Part two; Magic is dead

Elephant

"What's he going to do with it?" Edgoni asked searching for something inside the rusted metal box on the table before him.

"I don't know," Amaka said frowning. It also puzzled her.

The blacksmith threw her a quick glance from his place on the stool at the big table then resumed his search. The shop was busy with other blacksmiths and apprentices going here and there in the clamour. Their skin slick with sweat as a hearth burned in the back of the room heating the place. Clangs of hammered metals rang perpetually. The room was hot and she was wet with precipitation. Amaka would rather be elsewhere.

"Well," she said carefully. A ripper? Woka is never one for swords. No one in Masakar is. "Maybe," she considered, "he's going to make a sacrifice."

"To Koo?" Edgoni snorted in disagreement. The blacksmith was a stocky man in his mid ages. Kind of voice and concerned eyes. His fat face was framed with a well trimmed beard, and his temples were streaked with grey. "That man worships Ife. Besides...."

He's an heretic? Amaka thought derisively. That's what you would have said if you had the guts isn't it you foolish man? But outward she just smiled and waited patiently for him to continue.

The man suddenly looked away in embarrassment then grunted. "Let's leave Woka's games to Woka." he said with guilt. "You can't know what he's plotting no matter how hard you think of it anyway. Probably for the best."

"Wise words," Amaka agreed nodding. "Or maybe," she rose with a grin. "father just wants to practice wielding a silly sword."

"Probably..... Um, You can come for it by tomorrow, I will start working on it today." Edgoni told her. Amaka thanked him then departed.

The day was bright. The afternoon sky was clear and blue with white clouds in spaces. Amaka could feel the cold sweat on her body as she moved out of Edgoni's compound. The fire in the shop was hot and the sun did not help. She wiped her facial sweat with the wrapper about her body then removed it, folded it, and carried it in her hand. Leaving only her chest and waist cloth.

As she walked through the kraal she wondered where she should go waste her free time. Gonto and Randa are not at home and she has eating; She has no reason to return home yet. Besides, if she does her mother will keep sending her on errands. Now normally Amaka would go to the spirit forest and find her brothers but they have left to the hills with Bako that wanted to check on Woota's grave, leaving Amaka to herself. She was sure the real reason they stuck to the wizard was for him to show them magic. But still it broke her heart.

Not magic, Amaka corrected herself. Father claimed it wasn't magic the man uses but magic tricks___ real magic is gone. Real magic that can level kraals, bring forth beasts like kuras and karie, and stop floods. Those are no more.

Well, Amaka thought as she looked at the village street with people, goats, and fowls going about. Maybe she should go to Yaki at the farm. No, she dismissed the suggestion, she shouldn't distract her friend when she's working. Out of any reasonable places to go Amaka made peace with herself to do the forbidden. She took a less passed street through some huts to the cashew tree by the eastern fence. It was beside Banza's and Mari's compound. It was a peculiar tree, standing just by the fence with a branch going over the structure reaching outside.

The place was silent. The owners of the huts close by had all gone either to rear their animals, their businesses, or to more busy places to gossip, and jest, and drink, and smoke. Or any just one of them. Or none too.

Amaka wrapped back her wrapper around her body to free her hand, went to the tree and swiftly climbed atop, feeling the hard rough surface. A part was cut in slices and it's sap pooled there, almost drying. She careful avoided it not to stain her cloths___ the stains are permanent. Her hand touched a different one mistakenly, it was sticky. "Serpent!" She cursed. She climbed up to the top of the tree then went over the intended branch. She lay on her stomach on part of the branch outside the fence, then twisted so her back was facing the ground and let go of the hold she had with her legs so she dangled down with only her hands holding her up. And then let go in one moment landing with a crouch on sandaled feet. Safely outside the kraal.

She straightened to full height feeling the snag of weeds beneath her, an evidence she's out of the kraal. Father will be angry if he finds out, she thought with a wry smile, if he finds out.

Getting out of the kraal itself is not forbidden; she could go to the spirit forest or to farm, but not the Evil forest. The north and west side of Masakar has the spirit forest that went in an arc, the south has the Odo hills, while the east has the Evil forest. Amaka's parents had forbidden her and her brothers from stepping there. Though Amaka breaks the rules once or twice. She knew her mother forbids her because of the beasts___ which Amaka knows her way around. But her father does for a much stranger reason. His brothers had died in that forest. Taking by the flood.

Amaka had over heard Laria telling her mother that the flood had taking  father's brothers when they ventured deep into the Evil forest. Amaka was vicious and fearless but she can't imagine how anyone will trend that far into that spooky place. There was a spot that was particularly spooky. Amaka has seen it twice from a distance. They were stone statues rooted to the ground like old iroko trees, around an old flat roofed temple . Those statues were warriors and beasts alike.

The warriors wore  full armor and trousers like the ones Bako wears. They had long swords, eight men  eight swords. Each with the tip pointed at the sky, or to the void before them or stabbed to the ground; one held it casually to its side. While those beasts looked like lions only they had longer fangs that protruded downward out of their mouths. Both men and beasts lined the front of the temple as if guarding it.  Ending it were three gigantic empty thrones cast on a dais beside them, overlooking them, no one more majestic than the other. It was a ghastly place. A stone ghastly place. So is the temple of the three. The way to go farther into the forest.

When Yajji was still alive she had said the place was cursed. In her ailing days when Amaka visited, she still said it was hunted; that it was the witches and ghosts and jhinns in the place that eats her, chasing her as a sheep in her dreams, biting parts from her body in a cruel competition. She had died screaming about the place, it still made Amaka's skin pickle to think of it. Still, beyond the forest and the statues, and the mountains, if you can travel through the forest, the watchers stood in the land watching for dangers.

