1800AD
AROUND THE SHORES OF LAKE VICTORIA.
The radiant hot sun is halfway the sky pausing at the center while scouting the earth beneath it. The lake shores is as midway dry, midway wet and soaked in the water that keeps chasing after the dry land with every single tide from the lake. It is as well scattered with all kinds of tinny shells from the lake and other lake residue resting at the shore in sight. Kumisa; a fisherman and his wife Namono are preparing their boat and nets to venture into the lake to scavenge fish. Kumisa is a tall and well-built man for his age with a clean bald head, a long bushy beard hiding most of his mouth, thick eyebrows, dark eyes that match his black skin and a flat nose. He is half naked with an old cloak around his neck falling on his back and beyond and a waist old thick leather skin belt with only pieces of aged cloth and animal skins covering his waist and not so much beyond his knees. His wife is as dark as roasted mountain ground coffee. Her hair is as long as the Nile River. Her eyes are cattish and she is as beautiful as a god yet as simple as the evening sun going to sleep. She is in a long brown dress that is almost catching her entire body: with a handmade woolen scarf of wild dog skin around her neck. Their canoe boat is huge; made of strong dark brown tree wood with a sculpture of a crested crane’s head and neck eyeballing down into the water and. After putting everything they need in the boat, they remove the anchor and together with both their shoulders pinned to the boat gradually push it into the lake and hop into it one after the other and voyage towards the heart of the lake.
Upon reaching the spot that they had planned, they cast their nets as wide as his they can throw and wait. In that moment, the environment begins to get peculiar. The wind builds up gradually; the birds of the lake spread out in the sky frightened. The couple upon noticing the vivid change in environment get up on their feet carefully as they scout the entire lake from where they are to as far as their eyes can see. The waves on the lake begin to build up with slight ounces of wind, steadily making the boat uneasy with the growing water turbulences.
In that moment, the dark clouds precipitously gather together under the sun and they see it. From the darkened clouds, the tot strikes of thunder begin to rumble with lightening therein as they grow stronger. The dark cloud eventually pukes out what it has been harboring. A golden fire ball comes out racing down towards the lake and precisely towards the boat. The couple instantly rush back and begin to rower away as first as they can. The golden fireball pierces through the water a few feet away from the boat and causes an aggressive rise in the turbulence of the waves on the water hitting against each other and bouncing strong on the boat causing the water to get into the boat partially. The vicious waves on the water toss the boat away beyond their control towards the lake shore. They both get off of it soaking wet and fall on the shores as they struggle to help one another to the dry land. Gradually live fish begin to surface and float towards the shores. They then attempt to gather the fish. Before they could even pick a single fish, they see a physical manifestation of a man gradually rising up from the water afar advancing towards them. The man is as golden skinned as the gold armor on him. His dark afro is dripping of water from the lake. He is holding another being in his hands in a golden robe and as he draws closer towards them, his skin begins to turn to normal: dark. His eyes match the color of his hair. He is almost seven feet tall with a fine toned body of a god. The being he is carrying happens to be an unconscious pregnant female. He screams out to the couple for help as he gets to the shores. He falls on his knees, puts her down and blacks out. Namono rushes to them quickly with the husband following her closely and checks on the pulse of the woman and notices her heart still beating.
‘She is still alive but weak. We have to take her to home.’
‘We cannot carry her. She could lose the baby or babies inside her.’ He rushes to the boat, gets out a net, both the rowers and returns with them to her. He ties the net on both of them and carefully lifts her off the ground to his new craft that acts like a stretcher. He then picks the man off the ground, puts him on his shoulders and takes him into the boat for safe keeping. He returns and together they carry the woman away towards their home. Through the local streets, onlookers become curious about what they are carrying and keep looking at them and the woman on the stretch with curiosity. They pay no attention to them and proceed ahead.
