Chapter 62

Thanks to Ewatomi, Ireti and Babatunde were no longer a lonely couple just as Ewatomi had assured her. Their family had increased in number and they now had all the company they could need after Ireti added two more children- a girl and a boy were born seven years after Idowu was born. 

Despite now having six more children, the twins being thirteen years each and Idowu, being ten years, Ewatomi who was now sixteen years, did not stop being Ireti's favorite child. 

One sunny afternoon, as Ewatomi sat on a rock in the middle of the stream singing to herself and skipping flat stones into the water, watching it skip on the surface before sinking softly into the water with a plop, she smiled, enjoying the serenity of the stream. 

She had discovered that spending more time on her own and away from people made her more relaxed. As she flung the seventeenth stone into the water, a hand suddenly shot out of the water and snatched the stone mid-air. Ewatomi gasped now and scrambled to her feet on the rock and just then, Labake emerged on the surface.

"You could knock someone's eye in, you know." Labake, one of Osun's personal ladies-in-waiting, said with a smile.

"There's no one here but me." Ewatomi answered then pursed her lips briefly and glanced up at her sides at the trees. "...and the birds, bush rats, squirrels, monkeys and of course, the fishes."

"Are you certain those are the only things that breathe around here?" Adunni, the second lady-in-waiting, said from behind and Ewatomi turned around to see Adunni lifting herself out of the water on a rock to sit down then happily flapping her tail up and down. "We have missed you so."

"What are you two doing here?" Ewatomi asked, happy to see them both after sixteen long years.

"What else? Do you think we have come to bask in the sun or admire the blue sky? We have come to see you of course." Labake answered swimming closer to Ewatomi.

"And from the look of things, not only are you doing fine, you are still as beautiful as a human just as you were as a mermaid in the river." Adunni complimented.

"I'm still one of you." Ewatomi stated, rolling her eyes.

"Of course, no one is disputing that fact." Labake folded her arms on a rock and placed her chin on them while her tail lazily danced in the water behind her, occasionally lifting and sinking into the water. "You'll always be our dear princess no matter where Osun banishes you to."

Ewatomi gave a sad sigh at the mention of her grandmother. "Does mother know that you are here? She asked both mermaids.

"No, she doesn't." Adunni answered with a mischievous smile "but it sure feels good to come to the surface and bask in the sun once in a while." She splashed some water on her herself with her tail, shook her long hair and lifted her face to the sun, with her eyes closed.

"So, it means you two came here of your own volition?" Ewatomi asked in surprise. "When did you two start going AWOL?"

"We miss you so much and we decided to come see how you have been faring." Labake said and curiously lowered her eyes to Ewatomi's feet. "How are those human legs working for you?"

Ewatomi glanced at her legs then rolled her eyes again. "What do you think? I've been constantly using them for the past sixteen years, Labake."

"We bet you have! Not that you have much of a choice anyway." Adunni chuckled now. "Don't think that we have not seen the way the boys in the village ogle you." She and Labake giggled now.

"I don't care about boys, Adunni!" Ewatomi strongly stated. "They are no fun and they are boring."

"Oh, yes you do... You know, they are actually fun to be with..." Labake said dreamily. "...oh, you just don't know how love can make one feel." She said dreamily, sighing.

Ewatomi folded her arms on her chest now and gave Labake a disgruntled look. "And how would you know that? Have you ever loved a human before?" She asked.

"No, but your mother told us how in love she was with your human father." Adunni blurted then gasped and quickly clamped a hand over her mouth, realizing what she had said.

"You knew?!" Ewatomi asked in surprise, glancing from one mermaid to the other as she noticed the sheepish looks on their faces. "You two knew and you didn't even try to stop her from making the biggest mistake of her life?!"

"If we had stopped her then you wouldn't exist." Labake mumbled. "Besides, she was bold enough to love a human, we do not have the nerve to disobey Osun. Her wrath is second to none."

