by Yaba Badoe
When the drummers, recharged, started beating their drums again, and the head drummer tapped out my name, the only choice I had was to obey. I was Gran-pa’s shrine-girl, a steward to the river goddess, and when the drums speak to me, commanding me to do the bidding of my mistress, I have to answer. And so, to Sweet Mother’s dismay, arms outstretched, I stood up.
‘Adoma! Sit down!’ she hissed.
‘Let the girl dance,’ cried an old priest, a good friend of Gran-pa’s. ‘She was Okomfo’s shrine-girl, even closer to him than a daughter.’
I took to the floor, and as I did so, I felt the tug and pull of the drum’s song as the chief drummer tested my footwork. The drum gave me its rhythm and then my feet followed, while in front of the drummers, three young women, dancers as well, shook gourd-shaped rattles. And as the beads on them jangled, the drummers pounded with the deadly precision of a leopard hunting her prey.
Sweet Mother had told me not to ask awkward questions and I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t going to utter a word. Instead, I would dance what I knew to be true in front of the chief and the village. And now that Gran-ma, back on Old Freedom, was nodding in approval, I believed the gods were on my side. Is it any wonder therefore, that as I moved my body in a fluid motion of an antelope feeding and drinking at dusk, I heard Gran-pa say: ‘Good girl, Adoma. Good girl.’
I was performing the adowa, a funeral dance, and with every gesture I made I spoke. I am an orphan, I said first of all, a fist clenched against my stomach. I am bereft. My grief is so great I am like a warrior at war. My heart is broken. I am at war.
I teased out the dance and as my feet stepped as delicately as a horned creature through grassland, my neck swayed looking this way, then that. Straight away, the drummers followed me, keeping time with the rhythm of my feet. They pursued, even as a part of me stepped aside to allow another entity to enter my being. I quivered, charged with earth and water magic, the movement of my feet on the ground linking me through wells and streams to the sacred river I cared for. I looked down on myself and observed the body of a young woman in black infused with the fearless power of the river goddess. Her strength rippled through my muscles directing the liquid grace of my arms as she posed questions a teenager would never dare ask of a chief.
I danced before him in full view of his entourage, half-aware as I did so, that his face was as thunderously dark as the black funeral cloths we were both wearing. I danced, while tight-lipped, the chief shifted in his chair. He had to stay to watch what the river goddess was saying. Because by now, my body was her home and the gestures I made were hers and hers alone. Nonetheless, as I swayed and my neck dipped, I realised I was knocking on danger’s door, and when the door swung open, there would be no closing it again.
‘You slaughtered the old man, my priest,’ I signalled. ‘It was you, chief, who killed my old bull elephant. I will come for you. For with every deed there is an outcome and your time has come.’
Using my arms, my body, the fierce expression on my face, the goddess motioned: ‘All of you here, each and every one of you should bear witness to the fact that this your chief must go. And with him must go the foreigners and their galamsey workers. Once they’ve gone, and the river is restored, the village will be strong again. If you allow the river to weep tears of blood, the earth also will bleed, and then you might as well eat dust. Because when the earth bleeds, she dies. Surely, surely, as the sun ushers forth the day, if the earth dies, all of you here will die too.’
*
Sweet Mother, horrified by what she called my ‘childish, attention-seeking antics’, would have driven me out of the house if hadn’t been for Gran-ma. When I came out of my trance, Gran-ma’s hand was in mine and she smiled at me – the first smile she’d given a soul since Gran-pa’s death. I could tell as I gathered my wits and stretched, that she was pleased. So too were the chief’s drummers and most of his entourage.
As for the chief himself, he’d left, claiming that I was an impudent village girl. I was not ‘correct’. I should leave immediately and return to Accra with my mother. He, the chief, would not tolerate my craziness a moment longer. So I was told. But from what I could see, he could scream and shout as much as he pleased, because after what Junior had done, nobody was inclined to listen to him. Indeed, it appeared that more than half the village approved of the river goddess’ disdain of his leadership.
