LARA: THE god OF HEKO

LARA: THE god OF HEKO EPISODE ONE Mid 1980s. We were young. Children between the ages of seven and fifteen. We knew nowhere else beyond the forest of Olle-Bunu - an agrarian Community situated in the middle of a rain forest. We knew our farms and our streams. Odu lied in the South West, Orede in the East flown northward; Arugba was in the Northwest with Ogido next to it; and then the king of them all - Heko sat majestically in the Midwest of Olle-Bunu. These were the streams that supplied the denizens of Olle-Bunu with water to drink, cook and bathe. Of all these rivers, Heko was the closest to the homes and was most patronized. In those days, Borehole technology was rare and too luxurious for rural communities to desire. These rivers, specifically Orede and Heko, had their known and visible gods. The god of Orede was an old man with grey hair all over his head. He was meek, mild and friendly. He also reared chickens. If you were kind to him and he was pleased with you, he gave you chickens to rear on his behalf - as a reward. The selected chickens would follow you home on their own accord. As children, we knew for certain that nothing touched or harmed Orede's chickens. No hawk hunted them. If the mother hen hatched twelve chicks, it nursed twelve chicks to maturity. Their safety was most assured - guaranteed by Orede himself. Occasionally, we would offer sacrifices to the god of Orede. Men, women and children. These three groups must be present for the sacrifices to be acceptable to the gods. It was usually a c**k, white or red, or sometimes a black goat. The size of the animals to be offered to the gods was determined by the weight of sins to be atoned. But whatever it was must be red blooded, something the gods would accept as an offering. It would be slaughtered, roasted and made edible. Then the sacrifice would be shared among all of us in attendance - women, men and children - everyone to a piece of meat. Once we had eaten these meats and it was pleasant to our tastes, the sacrifices were accepted by the gods. It was not exactly clear if the gods lived in our intestines and had their altars on our taste buds. But consuming the foods offered to the gods made us some gods in our own realms. The god of Heko was not as friendly. He chose to come in the form of a snake. Black, long, huge and had a reddish crown on his head. While the god of Orede dealt in chickens, the god of Heko actually feasted on chickens. Maybe that explained why they chose not to be neighbours. One was in the East and the other was in Midwest. The two Rivers went in different directions and so did their gods. As children, not one day did we hear the elders suggest a sacrifice to the god of Heko. The snake-god simply took his sacrifices himself. Chickens in the neighborhoods disappeared and no one queried the god of Heko. In any case, this god was deemed to be harmless but quite notorious in some ways. Since the days of Adam and Eve, snakes and mankind had never been friends. This would not be different. Even though Heko was not known to have hurt anyone in the village, the locals fled from its presence. This huge, black snake, ferocious in look and stodgy in built, was the custodian of River Heko. When the river was troubled by excess crowd, and the noise was unbearable, the god of Heko would come out. Nobody dared endure the threatening presence of the god. Everyone, small or great, man or woman, would flee. Regularly, the god of Heko restored sanity to the river and it's environs only by showing up. But the day came when the god of Heko would come face to face with human and one of them, the god or the man, must retreat. This community, peaceful until now, could only hope that such day of evil won't show up or such day, evil as it may seem, was postponed. ************** Lara was a twelve year old girl. She was a normal child. There was no sign of autism, or any special look that Africans would attribute to demons. But Lara had a physical look that was significant for her age. She was short. Not too short. Her legs and hands were short but firm. When she stood, her legs were firmly established on the ground with a solid and determined grip. She was muscular and masculine. Nothing in her was patterned after the female folks, and because she was yet to grow any features, she was just a bonafide male. In school, Lara never ran away from a fight. She mingled just fine wherever men were assembled. At home, Lara picked up all house chores unperturbed. She ventured into the forest to harvest firewood all alone. These and many more gave her parents some concerns. The only addition to Lara's physical features that raised some eye brows was that she was black, mysteriously black, and black to a fault. Here, it was customary for kids our age to help their parents with house chores after school. Some would fetch water from the streams, some gathered firewood, while some would join their parents in their farms to help with loads and some little works. This hot afternoon, after closing from school, Lara was in the League of those who chose the stream, river Heko. The group was largely mixed: nine, ten years old, twelve, fifteen years old. All within this range, numbering about fifteen kids. Going to the river, this team made the greatest noise possible. Everyone talked on his own terms. No one waited for replies. And because they were all young and miserable, there was no one to guide them to decorum or moderation. At the river bank, everyone wanted to fetch the water all at once. Rough and rowdy, River Heko became like an overpopulated market. The peace of the god of River Heko had been tampered with. Yet, he was the guardian of the river. Suddenly, there was a strange movement from the distance. Dry