All stories (c) Remo Kurka 2025
Episode IV – “The Fire in the Trees”
Aputai, hunted by the king’s elite, escalates his guerrilla war.
Kofi is asked to take part in diplomacy… but begins to question the future of Asante entirely.Meanwhile, rumors rise: Osei Bonsu’s health is failing.
Historical Fiction Narrative | Arc II: Ashes and Embassies | 1821–1823
The death of Kojo Bediako has shaken the Ashanti court. His voice of caution is gone.
King Osei Bonsu grows increasingly withdrawn and ill.
The ghost of the forest — Aputai — burns brighter than ever,
his guerilla war flaring across Assin and Fante lands.
And now, the question rises in the palace:
Can a kingdom be kept whole by treaties, while its wounds still bleed?
Kofi – Former warrior turned court tutor, pulled back into affairs of state.
Prince Adu – Young, intelligent heir apparent.
King Osei Bonsu – Elder ruler, increasingly sick.
Aputai – Rebel leader. Elusive, obsessed with vengeance.
Senyo – Scout and informant, Kofi’s contact in the bush.
Captain Lyttleton – British governor, suspicious of Asante intentions.
Ama Baa – A Fante woman whose village was burned, forced into Aputai’s camp.
Assin Forestland, 1821
A line of smoke rises in the grey morning. Aputai's men — barefoot, lean, vicious — have struck again. This time, it’s not traders. It’s a royal tax envoy. Three mutilated bodies, dumped near a stream. The symbol carved again: a tree on fire.
Senyo (to Kofi):
“They strike at messengers now. They want to provoke the king.”
Kofi:
“They already have. The only question is — what kind of answer he gives.”
Kumasi Palace
Osei Bonsu lies in a woven hammock. His breaths are shallow. His once-proud eyes flicker. Kofi kneels by his side, summoned in haste.
Osei Bonsu (weakly):
“Did we… make peace? Or… pause the storm?”
Kofi (gently):
“Both, Majesty. But the storm waited for your silence.”
Osei Bonsu:
“Then you must speak. You must carry the drum.”
A cough overtakes him. He turns his head.
Osei Bonsu:
“Send word to Bowdich’s people. I will see no more red coats… but I will not die without knowing where they stand.”
Deep in the bush, Aputai’s hideout is growing. Refugees, outlaws, orphaned Fante youth—they come in ones and twos. Aputai gives them food. Weapons. A story.
He walks through the camp with Ama Baa, a once-captive now hardened into a tactician.
Aputai:
“They will offer gold for peace. But peace is the lie they hide their knives in.”
Ama Baa:
“And what do we offer? Fire?”
Aputai (flatly):
“Ash.The king took my honor. My brother. My village.
He’ll have no kingdom left to bury.”
Cape Coast Castle, Early 1822
British Governor Lyttleton receives word of the new violence. Traders are nervous. The African Company sends cautious instructions: avoid entanglement, but protect routes.
Lyttleton (to his clerk):
“Tell them it’s Asante business. Not ours.
Let the fire eat itself.”
But one report grabs his eye:
“Prince Adu rumored to be visiting southern districts with emissary named Kofi…”
Lyttleton (muttering):
“They're preparing the boy. And maybe a war.”
Mid-1822
Against his own instincts, Kofi travels south again — not with soldiers, but with Senyo and a small escort. Their goal: find Ama Baa, rumored to be the only voice Aputai listens to.
In a ruined village, they find her waiting.
Ama Baa:
“I remember you. Kumasi soldier. Now you wear a scholar’s voice.”
Kofi:
“And you wear rebellion like a necklace.”
Ama Baa (coldly):
“We both wear what the king made us.”
She agrees to send word to Aputai — but warns:
“He will come. But not to speak.
Only to judge if your blood is still worth spilling.”
A full moon. The edge of the Birim River.
Kofi and Aputai meet once again, under shadowed trees, watched by hidden archers.
Kofi:
“I did not come to beg. I came to ask: what is your end?”
Aputai:
“There is no end. Only payment.”
Kofi:
“Kojo Bediako is dead. The king is dying. Your war is a mirror — you strike it, and only see yourself.”