Their home is strongly fortified with a hedge build and assembled with stones surrounding their house within. The compound is large enough with no ground vegetation on it except for one ancestral tree at the back of the house. There are chickens grazing from within together with turkeys and domesticated guinea fowls. There are a few goats tied feeding from their wooden troughs and a long horned cow lying on the ground licking its calf generously. Through the wooden entrance door, they walk in and rush into the house with the guinea fowls squawking violently upon noticing a stranger in their midst. They lay her down in their ancestral tree next to a large open hollow wooden bathing trough curved and forged from a tree trunk. Snappishly they fill it with clean fresh water. Kumisa leaves his wife attending to the strange pregnant woman whose veins at the moment are now glowing like is fire running through them in her body. She reaps off her dirty linen and carefully lifts her into the bathing trough and as soon as her body touches the water, it heats up instantly that Namono leaves her side. Eventually it begins to boil with her within that the vapor rises up like a fog around her. A while later, the boiling stops and the fogged vapor clears. Namono braves again to get closer and as she does so, the woman gains back her consciousness with her eyes beginning to tremble. When Namono gets closer to her face, she opens her eyes that are at the moment as white as cotton. Namono freaks out but remains around brave.
Kumisa finds the strange man out of the boat gathering the fish in a net while eating some of it. When they notice each other, the stranger comes at him at lightning speed, grabs him by the neck and lifts him off his feet like a feather.
‘Where is my wife?’ strongly he asks him. ‘Kumisa tries to break out of his grip but in vain. He throws him away on the ground and gives him ample time to catch his breath.
‘We took her to our home so she could deliver safely when she wakes up. She is in good hands.’ He then returns to the boat and drags it to the drier land effortlessly. ‘How are you even doing that?’ he asks in a whisper while getting up on his feet.
The stranger begins to feel the heartbeat of his wife calling out for him. He touches the boat and they both disappear in thin air. Kumisa gazes around in shock and goes back home running like a lunatic; this time not through the market area.
Outside Kumisa’s home, the locals who saw them through the market earlier, gradually flood their home to satisfy their curiosity about what they had seen and heard about what happened on the lake shores. Kumisa climbs from the backend to access his own home. Dropping in, he finds the stranger, the boat and both their wives inside. This time the male stranger seems friendly and non-violent. But still, Kumisa does not buy it.
‘It is okay husband.’ Said Namono. ‘You have nothing to worry about.’
‘He choked me nearly to death at the lake.’
‘All that is settled my husband.’ She said to him gently. ‘Come. We need to talk with them right away.’
The strangers’ wife gets out of the bathing trough naked, strongly by herself. Kumisa and the wife feel embarrassed about it as she gets the red linen that Namono had provided her. She wraps herself in it and they walk away from them heading into the house. The owners of the house follow eventually.
In that moment, bees and wasps from all over begin swarming in towards this homestead and as hostile as they come, they harm no one. They assemble on the entire stonewall as others continue to come. The locals begin to fear for their lives, run away dreadfully in fear of the bees and air curses and accusations of witchcraft after what they had seen.
Back in the sitting room, the strangers are on one side where the wooden chairs are. Namono asks them to sit and they obey. She gets a short round three legged chair and gives it to her husband while kneeling down. He sits on it as she remains kneeling beside him. They gaze at each other silently for a while. Kumisa decides to break the ice.
‘What do you want from us?’ gently he asks them.
‘There’s nothing for you to worry.’ Said the woman. ‘Apologies for how my husband’s behavior at the shore. We’ve come in peace.’
‘Why are you here? We have never seen anything like the two of you and what you have done. These insects never come anywhere close to this place and yet for some reason they’ve come beyond count.’ Said Namono.
‘Well, I am sure you have already figured out that we are not of this planet.’ They both nod in agreement. ‘I am Baskotakhudha and this is my wife Tswadhai. We have come so we can give our baby life from a place where her ancestors originate from.’
‘So you want to say that she is one of us as well.’
‘Correct. Five generations ago, long before any of us had come to life; her early ancestors was from here. He gave seed to one of our female species and birthed a new race among us. I am a pure blood from my line and what she and I are having is an abomination for my people. They cannot allow us to be together yet our hearts are one. We chose our own path and it led us here.’
