I tossed and turned on the light wrapper placed beneath my back on the sand mud ground of the open kitchen hut; the wrapper didn’t do much to protect my skin from the coarse nature of the ground but while my body could be seen reacting to the uncomfortableness in reality, in my dreams I was nothing but at peace.

I was once again dreaming of papa and I in happier times, times that always contained mama. Iya mi. This time we had gone to the river bank, but baba was not working today; we just wanted to enjoy the cool breeze closer to the river. Mummy was cradled close to baba’s chest as they sat closer to the trees that surrounded the terrain of the river bank, meanwhile I decided to edge even closer to the river, imagining what it would be like to take an afternoon dip.

I remembered mama’s smile as she shook her head watching me dip my feet into the clear waters of the river; her white teeth glistening bright against her dark chocolate skin, a skin tone we had in common. I remember how beautiful she had looked that day, her skin glowing and contrasting with the new red wrappers and beads baba had brought for her from his trails in Benin kingdom.

I remembered how papa had smiled at her in his arms, pulling her tighter and I remember watching them feeling lucky for the parents that I had, feeling wistful for a love that waxed ever strong, that never seemed to ease from the glint in their eyes.

I remembered feeling lucky to be an extension of that love, even selfishly thinking at that moment I was glad to be an only child because I had them and their love all to myself.

How foolish was I? I have lost them both and now I am alone with no reminder of them.

That singular thought began to unravel the safe haven my mind had woven for itself, and I was back there, two houses away from where baba was, kneeling in front of that pale skinned man, who now possessed eyes as red and beady as the devils in the stories the old ones told.

I was back there now, watching his sword swing heavily against baba’s neck and just before I had to watch his head roll onto the ground, I heard my mum’s voice but this time she wasn’t laughing, it wasn’t gentle and sweet like the wine tapered from our palm trees, no; it was heavy, it was loud and it was powerful “Oluwatobi ji ma sun!, this place of darkness and death is not for you. Do not cling to the sadness of yesterday but fight with that anger you feel, so those pale beasts will never make you shed another tear. Orisha mi yóo pa ọ́ mọ́. Omo mi, awọn oriṣa yoo ja fun ọ, awọn oriṣa yoo ja pẹlu rẹ, so you must let them fight through you!. Tobi ji!”

I jumped out of the dream, my heart pounding out of my chest, even more when I felt Kehinde’s hand on my left shoulder; so much so that I barely even noticed as I shoved my elbow harshly in to his own shoulder. It was his loud hiss that gave it away and finally broke me out of the spell it had over me.

I scrambled to my feet, tying the wrapper that covered my chest tighter as I looked around and realized that the other women and children from my town whom I shared this hut with where now nowhere to be found, the only signs that they’d slept here being their wrappers neatly folded to the side.

I looked over to Kehinde who was watching me with guarded and confused eyes and the anger and despair of what had occurred not more than two days ago followed me as I responded to his expression with a snare “What do you want? Where is everyone else?”

He huffed at the tone of my voice “You want answers and yet you snare at me. Anyways, the people you stayed with and everyone else have gone to the Oba’s town hall, to discuss next moves. The meeting is just about to start but when I did not see you I realized you are probably still sleeping, like you have been doing for the past two days straight. I asked mama osanobua ati iya dami and they said they had tried waking you, but you refused to let go of your dreams”

As he talked, he moved closer to me and I could see the glint of pity in his eyes and it did nothing to quell the disdain I currently held for him “What business, is it of mine to be at the meeting? All the important information will be left to be discussed among the men, when it really comes down to it they will make the decisions in their secret conversations and once again I will be relegated to the dark. You have no right to look at me like that, I do not need nor want your pity, why don’t you keep it for yourself? It wasn’t only my father’s head heaved from his neck”

I felt a sense of satisfaction take me over, when I saw the pity in his eyes turn to anger, but it was short lived as he let out a sigh , stepped back and lowered his soldiers that were previously in a defensive posture. He was letting his guard down and in his eyes I could see what he truly felt : grief and the guilt that rose up in me tasted like bile at the back of my throat.

He took a long glance at me before he replied “I did not come to fight with you and Tobi you know not one man in our town have ever treated you or the other women as unimportant or with less than the respect you deserve. The personification of olorun osun, I have never treated you as less than you are. You will never know how sorry I am about the death of your father, about how you had to find out about what he did for his kingdom, for the freedom of all the three tribes from the hands of the pale invaders but I will never apologize from saving you from your own recklessness”

I scoffed at his words “How important I am? Yet you knew my dad was continuously putting his life at risk and you told me nothing, you were by my side, the day iya mi ku, you knew he was all I had and you said nothing. You still have your mother. My dad fighting for the other tribes that won’t even fight for us, who would rather fight against us and save their own skin than ally with us against the invaders, and you told me nothing. Then you stopped me from helping him, watched as they killed him and your own father”.