"And if you two really want to experience love so badly, why didn't you tell grandmother? Perhaps, she might have compromised. You two are the closest to her." Ewatomi said.

"Because we know that she'll get mad." Adunni answered. "She has forbidden us from ever falling in love with humans, so, the only thing we can do now is daydream and admire them from afar."

"Why do you sound like you are already in love?" Ewatomi suspiciously asked Adunni who evasively and coyly looked away and began to softly flap her tail up and down against the surface of the water.

Labake chuckled. "Mind her not, she is fantasizing about a man from the next village. He's a woodcarver."

Ewatomi smiled now and cooed. "I miss home so much and it feels so good to see my kind again after so many years..." Then her smile waned a bit as she asked, "Do you think mother misses me?"

Adunni sighed. "Yes, she does, a lot of times we have seen her watching you but she is so hard-hearted that she has refused to retract her judgment. She insists that you can only return home until you are twenty-five."

"And you'll be that in a few years' time." Labake added hopefully.

"It's still too far away." Ewatomi said sadly. "Can't you appeal to her to reduce my sentence?" She asked.

Suddenly, both mermaids sharply turned their heads towards the bushy part of the stream in alarm. "I perceive evil!" Labake uttered and before Ewatomi could figure out what was wrong, both mermaids threw themselves into the water and swam away as fast as they could. 

Also sensing an evil presence, Ewatomi turned to look at the bush which shook a bit as something moved within it. Soon, Kikelomo's viper appeared, lifted one-third of its body off the ground, opened its jaws and hissed at Ewatomi. Ewatomi quickly dropped to a partial crouch and snarled back at the viper in a louder hiss, perfectly imitating its sound.

"Off with you! This place is not for your kind! You shall not dwell here!" Ewatomi hissed at it, undaunted. But when the snake ignored her and lowered its body to slither down into the stream, Ewatomi snatched up a rock and hurled it at the serpent. It missed it only a hair's breadth but the serpent curled up in irritation and angrily hissed at Ewatomi, turned and slithered away as quickly as it could.

                                                                                    ★★★

Eight Years Later...

Vincent who was now twenty-seven years old and had spent more than a decade in the seminary with the bishop mentoring him through it all had grown very handsome. He was now on his first missionary mission outside his region of birth to another Diocese with two other ordained priests, Gideon and Paul, whom he had made friends with since his late teenage years. 

After they all alighted from their flight, they started their long journey by road to the remote village where they had been posted to. The long journey was so strenuous that it took almost eight hours to finally reach the outskirts of the village. 

Babatunde, Ewatomi's father had volunteered to go pick up the priests with his old truck which he used in transporting his farm produce such as yams, cassavas, corns, cocoa and cocoyams to other villages. 

While his hired driver drove them, he sat with the three priests at the back of the truck which had been cleaned and had wooden benches fixed in it, leaving an aisle between them. He sat next to Vincent who had his transparent glasses on and remained very observant of the surroundings around them while the other two priests, Gideon and Paul sat opposite them and looked a bit weary.  

As the truck started down the desolate bush path untarred road which led towards the main part of the village, it began to drizzle, and thankfully, the rain didn't affect them because of the roof the truck provided. Vincent was rather too awed by the scenery to bother about the rain. When he caught a glimpse of monkeys swinging from one branch to the other, he quickly took a shot of them with the small camera he had brought from the East.

"It seems this place is really primitive." Gideon said sourly when he noticed that there were acres and acres of thick forest surrounding them and not a house or structure in sight.

"Development is slow in reaching here." Babatunde answered, not wanting to feel insulted about what the priest had said. "We would have preferred such but we are not the government. We don't have electricity and the villagers are unbothered. The church has a big generator though which powers the church and the buildings around it. We do not have pipe-borne water, so we still drink from the stream. Besides, having companies and factories here will only pollute our environment. My people live longer life-spans here because all we breathe is clean air and all we eat are natural food. We hardly have all those ailments trending in the urban areas."

