King of enemy

King of Enemy

She questioned why the story falsified Christ.

I responded with another, it's intent unknown to me at the time.

I hesitate to tell it now, just as I hesitated then.

The girl was Black American and Christian. Her belly was still full and showing.

She spoke of a pregnancy she turned away in the days prior and the guilt she felt--her friend brought her to me for an understanding, her faith denied her.

She repeated the question of my own story, what do you lose by believing?

I told her the story I was given.

It was the time of Happenings in the Oyo Empire, the greatness or poorness of which was unknown even to the egun.

Paths were now unclear.

For the contracts between Egbe and companions on Earth were regularly broken in this time of Happenings.

Remember, the Egbe are our personal society of companions in what you understand as heaven.

They are tasked with clearing paths to greatness--however, they do so with the expectation that heavenly contracts be honored.

The Egbe of this time were confused.

They were now receiving supplications in the name of the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost.

There were songs of Christ who is King.

There were lamentations against them, calling their veneration occultism.

All these things were heard by the Egbe in a strange tongue brought by the Oyinbo.

Among the Egbe, there was a couple that all respected.

They bore many children in Heaven and it was a joy to visit them in their palace.

It was said that their philotic connection had been fashioned by Olodumare and given to Oshun to carry back with the rain.

That was in another era of Happenings, long before the Oyo fell to the Fulani and were enslaved and sold at market to the Oyinbo.

Sango had seduced and taken Oya from Ogun, after drinking her water.

Ogun in retaliation organized others to ignore female influence on the world, causing for a time creation to fail.

Olodumare thought to punish his sons, the Orisha for their pettiness and rancor.

So Olodumare held back the rain.

Oshun who at the time wore the skin of a peafowl flew from her perch, high into the heavens, hoping to reach Olodumare and apologize for her husband.

As she neared the Sun, her pretty feathers burned off and fell to the ground and she became as ugly as a vulture.

Yet, she persevered and flew on, reaching Olodumare.

That was how she was rewarded with rain and this Egbe couple.

It was said that so perfect was their coupling, the husband never refused the wife's food and the wife never refused her husbands touch. It was their shared task to met out time to Earth, but they would be so lost in it together, time would fly on earth. This is where African time comes from. They exchanged gifts that spoke of their understandings of one another. He gave her fruit from a mango tree. She gave him earth to ejaculate his seed.

Theirs was a perfect love.

So it was fitting that the wife would be given the mission to see about this time of Happenings and fix what was asunder.

Before she left, she promised to return to her lover, before she would be given a name on Earth, which was the requisite seven days.

She came to earth, unknowing and bright.

The contract would guide her.

Her egbe would remind her.

Instead she grew from baby to girl to woman alone.

This was all Ogun's doing.

He influenced her to break her contract with her egbe and set many things in motion to bring her folly.

Her mother would leave her for long periods of time and her father would beat her.

The Oyinbo took her from her family and arrested her father.

She spent most of her childhood in the care of the Oyinbo as an orphan.

The boys would hiss and accuse her of being emere.

A group of them tried to force themselves on her, but she touched a boys penis with some substance and he lost his erection for months after.

For their crimes, she bypassed Sango and called upon Olodumare for justice.

This caused anguish in the house of Orisha and they called upon her heaven mate to see about his wife, now on Earth.

She had no friends and had a lonely life.

She took residence at the edge of town and her people forgot to love her.

If not for her knowledge of herbs to heal, she would have been cast out.

The Oyinbo had already constructed a church and school.

The price there was simple. The children need only take on names from their good book and accept science over the esoteric.

They only now needed a hospital.

So it was decided that forty girls and twenty boys would be given to the Oyinbo in exchange for a hospital.

She was one of the forty.

So it was that the children of Yoruba-land lost their names in exchange for newfound religion.

So it was that the children of Yoruba-land were lost for public health.

As she was marched from market to sea, her heaven husband dashed to the portal between the dimension of the egbe and humanity, promising spite and vengeance.

He was told that crossing between existences would forfeit his role as keeper of time.

He marshaled Oya and Shango, certain of his path.

They came upon the ground in darkness, unseen by humankind.

Their war cries were but whispers on the wind.

The girl could hear what the others could not and sang an old song they did not know.

The boys in their shackles stomped their feet to the rhythm and hummed along, as they marched aboard the ships.

The girls, frightened, looked to her unsure of what to come.

One tried to warn the Oyinbo, certain that there was death in whatever incantation she sang.

The Oyo men who dealt with the Oyinbo understood the threat and slunk away from the ship and its captives.

The ship set sail under clear skies.

They were but a day away before Sango and Oya had spoken in the minds of the captives and told them to sleep.

60 Black bodies lay still as thunder and lightening struck the mast.

60 Black bodies lay still as a whirlpool opened in the sea to carry the girl home to her heaven husband.

The Orisha had not considered what to do with the Oyinbo.

They figured to claim they as slaves to serve the children in afterlife as they had wanted to do the children in this one.

But they were met at the door of death by one who smelt of brimstone and burnt copper.

He called himself The-evil.

Sango yelled out to the figure with his hammer light in hand.

"What agent of what god of these people are you? I have heard my people call out to an almighty being who gave his son, he so loved the world. A trick to steal their faith. Bring your master forward so that I might punish him for his thievery."

The-evil replied that his greatest trick was making the world believe his God exists. Your people you can keep, but mine I have come to take to hell. For who shall believe a lie is mine to torment for eternity.

So it was that reunification of the lovers was bittersweet.

They had learned an awful truth.

The people created by Olodumare had bargained away not only their earthly possessions but their souls to The-evil.