He released a sharp groan, and pushed closer to me holding onto my arms tightly, not harsh enough to hurt or bruise, just hard enough to gain my full attention as I stared back into his relentless eyes intently “Tobi, I will tell you again, our deaths would have been nothing but a waste, this way we can fight, we can kill the man who dared put his sword on them, we can burn them to ashes and chase them out of our lands. The other tribes relent in fear but we are not afraid. We can show them we are the true children of the gods we serve”

I said nothing at first, his words an all too familiar reminder of my mama’s voice in my dreams, then I replied with the true question on my mind “And you think we could actually win?”

He pulled back at my question, offering no response to my faithless inquiry “We’ve already been here too long, just come with me to the town hall so we can discover what the next steps are, like it or not war is coming to us and we must all be prepared. After this I will answer all the questions you have about baba, as much as I can from what I was allowed to hear and what my father shared with me”

I gave a curt nod in answer, and he turned to walk out of the hut in the direction of the town hall, and I walked closely behind him, not wanting to lose my way as it had been a while since I’d actually been here.

I could not help the annoyance that took me over when I realized not even the deep anger I currently felt towards Kehinde could stop me from noticing how attractive the muscles of his shirtless back looked as he moved.

I sat on one of the wooden stools, both the women of benin and my town had arranged to seat all 300 of us. The Oba’s town hall was large, but we were still clustered together like the fishes I often saw caught in papa’s net; the lack of space in the hall symbolized for me how Benin could not afford to continuously shelter us.

Chief Ebohon was currently discussing my sentiments, of how they could not continue to shelter us and how we could not afford to wait out the pale invaders. I watched him three lines behind where he sat with the other three chiefs in a circle formed around the Oba, with the old one at the head of the left side of the circle, each point of the circle flanked with traditional Benin warriors and two of what I assumed were the best at each side of the gold encrusted throne Oba Nogbaisi sat on; his personal guard.

Even from where I sat I could detect the nervousness he felt from the severity of the situation, as he kept swinging around the Eben that he held in his left hand, while fingering one of the six heavy red beads around his neck. I bet if he had on a shirt with the white wrapper that was tied tightly around his waist and flowed down to his feet, we would see it stick heavily to his back with the wet sheen of sweat.

He was not a new chief, given clearly away by the absence of egben around his waist, but right now he was acting worse than the ones still in training; but I understood that this could be forgiven considering the situation. He was also right, we had to prepare, they would be moving in on us soon; they wanted us to fall into a false sense of security and we could not afford to succumb to that.

Our Oba who sat just a seat away from Oba Nogbaisi’s inner circle, cleared his throat, slamming his yellow painted wooden walking stick onto the floor before he stood up putting a sleeve of his green and black aso-oke agbada over his shoulder. “Oloye Ebohon, mo ti gbo e, but what will you have us do, o gbo ohun ti kehinde so lana, they are the ones waiting us out, they want us to feel comfortable before they come here and slaughter us all together. We have both fought against them and they ambushed us and burnt down my kingdom for helping you. I lost one of my greatest weapons against them, we have no more access to insider information and we do not have the numbers to risk attacking one of their bases. They may have left my kingdom in ruins but I know for sure they have left some men there in case we return; We won that last battle against them because we had the element of surprise, they did not expect much resistance so they sent a handful of their foot soldiers, and they will not make the same mistake again, so what will you have us do?”

Chief Ebohon’s expression turned grim as he seemed to consider Oba Adeyemi’s words carefully, his look of disappointment reflecting the hopeless question I had posed to Kehinde earlier — “And you really think we could win?”

The entire hall was silent as well, as everyone waited for the next words of suggestion, but it never came as both Oba Adeyemi sat back down, defeat in every sphere of their hunched postures.

What could you do against a massive amount of well advanced invaders, who wanted your land, your people, your resources and were clearly done requesting with sweet words and promises.

I turned to Kehinde who was a row in front of me, though his back was to me, from his taught muscles I could see clearly the stony expression he won, I could see more than anything that he wanted to scream that they could not give up now, we could not give in without a fight. This was our home, even the other tribes we fought against were more of our people and we could not just easily relegate to these foreign invaders.

