The Witness of Usehjiki

Once, when Osa was a junior student at Hosten Military Secondary School in Usobo, she’d gotten caught up in a scheme to expel the reigning school prefect. She hadn’t been a part of it. She’d just been the ignorant, innocent junior girl who was sent on an errand that ended with her in possession of damning evidence. Eventually, she’d been cast away for three days in the shed. Which was code for a cube-like space underneath the mock-ammunitions shed.

Unlike Ifiso who’d grown wider than her sisters and Toso who’d grown tall, before the rest of them caught up to her, Osa was the oldest, but the smallest of the three of them. So, while she’d spent those three days, curved into a ball and aching from head to toe, she’d been incredibly grateful that none of her bigger sisters were foolish enough to get thrown in the shed.

Sitting in the room that was meant to be hers in the Izeh mansion, Osa couldn’t help wishing that, at least, one of her sisters could switch places with her. She was the one who’d been fated to die. As the oldest, she wasn’t supposed to outlive them and mourn them.

She wiped tears from her eyes and stared up at the open window. What was she supposed to do now? Everyone she loved was gone.

Osa shuffled back on her butt as the door opened and Enechi entered the room, fuming in anger. Her hands were cuffed to a chain that was tightly wound around her waist and connected to another pair of cuffs that held her legs together. Even if she wanted to, there was hardly anything she could do against the tiny terror that was Enechi.

“You’re refusing to eat,” he said as the scared attendant who’d been trying to feed Osa a few minutes ago hid behind him. Osa had bitten the girl’s fingers till she bled. The girl screamed and ran from the room, the first chance she got. Wuss.

“You can’t force me to do this,” Osa said. “The ritual of the keys requires my consent. And I refuse.”

His anger slowly slipped from his face as he strolled into the room and squatted in front of her.

“You’re the only Oseki alive. You have no cousins. No uncles. No aunts.”

“Exactly,” Osa said, trying not to scream at the thought of her sisters and her mother. “I’m the only Oseki who can give you what you want. So maybe take off the cuffs and let me decide what I want to do.”

“Why would I do that?” he smiled at her. “When I hold your life in my hands.”

“You can’t do anything to me.”

“Thanks to you freeing the witness and rendering the keys powerless, the divinity is gone.” He smiled. “I can kill you now.”

Osa laughed.

“You think I need the protection of the keys?”

“From me, yes you do.”

“Take one more step,” she urged. “Let’s find out.”

Still smiling, he took a step closer. He was within reach. Osa could force her leg out through the restraints of the chain and sipe his legs out from under him. But then he took another step, bringing himself even closer.

This time, Osa didn’t hesitate, she reached up to punch him but the next thing she knew, she was sitting back on the floor, perplexed as to how she’d gotten there.

“How foolish do you think I am?” he asked. “After your sister assaulted me and stole my key, I had the tota in my employ install a totem against physical violence.” He shrugged, showing her the tattoo on his lower arm. “I mean, I’m pretty much protected against everything else, but it’s been a while since someone punched me and I hated the feeling.”

It made sense. Because Toso had attacked Enechi back at Pastor Kuwin’s place and he’d somehow gotten the best of her. It had been a shock at the time, but if Enechi was walking around with brand-new, customized juju, then he was more prepared than Osa had given him credit for.

“I’m not helping you with the keys.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I said no.”

“Did you now?”

Osa frowned. What did he mean by that? Usehjiki was built on the unification of the clans and the unification required explicit agreement among all four families. Why would he say that? Did he think there was a way to coax her into changing her mind? Did he think she was going to try and save him and his family when everyone she loved was dead and gone?

Ahimad came into the room with a rolling cabinet of medical supplies. Behind him, two big men followed as they moved in on Osa.

“What are you doing?”

“I can’t kill you because the ritual will require a fourth family. But… if you become the witness, that will solve all my problems.”

“What?” Osa asked as the two men picked her up and carried her to the bed. “No. Wait. What?”

“Two birds, one stone.”

“You can’t make me the witness.”

“Why not?” he asked with a nonchalant shrug. “What’s not to like? As the good pastor pointed out, immortality, strength, and wisdom. I mean. It’s the best life.”

“You’ll lock me up,” she cried as they held her head down. “You can’t-YOU CAN’T DO THIS.”

“Ah, there’s that popular Oseki self-righteousness. You were all too glad to go ahead with the plan when it was someone else’s child we were planning to use.”

“Please, WAIT.”

They covered her mouth as Ahimad stepped forward with a syringe.

“You have to rejuvenate and rest for the next 24 hours because the ritual is going to drain you. But, as I’m told, you don’t have to be awake for that to happen. Modern medicine is awesome. I can’t have you die and be too weak to be reborn after I’ve wasted all these resources.”

She pleaded through the heavy hand on her mouth as Ahimad searched for a vein in her arm. As he inserted the needle, Osa offered one last escape attempt, but the men wouldn’t budge.

When the drug began to take effect, she could feel it. Her eyes grew heavy and her head swarmed. As her surroundings blurred, Osa fell into unconsciousness with the simple thought that she never should have said no.

