Wolf Light

by Yaba Badoe

  Gran-pa nodded and listened, his eyes half-closed like an old lizard basking in the sun, while he attended to what Gran-ma was saying: ‘I asked our daughter to talk to you today because I have never, in all our time together, husband, seen you behave in this manner. Our chief, who was once our friend, is now your enemy. Our neighbours no longer go out of their way to talk to me. Why? On the chief’s orders!’

  ‘You see!’ Sweet Mother cried, standing up. ‘You see, Pa!’ she said bounding towards him with the speed of a tigress about to pounce. ‘This is all your doing. Leave this nonsense behind you! Walk away from it. If not for me, for Ma and Adoma’s sake at least!’

  My mother had a point. Her fervour prompted Gran-pa’s question about what each of us would do should danger knock on our door to clamour in my mind. And in my heart I felt a fierce scratching, a snarl of alarm as I recognised that this was Gran-pa’s moment, his future in the balance.

  He lifted his eyes to the ceiling as if begging a superior being for assistance in withstanding Sweet Mother’s attack: ‘Am I to blame,’ he asked, his gimlet gaze piercing hers, ‘if our chief behaves foolishly and rattles like groundnut shells in a broken calabash? Is it my fault if our countrymen upriver have to buy water to drink now? My fault that our fishermen no longer find fish to feed their families?’

  Their fingers still entwined, Gran-ma laid Gran-pa’s hand against her cheek. My mouth opened again.

  ‘You are not to blame,’ said Gran-ma. ‘Nevertheless, I’m begging you, husband, do not make me a widow while our bones are yet strong. Do not make me grieve while we can still relish this life of ours. Husband, do not leave me to gaze in my pot of pebbles alone, for what I have seen in it does not bode well.’

  Gran-ma’s words snuffed the last flickers of anger from the conversation but as her premonition fluttered like a moth in a corner of the room, I held my breath. We all did because in our different ways we each of us felt the shiver of the moth’s wings flitting closer.

  Gran-pa sighed. Then with his eyes dancing with hers, he replied: ‘Wife, would you have me behave in a way that I cannot? Would you have me be other than what I am?’

  Gran-ma shook her head. Between one moment and the next, the tilt from one side to the other, her face quivered and time froze. In that second I glimpsed Gran-pa’s fate and trembled. Danger was at his door and he was opening it.

  ‘And you, Adoma?’ Gran-pa asked. ‘Would you have me behave otherwise?’

  For a moment I was tempted to side with Sweet Mother and force him to change course. Avoiding the delve of his eyes, the deep dive of them that exposed my soul to his, I looked at my feet, praying that Kwame, the creator of all creatures in this world and the next, would do everything in his power to prevent Gran-pa venturing outside and thereby keep us safe. In that instant I was almost persuaded to lie. But I could not. Even after what I’d glimpsed, after Nana Merrimore’s voice came back to me and I heard her say: ‘Whatever’s coming our way will be here soon,’ what else was there for me to do but to stand firm as tendrils of fear slithered around my ankles, binding me to the floor?

  I shook myself, stamped on my terror and met Gran-pa’s gaze: ‘I’m with you Gran-pa,’ I said. ‘I’m with you all the way.’

  As the words left my lips, Sweet Mother hissed.

  *

  Gran-pa and I would have reached the chief’s palace within the hour if my One and Only hadn’t met us at the gate of our compound. Kofi was with his mother. Felicia, known as Auntie Feli, the sole provider for her family, a market woman cursed with a cauldron of ailments that needed constant attention – which she received at a cheaper price from Gran-pa than from a medical doctor. If it wasn’t the wheeziness in her chest, her stomach would be hurting her. And if not her stomach, it was rheumatism in her joints or excruciating pain in her legs, the result of long hours on her feet at the market.

  At the sight of her the fear creeping through my veins eased somewhat. Kwame, the creator of all creatures great and small, was smiling on us at last! Because with Auntie Feli at our house, there was no chance of us leaving the compound before nightfall.

  She hauled Kofi into our yard by the neck, pushed him down the path past the neem tree to a grove of fruiting lemon, orange and guava trees overshadowed by a huge mango. Beneath its branches, Auntie Feli shoved her son on to a stool.

