The November Order

💎 XXVI : The End Is Near

The two room mud house was cold and almost devoid of life. In the corner of the inner room wrapped in two hole ridden blankets beside a kerosene lantern with an open flame a five year old tossed and turned in his sleep as the mosquitoes and cockroaches had their fun. The mat he bed he slept on did little to nothing to elevate him from the floor, it was almost paper flat.

The cock crowed as the first rays of sunlight broke through the darkness, the child opened his eyes and rolled out of the bed. He folded his beddings and walked around the room trying to get all his nerves awake again as he slowly lost the imbalance in his step. He went back to the kerosene lamp and put it off. The holidays were coming so he wouldn't have as much money to get more, he had to conserve his resources.

The five year old felt his way out of the inner room and walked to the fire room. He opened the door and pulled in the gourds of food left for him by the villagers. He was a cursed child but the gods had declared he shouldn't be killed by any of the villagers. The prophecy stated he had to be allowed to grow into a full man without them laying a finger on him otherwise he would bring about a great destruction.

He ate a bit of the food and placed the rest in a hand carved alcove in his mud walls. He sighed, under normal circumstances, he wasn't supposed to be eating food made in such manner's but over the years, he had gotten used to the dry blood meals and the large amounts of palm oil surrounding the unpeeled roasted yams.

The boy sighed as he walked out of the room. The day was still a bit dark but it served a good purpose. He walked by the bush path that led to the stream. He stretched his hands out to the sides as he hummed a tune, he loved the random feeling of the the leaves and branches hitting his hands on the narrow path.

He got to the empty stream and smiled, no one was going to Hey surface and swam to the opposite bank. He climbed out and stripped. He shook the clothes violently in the stream, squeezed them and hung them on a nearby tree branch.

He jumped back into the water and splashed around. He swam to the bottom and used some of the bottom sand to scrub his skin. He finished up his cleaning and swam back to the top. He sat there waiting for the day to get brighter and his close to dry a bit before he wore them and began his walk to the market to the next village to beg for alms or find something to do.

The sunlight filtered through the trees creating a pattern mosaic with the shadows on the forest floors. He danced around in the little dogs of heat and the cool darkness around it. He finally broke out of the boundary forest and walked to the village square, the market was just waking up. He scanned the area for any of the women trying to lift their stalls or fix something and ran around helping them out, he accepted the single coins they gave him with all his heart and smiled. By the end of the day he had gathered quite the bounty, a Naira and fifty kobo, enough to feed him three dinners or buy some more kerosene for his lamp.

He sat by one of the closed stalls and sighed, it was just a matter of time before someone from his village came here and announced he was cursed too. He pulled himself up and began his walk to the village, he would survive and prove them all wrong.

He got to the river and waited behind a shrub for the villagers to wrap up their activities and return to their homes. He walked into the water and swam across to the other side. He placed one of his coins at the river bank and prayed to the river that his plight would end soon before he began walking home.

*

The soldier watched the festival go on doing his utmost best to suppress the bike rising in his throat. He wanted to burn them all to the ground as the chiefs danced with the crowd towards where he sat on the lesser podium beside the Igwe's podium. He glanced at the Igwe's platform and scanned the large number of people behind him, he chuckled when he compared how different the two platforms were. He only had two soldiers from his troop behind him. He knew the chief priests platform would also have more people than his did. He chuckled at how ironic it was that he was the one being celebrated. The drumming stopped and he looked forward.