Wolf Light

by Yaba Badoe

  ‘And if they come at night?’ asked Adoma.

  ‘We unleash our creatures on them,’ I said.

  Linet nodded. ‘I get the feeling you’d like us to sort them out at night, wouldn’t you, Zula?’

  ‘Batu’s my uncle,’ I explained. ‘Knenbish, his wife, is my friend, and her children are my cousins. I don’t think I’ve got the stomach in daylight to eyeball Batu and dazzle-kill him.’

  ‘Not even for your man in the mountains?’ asked Adoma.

  I frowned: ‘If I have to, I can dazzle and blind, make a man miss his step and fall to his death. But with my uncle, I don’t know.’

  ‘No one said life would be easy. That’s what Nana Merrimore would say,’ said Linet. ‘Let’s hope they come at night then.’

  ‘That’s unlikely.’ Adoma examined the map between us before her eyes locked with mine. ‘To follow the trail Batu laid, they’ll need as much daylight as possible. If I were them, I’d start early, and if necessary be prepared to spend a night in the cave before returning next morning. Why create more wahala when the expedition is dangerous enough already? No one in their right minds would attempt a climb such as this at night. We should set our creatures on them during the day, if we have to.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ Linet confirmed. ‘Let’s set the traps.’

  So that’s what we did. At strategic points along the trail, we prepared snares that could make the difference between life and death: a boulder perched above the track, which with a slight push could tumble down, flattening anyone below; a thin tripwire, invisible to the untutored eye, which could precipitate a fatal fall. We littered the climb with snares to ensure that wherever the trespassers turned, their lives would be in jeopardy for having dared venture so far.

  Satisfied that we were prepared for them, we sat and waited for Batu and the skin-walkers.

  ‘My sister squad, how be?’ asked Adoma inviting us to nestle and share.

  Linet smiled and then laughed in a drizzle of glee that urged us closer still. I sensed a lightness in her that intrigued me.

  ‘How are your guardians?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re nice,’ said Linet. ‘They give me money for food every week, pay my bills and visit. Now that Nana’s gone, the lake’s more of a mother to me than ever.’

  ‘The lake’s your mother,’ I laughed, ‘while this mountain here is…’

  ‘Where your heart is,’ said Linet.

  ‘And where your heart resides is where you feel most alive,’ Adoma concluded.

  ‘I’m most alive with the lake and Lance,’ Linet smiled.

  In the glow of the setting sun, Linet’s features rippled, a shimmer of light on water.

  I nodded as on either side of me, my sisters, each with a hand in mine, thrilled at the Giant’s breath. Captivated by and immersed in his splendour, the three of us watched the flight of eagles over his mouth while down below wind whistled, spiralling between crags.

  ‘He’s alive and he’s waiting for you, Zula,’ said Linet.

  I chuckled at her fancy, which encouraged mine, for in my heart I felt him draw me even closer. So close that his breath, warm as a sun-kissed feather, tickled my face teasing me.

  ‘I feel him too,’ said Adoma. ‘You may not be able to see him, Zula, but your man in the mountains is as true as my goddess of the river. He’s here, there and everywhere.’

  ‘And what about you, Adoma?’ I enquired. ‘Any news of Junior?’

  Adoma grunted: ‘As soon as the chief left us and was no longer a chief, what the police in our village refused to do, they did in Accra. Come and see, operation or no operation, they swoop into Junior’s hospital room and grab him like this.’ Adoma enacted Junior being hauled away by the neck. ‘And all because a man without power is as helpless as a grain of rice in an anthill.’

  *

  That night the three of us slept in my cave at the Giant’s mouth. Next morning, I sat up and, alert to trespassers, sniffed the air. I detected nothing unusual. Nonetheless, a moment later, I shivered with the intensity of a child about to come down with fever.

  I woke my sisters. ‘Something’s not right. Do you feel it?’

  Linet nodded. ‘A sensation like an itch on the skin?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, indeed. There’s a sizzle of electricity in the air,’ Adoma confirmed. ‘Come closer, Zula.’

