When Deaf Gods Cry

Anyi found sleep hard to reach after he had exhausted stories of Onicha and the pig-men who now ruled it. He spared small Ozi and Akpi the details of Nnanyi being stabbed and the death that had nearly followed. He also made light of their captivity, painting it as a daring adventure that starred himself and Nnanyi as heroes. To him, this was not lying, only omitting and imagining. And he had good reason. Small Ozi and Akpi needed it to feel safe, and now that they were asleep, he realised he must have needed it too. Outside, silence had fallen and a quiet breeze swept the night. With what lay ahead, tomorrow felt a thousand rains away, yet time also seemed faster than ever. If only he could freeze it. Again and again, he tried to imagine, to dream. Each time he gripped his short blade, the warmth of blood wrapped his fingers. The pictures made his heart pound against his ribs. He was ready; he had to be. He tried reliving the test of manhood—the frightening face of the masquerade rushing at him, the fear rising, the courage he had been forced to summon. Breathe. If the battle came at the first crow of the cock, there was little time for rest.
At last, when his thoughts had worn his body into near-anxious shock, his eyes fluttered shut. He was grateful for the sleep, and his only wish was that it be dreamless. Sleep, Anyi—he let himself drift.

Anyi found himself in a space he did not recognise. It was a large room, a hall perhaps, lined with long tables that held all manner of strange apparatuses—many made of metal, most sculpted from glass. A woman was there, alone. She wore a white robe, and her hair was scooped into a single puff. He stared at her, wondering if she could see him too, though she seemed too absorbed in whatever she was examining beneath yet another strange apparatus.
‘What is this place?’
In the way dreams move with thoughts that sound aloud, he could not tell if he had spoken the words or merely thought them. He could not explain why, but he was convinced this was no dream. It felt more like a memory—yet he had never been anywhere remotely like this. He tried to focus on the table: machines with dials, screens, things he had no name for. But more than any of these objects, it was the woman who held his gaze. She looked up from the device and turned in his direction. He expected her to catch his eyes, but she did not. If she had seen him at all, she gave no sign. For a moment, he wondered if he was dead, hovering like an apparition. No—it could not be. This was not the home of the Ancestors. Impossible.
Anyi moved closer to the woman, his eyes desperate to read the alphabet symbols on something tagged to her large white robe. It read: O.N.Y.I. He knew enough to recognise them as pig-men symbols, but too little to read or understand. He shouted at the woman again and again, but as before, she ignored him. After perhaps the fifth call for her attention, he stopped. She glanced at her wrist, then turned toward the door. Footsteps approached. Anyi froze, a quick shudder rushing through his heart.
A man emerged, sliding open the double entrance doors to let himself in. He was dressed in the unmistakable pig-men military regalia, with several badges pinned across his chest to mark his rank. But this was no pig-man. The man was brown—brown and familiar in a way that made Anyi’s body stiffen. It was his father, and yet it was not. Perhaps if Nnanyi were younger, younger by a decade or two.
‘Is this really you?’ the woman asked, her eyes fixed on the visitor.
‘I don’t understand. Do you know who I am? Have we met before?’ The man’s voice was deep, and his Anglon-speak flowed with the ease of a native. Anyi wanted, more than anything, to know what they were talking about.
‘Anyi, o gi di ifa?’ the woman asked.
This time, Anyi could not have missed it. She was asking the man in uniform if he was Anyi—if he was him.
‘I don’t understand. What language are you speaking?’ the man replied.
The woman said nothing. She shuffled slowly toward him, placed a hand on his face, and stared into his deep blue eyes.
‘I know you are there somewhere—ima onye ibu. Nwa ogbu’agu.’
He didn’t understand the first half of the statement, but the second was clear to him. Whoever this woman was, she knew who he was—and who his father was too. But who was she?
Slowly, she reached into her pocket and drew out a rope necklace. Its pendant was a piece of bone carved in the shape of a canine.
‘This was yours.’
At these words, the uniformed man clutched his chest, pressing as though searching for a pendant—this pendant. ‘I found it where…’ She broke off. Tears flooded her eyes, and she began to tremble. But the man in uniform only looked more puzzled. ‘They have done an evil thing to your chi, to your soul. But I am here to bri—’
A soft tap pulled Anyi out of his dream.
