Blood had been spilled in the Spirit Grove. Yet the Ancestors still slept. And Odomankoma remained silent ...
ADUWURA THROBBED WITH the exuberance of the Yam Festival. The sounds of revelry overwhelmed the low murmur of the nearby Ogopo River. Masked dancers cavorted through the streets in celebration of the planting of new crops – and anticipation of the blessing of Onyame the Sky-God and Mawu-Lesa, twin deities of the sun and moon.
Drums pulsed a beat of rhythmic joy; maize-beer and palm-wine were quaffed with uncaring abandon; songs were sung with bleary enthusiasm; love was made with reckless passion. For the Yam Festival was a time of renewal for the Akan – a time when the cares of the past rain could be momentarily forgotten.
In the house of Ekupanin, the akuapem or sub-chief of Aduwura, the Festival was observed with more decorum. Beneath the roof of woven straw, the akuapem entertained the important personages – the people-with name – of his city. The wide gyaase, or inner yard, was filled with clan heads, weapons traders, and diviners, all bedecked in their finest robes of patterned adinkra cloth. Light from several fire-pits flashed sun-like against golden ornaments weighting black arms left bare by the adinkra. Ekupanin sat on a double-curved stool; the others rested cross-legged on mats of rattan.
The reason Ekupanin’s guests were quieter than the revelers outside was that they were listening to a drum-poem played by Kwomo, son of the akuapem. The intricate patterns of beats were as easily understood by the Akan as their spoken language. The poem was a tribute to the Sky-God: a retelling of the departure of Onyame from the earth to the heavens.
Kwomo was a skilful drummer. As he filled the gyaase with the pulses of his drum-phrases, the assembled dignitaries of Aduwura paid less heed to their gossip and gourds of maize-beer. Yet the attention of Kwomo’s father was focused elsewhere. Ekupanin, a burly man whose body was slowly surrendering to fat, stared intently at Kipchoge, the healer.
Aware of the akuapem’s gaze, Kipchoge refused to meet it. Kipchoge, the sub-chief mused. It was a name as exotic as the man. Among the short, stocky Akan, Kipchoge stood out like a heron among guinea-fowl. His lean, angular frame seemed lost amid the folds of his adinkra. His ascetic features appeared pinched and narrow next to the broad faces of the Akan. And his skin was the color of polished mahogany, not the ebony and umber of the people of the Forest Kingdoms.
Kipchoge was a man of the east, where the plains stretched as far as the eye could see and the mountains brushed the sky. Long before the birth of Ekupanin, Kipchoge had come to Aduwura. Ekupanin’s father had discovered the stranger lying naked and senseless near the Spirit Grove. The Akan were a hospitable people; they nursed the stranger back to health, taught him their speech, found use for his uncanny skills as a healer, and finally accepted him as an Akan whose soul would one day sleep in the grove near which he was found.
Eventually, the Easterner had married Ekupanin’s aunt, Salifah. She sat at the healer’s side in the gyaase, along with Adjei, their son.
Adjei was an asufo – a soldier in the army of the Ashonti, overlords of the Akan. He had come home from the nearby asufo garrison to be with his parents during the Festival. Rather than adinkra, Adjei wore the leopard-spotted armor and snarling helmet of his trade. With the height of his father and face of his mother, Adjei cut a commanding figure as he sat at rigid attention.
Ekupanin frowned at the sight of asufo armor. Long ago, the Akan had dominated the Ashonti. Two centuries past, the lesser clan had conquered, and now the entire forest kingdom bore the Ashonti name. For many Akan, the old wound was still sore. Now, though, Ekupanin shared the concern of Adjei and Salifah for Kipchoge.
Though the only indication of age the healer showed was the white, woolly hair that thatched his skull, Kipchoge appeared many rains older this night. There was a tremor in his hands. From time to time, his body would slump forward, then jerk into an erect posture as though he were fighting sleep ... or worse. He held his hand against the bridge of his nose.
Yet neither sub-chief nor wife nor son attempted to aid the healer. To do so before Onyame had heard the entire drum-poem was unthinkable.
With a final eloquent flourish, Kwomo completed his tribute to the Sky-God. Before the sound of the last drumbeat died, Kipchoge suddenly clutched both hands to his face, shrieked in agony, and toppled forward, sprawling across the rattan mat.
Instantly, Salifah and Adjei bent to aid the healer. Ekupanin rose ponderously from his stool and strode quickly to the fallen Kipchoge. Close behind the akuapem came Kofi the diviner.
“Kipchoge!” Salifah cried into the fallen man’s ear.
The healer remained inert, giving no sign of having heard his wife’s call.
“Help me turn him over,” she ordered the men.
Anxiety marked her round, ebony face as Adjei and Kofi bent to roll Kipchoge onto his back.
The healer lay slack and unmoving, his hands still covering his face. Gently, Salifah moved her husband’s hands aside ... and gasped at the expression on his face. Kipchoge’s eyes were shut tight, and his lips were peeled back from his face in a grimace of pain. The small crowd that had gathered around the healer and his family echoed Salifah’s gasp.
Salifah touched her husband’s face ... and with a sharp cry of dismay, she pulled back her hand as if she had just touched a coal from the fire pits.
Adjei grasped his mother by the shoulders and turned her to face him.
“What is it?” he demanded. “What is wrong with the Old One?”
Salifah rubbed her thumb across the
