What the Earth Claimed
The Tale of Mshousa
A Gothic African Folktale
Do not speak his name too loudly after dark.
The soil here has a long memory for betrayal.
The soil here has a long memory for betrayal.
Mshousa’s life was not one of lack, but of deep-rooted covenant.
His hut stood where his great-grandmother drew her first breath.
The earth knew his lineage.
But in his heart a worm of discontent began to feed.
He did not want more.
He wanted other.
He wanted to be unbound from the red earth that held his history.
The stranger came in the stagnant hour between midnight and dawn —
a space where firelight did not fall.
He had no shadow of his own.
He smelled of turned earth and cold metal.
“The world beyond these hills has forgotten the weight of roots,” he whispered.
“Come. Be weightless. Be new.”
And Mshousa went.
As he crossed the boundary he felt a snap —
a silent tearing deep in his soul.
The land, which had once cradled his footsteps, now felt cold beneath his feet.
He had not sold his soul.
He had traded the land’s memory of him.
In the city of glass and false light, Mshousa thrived.
But at night he noticed the emptiness.
On sun-baked streets he cast no shadow.
His reflection was complete — yet the ground refused to acknowledge him.
Back home, the consequences took root slowly, horribly.
The well turned black and thick as blood.
Crops grew twisted, fruit hollow and filled with ashen dust.
The land was not punishing him —
it was forgetting him, and in forgetting, undoing all he had been part of.
When the city’s glitter turned to dross, Mshousa returned —
a hollow man seeking his echo.
His hut was gone.
There was no impression where it had stood.
The path to his door was now an impenetrable wall of thorns that wept dark sap.
His family’s faces held no recognition —
only vague unease, as if looking at a half-remembered ghost.
Elder Durmga, eyes milky with the sight of things unseen, whispers to the children:
“On moonless nights you might see him — a man-shaped emptiness trying to press his form back into the world. He is not looking for forgiveness. He is trying to find a crack in the earth’s memory to slip back into.”
“On moonless nights you might see him — a man-shaped emptiness trying to press his form back into the world. He is not looking for forgiveness. He is trying to find a crack in the earth’s memory to slip back into.”
To be forgotten by the land
is a fate worse than death.
is a fate worse than death.
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