DANUSHIKI

CHAPTER FOUR

Dojami was closing for the day as Darjer and Danushiki prepared to walk home. Few minutes later he told him to be strong, and instructed him to hurry home to his mother since his old legs were no match for that of his son.

“There’s nothing much in the training and initiation…” he called out to him as he watched his son’s back get absorbed into the shadows.  

While Danushiki walked home to his mother, Darjer remembered the first time he’d taught his son to hunt. His head had barely reached his father’s shoulder, but now he was inches taller than him.

Training or no training, Darjer knew he’d better start ‘preparing’ to droop and the use of a walking stick. He looked at a rocky surface and began to think of the delicious meal his wife was going to make from a portion of the dead antelope, for the family. Hard as he tried, he could not push out gory thoughts of headless bodies and bloody battlefields from his mind. He felt it was futile as he examined his hands and remembered how he’d killed with the heavy sword now lying in his small red chamber. Presently, they tilled the soil and cared for animals. He continued walking again, watching the passers-by at the same time, before his mind went to the dead antelope and the evening meal.

Twenty five metres from where they’d stood talking, neither Darjer nor his son had the slightest idea that they were being watched by Gohryo. She was Makiya’s immediate elder sister and was also known as the cat of the family, due to her stealth nature. She’d worn one of her mother’s old woven wrappers, and heaped several banana leaves atop her head walking back and forth slowly, away from where the two had been standing talking. The moment she was certain they were out of sight, she threw the banana leaves away, and picked up her small oil lamp from where she’d kept it.

“Go and watch them…just watch them… I don’t know why mama’s always disturbing someone.” She grumbled and only stopped fuming when she loosened the end of her woven wrapper, from her knee downwards to enable her walk more freely. She ignored some elderly women who looked at her while passing, probably wondering what a girl at her age was doing outside her father’s compound at that time of the night. Gohryo simply ignored the women, packed and tied her long hair before walking briskly into the night, hoping to reach her father’s compound before him. 

It’d been three years since he predicted the use of a walking stick for himself, and it’d become a reality less than four months after he foretold it. After countless bouts of nagging from his wife, he had succumbed and stopped every form of manual labour on his farm, then proceeded to hire twenty virile men to work under his supervision.

           *                                                         *                                                         *

The day the all 21 year old men dreaded in Shaingwa finally arrived, and it was the day there were to begin their initiation into Cobra Land, and the day families of eighteen year old virgin girls were handed over to a special group of women for an informal training to prepare them for womanhood and ‘marriage.’

Cobra Land as the name implied was the grand abode of the supreme god of Shaingwa - the king cobra. It was superior to all the other gods and goddesses which watched over and protected the island. It was also forbidden for any female to be seen near Cobra Land, no matter how highly placed she was, or thought she was. The penalty for disobeying such rule was a slow and painful death from swollen breasts of such a girl or woman. Thereafter, her corpse would be disposed in the sacred grove. It was believed that once the corpse was disposed therein, the diamonds on the ground emitted mysterious flames which burnt the corpse to ashes.

The training and initiation which covered a period of three years was to be done in the most intricate and bizarre manner ever imagined. It involved making the men attain the highest degree of physical fitness, inculcating discipline in them, hardening of their bodies, assimilating the ‘rules and regulations ‘of Shaingwa, eroding their thoughts and consciousness of anything associated with weakness and possession of their minds and bodies by the gods and goddesses of Shaingwa.

Lying on his bed that morning, Darjer was soon woken up by the delighted shouts of his favourite daughter Gohryo, and her younger sister Makiya. They were happy that the D-day had finally arrived for Danushiki, after seeing the clouds turn red in the sky, and black dragon-like birds circling the sun. Although he knew his wife had not come to terms with the ‘prophecy’ made by the sacred grove concerning her son, he knew sooner or later she was going to bring up the matter again for ‘deliberation.’ In a stone made bowl, where he washed his face, he was soon interrupted, by his wife’s voice from behind.

“Why can’t you understand anything I say concerning your son?” Darjer asked while coming out to see what the wailing was about.

“It’s beyond my power to reverse anything, and if the sacred grove has chosen him out of all the youths of Shaingwa, is it not something you should be proud of?” He asked again with little sarcasm in his voice.

“You men never understand the way we women feel about such things, because you all know nothing about childbirth or raising children.” She fired back at him. Darjer restraining the urge to strike her face while she spoke, held his walking stick firmly, and wondered where Danushiki could be that moment.

‘Women will always be women,’ he thought sadly to himself. After three years, she still blamed him for her son’s fate. This and many others still made him wish she could spend a short time in Cobra Land.

