THE QUEEN'S MEN
I travelled several heavens 'til I was forced into this dank part where the sun never shines.
I was born by the river bank in the presence of the celestial spirits of our ancestors while the older women laboured over my mother in the middle of the cloudless night. I remember, now like then, it was dark... eerily dark I started crying.
The jetty was dead quiet except for the crackling of weak fire and frogs croaking for their lovers.
This place I was told was so named for the abomination it is - THE LAND OF THE WITCHES.
Thirty-six they were in their coven; they represented the thirty six clans in our village.
For any visitor, one might see an almost disintegrated wooden sign post perched at a corner on the mouth of the riverine settlement. The sign read in an ominously whimsical handwriting - BEWARE! THE WICKEDNESS OF THE LAND.
The village had numerous gods that appeared in different natural forms. We believe these gods were the predestinator of our destinies. The individual clan each had a god they worshipped while they gave reverence to the others during their festival of sacrifice.
Those days our village collects water from the top of the mountain before sharing its content to the great raucous salty river. The waters then flows outwards to the horizon where it meets with the sky.
My father says the gods have ever been present with us. They are dressed in the form of the trees, the drifting clouds,the water, the sacred forest animals,the star, moon,the air, the rock and even the dark sticky blood that slithered in the depth of the black earth and waters.
I remember asking papa after the ninth festival of sacrifice since my birth why the sky didn't give light?
I had only been used to a faint orange twinkle in the height of the heavens at certain times of the day as if shyly hiding behind the dark opaque clouds. Papa had replied with a mirthless ha-ha.
"The land wasn't always like this, my daughter." He said.
"The village was not always like this, shadowy, smog-filled and futile. It was once like Eden where everything made perfect sense and was indeed good. The sky was then, a splash of rainbow colours, the mountain adorned with glowing elemental colours, the green hills alive with wildlife, the forest so enrich we boasted to the other nations. The air was lithe and sweet. The waters gave amazing harvest of aquatic creatures. Some fishes were as large as a full-grown adult human.In those days, the people and their gods lived together in peaceful harmony.
Then an unpardonable sin was committed many centuries. A day we had since cursed and have been eating the fruit."
"A great legend told of a mysterious alliance with Queen Bilisi - the devil herself. It was a tale of how a great village lost all its beauty, even its sun - the source of hope. Our village have remained in this abject incurable darkness ever since."
***
"One day, several boats filled with men arrived the village - the Queen's men they had been called. They rowed in their multitude like amphibians.
Unlike us, these beings were strange in their appearance. Though they stood on human legs; they had whitish balls for their eyes that made them all the more eerie - just like men without souls.
The legend said their veins coursed blood that was a slick black. They had fire in their mouth and chugged thick cloud of smoke from their nostrils when they breathe.
No one knew where they came from except that they must have come from the distant lands beyond the great raucous salty river."
Papa said that these men had come to the village on a festival day in the world of the gods. Meanwhile, at the village, people went about their daily biding.
The Queen's men had met with the chiefs representing each clan of our village. They presented gifts from their leader - Queen Bilisi.
At first, our people had been suspicious of gifts from the strange beings. But then with soft sugarcoated words, the queen's men reassured the villagers. They even promised more of the gifts in the future if only the villager allowed them to stay in the village. They brought lots of mirror, chocolates, sugar cane, powder and alcoholic beverages.
For several days, the voice of the Queen's men rang convincingly among the people of my village as they collected the beautiful gifts. Soon greed prevailed over the conscience of some of the villagers.
Soon among the villagers, there was division. Some of the clans wanted to go to ancient spirit friends for counsel as this was the tradition. Yet immediately after the majority of the village had set out to the land of the gods; some of the clan chiefs rose to sign a deal before the majority of village returned.
The soulless men successfully sold their evil intentions to the chiefs at the expense of their kinsmen. The chiefs were promised lots of gifts that would make them very wealth for the rest of their lives. In return, the village will allow the strangers an endless supply of black blood- one of the offsprings of the gods. The black blood usually flowed freely under the water and the earth as the people of the old knew it.
A few days the rest of the village returned.
At first, when they found out what the chiefs had done; they were disappointed. But immediately the chief promised the villagers to share from their ill-gotten wealth, the villagers agreed to participate in the evil act. In the following weeks, the entire village agreed to selfishly allow the strangers have unlimited assess to the black blood.
After a brief period, a civil war broke out amongst the clans concerning how the gifts from the Queen's men will be shared. Unknown to the villagers, the Queen's men had started pillaging the entire village for black blood in uncountable quantities, taking it across the river into the great salty water till it disappears beyond the eye. Meanwhile, in the village; one clan after the other, people soon forgot about their first love, the gods: the custodians of the clans in favour of the gifts of the Queen. They convinced themselves of the cruelty against the gods of the village.
The people boosted in their homes and in public places 'we don't need an old school love. We need to move in the future' and indeed they moved.
Barely after the first full moon; the queen's men without care marched into the forests and into the river basins. Night and day they howled like soulless beasts.
Unfortunately, while the Queen's men pillaged the village, their activities destroyed many important cultural monuments in the village like the sacred shine, the thick rainforest, the rich aquatic life.
The villager could not be bothered. They were excited at the gifts of these soulless men so long as their wealth grew. They never thought of the result of their evil action.
It didn't take long, this new found wealth brought envy, jealousy, hatred, fraud, ritual killing, terrosism and other forms of corruption.
The cultural life of the village was totally eroded while the presence of the unseen foreign queen continues to loomed even greater like wild forest fire. In the days before the arrival of the Queen's men, the village had enough food in its farms. Everyone had enough to take care of their families.
After the invasion by the soulless men; no one wanted to keep their former profession like masonry, blacksmith, farming, hunting, fabric production. They preferred the easy cheap money instead of working hard. People began losing their dignity, their identity and self-respect for the vain prize of money. Everyone was forced into a "kill-or-killed" mode.
As papa said these words in his story, his eye seems watery like someone deeply hurt.
"It had taken one bad decision from the chiefs in one generation then it spread like a virus through an entire village."
"The gods gave us life in the clean air we breathe, the forest, the wild life, the waters and age old tradition. They protected us..."
"We had a glorious history but the beginning of our alliance with the queen's men was the beginning of our dark history. The one that everyone around the world now called us by. It didn't matter which clan you came from, the world would have since then labelled us as corrupt and irredeemable"
"This is the history of how the people turned into soulless beings as they haunt themselves by their wicked proclivities.
We beat the first drums of war and now the situation is beyond us. There's great sorrow now in the land. Hunger and strive now thrives in the land.
We were ripped off not only by these soulless men but our kinsmen that have now turn us against ourselves on the basis of those same things that made us kinsmen. Our village is now a burial ground for all the other condemnable things around the world"
"The gods have forsaken us as we did them. The trees, the air, the water... they lined up behind their own cousins. Sadly, the consequences of the sins of the fathers have been visited on their innocent generation to come."
He briefly paused to breathe. Then with hot teary eye, he said "After the Queen's men defiled the village with the ignorant support of the people, the spirit of the black blood was later avenged by the gods. They poisoned the farmlands of the village, the water, the air and the people to their death."
As if to remind the villagers of their sins; one morning, the villagers woke up to the mysterious presence of a rock shaped as a crying woman at the center of the only river in the village. People said the woman in the rock often shed tears made of the black slick blood that has made the water useless.
Today, the primary source of water was gone; the village gets its water by walking long distances up the mountain.
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