Chapter One

The New Moon was Eyanka’s name for the first full moon after the new rains, a night of hope and celebration. A thin rainy season foretold famine; abundant rain promised full barns. To court the favour of the sky goddess, the village marked that moon each year with sacrifice, music, and fire.

Huts stood open and empty. Smoke from roasting plantain drifted towards the square, where drummers tightened goat-skin heads over fire and women passed calabashes of peppered meat between dancers. Palm wine vanished almost as quickly as it was poured. Children wore chalk moons on their cheeks. Men who had quarrelled all season embraced as though one night of music could settle a year of debt.

Children folded themselves around the elders’ stools. They wanted wars, monsters and kings who returned from death. What they received was a silence nobody had rehearsed. Thirteen rains had passed since the execution, yet the square still seemed to remember where the girl’s blood had entered the earth.

“Dance well,” the Mad Man called. “A debt collector is coming, and she does not accept palm wine.”

“Papa, which debt?” asked a boy of nine rains.

“The debt inside his bottle,” the elder said, waving the Mad Man away. But his laughter arrived late, and the children heard the delay.

“I know what I saw and believe it or not, you are all going to pay for the blood of the innocent.”

For thirteen rains the Mad Man had repeated the same impossible testimony: after the beheading, while the storm emptied the square, a burned woman came for the child’s body. Every retelling had made him easier to ridicule and harder to ignore.

Eyanka manufactured explanations because explanations were cheaper than guilt. Dogs ate the corpse. The storm carried it underground. The dead girl grew another head and escaped. Each version absolved the living.

“You all think I am crazy, perhaps it is this village that is crazy. I am telling you what I saw. I saw the ghost of a woman emerge to collect the Little Girl’s corpse. She appeared burned like she too had been killed in an execution. On her wrist I saw marks left by the ropes she had been bound with.” He motioned to his own wrists.

“You weren’t even born when this village had its last execution by fire!” an old man shouted.

“I know what I saw old man. And tonight I shall be vindicated. Children, just pray to the gods it isn’t one of you she comes for. Oh yes, she is coming. The burnt woman said she would.”

His eyes widened to inspire fear in the heart of the young.

“Thirteen rains of peace is what she gave us. A fair exchange for the life of the innocent we took.”

“Pay him no mind. Only the foolish challenge the words of elders. Now be gone! Let me teach these children something worth learning about.”

With that last dismissal, he was gone to where he came from, muttering indistinguishable words under his breath.

“Mad Man!”

“Dread head!” the children called out, mocking him as he left.

It wasn’t until the flames of the bonfire reduced to embers that the High Priest made his entrance with the village masquerade. It started with the sound of a powerful drum.

At the sound of the first stroke, children broke into a sprint to get off the walk path and village square. The adults hurried in their steps pretending to chase the children to safety while evading the square themselves. The masquerade runner appeared in the midst of the celebration in a frenzied dance, lashing out his koboko whip in the air. Anyone on his path or within the whip’s reach was asking for a good lashing. The drum grew louder as the masquerade got closer, and soon, other instruments followed.

The masquerade entered in raffia, bells and a painted wooden face, clearing the path with a whip that cracked above bowed heads. Children believed the mask could steal the spirit of anyone who met its eyes. Adults claimed to know better, yet none looked directly at it. Behind the dancer came the High Priest, carrying the same prophecy he carried every year: rain, harvest and a darkness described too vaguely to be proved wrong.

As custom demanded, the King arrived with his guards, the largest faction of the village army. When the march halted, he invited the soft-spoken Queen to deliver the annual address. She praised the village’s accomplishments, the High Priest and the General, then announced that a seer had foretold the birth of a prince. The square erupted. The King smiled behind her and dismissed the parade with a slight nod.

It was only after the King turned his back on the crowd that the drinking and dancing could continue, even if poisoned by an underlying fear of an approaching darkness as predicted by the priest. By the end of the celebration, the square was deserted save a few sleeping drunkards too weak to find their way home. Silence befell the village and not long after, sleep followed.

The fisherman chose his canoe over his hut, as he did whenever drink made the earth feel too steady. The current rocked him beneath the moon. Near dawn, the canoe struck the bank once, twice, then again. Nobody heard him wake.

“He was right, the Mad Man was right!” The Town Crier banged on his gong as he shuffled and stumbled through every street in the village.

At sunrise, the canoe rested crooked against the reeds. The fisherman lay inside it without his head. Blood had dried beneath his fingernails, and deep scratches travelled along the wood towards the water, recording the last thing his hands had tried to do: hold on.

The Mad Man stood behind the gathering crowd. “Even a fool can carry the truth,” he said. “The truth does not become foolish with him.”