When light comes

Part 2

The orphan was distraught .He just couldn't understand why the incantations hadn't worked.
The inscriptions on the antelope skin were faded but he could still make out all the words. The instructions given by the old man was carried out to the letter,"..

  "human blood must be shed , poured on human or animal vessel,",

    Or did the old man expect him to slit his own throat . He had practically borrowed money from The farmer to pay the old man.
   Life was hard enough for him. The old man would have to give him back his money,..silly old hermit. Although deep down he feared Saluu.

The man was not old,..he was ancient.

People said he was born to an age and time so long ago that no one remembers who his true people were, or from which african tribe he actually came from.
   His face was so wrinkled that his eyes looked like deep dark pits of coal. Skin falling off old bones, and always showing  off a toothless grin and a crooked smile, ..snarling at every creature that came near his hut.

He was like no other person Zebu had come across . There was always this stench of something rotten around the old man, as if something had died ,..was unburied,..and remained living inside his very being .
The stench kept many away ,but not Zebu. He was desperate, ..life had been unfair to him since the day he was born.

No one wanted him, at least, not the unknown woman he called mother.

She had dumped him in front of the monastery orphanage , run by the Italian nuns that had settled there many years back.
The nuns had told him how his mother had written a small note saying that the child was a bad omen and should be drowned.
Zebu wondered why she hadn't carried out the drowning herself,..stupid woman.

He hated her,..he hated them all in this time forgotten town.

He wanted to go to the big cities ,have a chance at life, and make something of himself .

The people here were cruel , they only cared about themselves. There was no pity or love for an orphan among them.

School was no better. The kids laughed at him all the time because he wore old clothes. 'Funny clothes '..they called them, jeering at him during sports in his oversized canvas shoes. It was hell on earth.

    Sister Martha tried her best to always cheer him up whenever she noticed his down cast face, but there was no relief,..the other children were merciless.

Well ,except one. Emily

   She was an orphan herself, adopted by a loving family who had changed her name from Nainu to Emily.

Zebu never liked her english name , so he called her by her native name which meant..'Something sweet ' .

Zebu ,shook his head and thought '...why' would anyone change such a beautiful name to one so simple and boring'..

"Baaa"!,.. he said aloud.

Anyway she was grown up now, as was he. Nainu would likely not remember him.
She was the only kind soul at school to him. The only person apart from the teachers who spoke to him about anything.

He had dropped out of school because the teachers all complained about his rudeness,  lack of discipline and uncontrollable anger.

It wasn't his fault,..if only they could have witnessed the jeering and constant bullying of the other children_especially the older ones. But it was not to be.

If he was pushed down by another pupil, it was his fault. If there was a fight and he tried to separate it, they would say he was likely the cause.