leaves, woods all parting ways for the King Cobra. This snake, black, long and huge, stopped midway, lifted up his chest, neck and head, his red crown firmly fixed on his head, he hummed and fumed. He was visibly angry. His sheer size was conspicuous to the blind and his angry voice was audible to the deaf. No child needed to listen before they heard the god fuming. Boo lo, yago!! Nobody remembered to pick their buckets. Eni Ori yo, o dile. Whoever survived this headed home straight. No bird warned the other of impending danger. We all saw the danger coming. Everyone, young and old, headed home. Slippers, buckets, clothes, toys - all littered the river path. Getting home, they were all panting, huffing and puffing. Amidst heavy breaths, they managed to tell their story: the god of Heko came out. We saw him. The elders who received them quickly did a head count. Everyone was here but one person: Lara. EPISODE TWO Olle was peaceful but boisterous with activities. A group of young men held their inflated ball, impatiently waiting for the sun to go down so their soccer game could begin in earnest. Some aged men were beginning to return from their farms. Some young men and women sat under Odon Tree not far away from the market square where they drank palm wine served in calabash. Each man and woman to his calabash of good palm wine under a foliage that made the environment so fresh and cool, their stories went wild and almost riotous. Shade, a young woman of twenty eight, was a second wife who had an infant to care for. Shade had been worried by the refusal of her little lad to feed as expected. Now the six month old boy looked malnourished and sickly. In a soliloquy that drove her close to tears, Shade spoke to her child thus: ‘I have tried all I could to make you eat and gain weight, but you said you won’t eat. Soon, everyone would say I can’t care for a baby adequately. Before you kill me, I will make you eat the food by force’. The food was a corn pap with milk served in a little bowl. It rested firmly on a stool as Shade spoke. Done with her rant, mother seized her child, laid him down on her lap, his left arm tucked in between her two legs, his right hand pushed behind his head. Little kid cried and screamed. Mother ignored him as she grabbed the pap, held his nostrils together with her left hand such that breathing was at the mercy of his mouth. Then mother poured a mouthful of pap into a palm curved around his mouth. He is now left with two choices: death or pap! As baby Jim sucked in oxygen, pap followed. Amidst subs and cry, more pap flowed in. Usually, mother’s like Shade would require a third party to pour in more pap into the curved palm. But when there was no third party, she relaxed her left hand from his nostrils to apply the pap herself. Little Jim would seize the opportunity of the hiatus to breath freely and cry harder. Then more pap came, nostrils held together. Jim must suck in oxygen to survive. Along that came some opportunistic pap. A protruding belly was the first evidence of satisfaction as Jim sat motionless and almost breathless. His stomach was filled to the brim and mother wouldn’t have to worry about feeding him for a few hours. This method worked for Shade and Jim but some others were not so lucky. Two years ago, Dupe had forcefully fed her seven months old girl using this method. As the baby sucked in oxygen and pap followed, nostrils held firmly together, pap went the wrong route, choking every available airspace. Moments later, pap came from her nose, her ears and her eyes. Every efforts to save her came to null. She died two days later. This had greatly discouraged these village women from feeding their kids through this method. Except it was a last resort. Bad news traveled fast. The news quickly spread around the village: Lara had been taken by the god of Heko. She was possibly killed and swallowed by the snake or taken into their cave where she would live the rest of her life - with the gods. Some said the gods came for her because she looked like them. Fear enveloped the entire village. The farthest anyone could go was the entrance of the forest where they screamed periodically: Laaaaraaaa! No one dared venture into the evil forest where the gods just took a human to themselves. Lara's foster mother was now rolling on the muddy ground next to the forest, fists clenched to shrubs, she offered to die in her stead. Then suddenly, the old woman passed out! It was important this woman fainted or died, else public opinion wouldn’t favour her. It was either she was a witch, or she used the girl who was not directly her biological daughter for ritual and merely hiding behind the gods. Among those coming to mourn and commiserate with her would be those who were only there to ascertain the genuineness of her mourning. So this woman here had a firm resolve not to endure such public scorn. She would rather die! In this community, no one had ever died of a natural cause. If she was bitten by a snake, a witch must have sent the snake on an evil errand. If she slept and didn’t wake up, some witchcrafts must have strangled her in her sleep. Somehow, some mystical powers was always responsible for ordinary events. The woman who had fainted needed a special care to regain her consciousness. She got just that. Cold water poured on her head, several hands beating and tapping her to consciousness. A search team of about forty or fifty people stood at the entrance of the forest, armed with cutlasses or clubs, anything that could smash the crowned head of a snake to bits. But still, no one ventured into the forest. Lot, arguably the strongest youth in the village, had suggested that ten young men be prepared to go into the forest to conduct a search, nine young men together