Mother Village Chapter 1 __top__ «Full Version»

Koffi had asked. He had pressed his forehead to the baobab’s ribbed trunk until his skin bled. He had dug up a finger of the sacred yam and eaten it raw. Nothing. His mother still sat by the hearth, humming a song that had no melody, weaving a basket that would never hold water.

The sun was a white blister in the sky. Koffi squatted at the edge of the Cassava Field, the one closest to the Old Wall—a crumbling spine of mud-and-stone that no one remembered building but everyone knew not to cross. Beyond it lay the Ashen Grove, where the red soil turned gray and the trees grew twisted, their branches pointing east like accusatory fingers. No one from Lapazza had gone into the Grove in three generations. Not since the Season of the Missing. mother village chapter 1

Koffi stood. He tucked the leaking gourd into the fold of his tunic. He did not tell his mother goodbye—she wouldn’t understand. He did not tell Tebo, who would chain him to the baobab. He simply walked. Koffi had asked

Koffi looked back at Lapazza. From here, it looked peaceful: round huts with thatched roofs, smoke curling from cooking pits, children chasing a lame goat. But he saw what others didn’t. The wells were shrinking. The goats gave sour milk. The babies were born with gray eyes that turned brown after three days—except now, they stayed gray. Nothing

Now, at the edge of the Cassava Field, he held the leaking gourd—his mother’s favorite water gourd, the one with the gourd-bird carved into its side. It wasn’t leaking water. It was leaking a thin, silvery sap that smelled of milk and thunder. He had never seen sap like that. Neither had Tebo, who had crossed himself with ash when Koffi showed him.

That was when Koffi noticed the crack.

The Old Wall was higher than he remembered. Or maybe he was smaller. He climbed it anyway, scraping his knees on stones that felt warm, almost feverish. At the top, he paused.