One-eyed king

Okiroro Vs Goliath 😀

In this age of men omnipotent in their own sight yet as afraid as their ancestors were, I was given life at soils south of the deadly Sahara desert in a kingdom famed for fishermen, farmers and fair damsels. In the years when the traditional monarchs still had all power in their domain amid encroachment of the British, my father was the Ovie of Uzei Kingdom which made him as traditions demand double as the chief priest to the water spirit Eni famed for its ability to detect which person is infected or free from witchcraft; thus my father was the absolute monarch of that great Uzei Kingdom founded upon the soils of fornication.

My father had one wife, the love of his youthful age whom he loved till his love for her withered as the beauty of her youth withered away. With heart no more pleased by the woman of his youth, my father’s eyes began to grow lusty for my mother’s youthful charm and in a matter of few eyelid-blinks, he took my youthful mother as his second bed-warmer. Seeing that he loved my mother more every hour he spent with her, my father sought to make my mother his second wife against the counsels of his best friend who was the Okiroro (the advisor) of the great Uzei Kingdom. In a matter of heartbeats, my father’s ceaseless urge for my mother soon quickened him to lock himself in wedlock with her, making my mother his second wife.

A night ere the wedding was to grace the brown soils of that land tottering in unsure yet simple steps, the love of my father’s youth with her now wrinkled face appeared at his bed-chamber pleading against the marriage, hoping that the bond of their youth still live even in that hour silver locks had been sown on their scalp by the clock’s finger but my father in lust for youthful beauty that encircled my mother’s waistline would not heed the pleas of the woman of his youth.

When his wedding with my mother was too big a dream to still reside only in his thoughts, it met isles of reality. With the sweet aura of a new marriage standing on my father’s eyeballs, thenceforth my father never called his first wife to his bed-chamber again; for her petal had wilted on the vine of time.

The first queen of that kingdom of my birth could retrace all the sweet promises my father made to her when her beauty was yet without a wrinkling crinkle. She recalled when through the years his kingdom was nigh slipping away from his fingers and how her wisdom and love for him had given him the right path to tread towards holding his kingdom firmly. She hated that another woman whose only credit in his life was giving him beauty to gaze upon had chased her away from the right hand side of my father’s desire. Hard as she weaved with the finest of cosmetics to please my father, his heart never returned to her, for no bee ever goes to a wilted flower whose nectar it has emptied. This made the first wife to lay evil eggs waiting to hatch.

After the sweet night my father sowed my seed into my mother’s womb, he left the kiss of my mother and the orgasm in her sighs. Disturbed by some mysterious burdens sown on his chest by the community of spirits, he being the chief priest of the Eni spirit went to the Eni river to consult the water spirit Eni which arrived with Uzei the eponymous founder of Uzei kingdom from the great Bini Kingdom.

As my father invoked by the Eni riverside with the languages of spirits, a portent was opened unto him by a spirit. In that portent he was told by an elephant dwelling within bowels of the Eni river that a one-eyed man will send him to seize his seat with his forebears at the netherworld before his due time arrives, and that his kingdom will not last more than a year from that second. When my father whose name I never bore woke from the vision by the Eni riverside, he ordered that all one-eyed men in the kingdom be escorted to the grave by cutlasses stating that the spirit Eni has called them all witches who must be plucked away lest they infect the land with the wandering of demon-footsteps which bring only fatality piled upon fatality.

Only half a fortnight later after the executions of all one-eyed men at the Uzei Kingdom, conflict broke between Uzei and Irri a vastly growing conglomerate of hamlets which lore says was sired by the expansion of the great Uzei kingdom. From which roots the conflict grew I am eternally ignorant but from the tales I was told in my childhood by the lips that bothered to tell me of the tales, it was exactly nine months after this conflict with Irri began that I was given the breath of life by my mother’s womb.

With my father blessed with a fat ego and thus too stubborn to compromise his stance, the conflict with Irri soon tiptoed with staggering steps into a war as the leaders of both lands prized their ego above the bitter taste of bloodshed. My father’s best friend the Okiroro (the advisor) of the kingdom was against the war but my father was adamant.

For many moons and middays the clash of steel blades, shields, armors and the dying cries of warriors about to die interfered with lullabies that ought to lull my infant self to sleep. The war caused many men to die on both sides but the war never looked like its death was near. Widows were made, orphans were made but my father’s ego will not listen to the advice of the Okiroro. 

When the war had raged to a certain high level, the leader of Irri who was fonder with the Oba of Bini kingdom than my father was pleaded with the Oba of Bini to send to his aid the greatest champion of all Bini warriors. The Oba of Bini sent emissaries to my father asking my father to bow before him else he grants the request of the Irri leader. My father, fat with ego dared not submit his pride but rather spat at the faces of the emissaries.

