Part One
“Tufiiaaaaaaa!”
The screams echoed through the walls of Adoni’s hut. She laid on a bamboo bed, wet and exhausted from the long hours of labour that gave life to her two baby boys. The newborns lay quietly. They were cradled on a mattress beside their mama’s bed and wrapped in an abundance of soft clothes. Like a knife searing through warm skin, the screams travelled through the quiet village and with the wails, so did the stench of death.
Akuna trembled as he bowed in the royal palace. Sweat ran down his armpits and onto the band of his kembe, making him wet around his waist. “My king, please hear my plea. Have I not served you loyally all these years? Pity your manservant and spare the lives of my sons.” “Tufia!” The king’s anger roared in the hoarseness of his voice. “Abomination! You have brought chaos upon us. Your wife has not borne you children, Akuna! She has birthed monsters, messengers of darkness, channels for the spirits of evil to travel freely into our land and devour us.” He jumped from his royal throne in a sudden rage. “Tufia! They must not live to see another sunrise.”
Adoni shivered as the voices of shouting women travelled into her hut. “I knew it! She has no children in her womb,” they said. She had waited seven years for this day. She had endured as people called her He-goat, Witch and Ogbanje. She waited for the moment when the gods would finally smile down on her and bless her with a child. But the gods have turned their backs on her and turned her song of motherhood into a cursed chant. They turned her moment of blessing into a curse of death. As the night drew near and a thick blanket of darkness settled upon the agitated people of Laima, Adoni felt her heart grow restless. Holding her babies to her bosom, she stared out of her hut into the blackness of the starless sky, then down into the eyes of her little boys. Their eyes were beautiful. Their tiny fingers curled into little fists and reached up to her. She could almost hear them whisper, “We trust you, mother.”
Sucking in a ragged breath, she placed the babies on the mattress and dragged herself to her feet. Her legs were shaking as she reached behind the bed for her konkoli. She poured the coins out, tied them in a knot in her wrapper and then picked up the first of her boys, strapping him gently but firmly to her back. With shaky hands, she picked up her second twin. “Shhhhhhh. It’s okay, my children,” she said. Her words were trembling whispers falling out from stiff lips and clattering teeth. “I swear I will protect you with the last drop of my blood.” With a final sigh, she stepped into the darkness of the cold night. She was weak, and her body was still in pain from the long hours of labour. She could feel the wetness of blood gathering between her legs, yet she did not turn back. This was her fate. Wherever her feet will take her, she will go. She will raise her sons into strong and powerful men. She will show the world that her babies are not demons. They are her deliverance.
Part Two
Tau was all grown up. Like his name, he was like a lion; wild, fierce and strong. By the time he was seven, he was the pride and joy of Kuya town. He was their black star from the north, blazing red and wild in a dark sky. Tau was Adoni’s first son, who wrestled with boys twice his age and dropped them on their backs in minutes. The people of Kuya embraced him. He was their fighter, their hero and their lion. Yet they feared him as much as they loved him. Are they to blame? Is not a lion to be feared? With the same power that he protects, can he also not destroy? Anil was grown up too. Like his name, he was as unpredictable and unstoppable as the wind. At times, he was a soft, gentle breeze who sat with the old men gathered under baobab trees, carefully listening to their endless tales. He conversed with them like he was one of them, and maybe he was. There is so much that the wind sees amidst his endless journeys, unable to be captured even by the vastness of the mind of a one-hundred-year-old man. He was the one who helped the market women pick their tomatoes and wash their vegetables when their own sons were too busy being boys. It was he who whispered peace and comfort into Adoni’s heart while Tau was away being a lion. Other times, he was a whirlwind, swirling in an invisible rush and consumed with rage from a depth invisible to ordinary eyes. The wind broke everything in its path, and why not? Who tells the wind when to be soft and when to be wild? Does the answer not lie only in the soul of the wind?
Adoni watched her boys grow; her heart swelled with pride and joy as the tiny babes of yesterday became the men of today; brown, tall, slender, with dark grey eyes and thick black curls that ran from their foreheads to the napes of their necks. The years flew by fast, and the journey was rough. When fights brewed between her two sons, she thought it would pass with time. All those years, she let it go. She saw the anger in Anil’s eyes when he yelled at Tau and the rage in Tau’s when he hit his brother. They broke each other again and again, and every time, she cleaned them up, telling herself that they were just being boys, and it was a matter of time until things changed. Now she could see, but it was too late. How mightily her boys had grown, but how different was their might. Tau was drawn to fire as much as Anil was drawn to ice, and Anil was drawn to the sun as much as Tau was drawn to the moon. Their bond was stronger than blood, for with blood comes life, but the bond they shared carried the stench of death.
So all Adoni could do was pray as she ran from the market to her home, where she was told that her two sons were again breaking each other and causing dust to rise. Did dust ever rise in Kuya before Adoni arrived? She heard the chaos as she drew closer to the little hut where she lived with her boys. The names of her babies were on the lips of screaming women, like the ones who called her Obganje many years ago when she lived in Laima as Akuna’s childless wife. Mumbled noises were heard from the beginning of a crowd at the front of her little house. “Anil, Tau! Anil, Tau.” Adoni felt her heart stop. “Tau!” she screamed. She could see the soul of the lion that dwelt inside of him when she looked into his eyes. His hand clenched into a fist, aiming for his brother, who was lying with his back on the ground and his face drenched with blood. Adoni’s throat burned as she fought to drink back the tears that filled her eyes, threatening to flood her face in a violent downpour. “Stop, Tau. That’s your brother!” Her voice was a trembling whisper. She saw his chest heave back and forth. His fiery gaze was fixed unwaveringly on Anil. His ears twitched at the sound of his mother’s voice. Slowly his face softened, and his fist gradually unclenched.
A thud. A scuffle. Anil’s fist moved with the swiftness of a hare and crashed into Tau’s face. It was an upheaval. Fists clenched. Blood splashed. Bones cracked. Adoni heard herself scream. “Gods of my ancestors, have mercy on me!” Another punch. Another crack. She could feel the tension between her sons like she could feel the sun’s heat on her face. This was the power of the bond that bound them together. She saw a stone being lifted. Who held it? Anil? Tau? She couldn’t see, but she could feel it. The spirit of the grim reaper had come after all the years to take her sons. And today, again, she would fight against nature. She would deny the gods what they claim as theirs, just as she did seventeen years ago. She heard the scream and the roar of an angry lion. She ran. There was a smash and then a crack.
She could not feel the pain. Her legs beneath her were numb. Like an out of body experience, she watched herself fall to the ground in a time frame that seemed to stretch out into a hundred days. All she could feel was the heat of the mid-year sun shining unwaveringly on her skin. She could hear the sounds of her children’s voices as if they echoed from miles away and carried on the whistle of the wind travelling through the trees. One voice was the roar of a wounded lion, and the other was the sound of a brooding storm. “Mama. Mama,” the voices pleaded. As her knees hit the ground, all she could see were the faces of her twin babies. Those two innocent pairs of eyes that had looked up to her seventeen years ago and trusted her with their lives. As she fell on her back, she smiled and was grateful for the warmth of the sun as it washed over her, like the gaze of heaven washing away her pain. She felt the arms of the ones for whom she had defied nature. She sighed an inaudible whisper, “Anil. Tau. My deliverance.” Darkness enveloped Adoni, yet she could still hear their voices call. “Mama! Mama! Mamaaaaaaaa!”
