The Grey Wedding Part 3

Anyi watched his father from the corner of his eye as the man forced the tension out of his face into a mask of laughter. He himself did not breathe with ease, not with the twitching in his hands, and the churning in his belly. The Umunnas had been instructed to fill the empty barrels with water, and they moved without question. They drew bucket after bucket from the well, sometimes dropping it with drunken grips. When the last barrel was full, they made their way back to their canopy, the exercise stealing the sway that had previously come over their eyes.
‘Ahh, we need to top up,’ one announced.
‘Don’t worry, strong wine is coming!’ one of the boys assured.
The wine merchants had come to apologise to Nnanyi, sprawling themselves on the floor for a lashing if he so saw fit. Against the rage in him, he had asked them to rise to their feet and simply ensure their pig-men delivered as promised. He also made it clear to everyone present that they were the ones who had brought the pig-men to the wedding, not him. They agreed in haste, nodding quickly and bowing their gratitude to him.
‘I will deal with my boys and the store guard. I promise you. I will deal with them!’ The wine merchant sounded as if he meant it, but Nnanyi did not care.
‘Just deliver. It is no concern of mine what happens to your people. Just make sure your pig-men do not fail you with their magic.’
The pig-men in question had come from their forest dwelling and taken over a room in a hut. There, they sat in their priestly robes, converted local porters aiding them in carrying their wooden boxes and sacks of magical apparatus. Their holy books they carried themselves, along with their tall walking staffs shaped with crosses at the top. Anyi made it his business to stand by their window, but at the speed they conversed in the pig tongue, they were barely audible to him. He could not make sense of a single word, but still, he listened.
‘This is a big opportunity for us. We cannot get this wrong,’ the man who appeared to be in charge spoke. Anyi guessed so because he seemed older than the others, and his robe and hat were much more elaborate—a purple scarf embroidered with an eye-catching gold hung from his neck.
‘We have done this many times. We are not going to fail now,’ a younger priest offered.
The black-skinned porter said nothing, and Anyi wondered if he understood the language at all.
‘Here, everyone who is anybody is present,’ the older man continued. ‘I don’t know what they are called, but let’s just say the nobles, lords and royals. General Sax will give us whatever we desire if we can capture this place. Do you understand?’
The two younger priests nodded and turned to the porters.
‘You can go check if they are ready.’ The priest spoke in Eke tongue, heavy with the accent of his birth but fluent enough for Anyi to catch every word. He moved from the side of the window immediately, as if scared he would be caught. The door swung open and out came the converted porters.
The converts wore robes similar to the pig-men they served, but in a different colour. Theirs necks were bare where the pig-men all had white collars, and they seemed to be missing the regal-looking scarf as well. The absence of their walking staffs was perhaps the biggest tell of their place in rank.
‘Are the barrels full?’ the porter asked as soon as their eyes met.
‘Yes, every one of them. To the brim,’ Anyi replied.
‘May you take me to them for inspection?’
Anyi twisted his face but made no argument. Time was something they had very little of, now that the sun had dipped and appetites for liquor had found new vigour.
‘Follow me.’
Anyi led the two porters to the backyard, where barrels and barrels of water waited. They inspected each one, dipping in a finger and tasting as if to make sure they weren’t being tricked. It all made very little sense to Anyi, but then, not much the pig-men did made any sense to him. In fact, the very idea that they could somehow chant water into wine still rattled his mind.
‘How do they do it?’ The words slipped out before he could hold them back.
The porter turned to Anyi.
‘Through the power of our lord and personal saviour, the living Xrist, all is possible. For it is written, even with the faith of a mustard seed, those who believe will be able to move mountains.’
Anyi’s confusion did not subside; rather, the reverse was the case. He shook his head with his eyes closed. .
‘But I do not understand. Nothing moves for a man that he has not moved himself. Even his chi will only agree where he has first agreed.’
‘The ways of the Xrist chi are greater than the ways of our chi. Perhaps after you have witnessed with your eyes and tasted with your tongue today, you just might begin to understand.’
At the mention of the word eyes, Anyi searched the porter’s to find a pair of empty greys staring at him. He resolved to ask Onyi about this greying when the madness was over—when the drink was flowing again and his family was less tense.
‘Anyi Anyi!’
Her appearance startled him. Could Onyi now feel him thinking about her?
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘Can I leave you to do anything on your own? You will just ruin it.’
Anyi was too used to the way Onyi spoke to him to take offence—it was what the elders called azu okwu, tongue-in-cheek irony.
