By the Ocean.

Somewhere near the estuary of the River Casamance. Low-Casamance region; Senegal, West Africa. Last day of December, 2006.

Tired of tossing and turning and drenched in sweat, the old man laboriously sat up on the bed and fought wildly to get rid of the flimsy mosquito net that stuck to his humid fingers. Then he had to rest for a while, busy recovering his breath, ashamed that just setting his feet on the ground took so much trouble and caused him such level of exhaustion.

Life must slow down at eighty-two, he reminded himself, trying to calm down the accelerated pace of his heart. He took in several deep breaths, gathering the strength to haul himself up and out of bed. He managed it with great effort, grasping one of the posts that supported the mosquito net and pulling himself up with a sudden heave.

He reached the makeshift washstand at an excruciatingly slow pace, dragging his swollen, puffy feet over the dry floor of packed earth. A number of differently coloured small flasks lined up on top of the old chest of drawers beside the washstand. He studied them with a critical eye, still breathing heavily.

His kidneys did not work properly, whence the swollen limbs, telltale signs of liquid retention, which also affected his lungs and forced an already weakened heart to work doubly. Choosing what medicines to take was a problem, though, for what worked well for one ailment was not so good for the others, and so it all ended up being a game in which he watched and all the machinery inside him raced against whatever time he was left.

“These are the latest, they will make you feel good, I had them sent straight from France, through Doctors Without Borders,” the young practitioner at the field hospital in Oussouye would tell him eagerly, bringing a new promise of hope every time he came to visit.

Age is not an ailment, he wanted to argue, but he never did, pitying the young doctor who was so eager to help, so hopeful that his science and his medicines would work. So father Antonino Rizzone, father Nino, or the Italian Priest as he was widely known in the country, simply nodded and obediently followed the physician’s instructions and then informed him on the effects, no matter how tempted he was to get rid of those pills, sit calmly and wait for his hour to come.

Hope was unnecessary when confronted with more reassuring certainties, but hope, he reminded himself, was also the truth of youth; and youth was the only disease that was actually cured by time.

Therefore he obeyed patiently and took his remedies, and felt better because the young doctor looked so hopeful and relieved. With an effort he opened up the first of the flasks and dropped two pills on a sweaty palm that trembled slightly as he lifted it to his mouth. Fumbling around, he found the pitcher and poured himself a mouthful of tepid water on a deteriorated cup and drank down slowly, easing his dry throat.

Bow to the lord and do as is your wont.

His grandfather’s saying came to his mind suddenly. It meant actually “say ’yes’ to the landowner and then go and do as it is your custom or preference,” a cry of freedom, a piece of rustic wisdom against the haughtiness of the powerful, but also against innovation and change.

But father Nino would not feel well cheating the young doctor.

Obedience, the old priest had learnt long ago, comforted those who commanded it and freed those who exercised it, since it was a chain and a gift that worked both ways and tied together differing wills upon a basis of reciprocal responsibility.

So he freely chose to obey the doctor and that was the end of it.

But his grandfather had been free as well, he had always thought, a poor peasant who had raised his five children to adulthood with tireless, backbreaking work, cultivating the lands of others - bowing to landowners while doing his wont- and who had died alone, in the open, bent on the patch of vegetables in his small orchard, which he still tended personally disregarding doctors’ advice and protective, fretting daughters-in-law.

Father Nino -a child of ten back then- had found him collapsed over the freshly removed soil –stiff already, his eyes closed and his face turned to the flighty autumn sun. He could still remember the quietness, the dream-like quality of the scene. The hound had been restless at home, pulling at his lash and baying mournfully, but up there in the windswept patch the birds had been singing happily, the trees rustling contentedly and the mountain stream ringing endlessly against the stony riverbed, undisturbed by the old man who lay now in peace, one with the landscape, belonging there.

He had been dreaming of that day often in the past weeks.

“Age plays strange games with memory,” he thought, pouring water on the basin and refreshing his sweat-drenched face. He had not been afraid, or shocked, he remembered. Death was a natural, even a fascinating event for a boy of ten who was growing up in the countryside. But the calmness of that moment had stricken him, seeped into him, sat within, deep in his soul, and had become part of his most inner self. And he now longed for that peace.

“You are an old man, Nino,” he scolded himself, “loosing yourself in childhood recollection while unable to remember what day it is today…”

“Va’ffan…” The curse, which he had not uttered for almost sixty years, came naturally to his lips as one of the smaller pills from the third flask slipped through his fingers into the ground. He shook his head and looked up and into the cracked mirror. There was a tired, sallow, deeply-wrinkled face there, but a ten-year old who had grown up free and wild in the Alpine grazing lands of Val d’Aosta in northern Italy gazed at him serenely from the depths of sunken, tired eyes, waving invitingly.