"Somehow, you are right..." Paul agreed. "This is nature at her best...well, I heard the village really has beautiful girls...the girls are so beautiful that even priests give up their vows for them." Paul smiled.

Babatunde smiled. "My advice is that you all stay focused for your own good. Most priests who have come here forget their purpose and stop chasing after our women. We need more men of God here, not husbands from another tribe."

Vincent cleared his throat and spoke now after taking a picture of a doe that had run past the road. "Well as for me, I don't care about how primitive this place is or just how beautiful the girls are, I'm more concerned about making an impact while I'm here...we need to win so many of them to Christ."

"You'll really enjoy your stay here then." Babatunde assured him. "Besides mingling with the people, there are a lot of wonderful things to experience and give you the best memories of your life. For example, you all came at the right time; the Yam Festival is in two weeks’ time and so many people from the four kingdoms come to grace the occasion and make it very colorful. Wrestlers even come to wrestle for brides."

"Really? In this century? Do people still wrestle just to win a girl's hand in marriage?" Gideon asked with a scoff. 

"We still practice most of our culture, father." Babatunde answered Gideon. "And it's easy to since civilization has not really penetrated yet."

"Speaking of civilization; are the people here educated?" Vincent asked.

"Not really; only a few like myself who were lucky to be taught by the first missionaries. Most of the villagers do not believe in education. Though, ever since the missionaries came here, the church has started building schools in the Diocese. However, some parents are still skeptical about letting their children go to the school, especially the girls. They are of the belief that we will teach them the white man's abominable ways." Babatunde replied.

"I guess I'll have to take it upon myself to convince these parents and also completely bury their doubts. Education is very essential. It helps the community grow." Vincent said.

"While doing that, I hope you'll be able to also convince my eldest daughter to go to school. All she does is wander around the village and disappear into the bush for weeks. All my efforts to take her to church or give her some education has been completely useless, though her siblings are doing well in that aspect but this daughter of mine is rather indifferent about it." Babatunde said with a tired smile.

"How old is she?" Vincent asked.

"Twenty-four." He answered.

Paul scoffed. "I don't think that will be possible. Besides the fact that she can't be teachable, she's too old to be in school. Where do we begin to teach a twenty-four-year-old the letters of the alphabet and numbers? Nah... not possible..." He shook his head in despair.

"No one is unteachable." Vincent confidently but softly corrected his colleague. "I could give it a try."

"Thank you, father." Babatunde's hopes were renewed again. "I like the fact that you are optimistic. Although, teaching her might not be the main problem, what's difficult is finding her first." Babatunde said.

"Finding her? Can't you go into the bush to find her? Or send in some boys to fetch her?" Gideon asked.

Babatunde scoffed. "Find her? The forest is vast and doing such is impossible. It will take a group of boys several months to scour the entire ground. Ebunoluwa only comes to you when she wants to, you can't find her when you want to."

"But isn't that dangerous?" Paul asked in concern now. "Why will a young lady wander off into the forest all by herself? What if she's mauled to death by a wild beast?"

Babatunde chuckled. "Ebunoluwa is not afraid of anything! The animals do her bidding! You know, there was a certain day, she was only twelve years then, and one of my goats which had just birthed a kid had stubbornly refused to let her kid drink milk from her. 

I tried severally to make this mother feed her baby, but each time the kid came closer, the mama goat simply rammed it away with her horns or stabbed the ends of her horns into the side of the kid as a warning.

 I knew that this kid was not going to survive without feeding from its mother, so I resorted to tying the goat down and forcefully letting the kid drink from her, but since I had other businesses to attend to and couldn't always be around to tie down the goat whenever the kid was hungry, I gave up. 

One day, I got home and saw the mother suckling the goat with Ebunoluwa standing next to her with a cane in her hand. After asking Ebun what happened, I realized that she had threatened to flog the mother if she didn't breastfeed her kid." Babatunde laughed now from the sweet memory.