‘Shhh.’ Even in his sleep, he recognised his father’s shushing. He awoke clutching his pendant. Small Ozi still slept beside him, Akpi too. Without a sound, he slipped out of the bamboo bed, tiptoeing to avoid stepping on his sleeping siblings. It wasn’t until they were outside and the moonlight touched his father’s face that the dream he had woken from came rushing back. The man in uniform had looked a lot like Nnanyi—too much, even. He studied the older man’s face, trying to strip it of years to make sense of what he had seen. His mouth moved, his tongue stirred, but he could not bring himself to share the dream. It was always like this when he had strange dreams. He asked himself whether it was Nnanyi he tried to shield with his silence, or himself.
‘Where is your mind? We are not going to hunt for bush meat. I need you to be focused.’ Nnanyi’s eyes burned into him.
‘I’m sorry, Nnanyi, I am focused. I just… I was dreaming when you woke me, that’s all.’
His father paused, as though weighing whether to ask about the dream, but moved on almost at once. ‘Everyone is dreaming something these days. It’s like the future can’t wait to come.’
‘Do we all see the future in our dreams?’ Anyi asked.
‘Our dreams are our chi’s way of speaking to us. The pictures they paint are not always true, but there is always a message. Each person’s chi is different, and we can never be certain what message is being passed. All we can do is act as we should.’
Anyi had stopped listening from the moment his father said dreams weren’t always true. There was more solace in believing his dreams were lies, mere projections. He recalled the earlier one on the battlefield with the pig-men, and now this. The man in the dream had never quite been him—or at least had never felt like him. Yet, in many ways, the dreams carried the weight of memories. What he needed was a good d’bia-agwu. If only Nneala were here now.
He followed his father out of their compound and down the walk path until they arrived at the Eke military base. It was a gathering of men, both grown and young. A small fire burned, casting light on arms rippling with muscle, heaving chests, and terrifying costumes. Each man wore a raffia skirt, covered his chest in metallic and cowry plates, and left his arms bare, with ropes drawn taut to make them bulge. Masks and face paints were everywhere.
‘Put this on.’ Anyi accepted the mask he was handed—a black wooden carving with blood-red symbols.
‘When you wear this, you must not think of yourself as a man anymore, but as a warrior. When this is done, you may take it off and become a man again. Do you understand?’
Anyi nodded and strapped the mask to his face. He waited with his father, sharpening their blades alongside the others, while the few guns and muskets they had were rolled out and tested.
‘Are we using those?’ Anyi asked, pointing at the guns.
‘We would have, except they’ve been unused for so long we don’t even know if they still work. We’ll take them just in case, but this mission should not require the noise they make.’
Anyi’s eyes lingered on the men cleaning the guns and muskets. Perhaps the men of Eke should have been learning to build such weapons instead of relying on the travellers who sold them. Perhaps they had never foreseen a war. But it was too late for that now. They waited until their numbers were complete. Anyi did not count, but he guessed fifty men—perhaps a hundred. More than enough to deal with a few priests and the handful of guards stationed at the cursed forest where the pig-men had made their home, parading the power of their Xrist over the ancient curses of the land. Their Xrist might protect them from spirits, but tonight, he would not protect them from men. He caught himself in the thought, uncertain whether it filled him with pride or with fear.
‘Now that everyone is here, let us begin.’ It was Nnanyi who spoke, leading the men.
‘Anyi ekwe-ro-nsu. We are resisting this force. So we must call on Ekwensu, for whom we must trade courage for victory—for nothing goes for nothing.’
‘Ise!’ the men chorused.
‘We will not beat the ekwe drum tonight, for the enemy sleeps in wait. We need the element of surprise to lead us. But when victory is won, we shall remember.’
‘We shall remember!’ the men echoed.
A brew of assorted leaves and barks cooled in a three-legged pot. With a coconut shell for a calabash, Nnanyi scooped a cupful and drank.
‘Let us drink to numb the spirit. For what we are about to do is neither good nor kind. Yet it must be done. And it is we who must do it.’
‘Ise.’ The men’s reply rumbled low.
The coconut shell passed from man to man, each taking a gulp and refilling it as needed. It made a full circle and came to Anyi, seated beside his father. He placed the rim against his lips and the smell rushed into his nostrils. It smelled bitter, and tasted even worse. He wished his tongue would dissolve. As the drink burned down his throat, his stomach threatened to revolt, so he forced deep breaths to calm himself. His head swayed, and his heart thumped as he blinked to steady himself. Then suddenly, every fibre of his body caught fire. Sweat poured from his skin, and his hand shook with rage.
‘Nzogbu nzogbu, enyi mba enyi. Nzogbu, enyi mba enyi. Zogbue nwoke, enyi mba enyi. Zogbue nwayi. Enyi mba enyi.’
