THE VILLAINY OF YEWA

Author’s Note – Another vignette from my Yoruba pantheon-inspired project (if you missed out on previous vignettes, check them out – The First Journey, The Seven Cycles of Peace & The Emancipation of Mia!)

Time had no meaning here. When she had been banished to the lands of infinite silence, she had not pictured each moment of her penance stretching like a fraying yet stubborn rope, dreary and unending, with only recriminations to quench her hunger and tears alone to quench her thirst. A naïve fool fleeing from her first and worst mistake, she had not considered how tedious it would be having to play nursemaid to children who were waiting to be reborn again.

She had never particularly liked children, and definitely not the undead ones who liked to cycle frenziedly between worlds, feasting on the sorrow and heartbreak of clueless parents who made endless sacrifices to cajole the capricious enfants terribles to stay. Malomo, Banjoko, Yemiitan, Matanmi, Durojaye…useless pleas wrapped in flowery names. 

A little over an hour ago, yet another of them had arrived through the gates. Kaabo, she had welcomed the little soul in white even as disappointment licked at her throat like a hungry lizard, even as she begun the rites needed to grant him passage to the beyond. There he would gambol and frolic with his malicious legion, like a young kid set loose in a season she once knew by the name of Spring, until it was time to begin the cycle of destruction again.

Foolishly, she had thought her sojourn here would at least see her joining forces with the two women she had heard of and admired from a distance for so long—the porter of the souls and the guardian of the gates—only to discover not one, but the both of them, were in love with the same fiery fiend who ruined her. Loneliness had kept her secretly hoping that her would-be partners, strangers-turned-rivals, would extend to her an olive branch. She supposed she should have accepted by now that she was anathema, a fallen one, disloyal to her creed, too far gone such that even their deadly personifications would have nothing to do with her.

They were nothing like her after all. They were ferocious in their charge, one with a loud recklessness that bordered on madness and the other with a quiet tenacity many foolishly mistook for meekness. And while they worked in tandem with her, they (even the one she learned had ended up here because of the same fiend!) would have no association with her beyond the lands they tended together. She had never been associated with power even before her fall but the scale of her powerlessness and ignominy now, despite the respite Father had tried to grant her, rendered her as bland milksop akin to a vampire with no teeth.

She sniffled and blinked furiously but could not stop the tears dropping onto the batch of gerbera daisies she was tending. They were screaming yellow, an obnoxious splash of color so jarring in the bare, gray landscape that was her new home. She fell to her knees then and gave in to the noisy sobs that had been building up in her throat, aching to be released.

Someone cleared their throat then and she turned around viciously, ashamed of being caught at her lowest. 

The rage rose like a flame when she saw who it was, standing under the ceiba trees. What are you doing here? What right do you have to be here?

He was silent at first, observing her with his infamous lambent gaze laced with dark mischief.

How the mighty have fallen. He said finally, looking around with a light scorn at the flowers scantily dotting the forbidding landscape. Tell me, how does this compare with your father’s garden?

How dare you? A blistering anger suffused her voice. 

How dare him indeed when he…and that man were the reason for her excommunication. Of course, he was right. This paled completely in comparison to her father’s garden, where she would have been content to live out her humdrum existence as the vanguard for purity but for this man and especially that man, who could never be content unless he was conquering and trampling a woman under his feet like the fated serpent in Abrahamic Eden.

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It seemed like yesterday when she had spotted both men watching her with furtive smiles, presumably exchanging a secret joke that she was not privy to. She had been tending to her father’s flowers as she did each dawn, dressed in her customary robes of light pink, flitting from the clusters of climbing hydrangeas with their fragrant white lacecap blooms to the vivid orange sunshine bursts of marigolds to the electric violet blue tango sprouts. As she did so that dawn, that man had approached her as though she were the first woman he had ever seen in his life and like a naïve fool, she had fallen for the scorching words that escaped his burning lips.

Sheltered and guileless as she had been, how could she have known that she was to be the hapless victim of a contrary man’s tongue, sharpened to make and unmake destinies with his capricious words?  How could she have known that she had been the unwitting target of a bruised man’s ego, stung to discover that that there was a hidden citadel no man, not even one as he, had ever even attempted to breach? 

Alas, vanguard for purity no more. The wager had been won and his attentions had dwindled away with his conquest. To add insult to injury, the man she had thought belonged to her belonged to other women still—vanguards of sensuality, ferocity, duty—how could she have ever hoped to compete? 

Unable to bear the shame her father would inadvertently hang around her neck with his stoic acceptance, she had retreated to a hidden corner of the garden. There she had sat on a rock and spread her legs wide so she could reach deep into her womb to grab the seed the man had planted. She had pulled it out and buried it in the secret shade that saw no sun.

