Spells and Language

The teacher laid out a set of figures with inscriptions, stick writing characters and ndisibi symbols. First was the word chi, with a pictographic egg beside it as its symbol. Mmuo followed, its figure etched on a carved snake. The others were Amadioha, Ekwensu, Ala, and Ifunanya.
‘Do you know what these mean?’
Almost afraid of how obvious the answers seemed, the class stared at her, but no reply came.
‘Really, nobody? Not even you, Onyi?’
‘I…’ Onyi started.
‘I know you know it. Your father has taught you everything. Someone else.’
‘Are they spell words?’ a voice answered with a question.
The teacher looked in the direction of the student.
‘Yes, yes, they are spell words. And why is that?’
Tobe turned to Anyi as if expecting him to supply the answers. Uzo said nothing, did nothing. Anyi stared into his eyes only to notice a lightness in them, a greying. He made no mention of it.
‘So, no one then?’ She waited, even though she knew no hand would rise. ‘Okay then, Onyi, it’s you again.’
Onyi shuffled nervously on the large tree stump they sat on, then stood to address the others.
‘These are all spell words, special words from the Great Ape Men, travelling through Nneuwa, first conduit of language down to Odumeje, the Lion King of the first settlers.’
The students had begun to murmur, for these tales were popular and known to all, Odumeje being the most common—the tale of the first Eze who led the people from the forest to the first farm settlements on the plains. As Odumeje the Lion King had made it with his family considered to be the ideal archetype, it was still common practice for women like lionesses to tend the children, cultivate the farmlands for food, and manage market affairs. When war came, as it often did, the men were expected to fight for the territory, just like the lion.
‘Very good,’ the teacher applauded. ‘So start with chi. What is chi?’
The class now poured a hundred eyes on her, and it seemed to make her shy from the way she rubbed her hands. Anyi had noticed this to be a trend with Onyi. With just him and the boys, she was loud, militant even. But on a bigger stage, she proved somewhat hesitant, as if a single mistake would leave too big a chink in her armour.
‘My father says that like Anya, the eye is the window through which the outside world flows into the mmuo, the spirit. In essence, chi is the window through which ako, information, flows into the mmuo.’
‘But where is the information flowing from? The air?’ a boy asked.
‘Yes, I have always wondered too. What were the Great Ape Men talking about? Why should we believe them?’ another followed.
‘Keep quiet while a more intelligent student is speaking!’ the teacher shouted, and the students laughed. ‘You speak like the children prophesied about in the last age—questioning the Great Ape ways and embracing the ways of strangers, the spell of strangers. Do you think that it is you thinking all your thoughts? That the great artist is truly the owner of their work?’
There was a deep silence as the students contemplated the questions. The thoughts in Anyi’s mind seemed so innate, so real, and so from him. But he knew that he did not control all the voices in his head. Not the one that told him to watch the girls slip into the bath house, or the one that told him to steal meat from Mama Ozi’s pot when she made fried goat. There were also better thoughts, like the one that made him help stray dogs find their way home or nurse wounded animals that would not make for a meal.
‘Onyenkuzi,’ Anyi drew the teacher’s attention. ‘But these thoughts that our chi accepts… are they always good, or are they sometimes bad?’
‘Good question! Onyi, you can sit down,’ the teacher instructed and Onyi moved to rejoin the others.
‘Amadioha—ama-di-oha, master knowledge of the people—is good and evil, just as people are good and evil. There cannot be light without darkness, stars without the night sky, life without death, or growth without decay.’ She saw the twisting on their faces.
‘There can be no choice if there are no options. Do you understand?’
They nodded slowly with confused stares.
‘We may choose the right path, the good way of Amadioha, the path of ofor, truth. Or we may choose otherwise. It is what we accept from our chi that we become. As the saying goes, onye kwe, chi ya ekwe. What you will, your chi wills too.’
‘This is very confusing,’ Tobe scratched his head as he spoke. ‘I don’t understand. Is our chi not the bearer of our destiny? So how can we tell it what to do?’
‘Who told you that… that your chi is the bearer of your destiny? And do you think that we are only gifted with one possible destiny?’
Silence followed.
‘Your chi is the bearer of potential energy, an infinite expression of what you may be, a road of a thousand paths like the linings on your palm.’
The students looked at their hands and the lines, interestingly named after the stick writing, akala aka.
‘Written in your palms are a thousand stories, but it is you who chooses the one you live out. Some have been written down for the path of evil, and others, the path of good. The question is, which path will you go down?’
More silence passed as the students contemplated the weight of the words being laid before them.
‘I know this is all confusing for your young minds, but with this foundation, it is my hope that your minds will be fortified against all manner of spells from other tribes and even from faraway lands.’
At the mention of faraway lands, Anyi found himself in a trance, a quick flash of blue eyes staring at him and a snake biting at his heel. He forced himself back into the lesson.
‘These spell words come together to bind your mind in the Ogbi way. It is by knowing what we call God and what our ways are that you become Ogbi, not by simply slipping out of your mother’s belly and eating off the soil the ancestors prepared before you. Ana eme Ogbi eme, adahi abu Ogbi abu.’
She paused, a hint of sadness flashing through her deep yellow eyes.
‘We already hear rumours of a great spell taking over other tribes. They say some priests speak of a Yaway, a Xrist. Our returning Amaosus that have interacted with these strange priests report that their ways are much like the Mohamidian spellers who gripped the Isiani Northerners of the Ausa tribe.’
Anyi had seen the Ausa men, but never a woman. Most in Eke Kingdom shared the same experience. It was usual for the men to pass through cities and villages with their herds of cow and cattle. They often made fine bowmen, carrying the most poisonous flute darts, and of course, the freshest milk straight from the cow’s udders. They sold cows, leather goods, and curved blades too. They also prayed regularly, on a mat they wouldn’t even let the Ogbis touch. In their spelling tradition, the hands of the unbound were filthy, their touch a contamination. Anyi found their ways strange, but then, he imagined they would find the Ogbi way of Odinala strange too.
The teacher went on to explain how important the spell words were and what it meant to be Ogbi. She spoke at length about their language and how it was a source code to unlock the ways of the Great Ape Men. The students followed. Or at least, they tried to. In the end, they were given a word to decipher – e’chiche. Anyi could already see Onyi lining up her answer as she whispered to herself. Others were more focused the symbol text the teacher had drawn with her nzu chalk.
Anyi broke down the word by its spelling—echi + eche. Echi was a common term ascribed to rulers, Echi’ochichi was Ogbi for ascending a throne, while ndi echie referred to a group of rulers. The idea was that only one who had manifested positive energy through their chi was fit to be a ruler. Eche, derived from uche which meant mind, was a common word that meant to think. He put the two together and submitted that e’chiche was a way of meditating on one’s chi—a combination of uche and chi. When the class was over, he found that he was correct in his assessment, save for one detail only Onyi had pointed out. Eche, though largely known to mean thinking, was rooted in another word, ichi, which meant friction. Ichi was also the name of the tribal markings cut onto the face of an Eze to show that they were a person of manifested chi, one who had truly polished their chi with great friction, like a sword still hot from the grindstone.
‘Onyi, you do too much,’ Tobe teased her when the session was over.
‘No Tobe, you just know too little.’
Anyi laughed, as did Uzo.
‘I really didn’t understand anything today. All this talk about information in the air and the intuition of our chi. I just want to chant the old chants, pour libation, make blood sacrifices, and hope that the spirits shower me with blessings,’ Uzo spoke for the first time.
‘Uzo, that sounds like idolatry,’ Onyi replied.
‘Leave Uzo. He is doing the one that works for him.’ Anyi patted Uzo’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
Onyi fumed under her breath, muttering something about migrants from neighbouring villages failing to understand anything remotely esoteric. She wanted to speak but held back because she did not want to have to define the term esoteric, or seem condescending, or even unaccommodating.
The crowd had thinned after many goodbyes and the boys were talking about when they would see one another again, when Ekpe called. Now that the nta’akara was finally done with, Anyi could feel the dread of Ekpe on his heels like the snake from his trance. What was that about? A blue-eyed snake? Probably from the Ijele masquerade. It had to be. Amadioha could never find him worthy of a vision. Not when the choice of Onyi, who knew more about such things, was available. Not when her father, Eze Eke, sixty-sixth of the throne, was still breathing.
He held his words till they had waddled through the other children and were finally on the walk path back home.
‘Can you two carry on? I want to talk to Onyi about something,’ Anyi rushed the sentence, as if afraid a single pause might stump his tongue.
‘Ahh,’ Tobe exclaimed, ‘you want to talk with Onyi without us? Have your parents taken palm wine to her father to do inyo uno already?’
’No, but we have taken to your house for your sister, you just weren’t around. Not that it matters, you aren’t a nwa diopkala. Second sons can play while the men of the house handle things.’ Anyi ran forward as soon as the statement was out, and Tobe chased him playfully until they were out of breath.
‘You are very stupid! You will see, Ozi will be my first wife. Just watch.’ The boys heaved with their hands on their knees until Onyi and Uzo caught up.
‘Boys, it is true what they say,’ Onyi started.
‘And what do they say?’ Anyi asked.
‘That most of you have no sense before your twenty-first rain, and just about as many after.’
Uzo laughed but no one else followed.
‘Oya, let us leave Anyi. If he looks for Onyi’s trouble, I know she can beat him.’
The two boys moved ahead, leaving Anyi and Onyi standing alone.
‘So, what did you want to tell me?’
He heard a strange softness in her voice and wondered if perhaps she did take the jokes about marriage seriously.
‘I…’ he hesitated, ‘I’m seeing things. And sometimes, I have this dream.’
‘Everybody has dreams and sees things,’ she replied.
‘Onyi, I know that. And I am being serious. It started before we visited the d’agwu in the cave, but now it is so much worse. I keep seeing a blue-eyed snake, and then it bites me on the heel.’
Onyi stopped moving.
‘What happens when it bites you? Do you die?’
‘I wake up, or snap back. I also dream that I am being immersed in water sometimes. I feel a man’s hand on my head, and he pushes me into the water.’
Onyi furrowed her brow in concentration.
‘Do you see his face? The man?’
’No, no, I never see his face. Do you know what it means?’
‘My father has been very bothered by the pig-men. The snake you say that has blue eyes—perhaps it is a symbol of some sort? Maybe it means the venom will poison you.’
It was Anyi’s turn to furrow his brow.
‘Poison me with what?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe I will tell my father. He might understand better.’ She paused. ‘As for the water and drowning, hmmm, I don’t know oh!’
It wasn’t much, but he felt better for it. If she didn’t know what was wrong, then it was somehow okay that he did not either.
Soon, they arrived at Eze Eke’s obi. In the compound, with its short bamboo fence, the priest-king could be seen sitting on a throne—a wooden chair sculpted with a lion where the head rested. An obvious ode to Odumeje, the Lion King. There were other men with him, two Amaosu in red robes, an ogbu’agu with his leopard-head helmet, and one pig-man with a little boy. Anyi noticed that this pig-man did not wear the green uniforms like the three he had seen before. This one wore a robe as white as nzu chalk, with a cap too small for his head, barely covering a patch of his all-grey hair.
‘What are they doing here?’ Anyi heard Onyi ask.
Without waiting for a response, she moved through the gate and Anyi followed without thinking. When they were close enough, the voices began to take shape.
‘He is saying that our chi is really an mmuo, a spirit. And it is called the Holy Spirit.’ The Amaosu appeared to be translating for the pig-man. At such close range, Anyi could see the cross on the pig-man’s neck, bearing a sculpted figure. And even closer, he could see a crown of thorns on the crucified man. One of the Amaosus with the pig-man wore one too. Anyi searched his eyes and found a fading brown with grey edges. Eze Eke glanced in their direction once, his gaze weighing whether or not this was a conversation fit for children. He looked away, permitting their audience.
‘He says our chi is mmuo, a holy spirit. But everyone has a different chi… which is an organ, like the heart. So, is this holy spirit one mmuo or many mmuos in a group? I do not understand this cosmology.’
The Amaosu wearing the cross spoke back to the pig-man in their tongue, pausing for a few ermms and gestures to make his point. The pig-man responded in fast Anglon speak.
‘He says the Holy Spirit is one spirit from Amadioha, but it is split into infinite parts so every human can get one as a guide.’
‘As a guide?’ Eze Eke echoed. ‘But it is you who leads your chi, it is not your chi that leads you. Even Onyi who just completed nta’akara knows that. I do not understand this way of spelling. You want our people to give their will to something else?’
‘In the way of Xrist, we will get knowledge to make guns, build engines, and maybe even land on the moon one day. I have already learned many things from them, much more than I ever learnt serving with any d’bia priest here. Eze Eke, you can be the leader who takes us into the future. A new age.’
Eze Eke was quiet at first, but his face grew lined with concentration as he began.
‘Our forefathers cast metal long before the pig-men and their Xrist. I also have it on good authority that our brothers in Ethopina use Xrist’s way of spelling. Or has your master not told you that the Xrist he speaks of is not Anglon, doesn’t speak Anglon, and never even visited Anglon?’
The Amaosu turned to the pig-man, who Anyi was now sure was a priest.
‘The pig-man comes from a place of warring gods. They speak of abominations, like father-gods devouring their sons for fear of replacement. They leave their old to die in the cold and say that only glory in death can bring a man honour. I know a little bit about their pre-Xrist ways—they are by nature, conquerors. They do not come with this spell to bind us in harmony. They are the kind of people to pollute an entire river instead of taking only the fish they need. You must be careful, Amaosu. Very careful. A dagger, even if forged in gold and wrapped in silk, will kill you all the same,’ the priest-king warned.
‘Let us simply set up a church… a spelling school. We will host it inside ajo ofia, the abominable land, completely removed from the town,’ the Amaosu paused. ‘It will not hurt to learn new things, new ways.’
Anyi’s eyes followed Eze Eke’s gaze and shifted to the boy, who was no taller than the pig-man’s waist. Like the other Amaosu and Ogbu’agu, he had said nothing so far. The boy looked up at Eze Eke and in his eyes, the ice of blue shone, as if a lamp hung ablaze in his head.
‘Let me think about it,’ Eze Eke sighed, his worry not hidden in his eyes.