“A dirty mouth at your age?” he chided his reflection, his mind wandering eagerly to the green pastures, the coolness of eternal snows and the lightness of a child’s limbs. It was a recurring dream in those hot, suffocating days since the always scarcer rains had ended, but it felt almost real at times.

He picked another pill from the flask and swallowed it with difficulty, then scrapped the remnants of last night’s yuca porridge from the bottom of a battered bowl and ventured outside.

A wave of hot, humid air hit him on his chest. The sun had not yet climbed over the dense canopy but soon the relentless heat would make it impossible to stay outdoors.

For now the hamlet was calm.

Fishermen would be back from the ocean soon, and the rest of the villagers were surely at work in their rice fields, father Nino pondered as he shambled under the cover of the scarce shade provided by the steeply pitched, thatched roofs of the wattle sheds that made up the poor settlement.

Following an undefined impulse, father Nino stopped and looked back to the jungle edge and the river bank. The silence was dense. He strained to catch the familiar voices of the monkeys foraging for food, the chatter of birds, the growl of hypos coming for their mud baths, but he could only hear the roar of his own blood thundering in his ears, and the pressure of an expectant, tense silence; the stillness that heralded a predator’s attack. He waited for a while, until the voices of the birds were heard again: egrets, herons, marabous,calling as if nothing had happened, keeping the secret of the jungle’s affairs.

His breathing had become a hoarse rattling when he reached the entrance of the communal building that also housed his small chapel. It was a big, round hut with a wide opening on the top of the thatched roof that allowed water to fall into a central basin during the rain season, and with several big rooms that were used for different purposes after the fashion of the Jola people’s ancient building techniques.

He nodded respectfully to the stone figurine that guarded the threshold, a long-limbed god of wild mane and bright eyes, crowned with powerful buffalo horns. The seated watcher held a round salver toppled with different amulets, mostly roughly carved wooden dolls that were commonly used as messengers to the deceased ancestors when someone died. Some had fallen to the ground and lay scattered at the god’s feet. Obviously his neighbours had the feeling that someone was about to die, father Nino thought absent-mindedly, for they had been leaving message dolls for their dead loved ones at the appointed place for several days now.

The rise and fall of children’s voices as they recited their lessons in the largest chamber distracted him and made him smile proudly. He leaned on one of the wooden pillars for a while, listening, his breathing a bit eased in the relative coolness of the building.

“Bon jour, père Nino!” a voice chirped merrily behind him, and a little girl rushed past him, waving his hand to him and hurrying towards the opposite side of the central, circular court.

He waved back contentedly, watching as the child ran happily towards the classroom.

Ten years ago father Nino had been forced into retirement, after a long, laborious and productive life of service to the Church. Instead of retiring to one of the several century-old monasteries that his order maintained for such purposes in the wide plains of northern Italy, father Nino had decided to settle down there, in Senegal, to live among those who had less, as he had done for the greater part of his life and in different parts of the world.

Now he was one of them.

A small part of his retirement pension he used to attend to his own needs. The rest he invested in community projects like that construction which housed the small school, a communal granary and a showroom for the handcrafts made by women in the surroundings, which were sold to tourists that passed the distant hamlet on their way to Cape Skirring’s famed beaches or the Isle of Birds natural reserve.

He had also helped finance a piping system and a well for fresh water, and had helped buy some necessary equipment for the small dispensary. He regularly lent money to those who needed it badly, and now they were embarked in several other projects regarding the preservation of the jungle and their territory…

The girl had reached now the classroom door and turned to wave again.

“Kassoumay, Bakin!” she greeted in their dialect, looking beyond the priest, and then entered the class.

Father Nino turned around as fast as his old bones allowed, but there was no one behind him, at least no one in sight, although he had the nagging feeling of a passing presence.

Had he looked through the wide open door to the jungle edge, he would have caught a glimpse of a strange golden glimmer among the trees close to the embankment –thicker than the swirls of silvery mist that rose from the many channels and waterways that laced that upstream part of the estuary of the River Casamance.

                                           ~*~    ~*~    ~*~

Insa was close to the river when the Bakin, the spirit of the forest, arrived unnoticed that morning.

He had got up before the sun and had hurried to carry his fetish doll to the altar of the stone guardian before father Nino got up. Insa’s father had died only a rain season ago, and the young man needed his counsel desperately. Father Nino -Insa knew- would not fail to find Insa’s father when he reached the other side, and would hand Insa’s questions to him. After all, Insa’s father had been the priest’s host and protector when he arrived; he would not refuse to do this for his host’s son.

