KODE

My brother returned home last week after he went missing three years ago.

Kode was his name, and the men of the wind took him just before his sixteenth birthday.

We lived in Tukora, a little but spirited village that sat on the edge of West Africa, and was often the first to receive the warm smile of the sun each morning.

As all splendid and beautiful things, Tukora had its enemy—the people of Kwandoo.
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The men of Kwandoo were more ruthless than a ruffled lioness in search of the hunter holding its cub. They bathed with blood and drank wine from the fragile skulls of infants. They were unlike us who craved peace and enjoyed the serenity of nature.

We called them the men of the wind because whenever they took our people, they were never seen again, like a piece of wood that when thrown into a rumbling river, floats away with it in an endless journey.

For centuries, we lived in fear of them as it was rumored that those abducted were buried with their deceased chiefs. Parents told their lads these horrors over dinner and threatened to take the stubborn ones amongst them to the men of Kwandoo.

It was known to everyone in our village that we would have been wiped out if not that years ago, when snakes still had legs and animals could speak, our ancestors beseeched the goddess of the earth after being troubled by the vicious men of Kwandoo, and were told to bury a calabash holding a drop of blōod from each of them in front of the withered Oak tree at the outskirt of the village. For decades after decades, this charm prevented the men of Kwandoo from penetrating our village as it made them forget what they wanted to do immediately they crossed our boundary. We were also warned not to cross this boundary as outside it, we were vulnerable. So, when we notice during our tread that the leaves were no longer deep green and the earth was still as if it was holding its breath, we would know that we’ve crossed the boundary and would retreat.

And, it was this boundary that Kode and I had crossed on the evening before his sixteenth birthday in the hunt of birds. But, when I returned that night, I returned alone, clutching my bleēding side from which the keen machete had gone through.

“They took him,” I whimpered to my weeping mother as I handed her the last remnants of Kode—his loincloth that fell while he was running.

Kode being abducted was as much as him being deād, and, for weeks, our house seemed deād, too, as it was as still as a graveyard. Each meal our mother made tasted too salty as tears never left her face. Our father drank wine until the sellers' pots were empty, and the next day, he'd continue again.

For years, Kode’s absence loomed over our house like an invisible cloak, shadowing, pressing, and almost suffocating. So, when he staggered home last week, three years after, his chin ridden with short hairs, his shoulders broader, and his calves firmer, my mother had sunk to his feet, sobbing whilst praising the gods for she believed that it was her sacrifice of chickens to them every week that had brought him back. My father slaughtered a fat he-goat and implored everyone to celebrate with him.

“They took me to their land and forced me to toil their farmlands for them each day,” Kode said in between breaths of the pepper in the bowl of hot goat soup my mother had served him. He told us how he was whipped and trampled on, and how they would starve him for days until his ribs began to poke out of his sides. He said he escaped by paddling a canoe he stole down the water.

Drums rolled and legs jiggled as everyone celebrated Kode’s return. Everyone, except me.

I knew Kode was lying, after all, he had already stopped breathing when I buried him in the forest.

Our father had always favored Kode, and I overheard him saying he would give most of the lands to him at his sixteenth birthday when he’d officially become a man.

Shivers tingled down my spine and a cold sweat broke over my back whenever I thought of Kode, knowing it couldn’t be him, and asking myself who or what had returned home in his stead.

Since Kode's return, he has grown strange. He no longer came out to watch the stars like he used to. He sat in his room all day long, and when father queried about it, our mother pleaded that he was still resting from his encounters. His eyes were now dull and lifeless, like those of a wooden doll, and his smile was forced and faint.

Last night, when I came out to relieve my pressed bladder, I could swear I saw Kode in the darkness before he hastily retreated into the thick bush beside my hut, his right hand firmly clutching a hoe.

The same bloodiēd hoe I had buried him with before dumping it in the forest.

Thats my post submission for the September #day8 inleo prompt.
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Greetings!

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