‘Adoma! Adoma! Where are you? Ha! Asleep again!’ Gran-ma squeezed her lips, kissing her teeth in disgust. ‘I’ve never met a girl who sleeps as much as you do! Are you feverish?’
I said goodbye to my sisters and turned as if protesting at Gran-ma’s intrusion.
She continued shaking me: ‘You’ll soon be a woman, my girl. You won’t be able to sleep as much then!’
I yawned to extinguish a smile. And then like someone clinging to sleep, I pulled away from Gran-ma.
‘Gallivant, that’s all you do,’ she grumbled. ‘You’re either playing football with Kofi or roaming the streets like a stray goat.’
Gran-ma continued whipping me with her tongue. She assumed I’d fallen asleep on my mat, a mistake I chose not to correct. That she claimed I was idle suited both of us. I could slip away whenever I pleased. Besides, as a diviner, who placed pebbles and water from our sacred river in a pot to peep into the future of her clients, if Gran-ma pretended she didn’t know what I was up to, she couldn’t be accused of being a follower of the craft. Old women can be lynched in seconds here, while a child of the sky, a warrior like me, can escape by running like the wind.
‘Adoma, get up! I’m not here to wait on you!’
Faking drowsiness, I rubbed my eyes and slowly got up from my mat. Too slowly as it turned out, for by the time I was standing, Gran-ma’s attention had shifted to Milo.
‘Just look at that monkey creature of yours! Get off my sofa! If I see you on Old Freedom again, I swear on all the gods in Ashanti, I shall put you in my cooking pot. I shall butcher you and eat you, chop-chop!’
She shooed him away. He sprang into my arms chattering through bared teeth.
This chimp understands language, I tell you! He knows who to trust, who to fear and realises that as long as I’m around, no one this side of the equator, not even Gran-ma, would dare harm him. He knows this, because until he’s old enough to fend for himself, Milo is my responsibility. Milo also appreciates that due to her liking for ‘bush’ meat, Gran-ma could never be a true friend.
‘Shush,’ I said to soothe his chattering. ‘She’s only teasing. Aren’t you, Gran-ma?’
A short, round ball of a woman, skin the colour of nutmeg, eyes black as coal, Gran-ma winked at Milo.
‘If you stay off Old Freedom,’ she said, ‘you’re safe from my pot. You understand?’
Milo buried his face in my shoulder.
‘Well?’ said Gran-ma. ‘I’m waiting for an answer.’
I nodded on Milo’s behalf.
‘Good,’ Gran-ma said. ‘We now understand each other better than husband and wife. Adoma, come and eat.’
*
Two days later, when Gran-pa returned before daybreak on a night bus from Accra, having already told him about the colony of fruit bats that had invaded the goddess’ shrine in star time, I shared an incident that pestered me.
‘Last night, Gran-pa, between waking and sleeping, I changed.’
He looked at me. Still in his travelling clothes: khaki-khaki shirt and trousers, he was eating a crust of bread for breakfast.
‘I changed,’ I repeated. ‘I was not as you see me here, Gran-pa, but newly made into a queen of the forest at our shrine.’
He beckoned and then touched the tattoo on my wrist. Straight away he saw what I’d seen and sensed what I’d felt. On padded paws I’d slunk through undergrowth and jumped up a tree. Claws gripped bark before muscles sinuous as silk draped on a branch. A cool breeze whispered through the leaves around me. Behind me, the silhouette of forest foliage loomed, looping in wolf-light, while quiet as a ghost, I watched with eyes that weren’t mine and listened, ears pricked.
‘I was a stranger even to myself, Gran-pa, yet I knew it was me, because the trees in the forest: leaves, roots, bark, heartwood, sapwood – everything – whispered my name.’
Gran-pa nodded, moving quickly, urgently. ‘Something’s happening, Adoma, and we need to be there.’
Since time was of the essence, Gran-pa decided that instead of walking to our sanctuary, which would take an hour and a half at least, we should travel on his scooter. We set off with me sitting behind him, Milo swaddled like a baby on my back.
My grandfather held the firm belief that early morning is the best time to begin a journey. The sun was already up, the first blush of its light soft and gentle before the harsh sting of high noon. The air was cool as we careered out of the village down a dirt track pitted with mounds and stones. Gran-pa knew the path well, and by twisting and turning his motor, avoided damaging its tyres. We sped along, Gran-pa greeting farmers and labourers on their way to work, while I waved at women cooking by the roadside, my age mates ambling to school.
