Six months into the life of Tasie, the son of Edoro, what started as a night fever gradually went up as flame. It marked the torment that had come to shake once more the very foundation the beautiful mother was building instead of her late husband. It was not in any way a criminal act to wage war against the closure of one's marital home, and give her the light bearer.
However, the details that this sickness was coming with became a source of concern to Edoro and Ekwulu. Suffice this, little Tasie was so bent on making it. Even when the sickness was defying all the medical appeals and spiritual rituals, it seemed what was so important to the baby was to walk on his two legs. As tiny as the tiniest of the sticks, Tasie still dangled around to make it to his feet. It was a challenge. It was really a drag for this gritty child to call it a walk into his moment.
The slog went on into the eleventh month of sickly Tasie's life. It was a struggle he shared psychologically and emotionally with his shriveled mother, who had gotten more than he bargained for. The ailments looked like a lined-up tornado. Each came at its appointed time as it seemed, and only the wrinkled body of Tasie housed them all. The child's protruding body had become more painful a second week into his one-year-old birthday. Yet his crawling was not an easy outing.
A night into Tasie's first birthday became the longest ever in the family of Ononiru. What made it long is a valid question. It was a night that denied everybody under their roof any impression of sleep as Tasie groaned and bellowed to catch a grip on his breath. It seemed nothing was that close to saving his life. Not even the tearful face of Edoro was that close to passing a message of despair to the struggling Tasie. It was the darkest night that flouted every act of mercy. The cockcrows and what made them choose to be very far away that night, and the chirping of chicks, were indeed a nuisance to these agitated minds. Tasie's body temperature was so hot that it could give warm to cold water.
Immediately the hens made their middle-night crows, the unthinkable happened. Tasie scaled down from his sick bed and, for the first time, stood up firmly, and made a sudden walk. The first and second steps he took looked not new, but the third he took ended with his life as he fell down, collapsed and died. It appeared like a dream to all that kept vigil to see him to either survive or transition that night. Edoro was painfully out of the world to have a grip on what had befallen her.
Very early in the morning before sunrise, Tasie's lifeless body was taken to the Evil Forest for burial. It was a burial that needed no crowd. It was a journey back home of a newcomer to the world. Such life doesn't call for any celebration than grief. Only Ekwulu buried him.
As Ekwulu was coming back from the burial, he met one of the grandchildren of Amadi, Njama. He had come to pass a message to Ekwulu that morning. They exchanged greetings before Ekwulu asked him to have a seat. He refused. ''Well, there is no need to sit down. Your presence is needed at home. We lost Igwe, your son, in the middle of the night,'' he said. It was a rude shock to Ekwulu as the hoe and digger in his hand fell off. ''My son? Igwe, my son? What happened? Was he sick?'' Ekwulu asked, sorrowfully. ''No, there was no sign of sickness prior to his death. He even had moonlight play with my child before they went to bed. It was a call from Nene that alerted us,''Njama replied.
Ekwulu didn't bother to go inside his hut as everyone came out staring helplessly with the news of Igwe's sudden death. It looked like two booked deaths for the two families, as it seemed. Ekwulu went to Idomma with Njama, and had his son, Igwe's body buried. Nene was yet to understand what had hit her until Ekwulu returned from the bush with a hoe and a digger after the burial. She let tears flow freely once again, and Ekwulu was seen consoling her. Sometimes death makes it so obvious that it is a criminal.
Eight days after the death of Igwe, Ekwulu took Nene, his wife, to Uyom to look after her properly while she mourns the death of her son. But something happened. Was it not Edoro that tearfully bade Ekwulu a safe journey when he left for Idomma a few days ago? It beat the imagination of Ekwulu meeting her almost passed out. He tried everything he could to stabilize her, but it all failed.
She was grasping for breath until she died a few hours after the arrival of Ekwulu with Nene. Uyom kindred were seen gathered at Ononiru's compound with faces that depicted sorrow, loss and pain. Edoro, the sparkling beauty of Uyom, had joined her late husband. Like a dream it came. Uyom people waited for more hours before her body was taken to her father's house close by in the same Isumeh. In their time and republics, the bodies of dead wives were sent back to their fathers' houses for burial. It was really a tough journey in life for Edoro. But death knows how best to calm the nerves of its victims, and life happens.
When Ekwulu returned from Edoro's burial, he found out that there was nobody in the house except Uga, who told him that Amanke and Nene, his mother, had run away to their various paternal homes. Fear kills, but it kills faster when the very source of the fear is coated in ignorance and much more, when there is a hidden hand behind it. For Nene and Amanke, staying and dying in their fathers' houses appealed more to them, especially now that they didn't understand whose flute was blowing hot in the air.
Ekwulu was in a very ugly state of mind. Multiple deaths and derivable fears have taken over the guts of the living. He was eagerly waiting for the next day to make a move or forget it. Thank goodness, the morning wasn't that far to exhaust his patience. When it came, he chose to be wild or close to the wild as he took his son Uga to what was later known as Ekwulu-alona. Ekwulu-alona was meters away from the northernmost part of Isumeh's Evil Forest. It was there he chose to start all over again. Part of this land was later called Uga after the name of his first son. Ekwulu married two more wives that gave him, Dunuora, Ntu and Awom. It was in present-day Uga village that Ekwulu's body was buried.
