The Child Who Ignored the Elders

Èmeka was the pride of his father's compound. At fourteen he could throw a spear further than men twice his age. At fifteen his trap-lines caught antelope where grown hunters caught only flies. The elders of Umu-Ọzọ called him Òkè-eze — "the great one is coming" — and his head grew large under the praise.

North of the village, beyond the cocoa farms, lay a stretch of forest the people called Ájọ́ Ọ́hịa — the Evil Bush. It was thick and dark and full of antelope so fat they walked slowly. No one hunted there. The elders said only this: "That forest belongs to those who walked before us. We do not enter it. When you want to know why, ask the trees, but do not go in to ask them."

Èmeka grew tired of the answer. "Old men," he said to his friends one evening, "are always afraid of the past. The Evil Bush is only a forest. Its antelopes are fat because no one has shot at them. I will go in tomorrow before sunrise. By the time the village wakes, I shall be back with meat for a whole feast."

His friend Chike grabbed his arm. "Èmeka, my brother, do not. My grandfather lost his own brother in that bush. He never spoke of it. Do not."

Èmeka shrugged him off. "Your grandfather, my grandfather — that was their season. This is mine."

Before the cock crowed he was at the edge of the trees with his bow and his cutlass. He paused for a heartbeat, then stepped in.

The forest swallowed sound. His own footsteps disappeared. The light became green and old. Vines hung like sleeping snakes. The trees were taller than any he had ever seen, with bark scarred by marks he could not read. He laughed nervously and pushed on.

Deep in the bush he came to a clearing, and in the centre of the clearing he saw a great antelope, brown and shining, with horns like spears. The antelope did not run. It turned its head and looked at him.

Èmeka raised his bow. His arm was steady. He let the arrow fly. It struck the antelope cleanly in the heart.

The antelope did not fall. It looked at him with the same calm eyes, and then it spoke. Not in any language Èmeka had heard — but he understood every word inside his skull.

"Young man," said the antelope, "who told you that you could come here?"

Èmeka could not move.

"For seven generations," said the antelope, "your village has agreed to leave this place alone. The agreement is not with the forest. It is with us. We who were once your people. We who, in our season, also ignored an elder."

The ground around Èmeka began to shift. Out of the leaves, all around the clearing, antelope rose to their feet — twenty, fifty, a hundred. Each one had eyes that were too steady. Each one looked at him.

"You do not need to die here," said the great antelope softly. "That is not the agreement. But you will not leave the way you came."

Èmeka woke at the edge of his father's compound with the sun high in the sky. His bow was gone. His cutlass was gone. His sandals were gone. There was no wound on his body, but his hair, his thick young hair, had gone completely white.

He never spoke of what he saw. He never hunted again. When the boys of the village came to him for stories he would say only one thing.

"When the old men say do not, my brothers, do not. They are not protecting the forest from you. They are protecting you from the forest."

He lived a long, quiet life, and when at last he died, the children of Umu-Ọzọ buried him at the foot of a small tree at the very edge of the Evil Bush, where the village ends and the agreement begins.