Episode Two — The One Where Everyone Thinks Fufu Is A Miracle (Except Fufu)
The rooster crowed like an alarm with bad manners. Fufu opened one eye, found a bowl of cooled fufu beside his head, he smiled, and decided that it was a good sign. Amina was already downstairs, arranging cups on a tray with the clinical efficiency of someone who'd learned to keep order around a ridiculous brother.
"Morning," she said without looking up. "We've got three people waiting, a goat wants sanctuary, and the mayor sent someone asking if your advice works on councilmen."
"Do I accept councilmen?" Fufu asked, sitting up. He put a finger to his temple and pretended to think very deeply, which was his usual process for deciding breakfast priorities. "Hmm. Do councilmen ever bring goats?"
Amina snorted and handed him a cup. "Then no."
By the time they opened the doors, the small square in front of the church looked like a market stall for odd complaints. A woman clutched a basket with one hand and a bundle of something that squeaked with the other. A thin boy proudly held a plaster cast shaped like a banana. A married couple argued over whether their daughter's laughter had become too loud.
"Brother Fufu!" called an old man with the squeakiest knees. "My left ear — it keeps hearing the neighbor's quarrels in the night. It makes me angry and then sleepy and then mad again." He tapped his ear with a gnarled finger for emphasis. "You must fix it."
Fufu peered at the man, practiced solemnity ready. In his head a tiny hyperbolic orchestra began to play: clashing cymbals, the chorus of the neighbor's argument on loop, a tuba wheezing dramatic sympathy. Ohh God, he thought with the private dread of a comedian two jokes from a punchline. I'm about to spend my morning hearing Mr. Obi shout about cassava and his cousin for three days straight.
He set the old man on the stool, murmured the quick prayer from the Pain-Bible, and for a satisfying two seconds the man's face smoothed like dough being patted flat. Coins clinked into Fufu's bowl. The old man left with a silly grin and a warning to the neighbors: "Quiet your scandalous mouths!"
Next up was the boy with the banana cast.
"What happened?" Fufu asked.
"Fell out of a mango tree and hit my head on a donkey," the boy announced, proud of his misadventure like it was a medal. "Now I dream of mangoes made of bread."
Fufu tapped the banana cast theatrically. "You dream of good things," he said. "That is a sign of a generous skull."
Amina muttered something under her breath that meant roughly: Stop making children worse just to look clever. Fufu hummed and gave the lad a sweet and a stern look. The boy left with his head a little lighter and his banana cast so respected that a passerby offered to hold it while he ran errands.
Laughter bubbled around the church like warm soup. People loved Fufu because he was competent in a lazy, awkward way. He was no miracle he was a man who could sew and stitch and scold and make a proper fufu. That, the town decided, might as well be a miracle.
Then the goat arrived.
Not metaphorically. A goat—small, suspicious, and eminently pushable—ambled up and knocked over a stack of donated yams. The owner, a woman with one tooth and a swagger, demanded sanctuary.
"This goat climbed the mayor's fence," she explained. "It ate the mayor's wreath. It insulted the mayor's ceremonial cap. If you will not house it, brother, the mayor will come personally and demand restitution in the form of two goats and one apology."
Fufu looked at the goat, then at Amina. "Does it bleat like the mayor?" he asked.
Amina rolled her eyes. "Take it inside. Tie it to the stoop. If the mayor shows up, feed him fufu and tell him the goat is spiritually reformed."
A goat tied to the church stoop is a very good way to keep the town entertained. People placed small offerings—an apple here, a ribbon there—and watched Fufu roll with the absurdity. He took a homey pride in the chaos. Healing was unpredictable; people were predictable in the ways they broke, laughed, and gave.
The afternoon was pleasantly ordinary until the square quieted and a carriage rolled in that looked like it had been polished with a sermon. A man in a crisp jacket dismounted with the smug assurance of someone who'd never had to fetch his own water. He carried an envelope with a neat seal and a stamp whose emblem was unfamiliar: a crown and a ring.
"Good day," he announced, voice tuned for announcements. "I'm an emissary from the Trials."
At "Trials" there was a collective intake of breath like someone who'd accidentally dropped a pot on their foot.
Fufu, who had been folding a piece of fufu with unnecessary gravitas, paused and wiped his hands on his trousers like a man who'd been caught mid-prayer. Amina gave him a look that said: Stay calm. Or at least stay foolishly proud.
"We're recruiting," the man continued. "Seeking notable healers and remarkable bearers of suffering for a demonstration of endurance. Fame, coin, and a place in the Hall for winners."
A murmur of interest passed through the crowd like a slow ripple. The mayor's gossipmongers raised eyebrows. Someone clapped with gleeful malice. The boy with the banana cast looked jealous.
Fufu's internal monologue executed a full dramatic pirouette. Fame? Coin? Place in a hall? he thought. They're offering two goats and a lifetime supply of palm-wine? Do they provide dental coverage?
He smiled an awkward smile that had been forged in many such awkward smiles. "We do small healings here," he said diplomatically. "Sewn fingers, hurt egos—that sort of thing."
The emissary smiled like a man who'd been paid to smile. "We seek endurance, healer. People who can hold pain, and those who can give it."
Amina's eyebrow rose to a dangerous altitude. "That sounds… violent," she said.
The emissary made a sound like a well-oiled coin purse being opened. "It is sport, sir. It is spectacle. It is also commerce. And we seek representations from across the land."
There was a beat while the town considered the idea that their church might suddenly become a casting call.
Nosa, who had been sleeping on the back pallet and listening to the market with the acute attention of someone whose life depended on small changes, scrambled up and peered around the lectern. His eyes were wide with a kind of simple calculation: coin, survival, mother's roof.
Fufu looked at the emissary, and then at his sister, at the goat tied to the stoop, at the stack of donated yams, and at Nosa's nervous, eager face. He pictured the Trials, a ring, a crowd, a whistle. He imagined the Pain-Bible being opened on some grand table and the him as the winner the most famous business of trading suffering made into a parade.
He scratched the back of his head in that embarrassing thoughtful way. "We're busy," he said after a moment. "But… we'll think about it."
The emissary nodded as if that answered everything. He tucked the sealed envelope into his jacket and left, his carriage clacking like a metronome of trouble.
As the square settled, Amina plucked a yam and lobbed it gently at Fufu. "Don't you dare join any parades," she said. "We barely have enough sense to keep the goat fed."
Fufu caught the yam with the grace of someone who'd been catching thrown root vegetable his entire life. He bit into it and chewed, thinking. If this is a show, maybe it's a chance. If it's a market, maybe it's a danger. If it's a gamble… maybe the town could use the coin.
He looked down at Nosa, who was already scribbling a small ledger in the margins of the Pain-Bible's wrapper—new name, new debt, new hope.
"Tomorrow," Fufu said at last, shaving the yam with his teeth, "we find out what they mean by 'endurance.' For now, let's feed the goat."
The goat bleated in polite indignation, the town laughed, and the Pain-Bible sat on the lectern like a cat ready to pounce on the next surprising mouse.