He said nothing but I could hear his words loud and clear in my mind, that powerful voice with the heavy bass laden in it; It seemed Chief Ologbosere could hear his words too because when he rose up and spoke, it was the same fighting words.

“No, my people we cannot give in now, if we do lose, then let’s lose fighting on our feet than folding our arms and doing nothing; if we call to the northern tribe we would have more numbers and an increased fighting chance. They are more of our people than the invaders that seek to enslave and destroy us all”

Chief Erudare, slammed down his pale brown walking stick harshly on the ground interrupting him “The Northern tribe? Olorun ma je, not only do they not serve the Old gods, Their Emir seduced and stole one of our daughters from the Oyo kingdom. Ever since the pale invaders revealed their true colours, we have barely heard a word from them, they’ve stayed in their kingdoms and let us suffer the brunt of it, I say they are more likely to declare their support for the invaders just like the King of the Eastern tribe than give us any form of aid”.

Chief Ologbosere snorted shifting his Eben in the direction of Chief Erudare “You have always had a keen sense of imagination, Ekahaemo Erudare, but do you not remember that after we went to war for that young girl and lost so many of our brothers and sisters, she said it with her own mouth that he did not force or steal her, before she begged all our collective kingdoms and warriors to stop fighting and leave. She chose the Emir. Besides that is not the issue on ground, none of this is about Olamide, or the God or gods that the Emir serves, this is survival and if we beseech him to see things our way, we’ll at least have a chance, and if we can achieve that Igwe Nnamndi will also choose to side with the people of his world; he gave in to the invaders because he did not believe, we have to make him believe, we have to make them all believe”

The hall was silent again but this time I could feel the air lift with a sense of hope; this was always something Chief Ologbosere was good at, inspiring people and not letting petty reasons back him down from defending or helping his people. His personality in great contrast with Erudare the grim, who I was sure had never said a positive word since the time he learned how to speak; which I fathom was a long, long time ago.

Which is exactly what I whispered in Taiwo’s ears who was sitting next to me. He let out a shrill giggle which he then tried to muffle by placing his right hand over his mouth; it was a little too late as Kehinde turned around to face us, well mostly me, with a questioning expression. I met his gaze and waited until his sight lingered on me for longer than a second before I sharply turned away.

Even if he promised to tell me everything, even if after speaking to him earlier I was now more ready to forgive him than two days before, that did not mean I had to make it easy for him. Thankfully the chiefs were still too busy arguing amongst themselves to notice any of the murmurings, giggles or mind games amongst the crowd

“Ologbosere, we are not going to call on those heathens. If they have not backed us yet, they will not back us now, besides we do not have the time to begin diplomatic discussions, we should begin preparing and training, forging more weapons, those invaders might be waiting us out, but they will not wait for long and we cannot get comfortable now and be organizing leadership meetings, when we have war days from our doorstep. We can always call on the Esan kingdom, Oyo kingdom and half of our men guarding their western borders” Chief Erudare said now practically vibrating with his self-righteousness.

Chief Ebohon threw his hands up in frustration, expressing his vehement support of Chief Ologbosere “Those kingdoms may be our closest allies and that is the more reason why we can’t risk it. The other 15 kingdoms, still blame us four, for the men they lost when we rebelled against the northern tribe all for naught. Half of them have chosen to cast their ties with the eastern tribe and the pale invaders, while the other half have chosen to stay and protect their own Kingdoms. We all got lazy and the Osun kingdom got caught off guard, we relied too much on the information baba tobi was supplying to us, not knowing they had figured him out and lied about bidding their time before attacking another rebellious western kingdom. If we pull any of our men away from the western border, we risk losing the Esan Kingdom; they’ll make it one of their new camp bases while their warriors will be here dying for us. The northerners have the most numbers amongst the tribes, their mountain walls and borders have made it difficult for the invaders, we’ve lost half, while only two northern kingdoms have fallen. Their warriors are also the fiercest amongst all our tribes, unlike us they are unified, trained and blooded together; all warriors from all kingdoms fight together and if anything at least they can provide shelter behind their impenetrable walls if our kingdoms should fall. The Emir has chosen to remain out of this because he and his kingdoms are actually surviving, and he sees that we are not but he does not want to give in to those invaders any more than we do. We can show him that with his support we can not only survive but actually fight back , if he backs us our other kingdoms and the eastern tribe will too.”

Chief Erudare released a dry laugh in response “It almost sounds like you admire him, are you and Ologbosere thinking of switching allegiances? Deny your tribe and your old gods? Should Oba Nogbaisi inform our Oba of Obas , Oba Adelekan, Ooni of Ife that you now have a new King?”

