He had land now—wide, green, breathing—but land without people is just dirt. He had a cockerel that had scratched the world into being, a talking charm that never shut up, and Esu—who had already started rearranging river courses just to see if fish would notice.
The first humans—sixteen pairs—stood in the clearing under the iroko, blinking at the sun, touching grass, tasting air, looking at each other with the kind of confusion that comes before language.
