Why the Tortoise Shell Is Cracked

A tortoise's shell is never smooth, and never made in one piece. It is always fitted together from many small plates set side by side. Around each plate runs a dark groove, sunk deep like a scar that healed over long, long ago. Run a finger across the shell, and every one of those grooves can be felt clearly. It is like a tiny map, crowded with squares and many-sided shapes, and no two of them alike.

The Igbo are a large ethnic group who live in southeastern Nigeria, a country on the coast of West Africa. They still tell how the shell came to have that crisscrossed pattern. In Igbo stories, one character turns up far more often than any other: a tortoise named Mbe. Mbe is the smallest and slowest of all the creatures, but his mind always turns faster than anyone else's. Mbe is clever. Mbe is also greedy. And it was that very greed that one day gave his shell a new shape, one that would never go back to the way it was.

It all began on the day the whole forest buzzed with a rumor. High up in the sky, where white clouds drift slowly by, the people who lived there were preparing a great feast. They invited only the birds. Big birds and small birds, even tiny birds that had never flown far from the nest, all received an invitation. Day after day the birds chattered about the feast and about delicious dishes no one had ever tasted. Mbe stood beneath a tree and listened, and he longed for it so badly that he could not sleep. A tortoise has no wings. A tortoise is no bird. But Mbe was determined to be up there, whatever it took.

Mbe came up with a plan. He crawled to one nest after another and, in a voice as sweet as honey, asked each bird for just one of its finest feathers. "Just one," Mbe said. "It is hardly anything. I only want to share the fun with everyone." The birds had never had reason to doubt the gentle tortoise who had lived beside them for so long. So each one happily plucked the finest feather from its own wings and gave it to him. Mbe worked hard all afternoon, tying the feathers one by one to both sides of his shell with thin strands of vine. At last he had a pair of wings in every color. Each feather had its own shade and its own shape, and together they made a set of wings unlike any bird had ever worn.

The next morning, the whole flock took off together. Mbe flapped his borrowed wings, wobbled a little, then rose and kept pace, flying in among the real wings. When they arrived, the hosts of the sky came all the way to the door to greet their guests. They kindly asked each guest's name before showing them to their seats. One by one, the birds gave their real names. When his turn came, Mbe tilted his head and spoke in a very solemn voice. "My name is Unu Nile," he said. The host nodded and remembered it without the slightest suspicion, for it seemed just a name like any other. But Mbe knew something that none of the birds knew. In the language of the Igbo, Unu Nile means "all of you."

The feast began. The tables stretched far, heaped with good food and with strange dishes the birds had never seen before. The host stood up, and his voice rang through the hall. "This food we have set out for unu nile," he said. The moment he finished, Mbe leapt forward, full of glee. "Unu Nile is my name," he cried. "The host has just called my name, so all of this is mine." Then he plopped down in the middle of the table and ate and ate, grabbing and chewing without a pause. The birds stood around him, staring at one another in confusion, not yet grasping what had just happened. When the next dish came, the host announced it the very same way. "This is for unu nile." Again Mbe leapt forward, thumped his shell loudly, repeated his name and went on eating alone. So it went, dish after dish. The tables grew emptier and emptier, and not a single bird had taken a bite.

By now the birds were starving, their stomachs rumbling loudly, and at last they understood. There was no guest named Unu Nile at all. It was only a phrase that meant everyone. Mbe had used that very name to take the whole table's share for himself. The birds were so angry that their feathers shook, and they crowded noisily around him. "You tricked us," one shouted. "Give back our feathers," another cried. Before Mbe could explain himself, the birds swooped in one after another. Each one took back exactly the feather it had lent. Feather after feather went, until nothing was left of the bright wings on his back.

Mbe flailed in midair, his four legs grabbing at nothing. He fell straight down, the wind whistling past his ears, the ground coming closer and closer. Luckily, right below lay a thick bed of reeds at the edge of a large pond, where the earth was soft and damp. Mbe landed right in that spot and sank deep into the reeds. Still, the impact was hard enough to send long cracks across his whole shell. They ran this way and that, like lightning across a night sky. Mbe lay stunned among the reeds, aching all over, his head spinning. But he was still breathing and could still move. He was only frightened, and his face burned with shame.

After lying there a long while, Mbe heard a slow rustling creep closer. It was a snail who lived right by the edge of the pond. It had heard the loud noise and come out to look. Seeing Mbe lying there with his shell cracked all over, the snail asked few questions. It simply crawled up beside him and set to work. The snail crept slowly along each crack in the shell, leaving a shimmering trail of slime behind it. Back and forth it went, from one crack to the next, patient and without a word of complaint. All that night, the snail carefully mended crack after crack. At last the slime dried and slowly hardened, hugging each crack tightly and holding the shell together as one sturdy piece. Mbe stirred, stood up and could walk again. But the cracks from that day stayed forever. They became the borders around each plate of his shell, and it would never again be as smooth as before.

From that day on, Mbe never dared to go near a flock of birds again. And no bird ever wanted to lend him so much as a single feather. As for his cracked shell, the Igbo say it was the very first shell to take that shape. Plate by plate, piece by piece, each one is edged with a dark groove, left long ago by the snail's patient work. In the Igbo telling, those grooves have stayed just as they were ever since the day Mbe greedily took a feast meant for everyone and fell into the reeds by the pond.