Then he remembered his three cowries, which he hoped to invest in a gourd of banana-beer. Without a guinea-fowl, he would be forced to hold to his earlier promise to purchase the sticky alewe-sweets – which he loathed – for his wife.
He sighed. It would be well worth hacking through the undergrowth to the third snare, if only Yaa Nguyu, the Goddess of Luck, would for once heed the countless prayers he had directed toward ears that had so far remained divinely deaf.
Okosene was not far from his destination when he heard a high, distinctive cackle wending through the canopy of the treetops. His heart leaped, for the sound was the call of a guinea-fowl! As though of their own accord, his feet swiftly carried him through the bush. He needed to reach the snare before some marauding leopard robbed him of his rightful prey.
Bursting through the last of the clinging vegetation, Okosene anxiously looked upward from the place where he had set his simple mechanism. His questing gaze was rewarded by the sight of a flutter of black wings mottled with tiny white spots; a collar of long plumes hanging down from the neck, and a naked, bluish head from which plaintive cries echoed among the trees.
Okosene Alakun danced joyously. Here it was at last: a fine, fat guinea-fowl big enough to satisfy even Ajema’s voracious appetite. That he would in all likelihood not even get to suck marrow from the bones of his catch did not bother Okosene at all. Visions of the gourd of banana-beer his three cowries would buy lingered in the dan-Zamfaru’s head as he clambered up the gawasa-tree to claim his prey.
Cautiously, he crept along the limb over which the snare-rope had been looped. Clinging precariously to his high perch, Okosene removed his knife from its sheath, and positioned himself to slash the throat of the dangling bird – which had mercifully ceased its ear-splitting squawks.
In his fertile imagination, Okosene was stalking a leopard, not a miserable snared guinea-fowl. How the people of Nyamem would envy the fine spotted pelt he would bring back ...
Just as Okosene raised his knife for the death-slash, the guinea-fowl cocked its head upward and spoke:
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Okosene nearly fell out of the tree. He shook his head, blinked several times, then goggled his eyes back down at the guinea-fowl. Its bright bird-eyes stared back up at him. Intelligence, rather than the reflection of the sun, put the gleam in the guinea-fowl’s gaze.
Okosene’s grip tightened his grip on the tree-limb. For he knew now that he had snared a kungurus-kansusu – a spirit that had taken fleshly form. Why the kungurus-kansusu had chosen such a lowly shape as its guise, he could not know ... no more than he knew what he should do next.
As though reading the dan-Zamfaru’s thoughts, the bird offered a suggestion.
“If you set me free, Okosene Alakun, I will give you anything in this world you might like. Be it high office, wealth, learning ... whatever you want can be yours. But you may make no more than four requests, for I am a kungurus-kansusu of only minor standing. And, of course, your requests must be made in my presence. I am a kungurus-kansusu, not a mind-reader.”
Okosene’s mind whirled in confusion.
“H-how do you know my name?” he stammered. “Why is it that, if you possess the power to give me anything I want, you don’t have the power to free yourself from my snare? How do I know you won’t just fly away if I set you free?”
“Your wishes are that I answer those questions? Very well ...”
“Wait!” Okosene yelped.
Events were moving much too quickly for him. Even his daydreams had not prepared him for an opportunity such as this.
“Those are not my wishes,” he said. “Please ... give me time to think.”
“Better not take too long,” the guinea-fowl said. “The leopard climbing up this tree may not be inclined to wait for you to make up your mind.”
Okosene jerked his head downward in sudden consternation. Just as the kungurus-kansusu said, lithe, yellow-and-black death was creeping silently up the bole of the tree. Feline muscles bunched under spotted hide. Now that the leopard knew it had been seen, it abandoned stealth and snarled with appalling ferocity.
Even as the great cat leaped the last few yards toward Okosene, the dan-Zamfara shrieked: “I wish this leopard were gone from here!”
And, before Okosene’s disbelieving eyes, the springing cat vanished, leaving behind only a vagrant puff of breeze against his face. Looking again to his snare, Okosene found the bird still dangling impatiently by its legs, eyes glaring up at him over a hooked beak.
“That was your first wish,” the kungurus-kansusu pointed out. “You have three more left. But you are not getting any of them until you cut me free!”
Okosene, who had not made a major decision since the day he had delivered that fateful chicken to Ajema’s father, made a rapid one now. With one hand, he pulled the guinea-fowl up to his branch. After a deft slash to the rope that circled its legs, the kungurus-kansusu stood unbound.
The bird’s wings spread. Okosene’s heart sank. Then the guinea-fowl folded its pinions back against its sides, settled down on the branch, and waited. Thoughtfully, Okosene straddle the thick limb. For several minutes they sat like that, man and bird, each waiting for the other to speak.
The guinea-fowl was first to give in.
“Well for Legba’s sake, man, what do you want me to give you?”
Okosene’s face firmed into a rare expression of decisiveness.
“I have a wife named Ajema,” he began.
The bird emitted a sound very much like a human snicker.
“I know,” it said. “What about her?”
“I want you to make her beautiful!” Okosene blurted.
More avian laughter.
“It is done. Return to this place when you are ready for your other wishes – which, may I remind you, number only two now. I will not leave this spot until all your wishes are done.”
But Okosene
