The green snake slithered towards Olaudah’s brown toes. Then before the boy’s horrified eyes could blink, it had passed between his feet, crossed the sandy track and merged with the grass.

‘Spared!’ he shuddered, clutching his shrinking stomach through his long blue wrapping cloth. ‘P-p-praise be to Chukwu, Creator of us all!’

‘Merciful Chukwu!’ screamed the plump girl, who was running to catch up with this skinny little boy. She was in a blue cloth, too. ‘I, Chika, thank You for saving my dear young brother, Olaudah Equiano.’

‘Merciful Chukwu!’ echoed the six big boys, who had been singing their hateful jeering-songs at him all the way along the homeward track, and at whom Chika had stopped to sing her own special ones. These fellows were also in blue.

A bent old man was hobbling towards them from the direction of the village. He was thin and bald, with a goat-beard as white as his wrapping, but despite his age, his eyes were still sharp and had seen what had happened.

‘Praise be!’ he croaked, as he drew near. ‘I, Ebenebe, the oldest and wisest Ah-afo-way-ka in the five villages of Essaka, tell you, Olaudah, that this is an omen from Almighty Chukwu, God of Gods. He is telling you that your personal god, your chi, is a good one. You are truly well-named, my pretty little big-eyed child: Olaudah, meaning “The Favoured One”. Yea, Chukwu will favour you in all your doings, child, in all your doings...’

The boys were jostling round Olaudah. Fighting back the infuriating tears, he blinked up into these gaping eyes and mouths.

‘In truth,’ he told himself, ‘these big, bullying brutes just cannot believe that I, a quivering little mouse, cursed with a face far prettier than Chika’s, could possibly be favoured with a good chi.’

He frantically creased this twitching face into a smile, his favourite trick. He was determined not to show that the youngest son of Chief Obuechina Equiano was scared of these jealous sons of palm wine tappers. They were jealous because their own fathers’ foreheads did not bear the long, thick ichi scar, distinguishing the Mgburichi (Embreechi), the titled ones, from ordinary men. They were jealous, too, because they knew that even this ‘mouse’ was destined to bear the mark: when he was strong enough to endure the agonizing cutting operation. Yes, Equiano was a noble name indeed and one which Olaudah had vowed never to soil. So, though perhaps he was the most timid ten-rains-old boy that the Five Villages had ever bred, rot these apes if he would admit it! Nne (Mother) had told him not to mind their pretty girl and Olaudah the Mouse taunts, because one day he would grow into a warrior far better-looking than any of them. It was Nne who had said that they were jealous of his being a chief’s son, and jealous, too, of his new blue cloth, when theirs were so pitifully faded.

Rot them if he would admit to being scared! Thrusting out chin and chest, he reached up and clapped one thin hand on his sister’s still-shuddering shoulder and, with the other, proceeded to shove a way through this bunch of gaping apes. Then, arm in arm and heads high, brother and sister continued on their way home to Nne. They would be late for supper if they did not hurry.