MORROW arrived at his homeland at long last, and then came to his own house.
He’d plied paths that’d taken him from Ede to Europe—he used those paths back home.
It was nightfall in the quiet town of Ede when the journeyman returned to roost. And it was quite easy to find his path as not much had changed.
Morrow walked through the small paths between houses, and turned the last corner that led to his house. He wanted his arrival noiseless, as something to only mark with his clan.
He wanted just his people to see him arrive. Oji, Daleka with his own household.
But then the man turned and saw his house unlit. The structure was sitting in the dark, abandoned. Like a ghost of what it was before.
There was no oil lamp burning at the windows. Nor was there a sound coming from inside.
Truly, the doors and windows were locked. And cobwebs told him no one was inside.
Morrow stopped out there in the cold, pondering what this thing was. Then he looked to his brothers’, notted they’d gone to sleep, and thought:
Wura won’t be with my brothers now. They can’t be the ones taking care of her and the kids.
So she must be at her parents’. She must’ve gone back home since when I left and be staying there with the kids.
Well, that is good, so I commend her. I didn’t get to tell her to lodge with them, but she did. I do commend her.
So come tomorrow, God willing, I must pay my in-laws a visit. I must go uptown by morning – that’s after I see my brothers, Oji and Daleka.
Thus the man picked up and walked to his house, the lone place facing Oji and Daleka’s houses.
He got in front of it and forced the jammed doors open. They creaked like nobody had ever used them.
Morrow entered, and everywhere in the house spelt emptiness. There was nothing left of his great household.
The warmth which told him he’d got family, had left. The life and sparkle that made his house home.
No, he hadn’t expected to meet anyone in. But then what he saw inside made him think.
Made him wonder if his wife even went home. For he looked everywhere and found little left of his footsteps.
His priciest furniture set – some exquisite cane seats, had vanished in thin air.
His house of rich textile and cloth were left with little.
Two hidden chests of shillings and pounds, and old cowries. These sat on the ground like empty trash cans.
Still only Wura knew he had them.
So the survivor of war stopped to think. He wondered if he’d lost family...
If his brothers had thought he died and consoled his widow, asking her to feel free to start afresh.
To find a man to marry, and live on elsewhere.
He wondered if this was the sign that his family inherited him.
‘It’s five long years,’ Morrow said. ‘And that’s just long enough for a wife to hold on. It is okay if she remarried.’
He chose to understand Wura.
‘Then what wife lets the wealth of her late husband rot?’ he added, looking at those chests – the empty treasure chests.
‘So if my people felt I might not return, then it is right that my kids inherit me.
‘It is what my folk have done, and it is just what I’ve wanted!’
A small sigh dropped after those words. But Morrow chose to douse his doubts, then trust his wife...
For it seemed that Wura looted him.
Therefore the survivor of a brutal war picked up life from the rubbles, and started cleaning the whole house.
He was mopping and dusting, hitting and nailing things. It felt like doing the chores of five years overnight.
And within that time, he woke his clan. For Oji and Daleka went knocking.
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