with himself. They would be armed with guns, spells and charms. As the women were retiring to fate amidst ululations, and the ten men were being prepared for the search, a creature emerged from the forest a distance away. She had a bucket of water on her head; her short black hands holding it in place. She was not smiling. Her stern eyes were those of the gods. Those eyes, having fire in them, darted from person to person. At the sight of this creature, everyone who had come out to sympathize scampered to safety. Every man to his house. A few brave men stopped from a secured distance to see to what was happening. An imp not more than two feet tall had come from the forest. Her mission was simple: to return Lara’s bucket of water. As soon as she achieved this, she vanished into the forest. The villagers were now aware that the problem at hand was more than they could wish away. This had become a direct confrontation between the gods and the people and victory was not going to come cheap. Imps, ghommids and ghosts were extra humans and would require supernatural powers to conquer. ************************************* Back in the forest, Lara stood face to face with the snake-god. No retreat, no surrender. This confrontation gave her the opportunity to study the snake in great details. The snake was about twelve meters long. It had about four hundred and fifty bones in its spine. This strong spine that allowed him to strangulate any animal that crossed its path with sheer disregard to the size. The snake had something that looked like hand close to the middle of his body. With this part of his body, he could pin the ground with it and lift up his chest, neck and head. During any battle, when he pin the ground with his hands, the snake is able to wrestle with any animal on its path. Lara could also see that the body of the snake was slippery and shining. It suddenly dawned on her that to stand a chance with this snake, she would have to get rid of her own clothes. This was a small price for Lara who moved around the village mostly barefooted. If fighting n***d was going to guarantee her a slim chance against Heko, she was prepared to go nude in this solitary forest. She had heard in stories that virgins possessed enormous power and antidotes against spirits and ghosts. Lara was confident of her virginity. She became more emboldened that with the supernatural power of a virgin in her favour, she may just defeat the snake. While she was yet thinking, the snake lifted up his head. The head expanded as it swerved sideways. This head, staring Lara in the eyes, would conveniently swallow two adults without difficulties. Lara took off her blouse. The cloth was covering her face and was yet to leave her head when the snake leaped forward and began to fold around her right leg. She still had her skirt on. Lara ignored the massive snake as she focused on getting rid of her own clothes before engaging in a duel. With her right leg seized by the snake, her skirt can’t be removed via the legs. Lara passed the skirt through her upper body and tossed it aside. Then she was stark n***d, skin to skin and shoulder to shoulder with the god of Heko. The snake expanded its grip as it began to scale around Lara’s body. Lara held the snake by the tail and attempted to bend its spine but it was too strong for her. The snake moved towards her neck in an attempt to wrap himself around the neck and strangulate her. At this point, the snake dropped to the ground like a pack of rope. Lara took advantage of this and attempted to pin down the head of the snake. But here was a twelve meter long snake weighing more than one ton. This was too massive for Lara’s short hands to hold down. Almost immediately, the snake made another move to scale Lara’s body. Every move along Lara’s body had nerves stiffening his spine vertebrae by vertebrae. The spine was so strong that Lara could hear the bones squeaking against one another as the snake stretched and applied his muscles. The head of the snake was now on Lara’s chest, Lara fighting hard to remain on her feet. Every attempt to move further up her body met with futility. Her n***d body, with no clothes on, was too slippery for the snake to get a hold. In no time, the snake dropped to the ground the second time. Seeing the snake on the ground the second time, Lara reckoned that she could do the snake a good harm if she had a weapon. But she got no weapon. She could only hope for the luck of a pugilist. She continued to wrestle the snake with her bare hands when suddenly she remembered that she was making preparation to weave her hair earlier in the day and although the hair was not weaved yet, it was packed and tied at the back of her head. Underneath those luxuriant hair were three giant needles meant for her weaving. Remembering the needles, Lara ran her fingers through her hair and felt them in place. Then the snake made a third attempt to scale her body. He had climbed to her thigh when Lara pulled out the first needle and with an uncommon anger, she forcefully threw the needle and buried its entire length in the spine of the snake. The spine made a noisy c***k as the snake abruptly threw himself to the ground motionless. Lara pulled out the second needle and applying the same force as before, she buried the needle in the head of the snake. The snake wriggled and squirmed in utter pain, not able to move forward or lift his upper body as before. Lara, seeing the snake in his helpless position, she seized her advantage, reached for her clothes and in no time she was fully dressed. Not knowing what the god of Heko could do next, Lara took to her heels as she ran deeper and deeper into the forest of Loi. It was the last time anyone would see the snake-god alive. Olu Majek.