Today, Izondu has formally joined his ancestors even though he was not buried as a titled man. After all, the title was given to him by those who later isolated him and the same Ozo title they once deemed him worthy of. His death marked the end of rejection, because in death the earth opens up to accept all of us, making us all equal as we once were on the journey of our coming.
Yes, buried, but all the signs that accompanied the exit of the great sons of Isumeh had occurred, although some attributed the apia bird screech to the death of Omee, who died two days after the death of Izondu. When the flute of a hated noble fellow trumpets higher than that of a beloved vagabond, only the wise ask questions.
How could an apia bird have wailed for a man who ran away from a theatre of war, and hid at his maternal place, Okanimo? Omee did this during the Aja Ekperi war against Uho people. And how could the Evil Forest have lost its uzii tree of over one hundred years old, to a man who returned to Isumeh after six years, and remained in hiding for over a year before he begged his legs into the assembly of Isumeh kinsmen with heavy penalties that took him another three years to pay off?
Well, if it was how the Gods and ancestors of Isumeh rewarded cowardice, Izondu had wasted his youthful life on a course that had become a waste. Or were they blind to his war crime practice against Dunuora village after peace had been restored? Or which war had Omee fought on behalf of his people without claiming either he had a fractured limb, or one of his wives was pregnant? All these happened in the heat of those wars. Or when did the brave warriors of Isumeh, who are today their ancestors, become so primitive that they were taught the heart-beat of war?
Nobody wanted to attribute the crows and the felling of the uzii tree to the exit of his people's icon because he fell into the hands of nature, which they all were, but they chose to be Gods to themselves. For the first time in the history of Isumeh, divination was jettisoned, and no one cared to know if what had befallen Izondus was ancestral humiliation for evil or purely life that happens all the time. Could it be that the face of Izondu suddenly became so handsome that it had to be defaced to suit the jealousy of some enemies hidden under beautiful pretenses? Or could these humiliations be born out of an untamed ignorance that evil makes no friends?
After the burial, Udobuaku stayed back in his father's house, and mourned him for four days. Regretfully, she saw nothing that looked like a sign of condolence visits. Early on the morning of the fifth day, she sorrowfully wailed backed into her abode, in the Evil Forest. She had lost a father and something more than that; a friend, and a companion who her father had become over the years, and much more during his last days on earth.
Loneliness is now creating another Udobuaku in her; an Udobuaku so alien to her very old self. Before this time, she had lost her husband and her only child. Where would the strength creep into the heart of this heartbroken woman now she had also lost her father? Yet, she could not even imagine looking for Chime, her brother, this time. The stigmatization alone would be too portent to make her commit suicide. To her, instead of watching her father's lineage close up by the instrument of isolation by Isumeh people, it was better she lived in the news, or with an understanding that her brother and his family were alive somewhere in the world, still. After all, absence is not erasure.
It was not the end of the Izondu family. Maybe one day, some eyes will be open enough to understand that the medicine for the scourge that had visited Isumeh was hidden in Isumeh, after all. Death does not close a family, unless the dying first occurs in the head.
No doubt, after some days of loneliness, over-thinking, and heartbreak, it appeared that the sanity of Udobuaku was flaking. Incoherent words were noticed in her speeches, and people started avoiding her in the market squares despite the fact that avoidance did not stop people buying Leprosy medicines from her.
But here is a thing: when Udobuaku noticed that something strange had started playing out in her head herself, she quietly and religiously went to Amudani village and took four herbalists, two young women and a few young men to the Evil Forest. She spent four days teaching them how to combine herbs, roots and wild fruits to cure of this Hansen's disease.
We all go mad for various reasons, but in the midst of it, there is always a particular soundness of mind reserved by nature to help us manage our entire lunacy. Udobuaka seemed to be some steps saner ahead of the creeping insanity steadily descending on her, and she decided to transfer what she deemed worthwhile left of her, which was the knowledge she had acquired in the wild.
The news of the exploits these herbal apprentices Udobuaku had tutored in the Evil Forest of Isumeh went wild all over the world. They started traveling to many places to cure people of their leprous disease, and these included Isumeh.
It was within this period of time that Ononiru brought in his newest twin babies for murder in the Evil Forest. If it was her mentally disturbed state that saved these babies, Orji and Ekwulu, nobody can tell for sure, because they were not the first twins she had heard their cries before in the jungle. After all, the wife of her brother-in-law had one time given birth to twins; she never asked what had happened to them when she could not see them. The news was not told after a day. Or was there anything playing out now which she could not understand?
