Women Of Steel | ✔

XXVII

“I once tried to revert the fate of a prophecy,”

I am half lost in my thoughts as we ride that it takes a slow moment for me to realize that Tara is speaking to me. I had just began to tell myself that I was content with the silence between us, Tara isn’t the sort of woman who talks a lot, in fact, if I didn’t know better, I would think that she was under an oath of silence – similar to the ones that apprentices to the spiritual chief like Ifatunji took. Her hands tighten around my waist and I try to ignore the pain of her nails digging into my skin. I had thought about almost all the parts of getting to the desert except how to get there. When Tara had agreed to lead me to her mother, I had mounted atop my mare and gestured that she did the same to hers but in the commotion of fighting the prince’s men, Ifatunji’s own horse ran off, frightened.

I had been ready to leave him and ride off, until the older man raised his bushy brows and reminded me that we were down to two horses and needing to go different ways. In the end and with no other option, Tara and I decided to share. She clings to my now, unlike in the first hour of our journey when she tried as much to keep from holding me too tight. I am not sure if it is because the night has gotten colder or because her words feel like they are being torn from her lips hesitantly. Something whispers to me that this is a story she does not want to retell but is forced to. I want to tell her that she doesn’t have to give me a lengthy anecdote that to her, will in turn miraculously change my mind.

“I was exiled from Ile Wura after my husband died, before he did, my gift of prophecy was treated with a mix of distrust and awe, sometimes the villagers would come to me, asking to know their children’s futures or if the New Year would be a good one for them. The ones who distrusted me stayed away but could never find it in them to openly express their fear, because that is what all hatred stems from; fear.”

Tara has to raise her voice higher than her normal quiet whisper because the howl of the wind rush past us as the horse runs even faster.

“They spread the rumors but they stayed far away as possible because my husband was alive,” She says frankly and I realize that I have been unwittingly searching for a hint of sadness or feeling in her tine. I have no idea how long her husband has been dead and Tara is a willowy woman that looks timeless, there is sometimes where I think she might be older than Demilade and there are times where she looks like she could be my age. I deduce that she must have married young; it is not a farfetched thought. Girls in Ile Wura get married as early as thirteen and if Kabiyesi Gbadamosi had gotten his way while he had been alive, I would have my own brood of babies at eighteen.

“When my husband died, they came with their pitchforks, even the ones who had once come to me; I was dubbed an aje and exiled. I was never even allowed to see my husband buried.” There is a hitch in her voice that hints at the slightest bit of anger. “My daughter was taken away from me.”

My eyes widen but she cannot see it.

“For the first few years of my exile, I shunned human contact and built a home far outside of the village and I waited, swearing harm on the first human being that would find me. It didn’t take too long and I had a child get lost and find me in the forest I dwelled in. I remembered my promise and the vision I had been having of a child bleeding to death in a ditch. It was the first vision I had had in years too.”

My hands on the rein tighten, knowing how the story ends. I feel a deep hatred swell in my chest. How could she harm a child? But her next words surprise me.

“I couldn’t do it, couldn’t harm that girl I saw, perhaps it was because I had a child her age too or maybe I just wasn’t weak and angry enough to do it. I couldn’t lead her back to Ile Wura because of the laws concerning my exile, laws that if I broke would lead to my own death, I let the child stay in my hut, fed her and guided her as far as I could at night because in  my vision, she died with the sun high in the afternoon sky. I did all I could believing that I was delaying her death but despite it, I discovered her rotting body the afternoon after. In my vision, she had fallen into a hunter’s trap and bled to death, when I found her, she had died from a poisonous snake bite.”

I await her next words, predicting them word for word that I mouth them in the dark as she speaks them.

“You cannot change the course of the future, Omolara; you can only delay death for so long. Sooner or later, it will grab you by the heel.”

***

Tara and I take turns riding throughout the night and I spend most of it awake, mulling over her words. In every prophecy relayed to me, there are talks of my own demise but there is nothing about Remilekun and I wonder if the sneaky woman has found a way to cheat death or if it is fate that we lose this war.

By mid afternoon, the air grows windier and dryer as we ride, and at one point our horse stops just as we reach the dunes of sand ahead. Angrily, I snatch the leather skin half filled with water attached to the animal and take a small sip, the sun is duller in the sky painting the afternoon an orange color. Tara glances at me as she stretches muscles stiff from the ride.

“We are still a long way before we reach them,” She tells me.

I swear underneath my breath, an unladylike word that I learnt from the men in the desert.

“And we have no choice but to walk,” She continues calmly, as if the only thing that is miles and miles ahead aren’t just dunes of yellow sand.

When she starts walking, I have no choice but to follow after unstrapping the sword off the whining horse. I shoot the animal one final look of betrayal then I march after Tara.

“Did Remilekun ever come for you?” I blurt out minutes later, filled with the urge to talk.

Tara rewards me with a swift backwards glance.

“No, she never came.” The words are spoken flatly and my curiosity rises.

“And you don’t wonder why?” I ask her.

Tara shrugs.

“I don’t need to wonder about something I am already well aware of, I am her oldest child, the one she had accidentally and abandoned because she had realized that she never wanted a child after all. All the children she has birthed over the years are just pawns in a bigger game she has planned since escaping Ile Wura. While she was a rare presence in my life, she did appear sometimes, I remember when I was eight and she visited my father, she didn’t know how to act around me. By the time her whole plan came together, it was already too late to try and twist my mind to join her cause.” She says.

I remain silent for a tense second, waiting for Tara to admit the rest of the truth, when she doesn’t, I ask.

“Tara, does Remilekun know that we are coming?” I think of how Remilekun has stayed ahead of her game for so long, how she has stayed winning, how she built an army of soothsayers in so little time. I think of her own power and how she has become revered as if she is godlike.

Tara’s answer is a slow shake of her head, up and then down. Affirmative. I am right but I find no joy in it. Remilekun knows that we are coming.