Daughter of the Thunder Drum

In the kingdom of Oke Ijin, the morning is announced by drums.

Ayo Oladele woke before the first one, in the grey hour when the cocks were still thinking about it. She lay on her mat in the back room of her father's house and listened to the village waking: the slap of bare feet on red earth, the clink of a water pot, an old woman coughing and cursing in two languages. Beyond the mud wall, past the baobab, the hills rolled away blue and sleeping.

She was seventeen. She had dreamed of lightning again.

She slipped out through the back door with her bare feet silent on the packed floor, and went to the one place in the world where she felt entirely herself: the drum shed.

It was a low thatched hut behind her father's compound. Inside, hanging from the rafters on leather cords, were forty-one drums. Dundun, gangan, bata, igbin. Round-bellied, hourglass, long-necked. Her father, Baba Oladele, was the finest drum-maker in three provinces. He sold to chiefs and to kings. He sang over every skin as he stretched it.