“Talking about your son, do you know where he is right now, because as far as I’m concerned, he didn’t sleep here last night, and no one has seen him since morning?”

“How would he sleep here after what he heard in the sacred grove three years ago, about how he would have to kill some foreigners and turn into a statue afterwards?” She asked him without providing an answer to his last question.

Darjer on his part knew it was utterly useless to try to convince his wife to come to terms with the whole sacrificial hero prophecy by the sacred grove. Harshiri sat down close to the door and watched her husband as he proceeded to go inside the house. He saw the way her cheeks and eyes were, and knew sooner or later, crying would be next. Darjer’s right foot was passing through the door frame when all of a sudden, an arrow flew through the air, missing his head by a few inches and landed on the door. Gohryo and her younger sister opened their mouths and looked in horror, while Harshiri sprang to her feet with a tense countenance.

“I’m fine, I’m okay…” He whispered to his wife as she rushed to him and kept examining his head and neck for injuries. The next moment, he freed himself from her grip and walked to the door where the arrow was stuck and peeled off the parchment wrapped around it. He was about to read the inscription on it when they heard the sound of someone running away in the distance.

“What is it?” Harshiri asked impatiently, with fear creeping into her voice, while Darjer read the inscription on the parchment.

“See for yourself,” he whispered and handed it over to her when he was through reading the parchment. He walked inside the house dejectedly shaking his head as Harshiri read it out for Gohryo and Makiya to hear:

“I know I’ll survive the sacred training and initiation that will begin this morning, because I’m a man now, and I don’t want you two worrying over me. I promise you all that before my time on earth is over, I’ll bring honour to this family…please stop blaming yourselves for the sacred grove’s prophecy, it was nobody’s desire, but we have to accept it the way the sacred grove gives it to us. If you must know I was with Sarme last night, and I have to return her father’s bow before he wakes up.”

The tears from Harshiri’s eyes began to flow the same time the sun’s rays pierced through the skies of Shaingwa, as the two girls watched the parchment drop to the ground from their mother’s hands. Thereafter Makiya and Gohryo retrieved it and read the inscription on the parchment several times to ‘satisfy’ their curiousities. Although they were both delighted with the fact that their elder brother would be going away for a long while, their attention was soon diverted to their mother who was now sniffing and murmuring about her helplessness in reversing Danushiki’s fate. The two girls ignored the sun’s rays while they sat near her and consoled her. Inside the houe, Darjer sat in his reclining chair with a smile slowly appearing on his face. ”He’s going to be great, very great.”

Darjer was angry and amused at the same time by his son’s impudence. He only hoped their trysts were not carried out anywhere near the sacred grove. The amusement he felt was due to the fact that he was ‘worse’ than his own son when he was the same age as Danushiki. Although Harshiri was ignorant of all his past escapades, he could never forget the moments he shared with his first love until her demise, when the war ended. Till that very moment, he was glad he’d fallen in love with her, because according to him, Harshiri had helped to ‘cure’ him of his lust for maidens on the island with bare bellybuttons.

Darjer knew the girl his son had been spending time with. He also knew her parents as devoted farmers, even though he had never sat down to converse with either of them. He also imagined how they’d feel if they had knowledge of their daughter’s ‘night activities’ at undisclosed locations. Darjer, still on his reclining chair, recollected several obscene comments by some men who drank gruel and strong fermented liquids, made from rice, guinea corn and millet in a large drinking shed, as he usually passed by. Most of their obscene comments were centred on young girls and women on the island who had perfectly shaped bodies. They always dwelt heavily on their hips, and his son’s woman Sarme was the first and last name to be mentioned by the drinking men.

He smiled at the manner of things they often said about her - the softness of her t**s, the painstaking details on how the gods and goddesses of Shaingwa had painted her in beautiful coffee brown colour, her flexible hips and firm buttocks. Though his son had balls, he knew it was stupid of him to have balls without an iota of reasoning. Survival in Cobra Land was all about resilience and discipline, and he only hoped his son had both traits. Whatever happened, Darjer resolved to address the issue of maidens when he came back. Suddenly, his mind went back to everything that had transpired three years ago at the sacred grove and in his small chamber. From the conversation between his wife and her two girls, they were preparing breakfast before heading to the farm. It was at that moment he feared for his two unmarried daughters in the event of an invasion by ‘outsiders’.

No one ever prayed for a war or invasion, and if it eventually happened as the sacred grove predicted, he prayed that no member of his family would be a casualty.

It’d also been three years of hellish nightmares for Darjer, and he refused to tell anyone about them.