However, the experiences he had in Isumeh were big enough to make one have a rethink about oneself. Although he was little, he always remembered, albeit in a blurred mind, what happened in the Evil Forest the day Udobuaku told her visitors that he, Ekwulu and Orji were twin brothers, so now he had come to terms with the knowledge that their republics forbade twin babies. The recalls he was having were not that popular in his current mental state. They were too blurred to be caught in an unbiased truth.
The happenings at Isumeh suddenly became reflective points for him. He now thought that actually there was a reason twin birth was forbidden in their land. He almost committed suicide with his restless thoughts until he made a journey to Arobulo country in search of some truth about himself. Arobulo was the country home of a powerful seer, Oguenyi.
In this country, twins were safe and even celebrated. There was even a time Arobulo people were scrambling for bushes and evil forests, searching for abandoned babies. When people noticed that the Arobulos were on the search for twins, they started making twin birth a secret thing. Anyone whose wife gave birth to twins would quietly enter inside the Evil Forest, and dump them there.
Some Arobulos learned other people's dialects and lived among them, and secretly were busy gathering information about twin babies. Of course, they knew where to find them each time such news crept out.
By seven in the morning on Afor market day, Ekwulu was already seated beside the shrine of Oguenyi for divination, with his sweating body caused by a somewhat long journey that was now more telling on his cheeks as he had in anger clenched his teeth to enough. ''You have come from far, ejima ibem- my fellow twin'' Oguenyi said.
Ejima, a word rarely spoken among Isumeh people, has become a social word in Arobulo to welcome one with. He was shocked to learn that Oguenyi the seer was able to give him vital information that had remained blurred in his memory. Of course, he was only but a small child when Udobuaku was desperately trying to pass some information to him when she fell ill.
''Everything was taking a natural course as your ancestors were busy trying to keep you and to establish you. You were born to survive. Yes, however, you have committed an unnatural act that made your ancestors saddened up against your life. How could you have fathered a child with your own blood source?'' Oguenyi asked. This question sent goosebumps from the head of Ekwulu down his toes. ''Oguenyi, you mean me, Ekwulu?'' Ekwulu asked, confusedly. ''Edoro was your mother. Udobuaku was your mother too. Oruno was your father, and Ononiru was your father too,'' Oguenyi said.
Those words were only about busy turning whatever that was left of Ekwulu's head into a deadbeat stage of confusion. ''The wise one, come clearer, things have happened to me, a lot, recently. Please, come closer'' Ekwulu begged. ''Don't worry my son, I am closer than you think, and thank goodness your ancestors are all here to help us out. I go as they direct. They have been here since morning, even before you came, and that's the truth.
''Udobuaku was a woman who got married to her husband, Oruno, who was born Orunoge, who died, leaving behind Udobuaku and a son, Amobi. This son of theirs died later, too. Something happened: Udobuaku was sent to the Evil Forest of Isumeh for many things, but primarily to save your life. Your brother died in the jungle. You were the sons of Ononiru but were thrown to the Evil Forest to die. Udobuaku rescued you and started raising you both before your brother died. Of course, she knew Ononiru when she saw him in the forest, but she hid herself, but later went closer to the Ite Aja Ejima- pot used to dump the desert twins, and picked two of you up.
''She was not mentally sound at the moment though, but he whom the gods chose to use, it's their requisite choice to keep their heads on or turn them off. The fear of the death of Orji, your twin brother in the Evil Forest, made her hand you over earlier, and the fact that she herself was not feeling any better, pushed her to do exactly what she did at that time.
''She died a few days later after she ushered you into the hands of your biological parents. She had wanted to speak in detail, but she knew that that would cost her the life you have now. She was a wise woman. She has come back to life though; hope you know this?'' Oguenye said. ''Yes, she was born a few months after she left. She's my junior sister,'' Ekwulu said, with tears adorning his face.
''Emesia was not wrong, son. Every Igbo woman will always wish to see her mother's kitchen having smoke coming out of it. It means life. No doubt, Udobuaku's bride price was not returned before she was seen with a child. So, Emesia acted in the best interest of her family. After all, Edoro was her blood relative'' Oguenyi said. ''That's true. They were cousins'' Ekwulu said, admittedly.
There was silence around the shrine for some minutes. Oguenyi later broke it. ''Sorry, I was waiting for your ancestors to communicate with me. Now I have heard them. You see, my son, you acted in error and this took some lives with it. Things about you have taken many lives away from you. You only have one sibling now, which is the woman that saved you. Don't be far from her.
''You will have to clean the land. It will not cost so much other than things we can gather to bring down the anger of nature hovering angrily around you. Ononiru your father died an unhappy man. He needs to be appeased too'' Oguenyi said.
''Please, the wise one, name them so that they may be appeased. I have even left my ancestral land to sojourn somewhere outside Isumeh. I am okay with the land, but I need to purify the land and myself,'' Ekwulu responded, regretfully.
Oguenyi relaxed back into his seat and named all the materials and requirements needed to clean the land and the man Ekwulu. In the next four days, all the necessities for cleansing were made available. On the fifth day, Oguenyi visited Ekwulu, journeyed to Uyom kindred with him, and performed the rituals of cleansing and appeasement- ikpu aru na igba oriko.