The Prophets(56)

The village was decorated in blue. Berry-dyed cloth hung from the thatched roofs of surrounding huts. Lobelia was gathered in bunches and spread along the perimeter of the village square. Everyone in the village was there, all dressed in red, except Akusa, who, as king, wore bright yellow.

Handsome Elewa sat on a lavishly woven rug with his mother, Dashi, on his left and his father, Takumbo, on his right. The rug told the story not of battle—though, at first glance, the woven images of raised spears in the hands of those holding them seemed to indicate such. However, the direction in which the spears were pointed, to the left, specified both protection and supplication. Behind the spear holders was a giant orange sun, setting, not rising. And this was what the spear holders were both guarding and worshipping. Elewa looked down at the rug and touched it, hoping it would transfer some of its strength, prepare him for the responsibilities he and Kosii were about to take on.

They were born guardians, Takumbo had told him. The whole village knew it from the moment he and Kosii met as barely-walkers. The way they took to each other and remained as inseparable as a tortoise and its shell. Only with great violence could they be split, which all of nature would frown upon. It was providence, their connection, for the last guardians had transitioned a few seasons before, valiantly, during the mountain war, and there was no one in the village to guard the gates, not just the formidable ones here, but also the ones between here and the invisible place where the ancestors sing, dance, and drink palm wine for all eternity.

Elewa looked at his father, whose eyes were glassy from tears that welled but did not fall. Takumbo smiled.

“You make us proud,” he said.

Dashi patted Elewa’s hand and then fixed a stray dreadlock that escaped from its place behind Elewa’s ear. She checked his face paint, licked her thumb, and then used the moist part of it to wipe away an imperfection in the line on his chin. Takumbo inspected his medicine stick, looked at Dashi, and nodded. Dashi leaned back to get a better look at her son.

“There,” she said. “You are ready now.”

Elewa stood up and helped his parents to stand. The three of them were as sturdy as trees when they rose. Kosii arrived, walking through the gathered crowd, flanked by Elewa’s seven aunts, with Kosii’s family bringing up the rear. Just as he reached where Elewa and his parents were standing, Semjula made her way to the front of the audience. She had a hollow medicine stick in one hand and her cane helping her to walk in the other. She balanced herself and then held her stick high and ululated. The crowd returned her cry. And then the ceremony began.

Elewa and Kosii danced toward each other as the rest of the crowd stepped back and formed a wide circle around them. Elewa and Kosii shook their sticks, which, filled with dried beans, rattled like snakes. The tribe provided a hand-clapping rhythm. Elewa smiled. Kosii bit his bottom lip. They circled each other, never losing the beat. Elewa kicked his foot, casting dirt in Kosii’s direction. Kosii stomped and kicked dirt back toward Elewa. Then they approached each other.

They placed their rattling sticks on the ground, lined up so that they were parallel. Then Kosii grabbed Elewa and they tussled. The crowd was elated; they clapped rapidly, creating a staccato rhythm. Kosii was on top, then Elewa. They rolled around on the ground, one unable to best the other. And just when the frenzy had reached its pinnacle, the clapping stopped. Kosii and Elewa stood up. Dirt stuck to their bodies; they looked celestial, like human-shaped pieces of night. Panting and smiling, they turned to each other and laughed. The whole village laughed with them.

Semjula stepped forward, this time with a thick vine rope in her hand. She made her way toward them and stopped where their medicine sticks lay on the ground before them. She placed her cane down on the ground parallel to theirs.

“Give me your hands,” she said in her strongest voice.

Kosii held out his right hand, Elewa his left. Semjula held up the vines and displayed them to the village. Many nodded. Dashi and Takumbo clung to each other.

“So that you may never be cleaved,” Semjula said and she wrapped the rope round and round their wrists until they were securely joined. She took a step back. She placed her medicine stick on the ground so that it lined up with the three sticks already there.

“Now,” she said, signaling with her wrinkled hand. “Come.”

Elewa and Kosii took deep, simultaneous breaths, and then they leaped, clearing all four sticks. The entire village erupted in ululation. Elewa and Kosii beamed. They turned to each other and embraced, seemingly for this life and for the next.

King Akusa raised her fist in the air and the drummers in the rear of the crowd began drumming. The crowd split in two, clearing a path for Kosii and Elewa. They danced down the opening, followed by their families, then the king, and then the rest of the village. They all danced and danced and danced until they were wet with celebration. Then they headed toward the king’s hut.

It was bad fortune to keep the intruders captive in the guard’s hut as the rest of the village celebrated. King Akusa found it harmless to allow them to partake in the bounty and merriment. She thought it would, in fact, illustrate just how charitable her people were and please the ancestors. Fierceness should always be tempered with kindness; that was wisdom. An unwise king was the mark of shame and this she would not be.

She offered her own hut for the celebration, for it was the largest and it would, after all, please Ketwa because Kosii was his favored nephew. The ground before them was covered with unfurled banana leaves, stretched out for the length of the more than one hundred Kosongo who sat cross-legged at either side. Others stood just behind. There was not a space on top of the leaves that was not taken up by some dish. Ketwa and Dashi made sure that each was impeccably prepared. Fish, quail, stewed coconut, banana, wild rice, mango, ackee, bread, mashed yam, honey pudding, and lots of palm wine. The king sat at the head and Elewa and Kosii—newly bonded, still roped by the wrist, each feeding the other with his free hand—sat at the tail.