It seemed this meeting was just going to transform into a constant back and forth of witty words and curt remarks. I couldn’t help the one sentence that flashed across my mind, as I stared around at the mute crowd with tired expressions, my kingdom’s chiefs who sat behind our king and for the most part remained numb and looked even more hopeless than the crowd and the so called clever bini chiefs who right now were no more than squabbling, hard-headed children,

“We are all going to die”

At this point, I was even hopeful for it, the sooner we die, the sooner I can be with my parents and ask baba to his face why he decided to leave me, and mama exactly what she meant in my dream.

Talking about the gods, it didn’t matter if I believed in the old gods because I knew now more than ever that they had deserted us.

Oba Nogbaisi had finally tired of the arguing, the king of benin slammed down his bronze staff of office once, but that was more than enough to silence not only the chiefs but whatever murmurings was happening within the crowd. Everyone was hyper focused on him now, the coral beaded and mesh ikekeze worn over his iyeruan which flowed down to his ankles, the akhuankhuan sitting tightly around his waist, the Ede, red, beaded and woven into a mesh that sat easily on his head, glowing brightly underneath the sun and against his coffee brown skin; the udahae tied around his forehead matching the coral beaded texture of the Ede, his coral bead ikiro bangles, his beaded ukugbo-olila band around his chest, his coral eguan ankle beads, the dozen heavy beaded necklaces, Odigba which dropped some inches below the chest and the way his hand lay gently on his ugogoro; Oba Nogbaisi was a handsome king and at this very moment the pure picture of regality everyone was looking to for a firm decision.

I couldn’t help but think his entire elaborate attire was the reason that the few times I saw him, he was always sitting; it all looked incredibly heavy, more so at this moment when all I did was stare at him, wondering if he was truly going to agree on calling the northern tribe; that would be a true shock.

Oba Nogbaisi finally spoke, not providing a vote of support for either chief’s suggestion, “I have heard all what you have to say my ekhaemwen, but before I make my decision, I want to hear from the Old one?”

The Old one, had also been quiet during this entire meeting, but with her it was different, she was silent but her eyes always spoke volumes.

Her lips never moved an inch but her eyes always scaled the crowd, watching carefully, making her inferences. We had our own priestesses in my kingdom, three of them that worked together as a coven of their own, but the Old one worked alone. The few times she had come over to speak to the priestesses of my kingdom, I found she truly worried me, her eyes always seemed to rest on me, and I’d made a point to stay out of her piercing sight.

Everyone needed no indication of who the old one was, as she sat on a red cloth covered stool at the head of the circle; her white cloth wrapper which adorned her from her chest to her ankles, the numerous white cowrie beads around each strand of her silver tightly coiled hair, her charcoal black lipstick and the bright red beads on her wrist and ankles, three on each one, her traditional adornment which always gave her away.

Everyone needed no indication of who the old one was, because they could simply look at her and feel the power that radiated off her; well at least they used to. She still had more power than anyone else in this hall, but the gods had forsaken even her. They had been quiet for such a long time, I wondered why we still needed to ask, when all she would tell us is exactly this.

She proved me right when she spoke “My king, I have been conferring with the Old gods, I know they are there, I can feel them, but they have chosen to remain silent about our current troubles, I am sorry I cannot provide more insight”

What a shocking twist of events

Any hope that remained amongst the crowd, I could feel her words completely extinguish;

Oba Nogbaisi nodded his head and released a deep sigh “Thank you Old one, it is not your fault, we must have annoyed the Old gods in some way, or they have a plan already for us, but either way we do not have the luxury of time to wait, either on them or on the Emir to decide if he wants to support us or not, we should call on people we can trust to ally with us. We’ll call on the Esan Kingdom, and I will also send a message to the ooni of ife and inform him we will need back some of the warriors we dedicated to protect the capital, and even his own warriors. I never wanted to do this because it is because of the warriors all our kingdoms dedicated that still keeps the capital standing, but we have no choice”

I sighed internally, he was right, even the kingdoms that chose to side with the eastern tribe and the invaders, the warriors they had already previously dedicated to ile-ife, chose to remain there. The capital was heavily protected and now we were going to risk losing it and the ooni to protect our own.

We were going to risk the Esan Kingdom too;

I didn’t need to be an old one to see the fall that was awaiting the western tribe; and from the way I saw Kehinde’s posture immediately slouch at the Oba’s decision, I knew he saw it too.