Strange things happen. Some stranger than others.
Ekile's life was one of strange occurrences. His birth was the first.
His father, a lorry driver, was returning from a cross-country trip when he collided with an animal that dashed out of the bush. He got down to check. The fawn, with a striking white strip between it's eyes, was in death throes.
When it finally lay still, his wife, thousands of kilometres away, suddenly went into labour and gave birth. The child had a black strip between his eyes.
The father, of course, did not know of these events until his return.
On the seventh day, the child was christened Ekile, in testimony to the unfathomability of tomorrow.
As he grew, Ekile's experiences were often far from the ordinary.
In primary four, he went to the village to holiday with his maternal grandmother.
The moment they walked through the doors, she shuddered and spoke a local prayer used to ward off evil. More than once, Ekile caught her staring at his birthmark and muttering.
He was uneasy.
His dad went back to the city in the morning.
Three days later, while he was sleeping, hands grabbed and lifted him. All his struggling was of no effect. They dumped him in a hut in the bush.
A wizened, sinewy old materialized after a while.
The issue was the strip. It meant that he was a special child that could upturn the balance between good and evil.
On clocking 11, he would inherit either the powers of the sun or the moon.
If it was the latter, it was fine. But if the former, then the world was doomed. He would orchestrate the decimation of thousands of humans.
Rather than wait to find out, grandma and her cohort were going to perform some rituals to force that event to occur. If Ekile turned to the dark side, he'd be killed )to keep humanity safe).
The old man brought Ekile out to the clearing in front of the hut. He deposited him in the middle of a pentagram made of candles of different colours.
His grandma and another old woman stood at the southernmost tips. The old man was at the north. Clad in only white loin cloths, they were otherwise bare.
Before they could start, a cow ran into the clearing, head lowered. It slammed into the old man, lifting him clean off the ground. He was dead by the time he landed.
The cow snorted, pawed the ground and charged.
His grandma screamed a command, in a language Ekile did not recognize. The cow headed for Ekile. He spoke a counter before it dawned on him that he'd just said what he did not understand in a language he did not know.
The cow veered midway and went after grandma. Its horns caught her in the chest. Then it reared up and kicked the other woman in the head.
Ekile stood up.
The herder arrived on the scene at that moment. Seeing the rampaging cow, he loosened an arrow from his bow to put it down.
The arrow went through Ekile's heart.
Photo credit: southwestfarmer.co.uk
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