That night, the moon a waxing crescent, was a curve of luminous light in the sky. As soon as the house was quiet, my sisters and I clad in our shadow selves slipped out. The moon freckled us with glimmer and as we ran through the village screaming with laughter, we untethered our inner creatures. Hands and feet became paws, shoulders sloped, skin and hair matted, enfolding bodies in a blanket of fur: leopard, dark-spotted sleek and white, then a winter wolf, silver bright, fur double layered – inside warm and soft, outside coarse and long. And our teeth! What teeth we animals had, razor-sharp and strong.
As for our sister-bird, tongue and mouth became a beak. Raven curls feathered, arms turned into wings, and with wings flexed, the chough flew. While leopard and wolf, the earth springy beneath our paws, padded, then danced beneath the crescent moon.
After midnight, guided by dark tentacles of night we crept into the chief’s compound and sniffed out his bedroom.
He tossed and turned and when at last he sat up, he saw the three of us: a leopard, a red-beaked black bird on her head, and beside the leopard, a winter wolf, eyes moonstone-bright.
The chief blinked, rubbed his eyes. Blinked again.
I snarled taking great pleasure in revealing the length and breadth of my open jaws. I snarled a second time and then yawned while beside me the winter wolf sat panting.
When my leopard mouth opened a third time, I spoke in a voice I knew well; an old man’s voice molten with rage, Gran-pa’s voice that would live in me until I drew my last breath.
‘It is time for you to go. It is time for you to hide your face from this village and leave us for ever. I command that before the cock crows, you and your family leave this village never to return. And should you come back, the curse of Antoa Nyamaa will be on you and your descendants for ever.’
The chief heard us, and as far as my sisters and I are aware, the man who ordered Gran-pa’s murder was never seen in the village again.
*
Our mission in the village complete, my sisters and I, hidden by shadows, retreated to the ruins of the goddess’ forest shrine. To honour our decision to shape our destiny as children of the sky, determined to sabotage the activities of skin-walkers, we destroyed every sign of their presence on the river. Standing by the boggy sludge they’d created, I blasted their wooden barricades, using energy from earth, wind, sky and fire. My mind balled in a fist, I smashed their equipment into pieces. As soon as everything was demolished, the wood splintered, then burned, the river started trickling in runnels, till eventually it streamed over mud.
As the river began to surge, as it poured down its main channel, silting roots of shorn trees, as it seeped deep into the soil, we heard it gurgle in satisfaction. Then, gathering momentum, it gushed in a scream of liberation.
Eager to fulfil her promise to flush it clean, Linet raised her hand and drawing on the lake of tears within her, let a teardrop fall on her skin. The moment it touched her, torrents of water cascaded from her palms. A lake-full of water, an endless stream of it, which Zula and I added to as best as we could.
Zula ruptured the sky with a flash of lightning. After a second flash, dark clouds rumbled and as they broke open, huge drops of rain fell cracking like eggs on the ground.
What with the rain and Linet’s skill in water magic, before long what had started off as a dribble turned into a flood, an outpouring from Linet and the sky. Drenched, water still trickling from her, Linet stopped, exhausted. If not clean as yet, we knew that the river was in a better state than before. Mother Earth would repair herself in due course, but with our help, she would do it quicker.
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nbsp; 27
Zula
Pa used to say that among the wisest of the Great Khan’s sayings was this: Only a fool fights a battle he knows he cannot win. ‘So, you and your sisters,’ Pa chuckled, ‘should choose your battles well. Study your enemy carefully. Get to know him. Learn his weaknesses. And when you’re ready, destroy him completely! Half measures simply won’t do, Zula, my daughter. You have to be as ruthless as skin-walkers are with us, if you want to defeat them.’
On the day I recalled those words, the day we said goodbye to him, my intention was clear: to give him the funeral he’d asked for at the Giant’s mouth. But champing close behind in my mind was my pledge to keep the only safe path to the location secret. After two hours of arduous trekking, we were almost there: Ma, my brothers, and Pa’s siblings – Batu, the youngest and Bataar, the second of Grandma’s sons. Pa had been the eldest. Travelling with us on our climb were two of Pa’s fellow campaigners and our horses.
