FA Yuletide Writing Prize — Shortlisted Story
Theme: Dark Yuletide
Year: 2025/2026
Author: Nelson Precious Chinaturum

The Harmattan was less a wind and more a deliberate thief. It didn’t just steal moisture from the skin; in our sun-baked village of Dambatta, it stole sound, stole colour, stole the fat of joy, leaving behind a brittle, parchment silence that felt heavy with historical dread. Aisha pulled her cotton shawl tighter. The red dust of Christmas Eve, fine as flour, relentless as time, clung to the wool, not like a festive powder, but like a shroud. The marketplace, usually a riot of noise and neon adire fabrics bursting with Yuletide life, was unnervingly subdued. Stalls were folded early, their canopies drooping like weary flags. The usual back-and-forth banter of the cola nut sellers had been reduced to anxious, throat-clearing whispers. Even the sky, that perpetual canvas of Northern dust-haze, seemed too close, pressing down on the festive spirit until it was barely a flicker. 

She watched her grandmother, Mama Ladidi, stack firewood outside their compound, her movements slow, stiff with age, and something else… a deep-seated fear Aisha hadn’t witnessed since the great famine five years ago. 

“Mama, it’s just the dry season,” Aisha said, her voice sounding too loud, too sharp, too Lagos in the stillness. “It’s dry, yes, but it’s only wind. It won’t hurt us.” 

Mama Ladidi didn’t even glance up. Her face, etched with the memory of nearly eighty brutal seasons, remained focused on the wood. “It is not the wind, Aisha. It is what the wind carries.” She paused, her voice dropping to a low, chilling rasp, like gravel scraping stone. “It carries the Iku-Ebi (Death-by-Hunger). It smells the hope we keep hidden… the hope for the new harvest, the hope for rain… and it demands a feast, a ritual appeasement, to keep its hunger satisfied until the New Year.”

Aisha forced a smile, scoffing inwardly. “A feast? We have enough for a feast. The generator is fixed, thank God, and Uncle Sani has nearly finished roasting the goat. We will have a good, bright night.” 

Mama Ladidi finally fixed her with a hard stare. Her eyes, usually warm and comforting, were cold and fixed on the colossal wrought-iron lantern hanging over the market square… the lantern that, by tradition, was their symbolic sun, required to burn until dawn to keep the entity at bay. “The Iku-Ebi does not feast on goat meat, my child. It feasts on light.” 

Aisha hurried toward Uncle Sani’s smoke pit, a tremor of pure, sharp irritation now replacing her anxiety. Uncle Sani guarded his goat barbecue like a military post; he would never abandon it. But when she reached the circular pit, the irritation froze. The coals still glowed faintly, but the heavy wire rack was empty. No scorched hide, no fatty residue, no scent of suya seasoning… just pristine, cooling stones. It was an impossibly clean disappearance. 

“Uncle Sani?” she called, the single name swallowed entirely by the sudden, unnerving stillness of the square. 

Her eyes drifted to the massive iron lantern above. It was lit, yes, but its light was starving, a sick yellow glow that offered less warmth than a sparkler. Aisha climbed the stool to inspect it. The glass was strangely frosty, and when she touched the thick, cotton wick, it crumbled to dust between her fingers. Where the kerosene should have soaked it, the wick looked precisely chewed, like a dry stick gnawed by some desperate desert animal. 

It has to be an animal. A very organized animal, she told herself, but her heart was hammering a furious counter-argument. The goat was too large for a stray, the wick too high for a prankster. She fled back toward the compounds. The generator sputtered and died, plunging the immediate area into darkness. The silence was broken by the children’s chorus. They weren’t singing “Hark!

The Herald Angels Sing,” however. They chanted the Eko-Oro, a mournful, minor-key funeral dirge Aisha had only heard at the village burial ground. 

“What are you singing, Tunde?” she asked the eldest boy, her voice cracking. Tunde stared at the ground. “Mama Ladidi said we must sing it to show the Harmattan we are awake. That we know our place.” 

An elder emerged from a doorway, his face severe, like carved mahogany. “The Yuletide is a thin veil, my daughter. On one side, the promise of joy. On the other, the primal hunger of the earth. Be careful what music you play near the veil. The wind has ears for joy, and a mouth for light.” A deep, echoing crack travelled across the square… the sound of the main lantern’s glass pane shattering, even though no one was within twenty feet of it. 

Aisha ran. She found Mama Ladidi huddled over a small, personal kerosene lamp inside their compound, frantically shielding the flame with her hand. 

