“Akwaaba,” he said. “You are welcome here.”

They were taken to the new king’s large palace, where the servants had prepared a room at the corner of the structure. Kofi sat with them while they ate the welcome food and updated them on what had passed in the town since they had left their own village.

“I’m sorry, sister, but we could not wait so long to bury him,” Kofi said, and Nana Yaa nodded. She had known that the body would be buried before they got there so that the new king could take office. She had only wanted to make it to the funeral.

“And Osei Yaw?” she asked. Everyone was worried about the new king. Because they were at war, they had had to choose him quickly, just after the burial of James’s grandfather, and no one knew whether or not this would be bad luck for the people and the war that they were fighting.

“He is doing a fine job as Asantehene,” Kofi said. “Don’t worry, little sister. He will make sure our father is honored as he should be honored.”

As his uncle spoke, James noticed that Kofi paid no attention to his father. His eyes never once reached Quey’s eyes, not even when wandering. He was like the blind cat that moved through the dark forest solely on instinct, avoiding the logs and rocks that threatened it or had hurt it once before.

The funeral proceedings began the next day. Nana Yaa left the palace long before James and the other men were awake so that she could join with the women of the family in mournful wailing, wailing that announced to everyone in the town that the celebration day had indeed arrived. By noon, these women were dressed in their red cloths, nyanya leaves and raffia braided about their clay-stained foreheads as they walked up and down the streets, wailing for all the townspeople to hear.

In the meantime, James, his father, and all of the other men put on their black and red mourning cloths. There was a line of drummers that began at one corner of the Royal Palace and ended at the other. They would drum until dawn. The men began chanting, then dancing the Kete, the Adowa, the Dansuomu. They would dance until dawn.

The dead king’s family sat in a row so that they could be greeted by all the mourners as they came in. A single-file line of people began at James’s grandfather’s first wife and went all the way into the middle of the town square. Everyone in line shook the hand of each family member, and offered their condolences. James stood next to his father. He tried to remember to keep his shoulders squared and to look each mourner directly in the eyes so that they knew he was a man whose blood was as important as they expected it to be. They shook his hand and murmured their sorries, and James accepted, even though he had never lived in Asanteland and had known his grandfather only as a person knows his shadow, as a figure that is there, visible but untouchable, unknowable.

By the time the last of the mourners were coming through, the sun was at its highest point in the sky. James reached up briefly to wipe sweat out of his eyes, and once he had, he opened them to the loveliest girl he had ever seen.

“May the old king find peace in the land of the spirits,” the girl said, but she did not reach for his hand.

“What’s this?” James asked. “You do not shake?”

“Respectfully, I will not shake the hand of a slaver,” she said. She looked him in the eye as she spoke, and James studied her face. Her hair was worn in a puff at the top of her head and her words had whistled through a gap between her front teeth. Though her mourning cloth was wrapped tightly, it had slid a little low so that James could just make out the tops of her breasts. He should have slapped her for her insolence, reported her, but the line continued on behind her and the funeral had to continue too. James let her move on, tried to watch her as she continued down the line, but before long he lost her in the crowd.

He lost her, but he could not forget her, even as the line moved on and the rest of the people came by to shake his hand. James was by turns annoyed and ashamed by what she had said. Did she shake his father’s hand? His uncle’s? Who was she to decide what a slaver was? James had spent his whole life listening to his parents argue about who was better, Asante or Fante, but the matter could never come down to slaves. The Asante had power from capturing slaves. The Fante had protection from trading them. If the girl could not shake his hand, then surely she could never touch her own.

—

They finally laid Osei Bonsu, the old king, to rest. The gong was rung to let the townspeople know that it was done, that they could all return to their normal lives. It would not be over for the family members for another forty days. For another forty days, they would wear the mourning clothes, sort through and divide the gifts, and worry over the king’s successor.

James’s parents would be leaving within the next couple of days, and James knew that he didn’t have much time to find the girl who had refused to shake his hand.

He went to his cousin Kwame. Kwame was approaching twenty years old and had already married twice. He was a fat, dark man who spoke loudly and drank often, but he was kind and loyal. James and his family had visited once when James was only seven. He and Kwame had been playing in their grandfather’s Golden Stool room, a room men had been killed for entering uninvited, a room that had been expressly forbidden to them. While playing, James had knocked over one of their grandfather’s canes. In one of those coincidences that could only be attributed to evil spirits, the cane had landed in the palm oil lamp, catching fire, and the two boys had worked quickly to put it out. Smelling the fire, the whole family had come to see what was going on.

“Who is responsible for this?” their grandfather shouted. He had been the Asante king so long that his voice seemed no longer human, more like the roar of a lion.

James had looked down immediately, expecting Kwame to tell on him. He was the outsider, only in town once every few years. Kwame was the one who had to live there, with their lion of a grandfather and his quick, powerful rage. But Kwame had said nothing. Even as their mothers laid them across their laps and beat them in unison, Kwame still had said nothing.

“Kwame, I need to find a girl,” James said.

“Eh, cousin, you have come to the right place,” Kwame said, laughing loudly. “I know every girl who walks this town. Describe her to me.”

So James did, and when he finished, his cousin told him who she was and where he could find her. James went out into the town he barely knew, looking for the girl he’d met but once. He knew his cousin would keep his secret for him.

When James found her, she was carrying water in a bucket on the top of her head, heading back toward her family’s hut.

She did not seem surprised to see him, and he was confident that whatever he’d felt during their brief time together, she had felt too.

“Can I help you with that?” James asked, pointing to the bucket.

She shook her head, horrified. “No, please. You shouldn’t be doing this kind of work.”

“Call me James.”

“James,” she repeated, rolling the strange name around in her mouth, tasting it as though it were bitter melon hitting the back of her tongue. “James.”

“And you are?”

“Akosua Mensah,” she said. The two kept walking. The few townspeople who recognized James stopped to bow or stare, but mostly people went about their daily lives, fetching water and carrying wood back for their fires.

It was a ten-mile walk from the stream to Akosua’s hut in the bush on the outskirts of town, and James was determined to learn everything there was to know about her.

“Why would you not shake my hand at the king’s funeral?” James asked.

“I told you. I will not shake the hand of a Fante slaver.”