Chapter 10 Ìlú-Ìmo, Second Ring, Kingdom of Oru
ìlú-ìm, Second Ring, Kingdom of Oru
L’?R?
L’?r?’s favourite place in the entire kingdom was under the tree in the middle of her compound.
Her fondest memories were of her and her father staying out late beneath the moonlight, listening to the songs of winds and night creatures.
There he had told her stories that made her laugh, cry and scream in fright.
Today, she wished none of the children had come, and they’d have the tree to themselves. Would it make any difference? She eyed the gathering – she hadn’t spoken to him since Alawani took the call.
Baba-ìtàn wrapped up a story about how the masquerades – ritual dancers with masked faces – came to be a part of the kingdom, and were the reason no one was allowed to be out in the streets on the night of blood moons.
The story warned that whoever left their homes on those twelve special nights in a year would be flogged with seven-mouthed horse whips by the faceless Egungun, who roamed the streets looking for anyone foolish enough to be outside on their night.
‘Is uncle prince Alawani going to die?’ said the boy seated opposite Baba-ìtàn, his voice soft, and the group fell silent instantly.
Baba-ìtàn’s eyes widened. He wasn’t expecting that question.
The boy continued, ‘My father said he thinks I am an àlùfáà, but I don’t want to die.’
‘No one has to die,’ Baba-ìtàn said. His voice was so loud and firm that the boy shrank back.
L’?r? scoffed under her breath. That was a lie. There’d never been more than two survivors in any given calling since the day of the First Sun. Yet, every decade the boys still gladly accepted the call.
‘The call for àlùfáà is – it’s complicated and nothing for you to worry about,’ Baba-ìtàn said to the boy. ‘Your father shouldn’t have told you that. Only the gods can call an àlùfáà, and if they do, then you have nothing to worry about.’
‘Can I say no,’ the boy asked softly, ‘if I don’t want it?’
Baba-ìtàn said nothing. He only stared at the boy’s teary brown eyes.
The boy was too young; they all were too young to truly understand why their parents forbade them from entering L’?r?’s home.
Why everyone in the kingdom was free to raise up arms against her and her father at the mere sight of them.
But the children would soon grow up. L’?r? knew from experience that they would grow up to hold the same prejudices.
Guilt squeezed at her heart, and she turned away.
She knew very well the life she would have condemned Alawani to by asking him to reject the call.
She was living that life of exile and rejection, and it was hard – but still better than death.
‘Were you afraid to die when they called you?’ the boy asked Baba-ìtàn.
L’?r? returned her gaze to her father. She wanted to hear this. Baba-ìtàn never talked about his time in the temple or as a priest of the Holy Order.
‘No,’ Baba-ìtàn said, ‘not at first. Not until I discovered –’
His head shot up as though he’d remembered something. He bent low and scooped a handful of sand in both palms and poured it into the firepit. The night was over. ‘That’s enough for tonight. It’s time to go home,’ Baba-ìtàn said.
Another boy from the group spoke softly, his voice choked with tears. ‘My brother was chosen to represent this ring a few days ago. My father said we shouldn’t expect him to come home. I want him to come home. He’s my best friend.’
L’?r? felt a pang in her heart, and for the first time, Baba-ìtàn looked up in her direction, and she walked out of the darkness. His eyes fixed on her.
‘Bàbá?’ the boy’s voice broke their gaze.
L’?r? sat on the floor next to the boy with tears pouring down his face.
Baba-ìtàn looked around at the wide-eyed children whose laughter had turned to sadness and fear in mere moments. L’?r? saw her father’s resolve weaken, and after a few silent moments Baba-ìtàn said to the girl next to him, ‘Bring back the fire. I think we have time for one more story.’
A few smiled but most of them still looked haunted by the questions Baba-ìtàn clearly didn’t know how to answer. The girl next to him leaned forward and summoned her agbára. She placed her glowing palm into the flames, and they blossomed back to life, bright and roaring.
‘Who here knows the story of the first àlùfáà?’
The children all shook their heads.
He took in a deep breath, ‘Okay, then I’ll tell you, but then you all go straight home. Yes?’
The children nodded in unison, and Baba-ìtàn leaned back and nodded, ‘Story story.’
‘Story,’ the children replied in a single voice.
‘Once upon a time?’ Baba-ìtàn asked.
‘Time, time,’ the children answered. Completing the series of phrases that started every story told under the moon’s light.
L’?r? looked at the boy beside her. His tears had stopped flowing. His wide brown eyes now fixed on her father as he spoke from the other side of the fire pit.
‘A long time ago, the people of the continent were scattered across the desert; small tribes formed in settlements and villages, constantly at war with each other. One day, the king of one of those tribes asked his High Priest for a weapon to defeat his enemies and unite the continent. The High Priest discovered a way to summon the magic in the sun. The king convinced all the tribes of the continent to join his new kingdom, promising them the power of the sun. The tribes agreed, and on the day of the First Sun, gathered right in the middle of this kingdom ready for the coronation of the king, who was blessed with agbára oru – the power of the sun. And every generation since the day of the First Sun has been blessed with agbára – the gift from the gods of the sun and sands, as was promised in the days of old.’
L’?r? held her hands in a fist and tucked them around her sides.
Being reminded of how she was the first person in centuries to be born without agbára oru was not how she’d wanted to spend her night.
Her father’s brown eyes glistened in the flames as his words fell upon them like a song.
As he leaned forward to speak closer to them, the streaks of grey in his short black curls sparkled in the light.
When he told stories, it was as though he came alive in a way he wasn’t at other times.
By the end of this story of bravery and loyalty, none of them would remember the tears they had shed moments before.