  ‘Okomfo!’ she cried. ‘Help me! Help my son. Cast out this nonsense of football that’s taken hold of his mind. Make it so he can study with a clear mind and pass his exams! Okomfo! Help us!’

  Kofi glanced at me making it clear that if I so much as tittered, if I so much as remarked on the events I was about to see, I would score an own goal and lose his friendship. The smile on my lips shrivelled.

  ‘Feli, bring your boy another time,’ said Gran-pa. ‘You’ve caught us on our way out.’

  Another time? Auntie Feli had no intention of leaving and barrelled on: ‘Okomfo, someone has cursed us with football madness because this boy of mine thinks and dreams about one thing alone. Football! His dreams are wild, I tell you. So wild he wants to travel to abrokyire on a football scholarship. If he’s not playing with your girl-child over there, he’s practising with his team. Make him stop, Okomfo. Make him drink one of your concoctions to purge him of this illness. And then make him sit down and study. Okomfo, I beg you!’

  Arms outstretched, Aunt Feli fell onto her knees. She flinched. I shook my head. Rheumatism.

  ‘Please, Okomfo, please!’ she grovelled.

  I helped her back to her feet and into a chair beside Kofi’s stool. When she was safely ensconced I slipped behind the guava tree and, hugging my ribs, heaved with silent laughter. The pungent scent of ripening fruit tickled my nostrils, while I listened, squatting beneath the tree.

  ‘He never studies,’ Auntie Feli said of Kofi. ‘Kotoko! Chelsea! Everything’s Kotoko or Chelsea! He used to talk about Michael Essien morning, noon and night. Now, every day: Pogba! Pogba! Pogba!’

  A hand on her hip, she swung around to glare at my One and Only as if she was on the verge of throttling him.

  ‘Okomfo, what am I to do when this my eldest, the only one of my three with the brains to elevate us, won’t do what he’s told and concentrate on chewing his books?’

  Having already thanked Kwame for delaying our departure, I urged him to cancel our outing completely.

  ‘Please,’ I said to him, ‘make Auntie Feli talk so much about her problem with my One and Only that before we know it the morning is over and we have to visit the chief another day.’

  ‘Feli,’ said Gran-pa, ‘what you believe to be a curse may be a blessing in disguise. Does your boy respect you?’

  Kofi’s mother grunted.

  ‘Does he steal?’

  ‘No, Okomfo.’

  ‘So your problem is that he doesn’t work hard enough?’

  She grunted again.

  ‘Kofi, are you willing to change your habits and spend more time with your books?’

  Gran-pa’s question was met with silence.

  I turned as my grandfather repeated it. Kofi’s face was as dark as an afternoon sky in the rainy season, the first drops about to fall. My heart heaved, almost capsizing as I felt the weight of his humiliation followed by a twinge of tenderness so intense it hurt. I tell you, my friend, we Asante are a proud people, none more so than a boy raised by a woman on her own; a woman who lives in the hope that her eldest, a boy, will excel.

  I got up from the ground and, crouching by Kofi, whispered his name: ‘Okomfo Gran-pa’s talking to you. Answer him.’ I nudged him by linking my little finger with his and felt him shiver, felt his tears slide down his cheeks as if I was crying myself. Kofi placed a hand over his face and half-sobbing, waited until, able to speak once again, he told his version of the football story. And all the while, as Gran-pa, Auntie Feli and I listened, a sun lark in the guava tree, having satisfied her hunger, lit up the sky with a bright new song.

  19

  Adoma


  ‘You like him,’ Gran-pa said after Kofi and his mother had left, each content with the truce the old man had brokered: Kofi promised to play football only at the weekend, the rest of the time he would spend on his books.

  ‘He’s my one, true friend,’ I replied. ‘My one and only.’

  ‘The one and only?’

  I nodded. ‘One of these days I intend to be like this with him, Gran-pa.’ I folded my middle finger over my forefinger, touching them to my cheek as my face glowed. ‘When the time comes, I hope I’ll treat him with the same respect and loving-kindness you show Gran-ma.’

  ‘He’s not frightened by what you do for the river goddess?’

  I shook my head. ‘At times I think he’d like to use her to win at football, but I know better, Gran-pa.’

  ‘Good girl.’ A smile rippled over my grandfather’s features, lighting his eyes.

