Kola did not set out to cause the sky incident. He was arguing about yams.
The market man's name was Bello and he was not a dishonest person, he was simply the kind of person who, when he had a chance to short-measure a customer who was young and clearly had somewhere else to be, generally took it. Kola had somewhere else to be. The palm-sugar his uncle wanted for the evening meal was not going to appear on its own.
"That is not three measures," Kola said.
"It is close to three measures," Bello said pleasantly.
"Close to three measures is not three measures."
"For what you are paying—"
"For what I am paying, which is the price you told me, I get three measures." Kola put another coin on the block. "Fill it properly."
Isah looked at the coin. He looked at Kola.
He began, very slowly, to reach for the scoop.
That was when the sky happened.
It was a single crack of thunder, loud, sharp, immediate, coming out of a sky that had been clear and cloudless all morning. The market went silent. Everyone looked up. The sky was still clear. No cloud, no rain, no second sound. Just the one enormous crack, and then nothing.
Isah filled the measure properly without saying another word.
Kola picked up the wrapped sugar and walked away.
He had gone perhaps twenty stalls before Taiwo fell into step beside him. Taiwo was seventeen, same as Kola, and had known him since they were both eight years old and Kola had helped him carry a water pot that was too heavy without being asked. This had established, between them, a friendship built on the mutual understanding that Kola did the practical things and Taiwo talked about them afterward.
"That," Taiwo said, pointing upward unnecessarily, "was the third time this month."
"It was thunder."
"There are no clouds."
"Clouds move fast."
"Not that fast. You were angry at Isah."
"Isah was shorting me on three measures of palm—"
"You were angry," Taiwo said again, with the patient emphasis of someone repeating the important part, "and then there was thunder. The same thing happened in the second month when old Agbeke's goat ate your uncle's plantains. And in the third month when the Eso war-chief's horse nearly trampled Amaka in the lower road."
"Horses startle. Thunder is weather. These are normal things."
"The horse was twenty yards away from Amaka and stopped like it had run into a wall," Taiwo said. "And then it walked backward. I watched a horse walk backward for the first time in my life and you told me it was a training trick."
"It probably was."
"Kola."
"What."
"It follows you."
Kola stopped walking. He turned and looked at Taiwo, who had the specific expression he got when he was saying the true thing and was also fairly certain he was going to regret it.
"The weather," Kola said, "does not follow people."
"I know that. I am not saying the weather follows you. I am saying something that looks like weather follows you and has been following you since at least the third month and probably longer and you know this and are currently doing the thing you do where you explain very clearly why the obvious thing is not happening."
There was a pause.
"The sugar is going to melt," Kola said. "We should walk faster."
Taiwo, to his credit, let it go.
* * *
Gbadegesin's yard was a block from the palace ward market, tucked in the narrow lane between two compound walls. You could hear it before you could see it, the sound of iron and fire and the heavy rhythm of the hammer that Kola had been listening to since he was twelve and had started finding excuses to pass by.
He went most afternoons. He told himself, and his uncle, that he was helping. He did help, he worked the bellows, ran errands for the forge, fetched water and charcoal when the supply ran low. But helping was not the reason.
The fire was the reason.
He could not fully explain what happened when he watched the forge fire. It was not a feeling, exactly. It was more like recognition, the way you recognized a face you had seen before without being able to place where.
The fire looked familiar. He had never told anyone this because it sounded like the kind of thing that got you looked at strangely.
Gbadegesin was working alone when Kola arrived, shaping a set of door hinges for a merchant who apparently had a door in serious need of hinging. He was sixty years old and built like a man who had been putting iron to fire for sixty years, broad through the shoulders, hands like roots, moving around the forge with the unhurried certainty of someone who had nothing left to prove in this particular space.
He nodded at the bellows when Kola came in. Kola took his position.
They worked for a while without talking. This was the part Kola liked best, the breathing rhythm of it, the fire's response to the bellows, the heat coming off the forge in steady waves. The world simplified in here.
Everything was iron and fire and the next task.
Then Gbadegesin said, without looking up from the hinge: "Your uncle got a message today."
"I know," Kola said. "From the Bashorun's office."
"From the palace ward."
Kola worked the bellows twice before responding. "Amaka told me. She said it was about a young man in this ward that someone in the palace wanted to know about."
"And what did you make of that?"
"I made nothing of it yet."
Gbadegesin picked up the hinge, examined it, put it back.
"Smart," he said. "Nothing yet is smarter than something wrong."
They were quiet again. The fire was burning particularly well today, hotter and more even than the charcoal and the bellows-work alone quite accounted for. Gbadegesin noticed. He always noticed.
"Kola," he said.
"Mm."
"Do you know who your father is?"
Kola's hands stilled on the bellows. The fire dimmed slightly.
"No," he said.
Gbadegesin looked at him. He had the kind of eyes that had looked at fire for so long they had taken on a little of its quality, direct, not warm exactly, but not cold either.
"Your mother hasn't told you."
"My mother has said nothing about it my whole life."
"That is her right," Gbadegesin said. He turned back to the hinge. "I am not going to tell you either. It is not my information to give." He worked the iron for a moment. "But I will tell you one thing."
Kola waited.
"He has the same effect on horses."
The forge crackled. Outside, somewhere in the ward, someone was singing, a low, tuneless working song that drifted over the compound wall and sat for a moment in the afternoon air.
"What does that mean?" Kola said.
"You'll work it out." Gbadegesin set down his tools. "Go home. Your uncle's palm sugar is going to be needed before the fire."
* * *
Amaka was waiting at the compound gate when he got back. She was leaning against the gatepost with her arms folded, which was the posture she adopted when she had been thinking about something for a while and had decided what to do about it.
"The palace message," she said. "My mother heard from the ward headman's wife that it was asking about a young man whose age and compound location matched yours."
"My age and compound location could match several people."
"Seventeen, lower ward, adjacent to the palace ward market, living with extended family after the father's absence and the mother's return from the coastal trading towns." She looked at him. "How many of those are there?"
Kola was quiet.
"Has the weather happened again today?" she asked.
"Taiwo has been talking to you."
"Taiwo talks to everyone. That does not make him wrong." She unfolded her arms. "Has it?"
A pause. "In the market. Yes."
She nodded slowly, the way she nodded when she had suspected something and had just been given confirmation that did not quite surprise her. "How long has it been happening?"
"I don't know. A while."
"And you have not told anyone."
"What would I say? The sky is angry on my behalf?"
"Kola." She said his name the way she said it when she wanted him to stop performing and talk to her. She was very good at this. He had always found it slightly unfair.
"Something is paying attention to you. Something has always paid attention to you. The fire at Gbadegesin's yard. The horses on the lower road. Today in the market." She met his eyes. "And the palace is asking about you. That is not nothing."
He looked at her for a long moment. She looked back with the patient steadiness of someone who was going to keep looking until she got a real answer.
"I know," he said finally. "I know it's not nothing." He shifted the wrapped sugar to his other arm. "I just don't know what it is yet."
She accepted this. That was one of the things about Amaka, she could accept incomplete answers without treating them as evasions, as long as they were true.
"When you find out," she said, "tell me first."
"Before Taiwo?"
"Taiwo will tell himself and then tell everyone else before you've finished your first sentence. Yes, before Taiwo."
He almost smiled. "Alright."
She went inside. He stood at the gate for a moment, the wrapped sugar in his arms, looking at the clear evening sky above the compound wall.
Whatever was up there had been very quiet since the market. He was not sure whether that was better or worse.
He went inside to cook.