‘Years later, when it was nearly time for the High Priest to ascend into the city of light, the king asked who would succeed him after he was gone. The High Priest told the king that only someone like himself – someone empty of agbára – would be suitable to take his place.
‘You see?’ Baba-ìtàn said, slowing his words.
‘Whoever the new High Priest was, it was his job to be a conduit between the gods and the people of Oru. And so only one without agbára could do that. Since that moment, every ten first suns, chosen ones have accepted the call of the gods living as priests of the Holy Order. They are our kingmakers, keepers of history, and through their sacrifice the gods keep agbára flowing in our blood from generation to generation.’
L’?r? felt her heart start to hurt again and grabbed at her pendant, rubbing its smooth cold surface to calm herself.
It didn’t work. What Baba-ìtàn didn’t say was the stripping ceremony before his yielded no survivors, and the one after his only ten first suns ago, also yielded no survivors.
It was by sheer luck or the cruelty of the gods as far as L’?r? was concerned that both he and the Lord Regent, who now ruled the kingdom, survived.
Baba-ìtàn’s eyes fixed on the children. ‘The child of a man with powerful agbára may inherit only half his agbára, but the child of a High Priest – an àlùfáà, one touched by the gods – will always be the most powerful person in that generation. So, in addition to the àlùfáà’s duties as High Priest, he’d also sire the next sovereign who’d rule after the king left the land of the living.
To select the mother of the next sovereign, the High Priest told the kingdom to bring five brides, one from each ring, excluding his own – the capital. ’
‘How were kings and queens chosen before?’ interrupted one boy, blinking.
‘Before that, the king’s eldest child was always the next monarch, so the crown stayed within the royal family.
But this king was willing to sacrifice the continuity of his line for the sake of the kingdom, so that there’d always be agbára in Oru.
The king knew that without the stripping ceremonies, our agbára would begin to fade.
Without the sacrifice of the brave men called to the Red Stone, the gods would take from us the powers they gifted us.
Even more, their sacrifice was rewarded, and the children of those who survived the stripping had the greatest agbára in the kingdom.
Knowing this, the new High Priest, a survivor himself, wed all five wives, and the firstborn of those unions was our next sovereign, and the siblings born to each of the other wives formed his sacred council.
The call of the àlùfáà keeps our connection to the gods and our agbára alive through time, from generation to generation, until the sun no longer burns in the sky. ’
‘But the son of the new High Priest, he was just a baby. How could he be king?’
‘Yes, his father, the High Priest, ruled as Lord Regent until he was old enough to rule on his own, just as our Lord Regent Babátúndé took over the throne on the day our late king died and has held it for eighteen first suns. He will continue to do so until the crown heir’s coronation in just a few blood moons. ’
L’?r? wrapped her arms tighter around her body.
Alawani was now bound to the gods, the Holy Order and his maiden.
Bound to everyone and everything that took him farther away from L’?r?.
She remembered the warmth of his breath as his lips touched hers, and she shivered in her seat.
The tears she tried to push back filled her eyes, and she felt herself on the brink of falling apart. Again.
‘Baba-ìtàn, so why did you leave? Didn’t you like the palace?’ the girl who’d lit the fire asked. ‘Are you still àlùfáà? My father said you are and that even if you left the Order, you’re still part of them. Is it true? And will our agbára go away because you left?’
L’?r? didn’t need to see her father’s face to know how he felt about questions like that.
Even though his story was a cautionary tale taught to every child in their kingdom, still it must have felt like a wound being reopened every time he had to talk about it.
Even she’d never had the guts to ask why he left the life of an àlùfáà.
Still, on days like today she did wonder why, after all her father had been through to survive the stripping ceremony, he’d chosen not to live in wealth and comfort within the walls of the Sun Temple.
The people called him a coward, but even though she didn’t know his reasons, she knew her father was braver than any of them could imagine.
There had been no precedent for what happened to an àlùfáà who left the Order, because it had simply never happened.
No one dared, no one questioned, they all complied.
Until him. The first of his kind. That had to count for something.
Now she just had to get Alawani to do the same.
‘My mother said it was because –’ The voice belonging to another young girl broke off. As though whatever her mother had told her was too much to say out loud.
L’?r? raised her gaze to meet her father’s.
She sat quietly with the rest of the children, waiting for the answer she’d wanted to know her whole life.
L’?r? had known from a very young age that Baba-ìtàn was not her birth father.
Beyond knowing that ordinary priests could bear no children, he had told her many times about her mother the temple maiden, who had fallen in love with a palace guard, and how they both paid for it with their lives.
Still, L’?r? occasionally wondered what her life would have been like if she’d been born of an àlùfáà, with fire in her blood and the power of the sun in her hands.
She looked at her hands and wished with all of her might that they would glow.
Nothing happened. Nothing ever did, and now only the shadows of the night danced across her palms.
Baba-ìtàn rose from his seat and said, ‘I think that’s enough for tonight. Go home.’
The children moaned as they left the compound.
When silence fell, Baba-ìtàn turned to her. ‘All who go into the Order come out broken. Alawani should never have accepted that call.’ He added quickly, ‘But he did, and we must accept that. Don’t visit him, don’t beg for him, don’t write to him, don’t appeal to the Holy Order. Do nothing.’
‘Is that an option? An appeal? Will they –’
‘L’?r?! This is serious,’ Baba-ìtàn said sternly. ‘If you get caught going near that temple you’ll be dead before dawn, and then they’ll come for me too.’
L’?r? felt her resolve melting away in her father’s teary eyes, and she crumbled into his arms and wept.