He had then walked to the rice fields of his family, among the best in the whole area, to check on the dikes and do the maintenance work that was the privilege -and duty- of the head of the family.

It was earlier than usual and the rest of the village rice fields –further upstream- were surely still empty. Insa worked quickly while pondering his worries. At thirty-one, and being the eldest surviving male of his line, he had been appointed keeper of the family’s lands even before his initiation.

He had to be proud of his role –he reminded himself as he worked the mud with his hoe and checked the ancient works for cracks and weak spots in their structure.

It had been a dramatic change in his life, though. He had been sent away from his home when he was barely ten, first to study in the mission in Oussouye, and then to Dakar, in the hopes that he would make a better life away from the jungle. He could read and speak French and he had attended nocturnal law school for four years now, working hard to become a lawyer rather than a driver for international lawyers. His visits home had become rarer as the years passed by.

But the jungle was in his blood.

Or perhaps the fetish master had secretly picked up a handful of hair from his head and had buried it under the same tree to which his first soul had been tied at his birth, thus binding him to the village forever.

Then, less than a year ago, he had come home to visit before the rain season and there had been great feasting and rejoicing. There would be a Bukut that year, his father had told him, the initiation ceremony that lasted two months during which the candidates had to survive alone in the jungle and receive the full approval of the spirits. The Bukut granted full rights to lands and citizenship to the youngsters –as well as the right to marry. The last Bukut had taken place twenty years ago, and there was no way of telling when –if ever- there would be another one.

Insa had argued with his father. The Bukut meant another knot in the rope that enslaved him to the jungle. He had an elder brother who had already been initiated, and his brother’s wife could still bear him an heir. They could manage without him. Besides, he could not lose so much time away from his job. And he was in his last semester at law school and soon would obtain his degree.

But he had promised that he would think about it.

A couple of days after that conversation, both his father and his brother had been killed by a vicious, blood-thirsty panther during a hunting party.

And so Insa had been forced to remain, lest the lands that had belonged to his line for centuries were lost for lack of an heir. He would not bring that shame and misery –and bad luck- upon the whole village, he had decided then, surrendering to the demands of kin and lineage and following the path that the trees had long ago ruled for him.

He had almost died during the Bukut.

After fifteen years in Dakar he was a stranger to the jungle, and the demons there fought him fiercely. He lacked the knowledge, the resilience, the ability to survive there –and perhaps even the will. 

One day, when barely three weeks of Bukut had passed, he lay dying in a grove of mango trees. Tired of his inability to catch his own prey, he had fought an old hyena over the rotting despoils of a gazelle’s carcase. Then, after three days of being sick, he had found himself delirious and dehydrated, and lacking even the strength to drag himself under the shade of the trees. It was not unheard of that some of the candidates died during the Bukut, but it seemed a cruel joke to Insa as he lay there wondering –with the detachment that only approaching death grants- which of the spirits that waited patiently for the unravelling of his souls would get to him first.

He shivered in the hot, humid morning, remembering how the tall, black-haired Bakin had approached him that day, shrouded in a golden light, claiming his dying body against the houseless spirits of the forest who had been stalking him, taunting him as he slowly passed away… The Bakin had taken care of Insa in his hut until he was strong enough to stand, and had looked after him from a distance while the Bukut lasted, providing him with food and water when he was unable to find it for himself.

Insa shook himself from those haunting memories and looked up suddenly, alerted by the uncanny silence that had blanketed the jungle’s morning chattering. He stopped digging on the mud and listened intently, feeling the tension brewing up.  

Suddenly, the jungle exploded in noise again, as if a shadow had passed, or a threat had been dispelled, and Insa concentrated again on his job, freeing the dikes of vegetation and stones and piling fresh mud on the weaker walls so the relentless sun would reinforce them. He worked efficiently, with the sure hand and caring dedication that had been passed from father to son, bending over the ancient structures with his ankles submerged in muddy water. When he stretched up again to take a brief rest he noticed a thin veil of mist hovering over the river, golden simmering tendrils threaded on the bushes and around a dugout canoe that bobbed lazily on the riverside, not a hundred paces from Insa’s dike.

With an apprehensive look around, Insa held his hoe tightly in his left hand and walked cautiously towards the apparently abandoned canoe which had not been there but a few moments ago. The golden mist was lifting slowly, or rather dissolving in the ordinary silver shroud of evaporation, as he approached the boat. He stood in silence for a moment, suspicious, trying to feel the presence around him. Satisfied that he was alone, he inched his way to the riverbank and bent forward to peek inside the canoe. The carved paddle lay in the bottom, as well as a long-handled shovel, but he could not hold back a soft gasp at the sight of an ejumba, the full face, cylindrical, buffalo horned mask that every initiated received after the Bukut. Made of  tightly woven vegetal fibre and topped with antelope or buffalo horns, the ejumba was worn by every initiated as proof of virility and full rights in the wild festival that followed the end of each Bukut and during which most of the new initiates found their wives and mated for life.

