Udara

Like every day, she sat on a bench under the udara tree, humming sounds of ancient songs, songs a girl her age should not know. These songs were sounds of the spirit. Even the elderly in the community forbade their ears from hearing them. Isolated from her people and declared possessed by evil spirits, she was happy in her world.

“She must have been evil in her past life; why else would she be cursed to set on earth the footsteps of the dead by assembling them to dance with her voice?”

The villagers kept whispering amongst themselves.

Oshimili, the village rebel, paid no mind to what they said. She was happy and had always distanced herself from people since she was a child; now, she could care less about them in her twenties. Her mother felt helpless about her daughter’s situation and had long given up trying to solve her problem. She decided to accept her daughter’s answer when asked why she sang.

“The spirits bow at the words of my song Nnem, I do not sing for them, but for a great man that shakes the ground with each step he takes. He is father to all, both human and spirit. I sing to usher him in, pending the day he arrives.”

Oshimili further explained to her mother she had no clue when this man would arrive and what he looked like, so she had no choice but to keep singing. She added his soul would understand the lyrics as a compass for his journey ahead. Her mother thought her daughter was mad, but she went along with Oshimili’s story for her sanity. After all, she still functioned like everyone else. Weeks passed after her explanation, and her mother could no longer take it. People now avoided her, too, so she planned with her son to put Oshimili to sleep. She hoped to make her daughter miss a day of singing. Maybe, she would stop if she missed a day. Mother and son mixed the portion they had gotten from the medicine man, without adhering to his instructions on how to use it, swiftly, they mixed it in Oshimils soup.

Oshimili looked at the food set before her, with a big smile on her face, turned to her mother, voicing out strange words.

“Nnem, please don’t feel sad; it is just as it should be. From you I came, through you, I would go.”

Though confused, her mother did not know what to make of these words, and she could not wait to see her daughter taste her food, the food meant to be the answer to their problem. Oshimili ate and smiled through her mealtime. Afterwards, she drank a cup of water and headed to her room, where she fell asleep. Nobody bothered waking her up; Oshimili was meant to sleep through a day; however, trouble arose when she did not wake up after the third day. Her brother rushed to her room, where he found her lying peacefully on her bed until he checked her pulse; she was gone. On hearing the news of her daughter´s demise, Oshimili’s words now made sense to her mother.

“Through her, she would go”.

With death, her mother understood she was not insane but a gifted priestess. The villagers thought she died in her sleep, of which her mother knew better, but felt maybe it was her time to go. The sleep portion was not meant to kill her. Oshimili was buried immediately, under the udara tree, as her mother had pleaded with the villagers. Months passed, and the village felt the silence; it felt as though the sound they feared so severely was protecting them from evil, the warmth they never knew they felt was now replaced with cold and dry air.

The night before the new yam festival was strange, it was too quiet to be a festive night, but something happened, the song returned. The song returned with Oshimili’s voice echoing through the village; some of the villagers swore they saw her sitting on the bench under the udara tree, where she was buried. Others added she sat there wearing white and dripping water, with her famous smile on her face. However, doom loomed when those that last saw her mentioned she had blood dripping from her eyes and mud on her palms.