___

Eje fongsa Usop

Eje nina Elheji

Eje ememe Izeh

Eje ji Oseki

Eje orabo

Bless Usop, the strong

Bless Elheji, the healer

Bless Izeh, the wise

Bless Oseki, the emphatic

Bless this maiden

Osa woke to a uniformed chant of a hundred people, kneeling in a wide field. They were lined in three rows, around the field, hands raised and eyes looking up at the night sky as they chanted in Jiki, repeatedly. The air was filled with the stench of burnt flesh and blood.

She was in a cage, at the center of the field. Her hands and feet were still bound. And she was barely clothed. Someone, at some point during her slumber, had undressed Osa and redressed her in a flimsy top and a pair of skimpy, black shorts that left nothing to the imagination.

There were three torch stands, a few yards away from her with a big container on a tipper truck, at the center of the torches. Ahimad was shirtless, standing at one torch stand while Kuwin was standing by the other one, in a white singlet and a pair of shorts.

The forest around the compound that had once housed lots and lots of erkanara trees had lost a bunch of them. Tree trunks and uprooted stumps lay scattered around the premises. For the ritual, of course. Everything was dying for the ritual. Enechi was killing everything around him to make the ritual happen.

The place reeked of burnt, cow flesh and dried blood. Even though it was night-time, a tall fire, hosting an immeasurable number of cow and goat carcasses, illuminated their surroundings.

“You’re awake,” Enechi said, standing beside an old woman who was holding a fire torch.

“Enechi, think about what you’re doing,” she said, crawling on her knees to the other side of the cage so that she could see him better. “We’re not supposed to be enemies.”

“Your family has been a thorn in everybody’s side for generations.” He removed his singlet and slippers. “While the rest of us did our share and procreated to make sure the land continued to survive, your family hid, growing scantier and scantier in the name of guilt. Now look at you. All alone.”

“I can change all of that. Let me go and we can still repair this.”

“The witness is supposed to be created using the blood of a thousand cows.” The woman handed Enechi the flaming torch. “But cows are hard to come by on such notice so I had the pleasure of adding goats and other critters to the mix.” Clasping his hands in front of his mouth, he smiled at her. “I even added erkanara sap to the blood. You know? For variety.”

“Enechi-”

“I have no intention of killing you. Quite the contrary. I aim to give you everlasting life. If anything, the unification should reward me for that.”

“Please,” she pleaded through the bars. “I’ll do it. Uncuff me and you can take my blood.”

“Already got it,” he said, nodding at a one-liter bottle beside her cage. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“You can’t do this.”

“I can,” he nodded. “My dear tota,” he smiled at the woman beside him. “Suggested I add plants and trees too. We needed as many living things to give their lives for you to be immortal.”

It was then she looked around, noting the number of new tree stumps that had been made from the chopping of ancient trees that had been in the Izecha forest for centuries. He was going to add the tree sap to animal blood. And they were going to… she couldn’t even bring herself to imagine what he was about to do.

Osa cleared her throat and stood, once she realized that begging wasn’t working.

“You think you’ll be able to succeed?” she asked as he walked away. “You think I’m just going to sit there and wait for you to trap me.”

“You’re going to go from soaking in blood and tree sap back to that cave in Osekoni. At no point do I plan on releasing you from the incantation until you’re completely under my control.”

She stumbled back as two men pushed the cart that Osa’s cage was perched on.

“Oh god,” she said as they pushed her closer and closer to the center of the field where the yellow tipper stood with the container on top.

Osa shook her head and held on to the back of the cage. They were going to do this. They were going to make her the witness.

“ENECHI, STOP! PLEASE,” she pleaded, but Enechi just dipped his head into the bowl of water, ignoring her. The only person who seemed to have any reaction to her, at all, was Kuwin. “Don’t let them do this. PASTOR KUWIN!”

He hesitated. For a moment, it seemed like he was going to get up, speak or even look at Osa.

But then he put his head in his bowl.

“Please,” Osa begged. He was her last hope. A man of God was supposed to have empathy and care for human life. How could he do this? “Please, Pastor Kuwin. You can’t do this-” the cage rattled, throwing her off, but she scrambled back to her knees. “Pastor Kuwin, do you hear me?”

The cage got to the edge of the container. They unlocked the cage. She held the cage when the men tugged her chains forward. One of them hit her fingers till she relented and slid out of the cage and into the container.

The chanting continued.

She tried to stand, but her hands and feet sunk into the soft, jelly-like surface of the contents of the container. The container reeked of blood and the more she moved around, the more she sank. She stopped moving, realizing that she was probably sitting in a mixture of congealed animal blood and tree sap. The blood of the sacrificed.

She didn’t know if she was disgusted that they’d used cows or if she was relieved that she wasn’t about to suffocate to death in human blood.

The two men came back, this time with pipes that were pouring liquid into the bowl. By the time it got to her body and began to rise, Osa cried out as the slippery oil pushed her into the blood. She struggled and screamed, sinking even lower till the oil and the blood covered her head.

Her heart raced. The oil slipped into her nose and eyes and ears. As she choked on the blood, her head spun into darkness.