It was a nightmare at first, but…
The master thatcher was in the bush collecting grasses as usual when the news reached him. “Nyagwom, the thing inside your wife is out,” Kofieze said, a choir of flies buzzing around his face as he spoke. Nyagwom’s heart sank. The golden-yellow sheaf of grasses in his hands fell to the earth as he watched Kofieze gulp from the gourd of palm wine and heard his whistle fade away. Nyagwom then swerved into his compound through the narrow entrance between the fence demarcated with cactus plants, panting. A spike from one of the cactus tore into his arm, drawing a strip of blood on his skin. The compound was clustered with people murmuring indiscernibly among themselves. His confusion sprung higher. He saw the midwife washed her hands rigorously and scrubbed with white clay and warm ashes.
He pushed through the crowd to his wife, Omoladi’s hut but the entrance was guarded by two muscular men. His mother had ordered them to do so. He yelled at them to leave way else he would fetch his machete, but they stood stronger. Everyone looked at him; some eyes held pity, some showed curiosity, some were indifferent.
“She thinks she can deliver a normal child. Is her husband any better than ours?” He heard one of the women in the crowd say to her friend. The tension in his chest swelled more. He walked towards the woman and slapped her on the face before he ran into his hut. He returned with a machete and the young men gave way. He pushed his mother aside and entered the hut. Omoladi was in tears. The child in her arms was wrapped in a linen cloth, its face on her breast. Nyagwom sprang towards her to see the child when he woke up.
“Nyagwom, Nyagwom, Omoladi’s water has burst,” his sister-in-law who had been attending to Omoladi during the pregnancy cried. “The child is coming.” The achibalbal lamp in the corner of his hut flickered and a new confusion wafted into his head.
“Hurry, go and fetch the midwife,” she said and ran back to Omoladi’s hut.
For years, the people of Makenco had not caught newborns. The kingdom was populated with grown-ups who aged along with every sunset. There were no infants on mothers’ breasts, no toddlers crawling on dirt, no girls by fireplaces, and no sons accompanying fathers to hunt. The kingdom was ageing into extinction. Men had not been able to plant seeds in their women since the cones of red light fell from the sky and whirled away boys and men, sons and fathers, unborn sons in their mothers’ wombs, all the males of the kingdom, in open fields, under roofs and behind walls. After a long time, the cone of light hurled back the abducted, but by then, most of the men had greyed and even the unborn sons had grown into men. None of the returnees had any memory of where they had been taken to but one thing was sure: their testicles were corrupted.
“Since the light came, I have not caught any baby,” the midwife said while she gathered her delivery materials in her skin bag “you know it.”
“I’m not giving up,” Nyagwom said.
“Last year when you sought me, what did we get? A body without limbs? A noseless body? And the year before?” the midwife said, hurrying out of her compound, behind Nyagwom who ran homewards.
“It will be different this time,” he promised.
“You have said so, so many times, yet nothing has changed.”
“I have to keep trying. Someone has to.”
“Your wife’s body is tired, how many times now? Nine? Ten? Or eleven? You have heard the priestess, Chiolu has decided to end the world like this, who are we to resist?”
“This is not Chiolu’s way. It is… some… I don’t know…” he said.
“He has done it with water before,” the midwife said.
“Let us hurry, please,” he said, disregarding the belief looming over the kingdom and beyond. The kingdom of Makenco would have given its daughters and even wives to neighbouring kingdoms to bear children in their names but the cones of red light had stolen their men also. The priestess of Makenco had burnt incenses and chanted prayers for years but nothing was forthcoming. Being a master thatcher in the kingdom, Nyagwom knew every blade of grass, every pulp of bush fruit and every tree root. It was a personal sacrifice that he dedicated himself to. Poison or cure, he was desperate.
“You are a persistent man,” the midwife said, after they had trod quietly. “I understand the light took you on the ceremonial night of your marriage to Omoladi, I understand your intense desire to hold your blood in your hands, but…”
“What if I succeed? Have you considered?” he cut in.
“Are you not tired of burying stillborns?” She asked
“If I succeed, it means I could father more children and if Chiolu wills for one to be a son, then, he would grow to father more children too,” he said, trying to convince himself.
She huffed and strode on. As they approached his compound, Kofieze staggered about, a gourd of palm wine tucked under his arm.
“The man who wants to change the fate of man…,” he slurred.
Nyagwom ignored him and led the midwife into his compound. She went immediately into the hut where his wife’s labour moans reverberated. The midwife, along with his sister-in-law attended to Omoladi while he stood outside, in accordance with the tradition. The light of the morning moon was his only companion. Neighbours had grown tired of his faith and hope. People no longer ran to compounds of birthing women to offer strength. Even his mother who was in the opposite compound heard the labour cries but pressed her eyes firmer to shut out the images of the malformed babies that she had seen over the years. It was understandable. After years of trying to procreate and failing, people had decided to age into death quietly, avoiding the game of hope and sorrow. Some refused to meddle with activities of procreation fearing that they were interfering with Chiolu’s verdict on mankind.
Am I crazy? Nyagwom thought, standing over the ten gravestones in his compound. Each for every attempt at birthing. How many more could he bury before he accepts the irreversibility of what the red light had done? How much suffering could Omoladi’s body take? He paced around the compound.
“Nyagwom,” his sister-in-law called aloud, standing at the entrance of the hut. Her voice was joyous. He ran towards her and dashed into the hut. The midwife held the baby by the legs and shook it while patting its back with her other hand.
“There is life in this one,” she said excitedly.
Nyagwom stared, dumbstruck, clueless how to express his happiness.
“It’s a boy,” she said, a whimper escaped the child’s mouth. She stopped shaking him and held him upright. “Come, come and hold your son.”
The midwife was filled with pride. Nyagwom’s sister-in-law smiled and tapped him out of his dumbfounded state. Nyagwom walked towards the midwife. The baby’s cry became shriller. Just when he reached out to receive the baby, four cones of red light whizzed into the hut and whirled everyone away.
Haruna Solomon Binkam is from Jos, Nigeria. He is a finalist of the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive Fellowship 2021. He is also winner of the EB FLIP poetry challenge ii and iii. He was runner up of the Abuja Literary Society short story competition. He is a final year medical student and he finds fireflies fascinating.
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