The forest always woke before the sun.
Long before the first rays kissed the earth, the trees would groan in their age-old song, and the rustling leaves would hum like a lullaby turned inside out. Birds chirped in sleepy confusion. Crickets clicked warnings to each other. Somewhere in the distance, a baboon screamed its claim on the high branches.
This was not a forest that welcomed intruders.
This was a world with its own heartbeat. Its own rules.
And for the boy they called Bush Baby, this wildness was home.
Six years had passed since the night Baba Gani found the child beneath the Iroko tree.
He hadn't named him at first.
Names were sacred things to hunters. You didn't name a thing unless you planned to keep it. You didn't name a child unless you were willing to raise him like your own blood.
But by the time the boy took his first unsteady steps across the dusty compound, the hunter had begun calling him Chuka — a name meaning "God's will."
Not that the villagers cared.
To them, he was still Bush Baby. A child of the wild. A spirit maybe. A curse at worst. Whispers trailed him like shadows whenever Baba Gani brought him down to the village for salt or palm oil.
"He's not natural," they would mutter.
"No child lives in that bush and comes back normal."
"They say he doesn't cry. Did you ever hear him cry?"
But Chuka never fought back.
He heard.
He swallowed their words like bitter herbs.
And he trained.
Each morning before the sun fully rose, Baba Gani would wake him with a nudge of his wooden walking stick.
"No dreams today," he'd say. "Only sweat."
Their home was no mansion. Just a mud hut with a thatch roof, a broken stool, and a mat woven from raffia. But the forest around them — that was Chuka's school.
Where most boys learned alphabets, Chuka learned tracks.
Where others read books, he read wind direction, bird calls, and the weight of footsteps in the sand.
His school bell was the warble of the forest eagle.
His classmates were silence and pain.
His lessons were survival.
One morning, as the mist clung low to the grass, Baba Gani handed Chuka a bundle of firewood. Not a word. Just the look.
The boy understood.
Ten laps. Around the clearing. With the wood on his back.
And so he ran.
His bare feet slapped the earth.
Dust clung to his legs like second skin.
Mosquitoes swarmed his arms. Thorns bit at his ankles.
But he didn't stop.
Sweat poured down his back, darkening the old cloth tied around his waist. His breath came in sharp, shallow bursts. But he didn't slow down.
By the tenth lap, Baba Gani was no longer watching. He had gone inside to boil water. But Chuka kept running.
He ran an eleventh lap. Then a twelfth.
Not for the hunter. Not for praise.
For himself.
For the silence in his chest that screamed he wasn't enough yet.
That evening, as he pounded yam for their meal, Chuka spoke without looking up.
"Why did my real parents leave me?"
Baba Gani, seated on the mud floor and scraping dried fish with a blade, didn't respond immediately.
The fire cracked between them. Outside, the crickets had begun their nightly orchestra.
"They were hungry," the hunter finally said. "And the world does strange things to hungry people."
"Was I cursed?"
"No."
"Then why do they call me bush baby?"
"Because people are afraid of what they don't understand."
Chuka paused his pounding. Looked up.
"Do you understand me?"
Baba Gani met his eyes. Those same wide, curious eyes he'd found under the Iroko tree six years ago.
"I understand your silence."
The first time the villagers saw Chuka carry a full sack of yam on his back — alone — they stopped laughing.
It was market day in Odu town, and Baba Gani had injured his leg while setting traps in the forest. So Chuka volunteered to carry the goods down the five-mile path.
Nobody expected him to make it.
But he did.
Sweating. Breathing hard. But standing tall.
Even the village chief's son, Obinna, who was two years older and much heavier, couldn't believe his eyes.
"That boy's back is made of iroko," someone joked.
But the joke didn't land. Because deep down, they had seen something else.
Something in the way Chuka stood.
In the way he scanned the crowd, alert like a panther.
In the quiet fire burning behind his gaze.
The stigma didn't disappear overnight. But fear has a funny way of silencing ridicule.
One night, as thunder rolled like drums across the sky, Baba Gani handed Chuka a gift.
It was an old punching bag, made from dried goat hide and filled with sand.
"Use your strength," he said. "Don't just carry things. Learn to fight."
"Fight who?"
"Life."
So Chuka did.
With each punch, he let out years of silent pain.
Thump. For the mother who left him.
Thump. For the boys who mocked him.
Thump. For the questions that never had answers.
His fists bruised and bled. But he smiled through it.
Because for the first time in his life, he was making noise — a noise that didn't come from crying or screaming.
It came from power.
By age eleven, Chuka could outrun every boy in the nearby villages.
By twelve, he had knocked down Obinna in a play-fight that ended in a real black eye.
By thirteen, he was a myth.
They said he could climb trees faster than monkeys.
They said he once fought off a wild dog with only a stick.
They said Baba Gani was training him for something.
They weren't wrong.
One morning, while cleaning Baba Gani's hunting tools, Chuka asked:
"Why do you never go to the city?"
Baba Gani spat into the fire and chuckled.
"Because the bush taught me everything the city couldn't."
"But I want more," Chuka said, surprising himself with the confession.
The hunter looked at him.
"You'll get more. But first, you must become something."
"Become what?"
Baba Gani pointed to the punching bag.
"Unbreakable."
That night, Chuka stood alone under the Iroko tree — the same tree where his life had begun. The moon cast a silver circle around him, as if blessing the soil he stood on.
He didn't cry.
Didn't speak.
He only breathed.
And in that breath, there was strength.
A promise.
A rising.