The First Journey

Author’s Note – I’m slooooooowly fleshing out what may be a new book (yep, officially insane) inspired by the Yoruba pantheon and as part of doing so, I’ve begun to create vignettes to help with my world building…this is one with several more to come. Don’t anticipate any will end up in a final version but if anyone’s reading these, I hope it whets your appetite for more!

As the others began to argue even more vigorously—some for, others against—he turned to exchange a wry look with his brother. His brother’s wife, self-possessed as always, had tuned out the chaos and was observing them both with one brow raised and an arrogant smirk on her timelessly beautiful face. He could guess what she was thinking; after all, she had always had little patience for what she had termed pointless shenanigans the first time around. History really did always repeat itself.

There hadn’t been this much opposition the first go-around. His brother had indulged him, knowing how deeply he had been longing for something, somewhere of his own. His brother ruled supreme with full dominion of the above while his powerful wife had claim to all that lay below, the deepest of which she had eventually ceded to her equally powerful daughter.

I wonder what it would be like to create a world-in between? He had mused out loud to his brother one day after returning from his usual routine of staring down through the impermeable mists below the sky.

His brother had peered at him with that all-seeing gaze, the one that made you believe that he could see right through every synapse and bone. Well, he could.

In-between? You grow tired of us? His brother had teased.

He had shrugged. Only now and then but on a serious note…

Yemoja had thought the idea silly. Have we not enough to contend with here? You are the only one who has ever been able to help me keep the children in line. Whatever are we to do while you go off fooling around in a place that has no form?

Classic Yemoja. Her self-interests first, everything else came second. And children? He had snorted to himself. It perplexed him whenever she referred to the first gods with thousands of years of being in existence under their belts as such, but they were her children, he supposed.

A place that has no form…yet. He had interjected, then added. I could take them with me.

They had both turned to look at him askance.

I could. They could help create a mirror of our worlds, create expressions of themselves and…

Bi loke bẹ ni isalẹ? Yemoja had laughed at the thought of creating worlds as above, so below. Those lunatics would love it. More adoring worshippers and animate too? You have my blessing if you can make it happen.

To his surprise, he had won the argument with his larger audience even with the terms he had presented – trust me with the conveyance of your ori and aṣẹ to a place and purpose unknown. The others had not needed much convincing. All but one had eagerly rallied, keen for some distraction from the monotony of their godly lives. They had entrusted him with their respective oris and aṣẹs—an unprecedented privilege, given how sacred these were—each of which he had painstakingly worked with The Ironsmith to craft into a set of golden links that made for a long, sinuous chain.

On the day he had parted, he had wrapped the chain around his neck and across his chest. It had been a rather tense farewell—for all their existence, he and his brother had never been apart for more than an hour at a stretch, but it was time, he knew. He needed to establish his own identity, his own world outside of his brother’s shadow, and this was his one opportunity to do it. Yes, he would be back but even then, the unspoken truth remained – Ikole Orun, the heavens, would no longer be his home.

His brother had handed him a pouch which had contained a snail shell filled with earth from the throne room, a miscellaneous panoply of palm nuts and other seeds, and a squawking guinea hen with five toes. He observed the curious collection, bemused.

What am I to do with these? He had asked. Will these create a mighty world?

Akeekee rin tapotapo. That had been his brother’s tart and indirect rebuke. The scorpion travels accompanied by venom.

The first journey had begun with him throwing the golden chain into the opaque mists, after which he had blindly begun his descent down the chain. When he had reached the last link after a hundred days and nights, he had hovered over the…nothing, pondering his next move. As he did so, the deafening indignant protests of the guinea hen grew even louder as it protested the sheer indignity of being squashed away in the cloth pouch his brother had given him.

Irritated, he had reached into the pouch to grab the hen and had lost his hold as he struggled to hang onto the golden chain. Out tumbled the snail shell and the earth that had filled it. The vexed hen followed, all piercing claws and flapping wings. It immediately began to claw the earth it had landed on, spreading it about while its wings whipped up a windstorm that blew the earth even further and as he watched, the first solid land, what he would name Ikole Aye, materialized.

Rolling his eyes at his brother’s theatrics—he just knew his brother was watching with a wide grin on his face—he had let go of the chain when the storm had ended at last and landed on the firm terra. On a whim, he had shaken out one of the remainders of the pouch’s contents—a palm nut—and as he did, it had instantly sprouted into a palm tree, his favorite. Smiling, he had set about to explore the dunes and valleys created in the aftermath of the hen’s tantrum-generated storm, leaving nuts and seeds in his wake that had immediately sprouted into more trees.

In the following days, he had discovered clay and had set out to shape figures which his brother had then breathed life into. He had broken the chain apart then, handed a golden link to each of the first tribes, and had directed them in completing the requisite clandestine rituals to reincarnate the gods who would be their patrons. The days had turned into months, and the months to years and with the support of his brother’s chaotic brood, Ikole Aye had become home to thousands of men and women created in his image and that of his kin … a world of his own at last.

It had been a successful first journey, he reflected ruefully now. There had been glitches, of course. Like the shameful incident with the palm wine and the misshapen clay figures created in a fit of never-to-be-repeated drunkenness…best not to think on that now. Then there had been that foolish rebellion of Yemoja’s spoiled, sullen brat—Olokun—furious about the intrusion the new world had apparently made on her terrain of deep seas. How she had thought creating a flood to erase the hard work he and the others had done had been the way to ease her grouse, he still did not understand. All brute magic and little sense, that one. Then there had been the too-numerous excesses of his brother’s children, the same set quarreling vigorously now while he and their parents, Yemoja and Odumare, looked on, tired. Orunmila was the only silent one, wise as he was.

While he thought the lot of them needed some humble pie—one would think they were the only gods with the way they carried on sometimes—he understood why some were opposed to what was being proposed. After all, they had been long forgotten by most of the world they had helped to make, by the expressions of themselves in the humans they had helped to create.

It was partly his fault—one day, Odumare had asked him to return as he wanted him back at his right-hand side and he had never known, still did not, how to tell his brother no. He had thought to leave his brother’s brood, the first gods, in charge but exasperated and exhausted with cleaning up their messes during his periodic visits, he had encouraged them to return permanently to Ikole Orun advocating for the independence of the Ikole Aye. After much persuasion, they had reluctantly done so with the expectation that their legacies and the tributes owed to them by their followers would persist with no disruption.

But alas, the descendants of clay were not only short of life but memory too. The first gods had fallen out of favor with most of the humans over the centuries and now, with bruised egos at stake, they were very much less inclined to agree to support his proposal to re-enact the journey and the ages-old reincarnation rituals—spirit bound to flesh by soul—to save the earth, the world that was now falling apart.

But the chaos could not be allowed to continue. It was a beautiful world they had created, with beautiful expressions of the gods seated now before him, Odumare and Yemoja in the throne room.  Ikole Aye was, in fact, the third most beautiful thing he had ever created—the first being his gardens and the second, his beloved daughter—and it could not be allowed to fall to ruin, not now, not after all this time.

There would have to be another journey. He would yet convince them, or his name was not Obatala.

© Lara Brown, 2020

Photo by Tatiana Syrikova from Pexels