Almost unconsciously he extended reverent, hesitant fingers to touch the mask that had been denied to him after his ordeal. He had feared that he would not be granted all his full rights as an initiate because he had received help during the Bukut, but when he came out of the forest, last of the candidates and still unsteady upon his feet, the village fetish master had bowed before him as before one chosen, and had named him Wise-man-to-be, a higher status than that of a simple initiate, yet one which allowed him not marriage for some more years.

“Here! Help me with this!”

The low, beautiful voice caught Insa by surprise. He lost his balance, toppled over and fell in a heap inside the canoe. He looked up from his undignified position to see the tall Bakin standing over him with a faint air of amusement despite his blazing eyes, the wild dark mane and the strange glimmer that always surrounded him.

“Go to the sacred grove and set these on the fetish tree.”

Insa could hardly nod his assent as the tall spirit dropped an armful of fetish dolls quite carelessly into the canoe.

“When you are done return the canoe here. Do not touch the mask,” the Bakin warned, pushing the canoe from the river bank with a powerful kick.

Insa looked from the imposing forest spirit to the canoe, now loaded with the messenger dolls the villagers had left upon the guardian’s tray, and could only nod silently and obey, too stunned by the unexpected apparition to even think of whistling a call to his neighbours, who would surely be upstream working in their fields.

Grabbing the paddle with the clumsiness of a blind monkey, he finally managed to steer the canoe against the current and towards the sacred grove where the Kanolen, the festival to honour the dead, was held. 

                                              ~*~     ~*~

Father Nino entered his small chapel half-expecting to find the Bakin waiting there.

Although the Jola and Baïnouk people, the predominant ethnic groups in that part of the country, were mostly catholic, animism was still very strong there, in the deepest heart of the jungle. He had made it clear since his arrival that he was not there to force any of them into conversion, and apart from some misgivings from the fetish masters and recurring political struggles among village chiefs, who took him as an excuse, he had been ignored first -an unmarried old man who could not tend his own rice field- and only slowly accepted later as a useful member of the community.

He had decided to build the chapel to appease the bishop –who back in the capital worried for this old priest lost in the middle of the jungle without spiritual comfort- but also with the intent of creating a meeting place that served his neighbours’ needs.

He sketched a tired bow before the plain wooden cross and began his prayer.

The settlers had been enthusiastic at the idea of building up a great communal place, he remembered fondly, and the works had proceeded amidst general joy and much singing. Women had threaded the palm leaves gathered by children on the posts set up by the men, after the elders approved the layout following the indications of the fetish master, who first consulted the spirits of the forest.

Once the wattle structure stood up, the men had kneaded loam soil with water into a mass of malleable consistency, daubing the gaps of the wattle structure with it until it formed a solid wall.

The enthusiasm rose as the decorations began, after a new, thicker coating was spread over the first wall.

Father Nino had first seen the stranger they called the Bakin then; a tall, slender, pale figure of long black hair and extraordinarily bright eyes, who one day materialized gracefully out of the mists of the jungle, shrouded in an indescribable golden glimmer, reducing the whole settlement to an awed silence and sending the women hurrying in accorded motion to offer him the bunuk, the palm wine, together with other delicacies reserved to the mightiest spirits of the forest.

The strange man had joined them in the decorations, father Nino remembered fondly, casting an appreciative glance at the skilled high-relief carvings that adorned the walls inside as well as outside. First he had carved a mighty trunk, with a strong vine threaded around it, from which powerful branches spread to embrace the whole building. Once the mighty tree was brought to life under his talented hands, the tall man had helped the children carve animals, birds and plants, as well as guardian spirits of the jungle to take care of those under their protection.

As word spread, tourists had began flocking there, taking part as well in the decorations so now there was not an inch free of carvings, up to the thatched roof. Besides, it had become a word-to-mouth attraction, so now wealthy tourists would stop there for a while and leave money for the preservation of that work of art, money that was always welcome and always needed in the community.

The strange man had remained with them for several months at that time, living in a half abandoned hut away from the close knitted village and at the very edge of the jungle, as it suited his apparent nature as mediator between the village and the forest.

To the children and women he was a Bakin of the jungle, one of the friendlier, playful guardian spirits that dwelt in the groves and protected villages, at times playing tricks on villagers who did not pay due respect to them. They had tales about his visiting, once or twice in every generation, and they felt blessed by his presence.

The adult men respected and feared him, believing him to be one of the A Halawa, houseless spirits who occasionally took possession of innocent villagers, doomed to wander the forests until they redressed a terrible wrong committed during their previous existence.