“The lantern! It’s broken, Mama! We need to go fix it, now, before…” 

Mama Ladidi shook her head slowly, tears of sheer terror carving tracks through the dust on her cheeks. “It is too late, Aisha. The Iku-Ebi has started its feast. It doesn’t crave the fuel; it craves the promise that the light represents.” She pointed a trembling finger toward the empty corner where the goat should have been. “First, the feast of the body. Now, the feast of the light. Soon, it will come for the rest of us.” 

Aisha looked at the small lamp in Mama Ladidi’s hand, its flame trembling violently. If the Iku-Ebi fed on light and the hope it represented, then all the flickering lamps in the village were only serving as appetizers, drawing the entity closer. 

She remembered Mama Ladidi’s words: “It smells the hope we keep under the ground, the hope for the new harvest.”

Aisha slammed the compound door shut. “It’s not eating the light, Mama! It’s eating the belief! The fear is making it real… it’s feeding on our certainty that we will starve!” “The fear is the only ritual we have left,” Mama Ladidi choked out. “It is satisfied by the knowledge that we remember its hunger.” 

Aisha’s mind raced. Logic had failed. The impossible was happening. What was the purest source of light and hope in Dambatta? It wasn’t the generator. It was the future. It was the possibility of escape from this cycle of drought and want. 

She grabbed the small, burning lamp. “I know what it wants. It wants to know we will survive its hunger. It wants a sacrifice that proves we are willing to fight for a new beginning.” She rushed out into the dead night, running toward the marketplace, toward the shattered lantern. The square was swallowed by utter darkness. She could hear the Eko-Oro chant, louder and more desperate now, a wail against the dust. 

Standing under the iron skeleton of the shattered lantern, she finally saw it… not a monster, but a towering absence of light, a disturbance in the dust-filled air that seemed to suck the illumination from the air around her small lamp. 

The Iku-Ebi was a shadow woven from drought and famine, a primal terror given form. It was massive, silent, and felt like the heavy, paralyzing certainty of unending poverty. Aisha did not scream. She held the small, burning lamp out, not as a defiant weapon, but as a small, tender offering. 

“You can take the last of our lamp oil. You can take the last of our dried meat,” she spoke into the shadow, her voice firm, unwavering. 

She placed the lamp carefully on the ground, then reached into her inner pocket. She pulled out a thick wad of papers… her degree certificate, framed in cracked plastic, the proof of her escape to

the city, the source of her father’s intense pride. Beneath it was a stack of carefully filled-out loan applications for a new, expensive irrigation pump. These papers were her future, her ticket to breaking the cycle of want that the Iku-Ebi represented. 

She struck a match, and against the crushing, dark cold of the night, she lit the papers on fire. The flame was small, but it burned with a fierce, blinding intensity… the hottest, purest, most personal light she could offer. As the ink blackened and the plastic shriveled, the shadow of the Iku-Ebi seemed to contract, not in anger, but in a profound, deep acknowledgement. She was sacrificing her individual, modern hope to protect the communal fire. A gust of wind, still dry but suddenly gentle, blew the ashes away. The massive, hungry shadow was gone. 

The stillness that followed the destruction of her documents was not the eerie silence of fear, but the deep quiet of acceptance. Aisha stood alone, watching the last wisps of smoke coil into the air, her eyes stinging from the smoke and the dust. She had given up her escape, her personal freedom, to satisfy the ancient hunger of the land. 

When she finally returned to the compound, Mama Ladidi was standing by the door, her terror replaced by a profound, weary understanding. The small lamp in her hand was now burning steadily, the flame strong and calm. 

“You gave it the light it truly desired,” Mama Ladidi said softly, her eyes holding no judgment for the career Aisha had burned. “The Iku-Ebi does not feed on things; it feeds on the false hope that makes us arrogant and forget the cost of survival. You showed it you understood.” The next morning, Christmas Day, the generator roared to life, a stubborn, glorious declaration of resilience. The air was still dry, but the intense, malevolent pressure had lifted. Children ran

through the market, singing genuine, joyful carols. Uncle Sani, perplexed but relieved, found his goat, unharmed, wandering just outside the village perimeter. 

Aisha sat down with Mama Ladidi, drinking scalding hot tea sweetened with a generous scoop of sugar. The elders came by, not to praise her bravery, but to simply look at her with quiet, new respect. She was one of them now… a keeper of the complex, terrifying balance required to live under the Harmattan’s shadow. 

She looked out at the dust-hazed morning, knowing the struggle for the harvest would be harder now, but possible. She had sacrificed her individual light to protect the communal fire. And in that shared, hard-won warmth, a new, grounded hope began to bloom, ready to face the New Year.