On the first stage of our journey, Takhi carried Pa’s body cocooned in a fur blanket, upwards, along a track that led through a pass on to a ledge. There we dismounted and tethered our horses. Takhi, aware that this was the last service he would render his master, whinnied as Pa’s comrades lifted him off his back on to a makeshift stretcher. His tail swishing, he pawed the ground, while Altan, suddenly skittish, nipped me.
‘Don’t you want me to leave you, my friend?’
My horse neighed, and with one hoof scraping thin mountain soil, snorted to keep me with him.
‘We’ll be back soon,’ I reassured him. ‘Once we’ve prepared Pa for the eagles, I’ll be back.’
I stroked Altan’s forehead and blew my breath onto his muzzle to calm him, even though I knew that what he felt, I did too. There was a whisper of unease in the air that hinted all was not well in our group.
Our horses behind us, we continued the climb to the Giant’s mouth. Step by step, as I led the procession that carried Pa’s body higher, I continued a conversation with him to keep his spirit abreast of what we were doing: how far we’d reached on our journey; how much further we still had to go. I marked the passage of time for him and described the landscape to make sure he understood we were taking him to our shaman home.
I led, my brother Gan’s hand in mine, while the others followed on the trail I first walked seven years before. I’d made the same journey many times since, often several days a month in high summer. And yet on every occasion, whenever I approached the Giant’s mouth, my heart thrilled at its wild beauty: those vivid peaks and gullies that heralded new adventures: time in wolf-light with my sisters, flying with eagles in their eyries; and time alone, the Giant’s breath mingling with mine, his pulse the steady beat of my heart as he drew me ever closer.
‘Do you remember this place, Pa?’ I asked his spirit. ‘It was here, seven years ago, that you lifted me on to that ridge there. And after heaving yourself up, you led me down that path.’
I lifted Gan up, and we descended the footpath, a steep canyon on one side, a granite promontory on the other.
‘It was here, Pa,’ I reminded him, ‘that I slipped and would have tumbled if you hadn’t caught me and held me close. Do you remember?’
I sensed the tenderness of Pa’s smile on my face, and as I clasped my little brother’s hand firmly, I heard once again the slip-slop of a child’s tread on wet rock from long ago.
‘We’re almost there, Gan,’ I said to my brother, repeating the same words of encouragement my father had given me. ‘Almost there.’
I stopped to look back at the procession behind us. And once again I saw my Uncle Batu surveying the landscape we walked through: the high mountains, ravines and wildwood. Everything he gazed on he seemed to ogle at. Eyes scavenging, his expression ravenous, he looked like a skin-walker about to make a claim on land he already considered his own. Even at a distance, the stench he gave off of fish and seaweed reminded me of a craving for salt. Once the taste is on your tongue, never satisfied, you want more and more.
I watched him, and saw with my wolf’s eyes that as soon as my uncle got his bearings, as soon as he memorised visual indicators, he laid down physical markers of his own when he thought no one was looking: a clutch of stones from his pocket, a feather jammed between rocks, the slash of a blade on a tree. How carefully he peppered our trail with signposts he believed no one else would notice.
‘Do you have the strength to see this through, Zula, my daughter? Do you have the strength to grab your foe by the jugular and then tear him apart? Are you listening to me, Zula? If you are, answer me!’
‘I’m listening, Pa. I’m listening,’ I replied.
‘And what is your answer?’
‘I’d like to say that when the time comes I’ll have the strength to do what I must. But in truth, Pa, my temper is not as hot as Adoma’s and my tongue not as sharp as Linet’s.’
‘Then you will need their help, my daughter. Otherwise, before you know it, I’ll look back on my journey through death and see you walking behind me.’
Pa’s words forced me to delve into myself to consider questions I’d been pondering but hadn’t yet been able to answer. Did I have the heart to deprive Knenbish of a husband, and her daughters, their father? In the weeks I’d known them, I’d grown fond of my aunt and cousins. Come to think of it, even Batu had his good points. Yet the question dangled in front of me like a noose. Was I capable of killing my uncle and anyone else he brought here to preserve the sanctity of the Sleeping Giant? No, I decided. Not in my human form when my victim’s eyes could plead with me, reminding me of those of his daughters. Those eyes would haunt me for ever! But as a wolf I could shake him by the throat and tear out his heart without a moment’s hesitation.