With the insolent deed from my father to the Bini emissaries, the Oba of Bini accepted the request of the Irri leader and sent him a Goliath whom the tales here popularly call the Irri-Goliath. The people of Irri without waiting for the slightest ado sent their Goliath requesting ours to fight him in mortal combat in a crucial winner wins war match. No man in the kingdom dared come out to fight the Irri-Goliath; for his shoulder was taller than the scalp of every man in my father’s kingdom and the scars on his body signaled to all that he was a giant whose eyes have tasted many battles and thus was vast in experience. Every Uzei man shook in his armor shackled by fear to the brown dust of the Uzei kingdom as the Irri-Goliath tortured the kingdom of my nativity with mockery and terror.

My father’s best friend the Okiroro knew that the giant foe (Irri-Goliath) would not be slain by brute of strength which was a game the scars on his body signify he was vastly experienced and thus skilled at. The Okiroro knew that only the brute of wisdom can conjure the magic portion that may fall the brutish Irri-Goliath who stood mighty as a tree among trees.

For the great love he had for the kingdom of his nativity and the children whose earlobes are taught weakness by the mockery of the Irri-Goliath, the Okiroro, my father’s best friend chose to face the Irri-Goliath but like his habit was, he first sought the verdict of his oracle. When ado about consulting his oracle was sated, his oracle asked him to sacrifice one of his eyes if he must win in a match with the Irri-Goliath. Though the loss of an eye in the realm of human thought is so hard a thing to do, nevertheless love of his native kingdom gave him a strong will that excelled his will to keep use of his one eye by far. The Okiroro sacrificed one of his eyes.

Since the Okiroro’s sacrifice was great, the elements favored him on the day he strode out decked in his armour to fight the Irri-Goliath amid many eyes from both warring lands looking upon his armor and believing that his armor was surely his shroud. When the battle began, the sky respected the Okiroro’s sacrifice and the sky sent gales that gave dust wings to cloud sight of the Irri-Goliath and with the Goliath blinded as implied by Okiroro’s sacrifice of his eye, the Irri-Goliath was easily slain by the Okiroro who after his gravely heroic deed was taken to see a physician within the palace to be tended to incase of any hurt sustained in the match that won victory for the Uzei kingdom.

When the Okiroro had been tended to, my father from the physician got whiff of tidings that his best friend was now a one-eyed-man, thus my father sent for his best friend to the royal court. As the valiant Okiroro, my father’s best-friend was going to his king striding upon the royal passage, he overhead whispers of my father’s first wife wing from her unvisited chamber and lo he heard my father’s first wife tell one of her trusted handmaid to put the venom of a viper which she got stored in a bottle into my father’s meal.

On hearing of the lethal plan by my father’s vengeful first wife, with hasty steps the bold Okiroro sought my father’s face to tell him of the evil webs his first wife was weaving lest my father who was his best friend in all the earth makes the mistake of being ensnared by the webs. On getting to the royal court my infant self was upon my mother’s thighs suckling the fountain of milk from her breast into my toothless mouth. In the assembly of all his chiefs, my father embraced his best friend with a dagger concealed his hand. Ere the Okiroro could speak a sound about the evil plan to poison my father the first queen was weaving, while still in my father’s embrace, my father drowned the silver blade of his shiny dagger into belly of the Okiroro who died in my father’s embrace with the secret of my father’s fate perishing on his tongue with his dying breaths yet unspoken. Aye my father killed his best friend because he was warned of the threat of a one-eyed man by the portent of a spirit. Rather than dress the Okiroro in glory for his great sacrifice of an eye for the kingdom, my father dressed his corpse with a fine funeral.

With the Okiroro expired, with the promise unsaid hung on his lips, my father ate the baneful meal from the first queen and faded into the arms of endless-slumber like his best-friend. Aye, a secret unsaid by a one-eyed-man slew my father. O the spirits spoke of the threat of a one-eyed man but my father raged in vain to alter the prophecy; for his raging against the prophecy was the very finger that brought it to live and sent him to the promised expiry. Aye unless God alters a prophecy, human rage will only bring it to pass in ways that say man is no God but a creature only better than the beast on four paws by the power of his selfish heart and an ability to pretend with smiles yet invent the grandest of evils only Satan can surpass.

My father was the one eyed man the spirit spoke of; for he only saw with the eye that fears for his death and not with the second eye that fears for his best-friend’s death. At last his best friend’s death effectively was his own death.

Picture courtesy Pixabay