But of course, no one in the world had ever been able to hide anything from Father. 

Make the rounds with me, Daughter. He had asked her one morning. Let us check on my children. He called the flowers his children.

She had acquiesced and they had commenced a leisurely stroll where she had pointed out the hard work she had done in the week with the lush red rose buds, the shocking purple violets, and the fence of sprawling gardenia jasminoides. I pruned the old flowers to make way for new life, just like you showed me.

What did you do with those flowers you pruned? He asked.

I tossed them on the heap.

And the flower inside you?

She had broken at the last. Her rose pink robes took on a deeper hue, reflecting the color of her shame as she confessed the story of her seduction. Distraught, he had held her in his arms as she wept disconsolately. 

You know what I must do, he had said to her later at nightfall, looking away from the gossamer veil she had thrown on to shroud her bloodshot eyes, as much as I do not want to. Would that it were such that I could bear this for you, but my hands are tied. She had steeled herself for this conversation, knowing that her father could never be like her, abdicating his vanguard, especially a vanguard so rational and unyielding as justice. He had always done what he had to do but still, it stung.

I have let you down, Father, and I know what you must do. She had told him. But I will be brave. Send me then to the lands beyond, that I may go tend the flowers in exile there. All I ask is that you think of me fondly now and again as the daughter you once loved.

…and always will. Leave now then as the preying Owl with supreme dominion over the night. Leave now then as the keeper of the lands of silence, with the porter of the souls at your right hand and the guardian of the gates at your left. And may you never again set your eyes on a mortal man until it is his time to die. 

She flinched as her father’s voice trembled at the last line. He was no mortal man, she knew, but he was blinding white light and she had now become his antithesis. He had affirmed that he would always love her but as she assumed her mantle of darkness, she knew his love for her could never be the same. 

And so, she had parted at dusk, robed in scarlet, newly crowned vanguard of night. Here she was, here she had been, trying but failing to replicate her father’s gardens in the lands that had no breath. Disowned by her father, betrayed by her lover, shunned by the others who were to be at her right and left hand. They, unlike her, were unfettered. They were not shackled to the lands beyond as she was. Oba came and went as duty called, and Oya came and went as she pleased.

Her only companions were the flighty abiku and the loquacious iwin, the latter who taught her all the stories, patakis, she had never known. Such gossiping busy bodies, these ghosts. 

Over the years, she, former symbol of all that was light and pure, had become synonymous with fear and loathing. It was as Father said—no one ever looked upon her unless it was their time to die. Shrouded in shadows, her legend had become that of a severe, malicious, unwelcome vanguard. The years she had served faithfully in her previous archetype had counted for nothing. She had been banished, abandoned, forgotten for one mistake while that man, her undoing, previously mortal, was held high now as a god among gods.

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And here was this man, gleefully dancing barefoot on the jagged shards of her pain but such was his nature, why should she be surprised still?

She asked again fiercely. What are you doing here? 

I came to see what penance looks like, never having had to indulge in that folly myself. I must say it does not look so well on you. He wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Were there no boundaries he would not cross? You are why I am here. You and that…

He smiled broadly and finished her sentence. Seducer?

She saw incandescent red but answered in blue chill. Should you not be with him even now, pushing him to wager over the next fool to debauch?

You sound…is it, could it be…jealous? He crowed.

Her fingers itched to slap his face. Not that she would ever dare, she knew his ethos. She should ignore him. It was his way, turning salt over and pretending there was some deeper meaning to the pattern the sprinkled particles made on the ground. She should turn her back to him and disregard his taunting until he gave up and went away but the bitterness frothed over like an overflowing well following a storm.

Look at what you, what he, what they have made of me. Rot, ruin…and all for what? Like each of you hasn’t done worse in your lifetimes.  

This is what we made of you, or what you have made of yourself? His tone had turned solemn. Which is it?

I’m in no mood for your parables, now leave. She made the mistake of turning her back to him and felt the impact of the error in the cold hand trailing lightly down the arch of her neck. At once, she felt the life drain out of her as she collapsed to the floor. The flock of undead children gathered, chattering noisily—here was some other kind of entertainment, the likes they never had on this side of realms.

Get up, he said harshly, staring down at her in blank disapproval. Like quicksilver, the trickster had switched like the fickle, inconstant moon.

She groaned. No, please…don’t…why are you…haven’t you done enough? Why can’t you…just go away?

Not until you give me what I came here for.

You tore me down from my pedestal. What could I possibly have left to give to you? What do you want? She barely refrained from invoking his name. 

What do you want? He pointed the question back at her.

