Nyumbani Tales

by Charles R. Saunders

  “What happened?” one of the soldiers asked.

  “It’s sorcery, you peanut-brained fool!” Nwankwo roared, spitting blood as he moved his hands away from his face. “Some kind of foul magic turned Ajema into a monkey just as I was about to ... never mind. This could only be the work of that accursed Okosene Alakun!”

  “Him?” another soldier scoffed.

  “Who else?” Nwankwo snapped. “Nyame knows, it’s unlikely. But my father always told me the quiet ones are the most dangerous – and who is more quiet than Alakun?”

  The obufin wiped his mouth before speaking again.

  “I want Okosene Alakun found and brought to me, and I don’t care how you bring him as along as he’s alive!”

  The soldiers hastened to carry out their chieftain’s bidding. And at least a dozen of Nwankwo’s wives, having learned of the incident with their would-be rival through their own near-magical means, bustled into the bedchamber to tend to their husband’s injury.

  OKOSENE LAY IN HIS own pallet, which still smelled of the fragrance of Ajema’s previous presence. He had long since returned from the site of the guinea-fowl’s tree-perch, for he had no desire to wander in the forest after nightfall. The uproar outside his dwelling’s walls was lost on him. In his muddled state of consciousness, the dan-Zamfara had no idea that Nwankwo could ever suspect him of sorcery as a result of his request to the kungurus-kansusu. And the obufin’s soldiers had assumed that their quarry would be someplace other than his own home.

  Following his brief flirtation with decisiveness, Okosene had reverted to his usual state of semi-lethargy. His thoughts alternated between amusement at what he imagined to be the expression on Nwankwo’s face when the kungurus-kansusu turned Ajema into a monkey, and speculation as to what his fourth wish would be.

  Okosene was painfully aware that his two previous wishes had been used unwisely. No one could have faulted him for his first one, which saved him from the leopard. Still, the nature of his requests had been determined impulsively. This time, he vowed, he would ask the guinea-fowl to materialize a dream that would serve him well for the rest of his life. But ... which one? He had so many fantasies to fulfill ...

  Okosene was still trying to come to a decision when the soldiers, finally desperate enough to search the least-likely hiding-place, burst through the flimsy entrance-screen. Feeling foolish because their long search had just been rendered superfluous, and recalling Nwankwo’s charge to bring Okosene back in any condition as long as he was alive, the soldiers attacked the befuddled dan-Zamfara before he could move.

  “Damned sorcerer!” they raged as a storm of fists, spear-butts, feet, and sword-hilts crashed against Okosene’s head and body.

  Just before the blows began to land, Okosene cried: “I wish I were gone from here!”

  Too late, he remembered that the guinea-fowl had warned him that his wishes could only be granted in the bird’s presence ...

  IT WAS A BATTERED, bedraggled Okosene that the soldiers finally dragged into Nwankwo’s throne chamber. By then, the obufin had gathered his decorum and clothing, and dismissed his fawning wives. Now, he fixed Okosene with an ominous glare. The deep wound on Nwankwo’s lip lent his countenance a demonic aspect that boded ill for Okosene’s future.

  “So, Alakun the Daydreamer is a sorcerer in disguise,” Nwankwo sneered. “Who knows what misfortunes you have been responsible for over the years, posing as an utterly useless idler. Well, this is one piece of trickery you won’t get away with! If you know what’s good for you, you’ll bring Ajema back – in her proper form – now!”

  Okosene could only moan and shake his head. Even if he had wanted to, he could not have spoken with his swollen jaw. And if he could have spoken, he would not, for he would rather have died than reveal the secret of the kungurus-kansusu, and lose his final wish.

  “All right, then,” Nwankwo said as the silence stretched. “In the morning, you will die as an example for anyone else who contemplates the use of sorcery against me. How does being torn between a pair of pack-elephants sound to you?”

  A groan was Okosene’s only reply.

  “You, soldiers,” Nwankwo commanded. “Take this piece of hyena-dung and put him in the prison-house. No, better still – throw him behind it. Just make sure he stays tied up.”

  Wordlessly, the soldiers dragged Okosene away.

