Chris Dahi
Chapter One
The African morning had come slowly over the distant hills and as slowly washed over the palm, oil bean and boabab trees that surround the still sleepy clan of Oja. It had come like a shower of light blown gently by the fresh morning breeze, caressing all in its mild golden path. Trees, huts, the cock that heralded it’s coming and other early rising domestic animals. Also Isiburuekperi, the King’s medicine man sitting in front of Prince Dikes hut.
Isiburuekperi is sitting in front of Dike’s hut on his mat of lion skin, while the brown spotted leopard skin is spread out in front of him. His medicine bag is by his side. He was methodically tossing his cowry shells unto the leopard skin, among the alligator peppers, kola nuts, leaves, roots and other odds and ends he uses for his oracular work. He mutters incantations before and after each cowry throw.
His expression is as unreadable as his age. Everyone in that village came into the world and met Isiburuekperi, at the age he is now. He never gets any older. Yet he has been known to tell stories of his activities with the present king’s great grandfather.
Inside the hut, Dike had woken up with his wife Obiageli. Dike is bustling and hustling all over the expanse of his newly built hut while Obiageli is sitting on the bamboo and mud bed watching him with a glitter in her eyes, and a smile romancing the corners of her mouth. She is restrained not because she is heavily pregnant and due to deliver any time now, but because her man had insisted that she not worry herself.
For a man who is going to be King in this warrior influenced society, Dike is too sentimental.
“So you take it easy, okay, you don’t worry yourself, I will take care of things.”
She smiled, as she watched him knock up a breakfast. A slopshoddy work he is making of it. But his enthusiasm is admirable.