Once our village was behind us, farm plots gave way to the lush green vegetation of ancient palms laden with flowering creepers. On we rode, following meandering paths through neighbouring villages and farms, until we approached the edge of the forest – a protected area for animals, birds and trees.
Gran-pa brought his scooter to a halt and dismounted. I followed him. I put Milo down and slung a rucksack on my back. It contained, among other items, water and a midday snack of boiled yam and fish. I trotted beside Gran-pa, while Milo scampered ahead into the forest where he’d been discovered beneath the body of his dead mother.
‘Not so long ago,’ Gran-pa said, ‘all of this was deep forest. A forest so dark you had to carry a lamp to find your way through it. They cut the trees to build the village back there. First came the village, then villagers slashed through virgin forest to grow cocoa. And before long, they destroyed more trees to make charcoal for their women’s cooking pots.’ He tut-tutted, shaking his head. ‘Now they wonder why the rains don’t come with the same vigour as before. They wonder why the land is drying up and the air is dusty.’
Gran-pa strode into the undergrowth, along a path I’d memorised when he first brought me here, years before. He followed the route I take when I attend to the river goddess’ shrine, when I dance for her and bring food to her. Milo raced ahead, and when we passed a giant silk cotton tree surrounded by an orchard of wild bananas, he clambered up a trunk and swung from tree to tree whooping with joy. Further on, a grove of towering mahoganies was marked with red paint – a sign that someone intended to cut them down illegally.
‘Open my bag, Adoma.’
I did as I was told and removed a plastic bottle of paint remover and two sponges from the rucksack. I handed the bottle and a sponge to Gran-pa and with the other copied what he was doing: wetting the sponge and swabbing off the paint first from one tree, then a second, until one after the other the entire grove was clean of paint. This is what we did every time we came to the forest – saved as many trees as we could from destruction. It was, after all, a protected area, but from our experience of protecting trees from harm, I understood that in Ghana rules didn’t apply to everyone.
The job done, I followed Gran-pa’s example and tramped from tree to tree, stroking the bark of the first, crouching at the gigantic roots of another. As he touched and caressed the huge plants, so did I; and in the same way that he did, I sensed them. Even more so, when Gran-pa began chatting as if to old friends:
‘Who knows if this will do any good,’ he said to a mahogany so tall that the simple act of stretching my neck to glimpse its crown made me dizzy.
‘It may fool our enemies for a week or so,’ Gran-pa went on. ‘Maybe a fortnight, if we’re lucky. But in the end they’ll put their mark on you again and cut you down. Those devils have no respect for a tree as venerable as you, comrade.’
As Gran-pa patted its trunk, and proceeded to the next, I did the same. I didn’t talk to trees though; I simply touched them, alert to the foraging of their roots, the hiss and whisper of leaves, as one tree gestured to another. As I listened, a colony of blood-orange glider butterflies drifted from the canopy and flitted about my face.
‘Between breath and feather, scales and wings,’ I murmured, ‘talk to me, friends, tell me what you’ve seen.’
A few settled on my head, while others dusted my eyelashes and cheeks with their paint, before landing on my arms and legs. The agitation of wings and whirl of antennae spoke even louder than the trees. My heart leaped.
‘Gran-pa,’ I said. ‘We may be too late…’
I brushed the gliders away with a waft of wind from my hand. It carried them to where Milo rootled in the canopy. Suddenly he stopped. Still as a sloth, he cocked his head, uttered a bark, and scrambled to the safety of my arms.
‘Someone’s coming, Gran-pa,’ I said. ‘Let’s hurry to the shrine.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m too old and tired to play hide-and-seek. This small piece of forest is protected. They shouldn’t be cutting down trees and they know it.’
‘Are you sure, Gran-pa?’ I was getting ready to run to avoid a confrontation that could turn ugly. But there was something else, a sense of disaster rumbling in my ear that the forest was alive to.
‘Stay, Adoma,’ my grandfather said. ‘All will be well.’
I put Milo down, grabbed Gran-pa’s sponge and stuffed it in the rucksack with the paint remover.
