“Yes, there is death,” he said bitterly. “With this hand, I killed as many Sussu as I could see. But in the end, I have only this burnt-out field. My family is still dead, and there is no one to help me replant my crop before the rains pass.”
They remained silent for a time, each adrift in sad reverie. Then Amma said: “There is nothing for me in Gadou, and I am weary of walking. I will stay here and help you with your crop.”
Astonished, Babakar could only respond: “I have but one mattock.”
Amma laughed, her smile rendering her face even more attractive than before.
“I’ll use this,” she retorted, bending down to curl her slim fingers around a fire-blackened stake that had been part of a fence that once guarded Babakar’s field.
Without further words, Amma began to thrust the jagged point of the stake into the soil. Fresh earth emerged as she twisted the stake in a digging motion.
Only for a moment did Babakar watch her. Then he picked up his mattock and proceeded to work at Amma’s side. A cloud appeared, in the sudden fashion of the wet season, and a hot, misty rain soon washed down on two dark, naked backs bent to the soil.
DAY FOLLOWED INEXORABLE day, and newly turned earth progressively supplanted the scorched remnants of Babakar’s field. The rains fell with perceptibly diminishing intensity. Working against the advent of the day they knew the rain would cease, Babakar and Amma toiled from the rising to the setting of the sun. With grim determination, they struggled to prepare the field for planting while there was still time for another crop to grow.
Work they shared; work in plenty, along with the thatch-roofed house Babakar had erected on the side of the one the Sussu had destroyed. They shared meager meals of millet and beans bought only after tiresome haggling with the near-destitute merchants of Gadou. The people left in the town paid little heed to Babakar’s new companion; she was but one of many refugees from the desolate countryside.
At night, they shared the sleep of the exhausted, their bodies touching only by chance on Babakar’s single sleeping-mat. For, by unspoken agreement, they did not share each other: not in the way of a man and a woman.
On occasion, Babakar’s gaze would linger on the smooth play of muscles beneath Amma’s skin as she toiled beneath the sun. Such gazes did not last long, for the memory of the first Amma remained a shadow of sorrow in his mind. And he remembered how the Noba had ravished the second Amma ... was he, a countryman who had offered her shelter, to offer her similar abuse?
If Amma noticed such moments of quickly suppressed passion, she showed no sign. Indeed, she seemed more determined than Babakar to succeed with their late-grown crop. She demanded nothing of him beyond the food and shelter he gave her.
Once, at sunset, they were visited by Kuya Adowa, the local tyinbibi, or diviner. Despite her advanced years, Kuya stood proudly erect, and her eyes smouldered beneath her turban like the embers of a fire.
The words she spoke were addressed to Babakar. But her dark, portentous gaze never left the eyes of Amma.
“The dyongu, the spirit-cock that embodies the luck of Gadou, died yesterday,” the old woman announced ominously.
Babakar stiffened. The death of the sacred black rooster always presaged a period of ill fortune. When the predecessor of this last dyongu had died, the invasion of the Sussu had followed. What new calamities the death of Kuya’s bird foreshadowed, Babakar did not care to contemplate. His concern was why Kuya Adowa had chosen to come to him to speak of the matter.
“War brings destruction not only to the lands of men, but to the world of the spirits as well,” the tyinbibi said. “The kambu, the spirits of power, manifest themselves in our world, and the tyerkou shed their skins at night to wander the land and drink the blood of the unwary. Beware, Babakar iri Sounkalo. Beware.”
Only after the second “beware” did Kuya shift her gaze from Amma’s eyes to Babakar’s.
“What do you mean by that, Kuya Adowa?” Babakar demanded. “Are Amma and I in danger of some kind?”
The old woman wrinkled her nose in disdain.
“I leave that interpretation to you,” she said. “I must go and seek the black hatchling that is to be the new dyongu.”
With that, she turned her bare, bony back on them and stalked down the dusty road to Gadou.
Troubled, Babakar turned to Amma – and was taken aback by the hatred in her eyes as she glared at the dwindling figure of the departing tyinbibi ...
THE MORNING CAME WHEN the first seedlings of wassa poked boldly through the soil. Overnight, the seeds had sprouted several inches, in the typical manner of the first growth-spurt of this type of bean plant.
A smile of satisfaction crept quietly across the face of Babakar. It was the first such smile his features had worn since the coming of the Sussu.
Then he looked at Amma ... and his smile disappeared, replaced by an expression of utter bewilderment.
In an attitude approaching reverence, Amma knelt near a cluster of seedlings. One finger stroked the fragile green stems with the delicate touch of a priestess conveying a sacrifice to the goddess of fertility. Her head inclined so far forward that her face hovered only a hairsbreadth from the tops of the plants.
Tentatively, Babakar touched the shoulder of the kneeling woman. The effect of the brush of his fingers against her skin was at once instantaneous and disconcerting as Amma sprang into the air like a frightened animal. Yet for all the suddenness of her leap, she landed lightly on her feet, facing Babakar in a tense, quivering half-crouch. Her eyes, fixed glassily at something beyond Babakar’s head, bulged wide in fright.
A tremor shook her slight frame. Then the glaze faded from her eyes and she suddenly pitched forward.
Quickly Babakar reached
