Impundulu

The storm breaks over the hills of the Eastern Cape, and somewhere in the noise a bird is coming down. Not gliding. Falling, on purpose, a black-and-white shape the size of a grown man dropping through the rain toward one point on the ground, and where its talons strike the earth the lightning goes with it. The thunder is the beating of its wings. When the sky clears and the smell of scorched grass rises off the wet ground, there is a burn in the soil, and beneath it, the stories say, a single enormous egg.

That is the impundulu, the lightning bird of the Nguni peoples of southern Africa, known to the Zulu, the Xhosa, and the Pondo. Its name translates as lightning bird, and across the region the same idea wears many feathers. Some tie it to the hammerkop, some to the ground hornbill or the bateleur eagle, some to no living bird at all. Among certain communities it is held that the creature only ever reveals itself as lightning, except to women, to whom it appears in feathered form. The Xhosa version, the best known, describes it as white with red wings, red legs, and a short red tail. Other accounts give it iridescent plumage like a peacock or a fiery red bill and legs. It is roughly the size of a person, and when it needs to it can wear a person’s shape outright.

The shapeshifting is where the horror sharpens. In male form the impundulu becomes a beautiful young man who courts women, beds them, and fathers children who are born as birds. In its own body it is a drinker of blood with an appetite that does not stop at satisfaction. It comes at night for sleeping people and takes blood until they die, and it carries off unguarded children. There is a quieter cruelty in it too. Tuberculosis, in parts of Pondoland, goes by the bird’s own name, because the disease is understood as the impundulu crouched on a sleeper’s chest, sucking away the breath a little at a time until nothing is left.

None of this is random violence. The impundulu is a servant. Witches keep them the way others keep a hunting dog, and the bird does the errands its owner cannot do openly: it sickens rivals, ruins luck, kills on command. It is sometimes seen riding on the back of a hyena, since a witch can become a hyena, and the two travel the night together. The bond runs down the generations. A witch’s impundulu outlives her and passes to her daughter, and to her daughter after that, which is why the creature is counted as immortal. It does not age out of the world. It simply changes hands.

Its body is worth as much dead as alive, and this is what sends people digging. The fat of the impundulu is prized, either as the fuel it ignites when it hurls down a lightning bolt or as a potent ingredient in medicine and sorcery. To get it, a person must catch the bird at the instant the lightning touches ground, or dig it out of the underground cavity where it buries itself at the strike. The egg it lays beneath a lightning scar is its own kind of omen, good or bad, and a diviner may have to dig it up before it hatches, because an egg left in the earth means another impundulu loosed on the world.

A girl in one village told of meeting it plainly. A black bird like a rooster ran up the handle of her hoe, raked her body with its claws so that the marks stayed on her skin, and flew back up into the clouds. That is the register of most encounters: sudden, close, gone. The diviner is the one who deals with the aftermath, reading the claw-marks and the burns, brewing a supposed extract of the bird’s flesh into a remedy that traces thieves, and in doing so holding a quiet authority over everyone who fears the thing.

Its powers all follow from what it is, a creature of storm and appetite bound to a human master. It calls the weather down with its wings. It drinks. It changes shape to hunt or to seduce. It cannot truly be killed by the means that kill other things. You cannot shoot it, and you cannot stab it. It shrugs off poison and cannot be drowned. Fire is the only thing that ends it. Beyond that the folklore offers a few narrow defences rather than victory: the bird is fond of milk, so poisoned milk can be set out to destroy it; assegais flung up into a gathering storm may keep it from landing; and a diviner who finds the buried egg in time can stop the next one before it breaks the shell. Belief in it has never been safely academic. As recently as this century a man in South Africa was convicted after a death caused by his conviction that a child in front of him was an impundulu, which is the kind of thing that happens when a creature is understood not as a story but as a thing that gets into the house at night.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the impundulu?

The impundulu, or lightning bird, is a vampiric supernatural bird from the folklore of the Nguni peoples of southern Africa, including the Zulu, Xhosa, and Pondo. It summons thunder and lightning with its wings and talons, drinks human blood, and most often serves a witch as a familiar and weapon against her enemies.

What does the impundulu look like?

The impundulu is usually described as a black-and-white bird of prey about the size of a grown person. In Xhosa tradition its true form is white with red wings, red legs, and a short red tail, though it is believed that only women can see it as a bird, and it can also take the shape of a handsome young man.

Is the impundulu a vampire?

Yes. The impundulu is a blood-drinking creature with an insatiable appetite that attacks sleeping people until they die and carries off unprotected children. In its human male form it feeds on people, and in bird form it is said to feed on other birds, and it is also blamed for causing tuberculosis by sucking away a sleeper’s breath.

How can the impundulu be killed?

The impundulu is nearly invulnerable and cannot be shot, stabbed, poisoned, or drowned. The only thing said to destroy it is fire, though folklore also holds that poisoned milk can be used against it, since the bird is fond of milk, and that a diviner can prevent new ones by finding and destroying its buried egg.

Why is the impundulu connected to witches?

The impundulu is regarded as a witch’s familiar, kept and commanded to sicken, seduce, and kill the witch’s rivals. It is considered immortal because it outlives its owner and is passed down from mother to daughter within a witch’s family, continuing to do the bidding of each new mistress.

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