Reminded perhaps of his mother’s murder by poachers, Milo scrambled up a tree taking refuge in its branches. In the distance I heard the footfall of men walking towards us. Every few steps they paused to slash creepers. I heard the sweep of a machete, then the tear and snarl of vegetation trampled underfoot.
‘Two men,’ Gran-pa said. ‘Two strangers.’
I nodded. They had to be strangers. Only outsiders with no idea of where the track was would attempt to hack their way through the bush.
‘Hide,’ I whispered to Milo, up in his tree. ‘There’s still time to leave, Gran-pa,’ I added. ‘Nothing good’s going to come from these strangers. We’re needed at the shrine.’
He shook his head and stood firm.
Okomfo Gran-pa was my teacher and guide and yet, observing him that morning, I was startled at how old he appeared. His gaunt face glinted blue-black when sunlight, glimmering through dense leaves, danced on his skin. His eyes darted and delved to the heart of everything around him while he stood, his back to a tree.
The seam of unease I’d felt moments before, refused to disappear. What set me on edge were sparks of defiance reflected in my grandfather’s eyes: that, and a growing presence of danger that a shadowy creature inside me, a creature with paws and a leonine head, signalled by clawing the ground.
As the footsteps advanced, I moved and stood slightly to the side of Gran-pa to better protect him. It’s much harder to harass an adult with a teenager in tow, than an old man alone.
A machete cut through the undergrowth and a policeman, tangled in tree vines, fought his way into the clearing. In a holster he carried a gun. A few metres behind him was a corpulent, middle-aged man with a handkerchief in his hand. The fat man mopped slicks of sweat off his brow as he struggled to catch his breath. The armpits of his shirt were stained wet, its white print flecked with the trail of snails and pollen.
‘I thought it was you and I was right,’ the policeman said.
‘Is this the man?’ asked the fat man.
‘Indeed, master. Okomfo Gran-pa is well-known for his loving-kindness to trees.’
Gran-pa stood up straight. ‘Do I know you?’
The policeman, a young man in a dishevelled uniform, three thin scars running down the side of his face, smirked at a secret joke only he was aware of.
‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I am Inspector Kaku from Kumasi. ‘I’ve been staying in the village back there with my friend here.’ The inspector nodded at the fat man.
The fat man was wheezing, still trying to catch his breath. From what I could tell, he wasn’t used to walking; and certainly not walking and talking at the same time.
‘What can I do for you?’ asked Gran-pa.
‘You, old man,’ the policeman replied, ‘are giving me a headache. A severe headache that not even paracetamol can quell. Why do you keep doing what you shouldn’t be doing, old man?’
A flicker of amusement passed over Gran-pa’s face. ‘What am I doing that I shouldn’t be?’
‘Sir, are you laughing at me?’
I held my breath as the policeman’s fingers fluttered and then touched his holster.
The fat man tapped the younger man. ‘Inspector, let me do the talking here. Okomfo, allow me to introduce myself.’
The man walked towards Gran-pa, his right hand outstretched: ‘Mr Ebenezer Lamptey of Save Our Trees for Ghanaians Incorporated.’
Gran-pa folded his arms to make it clear he wasn’t interested in the usual formalities. Instead, he stepped sideways, legs astride.
I reckon I would have done the same too, for underlying the upturned curl of the man’s lips and the sleek smile in eyes magnified by glasses, was the distinct odour of corruption. It seeped out of him making the air around him rank with the stink of rotting fish. The man was most probably a liar as well. Gran-pa Okomfo knew it and so did I, because the closer he came to us, the more my skin crawled and the more physically ill I became.
That’s the way it is when a skin-walker approaches me. Their lack of human kindness is so distressing it knocks me off balance. Skin-walkers have no heart to speak of and no soul as far as I can tell, because they’re after one thing: money. And the dirtier it is, the more people they flatten to obtain it, the better it makes them feel.
The smile fixed on his face, Mr Lamptey withdrew his hand, allowing it to dangle by his side. ‘Hostility can have dangerous repercussions, be careful, old man.’
‘I am always careful,’ Gran-pa replied.
‘Not careful enough, it appears. According to the villagers, you’re in the habit of removing marks off trees my men designate for timber. Your stubbornness is costing me money, old man. Unless you stop your foolishness…’
I moved to stand directly in front of my grandfather. ‘Are you threatening Okomfo Gran-pa?’
