“That was before I was born,” he said.
The new chief—a girl of twelve years who had been hiding in a baobab tree during the flood—went to the hut and knelt.
“The river does not have a before,” Hera replied. She stood, and the water dripped from her ankles like melted garnets. “Tell your father I will come at dawn. But he must bring me three things: a hair from a dead child, the tooth of a virgin, and the shadow of a liar.” HERA OYOMBA BY OTIENO JAMBOKA
The chief laughed, a sound like stones grinding. “I think the river is a woman. And women forget.”
And from inside, Hera Oyomba answered: The river is already listening. What took you so long? “That was before I was born,” he said
By Otieno Jamboka
The river rose behind her, not in flood, but in a slow, vertical column of dark water that took the shape of a woman with empty eye sockets. The village woke to the sound of drums no one was playing. Chickens dropped dead in their coops. The four tongueless men dropped the chief’s litter and ran, their screams forming words they had not spoken since childhood. She stood, and the water dripped from her
Odembo knelt. The moonlight caught the scar on his cheek—a mark from a childhood fever that the healers had cut out with obsidian. “My father is dying. The medicine man says only the tears of a woman who has outlived two men can cure the cough that rattles his bones.”