Hera Oyomba By | Otieno Jamboka

The young man’s face did not change. He had been taught that history was a snake you stepped over on the way to the market.

The river rose behind her, not in flood, but in a slow, vertical column of dark water that took the shape of a woman with empty eye sockets. The village woke to the sound of drums no one was playing. Chickens dropped dead in their coops. The four tongueless men dropped the chief’s litter and ran, their screams forming words they had not spoken since childhood. HERA OYOMBA BY OTIENO JAMBOKA

The river had forgotten how to weep. For seven seasons, the rains had come late and left early, and the women of Nyakach drew water that tasted of iron and regret. But when Hera Oyomba came down the path with a clay pot on her head and thunder in her heels, the reeds straightened, and the mud turned red as a fresh wound. The young man’s face did not change

Hera took the pouch. Inside: a strand of white hair (she knew it was her own, plucked from her sleeping head last night), a molar from a goat (the chief’s daughter had lost it laughing at a cripple), and a crumpled piece of cloth that held no shadow at all. The village woke to the sound of drums no one was playing

“I have brought what you asked,” he wheezed.

“You think the river is a fool,” Hera said.