Chapter Nine: The Wild Places

Balarabe walked until his legs burned and the dust of Danja had been scoured from his sandals by the rougher, rocky earth. He walked not with a destination in mind, but with the desperate need to escape the crushing weight of his father’s authority and the memory of Rukayya’s final, damning word: “Obedience was.”

He was walking toward the Dajin Gida, the wild, unsettled forest that lay beyond the familiar farmlands, a place where the rules of the village did not apply, where the rhythm was set by the rains and the sun. . .