Before the Drums Fade: The Untold Story of Ikemefuna - Prologue

Before the Drums Fade: The Untold Story of Ikemefuna

They had walked for what seemed like hours in the dense hush of the forest.

The boy moved in silence, his bare feet brushing against the brittle leaves that carpeted the path. The trees stood still, ancient and watchful, casting long shadows like ancestral spirits. Even the wind had ceased to sing. The hush was not the hush of peace; it was the pause before something breaks, the deep breath before thunder speaks.

Ikemefuna, son of Mbaino, followed the men without question. He had learned early in life that a child who asks too many questions digs the pit of his own confusion. Still, his thoughts swirled like harmattan dust.

Why had they called him from his work so suddenly? Why had they told him to pack nothing, to leave no farewells? Why did Okonkwo, the man he had come to see as a father, walk behind him in silence, machete at his side like a loyal dog of death?

He was fifteen now, tall for his age, with strong shoulders formed by seasons of yam farming. His eyes, dark and steady, held the quiet wisdom of boys forced to grow quickly. He had come to Umuofia as a boy. Now he was a young man. His chest bore the beginnings of manhood, his voice had deepened, and the flute he carved in secret sang songs even the wind paused to hear.

Still, today he felt small again, like the day he left Mbaino, like the moment his mother’s song was swallowed by distance.

He glanced behind him. Okonkwo’s face was carved from the same wood as the forest, unyielding, stern, but cracking slightly around the eyes. The older man’s lips pressed so tightly together they looked like a wound refusing to bleed. His footsteps were sure, but heavy, as if each stride pushed back against something trying to rise within him.

A man ahead cleared his throat.

“Let us quicken the pace,” he said. His voice was flat, as though carved to sound like duty rather than mercy.

Ikemefuna obeyed, though he could not hide the ache in his legs. It had been for a long time, and the bush had thickened.

He glanced upward.

The sun, once proud and burning, had dimmed to a red smear behind the green veil of the forest. The light was low, filtered and strange, like that of a shrine where only spirits dwell.

Still he followed.

“A child does not know the road, but he trusts the one who leads,” he told himself, remembering his mother’s voice.

Yet something inside him had begun to shake.

They came to a clearing, a place where the earth gaped wide and the trees stood back in reverence or fear. The air was thick with waiting.

Ikemefuna hesitated.

“Why have we stopped?”

No one answered.

Instead, the man with the face like carved wood stepped forward. His eyes met Ikemefuna’s for the first time, and what the boy saw made him step back, not hatred, not even anger, but a hollowness. The kind of emptiness a man wears when he does the work of gods and hopes they are watching.

Then the blow came.

It was sudden, sharp, and terrifying.

The blade did not land clean. It struck him across the shoulder, opening flesh and spilling his cry into the air.

He screamed, not from pain alone, but from betrayal.

He turned, wild-eyed.

“Father! Okonkwo! Help me!”

The word father pierced the clearing like a spear.

Okonkwo flinched. His body stiffened, his eyes widened, not in surprise, but in shame. His machete trembled in his hand, and for a moment, a single fleeting moment, he did nothing.

A thousand voices rose within him. One sounded like Unoka, his lazy father, mocking. “So you are weak after all.” Another voice whispered, “Spare the boy. Let the gods see your heart.” But the loudest was the voice of fear, fear of being thought womanly.

“A man who cannot kill when the gods demand is no man. When the flute plays the song of death, a true man must dance.”

He moved.

The blade rose, and the boy saw it.

“No... no...” Ikemefuna whispered, backing away, hand clutching the bleeding wound.

But the machete fell.

Blood, hot and red, sprayed the dying leaves.

The boy collapsed like a tree felled too early. His breath rattled once, twice, and then was gone.

It was then the earth wept.

Not in thunder, not in quake, but in silence. The forest bowed its head. The birds, once gossiping in the trees, vanished. Even the wind, bold and restless, held its breath.

Ikemefuna lay still.

His body broken, yes, but more than that, his spirit shattered, scattered like cowries across an empty shrine. The soil beneath him darkened as it drank his blood, and somewhere far off, in a hut in Mbaino, a mother began to wail though she did not yet know why.

Okonkwo stood over the boy, his hands trembling.

He wiped the blade on a leaf.

No one spoke.

The men turned back the way they came, but the forest no longer felt the same. Something sacred had been broken, and though they would return to their compounds and yam barns and wives, part of them would always remain in that clearing, staring at the lifeless body of a boy who had called one of them father.

As they walked, Okonkwo’s mind grew loud.

“If the lizard falls from the tall iroko tree and lives, he nods his head in pride. But what of the lizard who dies? Who nods for him?”

He did not speak again that night.

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The next day, the trees whispered. Women walking to the stream paused at the silence of the birds. A child cried out when he saw a red stain on a leaf. Dogs barked without cause. Something hung in the air, like the scent of rain before the first drop. The elders gathered beneath the udala tree and spoke in low tones, but none said the boy’s name. It was as if speaking it would open a wound they all shared.

In Mbaino, a mother awoke from a dream soaked in sweat. She could not remember what she had seen, only the feeling, that something precious had been taken. She looked around the compound and her heart leapt to her throat. She called his name once, twice. Then she remembered. He had been sent away. To keep peace. To save them. To be a son among strangers.

Her wail tore through the morning like a curse.

And the earth wept again.

Not with tears, but with silence so deep it swallowed the birds, the wind, and the sound of drums. Only the hearts of the guilty beat on, thudding like war drums in the chest.

Ikemefuna was gone.

And nothing would ever be the same.