That night, I summoned my sisters to the Giant’s mouth where Adoma described what she’d witnessed by the river. She spoke haltingly, her pauses punctuated by gasps and sighs that Linet endeavoured to ease by saying: ‘Go on, Adoma. Go on.’
When Linet’s coaxing was met with silence, she poured words into the mix: ‘It’s unbelievable,’ she said. ‘It’s like, if I were to wake up tomorrow, step in the lake and discover that the water in it had turned to mud. Surely those people understand they’re hurting themselves?’
‘Grandma says it’s only when people are given time to taste the bitter fruit of their deeds,’ I replied, ‘that they begin to learn from them, like my Uncle Batu.’ At the mention of my uncle’s name, his tale of unhappiness in the city burrowed like a weevil in my mind.
Adoma remained quiet. Bereft of language, she stared blankly at us while we each held her hand. I teased her fingertips and as I touched her, pictures of what she’d endured unspooled. Linet shivered. She too saw what Adoma had witnessed. And she too felt Adoma’s shame at having failed to protect the river and forest.
‘I should have spent my nights there,’ her heart murmured. ‘If only I’d been present when they arrived, maybe I could have stopped them.’ Her eyes wet with tears, Adoma hung her head in despair.
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Linet, touching the stone Old Hester had given her. It dangled from a string around her neck. ‘What else could you have done? You and Okomfo Gran-pa could have been killed if you’d got in their way.’
I agreed. The trick, as Pa would say, was to live through misfortune, learn from it and then act decisively. Those fruit bats had indeed been a warning that the balance of our world was askew. But now that our sanctuary in the forest was gone, what should we do?
‘Okomfo Gran-pa says that while we’re learning the tools of our craft, we must be patient,’ Adoma’s heart answered with a sigh.
‘That’s what Nana Merrimore says,’ Linet confirmed, ‘as well as your grandma and pa, Zula.’
I nodded. ‘They’ve taught us well. We know what we believe in. We are for the earth and the sky.’
Taking up my cry, Linet added: ‘We are for every creature that walks and crawls on land. Every creature that flies in the air or lives in water.’
Adoma’s pulse quickened.
‘We are children of the sky, sky-warriors,’ I said. ‘Protectors of the earth, determined to do our best by aligning ourselves with nsoromma. Take heart, Adoma! We may have been defeated this time but one setback does not mean the battle is over.’
I leaned forwards and as my forehead touched theirs, my sisters and I swayed in silent communion.
Outside our den, a September gale surged, hammering the rocks around us with sand. The squall blasted everything in its path. Dark clouds rolled over the cave, somersaulting through the fir trees below. As the branches creaked, the trees bent to the tempest’s tune. The seasons were changing. The heat of summer was giving way to cooler autumn days, while high in the mountains at the Sleeping Giant’s mouth, nights already cold were becoming colder.
Linet trembled. Her brow against mine, her new talisman glowing, I saw a bird hatch within her. The chick tumbled from its shell and opened its wings, stretching. A tiny feather fluttered on to my lap, while in Adoma, I saw a leopard break free. I suppressed a growl and pulled away.
Right now, simply being a friend to Adoma was what mattered most. Little by little, as the wail of the gale soothed her, her thoughts settled, and after her tongue lost its numbness, Adoma described what had happened next at the river.
‘Milo wouldn’t let go of me,’ she said. ‘I had to carry him on my back, while Gran-pa Okomfo was so distraught he could hardly walk. The shrine in pieces and the river, the sacred river, the source of life to us, destroyed.’
‘We hurried back to the village to speak to the chief – a relative of Gran-pa’s. I never knew that Gran-pa had so many words rattling about in him. How he talked and argued and talked some more. We were in the chief’s palace by then. Gran-pa had poured libation, so that the ancestors would be present to hear everything.
‘“Listen,” said Gran-pa. “The least we should do in this life is make sure that what the ancestors left us, we pass on to the next generation. And to think that your son, Junior, is working with strangers to spoil our river. The goddess of the river will not forget it.”’
Adoma quivered, a flicker of memory closed her eyes. Teeth gritted, she opened them again: ‘That’s when the chief smiled. A fat, greasy boflot smile. An I-feel-sick-and-need-to-burp smile. Too much sugar in the dough, too much oil in the frying pan. His lips twitch, I tell you. Then he calls a small boy. Asks him to fetch a pouch. The pouch on his lap, the chief opens it and hands Gran-pa a wodge of money. Plenty money. Money enough to feed us for three years. And Gran-pa? He won’t touch it. “Nana Chief, what do you take me for? You forget, I was your prefect at school…”
‘The chief repeats his boflot smile. He urges Gran-pa to forget about our shrine by the river and concentrate on the one in the village instead – the one in our backyard. He should put it all behind him, the chief says, and chop small. Gran-pa shakes his head this way and that. No, he won’t. He can’t. Now the chief orders him, commands him to take his share. When Gran-pa insists that he won’t touch a pesewa of the chief’s bounty, Nana Chief says: “Okomfo, I advise you not to become a thorn in my flesh. If you do, I shall be forced to pull you out and throw you away.”
‘Gran-pa could sense the hair at the back of my neck bristling. Quick as a mosquito about to bite, he catches my eye and blinks to tell me “no”. He could sense what I wanted to do: blast the man to the next world and plunge thorns in his feet to stop him returning to planet earth. Gran-pa squeezes his eyes at me, gets up and we leave without saying a word.’