Adukeh stroked her smooth chin in imitation of Gray-Beard, and then shifted, rolling her shoulders like a wolf on the prowl.

“This very night, she comes: Old Age, with her mane as white as coconut, scratching her claws—krit, krit—on the walls of Gray-Beard’s house. He does not run, our Gray-Beard. No, he kneels at her paws and bows his ancient head. He says, ‘I am ready.’

“This pleases the Warlord’s beast. So she allows him to take one item with him: his favorite drum. Then Old Age smites Gray-Beard with her chilling breath—saa, saa—and takes him to a forest deep in the Underworld, where animals unlike you or I have ever seen live.

“‘Select a companion,’ Old Age tells him. ‘For beyond this forest lies the path to Core: the paradise that gives rest to all souls. But for every step of your journey, you will feel any pain that you caused on earth.’ Then Old Age vanishes. A black dog, tall and fat as a harvest cow, comes to Gray-Beard: Aja, the first emi-ehran. Faithful Aja! Hear it pound its massive tail—khoum, khoum—to embolden Gray-Beard’s soul. Together, they descend into Core.”

Adukeh played an interlude on her drum and danced, swaying her hips and stepping rhythmically on the balls of her feet.

“This is the part you will not like. You will want to run me, an honest griot, out of town. You will throw rocks and say, ‘Ah-ah, you are trying to scare us! It isn’t true!’ But I swear on the hide of this drum: I will someday walk that painful path to Core, and so will you.

“Aieeee! Hear Gray-Beard shout! His body aches. His cheeks sting from the blows he rained down on his siblings as a quarrelsome young boy. He doubles over. He jerks, as if he has sprouted invisible wings, now bruised and broken: the death of birds he once struck down for sport.

“‘If these are the crimes of my childhood,’ sobs Gray-Beard, ‘how will I endure the wrongs I committed as a man?’

“He falls to his knees. The pain is bad, bad now. He feels the shame of the peasant who swept his front step, teased and spat upon by Gray-Beard’s children. He feels the thirst, the hunger of the poor who toiled in his mills, and mined his quarries.”

The crowd’s foreboding hum grows louder—these lines of Egungun’s story were new, clearly added by Adukeh.

“Gray-Beard flees from the path,” says Adukeh, “away from Core! He beckons to Aja—‘Come with me, my faithful friend!’ But the emi-ehran stays put, staring with sad eyes at the path. Aja’s message is clear: I am your companion for this journey only. So Gray-Beard wanders the Underworld for seventy days,” Adukeh intoned. “But the loneliness is too much for him to bear. So he returns to that harrowing path! Aja nuzzles his face—gurunun, gurunun—and they walk on.

“The journey to Core can take years, or no time at all. It depends, you see, on all the pain that you have caused out of malice or neglect. But Gray-Beard is very old, and so the path stretches on for miles. He would go mad, I think, if not for the love of Aja, and the boon of his drum.