Aputai:
“Then I will break the mirror. Let the next king rise from ash.”
He vanishes before dawn. Leaves only a sign carved into a tree: “Not Finished.”
Late 1823. In Kumasi, King Osei Bonsu dies. The court is flooded with mourning — and fear.
Prince Adu, only just old enough, is poised to inherit. But the kingdom is frayed at the edges.
Kofi watches it all from a stone balcony. Below, the black cloth of mourning ripples in wind.
Kofi (to Senyo):
“We may survive this. But only if we remember what the drums meant before we beat them for war.”
Senyo:
“And if we don’t?”
Kofi:
“Then the forest will answer.”
A Historical Fiction Narrative | Arc II | Set in 1807 to 1824, Kumasi and Beyond
Kofi – Veteran, now senior court advisor and chronicler of the king’s final years. Haunted but focused.
Prince Adu (now King Osei Yaw Akoto) – Young heir, shaped by war and whispers, learning the dangers of power.
Aputai – Aging rebel leader, increasingly mythic, increasingly unhinged.
Ama Baa – Rebel tactician with a growing following of her own.
Captain Lyttleton (replaced) – British governor, gone.
Charles MacCarthy – New British governor at Cape Coast, disciplined, idealistic, and unnervingly ambitious.
Elders of the Asante Court – Growing anxious at foreign influence and internal disorder.
Cape Coast Castle – 1818
A new man steps onto the stone battlements of Cape Coast Castle. Sir Charles MacCarthy, governor of the Gold Coast, arrives with a sharp jaw, deep-set eyes, and a polished military coat. His gaze is long.
MacCarthy (to his aide):
“This is not Torrane’s mess. We will not buy peace with betrayal.The Ashanti must learn they are not the masters of the coast.”
He reads intelligence reports:
Fante refugees still smoldering with resentment.
Traders fearing jungle ambushes.
And somewhere in the green north — whispers of Aputai.
MacCarthy:
“We’ll need to draw a line.
And a redcoat stands better than a treaty.”
Kumasi, early 1819
The capital swells. Merchants, war captains, and emissaries crowd the inner court. But behind the drums, silence grows — King Osei Bonsu is ill.
Kofi walks the palace gardens with the young prince.
Kofi:
“The British have changed. New governor. New tongue.”Prince Adu:
“Will he march?”Kofi:
“If he thinks we’ve grown weak… yes.”
Prince Adu falls silent. His gaze shifts toward the north hills — the last place Kojo Bediako stood.
Prince Adu:
“Then we must not let him think it.”
Near Assin – Spring 1819
In the high jungle, Aputai stands over another caravan ambush. Ashanti trade goods smolder in broken crates. A dead trader’s fingers are missing — a grim message.
But Aputai does not celebrate.
Ama Baa (quietly):
“They say your men are ghosts now. Even the trees fear you.”
Aputai (distant):
“They should.”
But Ama Baa looks uneasy. His fire burns too hot. Villagers fear him as much as they fear the king.
Kumasi – Late 1819
The day comes with low thunder and wind. The royal drums change rhythm. Slow. Final.
King Osei Bonsu is dead.
The palace erupts in ritual, fire, mourning cloth, and silence. The king who led them through fire and treaty now rests beneath the palace tree.
Kofi (narrating):
“And so the fire-tender was gone.He had outlived wars, rebellions, treaties, and betrayal.
But no man can outlive the weight of a kingdom.”
Prince Adu ascends as Osei Yaw Akoto.
Some rejoice.
Some plot.
Some remember the flame still moving in the trees.
Cape Coast Castle, late 1819
Governor MacCarthy watches the smoke from a funeral fire rise far inland. A letter from London rests on his desk.
MacCarthy (to himself):
“They think the lion is dead.Let’s see how the cub roars.”
He begins drawing a military map.
Arc III: The Gathering Storm
The Ashanti Empire holds—for now. But cracks form beneath the gold.
Osei Bonsu still lives, but the end approaches.
And with each moon, the fire of rebellion spreads deeper into the roots.*
Continues Here