‘From where originate, when the bees show up, it is because they have recognized royalty nearby. And her having her roots from earth here disqualifies her to be so.’ Said Kumisa.
‘You are clever than I even thought.’ He said. ‘It is I that is of a royal descendant. My grandfather is ruler of our nation. We never grow old, we rarely die the natural way and we never change once we reach adulthood.’
‘What is your place of origin or wherever you come from called?’ asked Namono.
‘That I am afraid we cannot share it with you.’ Responded Tswadhai. ‘It would endanger you both and your entire civilization, yet we want to give chance to this our child to have a normal life here.’
‘Can I feel your pregnancy Tswadhai? Asked Namono. Tswadhai looks at her husband and he gives a go ahead. She nods to her gently. She gets up on her knees and gently crawls across towards her. She stretches her hands and puts them on her tummy, inclines her ear to it and listens for a while. ‘You are carrying a boy. His heart beats like waves beating against the rocks. He is a strong one.’ She gets up on her feet and stands before her. ‘He is supposed to be a twin. Yet he is in alone.’ This revelation shocks them both.
‘Wait! How do you even know that?’ asked Baskotakhudha.
‘I am a twin in the first place. I can feel the energy of my kind. Plus your unborn child let me see all this.’
‘Where we come from, females cannot have two children or more at once. The stronger one in such cases kills the other from within and takes over the entire womb till birth.’ Namono returns to her husband’s side and gets to her knees.
‘So your son is a murderer before he even comes to life.’ Said Kumisa
‘We all are. That is how we come to life. Without that, the child cannot be born. The body rejects them both if they are weak to consume the other. And that alone is as painful as tearing every single muscle apart inside your skin.’ Namono and Kumisa find it strange and stay silent for a while in their own thoughts.
‘Why us then of all the people here on earth?’ asked Kumisa.
‘We did not choose to be here. When we leave our home, the universe sends us to a place it knows will be safe for us.’
‘So what happens when you give birth? Where will you’ll stay?’
‘The boy will definitely stay forever here till he decides on his own to return to us. My husband will return to where we come from. I will stay here on earth but as far away from you all till he is fully grown into an Alpha. You won’t see me physically. But I will be there every day of his life. And that means you both will be his parents here on earth while we are away. And do not lie to him about us and this day.’
‘And what if we do not want to do this?’ asked Kumisa
‘Then you have the right to kill us right now so we all do not have to meet each other ever in this life or we kill you both so we know you will never tell anyone our secrets.
Kumisa looks at his wife and they excuse themselves from them. They move outside to the ancestral tree and stand there for a while.
‘These strangers are dangerous for us. I cannot allow them to stay.’
‘Yet we must husband. Is it not better to take care of their son than to have all their blood on our hands? Look, we have failed to have children of our own for twenty years ever since we got here from the mountains where the sun wakes up from. This could be our chance to start a proper family and perhaps a gift from the all-knowing to us. We must agree to it. When we arrived here, we had nothing yet the people here welcomed us and allowed us to be part of them. They gave us land and taught us how to navigate on the lake.’ The husband stays silent for a while thinking to himself. ‘It is only fair that we return the favor.’
‘Fine then.’ He paces away from her. ‘But you are responsible for everything that happens henceforth.’ Namono swiftly hugs him tight and touches his forehead with her lips. They then return to the house before their visitors and agree to everything before them. They then prepare a delicious turkey delicacy earth meal for them as a late evening meal.
With the bees and wasps continuing to stage at their threshold, the chieftain of the area with a few of his trusted men dare their way through but fail. He is an old man with silver grey hair in his early evening years. He is as dark as charcoal and still very strong for his age. He is dressed in pure crocodile skin, armed with a spear in his left hand. His men are all in animal skins of each animal that they killed on their own. They are armed with both a shield and a spear. Upon failing to get in, they blow the horn to make their presence known so they can be allowed in.