We trudged higher and higher, deep into the mountain. Gan’s footsteps faltered, his hand dragged in mine, while with every step I took that brought our destination nearer, the Giant’s breath became sweet and moist as buckthorn berries as he drew me closer. I saw him in the rugged terrain around me; in shafts of clear mountain air, lanced by the sun. I heard him in the swish of trees in the gullies below, in a wild cat’s hiss and yelp as it was chased by a fox. And when eagles, talons clawing clouds, circled above us, my heart pounded as when I first felt his kiss.
At the turbulence of wings overhead, Gan shrank into my trousers and hid his face.
‘Don’t be frightened, little brother,’ I said stroking his hair. ‘Those birds think we’re here to steal their eggs and eaglets. We’re not, so they won’t hurt you. You’re with me and the eagles here know me well.’
We turned towards the crater, which from a distance formed the Giant’s mouth and then, one after the other we walked to the cave overlooking the gully of crags and gorges. There, with the help of my brothers and uncles, I built a pyre of stones. And it was on that pyre, his body washed and oiled by Ma, that we children said our goodbyes to our father, my uncles their brother, and his fellow herders, their shaman and friend.
When it was my turn to bid him farewell, I bowed my head in awe at the stillness of Pa’s face, engraved for ever in my mind. He was gone. Yet present within me always, I would continue hearing his voice in mine. I would continue feeling the whisper of his breath on the hairs at the back of my neck, urging me on. Though no longer with us, I believed our teachers would never leave us: Grandma, Pa, Nana Merrimore, Okomfo Gran-pa. Between them they’d formed a bridge my sisters and I had walked on, a bridge linking the past to the future.
‘I love you,’ I told Pa placing my hand on his. ‘I’ll always love you.’ Then, I added: ‘You most probably know this already, Pa, but I’m in love with this place and the being who dwells here. Am I wrong in thinking that the Giant is not asleep but wide awake? Am I mad to love someone I cannot see but feel whenever I look around me? How I wish you were still here, Pa, to answer my questions!’
I heard Pa’s voice in the wind. First as a rumble, then a growl that, frolicking around my feet and ankles, whirled around me until it brushed my cheek
s in a final embrace: ‘Zula, my child, if there is one thing you should remember it is this: there is no right or wrong way to love. Love takes you where it will. From the hour of your birth when I saw the constellation of stars and glimpsed Venus turning to Jupiter, I knew that it was within you to achieve a feat I have not been able to: feel the Sleeping Giant’s breath. With breath is life. If you want, you can wake him, Zula.’
Once Pa’s words had settled in my heart, I ceded my place at his side to my mother. It was her turn to say goodbye.
Tracing the contours of his face with a hand, Ma said: ‘Husband of mine, I am like that old horse of yours, Takhi, at a complete loss without you. Were it not for our children, I would have run into the desert and tried to find you again as he did. But even Takhi couldn’t find your trail to the underworld and returned home without you. So now I shall ride him for you, my husband. And whenever I do, I shall listen for your voice in the desert wind and look for traces of your face in the sky. Travel safely to your new home, husband. But remember, no matter where you go, your first home was here with me.’ Her right hand on her heart, Ma turned away from Pa and followed me on our steep descent back to our horses.
*
Two weeks later, when Pa’s body had been picked clean to the bone, I saw with my wolf’s eyes that my uncle was about to make his move. I hastily summoned my sisters and that night we met at the Giant’s mouth at the entrance of the cave.
Our legs dangling over the edge, my sisters and I talked in wolf-light, devising a strategy to keep Batu and his skin-walkers at bay. In front of us, within the croon of a westerly wind, were eagles tending their young. The occasional bleating of a wild goat punctured the calm as I outlined a plan: ‘If they come during the day, we can ambush them here and here.’ I pointed at two marks I’d drawn on a map scratched on the ground. ‘This ledge is where they’ll have to dismount if they come with horses. We can frighten them away here as well.’ I indicated a spot further along the steep trail where an unsuspecting intruder could easily fall to his death.