The Prophesy (Fiction)
The Prophesy (Fiction)
“A prophesy is not destined to occur,” Nané says. She stares out of one good eye at Mother and I.
“It is only one of the possibilities the spirit man sees.”
Mother is silent. She bends over and jabs a piece of wood into the fire underneath the pot bubbling with ewedu. I busy myself sieving the yam flour, shooing my baby sister from the powder every other minute.
Nané gestures with her cup of palm wine,”It is the choices we make that help those visions along. Even the spirit man knows this.”
The spirit man. The one who sits in the circle of white pebbles, himself dressed in a white robe held up by a white snail shell. On the outer circle, are a company of white owls.
It is believed that the more the necks of the owls turn, the clearer the vision is to his shut eyes. By the time he has seen enough to speak, all the owls have turned their necks into the spirit world and they stare. Unblinking. Knowing. Channeling.”
“A prophesy,”Nane hisses into her cup of ferment, “is only a possibility.”
An event chanced.
O le je. O le ma je.
It may happen, it may not.
“The father of your children will die.” This is what the seer said to mother. This is the prophesy.
My father is to die.
Maybe it is the smoke or the smell of boiling leaves or Nane’s sweet ferment, but I feel sick.
“Mother, could father live by chance?” I ask as we eat supper, “Could Nané be right?”Mother says nothing.
Nané picks up the fish head in her bowl and after sucking out its eyes and chewing them, she begins to sing to the fish head.
Mother looks at me.
There's your answer.
I sit with father.
The fever has returned. He shivers, his lips tremble, and whispers nothing into the stillness. I touch his body with the damp cloth. He is whispering mother's name. Mother does not look at him.
The spirit man saw death and she is present; loitering, breathing the air and giving none back.
Death is here but so is Life.
She is sitting by father, drawing out his breath, and breathing it back. Her song is light on the night air.
You will live. She is saying to him, fighting for him and so I join the chorus.
My mother does not sing with us. She has sent word to father's people three towns over. They must prepare to bury.
The harvest is ready.
Mother is packed for our journey. My sister is nestled on mother's back, chuckling at nothing. Nané helps tie up some farming tools in burlap and they both lift and place them on mother's head. I carry three baskets on mine.
We begin our journey. Without my father’s strength and stories, the path stretches on. We are tired and quiet.
Nonetheless, Mother walks briskly, and I keep up.
I am happy to be away from father, from the gloom of the illness and from the smell of his unwashed body.
We arrive at dusk. Already Faluyi is counting the crops of harvest, his sons are around him and his wives are chattering idly. His side of the farm has been completely harvested. So has ours.
“Olaide,” he greets my mother, “hope it is well. How is home? How is my friend? I did not think you would come.”
“Your friend is at home, if you bothered to visit him, you would know how he is.”
None of his wives offer to help my mother bring down her tools from her head. She is too proud to ask. She squats before me and I help her with the burden.
“The harvest is great, we would not have gotten this far if I made a visit.”
Mother eyes him.
“Give us our share and we will be on our way.”
“How do you propose to carry it?” He asks.
“Do not concern yourself with it.”She says.
“I keep telling my friend to marry another wife. Many more. To have sons and more sons. To till his ground and carry his produce.”
He looks at me and then at my mother.
He takes a step closer to her, and I step behind her, as he towers over us. I smell the herbs and chewing stick on him.
He whispers, “The sickness will take him. He can not come out of it.” His tone drops lower. “Come, let me give you sons.”
“May sickness take you!” I snap at him,
“My father will not die,” Mother catches his raised arm before it swings at me and closes the small space between them in one step, her nose almost touching his.
“Name a place.”
His anger dissolves.
“At the hut by the rock, in the forest.”He presses his lips close to her ear.
He says it so I can hear.
He steps back and orders his wives and children to divide the harvest. Down the middle.
In seven days, his sons will carry the produce for us.
My mother does not thank him. She steps by him and lays my sister down in the shade. The wives stare at her.
It is night when she leaves my side. “Watch your sister,” She says.
“Where are you going?”
It is a stupid question.
She will not be long. It doesn’t take that long. This is all she says.
I should say something but I don’t. I lay there, determined to wait for her. Soon I am dreaming. In my dream, I am on a path at night, surrounded by tall yam plants. In the distance, there is a small, yellow flame and it is moving. A person is carrying it. Suddenly, the wind snuffs the light out. I wake up with a start. Mother is back, she smells of herbs and earth. I wrap my arm around her and she pulls me close.
She sings a quiet song of two friends: time and chance till my lids weigh down and I am asleep.
A prophesy isn’t destined to occur. That is what Nané said. It is the choices we make that help it along. If the prophesy says you will have fields, then by a hoe. If the prophesy says you will have children, then you must lay with a man. If the prophesy says to you a slave that you will be king, then serve your king, and kill his sons.
Mother will become Faluyi’s wife by the next harvest.
“We will starve” she had simply told me, “With your father gone.”
A prophesy isn’t destined to occur. That is what Nané said. It is the choices we make that help it along. When my father arrives on the farm it is night. He had walked all day. The fever stands far off, offended by his strength, and death has turned away to return the path along which she came. When he arrives, I am watching over my sister because mother has gone to Faluyi.
Father will find them at Faluyi’s hut in the forest. He would freeze at the sight before him.
His fingers will seek a lifeline and will drop to the scabbard hanging from his waist. They will close around the hilt of a sickle. His eyes never leaving their bodies.
Death will stop in her tracks, her sagging shoulders will be lifted, and slowly she will turn and look upon Faluyi’s hut.
The father of my mother's children will die. That was the prophesy.
But a prophesy is not destined to occur. It must be helped along.
My father has crossed the threshold.
The End
