“ The darkness carries
the dance of the malevolent spirits, they are centaurs, who having been found
not worthy to be ancestral spirits, hover in the silent night, chasing the echo
of the world they knew before” Uli’s father and mentor, the priest narrates to
him
“ Men
like us, face the couriers of nights, we are chosen vessels, the spirits grants
us sight to things that seem bleak, but in the foreboding of the things we see,
lies all uncertain truth” the old man continues, his weary posture admonishing
his labored breath. He was looking to a different world now.
“My son, our worlds are but different tales,
different dimensions of the same war; I am but a worn soldier at the dawn of
his war, you are fresh from the fire’s rage” he says looking blindly towards
his son, the light of the setting sun cresting his eyes in golden sparkle. The
young Uli seemed awed by his father’s words as they ignited a funny feeling in
him. He looked at the old man who had paused to regain his breath, what he saw
then was a loving father, finding the end closer than most, tying to accelerate
the training of his young son.
“Some secrets buried
deep, have no intercourse with light, the night is always black, for it hides
the secrets of the worlds, some secrets are too big, the darkness beneath them
captures all it can to hide, and they must be buried.” Uli’s father sternly
says looking intently at his son.
“I tell you these words,
not to frighten you but to prepare you for a journey long made before you; I
can tell you it would be a just cause, filled with the necessities of the
rightful heart, but it would be a ruse. No course we set is truly just, we only
carry the best recourse, each blood and sacrifice is a payment, to the evil
that stifles our growth. You know the spirits, but you don’t know men. It is
that evil that I need you to be ready for.” The old man says, his tone turning
more strict than ever, Uli listened, perfectly still absorbing his father’s
words.
“Our lives are but
circles in the infinite myth, of being, becoming and unbecoming, the spirits,
the unborn and the living, three curious phases in the circle of life, and though
there is evil in every space, the world that we live in is deeply scarred. Not
by the constant struggle between the benevolent and malevolent forces that
shape our world, but by the desire deep in man. This town of Maijo is filled
with many secrets, the times will reveal.” The old man said. The space goes
quiet as the last of the sun’s rays goes away. Uli sits staring at the creeping
darkness. The old man has not moved for a while.
The evening the old man died, the spirits
in the woods around the shrine seemed troubled, the wind kept howling with
their unease, the craving of violence registered in the sturdy winds sound
foretold a burden that they feared. Deep into the woods, in the forest deepest
core, the malevolent spirits knew their time had come. The village in Maijo was
quiet, it’s soul was gone.
In the fallow years before the young Uli
could be allowed to succeed his father’s duties, the town of Maijo grew
reckless under the guidance of Maje, the new temporary priest. Maje, unlike
Uli’s father believed in the liberal reality of life. The conflict however, is
that the ideals of the African moral standard objected an over expression of
liberal minds. And because the priest overlooked some faults, the men of Maijo
grew more at ease with their perversity. Women once held in high regard were
subdued to a cliché, and were faced with unimaginable physical abuse. The night
was black for rape, and women hated it. The young girls flowering were met with
the gravest ill, raped at the cusp of their own womanhood.
The six years before Uli became the chosen
priest is best remembered for the night that was black. People still whisper in
silent whispers, the way of that night. Seni, a maiden, not known to the
world’s travails, beautiful, well mannered and orderly, grew restless as the
light faded and her mother was not yet home. She held her ears to the streets that
were becoming empty but her mother was nowhere in sight. When the sun had set
enough that no light could pierce the sky except for the moon’s ray, Seni
decided she could be bold to search for her mother, and being of no living
father or sibling, she closed the door to their hut and went searching, calling
out to her in hope to her mother. At the time of the end of the first quarter
of the night, a faint noise drew Seni’s attention, in fear; she froze, growing
pale in the intermittent darkness of the night. When the faint noise kept
creeping, she summoned courage to confront its whereabouts, as she weaved her
way into the trees from where the noise came; a hand tugged her left leg from
the sides. Her heart almost jumped out with fear, cold and distraught, she
paused and closed her eyes, petrified.
“Run” the voice said
weakly
Seni paused for a moment
as she tried to make sense of the words that the hand was trying to say.
“Run, Run” the voice
echoed more clearly in an anguished scream.
Seni ran as the hand let
her leg free, fleet, and straight as her legs could carry but as soon as she
began to run, the sounds of rushing feet in a seeming stampede seemed to chase
her every leap, she ran all the breath of her pulsating lungs, but soon she
felt her body on the cold dry earth.
As soon as her body hit the floor, the hands
pinned her still, slowly, they lifted the coverings on her body and ravaged the
sight underneath. She felt each devilish grin, and each painful thrust that
they took under the sweat filled ecstasy of filth drowned her into a sudden
despair, the weight of their bodies, the stench of their filth and the
ferociousness of their thrust made her body and mind numb. They each took
turns, repeating the process, she was conscious enough to know that they may
have been six, but she passed out before she could be sure.
The night enveloped her frail body as she
staggered back to the voice that urged her to run, her eyes now accustomed to
the dark saw the figure of another woman lying, covered in blood and maimed
flesh, she falls close and the light shines just enough to reveal the corpse of
her own mother.
Seni , with not a tear drop shed, dragged her
mother’s corpse into the woods, vain anger fueled all her strength as she
dragged that maimed body into the deep end of the woods where the malevolent
lived. No one knows for sure what happened but the stories fetched their price.
Some say she gave her mother’s body to the spirits who needed a vacuum; others
say she granted her soul to the spirits to avenge the dreadful event.
The blood of vengeance was nigh on the
streets, one after the other, the men fell, each in ways more disturbing than
the next, till only the son of priest Maje was left. His death was the cruelest
of them all. He was found maimed on the path that led into the woods with dogs
licking from his wounds.
Maje, not being able to stand the trauma
went against his better judgement to pass on the mantle of priesthood to the
then seventeen year old Uli
The malevolent and Seni, on Uli’s ascension
to the priestly room, receded into the deep woods, but Seni longed for the day
when her conditions will be filled. For the spirits there had agreed that she
be set free if she could find a cosmic being to sway into love. Her body thus
will never age from the maiden that she was.
Years ran by and Uli grew old too, and
Seni’s call for redemption came when two young twins Semo and her twin came
jostling into the deep woods to play. She watched the boy closely for twins
were revered in Maijo. She watched as they played. When the twins separated,
she trapped the boy with her, the village searched, even Uli came far into the
deep woods where the spirits were, but could not find the boy. The spirits
raised the special boy, away from the prying eyes of the real world, he came to
know their passages, their ways, and when she was ready, Seni came to him.
Slowly but surely their bond grew.
The events of the ceremonial virgin come to
the woods, and the boy hears of his sister’s plight. That night they rode with
the spirits, resting vengeance on the men who had gone to the dark again. The
women in Maijo each knew the corpses they would see, for they too had been
raped.
Seni, now free and in love with the young
boy, stays with the spirits for a course, they both age slowly, so much that
when his sister dies of old age, the man who shows up with a snail shell on her
grave is not the same age, he was rather still too young. His story remains
different, one day soon, it may be told. But even when we close our eyes to
sleep, we should remember, The night is always black
By Elijah Abuni Peter
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