The fat man ignored me while the policeman laughed – a hearty belch of glee that doubled him over until, clutching his stomach, he ended up giggling like a schoolgirl.
‘I asked you a question. Are you threatening my gran-pa?’ I managed to keep my voice level, calm. I was merely a teenager to the world, but Gran-pa taught me long ago that when danger arrives the only way forwards is to face it squarely with eyes fixed on it.
Mr Lamptey was now about ten paces away. If he didn’t reply correctly, if he continued thinking that I was a small girl he could dismiss out of hand, in another three paces he would feel the full force of my fury in the form of wind magic.
Puzzled by the wry smile on Gran-pa’s face and the ferociousness on mine, the fat man froze. A smile greased his lips again; a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Yes, he had the eyes of a skin-walker, all right, the eyes of a dead man walking.
Mr Lamptey harrumphed and said: ‘Let me make myself clear. My men mark the trees and the final product, the furniture we make, ends up in the homes of our fellow Ghanaians. What is your problem with that, old man? It be our wood, we be Ghanaians, we dey chop!’
Gran-pa raised himself to his full height and pointed an accusing finger: ‘Mr Lamptey, I may be old, but I’m not a fool. Not so long ago we even had rangers who patrolled the forest. We both know that these trees are protected.’
Ebenezer Lamptey shrugged and then nodding in the direction of the policeman said: ‘Protected? Protected from what? This is Ghana, old man, and I have the law by my side. So, unless you stop making our lives difficult…’
His chin jutting out at Gran-pa, Mr Lamptey came a step closer. He took another step, examining me as if inspecting a toad he was about to obliterate with a stamp of his foot.
‘Unless I stop making your life difficult, you will do what?’ Gran-pa replied.
No one said a word and for a couple of seconds no one moved. Even the leaves of the trees we’d saved seemed to stop rustling as the birds nesting within them ceased singing. All of us, every living thing present, waited for Mr Lamptey to complete his threat. The police officer touched his holster. I tensed and the hairs on the back of my neck stiffened as I prepared to harness wind energy within and outside me. We waited and as we did so, I inwardly begged Mr Lamptey to come a little bit closer. A step, just a step, would do.
He took it and when he did, I was ready. No one speaks to Okomfo Gran-pa like that and gets away with it. I balled my mind into a tight fist and like a boy with a sling, released a single stone in the mighty arsenal I possess: nuggets of concentration packed with sharpened flints of power buoyed by air blasted the fat man’s chest. Zing!
‘Aie!’ he cried. ‘Aie!’ Screaming, he toppled to the ground, a hand clutching his ribcage where his heart should have been.
Unnerved, the twitchy young inspector lifted his firearm and fired it above his head.
I was on the verge of repeating my mind blast, when Gran-pa signalled that I should stop. He wanted the man to live.
‘Help me,’ Mr Lamptey groaned.
Gran-pa knelt beside him. The policeman did too, while I stood and watched.
‘Easy…’ Gran-pa straightened the fat man’s head and torso to make it easier for him to breathe. ‘Don’t talk,’ he said. ‘Inspector, run to the village and get help…’
Crouched beside his accomplice, the policeman asked: ‘Master, should I go?’
The fat man moaned, gasping for air.
‘Go!’ Gran-pa repeated. ‘Your master cannot talk. Run, man! Run! Round there, it’s quicker. Adoma, give Mr Lamptey some water.’
I opened our rucksack and knelt down, pushing a cup of water to the fat man’s lips. His bulging eyes, shiny with fear, shrank at my touch. He would have spat if he could, but he needed water. He gulped it down and as he started to recover, Gran-pa spoke.
‘Do you hear the forest talking to you, my friend?’
A dove cooed in one of the hardwood trees that had been marked for timber. Another bird replied singing an octave higher. The dove cooed again and in the hush that followed a rush of wind whistled through leaves.
‘Do you hear the forest?’ Gran-pa asked.
Instead of replying, Mr Lamptey closed his eyes and grimaced. He placed a hand on his chest.
‘The forest is alive, my friend,’ said Gran-pa. ‘It watches and waits. And to those who desecrate it, it reserves a punishment worse than death. The forest has warned you, Mr Lamptey. Don’t cut down any more trees, you hear? Because next time you do, your end will be near.’