The fetish masters had whisper red on occasion that he was an incarnation of Emitay, their almighty god, who came to the forest every other generation to see how his children behaved.

The Baïnouk, the most ancient ethnic group in the area, believed him to be the reincarnation of their mythical king, who had once cursed his people and doomed them to never ending wandering in exile and poverty because they had refused to follow him into war.

But all greeted him openly, offered him due respect and gifts and treated him as he preferred, as if he were one of them; and so they just pretended that they ignored his otherworldly nature as he shared his skill and grace with them for as long as it pleased him.

Father Nino, on his part, knew him to be a mystery; a troubled, doomed stranger who hid from guilt and remorse and buried himself away from civilization in a vain attempt at leaving behind the ghosts that haunted him. 

Yet he had seen enough in his long life to know that this man was no usual lost soul, no common criminal or cast away serving self imposed penance for actual or perceived failures. The blaze in his dark, deep eyes, or the glimmer that surrounded him he had never seen before, nor the wild, bottomless despair that at times seized the stranger and sent him howling in the night, the beautiful voice that was capable of charming the jungle into awed silence rising harsh and broken like the wail of a wounded animal.

Strange things happened around the Bakin, or rather around Malcolm Lauren, as he was known in the offices of Ministries and land-development companies in Dakar and Oussouye where Father Nino had found him as well, stern and self-assured, commanding hushed respect from secretaries and Ministers in his relentless defense of the land tenure system of the Jola. That was as well father Nino’s goal, to prevent another bloody conflict as the government insisted on destroying the network of traditional rights of the Jola people to their lands, the fight for the Jola’s property over their sources of fresh water underlying the conflict. So they had become allies and as close to friends as it could be said of such two lost people as they were.

Father Nino prayed not for the first time in deep gratefulness for such a powerful ally, be demon or angel, who appeared out of nothing when he was most needed, blessing the village with his sole presence and father Nino’s solitude with his intelligent conversation and, on occasion, with his light mood.

A sudden, sharp pain speared him through in the middle of his prayer, and he swayed and had to support himself holding convulsively the back of the closest bench. He gasped for air and clutched a hand against his chest, where his heart beat wildly, irregularly, painfully. Hunched there, in his own chapel, battling a shroud of darkness that lurked at the corner of his vision, father Nino panicked that he would die there, alone, without the chance of setting his papers right and telling Insa all he had to know of the ongoing processes that affected the village, as well as what was expected of him.

Hold on, not now, not yet, he encouraged himself, closing his eyes as he struggled to calm down the beatings of his heart, consciously pushing the pain to the back of his mind.

He could not tell how long it was before he was able to straighten up, drenched in cold sweat, trembling uncontrollably and with his vision blurred, but with enough energy, he deemed, to haul himself back to his hut and set things right before leaving.

Asking for help in the adjacent class was not an option, he knew, for as soon as they gathered that he was about to be called back to his creator, his  neighbours would insist on keeping him company and drink him, sing him and dance him into the other life. He still had many things to do before that, so with painful care he took one step, then another, and he slowly dragged himself outside, where he stood for a while against the heavy stone idol, fighting the rising tide of panic and the hurried rush of blood that thundered in his ears.

As his knees finally failed him and he slipped slowly to the ground, he noticed that all the fetish dolls had disappeared and the salver was empty. “They took the fetishes to the sacred groove,” he told himself, suddenly aware that it was his death what his neighbours had foreseen and had been getting ready for. As he lay on the ground, breathing laboriously and flickering in and out of consciousness, he had the faint impression that the stone idol had come to life and was bending over him, eyes that blazed wildly and a knowing, compassionate look on his beautiful face. Take me away, I am ready, father Nino desperately fought to say to that otherworldly presence, but suddenly his tongue seemed too big for his mouth and a moment after he knew no more.

                                              ~*~     ~*~

The priest was light as a feather, barely a bag of bones and hide, as Maglor lifted him from the ground and carried him back to his hut. In his long years he had seen many Edain depart beyond the circles of the world, so he recognized easily the song of a human fëa singing goodbye to Middle-earth…and the distress and longing that it always aroused in him, a Firstborn who had been for such long ages stranded in the shores of hither.

Seldom did he get attached to the Secondborn nowadays, but there were always a few of them in each generation that rekindled in him the feeling of kinship and softened his increasingly harsh feelings towards thoughtless, selfish humankind. Mostly those were uprooted souls who drifted across Middle-earth fighting lost battles and giving voice to those too weak to make themselves heard, without losing their hope in the process. Maglor flew to them, like a moth to a night fire, hoping to drink in their strength and find the source of their courage, their invulnerability against despair that he so badly needed. 

