Manifest

Forty-four

There he was. Her brother. Her other half. The lost piece of her soul that fate had cursed her with. Four hundred years had always been such a long time to go without seeing him, only to be afforded four days of companionship. She'd always dreaded it, knowing that it would come and go, too quickly.

But not this time.

This time, when she looked at him, all she saw was the man who betrayed her. The brother who forgot his place. The one she'd protected, but who had failed to protect her and her legacy. Isong didn't owe this man anything. This man had broken the cycle, long before she had. 

Isong raised her hands and tree branches sprouted from the walls of the hut, tying around Enyong's limbs as the ground beneath him started to pull his body in.

"Stop being childish," he said.

"Stop fighting. Your tusk has been destroyed."

There was a tingling in her spirit, the kind she got when people prayed desperately for her attention. Isong looked in Uduak's direction as the words of Uduak's prayer reached her heart even though Uduak was compelled by Enyong not to speak or move.

No, the tusk hasn't been destroyed, Uduak's heart screamed to Isong in agony. The real tusk is out there, Abasi.

Then what had Isong destroyed? She'd held that tusk in her hand. She'd felt Enyong's essence. If it hadn't been the sacred tusk, then what was it? How had her brother managed to fool her this time? He was a conniving brat, but he couldn't have been a part of that plan or she'd have seen it coming.

"How?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Enyong said.

"HOW DID THEY MAKE A FAKE TUSK THAT HAD YOUR ESSENSE ALL OVER IT?"

"That was not my doing," Enyong said, staring up at her with a reserved calm that was uncharacteristic of his situation.

There was a body of sand where Abasi Enyong awoke, Uduak prayed on the ground, tears pouring from her eyes as her failure to protect Isong weighed on her, more heavily than the compulsion Enyong had placed on her. They could have used the sand to craft a new, fake tusk, Abasi. This is my fault. I should have gone back for that sand.

"It doesn't matter, Uduak," Isong said. "If Enyong is buried too deep, he won't hear the tusk, anyway."

Enyong stretched his neck out as his shoulders disappeared beneath the sand. When he closed his eyes and stopped fighting the branches and the sand, everything stopped moving. For a moment, a slow quiet settled around them like a vacuum as Isong's energy flowed from her, dragging out her, painfully, like someone was draining all of it.

As she groaned, sound and movement returned to their surrounding as everything reversed and the branches retracted, pulling Enyong out of the sand. Isong closed her eyes, trying to force him back, but nothing happened. When she tried to lift her hands, she realised that she couldn't move, either.

"I never thought the day would come when we'd be forced to manifest against each other," he said.

"Whose fault is that?" she asked, voice sounding strained.

"You should have talked to me. Did you think I wouldn't continue your legacy?"

"Are you, are you serious?" she asked, venom rising in her heart. "You destroyed my legacy the last time I woke up."

Enyong rubbed his mouth in frustration as he paced around Abasi Isong.

"I can explain," he said.

"I can't wait to hear this," Isong said, trying to move, but ultimately failing. Enyong was tapping into her brain, messing with it and keeping her from moving an inch.

He sat on the mud bed by the wall, letting his head fall into his hands as he scratched his afro, maniacally.

"I'd just woken up, alright? And everyone around us, everybody knew it was my time," he covered his mouth and got up, pacing again. "They knew you were gone. The only one around was your weak, cowardly brother."

Isong laughed.

"So, it was my fault?"

"I'm not saying that. Listen to me," he said. "They all wanted to fight. Everyone had a grievance. I'd go two years in peace, and someone would show up with a stupid complaint and rage war on us. From all sides. Everywhere I looked, someone wanted to shrink Ọyọnọ till it was the size of an udara."

"I'm still waiting to hear how this affected the women in your care."

"Some of our enemies succeeded. Ọyọnọ was losing land and people. We were dying and everyone was looking to me for guidance. I had to do something. So, I..." he hesitated and sat back on the mud bed. "I just... it was meant to be temporary. I swear."

"What did you do?"

"I removed the women from the farms, from ekpo. I asked them to... they were supposed to remain at home, protect themselves and... and bear children."

"Iyammi," Isong said, quietly. "You did this? I thought you were just neglectful and didn't notice what your men were doing but you, you're actually the one who ordered it to happen."

"It was an honorable thing to do at the time, and we needed the children."

"To fight in your war."

"WHAT DID YOU WANT ME TO DO?"

"I don't know. Maybe try using that big brain of yours?"

"I did."

"I'm surprised it didn't work since you always said there was another way. Every time I fought for us, you had something to say. Every time I protected Ọyọnọ using force, you'd chastise me and ask me to control my temper."

"You were right," he said, throwing his hands up in the air. "In a time of struggle, I tried to do things your way."

"You sacrificed the dignity of an entire gender just so you could send children to war."

"Women were respected. They were meant to be protected."

"And how long after your wars did you allow women to return to their status as equal citizens of Ọyọnọ?"

Enyong bowed his head, ashamed.

"You let them keep fighting," Isong said. "You never corrected your mistake. You left mortal men to their devices and even after their land stopped being in peril, they wouldn't let go of the notion that women were their property and you did nothing."

"Everyone else was doing it."

"BECAUSE OF YOU." Isong couldn't understand the effrontery of the man before her. "The one time you used your brain for war, you set up inequality on this side of the world. That's not something to be proud of."

Enyong clasped his hands and faced his sister.

"Tell me what to do. Tell me how I can make this right and I'll do anything."

She watched him, looking for signs of dishonesty. Even though she couldn't find any, Isong didn't want to let her guard down. He'd just admitted to horrendous acts against everything their faith stood for. He was the reason for all this. He was the cause of the problem.

But he was also asking to be the solution. If that was what he truly wanted, then his next course of action was really the simplest thing to do.

"You can start by calling ekpo and telling them to stand down. Let them hand over the tusk to me and we'll see where we go from there."