  SECURELY BOUND, OKOSENE lay motionless on the dank ground, the shadow of the prison-house blocking the moonlight. The soldiers had beaten him again before departing. They did not deign to leave even a single guard behind. If Okosene really were a sorcerer, they reasoned, he was a powerless one now.

  A sudden, sharp pain on his nose jerked Okosene out of oblivion. His eyes blinked open – then snapped shut again. The wrinkled, simian visage he had just seen could not have been real ...

  Again, pain stabbed into his nose. Okosene let out a yelp and opened his eyes. The monkey was still there, sitting on its haunches and glaring balefully at him. Reflected moonlight shone in its eyes. Okosene recognized the look the beast was giving him. He had endured it countless times before – from Ajema.

  Abruptly, the monkey scampered beyond Okosene’s line of vision. Then he felt small, hand-like paws working at the ropes on his wrists and ankles, pulling at the knots that held his bonds together. At first, they held fast. Then they began to loosen under the monkey’s persistent pulling and biting. Several times, Okosene winced as sharp teeth occasionally sank into flesh rather than rope. Finally, the last cord fell away, and he was free.

  Or, at least, he was no longer bound. As Okosene stretched his aching limbs, the monkey bit at his toes. Okosene was well aware of the reason for the creature’s impatience. But he was loath to venture into the bush at night – not even to find the guinea-fowl.

  When, however, the infernal simian’s teeth snapped scant inches from a valued and vulnerable portion of his anatomy, Okosene scrambled to his feet. For all the agony that shot through his abused muscles and joints, the dan-Zamfara moved with alacrity – or, at least, faster than he had ever moved before.

  “All right!” he whispered as the monkey nipped mercilessly at his heels. “Just follow me, and I’ll lead you to the kungurus-kansusu.”

  Chittering low in its throat, the monkey jumped onto Okosene’s shoulder and clung to a fold of his tattered garment. The beast’s teeth were poised close to Okosene’s left earlobe. Sighing sorrowfully, the dan-Zamfaru made his way toward the outer edge of the forest, making certain that none of the night watch who guarded the sleeping townspeople caught sight of him.

  OF HIS GROPING, STUMBLING journey through the darkened bush, Okosene remembered little. On one occasion, he was sure he heard the growl of a hunting leopard. On another, he could have sworn he’d seen a ghost hovering between two trees. But each time Okosene faltered, his companion bit and chattered, driving him onward.

  At last, they reached the tree of the kungurus-kansusu. Okosene stared up at the bird-spirit that had promised him so much. Suddenly, he wished he had slit the guinea-fowl’s throat when he’d had the chance. He knew his last wish must be expended on the monkey ... to return Ajema to her previous form. Then, at least, he would still have a beautiful wife. With her, he could escape to a neighboring kingdom such as Kebbi or Yayuba, and start afresh ...

  His musing was rudely interrupted by the rip of two monkey-fangs into his left cheek.

  “Aaah!” Okosene screamed. “Kungurus-kansusu, I want you to make Ajema as she was!”

  Immediately, a tremendous weight bore down on Okosene’s shoulder. His knees crumpled. His backbone folded. He collapsed to the ground beneath a veritable mountain of human flesh. And he nearly suffocated before Ajema thought to roll off him.

  Ignoring her, Okosene lurched to his feet and glared wildly up at the guinea-fowl’s limb. Already, the kungurus-kansusu was flying away.

  “Wait! Wait!” shrieked Okosene. “I wish I were the Oba of Benan! I wish I had a million cowries! I wish ...”

&
nbsp; Something soft, wet and white dropped from the sky and spattered against Okosene’s face. The guinea-fowl was now only a black speck disappearing rapidly into the white face of the Nyumbani moon.

  Okosene Alakun buried his face in his hands and wept.

  “You’ll never do anything right, will you?” the harsh voice of Ajema commented.

  Okosene looked at her. The white guinea-fowl dropping stood out against the darkness of his skin. Ajema stood stark naked in the moon’s glow, every obese inch of her exactly as it had been before Okosene’s first encounter with the kungurus-kansusu.

  A strange light ignited in Okosene’s eyes. He bent and picked up a fallen tree-limb. He moved toward his wife.