Kumisa heads to the gate and the bees and wasps allow him access the door. He sees the chieftain with his men and welcomes them in. By tradition, no man visits another mans’ home with a weapon unless he is going to kill him. The chieftain and his men leave their weapons at the entrance and walk in unarmed. Kumisa invites them in but the chieftain turns down the invite due to his own fears.
‘What is going on here Kumisa? First it’s the fish at the lake, then the bees and the wasps all over your home. Are you practicing witchcraft? Because that is what is being said out there.’
‘No. No my chief. This is but something beyond my doing. While on the lake, we received unexpected visitors not of this place; a man and a pregnant woman. We felt they needed our help and we helped them.’
‘Without informing me at all? How do we know it is safe for you or even for us to harbor such strangers amongst us?’
Baskotakhudha comes out of the house and the chieftain and his men appear like little scared boys before him and they tremble at the sight of him. He shrinks in size to look like them. Baskotakhudha recognizes the chieftain after a close analysis of him. Namono comes out as well and stays in the back. He speaks to the chieftain directly.
‘I know you; Tribal Chief Bbarasa. I know you from forty years ago to be exact.’
‘Yet I do not know you at all whoever you are.’
‘It looks like old age has begun eating up on you already.’ He walks towards him. ‘When you were still your fathers’ son; in charge of the land warriors, you were attacked by a hostile tribe that was as dark as the night who had come for your women, children, cattle and wealth. You were defeated to the ground and while you were dying, you called for help from anyone in the universe to come and save your people. My people answered your call and killed five hundred enemies and you burnt their bodies to ashes.’ He paced away from him and stood by Kumisa. ‘Does that jog your memory Bbarasa?’
The chieftain vividly remembers the day and the events that transpired. He says no word for a very longtime. He looks at Baskotakhudha in guilt and falls on his knees.
‘I never got to meet any of you after or even during that battle.’
‘You swore to give them a bull sacrifice and forty years down the road; the essence of that offering hasn’t been received. But that’s not why we are here. This man and his wife have been good to us, sheltered us, feed us and taken care of my unborn son. And we intend for them to take care of him after he is born. So with your permission my chieftain, will you…’
‘Yes. You can stay for as long as you like. Your son will be safe in their watch and in mine as well. I promise you.’
‘No one must know he is alien. You will keep that secret till when the time is right for him to let the world know.’
‘You have our word. We will speak of this to no one and should any of us be tempted to, may death be our final guest.’
In that very moment, one of his men who had begun plotting to telling his friends about it falls to the ground like a fish out of water and dries to bones and just like that, he becomes no more. The rest of them including the chieftain, Kumisa and the wife in the back get paralyzed with fear. The chieftain and the rest of his men carry away the deceased in trembling as they exit the threshold dumbstruck.
Later that night, Tswadhai’s baby begins to unravel within her while she is in the house. She sends Namono to check if the moon is fully out. She does so and returns with confirmation. She requests her to fill the bathing trough with lake water. She on her own walks out of the house refusing anyone to touch her, strips and heads into the water. As soon as she enters the trough, the water heats up viscously and then calms down while steaming. She calls for her alpha to be around. Namono steps aside and he holds her hands within the water. She looks him in the eye and professes her love for him. He touches his forehead with his lips and so does she. She grips him strongly and begins to push. She struggles tirelessly for over two hours in excruciating pain and agony without giving up. He keeps on encouraging her to make it. The dark clouds above begin to gather and descend closer to them. With them fogged all over the place, the baby’s first cry is heard as loud as thunder.
The bees and wasps after his birth, begin to buzz away gradually along with the dark clouds. Namono appears to them with honey which had been left as a gift from the bees for the unborn and hands it over to the father. He holds the son in one hand, anoints his entire body in the honey and lifts him high before the sky. The thunder rumbles greatly before them and with one very bright lightning strike, the clouds break and heaven meets the earth in a picturesque downpour. He names his son Osiyah.