After their abandonment by their father because of a popular belief, Udobuaku, who had picked them up, gave them their names, Orji and Ekwulu. Orji showed signs of growing tall like their father, Ononiru, but dark like Edoro, their mother. Ekwulu was fair like Ononiru and much more, was born with albinism, but fleshy like Edoro. She called out her ancestors, and asked them to reveal to her the eldest among the twin boys.
On the same day she made this request, she had a dream where he saw Orji bring out a kola nut from Ononiru's kola nut bag. She woke up in the morning and interpreted the dream. ''Orji, you are my first child, and you Ekwulu, you are my last born'' she said to her innocent little boys. Among Igbos, it's the right of the eldest son to break kola for the family in the absence of his father. So coming up with the conclusion that Orji was the first child took no stress in particular after the dream revelation.
One day, the apprentices she tutored paid her a surprise visit. They usually pay her visit with many gifts since after they learned the art of curing Leprosy from her, in a show of appreciation. Udobuaku had always maintained that Orji and Ekwulu were brothers. And since Orji was taller than Ekwulu, she would always say Orji was her first child to avoid backlash.
But like there is always time for everything under the blue sky, her trainees had arrived at the Evil Forest that Afor market day, and she had given them something to eat, and they were resting before they started going back from where they came from. Orji and his brother were seen playing with dogs. ''These children are so beautiful. It is only skin colors that separate them; if not, they just look alike'' one of her visitors, Emele, said.
''Exactly, they are umuejima- twins, so there should be similarities'', Udobuaku said, nonchalantly. This word that came from their highly respected Udobuaku sent a cold wind into their hearts. They couldn't remember anything else than to make a big run out of the Evil Forest. It was unheard of; a woman raising children of evil spirits as twins were seen in those days. Giving birth to twins was a taboo, but happily nurturing them into full-fledged human beings was unimaginably out of choice except such a person raising them was either insane, or an extension of the evil spirits that sent those twins into the world. This belief held a strong position in the psyche of some Igbo republics, and some neighboring countries.
To change some ills in a society, no doubt, some intended traits of lunacy have to make it to the market square. The question is, how maddened up was Udobuaku to make it to the market square? Which, among creative lunacy and unconscious madness, was graced enough to save Orji and Ekwulu? Their mother was losing it. Arthritis, hyped by the night's chilling weather under the shades of the wild trees, had paid Udobuaku a surprise visit, and it came also with hunger, to humiliate the household that had come to be hers, and laid hands of torment on her twin boys. She had been deserted by all, and this put so much doubt in her mind if her Chi was still willing to take her on her long walk of life with her.
Today, sickly Udobuaku has lost the good will and appreciation of her Amudani apprentices, whose assistance had been her source of survival lately. In their clime, no sane person associates himself or herself with twins. Thus, they had seen Udobuaku with that very eye through which the lunatics were seen. They, consequently, fearfully, too, took a fast leave to avoid being seen by other people.
Each day, Udobuaku would wake up early in the morning staring tiredly at the innocent faces of her children. One stare, a teardrop, had become a recurring sight emboldened on the early morning face of a woman who had visited the world with beauty inside-out. To keep the boys alive, Udobuaku resorted to harvesting wild yam and cocoayam to feed his family. Her dogs were aged enough for sale, but the pains of arthritis had built a great wall that had barricaded her from the rest of the world. If not for the twins she was adamantly nurturing into full-fledged human adults, months wouldn't have passed without her apprentices visiting and providing for her.
Hunger was so real around this woman, but it would have been a mere thought if Orji and Ekwulu were allowed to die like others. Their presence had created misfortune for her, at least, in the hearts of the Amudani people. Desperation had coerced her into creating food menus which none of her ancestors had dreamed of. Her children were paying with their shrinking bodies. It was worse because her goats and dogs were not nursing. If they were, her boys wouldn't have forgotten how they started. For now, there was no milk for the babies. And she was not nursing either. If there was anything she knew she could do within her power to breastfeed her babies, she would have joyfully done that, and much more.
Diarrhea had become a constant visitor in the house of Udobuaku. No one was safe. Not even the dogs, except the goats that now went further in and outside the Evil Forest in search of food, and the pussycats that meowed out to hunt because Udobuaku was not strong enough to provide and control their movements.
Some paid with their lives when stronger carnivorous beasts met them straying around. One of her dogs was last time infected with rabies when she had a clash with a wild dog. Udobuaku knew the herbs to prepare anti-rabies for her dog, but she was too weak to journey up to the northernmost part of the jungle to fetch these herbs. And the fact that it was a mounting plant that had its stems and leaves stuck up on bigger trees made the journey meaningless because Udobuaku couldn't make a climb with her arthritis.