THE WOMAN OF RED LEAVES

Chapter One – The Lonely Farmer Dele was thirty-two years old, though his face often betrayed a youthfulness that belied the hard years he had known. The people of Manbala often said his eyes carried a softness unusual for a man who had lived most of his life with a hoe in one hand and hunger in the other. But Dele had always been different. Born an orphan, raised partly by the soil and partly by the kindness of old neighbors who gave him scraps when he was small, he had grown into a man of quiet dignity. He owned nothing but a mud house standing at the very edge of the village, a few goats, and the lean farm he tilled from dawn till sunset.His neighbors sometimes pitied him. Sometimes they admired him. But most often, they simply forgot he existed. Dele was like the lonely yam mound on the outskirts of the farm—seen, but not truly regarded. Yet, he never complained. He carried life as though it was a gift, even when it came wrapped in hardship.Every morning, he woke before the roosters of Manbala crowed, bathed quickly at the clay pot behind his hut, and set off to the farm with his cutlass and hoe. He loved the soil with a devotion some men reserved for their wives. He whispered to the seedlings, coaxed them to rise, and smiled at the first signs of green whenever the rains blessed the earth.Still, when evening came and other men returned to warm laughter in crowded compounds, Dele returned to silence. His only companions were the crickets, the moon, and the distant drums of festivals he never joined. Loneliness was his shadow, and though he bore it bravely, it carved unseen hollows in his heart.The elders often teased him gently: “Dele, you are handsome, tall, and strong. Why not take a wife?” He would only smile, a little sadly. For who would he marry? He had no family to negotiate a bride price, no riches to tempt a maiden, no powerful lineage to assure her parents. He knew the truth: the beauty of a man without wealth was like the fragrance of a flower at midnight—sweet, but unseen.Yet, desire stirred in him as it did in all men. On some nights, when the moon was heavy and the wind carried the faint perfume of the forest, he would lie awake and imagine the warmth of a woman beside him. He would imagine fingers softer than yam leaves touching his rough hands, lips pressed against his ear, and a voice calling his name with tenderness. Such imaginings left him restless, caught between shame and longing.It was in such a season of longing that the journey into the deep forest began.That morning, Dele had risen with the first call of the bushfowl. The rains had ended, and the air was crisp with the promise of hunting. He took his bow, his knife, and a small gourd of water, for he had heard of antelopes wandering deeper than usual. Hunting was rare for him, but he needed more than yams and cassava. Meat was strength, and strength was survival.The path into the forest thickened quickly, the familiar farmland giving way to wild trees that whispered secrets above his head. Sunlight streamed through the canopy in broken rays, dappling the earth with light like scattered gold. Birds sang invisible songs, and monkeys barked in the distance. Dele felt both small and alive among such majesty.Hours passed as he tracked hoof prints through the underbrush, though no antelope revealed itself. His legs ached, yet something urged him further, deeper into the heart of the forest where few from Manbala dared to wander.Then, suddenly, he saw it.A tree.Not just any tree, but one unlike any he had known in all his thirty-two years. Its bark was pure white, gleaming like polished ivory, and its branches stretched wide as though embracing the sky itself. But what caught Dele’s breath were the leaves. They were not green, as every leaf ought to be. They were red—red as the heart of fire, red as the lips of a maiden, red as the sun when it bled into the horizon at dusk. The wind moved through them gently, and they swayed not like ordinary leaves, but like strands of a woman’s hair, alive, beckoning, soft.Dele dropped his bow. His chest rose and fell as he stared. For a long while, he could not move. The forest seemed to grow silent around him, as though every bird, every insect, every beast had bowed in reverence to the strange wonder of this tree.Slowly, he stepped closer. His heart pounded. His palms sweated. He reached out, almost trembling, to touch one of the leaves, but stopped himself. Some fear, ancient and wordless, warned him not to.Instead, he whispered. To himself. To the tree. To the aching hollow of his soul.“If only…” His voice broke, and he swallowed. “If only you were a woman. You would be so beautiful. You would be the one to stay with me, to sit by my fire, to laugh with me when night falls.”The leaves rustled, as if they had heard. A sudden gust of wind blew, and they shimmered like flames caught in a dance. Dele closed his eyes for a moment afraid of the yearning swelling in him. When he opened them, he felt tears prick the corners of his eyes. He stepped back, ashamed. What madness was this? To speak to a tree, to desire it like a man desires a maiden? He rubbed his face and let out a long sigh. “Loneliness has turned my heart into a fool,” he muttered. Yet even as he turned to leave, he felt it—that strange pull, that promise of something more than wood and leaf. Something alive. Something waiting. He shook his head and walked away, but the image of the white tree with red, hair-like leaves followed him. It lodged in his chest like an arrow, pulsing with every heartbeat. That night, as he lay alone in his hut, he dreamed. In the dream, the red leaves fell one by one, not as leaves but as strands of hair. They wrapped around him gently, and from the tree’s trunk emerged the outline of a woman—soft, radiant, her eyes deep as the heavens. She reached out to him, and for the first time in his life, Dele felt the warmth of a woman’s embrace. He woke with a start, sweating, his chest heaving, his lips whispering a name he did not know he had spoken. The forest had given him a vision. And his life would never be the same again.