Why are you doing this? My only crime was…loving him. Why are you tormenting me? Why are you rubbing the salt in my wounds? You set him on my path, you set me up to fall in love with him and see where it got me…exiled, abandoned, forgotten by him, by my father, by my votaries while he thrives, while you thrive, while the gods thrive. He was made a god too with a bright and glorious vanguard; his women come and go; they regard me with pity and scorn, and yet, you stand here, mocking my scars, my failure! It’s not…She stopped, resentment choking off her words.

Fair? He spat. I would have thought you would have learned to accept the mercurial nature of our lifetimes by now. Why do you still snivel? How long will you crawl on the ground like you do before me now? You had to give up a lifetime because you loved a man who did not love you, so what? Is that enough to crawl in the dirt like a worm? Didn’t Obatala give you dominion over these lands beyond? Why do you waste this lifetime trying again to be the spineless facsimile of the virtuous gardener you were once?

She lay on the cold ground, the bite of his colder words sinking in her bones. I…didn’t ask for this lifetime. I don’t want this lifetime, not like this. 

And so, I ask again…what do you want?

It must have felt like hours that she lay there, silent, bitter, considering, and then she knew what she must have of him. Give me the Eight.

The shadows about him stirred, fluttered, sensing a new home, a new partial companion, and not the balanced neutral master they served now.

He cocked his head as though he were listening to an invisible presence. Ah, vengeance, my friend of old. He smirked to himself. Now this was language he understood and not the maudlin rubbish she had been spouting since he had arrived in the lands of mystery.

You want the Eight? He needed to be sure she knew what she was asking.

You asked me what I wanted, she replied sharply. Will you give them to me?

He laughed out loud and long. Well then. Shall I give you their wings? Will you take their reins? 

She felt the restrained violence in the air as the shadows fluttered even more violently, pushing against their fetters, against the leash he had them on. Would he really give them to her? He was not to be trusted. Was this a trick? 

Yewa, mo wi pe, ṣe o fẹ awọn ajogun mi? He asked in a terrible voice if she really wanted his warriors.

The resolve set in then. The thirst for power, for revenge, obliterated the check of common sense. She was already the antithesis of Father, wasn’t she? He had forgotten her, hadn’t he? She could be more than just a handicapped keeper of forbidden lands, couldn’t she? She was tired of the heavy robes of loss and shame, wasn’t she? She stood up slowly from the cold ground, the bones of her back and ribs cracking, muscle and sinew stretching as she did.

Bẹẹ ni, she confirmed. Bẹẹ ni.

And without waiting for his direction, she opened her mouth wide in invitation…wider…. wider…wider…until the skin around her jaw stretched tight, revealing a dark gaping maw of nothing.

He flashed her a quick wicked smile and then…. he set them loose. A haunting scream was ripped loose from her mouth as the shadows flooded down her throat. She curled over in savage pain as she let them in one after the other, as they tore through the inside of her. The first she knew, she tended his homeland after all. The other seven Ajogun were new to her. 

The echoes of her screams reverberated across the lonely dark landscape as she struggled for dominion in her own skin, in her being. Ah, Ogun re o! Ogun re o! 

Elegbara watched dispassionately as she screamed of war and her body contorted in a most unusual manner. The audience of immaterial children cloaked in white watched intently too as the internal struggle played out in front of them. The ghosts were watching from a distance, none of them wanted to catch his attention.

A final scream and then, a harsh silence.

She stood tall, hints of shadows moving across the landscape of her dusky skin, deathly white clouds escaping from her gasping nostrils, her mass of coiled curls wildly mating with the tendrils of a sudden wind. 

The pupils in her eyes, now a blank white, came to rest on the now smirking Elegbara with icy contempt. Ṣe ki n dupẹ ni?

The inscrutable trickster god snorted at the question she was foolish enough to ask. What good were useless words of gratitude? 

She looked down again at the shadows playing underneath her skin and was gripped by a tentative grim pride. Did he know what he had just unleashed? She suspected he did.

Yewa ti di Laburu, she said softly. Ogun ti de! The warriors under her skin echoed the ariwo ogun of their new commander in triumph. Ogun de ooooooooo! 

The children trilled stridently at the transformation of their keeper to a personification of Maleficence who stood in front of them declaring war. The formerly dim muttering of the ghosts still hiding in the silhouette of the night rose to a crescendo. Ravens launched into the air at the disturbance. 

He flashed his signature enigmatic smile at the chaos as he stepped slowly away into the shadows. He was no longer visible, but his voice cut through the dark mist beyond.

Yewa is no more, Laburu re o! He laughed in his mocking tone to see how the villainization had come full circle. O ya, jẹ ki ija bẹrẹ…

© Lara Brown, 2024

Photo generated by AI