  Head tilted, I paused. And gauging the warp and weft of him, the texture of his weave, I found myself nestling at the source of his being and remembered. Not so long ago, I used to sit on Gran-pa’s knee while I stroked the dent on his forehead. A friend had injured him when they were children. ‘He took a stone,’ Gran-pa had said. ‘And hit me right here.’

  I recalled his forefinger guiding mine as I explored the dent and then the rest of his face: stubborn bristles of hair on chin and jaw, lips that hid a tongue that never belittled but encouraged me to conserve what our ancestors had left in our care. Gran-pa was the kindest, most fearless man I knew, and I loved him more than anyone else, loved him even more than Milo and Kofi. I needed him by my side a while longer.

  So, instead of making light of my separation from most of my age group as I usually did, this time I chose to dwell on it: ‘You’ve taught me to rely on my sisters,’ I reminded him. ‘Because to belong to the shrine is not a popular choice.’

  ‘How so?’ Gran-pa asked.

  This was his way of teaching me to flex the muscles of my mind to better understand my calling. He would ask the same question again and again to help me walk firmly on the path I was on.

  ‘Because Gran-pa, those Alleluia worshippers in my class worry me too much.’

  Gran-pa nodded.

  ‘You know how it is, Gran-pa. They make the same wahala Sweet Mother does. They never stop telling me that what we do is worship trees and rivers. While they claim to worship their one true god, their three in one, they say we spill the blood of animals, sacrifice babies, practise ju-ju…’

  ‘And how do you answer them, Adoma?’

  I inhaled the scent of Gran-pa’s skin like I used to when I was small enough to sit on his lap. I held the smell of him, savouring a trace of wood smoke and sprinklings of nutmeg that Gran-ma used in stews and cakes. The scent enfolded me.

  ‘I tell them what you told me long ago, Gran-pa,’ I replied. ‘Our god being such a bountiful god wouldn’t have stopped at having just one son. He has many sons. Daughters as well…’

  Gran-pa laughed. ‘Spoken like a true Ashanti!’

  By now, despite my best efforts to delay our departure – my attempt to persuade Milo down from the neem tree, followed by a last minute suggestion that for his audience with the chief Gran-pa should change into a kente cloth – a colourful, woven cloth worn on important occasions – we were heading out of the gate once again. I carried a rucksack containing water while Gran-pa, behind me, steered his scooter.

  As I pulled back the lock to let him through, he gazed at me and said: ‘You’ve seen my fate, haven’t you, grandchild? You’ve seen. That’s why I know you’re ready for me to go…’

  ‘Gran-pa…’

  We were in the din and bustle of our street among vendors selling their wares. A Hausa man cycled past us, a pile of material strapped on his bicycle. Opposite, a woman, a straw hat shielding her face from the sun, roasted corn on a wood fire. Beside her a child wrapped portions of plantain and groundnuts.

  I said his name and Gran-pa smiled. At that moment a motorbike thundered down the lane. Two macho men in helmets, biceps pumped to bursting, sped towards us. A second before they passed, the larger of the two on the passenger seat, raised his hand. In it was a gun, which he levelled at Gran-pa. The clap of a firecracker exploded in my ears. One second and Gran-pa’s smile snapped into open-mouthed surprise. He looked down at his hand, wet with blood, as if it belonged to a stranger, the wound in his stomach to someone else.

  ‘Gran-pa!’ I shouted. I turned, and before the motorbike could exceed my range, made a fist of my mind, and summoning the powers of earth and sky, wind and fire, hurled arrows of molten rage at the assailants.

  The motorbike skidded.

  In me a volcano erupted and a leopard roared.

  No one hurts Okomfo Gran-pa while I’m around. And when I’m riled, no skin-walker escapes my grasp.

  I unleashed a volley of blasts that pummelled the hitman and his driver on their shoulders, arms and legs.

  Brakes screeched, necks jerked back and the bike flew into the air. For an instant the driver clung on, before he and the hitman tumbled to the ground, and the motorbike dropped on them. The crash ignited screams of pain, frantic juddering of helmets on the ground. The assassin’s fingers twitched. His body quivered, then lay still.

