By the second hour after dawn the leopard mould still held a heat that did not belong to charcoal. Apprentices stood back with wet cloths over their mouths. Water poured on the clay hissed and ran off like rain on a bronze roof. Ighodaro kept his hands at his sides because Osatohamwen had already said, without raising his voice, that no boy would touch what the fire had not released.
The guild elder walked the length of the yard twice. He stopped at the mould as if it were a person who owed him an answer. He bent, not to the eyeholes where the metal should have shown itself cooling, but to the air above the clay. Furthermore, he drew that air in through his teeth the way old casters do when they want to know if the alloy is honest.
“It is not the furnace,” Osatohamwen said at last. “The furnace did its work. Something else is sitting inside the heat.”
Ighodaro felt the wooden box against his ribs, under the wrapper his mother had tied for him before he left the compound. Evbu had shut that box with both hands after midnight. He had not opened it. He had not told the elder that a coral bead had spoken a name older than the street. Furthermore, he told himself that a name was not a crime. The heat rising from the leopard said otherwise.
Agharese arrived with a calabash of water from the well behind Uhunoma’s kitchen. She was not supposed to cross the threshold of the casting yard, yet no one stopped her. The street knew Evbu’s granddaughter. She set the calabash down, looked at the mould, and looked at her brother.
“Mother says you did not eat,” she said. “She also says Grandmother has been sitting with her back to the door since the first cock.”
“Tell Mother I will come when this cools.”
“Will it cool?” Agharese asked, not as a child asking, but as someone who had already heard the hammers hesitate.
Osatohamwen answered for him. “It will be cool when it remembers it is clay. Until then, no one pours a second leopard. The palace did not ask for a rushing gift. The palace asked for a true one.”
At the word palace the yard went quieter than the heat. Everyone on Igun Street knew the guild still carried an old debt toward the court, a debt spoken of in half sentences, the way people speak of a relative who left and might return. Igue was coming. Coral would be worn. The Oba’s presence would sit on the city like a cloth that could not be folded away. A mould that refused to cool was not only a spoiled morning. It was a sign that the street might fail a season it could not afford to fail.
Ighodaro followed the elder to the shade of the iroko that marked the boundary of the yard. Flies turned in the wet air. From the direction of the market a seller called the price of yam as if the day were ordinary.
“Last night you did not sleep,” Osatohamwen said. It was not a question. “Evbu sent you with more than a closed mouth. I knew her when she still walked to Olokun’s shrine with white chalk on her feet. If she has given you a thing that remembers Idu, you will not hide it inside a leopard.”
Ighodaro’s throat tightened. “She said the bead is not for the furnace.”
“Then keep it from the furnace. But do not keep it from the truth. Heat that will not leave clay is heat that has been asked to carry a story. Stories that old do not sit quietly because a young caster is afraid of his grandmother.”
A boy named Osahon, new to the bellows, dropped a stick of charcoal and snatched it up as if the sound itself were a fault. Osatohamwen did not turn. His eyes stayed on Ighodaro.
“Go home before midday. Ask Evbu whether the name that would not leave your mouth after midnight is a name the guild may hear. If she says no, we wait. If she says yes, we do not wait behind a mould that is pretending to be a locked door.”
Ighodaro walked back along Igun Street with the box still hidden. Women were setting out ebe ewere leaves to dry on mats, though the festival proper had not yet opened its full throat. The city was already rehearsing joy. He passed the turning toward the palace walls and did not look up. Looking up felt like admitting the coral had already looked for him.
Uhunoma met him at the compound gate with a bowl of pepper soup she had kept warm under a cloth. She studied his face the way she studied a child’s forehead for fever.
“Your sister says the leopard will not rest,” she said. “Eat. Then go to Evbu. She has not spoken to me. That is how I know the matter is older than soup.”
Evbu sat where Agharese had said, her back to the door, a white cloth over her knees. The room smelled of camwood and the faint salt of old beads. She did not ask him to sit. She pointed at the floor with two fingers, and he sat.
“You took the heat with you,” Evbu said. “I felt it leave the house when you left. That is why I faced the wall. I did not want the morning to see my fear.”
Ighodaro set the box on the floor between them. He did not open it.
“Osatohamwen tasted the air above the mould,” he said. “He named Idu before I did.”
Evbu closed her eyes. For a long time the only sound was a goat complaining in the next yard and, farther off, a single palace drum testing a rhythm and letting it fall.
“Then the guild has already heard the first word,” she said. “Good. A secret that reaches the elder before it reaches the market is still a secret we can guide. Listen to me, Ighodaro. The coral does not want to be a king. It wants to be remembered by hands that still know how to pour. Idu is not a ghost coming to take your work. Idu is the city under the city, the first walking of our people, the place the plaques keep when the living get tired.”
She opened her eyes.
“Tonight, after the last hammer, you will bring Osatohamwen here. Not the whole street. Not your sister, not yet. The elder and I will sit with the box. If Olokun is kind, the bead will speak only of bronze and debt. If Osanobua is watching, it may speak of more. You will not argue with either voice. You will only listen, and you will keep your hands clean of the mould until the clay remembers it is clay.”
Ighodaro nodded. The box felt heavier than coral. Outside, Agharese was telling someone at the gate that her brother had come home and that the soup was still hot. Uhunoma laughed once, a short sound meant to make the compound ordinary.
On Igun Street the leopard mould ticked as if a hidden tongue were moving inside the clay. Osahon sprinkled more water. The water still ran off. Osatohamwen stood with his arms folded and watched the steam as though it might shape itself into a name.
By the time the market bells marked the turn of the day, Ighodaro had finished the soup and washed the bowl. He put the box back against his ribs. Evbu had not blessed him with words. She had only touched the lid once, lightly, the way a person touches a sleeping child who must wake soon.
He stepped into the glare and turned toward the guild again, because an elder who has tasted heat will not be left waiting, and because a coral that remembers Idu will not cool a leopard by being ignored.
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