Deities of Deceit

Chapter One

They'd come to learn she was a slave for a high-ranking midwife and had learned a great deal about curing illnesses and delivering babies. Even though the sickness had rendered Mama crippled in one leg, Mama still offered her services and gave aid for both the delivery of babies and curing of illnesses.

It was years before Papa fell in love with her and then they had me and five more children before Papa died of the green vein illness. Mama did all she could to find him a cure, but it was reserved for the high echelons of Arjana. When Mama's skills in traditional medicine failed, she turned to witchcraft.

The practice of magic was banned for all slaves. We were neither taught nor given the blessing of Amadioha. Only one priestess in the whole village gave counsel to slaves.

But it was too late. The priestess said his soul had already crossed. All that was left was the death of his body. The priestess gave Mama a poisonous potion to help Papa die. It was tradition among the slaves to poison to death, anyone infected with the disease, else they'd be subjected to months of pain, only to find death in the end.

Mama could not bring herself to assist her husband in death. So I did it for her. I placed his head on my tiny lap, pressed his cheeks open and poured in the slimy potion. Then I waited. I prayed his death would come soon so Mama would be free of the pain. He didn't die until dawn, and by midday, he was buried.

He was my best friend, and as a boy, I looked up to him for everything. I took solace in the truth that I had made it easier for Mama and Papa. But at only eleven years of age, it was a pain too great to carry. My nights were long with tears and worry.

The Kingdom of Arjana prospered on the backs of so-called servants, who could very much still be likened to the same kind of slaves the queen claimed to have freed. Slaves built homes, ran the markets, tended to children and for a pay of less than ten cowries a month, when the minimum wage in Arjana was set at thousand cowries a month. Servants were the lowest and poorest in Arjana.

The children of the kingdom still sang praises of the queen, and even among slaves, children would gather at moonlight under the orange tree and listen to stories about her great conquest. The words shaped her tale like a beacon of hope to me, but to other children, a symbol of oppression. I could not understand how it was, that a queen who once fought for the voiceless could not have cared less for the people of her kingdom.

When I played sword games with other children, I'd play as her. I drew her in the sand and molded her with clay to the dismay of other children. During the masquerade festival, when everyone dressed up in costume, I'd dress like her. When I laid down in my little corner in the hut, on a worn out straw mat next to Papa, I'd imagine her bursting into the hut and freeing me from chains of poverty and torment.

In my dreams, I came to know the curves of her smile and the warmth of her touch. Every night for years, the moment sleep took me, it was as though my soul would travel to another dimension, another realm, where she was waiting for me under an orange tree. I would float sometimes through clouds. Other times I would be gliding through crystal clear water in the deep ocean, experiencing magical water beings. Sometimes, there would be a lion waiting for me outside the hut to carry me to her.

I'd run into her arms the moment I saw her, and afterwards, she'd feed me from a red basket filled with udara, apple and oranges. In my dreams, the seeds of udara and oranges were sweet and soft unlike in real life where they were hard and sour. I'd chew them while she told me stories.

When I woke, the memory of her face would escape me. But throughout the day, I'd spent hours daydreaming about falling asleep at night and floating through the sky to the orange tree where I always met her.

My fantasies and admiration for the queen knew no bounds. For a time as a boy, she was a sign of something true and bright. She was my savior and queen. But Papa's passing had awakened me to what she truly was—Evil.

After my grandparents passed, my widowed crippled mother, who had worked for years as a midwife and nurse in Uwari was forced to relocate my five siblings and I to the capital of the kingdom: Ara. There was barely enough for her to use and cater to her children and we were beginning to suffer the same fate of starvation she once suffered as a slave.

My uncle, the cousin of my grandmother, a low chief in the kingdom offered my mother work as a maid in his castle and free lodging in a medium sized hut far enough from his mansion. For the first time since I was born, Mama had a separate room from her children. With twenty cowries a month, it was more pay than Mama had seen in a year.

Upon arrival, there was no way I was going to allow Mama to work in her condition.

Mama's work had always involved sitting and tending to patients, whereas my uncle's castle would require her to walk long distances all day, mopping and dusting, doing all sorts of tedious jobs on her single leg. I took over her job and Mama began selling pumpkin seeds and vegetables in the local market.

It was two years before we could afford to enlist my twin younger brothers and triplet sisters in school to learn all the things I never got a chance to learn. And soon we could afford to eat once everyday without begging for scraps.

Though I did menial jobs in the lower side of the city where servants could roam freely, from pushing wheelbarrows for traders in the local market, running a weekend laundry stall in the cleaning factory, and occasionally nannying the children of middle class citizens who couldn't afford to hire vast amounts of servants, working for my uncle paid the most, but it was the one I loathed the most.

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