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But the expedition to Ogbagu Cave was a torturous one, and to recover The Ancestral Arrow, a herculean task. Ogbagu Cave harboured the most terrifying creatures you could ever imagine.

Those were the words of Ori, the Chief Priest of Okirikiri River.

‘‘This arrow belonged to Uwam.’’ He looked at me intently, his grey eyebrows furrowed in reminiscence.

Not many people in my town knew about Uwam. Only the elderly knew him, for he was banished from our land for manslaughter.

This is his case:

Uwam was not the aborigine of Obodo Nta. He ran to our town as a refugee from Agha, a very small town like ours bedeviled by the insurrection orchestrated by her people in their quest for power and fame. In that town, every family claimed to be from the royal lineage, and no one wanted to be ruled by the other, hence the war. When two metal objects come in contact frequently, the result is friction.

Uwam ran to our town, alone. His entire family had been slaughtered in the armed conflict. He looked like a bag of bones, as if he would die any moment if help didn’t come.

Our people came to his rescue. He was accepted as one of us, and given land to live and farm.

Not long, Uwam showed his physical prowess and ingenuity. He was a great warrior, my only strong rival in wrestling, hunter and craftsman. He was the one who fashioned The Ancestral Arrow. The name of this weapon was an epithet for the object from which he fashioned it — an ogirisi stem which he found in the thick mangrove of Okirikiri River.

I became envious of Uwam. Everything about him irked me. People admired him because of his charisma. How could a non indigene of Obodo Nta command so much respect and awe? My personality paled before his charismatic enchantment.

My silent bad wishes for him came to manifestation on the day of our Oriri Azu Festival. This annual festival was always decorated with spectacular events, some of them novel. Uwam’s show was mesmerizing. Positioning his arrow skywards, he shot birds in fleeting flight and killed each of them in one shot!

His woe started when an arrow left his hand accidentally and pierced the heart of a young girl, the only child of her parents. Everywhere became chaotic. Our people would have killed him immediately, but some older men intervened and said that that rash jungle justice would attract the wrath of the gods. Uwam’s charisma and legacies were forgotten in a twinkling of an eye. I smirked at his woe, knowing that my light would shine once again. He had been the darkness to my light, the hindrance to my success.

Uwam cried and pleaded for mercy, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. I was at the forefront of those meting out this judgment.

He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, ‘‘Brother, plead on my behalf. Don’t join them and condemn me. I didn’t do it intentionally.’’

I wondered why he called me ‘brother.’ Did he ever think that I liked him, that I was on his side?

He was later banished from our land with the threat of death if we ever saw him again.

★★★

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