  Adoma touched the tattoo on my wrist. Linet did the same and between the three of us we saw what I couldn’t on my own: my Uncle Batu, with four skin-walkers beginning the ascent of the Sleeping Giant. Behind my uncle was Mr Anderson, Mr Lee, Mr Clements and Mr Atagan, their interpreter, each of them armed. The Egret, the Vulture, the Broad Bear, and the self-satisfied city Cat.

  ‘Why’s your uncle wearing your pa’s white shaman smock, the one with all those tiny mirrors on it?’ asked Linet.

  I looked again. Sure enough Batu was wearing Pa’s special robe of mirrors. The robe sparkled dewy bright, alight with Pa’s psychic power. As I stared at it, spasms of fear and anger shook me.

  Adoma whistled. ‘The cunning dog. He’s trying to protect himself! He knows he and his skin-walkers have no place in a sacred space such as this.’

  ‘They’re here with murder in mind, Zula,’ said Linet. ‘They want you out of the way as a first step to taking what they crave from the Giant: minerals.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bring them here, so they want me out of the way?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Adoma. ‘Aba! These people have no idea who they’re messing with. And there you were being dopey-eyed about your uncle. If we don’t sort him out now, he’s going to be the end of you, Zula.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ I replied. ‘Let’s keep my man in the mountains safe.’

  28

  Zula

  If our teachers had been with us, I’d like to think they would have reminded my sisters and me that even the best-laid strategy does not always go to plan; and that at times, there’s no other way out but to improvise. We were young, determined to prove that despite our years we could outmanoeuvre five grown men armed with rifles. After Adoma’s success in naming and shaming the man behind Okomfo Gran-pa’s murder and Linet’s affirmation of her love of the lake, we thought ourselves remarkable, which we were. After all, we had magic on our side and our cause, we believed, was a just one.

  ‘Let’s find a place above the ledge where they’ll have to dismount,’ I suggested. ‘Then we’ll not only know when they’re close, we’ll see what they’re doing as well.’

  ‘Where we laid the first trap?’ asked Adoma.

  I nodded and using our understanding of animal lore, we called for assistance from the world of the pebble toad, a creature that runs from its enemies by curling up like a ball and throwing itself off the side of mountains.

  ‘Pebble toad, pebble toad,

  We call on you.

  Help us leap and bounce

  As easily as you do!’

  We didn’t curl up, and we didn’t bounce. We weren’t running from our enemies, but towards them. Connected to a shape-shifting world we were a part of, the three of us leaped, vaulting down the mountain with the resilience and speed of a tumbling toad. Instead of taking an hour to reach our destination – a boulder on a ridge a few metres above the waiting place for horses – we arrived in less than five minutes. The trespassers were still some distance away. Nevertheless, I heard the steady clop-drop of hooves climbing upwards, ever upwards.

  ‘It sounds like an army down there,’ said Linet.

  I listened: ‘There are five horses with them at least. Batu must have borrowed Pa’s stallion, Takhi. He knows the route here as intimately as the sound of Pa’s voice.’

  Clever Uncle Batu, I thought to myself. As cunning as a fox, he was every bit as dangerous as a rabid one. And to think that I had hidden Altan at the foothills of the mountains in the belief that to tie him up below would give my presence away. My uncle already knew my whereabouts and was preparing to hunt me down. My one advantage was he had no
idea my sisters were with me.

  Adoma, ahead of us, stopped at the boulder we’d manoeuvred in such a way that a small push would set it rolling down to the spot where seven years before, if it hadn’t been for Pa, I would have fallen to my death. We hid behind the boulder and waited.

  About an hour and a half later we heard Batu’s party dismounting. The horses tethered, the five men continued the climb on foot. We didn’t have to watch them. Not at all, not when we could smell their advance and hear the trudge-heave of men’s feet in boots plodding up the slope.

  My uncle’s instincts were good, I observed, for by the time the men hauled themselves onto the narrow ridge that led to the next stage of the climb, he’d ceded his place at the front to Mr Clements, the Broad Bear.

  Broad Bear walked with the strut of a man used to pitting himself against the elements and winning. He moved quickly, confidently, mocking the caution of his fellow skin-walkers who preferred to climb at a more measured pace.

