The Mind of a Hero is an interesting historical fiction written by Chinonso Aguzie, the latest Author Ambassador of Sarefat Vision Publishing and NowNowbooks.
This is a small taste of this interesting works of fiction by this exciting author. Please read the first chapter free of charge.
Note: In case you want to read the full novel or take advantage of the introductory price, please visit our online bookstore now to buy your copy
Or call NowNowbooks hot line or Whatsapp 08034300979
Chapter 1
1880s (Dry Season)
Jideofor was a notorious man who lived in a cave almost on the outskirts of the village of Umumbara. He was infamous, and that was based on his powerful charms and medicines. In the cave, he lived in isolation as though he had been ostracized from the rest of the villagers. And that was after he murdered Ijezie, and wiped his bloody machete on Ijezie’s corpse, because he thought that Ijezie had a hand in his father’s death.
It was on a lonely evening, Jideofor ambushed him on his way from taping his palm wine and pleaded to have a taste of his fresh palm wine. But when Ijezie bent to pour some wine for him, Jideofor’s machete descended like lightning, and within a flash, Ijezie’s head went off his neck while his lifeless body fell apart like a log of wood. Scared of what might happen to him,
Jideofor fled to Arochukwu that evening and never returned to Umumbara after many years. Now that he was back, he had cleverly garnered some strong men who helped him in his activities. Many people in Umumbara desired him. Among those people were the evil men, and his fellow sorcerers who mostly looked up to him for potent evil medicines and charms.
But most people in Umumbara knew that Jideofor had polluted the land ever since his father died. Jideofor being the only son of his father had inherited a great knowledge of herbs and leaves, and this had placed him on a pedestal above other herbalists s and medicine men in Umumbara. But anyone who took a closer look at Jideofor would know how he had deviated from what his late father lived for.
Uzomba was the name of his father, a great man, and also the chief priest of Ogwugwu during his lifetime. He was a great herbalist. No one with any kind of disease ever visited Uzomba and still remained the same. But he was not a sorcerer.
The people loved him because of his selfless and devoted services to the people and to the gods. “As a man, you have only two ultimate obligations and purposes to fulfill as long as you are alive,” he always said to Jideofor. “Remember to treat your fellow men the same way you would like to be treated, and secondly, develop a total devotion to your personal gods and your ancestors. Worship them the same way you would like to be worshipped when you finally join them.”
Uzomba was a very skilful orator who knew how to use words to be pleasant to the ears. His words were always like the early morning spring water, especially when he had wisely blended them with his proverbs. During those days, Jideofor had always complained about his father’s excessive usage of proverbs, but his father had merely told him that he had been addicted to them.
The Mimt of a Hero, Part! Although his father had told him that ‘proverbs were like palm oil with which he uses in eating words’, yet, the young Jideofor always wondered how someone could eat words. But truly, just as salt and palm oil are inseparable, so was Uzomba’s addiction to proverbs.
So Jideofor knew his father was really possessed by the spirits of the proverbs. Uzomba was average in height and with a well-built body. He had a hairy face with thick beards below his wide jaw, and up to his cheeks. The beards slightly gave him a stern look of exceptional masculinity, but what the people adored most in him was his eloquence. Uzomba always had a unique way of doing things which almost unusually separated him from the pack of other native men. He had a slightly different way of tying up his wrapper.
So, while most men preferred to have their piece of wrappers simply fastened round their waists, and float down their kneels with naked upper bodies, Uzomba always had his own wrapper knot at his top left shoulder, covering only one side of his hairy chest, as it crossed down below his kneels. However, during the days of Uzomba, Jideofor never seemed to understand those words of his father.
Many people did visit his father with different infirmities. Then Jideofor, just eleven, had been familiar with different herbs and leaves and their uses. He often followed his father around, helping him in carrying his medicine bag whenever they visited a neighbouring village.
Anytime they were not on tour, he would be the one running around the corners, bringing together the sacred calabash and bowels pouring water and mixing them, and then crushing the herbs and leaves and other components as prescribed by his father. Soon the mixture would be turned into a strong concoction to serve as a medicine for a particular patient.
