The Evening Of The Morning

004

Magaga took Agbo's hand and covered it with both of his hands. "Close your eyes." Magaga said.

Agbo had experienced it before. Seeing a live vision of what Magaga had seen. He closed his eyes and on cue, his eyes opened. But it opened to what Magaga had seen. He stood in the forest. It was flooded. The water reached his knee. He took long strides in the water, looking around. Different animals echoed. A green snake curled on a withered branch. Few monkeys swung on trees, and some looked at him, as he paced by.

Something was terribly wrong, he knew. It was the climax of the harmattan session when trees die from drought and wither, yet there was a great flood. Magaga's farm, house and bunker sank somewhere in this forest. No one ever came close, (Okay, maybe only a few wanderers and some of his workers) because the land was bought and tagged a private property. Even without it being private, no one in their right senses would go as deep as where his bunker was. Only a few, like Agbo, had gone there and came out alive. So, Magaga knew this forest like the back of his hand. During Magaga's early years in this forest, he carved direction signs onto the body of the trees, although now those signs were long gone, covered by time. But when they were there he studied them, naming different parts of the forest. He was hunting for Christmas dinner towards Iroko Arena when he saw the flood. Magaga wasn't a Christian, but his late wife, who was also his mother; once a Reverend sister, was Christian. In his previous lives, he was a Christian or Muslim, In some, he was a Jain, and Buddhist. But more regularly he was a pagan who cared about women and getting drunk.

This area, filled with monkeys, Magaga named Iroko Arena because of the Iroko tree with a great trunk rooted in the ground. Magaga had, many a time, climbed the tree to the top and from there he could see the port Harcourt/ Owerri road that ran in between the forest, as though one used a big comb to separate the forest. He has been craving for monkey and thought the Christmas a perfect time to eat the wild meat.

He drew closer and there was loud turbulence of water, and if he wasn't mistaken, it sounded as though a waterfall was nearby. Magaga knew of no mountains around, talk more of a waterfall. He hastened his steps in the flood. For the first time in centuries, his heart pulsed faster due to fear. The sound got louder and louder as he drew closer. He started feeling drizzle on his skin then...then he saw it: Heavy water was pouring from the iroko tree. It was not possible not to see it. It was clear from his distance. Magaga didn't go close. He stared from afar and let the dread sink. The unmistakable sound of a branch breaking pierced Magaga's ear, but it was very faint, swallowed by the loud turbulence. And before Magaga would crane toward that direction, the person, clad in a red robe, who seemed to be supernaturally fast zapped. Speed was one of Magaga's attributes, so he gave a chase. But he was no match for the person in red robe who turned back and released a kind of energy that blasted Magaga to a tree. The red-clad person was so fast that it seemed he/she/it glided on the flood.

Magaga removed his left thumb which he pressed to Agbo's forehead and Agbo's consciousness returned.

"What was that?" Agbo asked, as appalled as Magaga thought he would be.

"I don't know. I can't even guess."

"Have you shown others?" Agbo asked.

"You have ended the world." the intoxicated man said, sleepily and fully unconscious.

Agbo didn't laugh. He somehow tried to link what the man was saying to what he had just seen. It didn't make sense, so he said,

"Was that lightning the red person shot at you?"

"It felt so."

"Can you do such?"

"I can hold, and cause rain, or make thunder strike when I work the elements controlling these things, but I can't be a primary source of it." A big dread had engulfed Magaga when he saw the water pouring from the tree. It emitted a powerful aura, one that whispered to him, and told him that he couldn't hold the rain from a tree.

Magaga showed Goba and Goba didn't talk for ten minutes. Boga singlehandedly mounted the road. And after Goba saw it, and tried to comprehend it; touching his Barret to often, he called Boga to see and replaced him on the road. Boga, too, was quiet for a while, then broke the silence and said, "For one, It makes me think of the burning bush in the bible. And Thunder-man is Moses taking the commandments for the new generation." He walked up and down.

Magaga laughed, but it wasn't funny to Agbo who sat on the floor with his legs crossed. He couldn't stop thinking about the reference Boga made. Water pouring from a tree. Fire burning on a tree. It looked distinctively similar.

"It is already six." Magaga said, getting up, "You guys need to freshen up and mount the road. It is an important day for you."

"Where are you going?"

"I am going back to the tree." Although the presence of what Magaga had seen felt so strong, and to it, he was a peanut, he had to check again. In all the generation that had come and gone. He had never seen anything as such but always knew something would surprise him. He needed to get stronger and the only way to get that was to give offering. "I will be back before the sun is down." Magaga left the small thatched hut and disappeared into the thickness of the bushes. Leaving Agbo and Boga alone in the stale hut; Goba was still watching the roads. They uttered nothing. Each of them had their thoughts clouded with different possibilities. Boga left and Inadvertently, Agbo drifted to sleep.

I myself was coming from the stream nearby, my hair was still wet and my body was shining in response to the Vaseline I smeared on it. The Harmattan breeze, billowing all the way from the north, kept the skin dry and cracked the lips. Even the clothes I was wearing, I washed not too long ago at the stream. it had dried, but not fully. And the Vaseline was to keep my brown skin radiated and my lips from cracking.

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