Amaka picked a bushy narrow trail that dry branches snagged her legs and body as she moved, which led to a wider more cleaner trail. She spotted cow excrete, a proof of recent herd travel. Amaka had joined the main path. It started from the village and stopped in the outskirts of the wilderness. She took the trail carefully, praying she doesn't meet anyone. The woods around her were clear to see because of the dried bushes of the dry season that just passed. So while she was happy she could anyone from a distance, that also mean they could see her too. Because of her wariness Amaka took a path narrow and rough. The first trail should have led her to the forest but it also risks her being caught.

This new trail was longer and harsher. A few branches nicked her legs. Following a left trail where the trail forked she came up in some type of plain called the wilderness. Deers were about in their flocks on the plain grazing. A spreading crawling grass covered the ground and dried tall bushes could be seen at the near distance; mountains in the far distance. Mountains with dark tall trees making the sunlight scantly penetrate. That's the evil forest.

Because of her first battle Amaka's body was spotted with wounds covered with itchy scabs. They was one just below her knee that was particularly itchy. She stooped down and scratched it with her fingers, making sure to avoid using her nail so as not to cut her skin. Then rose and scanned the place as she felt better . Amaka took the direction she usually finds wild potatoes with her brothers. She went deeper into the wilderness, lossing the deers to a rocky plain with a forest by the other far side as she hiked the mountain to the evil forest.

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The forest is particularly creepy today, Amaka thought as she walked through it. It was quiet, and unwelcoming, and a tension hung in the air like a foul smell. What kept her from running away outright was the fact that she couldn't be really sure something is wrong. The evil forest was always an unwelcoming quiet place. Tall trees with decayed leaves of reds or purples were common, the bushes were stoat thorny things, and even the palm trees were black.

The insects here can kill a person. But this was the edge so Amaka did not have to fear worry, as she did not have to worry about any beast. Not wishing to stay long here though, she started searching through the bushes for potato leaves outright. In prevouis years after a few rainfalls Amaka and her brothers and Yaki will search for a growing potato leaves here. If found, there are usually potatoes down there from the one that surviveed their digging last year and the years before.

It wasn't easy today though. Amaka kept on searching, soon growing tired but pushed on. Her brothers left her to herself, she wanted to be able to laugh at them and tell them her find, that she had better time than them. Tired and weary, as she took hours not finding anything besides the occasional thorns that stung her, the search led her farther into the forest. There she froze still in horror as she saw the copse of an elephant. It was bigger than three huts combined, a black giant with a large wound in its side.

"Oh three!" Amaka prayed trembling. She moved closer to the copse, even though she knew she shouldn't, and placed a hand on it. It was cold.

Something moved in the forest behind her. Amaka spun heart leaping to her throat to see a boy crash into the clearing she stood. He fell on his face tripped by a vine and rose up in fear and panic, a little bit of relieve and confusion washed over him as he saw her. He was a stranger, yet Amaka realized she recognized him. He was the boy Cirdi and his friends had surrounded that night. A skinny dirty boy with unkept hair.

"Koo the father of running!" He said desperately. "They have us, oh they have us..."

"What are you saying?" Amaka snapped in fear. "Are you mad or something?"

"I wish," the boy said. "You should be afraid too." he rose to his feet feverishly and pointed to the dead giant. "They are more of them about. They are all dead. Oh Mala take my eyes I had seen this!"

Amaka pulled out the dagger in the belt of her loincloth and slammed the boy against the tree holding it to his neck. "Stop playing games or I kill you," she snarled.

The boy just shivered, rolling his eyes till they were only whites. "The warress, the warress....." He muttered again and again.

"The warress?" Amaka wondered. "What warress?"

"Edama. Your mother's friend. She killed us. Oh she killed. She was not of us but one act of kindness and she took the kraal from withing. Oh she plots. Plots as good as the chief."

Amaka frowned. "You said they're more of the elephants dead."

"All!"

"Right. What killed them?"

"Magic."

"Magic is dead."

"Is it?!" The boy sneered.

Amaka let go of him, frustrated her intimidation didn't work, and sheathed back her dagger."Was that why you were running anyway?" She sneered. "Because the elephants all died?" That was frightening enough wasn't it?

The boy's eyes widened as if he just remembered. "She chases me." He said then turned around and started running further out of the forest.

Amaka watched him run for a moment then scowled at the direction. "Stupid," she said and decided to return to the kraal.

When she turned to the direction the boy had came from however, she froze with sheer fright for the second time that day as she saw a small elephant standing there. Silent and on moving, just staring down at her. The elephant was grey, tusksless, and at chest level.

Amaka's eyes met with the elephant's as she considered her options. She couldn't really out run it could she? Why not? She smiled nervously and took a step back. The elephant took one forward too scaring her to death but otherwise did nothing. The young warress stood still for a moment then turned and started walking away. The elephant followed her slowly with a gentle pace. Enough to keep up, not enough to catch up. And the girl cursed that mad boy each step she took.

When she was out of the forest and the wilderness and was back on the trail that led to the village. She stopped abruptly and turned to the elephant. "You just want to come with me don't you?" She asked. The elephant cried softly. "Well look harmless and stay close," Amaka told it, "My father is a good man, and my mother a kind woman. I should be able to plead our case."

Girl and animal held each other's gaze for a moment and had an understanding. The elephant needed help and Amaka will give it. Kin to kin.