The war chant rose, and Anyi found his sweaty palm gripping his long knife. The men stomped the earth in rhythm—stomp stomp, great elephant; stomp stomp, great elephant. Stomp the men, great elephant. Stomp the women, great elephant.
The chant dwindled as the men streamed into the streets and disappeared into the bush. Anyi left his father to join Tobe and the other young men. They would all share rank in the event of war, so while Eke had no standing army, they had to forge their brotherhood for when it would be needed. With the brew in their system, the newest men spoke little, and soon they were in the bushes.
It was a matter of espionage, so they crouched low and moved in silence. It was not uncommon to find the odd pig-man with a rifle on his shoulder patrolling these thickets, and Anyi found it strange that they had no fear of spirits or omens tied to such places. Perhaps it was to be expected that men who held nothing sacred would hold nothing forbidden. Why else would they choose this place—where rejected bodies were left above the ground so they would not reincarnate? This was a place for the abominable, unfit for life or the living. Yet it was here that the pig-men saw fit to build their church. They had been spared for some time, but not tonight.
Anyi’s body had now adjusted to the brew, and he no longer swayed. The rage in him still boiled, and he wondered if it was the drink or his own anger at what strange men had done to their lands, to his father, to him, and even to the children yet to come. The enemy’s quarter was a cluster of bungalows, screened by a thin line of trees. Anyi scanned, but not a single pig-man soldier was appeared. They would regret their retreat into slumber. They would sleep, only to wake no more. They would—
‘Bang!’
Anyi’s thoughts were cut short by the crack of a rifle. His eyes could not reach as far as he needed them to, but he had seen where the fire had sparked.
‘Fa mu anya! They are still awake!’ someone screamed.
Another shot thundered through the air, and this time it left Anyi with a warm splatter across his face. The same bullet tore into his friend Tobe, leaving a hole in his head. The sight fixed Anyi in wide-eyed horror, set his bones trembling, and lit his rage like fire. Yet none of this prepared him for what was to come. Saving Tobe was impossible. Flashes burst from the treetops and low shrubs alike, each one followed by a bang that carried death. At first the shots came one by one, but as the Eke warriors began their charge, the tempo quickened. Anyi had never heard anything like it, and yet it sounded familiar. His mind flickered to one of his dreams of war, but he forced himself back to the battle before him. There must have been at least three guns firing without pause. The muskets and rifles the Eke men had amassed from their trade with pig-men tried answered as best they could, in the hands of men who had never trained for war. Ammunition was scarce, and rust and wear had long since weakened the weapons.
In his anger, Anyi ran, not caring whether it was toward the fire or away from it. He didn’t make it far before a bullet grazed his face, slicing his cheek. He fell to the ground and stayed there. The world around him collapsed into chaos as wailing and screams of curses rang out into the night. Just when the worst seemed to have passed, the loud blare of an elephant horn rose from the direction of the town.
‘We have to retreat?’
‘Retreat! Retreat! It’s a trap!’
The horn’s rhythm could mean only one thing: the pig-men were laying siege on the town. Orders flew, and the men began to withdraw. What use was it to fight in the bush, only to return home to raped wives and murdered sons?
Someone must have told them we were coming. They must have known. The river must have been poisoned.

Anyi clung to the thought, and to the question it birthed: Who? Who would do such a thing… and why? For power? What was worth the life of your people, the history of your ancestors? Too many questions, and too few answers. In his mind, he saw only the lifeless bodies of small Ozi and Akpi, and the image was enough to send him sprinting toward home. He was sure his father had already braved fire to reach their obi and would be waiting there for him. He sped through the bush, thorns and nettles clawing at his skin, corpses tripping his feet. He did not stop—not once—to see if he recognised a body. It made it easier to deny that any of them could be his father. Nnanyi could not die such a death, he told himself. His father was too great to pass without ceremony. Yet how could he know that these men who had fallen were any less great? Could they not also have sons sprinting home, believing as he did that their fathers would be waiting? Had he not just watched his friend Tobe— He cut the thought short.
Nnanyi falling meant the weight of becoming man of the house pressed on Anyi’s shoulders, and the thought drove him to run even faster. Nnanyi, you are alive. I can feel you. He broke from the bush into a town he could only describe as carnage. Smoke rose from thatched roofs as dry straw burned into the night. Gunshots echoed, and bodies lay scattered in every direction—bleeding red, mangled in death. The pig-men had clearly meant to leave no stone unturned. Between the explosions and the raging fires, even the screams were muffled. Anyi’s eyes darted in every direction. It was the same everywhere. The last flicker of hope died in him, but the brew from earlier drove him on, flooding him with a numbing rage. He pressed forward, staying low, keeping to edges and corners.
