by Reni K Amayo
Sinai had also briefly flirted with the idea of embarrassing Ina publicly, but that also seemed far-fetched. Ina was not at the centre of the highest social circle in the kingdom by accident. She was calculating and she had always thought quickly on her feet. Sinai had, on a number of occasions, watched Ina spin potentially detrimental situations into gold, right before her eyes. She was certain that the girl would be able to detect any ploy before it came into fruition, likely turning it into something that worked perfectly for her before Sinai could blink. Sinai needed something bigger, something fool-proof and concrete. Something that was completely out of Ina’s control.
Sinai paused briefly in the silent stone hall. She was trapped in this dilemma. Sinai took a deep breath and looked out at the bright beckoning sky from the distant window; a new thought suddenly began to flourish in her mind. Disfigurement? It was no secret that Ina valued her beauty highly, more so than most. Along with her wit, it was the principal tool she used to snatch and secure her power. If Sinai could take that away from her, she would break the girl completely. Disfiguring Ina could definitely be the answer. It was feasible and effective, yet just as the idea sprang into Sinai’s mind, uneasiness settled in the pit of her stomach.
There would be deadly consequences, of course; Ina would be equally, if not more, vengeful than Sinai. It was Ina, after all, who had attempted to kill Sinai unprovoked. Who knew what she would do if given an excuse?
However, that was not what was holding Sinai back. Sinai was sure that she could handle the repercussions of her actions. She would accept death or worse as the price for disfiguring that girl. It was the thought of doing such a thing that disturbed Sinai. The idea had tasted sweet at first, but ultimately left a bad taste in her mouth. For some reason it weighed heavier on her than beating Ina or ruining her socially. Sinai gazed at the Battle of Abam depicted on the wall. Disfiguring felt cruel and sneaky, devoid of the loose integrity practiced in the palace.
I could never do it, Sinai finally admitted to herself.
‘But …’ Sinai suddenly blurted out in the empty hall. She doesn’t have to know that. Surely the threat of disfigurement was enough to achieve Sinai’s ultimate goal: terrify Ina and teach her a lesson about what would happen if she ever crossed Sinai again. She could disfigure a patch on Ina’s arm or leg, something that would catch Ina’s attention. Sinai could then claim full responsibility, and warn Ina that if anything happened to her, the disfigurement would spread relentlessly over Ina’s body.
That’s it! Sinai thought, as she jumped up with excitement, causing throbbing pain to explode through her body. She leaned against the wall and caught her breath. Suddenly her smile melted down into a deep frown.
Sinai paused before slowly bringing her hand to her lips. Something about this plan is not quite right. Sinai couldn’t simply threaten Ina with more disfigurements, surely that didn’t make sense. Ina would have Sinai killed before she could disfigure her again, and that was assuming that Sinai got close enough to disfigure Ina in the first place.
Her plan was missing something fundamental. It needed to be truly dynamic. Sinai needed to somehow have remote control over the disfigurement. It must be something that Ina would never see coming. Some power that Sinai could flex whenever she needed to. Something like anwansi, the ancient practices and spells left by the lost gods. Sinai had heard tales of shadows leaving men, women turning to gold, and children turning to trees. Magical fantastical stories, that some still believed to be true.
Sinai lifted her left arm up to the sunlight and inspected it; it was slightly bruised but functional and straight. She recalled a few weeks back to when this arm was broken and bent out of shape. No one should be able to heal so fast. Sinai was flung out of a building—fur blankets or not, she should not have survived that fall, and she was certain that Meekulu was the reason why she had. The old woman was certainly versed in ancient anwansi, or, at the very least, knew someone who was. Either way, Sinai was certain that Meekulu could help get her what she needed. Sinai smiled openly; after weeks spent theorising and fretting, she had finally found an idea concrete enough for action.
‘What are you doing here, girl?’ a hoarse voice boomed. Sinai jumped out of her thoughts and looked up at the armed guard. She had been so lost in her quest for revenge that she had been oblivious to the fact that she had wandered into soldiers’ quarters.
The guard was a large man, armoured in gold and red-stained leather plates. He stood sternly before the huge brass doors leading to the soldiers’ quarters. She was finally here. The doors were thick and, like many artefacts in the palace, beautifully engraved with stories from the past. These doors whispered the tales of thousands of battles, small and large, throughout the ages. The Battle of Dahomey that took place in Oyo, the Yoruba kingdom, where the Orisha nearly defeated Amadioha, the god of justice. The Battle of Abam where Asilia, the Eze’s famously viscous lion, ripped through hundreds of men. Her fur shone softly in the image, illuminated by tiny ọkụ flames.
Sinai’s interest began to peak; she would have loved to sit for hours, watching as the engravings jumped to life. While Sinai loved to explore the various sections of the palace, a quiet fear had always held her back from the soldiers’ quarters. The raw power of the men and women involved in the Eze’s army had never been lost on Sinai; neither had the scent of death that followed each and every one of them. However, now that she stood here, with the remnants of vengeful thoughts still playing idly in her mind, she thirsted for the power and destruction depicted on the doors.
Warmth fluttered through her body and she suddenly felt light and weightless, as though she were seconds away from floating. It slowly dawned on her that her feet were no longer touching the ground.
‘Girl!’ the man barked again. Sinai’s feet abruptly hit the ground, sending a shot of pain up her body. She put her hand out to the wall to stop herself from falling. What on earth was that? she thought, but before she could answer, the guard grunted in frustration.
‘Did you see that?’ she exclaimed, but the brewing anger in the guard’s dark eyes, his tensing fists and clenched jaw, told her that he was quickly losing patience.
‘Sorry. Never mind,’ she murmured. ‘I’m looking for Sergeant Olu. He saved my life. I fell a few wee—anyway I’m here to pay my respects.’ Sinai tried and failed to keep her voice clear and steady.
‘Not here,’ the man said sharply, and Sinai’s face crumpled in a mixture of disappointment and confusion. While it had been her choice to travel the long way to the soldiers’ quarters, she was tired now and ached in pain. The thought of walking all the way back to her quarters filled her with dread, but the thought of walking back empty-handed was almost too much to bear.
‘Ozo, please, his name is Sergeant Olu. Please, I was told he would be here,’ she tried again.
‘He’s not here, his platoon has been called out for a disturbance—go!’
‘When will he be back?’
‘This is the last time, girl,’ the guard bellowed. ‘Go!’
Sinai took one last look at the impenetrable and intricate doors, before sighing and turning away.
THE EMERALD-EYED SOLDIER
Igbakwu
NAALA’S HEAD POUNDED, the thuds reverberating through her soul. She had been left in a tall, spacious and four-walled hut. Large, dark green palm leaves, acting as a ceiling, allowed flutters of light to float weightlessly into the room. Naala had spent some time frantically trying to find a way out. The door that was used to let her into the room seemed to have blended into the wall seamlessly, with no obvious breaks or openings. Naala ran her fingers over the wall, which was made out of series of thick wooden rods, glazed in hardened fish glue and secured to the ground. She pressed against the wall, but it refused to budge; she wouldn’t be able to knock it down.
Emerald vines crawled up the walls, and musical instruments lay scattered across the floor along with softened engraving materials and straw. Activities to distract a demented
mind. Pressure began to rise in Naala’s body, starting in her stomach and ending at her neck. It was becoming hard to breathe. She shouldn’t be here. She should be with her family; they should all be escaping. Instead, she was waiting for death to take everything she loved.
Naala had opened her mouth once again, and the thoughts that had been so clear and structured in her mind had appeared rotten and peculiar to the people she loved. She should have been able to convince them. She should have been heard. Should! Should! Should! She hated that word. She hated everything. The pressure that had clenched her throat suddenly built up into something uncontrollable. It exploded into a piercing scream that shook her whole body, as she succumbed to tears.
‘Ah ah?!’ a high-pitched voice suddenly said, as Naala struggled to catch her breath. Her heart quickened. She looked around the empty room and gasped. As far as she could tell, she was alone. Where had that voice come from?
‘Who is there?’ Naala asked cautiously; part of her was uncertain about whether she had heard a human voice in the first place.
‘Be quiet!’
‘What! Who said that?!’ Naala exclaimed, her voice sounding much more rattled than she cared for it to be.
‘Who said that? I said that! Who else? I hope you are happy with yourself; you have officially woken me up,’ the voice answered sternly.
Naala didn’t reply; she didn’t know what to say. Nothing made sense to her anymore. Instead, she followed the sound of the voice to the wall directly across from her.
Kneeling to squint through the cracks in the wooden panels, she could see another room, directly beside her. A shadowy figure paced up and down the room.
‘Hanye?’ she gasped. The figure stopped and moved towards the wall that Naala knelt beside. Intense fear seized her as she rose and backed away, clutching at her aching heart. Hanye was dead; he had been dead for years. Who or what was this being that took his form?
‘Onyinyo,’ she whispered.
‘Onyinyo? So you think that you can abuse me? I’m not a shadow person! You are the onyinyo! Nonsense—who even told you my name, girl?’ Hanye called, from the other side of the wall.
Naala forced herself to settle her breathing. His voice sounded real enough, not as eerie and mystical as what she imagined a shadow person’s voice would be. He also had not escaped through the wall, or done anything equally otherworldly.
Naala cautiously crept closer to the wall. She looked through the cracks once more and saw a thinner, older version of Hanye pacing up and down a room similar to the one that she was locked in.
‘It … it’s you … you’re alive?’ Naala murmured, as Hanye stopped sharply in his tracks and sauntered closer to the wall.
‘Alive? I suppose so … and you are?’
‘Naala—Esinaala—my grandmother is Mama Ugulo. My mother … well … I’m from Igbakwu,’ Naala replied.
Hanye said nothing for a while, before pressing himself closer to the wall. Naala could see a small section of his eye through the cracks, looking her up and down.
‘Esinaala? Of course you are Esinaala. Not a word from the usual ghouls; it must be little Esinaala silencing them once again,’ Hanye said wistfully.
‘I—we all thought you were dead.’
‘Hmph. Yes, it’s a nice trick that—trick trick trick. But it needed to be done. How else could I stop those people from visiting all the time, bringing with them their loud voices? I need my peace.’
Naala shifted back uncomfortably. So he is truly mad, she thought. Naala’s heart sank to her stomach as she settled down slowly.
‘We’re all going to die.’ She sighed.
‘Of course, we live because we die,’ Hanye replied. She could hear him scraping softly at the wooden walls.
‘The army is coming and no one will listen. They will kill us all.’
‘No one listens to an army?’ Hanye asked.
Naala did not reply. She looked around the room; how long before the army found her here?
Naala could see them now, with cruel mouths, their emerald abaras, unfailing arrows and long sharp spears that yearned to slice through living flesh with the desperation of a thousand starving men. Naala shuddered as she imagined the strange green tinge of the Eze’s enchanted weapons smeared with the blood of her village.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Naala stood up abruptly as a series of loud deafening noises erupted into the air. Her throat closed up as terror invaded her body.
‘They have come,’ she whispered, backing away to the wall directly opposite. Her body shook with fear, and she searched for a weapon to defend herself with. Nothing, she thought in despair; the room was filled with the softest and safest objects that she had encountered; nothing sharp-edged, nothing heavy, nothing that could be turned against a living soul.
Naala closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe; she didn’t want to die afraid and alone. Her heart was quickening, and her skin moist with sweat. But I am alone, and I am so afraid, she thought hopelessly as heavy tears ran down her face. She wanted so badly to call out to Hanye; speaking to someone, even a mad man, was far better than being alone with her fears. Naala kept her mouth shut. Calling out his name would alert the soldiers to his presence. Naala froze suddenly. I already have, she thought. Her heedless screams had surely alerted the men to the fact that living souls dwelled in the abandoned shack. She had killed them both. How could I be so stupid? she wondered incredulously.
Naala felt that peculiar sensation once again; the slight tugging at her core, and the earth began to tremble beneath her feet. She looked up as the door suddenly sprang open. Clenching her body and bracing for pain, she was surprised when warm sunshine washed over her face.
‘No one listens to the army?’ Hanye repeated, as Naala let out a wrenching gasp. She blinked back tears and flinched in the light. It took a while for her to regain her vision, but eventually the clouded blobs of white light formed into a man. A tall thin man with unwavering eyes: Hanye. Two thoughts dawned on her; the first one being that Hanye was alone. The army that she had imagined in her mind, with over a hundred armed, large, and violent men, had disappeared and melted into an old familiar face. The second thought slammed into her, hard, almost knocking her to the ground.
She was free.
The wall was gone; instead, her old neighbour stood before her. Behind him lay the open pasture, beautiful and beckoning. The small thin trees whistled in the light wind, and an amber-coloured stag chewed on yellow leaves as a flock of birds danced in the air.
‘Is that what you said? No one listens to an army?’
‘How did you get out?’ Naala responded, as she stepped out into the midday, not registering Hanye’s questions. She looked back at the hut; the wall was now slightly ajar.
‘The door, of course. How else?’ Hanye replied, as he peered down at Naala with a piercing gaze.
‘I tried—the door was locked,’ she replied in confusion, as he sighed and walked towards the hut.
‘Look,’ he said, with his chin pointed to the bottom of the open wall. There was a metal prong, which Naala had no recollection of seeing earlier, latched there. Hanye nudged it down into the ground until it was completely hidden. He then tried to move the door but to no avail. ‘See, it cannot move now, but if you lift the spike—’ he bent down to lift the metal out of the dark soil ‘—you still cannot push or pull. If you slide, then the door will move.’ Hanye looked at Naala curiously. It was the same look that Naala had given her grandmother over the years when she was seconds away from confessing her wrongdoings. ‘This is how I escaped,’ he finally said in a rush. ‘Then, after that, I left a pool of rabbit blood in my place so that they wouldn’t try to find me. So that they would finally give up.’ He chuckled manically to himself.
‘Why … why would you stay if you could leave?’ Naala asked in shock, as Hanye shook his head vehemently and pressed a finger against his temple.
‘It’s too loud around people; the voices get too loud and the
y scream and claw at my insides.’
‘Sorry,’ Naala murmured with concern.
‘No—not you, the voices have always been quiet with Esinaala.’ He smirked, revealing his toothless mouth.
‘No one listens to the army?’ he asked again, zeroing in on her, as if she were a tool he was inspecting.
‘The army …’ Naala said, and suddenly her curiosity left her like a scared gazelle fleeing from hunters. A sense of urgency washed over her. She didn’t want to talk anymore; she wanted to run.
‘Yes, the army! We—oh my—we are all in danger, the army is coming to the village, no one will listen but we have to go!’
‘Hmm,’ Hanye replied, before shaking his head and turning his back on her. ‘I was hoping you would say something more … profound.’
‘Profound? We have to go!’
‘Perhaps … no one listens to the army … as powerful as they are, people only move to the death that follows them—ha! Doesn’t that sound like something Mohammed Bagayogo would say?’ He turned around to face her with glee.
‘I … we have to go,’ Naala pleaded. ‘The army is going to—’
‘Yes, yes, blood, destruction, blah blah blah—I’m sure you are right.’
‘You are?! Great then—’
‘However, I am not going anywhere—’
‘But y—’
‘You, my girl, are free to do what you will, but I’m will not go and meet the voices,’ Hanye replied with a shudder.
Naala had already wasted too much time speaking to him. Time was not something that she had the luxury to waste.
‘If you do not leave this place, they will kill you, uncle!’ she pleaded for the final time, addressing him with a familial term in hopes of breaking down his resistance, but her protests fell on deaf ears. He shook his head as he walked back into his shack. Naala paused for a moment and allowed herself to be washed with a wave of sadness for the man. She kept that moment brief, turned on her heels, and ran towards the village.