  Turning, he bellowed: ‘Buck up, you lot. I want us to be up and down by teatime at the latest. We’re not on a Sunday school picnic here.’

  He turned to hurry them on and in that moment, his back to us, Linet, Adoma and I pushed the boulder. It wobbled. That was it. We pushed again. Nothing.

  ‘Wind magic,’ I muttered. ‘Let’s use the wind to shift it. Quick, my sisters, let’s do what Pa would do. When human strength fails, harness the wind.’

  Standing side-by-side, breathing in time, we flexed our wrists and when the nerves in our fingers started tingling, we channelled the power of wind and sky to dislodge the boulder. The heavens opened and, tunnelling through, a tornado thundered down. Our arms outstretched we guided it in the direction of the block of stone in front of us. The rock shook, and as its centre of gravity shifted, picking up momentum, it toppled.

  ‘Watch it, Clements! Behind you!’

  Broad Bear looked, saw the rock rolling down the ridge towards him and realising there was no space either side of it to escape, twisted around, pushing Cat man out of his way. But the Cat, claws at the ready, clung on to him.

  Those advancing turned tail and ran: Batu, Egret and Vulture. They fled as Bear and Cat snarled and spat in a frenzy of scratches and kicks to prevent one or the other falling off the ridge.

  ‘Let go of me, man! You want both of us to die?’

  It seemed so. Broad Bear, pinned in a hug, jabbed an elbow into Cat man’s chest. Cat man doubled over. But momentarily regaining his balance, he butted his head in Broad Bear’s crotch, pushed him down, and then ran to safety as the boulder, veering to the right, plunged into the ravine sweeping Broad Bear away.

  His screams seemed to last from autumn through to summer. They echoed from the earth to the sky and back again. When they finally ceased and the dust of the rock fall had settled, the four remaining men re-emerged, shaking.

  ‘What the hell happened there?’ asked Mr Anderson, the tall, bony Egret. He could scarcely place one foot in front of the other he trembled so much. His voice high and nervous, he asked: ‘Is there any chance Clements is still alive down there?’

  Batu shook his head, as did Cat man.

  ‘It was either him or me,’ he explained. ‘If I hadn’t stopped him, he’d have pushed me!’

  For over an hour I hoped their mission would be aborted, that after the death of their leader, they would cut their losses, leave the Giant alone and hasten on their journey home. I hoped and prayed to no avail. In the same way that I’d underestimated Batu’s guile and greed, I’d misunderstood the skin-walkers’ need to uncover what lay hidden at the heart of the mountain. Their devilish desire to know, to pull aside the mist of magic that cloaked the Giant in slumber, was much greater it turned out, than their fear of death. For after an hour of discussion as to how best to retrieve the body of their leader, by mutual consent, they decided to continue their climb. Only this time, Batu would go first. This he agreed to do.

  Further along the trail, my sisters and I attempted a diversion. Using Nana Merrimore’s camouflage trick we merged with the rock face and waited for our prey. Our plan was to separate Batu from the rest of the men, who would then lose their way and turn back.

  We waited, still as statues, pockmarked as grey slabs of mountain granite, concealed by our disguise. Eventually, when we heard them approaching, we swung into action.

  ‘Help! Help!’ Linet trilled. ‘Help me.’

  The men stopped. We heard a rush of conversation followed by a cry of warning from my uncle.

  ‘Haven’t you realised yet that this mountain is haunted?’ he said. ‘This is yet another trick devised by my witch of a niece and my shaman brother to keep us away.’

  At this point, Linet let out the bloodcurdling wail of a girl-woman in distress. ‘Help me! Help!’

  Egret and Vulture dashed forwards while Cat, ever cautious, padded warily behind them.

  Adoma and I jumped down. One blink of my moonstone eyes at Egret and he shrieked. Dazzled-blind, he shook his head, slammed his knuckles into his eye sockets and then, in a vain attempt to clear his vision, joggled his head again:

  ‘What’s happening, Artagan? Are you there?’

  I stepped away from Egret to blink at Vulture, but Adoma was already on him, blasting his body with shards of flint that she hurled with the strength of her mind. Vulture fell on his back jerking and floundering like a fish gulping air.

