He smiled. "I've had much practice, but I was first taught by my father, years ago in Ife."
The drawing was already done. He examined it a moment, approved it, and laid aside the bag of white powder. She picked it up and took a pinch to her lips. It had the tangy bitterness of cassava flour.
"Now I'll prepare a candle for Shango." He rummaged through the pile. "But in a way it's for you too, so I'll find a pure white one, not a bidding candle."
"What do you mean, 'for me too'?"
He seemed not to hear as he lit the taper and placed it beside the symbol. Next he extracted a white kerchief from his waistband and turned to her. "I've brought something for you. A gift. Here, let me tie it." He paused to caress her, his fingertips against her cinnamon skin, then he lovingly pulled the kerchief around her head. He lifted up her long hair, still wet from the rain, and carefully coiled it under the white cloth. Finally he knotted it on top, African style. "Tonight you may discover you truly are a Yoruba woman, so it is well that you look like one."
Abruptly, above the patter of rain, came the sound of footfalls in the mud outside. She glanced around and through the dark saw the silhouettes of the Yoruba men from the slave quarters. The first three carried long bundles swathed in heavy brown wraps to protect them from the rain.
They entered single file and nodded in silence to Atiba before gathering around the diagrams on the floor to bow in reverence. After a moment, the men carrying the bundles moved to a clear space beside the mill and began to unwrap them. As the covering fell away, the fresh goatskin tops of three new drums sparkled white in the candlelight.
She watched the drummers settle into position, each nestling an instrument beneath his left arm, a curved wooden mallet in his right hand. From somewhere in her past there rose up an identical scene, years ago in Brazil, when all the Yoruba, men and women, had gathered to dance. Then as now there were three hourglass-shaped instruments, all held horizontally under the drummer's arm as they were played. The largest, the iya ilu, was almost three feet long and was held up by a wide shoulder strap, just as this one was tonight. The other two, the bata and the go-go, were progressively smaller, and neither was heavy enough to require a supporting strap.
The man holding the iya ilu tonight was Obewole, his weathered coffee face rendered darker still by the contrast of a short grey beard. His muscles were conditioned by decades of swinging a long iron sword; in the fields he could wield a cane machete as powerfully as any young warrior. He shifted the shoulder strap one last time, then held out the mallet in readiness and looked toward Atiba for a signal to begin.
When Atiba gave a nod, a powerful drum roll sounded above the roar of the gale. Then Obewole began to talk with the drum, a deep-toned invocation to the ceremonial high gods of the Yoruba pantheon, Eleggua and Olorun.