  Ajema screamed ...

  FOR MANY RAINS THEREAFTER, the people of Nyamem regaled any outsider who would listen with the tale of how Big Ajema ran naked through the town in the middle of the night, shrieking at the top of her lungs as her husband Okosene the Daydreamer pursued her with a leafy cudgel in his hand. The incredible sight so astonished the night watch that they had forgotten that Okosene was to have been executed in the morning.

  Neither Okosene nor Ajema was ever seen again in the vicinity of Nyamem. But as the rains passed, the legend grew of a ghost that flitted through the nearby bush, setting spectral snares among the trees. And roast guinea-fowl soon became a culinary rarity, as the bird’s numbers soon dwindled to the point of extinction.

  AMMA

  OF ALL THE AFRICAN-oriented myth-tales I have written, this one is my favorite. It is a combination of two West African folktales. “Amma” first appeared in 1978, in my friend Charles de Lint’s magazine, Beyond the Fields We Know, and was reprinted a year later in DAW Books’ The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series VII, edited by Gerald W. Page. It was later reprinted again in the Mothership anthology, edited by Bill Campbell and Edward Austin Hall. Jerry Page took a fair amount of flak from critics who questioned whether “Amma” truly qualified as horror rather than fantasy. I’ll let you be the judge.

  A soft strain of music drifts delicately among the familiar midday noises of Gau, capital city of the empire of Sanghai. Softly it weaves its way through the shrill bargaining of market women; the intrusive importunings of tradesmen; the strident admonitions of adhana-priests to prayer and sacrifice at the shrines of the gods; and the clink and jingle of mail-clad soldiers strutting through the streets. The music is easily recognizable: notes plucked by skillful fingers from the seven strings of a Sahanic ko.

  There are other ko-songs that mingle with the general hum of the city, for the ko is popular, and Gau large. Yet some there are in the teeming populace who pause when the notes of this one reaches their ears. By the singular quality of its melody, they know that this is no outdated local strummer of weary songs, nor love-struck youth seeking to impress the object of his callow affections. They know, these connoisseurs of the ko, that a new griot has come to Gau.

  Before the final notes of the song have faded, a crowd is gathered at the saffiyeh, a small square off the main marketplace where, traditionally, a newly arrived griot comes to display his talents. The stranger sits with his back against a whitewashed wall; his fingers dancing lightly across the strings of his instrument. More like hands hardened by the gripping of sword or plow, these, than hands accustomed mainly to the touch of lacquered wood and slender wire.

  Beneath the road-worn garments of a wanderer, the griot’s frame looms large, yet strangely gaunt, as though once-massive thews have been reduced to the minimum amount required for physical activity. His sepia-toned face is solemn and middle-aged, webbed with lines scored by adversity. Large eyes, dark and luminous, seem fixed upon a point somewhere above the heads of his audience. Two tira, leather charm pouches, hang from beaded cords around his neck. Beside him rests a great empty turtle shell, upturned to receive the bronze coins and quills of gold-dust he hopes to earn from his listeners.

  The crowd stands quietly. There are turbaned men swathed in voluminous johos over cotton trousers, and turbaned women garbed in colorful asokabas that descend from waist to ankle, leaving the rest of the body bare. Children clad after the fashion of the adults squeeze between their elders’ bodies, the better to hear the ko of the new griot. The dry-season sun burns like a torch in the cloudless sky, bathing ebony skin in a sheen of glossy perspiration.

  The griot’s tune ends. His listeners stamp their feet on the dusty pave: a sign of approval. Even though no coins or quills have yet found their way into his tortoise shell, the griot smiles. He knows that a man of his calling is first a story teller, no better than second a musician. His ko has served its purpose. Now it is time for him to earn his day’s livelihood.

  “I am going to tell a story,” the griot says.

  “Ya-ngani!” the crowd responds, meaning “Right!”

  “It may be a lie.”

  “Ya-ngani.”

  “But not everything in it is false.”

  “Ya-ngani.”

  The griot begins his tale.

  MATTOCK RESTING ON one broad shoulder, Babakar iri Sounkalo stood shaking his head in the midst of his charred beanfield. For the thousandth time, he cursed the Sussu, whose raiders had swept down from the north to despoil isolated border towns like Gadou, the one closest to Babakar’s ruined farm.

