"Crack the visage of night, let the dust become light. Grasp the faces before you, wild eyed. Drag their ears to your lips. Speak."
The drought had eaten everything, even my grandmother's breasts and my father's songs. We were feeding off the corrupt children of our efforts. We had no choice but to hope and dream. It was in those times, my mother came to the village. It is said, she was a fire in the darkness of my father's heart, in the darkness of my people.
I did not meet my mother. She died. It is said the day she died it rained until the ground could drink no more and the river walked into our village. My father did not carry me after my mother passed into the land of the spirits. He lost himself in his grief and I was left to be weaned on my grandmother's gnarly hands. It was no surprise that I grew wild and unruly as the weed in front of my father's compound.
The drought had eaten the river when I noticed that the goats in the village were disappearing. The first time was when one hegoat with white beards walked into the small bush behind my father's house and did not return. He was the only hegoat my father had. It was my job to look after the goats. That evening, my father gave me the whip on my buttocks. After weeping, I bowed to catch the goat and give it a portion of my beating. I searched and searched but the goat was nowhere to be found. Soon other villagers started complaining too about their missing goats.
One day, I was sent by my grandmother to bring pebbles from the riverbed. Since the drought, it was easy to wade through the mud and get to the centre of the river. I would go there to catch dying fishes which I roasted and sold at the market. I did not know that it was a taboo to kill, sell or eat the fishes as the river is a sacred river. I was picking the pebbles when the boys came. They did not wait for me to defend myself before they rushed me. I struggled, I swear. I fought but they were many and they came with purpose. They beat me to stupor and left me in the mud.
I was there for hours and I was there when the moon rose and the bats swooped into the skies. I just watched the heavens, unable to lift myself from where I laid supine. Then I heard a growl. I tried to rise but my body ead broken and it hurt to even breathe. Slowly, I turned my head and saw the animal's huge canines grinning in the moonlight. I knew then that I was going to die.
I swear I peed myself. The beast strolled towards me. I could hear it's paws squelch in the mud, the fishes wriggling seeking for air, their eyes wide with terror, their mouths opened to a soundless scream. Maybe that was me because how could I see them? I was one of the mudfishes, a helpless wriggle in the mud. Then hot breath fell on my face and I grew closer to the bestial hunger that stood before me. The animal was lean with hungry eyes, that sadness that came with knowing you were at the end of your tether. I understood that it didn't want to eat me but what could it do? Hunger is not picky.
As those huge maws beared towards my throat, I heard a roar. The beast turned and growled. The roar followed the thudding of something running towards us. The beast seemed to flinch and then it turned and fled into the bush. I exhaled as if I was God on the seventh day. And before me stood my father. In his eyes was a fear I did not know of. He had never spoken to me or called me by name but here he stood with no weapon but his bare hands. But what hands, what strength, what hope.
He lifted me in his arms and took me home. At my grandmother's room, he gently laid me and he surveyed me from head to toe and disappeared from sight. My grandmother rushed in flustered, fear in her eyes. She saw me and she wept. I was in her room for one moon and when I came out of her embrace, I stumbled forward, unused to my legs. The first thing I did was to find my father. I could not find him. He was gone. Yet this time I knew that though we did not speak, we did not hold hands, he watched ovet me and made sure no harm came to me.
You see, he is the greatest warrior and hunter of our village. He is known far and wide and though I wandered through the bushes and forests, the dead rivers and the anthills where the spirits rose out of at night, I feared nothing because the man I barely knew was always somewhere behind watching me and ready to do anything to save me even with his bare hands.
"Open the calabash to the moon, let the story froth at the top, let the milk white wine drink your lips. Our heroes are broken bones in the sands. Their fingers stretch towards the moon and aye, we are their incantations answered. Amin."
This post was written by me, @warpedpoetic for Team Zizy @zyzymena in the Dreemport Sublime Staff Challenge.