. Two beads on it clink together.

“Not possible. You’ll tell people where we are.”

“I won’t!” I cry. “I promise I won’t.”

***

Tell us what you think: Are the boys better off away from their families, looking after themselves, or perhaps in a children’s’ home? Why?