PodCastle 878: The Carving of War
* Author : Somto Ihezue * Narrator : Mofiyinfoluwa Okupe * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Tor – Africa Risen anthology Content warnings for violent murder and the death of an animal Rated R The Carving Of War By Somto Ihezue Odili was a child when Nkeala, her grandmother, died. All she remembered of her were her braids, a tangle of clouds that reached for the floor. She remembered her eyes, how they swallowed her face. To look into them was to be lost in a vastness. It was to find eyes — owl eyes, bold eyes, brown eyes — staring back at you. Most of all, she remembered her kindness, an unending sea. Nkeala had been dìbìā — keeper, to Idemili; the roaring python, they who drowned oceans, mother of mothers. At the birth of time, Idemili, like beads dancing on a fragile waist, had wound herself around the clans of Obosi. Out of her mouth, the Eke River poured, its brooks and streamlets giving sustenance to the corn in the farmlands, the antelopes of the wild and the Irokos that split the sky. Odili’s family was bound in perpetuity to Idemili. With her grandmother’s passing, the fanged staff fell to her mother, Adaugo. In the past, a few keepers had met their fate with defiance. Odili’s great-great grandfather, Agbadike, had refused the staff when it passed to him. Setting the shrine of Idemili ablaze, he invoked the ritual of blood in a bid to sever the bond that tethered his life to the deity. Three days after, a breadfruit fell from a tree and split his skull in half. Like moth to fire, Adaugo embraced the mantle of keeper. Before her twelfth birthday, she could already perform the passage rites of ancestors. Beneath the glow of a horned moon, she’d slay a ram, its body thrashing beneath her knee. Immersed in its blood, she’d wade into the Eke, bridging the fold between the living and the dead. Ancestors past would come walking through her, blessing and cursing the ones they left behind. When she was heavy with Odili, Adaugo ventured into Idemili’s mouth and emerged unscathed, spirit water coursing through her veins. One of the dwindling few, Adaugo knew the words to the eternal utterances and the anchors that held them. The clans of Obosi had revered Nkeala; Adaugo, they feared. She was power unbridled, her dedication to Idemili undying. Like her mother and keepers before her, Adaugo stayed unwed. “We are the rage of Idemili, unburdened by the constraints of love and companionship,” she’d remind Odili, “We are fire and water, we are rain and lightning, our bodies are nothing but vessels.” Still, keepers were mandated to bear offspring and preserve their line. Without a present father, a mother who in all entirety was of another realm, Odili roamed the village unchecked, her python familiar slithering beside her. More than a companion, it had become a parent, regurgitating rabbits and bush rats for her to roast and eat. When the first missionaries came to their village, Odili was drawn in by their flaky bread and the trinkets that hung from their neck, how they shimmered in the light. At the rooster’s crow, she’d run into the village, into the shack that doubled as a chapel, to watch the priests bless communion, to watch Edward. Edward was a mass server and Edward was beautiful. With her eyes, she’d follow him and when he caught her stare,