Uzomba knew son was a gifted child and a fast leamer because, without the help of his father, Jideofor could cure a cobra-bitten patient tuberculosis and iba. “Go and look for ohilu leaf,” Jideofor said to his close friend, Ndukwe, who complained of feeling weak. “Cook it and drink it. If it continues, let me know.” He told Ndukwe while they were playing at Amaukwu playground. Amaukwu was the general playground and the centre of the clan of Umumbara, but it seemed to be closer to the village people of Umuokoro where Jideofor came from.
So that was the favourite place where Jideofor and his friend always met almost every evening when everyone was back from the farm. It was a wide sandy ground where all the rituals and ceremonial activities of the clan were carried out. There was a tall huge udara tree in the middle of Amaukwu where some of its fruits always got broken whenever they fell on some parts of the hardened earth.
Jideofor never liked to miss the evening gathering in Amaukwu, especially with Ndukwe whom he always liked to play with. He had been so much attached to him more than the other boys in the village. The bond between Ndukwe and Jideofor grew stronger every day because of the interesting stories Ndukwe used to tell him.
Ndukwe knew how to tell good folktales that Jideofor enjoyed, especially whenever they met in the moonlight, shortly after twilight. Most times, Jideofor wondered how Ndukwe was able to know so many old stories than most of the young people he knew. So one day, he decided to ask how it was possible that he could tell many different folktales each day without repetition. “My grandmother was a great storyteller,” Ndukwe answered. “She lived all her life telling stories to us before she died,” he paused for a while, and watched as Jideofor shook his head sympathetically. “Even in her sick bed, she never ceased entertaining us with good folktales,” Ndukwe said.
There was a brief silence between them. “I wish she was still alive today,” Jideofor replied finally. By that time in the evening when most women must have finished cooking, the young Jideofor would be right near the foot of the udara tree, waiting for Ndukwe, his friend to come out. The udara tree which was situated at the immediate centre of the wide brown sandy ground of Amaukwu was the sweetest of all in Umumbara.
Its oval shape and the succulent bright scarlet-like colour were what made it unique, so the people called it nwannu. It had borne that name for ages, and no one could tell who named it, but it was rather unconsciously passed down to every generation. The people had a great respect for udara tree. It was often believed that spirits lived at its top. And so no one dared to climb the udara tree.
Ndukwe often came out with a bunch of sliced roasted oil- bean seed and dried fish mixed with sauce, which had been prepared by his mother. He would sneak out to eat it together with his friend, Jideofor Jideofor enjoyed the treatment but it always huminded him of his own late mother whom he never knew. The friggered strong feelings of how this love which he never had His father had once told hier erose his mother died while giving birth to him.
So Jideofor never saw the face of his mother. His growing up had been more of loneliness and motherlessness, but he knew that he who has good people is better than he who has money. Even now that he was a man, Jideofor understood that he could not change the past. That was many years ago. Now Jideofor was a man and had discovered and chosen his path. He did not live among his people anymore.
He lived in a cave, far from the village settlement. He had deviated from the right ways of his late father and of the gods. Now, he was like a mighty masquerade, chasing everyone with a sharp machete. including his rope restrainers. After the death of his father, Jideofor left Umumbara for an unknown land. And for many years, he never returned. Some people thought he was dead, so most of his father’s inheritance was shattered among his kinsmen during his long absence, because an ‘absent man always returns to find his own piece of yam behind the dying embers’. He forgot that ‘it is only when you value your thing and strongly call it yours, that it will be yours’.
Even though he had a big dream of succeeding his late father as the chief priest of Ogwugwu, Jideofor had left it all behind during his long journey. And now that he was back in his father’s land, he still understood that becoming the chief priest was a crown he desired so much. And he had made up his mind to fight for it to the latter, even when he forgot that it was only the gods at home who served them. Upon his return to Umumbara, no one knew Jideofor’s intentions. People only hoped he would begin where his late father stopped in the path of herbs and medicines late unfortunately, it was only a misconception because the people never knew that he only desired to succeed his late father as the chief priest of Ogwugwu, and never really cared about herbs and medicines as his father did.
Upon his return, it was only the few wise men in Umumbara who knew that there must be an ulterior motive for a man who had despised his kinsmen and preferred living all alone in the caves. But the people’s ears were wide open because, ‘no one knows the intentions of a woman who pounds foo-foo with a bag hung across her back’.
Gain access to The Mind of a Hero today
Note: In case you want to read the full novel or take advantage of the introductory price, please visit our online bookstore now to buy your copy
Or call NowNowbooks hot line or Whatsapp 08034300979