  I pivoted, springing to Gran-pa’s aid. Slumped against the scooter, his eyes were closed. I touched his neck searching for a pulse. But as I did and Gran-ma and Sweet Mother rushed outside to see what the wahala was about, I understood that Gran-pa was on his last journey home to his village.

  20

  Zula

  On the day when, one after the other, another of our teachers left us, the sun climbing the sky in Ghana had not reached its zenith. After Grandma’s death, Okomfo Gran-pa was next to go. As he began his journey home to his village, Linet, jolted by the memory of ink on a patch of pink, turned to her upstairs window.

  I was halfway through watering our livestock in wolf-light. Overhead, a hawk drifting in the sky arched a wing, and blocking the last of the sun, cast her shadow on me. The shadow hovered. I looked up and at that moment a flash of insight set my wolf eyes blazing. I watched events unfold.

  On Bodmin Moor I saw what Linet was seeing: Nana Merrimore, head high, back straight, long strides taking her to the lake.

  ‘Nana. Nana, stop,’ I hear Linet cry.

  Heartbeats drumming, I follow her down the stairs.

  ‘Run, Linet, run,’ I tell her.

  ‘Nana! Nana,’ she screams. ‘Stop!’

  She tries to sprint, but Bracken, a cat bewitched, pounces and, clawing at her feet, foils Linet’s attempts to run unhindered.

  Wolf eyes sharp as a sabre, I race past Linet. In a white nightdress, hair braided, Nana Merrimore sees my shade at the edge of her vision and ignores me.

  ‘Think again,’ I tell her sensing her intention. ‘Think of Linet!’

  Her reply is to open her arms wide and wade into the lake.

  ‘No! No!’ Linet sobs.

  Deaf to her cries, Nana Merrimore ventures deeper. Dipping, slipping, she croons to the women of the lake as to long-lost sisters and summons them to her side:

  ‘Sister swan, sister auk,

  Sister starling, sister hawk.

  Sisters of day, sisters of night

  Owl, raven, curlew and kite

  Watch over my Linet-girl!

  But you, sister chough, settle on her,

  Red in beak and feet, build a nest for her.

  Hold her through life’s brawl and squall.

  Watch over my Linet-girl, sisters all!’

  Nana Merrimore sings as the lake splashes her waist, her chest, her neck. Then with only her head above water, she closes her eyes and with a sigh allows the drowning pool to claim her.

  I looked on, stunned, Linet’s whimpers of pain in my ears: ‘Hush, Linet, hush,’ I said to her.

  The answer I received was a deafening roar that shook my body. An explosion. Not where I stood by the lake with the hawk overhead but far away. Around me, our camels c
ontinued lapping water; our horses continued grazing. Altan, no longer thirsty, was rootling through scrubland for blades of fresh grass when Pa’s horse, Takhi, neighed. Altan did the same. Then Takhi, tossing his head, cantered in the direction of where his master was, towards the mountains of the Sleeping Giant.

  Ears pricked, Altan sought me out with his muzzle. He brushed against my arm and straight away the scene thrust before me shimmered into motion.

  ‘Pa,’ I whispered.

  He had left early that morning for the Sleeping Giant in a truck with several herdsmen. According to our sources, in preparation for the mining of copper to begin, an Australian company would start blasting the terrain that day. With our pleas ignored by our government, the plan Pa and his friends conceived, was to make it impossible to damage any part of our sacred space by demonstrating on it. Not a crevice or a canyon of the mountain range would be harmed by skin-walkers. Not when our lives depended on water that after settling in the Giant’s mouth ran down into the steppes.

  While some of our herdsmen argued with skin-walkers, Pa led two men up a ravine to the site of the proposed blast. The men down below pointed at them. That’s when the white men, arms waving, shouted. One of them took out a phone, tapped the keypad and shook his head at the same time as Pa’s intuition made him stop and turn. Pa saw arms signalling and alerted his friends. Between them they deciphered the gestures and bolted.

  A minute later, the blast sounded, and the mountain shuddered. Columns cracked, shattering into rocks that careened in a tempest of boulders. Blocks tumbled down a side of the Giant and, collapsing into rubble, took on the shape of a crouching Siberian tiger. The tiger growled and for a second, I believed the worst was over. The rocks seemed to slow to a crawl, faltering in their descent before the tiger roared, pelting the valley with pebbles and stones.