Father Nino had been one of those kin souls, he sighed as he laid the weakened body carefully on the mattress. He was a strong, resilient fighter who was never subdued by defeat and who was always up and back on the fight, searching for ways to improve his own contribution to those who were around him while never losing his optimism and his sense of humour.

Maglor checked the priest’s irregular heartbeat and pulse and silently wished the old man’s fëa to hold on for a while. “There are still a few things that we must settle down, my friend,” he whispered softly. After forcing some drops of fresh water through his throat and reassured that he was not dying immediately, Maglor left him to regain a bit of strength and looked around to make himself comfortable while he waited.

Rummaging inside an old cabinet he found one of what father Nino called “his miracles” –not as in performed by himself but rather the proof, in the priest’s eyes, of his creator’s grace poured down on him.

Every three or four months, father Nino loved to recount to willing ears, his best childhood friend used to send him a box of his best Barolo, no matter which part of the world father Nino was lost in at the moment. The red, strong, dense wine from the hills around Torino had unfailingly reached the Italian priest around the world, warming his soul with a piece of his homeland and a memory of others who loved him and remembered him. When his friend died, his eldest son, who had long ago taken charge of the family business, kept sending the precious wine to the old exile.

The other miracle was the money. Meager as the priest’s barely a thousand euros pension was, it represented a fortune in those forsaken, hunger, draught, war and Aids-wrecked lands of Africa. A fortune that traveled undisturbed from a bank in Rome to a bank in Dakar every month and then miraculously reached Oussouye’s communal bank intact, where it served to help attend the many needs of the several communities scattered in the area.

Evil engendered evil, of that Maglor was certain; but he had also seen in his long life that at times good also engendered good, and father Nino’s miracles stood encouraging testimony to it.

Unclothing the carefully kept crystal cup, Maglor sat at the priest’s battered desk, uncorked one of the remaining bottles, poured the crimson, dense liquid that smelled of oak and dark, cool stone cellars in long lost summers, raised his goblet and drank silently to his own ghosts.  

The sun was already hidden behind the tall canopy when the old man began to regain consciousness. He had been drifting in an out during the afternoon, and Maglor had tended him with dedication, forcing some more water inside him, keeping him as cool and comfortable as he could in his situation, and watching his dwindling constants.

“Welcome back, my friend,” he smiled warmly, sitting by his side and placing a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. The man’s gaze was clear and alert, and Maglor knew that they did not have much time left.

“I thought I was already there…” the priest joked weakly and then coughed, breathless with the effort.

“Without taking your leave and saying your goodbyes?” Maglor smiled. “That would have been a terrible discourtesy,” he added, steadying the old man and helping him drink. “And there are a few things that I must consult with you.” He stood, walked to the table and came back with a handful of papers and the goblet. The priest smiled softly at the sight.

“There are…a few bottles left… for you…”

“You know that I appreciate the gesture in all its worth. Now listen, Nino, there are a few things that I want you to know.” Slowly and briefly, Maglor updated the dying priest about the difficult legal situation of his neighbours, and listened to what the old man had to tell him in turn. The government was intent on displacing all of them to the cities, to ensure free access to the fresh water that sustained the Jola and their thriving rice producing lands, the country’s granary. More than thirty years ago, the first assault on their rights upon fresh water had ended in bloodshed and bitterness, and Maglor knew that father Nino had spent his last ten years trying to prevent a second, even bloodier confrontation that seemed more unavoidable each passing year, as many external interests fought and pressed to gain access to the resource that ensured the life of the Jola.

"I have a team of lawyers working at national and regional level, and we are creating worldwide awareness. It will not happen again, you have my word,” Maglor said with deep sentiment, and was moved by the gratitude that showed in the old man’s face and surprised by how deeply it mattered to him.

“I…I must ask…something of you...” the old man managed in a voice that was a bit stronger, now that his immediate worries were apparently quieted. “Keep my place…” Maglor paused for a moment, uncertain. “They need you…they need someone… Only...a few weeks…Someone will come…”

“Did you send word?” The priest cast him a strange, curious look.

“Did I send word to you that I was dying?” he asked with a kind, frighteningly knowing smile. Maglor sighed and looked away, suddenly afraid that, with the clear-sightedness of death, the priest would uncover his secret, the truth oh his otherworldly nature. “Someone will come and take my place soon… but… please…keep the place…”

“I will,” Maglor finally gave in with a warm smile.

“And give Insa a hand,” father Nino continued between laborious intakes. “They need... one of them… to guide them… I have… Bring me… that folder…”

Silently, Maglor reached the leather folder gathering dust on a shelf, and the old man opened it and searched frantically.