‘Just say you were bored and wanted to see me,’ Anyi shot back, though secretly pleased to see her.
‘Me? Bored? Never!’ She paused. ‘So these are the ndi efulefu?’
The distaste on both porters’ faces was instant. To be called one of the lost was one thing; to be called so openly by a girl unlikely to be old enough to have bled was something else.
‘You think you have wisdom, but the good lord has warned against leaning on our own understanding. You see, it is not us who are lost, but you, and all of Eke Kingdom, stumbling in the dark.’
If Onyi took any offence, she hid it well. Anyi, on the other hand, was not so tactful.
‘What do you mean? You insult the ancestors. Take it back! We are not lost!’
‘Then call the ancestors to turn your water to wine. Or is it only drinking libation they are good for?’ one of the porters asked.
‘Agbara is nothing new,’ Onyi pointed out. ‘Our ancestors turned palm juice to wine, smelted metal and sculpted bronze, made cassava sap into kai-kai and discovered cassava cereal. Just because your pig-men keep their findings secret doesn’t mean their power is magic. My father should never have granted them land, even in Ajo Ofia. There is no place for them or their ways here.’
The porters said no more, and Anyi’s rising temper seemed to have calmed too, because his breathing slowed and his fist unclenched.
‘I’m sure your masters are waiting for you.’ Onyi watched them with eyes that did not blink—a true daughter of her father.
‘In the eyes of the lord, there are no masters,’ one replied.
‘Yet these pig-men have enslaved enough of us to form a little tribe in their own land,’ Onyi fired her parting shot.
With that, the men excused themselves, but Anyi did not follow. Instead, he stayed back with Onyi and held his tongue until he was sure the converts were out of earshot.
‘Onyi, your father doesn’t like them too?’ Anyi asked.
‘Pig-men are not to be trusted. He has received word from many towns and villages—they come in peace with plans of destruction.’
‘What have you heard?’ Anyi’s eyes were now wide with attention.
‘They say shrines are being set on fire in certain places, d’bias chased into exile, families breaking apart, communities collapsing.’
‘And why are people not resisting? Do you know?’
Onyi paused to think.
‘They say they have a special new type of gun, one that spits faster than you can count. Our local gunsmiths stand no chance.’
Anyi’s mind went back to his dream from the test of manhood. The picture was as clear in his mind’s eye as Onyi’s face before him—the rattle of rapid rounds filled his ears, the roar of something he did not recognise, and the jolt as his body shook with his finger on the trigger.
‘Anyi, where have you gone?’ Onyi waved a hand over his face.
‘Oh, sorry!’ He snapped out of it. ‘Nothing… nowhere!’
She watched him suspiciously. ‘That didn’t look like nothing or nowhere.’
‘The elder men said we must never speak of what we saw in the Ekpe dream. Have you tried the spirit herb before?’
Onyi shook her head. ‘No.’ She turned to find the two porters heading towards them.
‘They said we should bring three barrels to the priests.’ Each placed a hand on a barrel. ‘They want to pray over it.’
‘Where are the drinks?’ a stranger’s voice shouted from behind.
‘We are almost ready,’ Anyi replied in his most reassuring tone.
‘I don’t know what these pig-men are up to, but I hope they can make something of all this. My father may be able to wrestle a leopard to the ground, but pride will kill him with a finger.’
Anyi watched the porters spin the barrels towards the hut where thr pig-men priests were being harboured. Now, all he had to do was wait. The show was surely about to begin.

When the time was right, Anyi found himself in the bamboo canopy with the rest of his family. Onyi was in her father’s canopy with the other royals, only a few paces away. In anticipation, he moved to the front, his hands gripping the bamboo pillar and his eyes fixed on the pig-men. Onyi did the same in her own canopy. They caught each other’s eyes briefly and quickly turned back to the attraction.
‘We greet you!’ said the pig-man in the tallest arching cap, and the porter-turned-altar-boy translated.
‘We come to celebrate with you today, and to give a gift. We come in peace, and hope that you accept our offering.’
Anyi turned to find his father’s face stonier than it usually was, lips folded in a stern twist. One of the wives rubbed his back as if to soothe him, but he showed no sign of calm.
‘Our Lord Xrist started a great tradition of turning water to wine at a wedding in Kana. It was the first of his miracles, and since then, we have been spreading the word of his power and drink.’
The crowd laughed at the last part when the translator was done, and the pig-men gave a soft smile. Anyi squinted. He turned to look at Onyi and found her focused, as if counting with her eyes. His gaze returned to the stage—four barrels of water, a drinking horn, candlelight, incense smoking.