  I pirouetted to tackle Cat man not realising that Batu, adorned in Pa’s robe of mirrors, was hiding behind him. I moved without thinking, forgetting that on my uncle’s back was a rifle. I heard the gun’s stutter and saw a flash as I closed my eyes to protect them. Then I felt it, and reeling from an explosion in my shoulder, keeled over and fell.

  ‘Zula! Zula!’ my sisters cried.

  ‘Adoma, get them!’ said Linet. ‘They’ve murdered Zula.’

  ‘Linet, behind me,’ Adoma shrieked.

  By then the pain in my shoulder was excruciating, a blaze of agony so intense, my nerves flamed. My eyes squeezed tight, I writhed on the ground as blood drained out of me.

  So much for waking my man in the mountains, I thought. ‘Pa, if you look over your shoulder, you’ll see me following you into the valley of death. Pa, wait for me… wait…’

  I can’t say exactly what happened next, because balled up in torment my eyes were closed; yet this I know. Throughout the commotion: the screams of skin-walkers felled by my sisters and me, throughout the cries of: ‘What’s happening? I can’t see. Artagan, where the hell are you? Damn it! Where are you, man?’ the mountain shuddered.

  First, I heard the screech of eagles, then the baying of wolves. Above and below us rocks tumbled. And in the tumult, as I smelled my blood puddle in a pool beside my head, I felt the Giant’s breath, warm as a blanket, cover me. I would have been chilled to the bone, otherwise. I would have frozen from the inside out. But not only did his breath soothe me, it revived me as well.

  If I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed, as those skin-walkers most probably did, that we were in the middle of an earthquake; and that the earth, suddenly at war with itself, was behind the shaking and splintering of rocks. I knew better, but I still wanted it to stop. The juddering persisted as in what seemed like eternity the earth tore itself asunder.

  ‘Stop!’ I wailed.

  The maelstrom continued. The mountains known as the Sleeping Giant rumbled and as their pillars crumbled and birds took to the sky, I half-wondered if my sisters and I could survive. The crags about us groaned.

  ‘You dare? You dare? You dare hurt my girl?’ a voice thundered: a voice of scraping metal and rubble, quarry-deep in tone.

  ‘It’s alive! It’s alive!’ my uncle cried.

  The last words I heard him utter were followed by a jumbled clamour as a blizzard of stones fell about us.

  ‘Your uncle’s gone,’ said Linet. ‘He’s crushed him. Stamped his foot on him.’

  ‘May Kwame, creator of all that is seen and unseen, protect us!’ Adom
a prayed.

  ‘Hold tight,’ Linet whispered in my ear.

  I lay with my sisters while the mountains fractured and swayed. And when, at last, I believed we would be swallowed into the bowels of the earth, a hand gently lifted us into the sky.

  It was then that I opened my eyes, and supported by Adoma and Linet, I looked up and saw the Giant’s face.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again, a huge ‘thank you’ to my editor at Zephyr, Fiona Kennedy, who shepherded me through the writing of Wolf Light. Thanks also to my dear friend, Cam Archer, whose encouragement sustains me, and to Wendy Hollway, for introducing me to the story of Skeleton Woman in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ ground- breaking text, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Thanks to my remarkable cousin, Dr (Mrs) Rose Emma Mamaa Ensua-Mensah, whose photographs of the devastation of galamsey mining on Ghana’s forests spurred me into action. I’m greatly indebted to African women whose stories I researched while filming in Uganda and South Africa. Had I not heard their stories and seen the impact of mining on their lives I would have lacked the courage to tackle the theme of climate change in Wolf Light. Finally, my heart-felt thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, for giving me the time and space to complete the first draft of Wolf Light. A month of intense concentration at the Center was exactly what I needed.

  Yaba Badoe,

  London,

  December 2018

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  1

  There’s only one thing makes any sense when I wake from my dream. I’m a stranger and shouldn’t be here. Should my luck run out, a black-booted someone could step on me and crush me, as if I’m worth less than an ant. This I know for a fact. And yet once or twice a week, the dream seizes me and shakes me about: