Women Of Steel | ✔

XXXII

The sword feels heavier in my hands than I expected it to be, I can count the number of times on my fingers that I have held a sword. When I was younger, I went through a time in my life when I was obsessed with doing the things I was told not to do, it was after the period when my mother died mysteriously of an illness as I'd been told — it was later that I found out that Kabiyesi Gbadamosi had killed her himself — I hadn’t really cared then because she hadn’t been the typical mother, the more I grew, the less I had seen of her. My father didn’t pay me much attention either and I used to follow Tadenikawo everywhere he went to his annoyance. My brother had been untouchable and I had been lonely, I watched him train with the guards and had the sudden desire to be like him. Days later, I lifted a heavy cutlass and pretended like I was fighting an invisible enemy, I had almost cleaved my foot into two when Kabiyesi Gbadamosi found me. I remember being so gripped by fear, knowing well that the attention of somebody like the king meant wicked things. To my surprise, he’d merely watched me, urging that I continued. Under his eyes, I had felt an even greater desire to impress him, I had gone on for a long time, afraid to stop and when I had dared to, I found that he had gone, not even bothered to chastise me.

Just like now, there is nobody watching us, not my real father who bleeds out on the sand. It is only Remilekun and I. Finally.

She watches me with careful consideration and I brandish my sword in front of my face.

“It ends here,” I say hoarsely. I expect her defiant rebuffal but she doesn't speak a word, not yet.

Remilekun shrugs a stiff shoulder and raises her sword up, a blade that can kill me. I stand and recall all the prophecies foretelling my death and I know that they are nothing but the truth, but if I die tonight, it must be by my own hands, to end the army of the dead that I raised but only after I kill Remilekun first.

“You have mastered your powers even more than I realized,” Remilekun says softly as the wind howls loudly. “But you are still nothing like me, nothing compared to me, you are not willing to transcend the limits, you still allow yourself to be constrained.”

“Limits exist because of balance, a line that you have crossed for selfish revenge!” I scream at her.

Remilekun laughs, the sound is nothing short of bitter and proud. For the first time I think of how she must see me, a demigoddess, yes, but a child not worth her attention, inexperienced.

“If there was a balance, the gods would have never allowed evil like Kabiyesi Gbadamosi to live,” She says angrily. I pause, I have never heard Remilekun sound anything less than calm but her weakness is in her vendetta.

“And look what you have become, no better than such evil.” I sneer.

She does not deign me with an answer, only runs toward me with a battle cry on her lips. I widen my stance and at the last minute and meet her sword with mine. The force sends me flying back so hard that when I hit the ground, my vision darkens for a moment.

My whole body feels like it is on fire as I force myself to stand. My breathes come in shallow pants that make my chest hurt with each effort.

I search blindly for Remilekun but all I see is a violent gust of wind swirling at me. It knocks me off my feet and I taste the sand again, with tears of pain streaming down my cheeks, I can barely find the courage to stand.

“Get up, child,” Remilekun voice comes loud and clear and taunting. “Fight for your life.”

I want to tell her that my life is not worth fighting for and neither is it what I am fighting for.

“You will never understand what it is to fight for others, to fight selfishly,” I cough out, I am not even sure if she hears me. My voice is a whisper and my throat is filled with sand.

My hands claw to hold on to something and I find that my sword is gone. Somewhere in the distance, my father shouts my name and Remilekun laughs, shaking her head wildly.

I spit blood onto the sand and smear it around blindly. I reach into the sand again and grip a dagger of bone. I stagger to my feet and inhale puffs of breath; I imagine her smug face, taunting me, telling me that I am not enough – something that I have been told my whole life. My mother told me countless times how she wished I had been a boy so she could take out Tadenikawo and have me sit on the throne; Kabiyesi Gbadamosi told me how I wasn’t enough because all women are worthless. Tadenikawo claimed to love me and yet I was not enough to change him, to make him consider how easily the wicked things he did to other women could be done to me. Demilade made me feel inadequate because I thought that all women had to be tough like her.  I am tired of not being enough, not being enough human and not being enough of a god.

I imagine the words being said to me over and over again and I fling the dagger, through one open eye, I watch the dagger as it moves in a zigzag motion, zipping past the wind, until it finds its target, Remilekun’s smug face. The dagger meets her clean in the shoulder and I laugh, a maniac burst that makes me feel like the most powerful woman in the world. My dagger is made of bones, living bones that can hear and obey my commands.

Remilekun realizes this and a shiver runs down my spine as she disappears out of sight, into thin air, gone like she never was. I turn around blindly, searching for her.

Without thinking, I run to my father who is out cold, his blood a pool around him. I find the hilt of the sword inside him and pull. The sword doesn’t move an inch out and I scream his name over and over. He is not dead, I know, but there must be something special about the sword that Remilekun wielded for it to harm him like this.

I pull again, hard and with every strength in me and he gasps, his blue eyes snapping open.

“The sword, it can kill us,” He breathes out the earning like a drunken slur.

Us. Me. gods. It suddenly dawns on me that this weapon is why none of the orishas have interfered with this war, the mention of a weapon that could return them to a mortal status would have been enough to strike fear in their hearts.

“You have to fight her,” I tell my father, shaking him hard. The hope for a victory is slowly draining out of my blood.

“Poison, she poisoned me,” He says and then he goes quiet again. I stand, staring blindly into nothing.

Remilekun reappears before me and her sword raises and descends on my right arm, severing it in one clean chop. The pain blinds me and I kneels before her, mouth parted in a silent scream, she raises her weapon again and when just before it comes down, I roll the other way.

I begin to scream, the wind seems to part for my voice, halting as if to listen do that my voice rings out clear, even as it is pained.

“Boluwatife! Arewa! I summon all the dead that have died by the blade of Remilekun,” I am not even sure of the words I speak but they pour out of my lips in a stream of strangled sobs.

Nothing happens at first then the wind stills and one by one, they rise from the sand, in tens, then in hundreds, some of them without heads, others having charred faces, she has killed so many that they form around me like an army. Remilekun freezes at the sight of them.

“Take your revenge!”

They swoop down like bats, with haunted cries on their lips, stories of their death, they take her apart and her screams fill my ears, so loud that I use my one arm to cover one ear. She screams and screams but there is no forgiveness for her. In the end, all that is left of her is the sword, my sword. Remilekun is gone but it is not over, not until I destroy the army I created.

I raise it above me, ignoring my father’s cry of warning. I inhale a deep breath and bury it in my stomach. The wind stops and the world is quiet when I breathe my last.