‘Let us have a volunteer.’
Silence followed.
‘Don’t worry, we just need someone to taste and confirm that this is a barrel of water.’
More silence.
The translator pressed with words of appeal, assuring the crowd that he had done this many times and that it was safe. Murmurs followed, and people nudged one another for encouragement. A young man stood up. He could not have seen twenty rains, but his step was steady. The others watched him, their faces bent into different shapes of worry, curiosity, fear, and suspense. He approached the pig-men and waited, his open chest holding still under the wrapper draped over his shoulder.
The tall-arched-hat pig-man reached into the barrel with a wooden cup and handed it to the volunteer. Anyi watched, his own throat swallowing as the young man gulped it down. He heaved and waited.
‘What does it taste like?’ the altar boy asked.
‘Water,’ the young man replied, licking his lips as if to be sure it was tasteless.
The pig-man went on to scoop from the other barrels, his colleagues moving around with altar boys to translate the chants they babbled. Anyi’s ears pricked at the pig speak and the translation.
‘That’s not Anglon pig-speak,’ he heard his father say behind him. ‘Probably their old tongue, the language of their ancestors.’
Anyi did not know pig-speak well enough to tell the range of it apart, but he trusted his father to be right. His eyes left the enchanters and turned back to the volunteer, who was tasting from yet another barrel. Anyi wasn’t sure which anymore. He gulped down the final contents of the cup and nodded. As if on cue, the priests rounded up their chants and circled back to their leader, who proceeded to light some incense and wave it over the drums like a magic stick. As he did this, he murmured words that were barely words at all. When he was done, they all chorused hamen.
The altar boys moved to empty some of the contents of the barrels, telling the crowd that libation was necessary because their ancestors on the other side had met the Xrist and would want them to accept his ways while they still lived. The people were mostly numb to these words, the distrust on their faces fractured with curiosity. Anyi wondered, too, if perhaps the pig-men had not found secrets to the universe that the Ogbis had yet to learn.
When they had poured enough on the ground, they began to mix the contents of the barrels into one another, their priest chanting with his eyes closed, staff stretched out towards the barrels. They turned barrel into barrel in a fast dance that wasn’t without spillage, and then suddenly, they stopped.
Hamen.
In the stillness of the moment, all that could be heard was a bird calling from a guava tree, the ruffle of its wings batting against the leaves before it finally took flight. Anyi counted his breaths.
‘It is ready!’ the pig-man announced, and the altar boys did not bother to translate. One of them found the wooden cup and poured some contents from a barrel into it. They held it out to the volunteer, but he hesitated. They turned to the arched-hat leader, and he nodded to them. The young altar boy holding the cup drank, and his brother followed. At the taste, their cheeks winced with the slap of strong liquor.
‘Ahh, odi oku! It’s hot!’
The crowd let out a nervous laugh. It was quite something, watching boys no older than thirteen rains taste alcohol, seeing their untrained tongues recoil from the sting. The volunteer took the cup and shot it back.
‘Ahhhh, odikwa oku oh!’ He grabbed his chest as the gin stung. He had never tasted anything like it, and the surprise was clear for Anyi and all to see.
‘Nka sikwa ike! This one is very strong!’
The elders laughed. ‘Your young tongue has not been trained to taste. Pass it around so that we may taste it and know for ourselves what is true.’
More laughter followed. Without delay, the altar boys and every servant present swooped in with more wooden cups to serve the guests. First, they attended to the canopy with the elders, then the royals, and then they served everyone within reach.
‘I know how he did it!’
Onyi’s voice found Anyi with furrowed brows and hands still hugging the bamboo pillar.
‘One of the barrels was loaded with strong drink. They poured so much libation to create space, and then they turned the barrels into one another to mix it all together.’
Anyi turned to her, impressed that she had noticed the possibility and ashamed that he had missed it himself.
‘How did you see it?’
‘It’s easy to see if you know what you are looking for. The masquerade society uses illusions all the time for their performances. I’ve watched them practise in the palace since I was a baby. This is a classic case of misdirection, not magic.’
Tobe approached the pair. ‘Did you see that too?’ His face was spread wide with excitement. ‘See what?’ Onyi asked, not bothering to hide her disgust this time.
‘The magic?’
Anyi and Onyi watched him with slack jaws. His once-brown eyes were now grey as bush ash.
Uzo ran up next, his excited eyes as grey as ever. Anyi looked into Onyi’s eyes, and she looked back into his, both terrified of what they might find.