  The Sussu had, as always, been driven back to their barren mountains by the soldiers of Sanghai. Babakar himself had taken up lance and shield to join the forces of Kassa iri Ba, the invincible general from Gau, and the blood of more than a few Sussu had washed his blade.

  But now, as he surveyed the burnt acres of the field that had been in his family since the first stone was laid in Gadou, the taste of triumph had faded for Babakar. His wassa-beans had been reduced to a mere blackish stubble, and though he knew the next crop would grow even faster in the ash-enriched soil, alone he could never replant his beans before the wet season ended.

  Alone ... again, the bitter memory seared across his mind: the memory of his wife and two daughters butchered by the swords of the Sussu, who had nearly destroyed Gadou in their treacherous attack. Sussu lives had paid for the loss of his family. Kassa iri Ba himself had praised Babakar’s ferocity in battle.

  Now, though, Babakar faced only a grim choice as his reward. He could re-till his field in the hope that the wet season would last long enough for a new crop to rise, saving him from starvation. Or he could join the many others already in flight southward to the provinces untouched by the border war. The idea of abandoning the land still nurtured by the spirits of his ancestors remained unthinkable to Babakar.

  “You’ll accomplish nothing standing here in self-debate,” Babakar chided himself.

  With a gusting sigh, he raised his mattock from his shoulder and swung it down into the soil. It was then that he saw her, walking gracefully down the road that separated his field from that of a neighbor slain by the Sussu.

  The mattock nearly fell from Babakar’s hands. For it was from the west that she came, and Babakar knew that only the semi-arid wasteland called the Tassili lay west of Gadou. The woman couldn’t have come from there ... she must have run off in that direction to escape the marauders, and was now making he way back to more habitable terrain.

  As the woman came closer, Babakar saw that she was, though disheveled, beautiful to behold. Although she was not tall, a willowy slenderness lent her an illusion of greater height. The tattered condition of her asokaba contrasted with the neatly folded turban that clung closely to her head. Between the two garments, a pleasant expanse of bare black flesh was filmed with a thin layer of road dust, reminiscent of the coating of ashes young girls smeared on their bodies before their puberty dances.

  A look at the way her conical breasts jounced with each step convinced Babakar that the stranger had passed beyond that age, though from the tautness of her skin she could not be much older than twenty rains. Her face, withdrawn and pensive, would not have been out of place at the Court of the Hundred Wives of the Keita, the Emperor of Sangha
i, who took only the most beautiful women of the Sahan to his golden love-chamber.

  Of possessions besides her clothing, the young woman had none save a few neck and arm ornaments. Babakar was just asking himself if he should call out to the stranger when she caught his glance, smiled and came toward him.

  That smile stirred something in Babakar that had remained sullen and dormant since the day – over a month past now – when he had returned from his field to discover the Sussu-violated corpses of his wife, Amma, and daughters in the smoldering ruins of their home.

  “Does this road lead to Gadou?” the stranger asked.

  Her very voice reminded Babakar of the beloved tones of another, long stilled by the slash of a Sussu sword.

  “What’s left of it, yes,” he replied. Then, on impulse: “Where do you come from? Only lizards and gazelles dwell in the Tassili.”

  The woman dropped her gaze.

  “I was taken by some deserters from the main body of raiders,” she said. “They weren’t even Sussu, but renegade Nobas who had joined the Sussu for the plunder. There were five of them. They swept me onto one of their horses and took me away to the west, and they found a patch of bush, and they ... they ...”

  She choked, unable to continue.

  This time, Babakar’s mattock did drop to the ground as he crossed quickly to the woman’s side and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “War makes victims,” he said. “Loss is the lot of us all. My wife, Amma, and my two daughters were slain by the Sussu. You, at least, still live.”

  The stranger’s head came up sharply. Her eyes met Babakar’s.

  “Amma?” she said. “I, too, am called Amma.”

  Babakar’s hand tightened on smooth skin. The pressure was gentle, though, and she did not flinch as she well might have at the touch of a strong man’s grip.