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.
No one ever believed him.
Then the day came when someone stole the principal's cherished coat and threw it into the muddy puddle in front of his classroom. The whole school had been punished .
Days later a rumor started spreading like wildfire that it must have been Zebu who carried out the act. And by midday of school, he had been taken to the principal's office, charged and convicted of a crime he knew nothing of.
That had been the last straw .
At the age of thirteen, Zebu left school. He ran away from the monastery's orphanage and became the apprentice of a farmer.
He wanted revenge on this people, nothing would give him more joy than to burn all their houses down. But, better still, ..he would go to the big cities and make it big there.
He would then come back,..flaunting his riches in everyone's face.
That dream had had the potential of being real when he had come across some local women who sat around a fire pit by a barn not far from the farm where he worked .
They spoke of Saluu and the old ways , before Christianity was preached in the lands around their mountains.
Many around the mountains had accepted the new way of life, but not all.
Some had followed Saluu and the old religion.He had been the high priest of the eight gods they worshipped in the land.
The town folks were frightened of him because he could shape-shift into animals, raise sick people that were already at death's door .
He even summoned the rain to fall from the skies, and was known to strike people with illnesses just by a snap of his fingers .
True or false , no one was sure of this .
The new religion had come like a consuming fire, breaking people away from the old ways and restoring peace to the broken and afflicted,_talking about love.
He became bored as the women talked into the night about the ways of the Christians. Their faith was strange to him. They worshipped a man that had lived so long ago from another land altogether. No one he knew had ever been to the man's strange land. So how did they know whether Nazareth truly existed or whether the one called 'Jesus' , was just the figment of others imagination.
Most of the Christians he knew in town gathered at the new church,donated by the richest man in town.
He was known to all as 'Big Daddy'.
'A good man' .. Zebu thought to himself , far better than half of the Christians Zebu came across in town.
Most of these Christians were so carried away with the latest gossip floating around town . Known figures from the congregation, he saw daily, entering into local brothels at night.
And by Sunday, he would see the same people ,..carrying their bibles so high up that it almost touched their noses.
Well, at least they didn't disturb him.
However, before leaving the fire pit ,Zebu overheard an old woman that the other women called ' mama sai', ..talking about the powers of the great Saluu and how he was still alive and well , living in an old hut on the mountain, Magu.
Another woman asked how she knew this,but the old woman only laughed,..and said "pray my dear ones,that you never enter any trouble that would cause you to look for a solution from any source other than GOD".
Zebu listened intently as Mama sai stared absently into the fire pit ,...lost in old memories as she began telling a chilling story about a part of her life she would rather not talk about but must have decided to share just this once .
Maybe her time was near anyway and she guessed her story would help a lost soul,teach them a lesson or two about life, ..Zebu grinned to himself.
"I was very poor once"..said Mama sai, "my husband fell on hard times and life became tough for us.
I had two daughters ,twins, but I know this will surprise most of you because you have never seen me with any child of my own ".
This was true ,everyone sitting around the fire turned and looked at Mama sai, some with their mouth agape. Nobody knew the old woman had ever given birth or nursed a child , let alone , 'twin girls '.
"We named them Adai and Amari. They were both beautiful to behold. Ours was a poor, but happy family"."Then one day, Saluu, who was said to live in the mountains-and had not been heard of or seen in almost a century ,came surprisingly to our hut . He requested an audience with my husband and I.
"The old man said he had observed us for some time through the help of his spirit guides ,
and wanted to fulfill our greatest desire" .
"He was ready to make us rich, if we only did one thing, ..give a willing sacrifice to his gods".
"Excited at the prospect of being rich, we asked what the sacrifice would entail, ..maybe cowry shells,..beads,or a goat? , ...all the things that were commonly offered in those days.
"Do you know what that evil man wanted?, mama sai asked, looking round at her listeners , some shaking their heads nervously, ... Our twins".
Everyone listening to the old woman's tale gasped.
Zebu leaned in more towards the storyteller.Did this woman actually offer her twins up as a sacrifice.
He had heard of human sacrifices being offered in the old days but this was real evidence of such a practice .
"Of course I refused and sent the old man out of our home, said Mama sai.
" But my victory was short lived , for my husband's heart had already been corrupted by the evil of Saluu.
On later nights unknown to me,my husband had started visiting the old man,who filled his thoughts with the pleasures of riches,and the things he could achieve with the wealth that his gods would bestow on him . He assured my husband,Tanlo, that we could always have more children to replace the ones used for the sacrifice needed.
Finally, the plan was hatched by both of them without my knowledge ,but my husband promised the old man only one of my twins.
"Two nights later,as if in a dream , I heard my daughter screaming from a far away place.
I woke up and found both Adai and my husband gone. I ran as fast as I could towards the screams ,into an open field that descended into a watery groove, and right on top of an old wooden trunk I could see the form of my beautiful child, so still, part of her face illuminated by the full moon in the night sky,her eyes wide open but seeing nothing and her throat, .. slit from one side of her neck to the other" .
The women were all weeping now, even Zebu felt sad for the old woman.
"It was a long time ago but it still hurts so deep "said Mama sai.."we became rich but there was no more joy in our home , my husband begged for my forgiveness but there was no more love in my heart for him".
"I tried telling the tribe head and our tribe what my husband had done to our child,but no one took me seriously. It was as if they were all in a trance, placed on them surely by Saluu.
And there was no trace of my child or the trunk of the tree were she died.
My husband told the villagers that Adai who loved to play by the river must have been swept away by the currents.
"Only a Christian couple helped me and listened to my rants. They ran the old church that still stands beside the new one built by Big daddy.
"They helped me to sneak my Amari out of this evil town ,sending her to a missionary home and school in Ivory Coast".
"There, I knew she would be safe. I haven't set my eyes on her since... but maybe one day.." mama sai voice trailed off, ..a lonely tear , running down her cheek.
"Some nights after my Adai was taken from me, the Christian couple gathered up their prayer band and we all matched towards the mountain and started praying against Saluu and all his forces of darkness .
"And GOD gave us victory"!
"We heard that old crafty thing, screaming into the night and telling Someone or something to stop beating him".
"As for my husband,Tanlo, I left him. I heard he later married two other women who practically ran him mad until he took his own life 5 years after he killed my Adai, ..serves him right !".
"I lived the better part of my life with the Christian couple that really lifted me up and spoke healing into my life, but I never married again. The pain of Adai was just to much for me," the old woman recounted, swaying back and forth on her stool and recollecting her time with the loving Pastor Jacob and his wife Joyce.
"The best thing was receiving Christ into my life through them. And though the wife is late, I still visit the man of GOD at that very old church ."
"As for Saluu, he disappeared from our valley . Some say he still lives on the mountain,..neither dying or living_just existing".
"I am sure he's waiting for another willing victim to corrupt."
Although the old woman was still talking, Zebu 's heart was racing. His ears had only heard the words "saluu,..riches .
His mind was planning out a journey to seek out this old man who could possibly change his whole world .
'Was this really possible!'
He was ready to do anything, ..give anything. This was the only escape for a better life .
Zebu left the gathering silently, slipping into the night ,and humming an old school tune in the direction of the mountains....
...........to be continued.....
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