Something was wrong. And every wrong thing pointed east.
Koffi picked it up. The doll’s wooden chest was warm. And inside it, something beat like a tiny, patient heart.
Three days ago, those hands had stopped moving. They had been kneading dough for morning flatbread, the same way they had every day for as long as Koffi could remember. Then the pestle slipped. Then the fingers curled. Then the eyes—those warm, river-stone eyes—went somewhere else. Somewhere far behind them.
Koffi had asked. He had pressed his forehead to the baobab’s ribbed trunk until his skin bled. He had dug up a finger of the sacred yam and eaten it raw. Nothing. His mother still sat by the hearth, humming a song that had no melody, weaving a basket that would never hold water.
But Koffi wasn’t thinking about the Grove. He was thinking about his mother’s hands.
Koffi looked back at Lapazza. From here, it looked peaceful: round huts with thatched roofs, smoke curling from cooking pits, children chasing a lame goat. But he saw what others didn’t. The wells were shrinking. The goats gave sour milk. The babies were born with gray eyes that turned brown after three days—except now, they stayed gray.