“Here.” He extended pale, swollen fingers in a trembling hand to Maglor, who studied the document with curiosity. It was a bank account in a Dakar bank under Insa’s name. “Make sure he gets his…degree…They need him a lawyer…not a rice cultivator…”

“I intended to take care of that as well,” he smiled, amused and moved by the old man’s foresight, and his devotion to those lost people who had become his by choice. “Now let go of everything, let me look after you, friend Nino. Is there anything that you… wished to… keep with you?” he asked, suddenly hesitant. The old man gave him a bright, peaceful smile, and searched under his sweated shirt to show him a wooden cross that had been around his neck for fifty years now.

“This is all that I need. I am ready.”

Impressed and somewhat reassured by the strength of the old man’s faith, Maglor nodded.

“Let us go, then,” he said in his deep, otherworldly voice, and bending down he picked him up again and carried him effortlessly outside. He caught sight of furtive glances stolen through quickly closed window curtains and doors in the neighbouring huts as he walked in his steady, easy pace towards the river. Surely Insa had sent word across the jungle, so they would not be disturbed.

Placing the dying man as comfortably as he could in the bottom of the dugout canoe that Insa had obediently left at the same place, Maglor picked up the paddle and with a few, powerful strokes he pushed themselves in the middle of the river and allowed the current lead them closer to the ocean.

When they finally reached their destination the old man’s breathing was laborious and irregular, but he smiled gratefully as Maglor laid him to rest against the trunk of a powerful, solitary baobab that topped a hill which overlooked the mangrove-lined beach and the ocean –a favourite haunting of the priest’s.

“Thank you,” the old priest sighed.

“I know that you like looking west,” Maglor whispered in a tight voice. Watching Arien go down beyond the western edge of the world hurt him more each passing ennin, and he hid from the soughing song of the ocean as much as he could.

“And I know that it pains you,” the priest whispered gratefully after a long pause, searching with a trembling hand that Maglor met and clasped tightly. Too troubled for words, he raised his powerful voice in a song that he expected would comfort his dying friend. Only when he turned to look at him he realized that he had sung in Quenya; a sad, hopeless lament that he had composed long ago, when he was still an Exile among exiles. The priest’s face was serene and peaceful, as if all pain had been lifted from him and only his strong faith –which was certainty - sustained him.

“You are forgiven, Malcolm,” he said in a voice that sounded unexpectedly strong.

“What?” Caught by surprise, Maglor pierced his mortal friend with the blazing gaze of a firstborn who had seen the Light before the light.

“I do not know who, or what kind of creature you are, or what your true name is…or what evil deed you once committed, but this I can tell you: you are a good being…and your creator has already forgiven you…” Maglor could not hold back a sarcastic, bitter laugh.

“How would you know, priest?” he asked harshly. “You are but a man, comforted by your faith and too short-lived to even fathom things that are beyond your mortal measure…”

“I know of pain, and hate, and sin and evil...and living hells.” Where the dying man had found his strength Maglor could never guess, surprised as father Nino met his blazing gaze steadily and admonished him. “And I know of guilt, and shame, and forgiveness and redemption…and the deep mysteries of creation. A creator capable of bringing to life a being of light like yourself...cannot fail to take your grief…and shame…and remorse…and turn them into blessing and forgiveness…no matter your deeds,” he stopped to catch his breath, but Maglor was too stunned to interrupt him. “Never doubt that you are forgiven and beloved, child, for your soul shines brightly,” he sighed now faintly. “I will pray that you finally find your way home…and that we meet again…”

Tightening his clasp on the weakened hand, and too moved for words, Maglor sang again, the mightiest of singers that were ever heard in these mortal shores, and he sang beautifully of the making of the stars and the coming of lords that brought love and light and wisdom to the lands, and the hope that lay in the growing things, in the music of the waters and the blowing of the winds. As he sang, the birds remained still and the beasts stopped in their tracks, and even Arien faltered in her trail, all caught under the spell of that otherworldly voice that rose in desperate plea.

“Lie me down,” the old priest pleaded weakly, after the last ray of Arien sent a soft caress to his wan face before disappearing beyond the brim of the ocean, leaving behind her green trail. Maglor complied in silence, easing him to his side, his head pointing south and his face looking east, the home of the Sun, after the manner of the Jola people.

“God bless you, my friend,” father Nino murmured, and then slowly, peacefully, he passed away; his last heartbeat given to the land that had fed him in the last years, his hand held by a friend’s and his last breath blowing in blessing towards the hamlet that had sheltered him.

