The Bodisha Chronicles

Bodisha has a god. Sango lives at the northeastern edge of the village, and in the evenings, he sits outside his compound and drinks palm wine like anybody. Eleven-year-old Olu has walked past him a thousand times without thinking about it.

Then fifteen armed riders come down the north road. Olu counts them from the hill. Akin runs for the farmers. Ajayi goes to the palace, where his father sits at the King's left hand. And Sango picks up his axe.

In four minutes, the sky comes apart. A tree falls two paces from three children. And when it is over, and the riders are bound, the village is safe, Olu is left with something nobody wants to say out loud.

The riders knew exactly where to come. Somebody told them.

It was an ordinary Tuesday in Bodisha. Then an animal walked confidently into the palace courtyard through a gate that was locked and watched. Every lamp in a herb stall went out at once, in still air. The main drainage channel ran backward for forty paces, uphill, and then stopped. And a trader arrives at the north gate on the wrong day, by the wrong road, unable to explain how he got there.

In the palace, a letter comes back from the north with its seal unbroken. The man who must explain that to the King is Ajayi's father — who, since last year, no longer sits closest to him.

It is said that the roads belong to Eshu, who opens what is closed and closes what is open, is never cruel and never entirely safe. He is also owed a greeting that Bodisha has stopped giving properly. The boys will have to go to the crossroads at midnight and say it themselves.

Olu, Akin and Ajayi have stood at that boundary before. They have never had to ask for anything.

The river is falling. A hand's width a week, in a season with ordinary rain. Olu notices because Olu notices things: the pale band of exposed earth above the waterline, lighter where the water has recently been.

Sango has been watching it from his compound for three evenings and has not opened his palm wine.

Iyanifa tells them about Moremi, who walked into an enemy camp on purpose and came back knowing how to save her city, and what she paid for it. The river remembers vows made. An accounting is needed.

Eight men are moving through the southern forest. The Alaafin's empire is coming apart in the north. And at the bottom of a river that should not be this low, something has decided that a promise is due.

Somebody has to go and stand in the water.