Member-only story
Original African Folk Stories
Seasons of Wrath
Once Upon A Time
Many years ago, when men and beast and forest were one, and our kind could hear the voices of the trees, there lived a man and his wife and their infant son.
At the time, the Iroko tree was the most revered of all trees because the spirits of our mothers lived in it to be close to the sons of men who borrowed its leafy canopies for shelter and burrowed its gnarly bark for art. From the Iroko’s slender limbs came wood that held the many tools that eased men’s burdens. Its shade was home to the beasts, and a place of refuge from the sun’s fury at high noon, and men spoke with the spirits of their fathers by casting divining pebbles at its trellised roots.
Every season, at the behest of the village priest, families brought offerings and libations from the best of their harvest and the finest of their crafts and laid it at the Iroko’s feet begging the graces of the spirits for whatever problems ailed them or praying for whatever future they hoped for.
And this continued until one day when the man and his wife searched for their infant son in vain. The child had disappeared from his woven crib of palm leaves and rafia and all that was left in his place were swaddling clothes that cradled his absent bundling.