Maglor did not stop singing as he dug under the huge, sacred baobab he had chosen as father Nino’s guardian. Hot tears streamed down his face as he carefully laid the shrunken, light body to rest under the old tree. When he straightened up and looked to the darkening sky for comfort, he caught a glimpse of his father’s Silmaril sailing closer than ever and brighter than Maglor had seen it for a long time. With a sad smile he raised his burnt hand in greeting, comforted by the priest’s hope and taking Eärendil’s presence for a confirmation of his friend’s last words. Perhaps his long fight would one day reach a blessed end.

The hollow trunks that served as drums began to echo steadily in the jungle. The Kanolen had begun; father Nino’s friends and neighbours were celebrating his passing with the honors and cheerful carousing reserved to important villagers, Maglor realized with satisfaction as he readied himself to join them. It could not be otherwise –he reasoned as he reached his canoe and pushed the mighty ejumba over his head. It was not every day that a Bakin of the forest came to lead a villager to the other world.

A Bakin of the forest danced in the sacred grove of the Jola that whole night in the Kanolen held to honour father Nino. Jumping and circling, singing and howling and pouring blessings over that people, he led the revelry with a wild abandon that was enthralling and contagious. The elders, together with the initiates, howled and sang and danced as well until the racket was so mighty that they were sure that the spirits of the other world would not fail to hear them and greet father Nino as he deserved. They also drank the sacred bunuk until they lost consciousness and fell happily in the realm of dreams, sure that, with the Bakin among them, the fetish dolls dancing on the trees in that sacred grove would carry their message to their loved ones even faster than with the help of father Nino’s soul, and they would get answers to their questions that very same night.

Only Insa was awake when the sun rose. Unable to get himself duly inebriated, he kept watch for the whole night in more alertness than he had wished for. Now he sat beside the dying fire while his neighbours slept peacefully, unawares of the day or the morning chores. With a sigh he stood up and took the path that led uphill, following the tracks of the Bakin, who had left them not long ago.

The first rays of the new day were warming his back as he reached the top of the hill. The glowing seemed to pool around the old baobab, and Insa inched his way closer. The Bakin lay there, bathed in that golden glimmer that at times seeped from him, his head resting on a long mound of freshly removed soil toppled with a rough, makeshift wooden cross. That was father Nino’s resting place, Insa knew, bending to get a closer sight of the sleeping, tear streaked face of the Bakin. Malcolm, he told himself, remembering that the Bakin was a man as well, and one who had lost a dear friend.

The ejumba lay beside him, and Insa took it and sat at the other side of the grave, toying distractedly with its mighty horns while his thoughts strayed beyond the clear, sapphire horizon, wondering about his uncertain future, hoping that his father’s answer would reach him soon from the other world.

“You can keep it, it is for you.”

The beautiful, if somewhat harsh voice startled him again. He looked around to see that the Bakin was awake, craning his neck to look at him with that indefinable, distant but fond expression of his. “And you will get your degree, so you can defend the village legally. We will make the necessary arrangements because it was his last will, so I will remain here until I make sure that everything is settled,” he added warningly, patting the mound on which his head was resting. With the agility of a wild cat he then stood up. “Goodbye, my friend, keep good care of the land. This will become the new sacred grove of the village, and I will come here to find my peace,” he whispered then to the mound. “Come, Insa, there are many things that we must discuss; I am terribly hungry…and with a mighty headache,” he groaned, shaking his head carefully and narrowing his bright eyes in displeasure. “That bunuk is a killer…”

Insa shook his head in disbelief as the tall, lean Bakin disappeared down the hill. He looked at the ejumba on his hands and then at the rather small mound that marked father Nino’s tomb. He looked up to see the mighty, imposing silhouette of the tall baobab towering over him. A white egret sat on a branch not far from him, and as he looked at it in wonder, for egrets seldom strayed away from the waters, it released a deep, urging screech before extending its wings and flying downhill to the beach.

After a short gaping Insa broke in a fit of relieved, accepting laughter; finally understanding that his life had changed indeed but that its course was still in his hands. He was a Wise-to-be, and he had the friendship of the Bakin. All he had to do was finally assuming his responsibilities and acting accordingly. The fate of the hamlet depended heavily on him, and he could not cower back in fear of tradition. With a grateful chuckle he patted the priest’s tomb and started after the Bakin, the treasured mask in his hand, curious to hear what the tall spirit’s plans were.

The white egret returned later and began to build its nest on a branch that stretched over the grave.

To the uncle who taught me to love the land. 

A/N

Va’ffan... Italian for What the…

“Bon jour, pére Nino.” Good morning, father Nino. French is official language in Senegal together with local dialects.

Kassoumay: dialect greeting of the Jola of Low Casamance.

Bakin: a spirit, in Jola animism.

Maglor –Makalaure- naming himself “Malcolm Lauren” first happens in “A chance-meeting”