The men of Eke fought back, striving to hold their ground, the women beside them. But bows, arrows, and blades were no match for the mechanical weaponry of the pig-men. Anyi refused to believe it, afraid of what that truth meant for him and his people. Yet deep down, even this carnage felt more like memory than reality. He wondered where Nneala was now, and if she had foreseen this. It no longer mattered. What mattered was here—war. He cut a corner to avoid the open path and scaled a short fence into a compound. As he landed, he froze—it was his sister’s husband’s compound.
‘Savages! Kill the savages!’ a pig-man shouted.
Anyi did not understand the words, but the tone alone stung him. I can do it, he told himself. The man’s back was to him. His long knife rested at his waist; all he needed was to move past the hesitation. He tried to reach for his blade, but his hand would not close on it. The pig-man turned to face him.
‘Are you scared, boy?’ The soldier raised his barrel until Anyi was staring into it. He shut his eyes, bracing for the worst. A thud. When he opened his eyes, the pig-man lay on the floor, an arrow lodged in his neck.
‘What are you doing, Anyi?’ Nnanyi did not stop. He drew another arrow and set it to his bow. ‘We are at war! You are now a man. You must fight!’
Anyi felt true shame, perhaps for the first time in his life. This was not like when Onyi knew something he did not, or when Tobe grew taller and could see the top of his head. This was different. This was a rejection of who he was—a questioning of whether he was truly his father’s son.
‘The women and children have been moved to the market for their protection.’ Anyi watched his father’s eyes linger on the still corpse of his son-in-law. They did not rest for more than two breaths.
‘We must make sure your sisters and mothers left with small Ozi. Now draw your blade and hold it firm. If you see a pig-man, drive it into his heart. Do you understand?’
Anyi obeyed but said nothing, shock ringing through his body. Trailing his father, he climbed short fences and ducked for cover when gunfire cracked. A few compounds later, they reached their obi. For the most part, everything appeared intact—no roofs smoked, no orange flames lit the night.
‘Check everywhere. Fast, fast—we must rejoin the fight immediately!’
Anyi hurried to the hut where he often slept with small Ozi and Akpi. Nnanyi moved to the master hut. If any violence had touched their home, it left no trace. The beds and mats lay unarranged—proof they had fled in a hurry. That was enough.
‘Ozi? Akpi?’ Anyi called, just in case. Next was his mother’s hut. He dashed out, almost certain she had already evacuated with the others. What else could she have done? Still, he had to be sure.
‘Hey!’ a voice barked, and a rifle flashed in his direction. Anyi dropped to the ground, and his long knife slipped from his grasp onto the clay. Before the man could reload, he stumbled into his father’s Ikenga shrine in blind panic. In terror he clutched the carved image, forgetting Nnanyi’s warning that the symbol itself was not the power. The curtain at the doorway rustled and a pig-man stepped in—rifle raised, a short knife fixed to its barrel. The soldier hesitated, and Anyi did not know why. With one hand he gripped the Ikenga, with the other he reached for his canine pendant. Desperate, he snapped its leather strap apart but would not let go. He shut his eyes, bracing for the end.
When he opened them again, a blade jutted from the pig-man’s chest, blood dripping from its tip.
‘Anyi! Is this what I have taught you?’
Anyi watched his father pull the blade free, and the pig-man’s body collapsed on the shrine floor. Suddenly Nnanyi jerked, coughing a mouthful of blood onto the palm-woven mat. A shot followed, striking Nnanyi in the heart and splattering the entire shrine with blood. Behind him, three pig-men stood with rifles in hand, reloading for another shot. Anyi still clutched the Ikenga and his pendant, rooted and unable to move.
‘He is only a boy, and unarmed,’ one said.
‘I say we finish him off too,’ another replied.
They paused and fixed their eyes on Anyi.
His gaze was wide and unseeing as he watched the chi lift from his father’s still body. He cradled the Ikenga as a drop of blood rolled down the figurine’s eye.
‘Take the statue from the boy. It must be worth something.’
‘Worth even more with the bloodstain on it. Don’t wipe it off.’
Anyi felt a tug at the Ikenga. He tightened his grip—and then, before it all went black, a crack split his skull.