Nyame Hides the Stories in a Box

Before Anansi, there are no stories.

This is not a metaphor. The Akan people mean it literally: the stories that now belong to the human world were once locked away in the sky, in Nyame’s possession, kept in a box of carved wood in the god’s compound. Nyame had bought them from whoever had them before him — the stories are always bought and sold, never given freely, because their value is too great for gift-giving — and he had kept them because stories are power.

He who holds the stories holds the world’s interpretation of itself.

Nyame’s stories are called Anansesem now — spider stories — but this is the name they acquired after Anansi bought them. Before that, they had no name that humans could pronounce, because no human had ever seen them.

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Anansi climbs to the sky.

He is a spider, which means he can climb things that other creatures cannot: the vertical face of a cliff, the underside of a leaf in rain, the single strand of web that connects the top of one tree to the crown of another across an open space. He arrives at Nyame’s compound and announces that he wants to buy the stories.

Nyame’s courtiers laugh.

Great kings and powerful chiefs have come before Anansi with their gold and their slaves and their elaborate proposals, and Nyame has turned them all away. The price he sets is not a price he expects to be paid. It is a price he sets to end the conversation: bring me a swarm of hornets, a great python, and a leopard. Alive.

Anansi says: how much?

Nyame says: that is the price.

Anansi says: I will bring them.

He descends.

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He captures the hornets by logic.

He fills a gourd with water and goes to the tree where the hornets live, pouring water over himself as he walks, pouring water over the nest, calling out to the hornets: see, the rain has come, come shelter in my gourd which is hollow and dry. The hornets, following their nature, pour into the gourd looking for shelter from the rain that Anansi has manufactured for them. He seals the gourd. He carries it to his bag.

He captures the python by flattery.

He finds a long branch, almost as long as the python is long, and walks past the python’s resting place arguing loudly with someone who is not there: I say the python is longer than this branch; my wife says the branch is longer; we have disagreed so badly that I have come here to measure. The python, vain as all large creatures are vain, insists on being measured. He stretches himself out next to the branch to demonstrate his superior length. Anansi ties him to the branch as he measures. He carries the branch-and-python to his bag.

He captures the leopard by patience.

He digs a pit, covers it with brush, and waits. The leopard falls in. He offers the leopard a ladder to climb out, and as the leopard climbs, he throws a net. He carries the net-and-leopard to his bag.

Then he climbs back to the sky.

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Nyame is not surprised.

When Anansi sets the three things before him — the gourd of hornets, the branch-and-python, the net-and-leopard — Nyame looks at them for a long time. He looks at the spider who is smaller than any of the three captives, who has no weapons, who has nothing but the intelligence to identify and exploit the specific nature of each dangerous thing.

Nyame says: you have done what no king could do. The stories are yours.

Anansi takes the box. He descends to earth. He opens it.

The stories pour out into the world.

They spread the way spiders spread: on the wind, on water, through cracks in walls, across the vast landscape of the human world. Every story told anywhere after this moment is an Anansi story — Anansesem — because Anansi paid for it, because he went to the sky with nothing but his mind and came back with everything.

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The box is still open.

Every new story told in the human world is another spider crawling out of the box that Anansi brought down from Nyame’s compound. The teller does not need to attribute the story to Anansi — the attribution is already in the structure. Every story that moves from one person to another, that captures attention the way Anansi’s gourd captured the hornets (by creating the conditions the listener is already looking for), that binds itself to memory the way Anansi bound the python to the branch — that story is using the technique that Anansi invented.

The hornets were captured by appealing to their nature. The python was captured by appealing to his vanity. The leopard was captured by patience.

The audience is captured the same way.

You are already in Anansi’s bag.

You have been since Nyame opened the box and said: the stories are yours.