The Evil Twin

It was two-hundred-and-fifty new yams after Ikenga departed from the settlement he shared with his brother, Mburu and their parents. Ikenga was the first son of Oge, the patriarch of Madu Kingdom. He was the rightful heir to his father's wealth, but he knew that his brother needed it more, so he packed his belongings and began the journey down the road to the direction from which the sun rose. He wanted to get as close to the rising of the sun as he could. With him were his pregnant wife, Ije and son, Amadi. They journeyed for two months until Ije was too heavy to continue. They stopped and eventually settled in a place near the river where they had their second son, Uka. The family did not move again after Uka was born. As time passed, other migrants came and settled at Umu-Ikenga as the town was later named. The city prospered under the leadership of Ikenga until he died after forty years' rule. The culture of the people was passed down through stories and folklore. That was how Akan knew about his ancestors and the gods that had prospered them all those years. He knew most of the culture even though he did not understand them all.

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According to how his father taught him, he was a descendant of the great Ikenga who established and ruled over their community. He remembered when how his father showed him things like how to count the days and how the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to years. It was Nkwo, Eke, Orie, Afo that made up on a week. Two weeks made up one market day which was always on the Nkwo. It took ninety weeks for the year to go round, then it was time to harvest the new yam and celebrate the New Yam Festival which ushered in the new year. He knew about the gods and the sacrifices they demanded. He knew that the chief priests spoke for the gods and he had never doubted their wisdom until now.

Akan married late according to the standards of those days. He was unconventional in many ways. Most marriages he knew of were arranged by the parents of the bride and the groom. When a girl was arranged for him to marry, he did not know how to reject the arrangement. Luckily for him, the girl felt the same way that he did, and they both agreed that she should run away. She ran away to a distant town, away from all the members of her community. When Akan finally got married, it was to the love of his life, Ejije. Akan and Ejije were the envy of the town. They went everywhere together and had above average means because Akan had worked very hard before he married Ejije. Only one thing eluded the couple: they could not have children. Akan's parents and kinsmen encouraged him to take another wife for the purpose of procreation, but he was adamant about wanting no one else. As the pressure mounted from Akan, even Ejije became convinced that Akan should marry a second wife. Still, Akan refused.

The people of Umu-Ikenga did not understand how a man would allow his lineage to end because his wife would not bear a child. It did not take long before the rumours began to circulate that Ejije had bewitched Akan. People whispered when the couple walked past.

"She has charmed him," they would say.

"He has lost his senses," they whispered under their breaths.

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Akan was unperturbed until one morning, he woke up to find the king's men at his door, demanding that his wife had been summoned by the king. He had no choice but to let them take her but he followed them. When they arrived, the king asked Ejije if she was guilty of the crime of witchcraft of which she had been accused. She pleaded not guilty. The chief priest was called upon to try her with the truth rope. The priest stepped forward and made some incantations. He threw his cowries on the floor and suddenly a tremor ran through him.

"This woman has done nothing wrong," he declared. He looked around the King's palace and shrugged. He was a lanky man, dressed in a wrapper and red-and-white-striped skull cap. Around his left eye was a white paint which signified that he saw in the spiritual realm with it.

"And there is something else. This woman is with child," he said, to the surprise of everyone in the room. They would have doubted it if the words did not proceed from the mouth of Asika the Great, The Eye of the Gods.

Asika did not need it to be right before he believed it. He was going to have an heir, and his wife is going to be happy again, free from all the accusations that had been hers to bear for almost one decade. He would have carried his wife home in his arms if she let him. But she insisted that she would walk with her two legs.

After two months, it became apparent that Asika the Great indeed could see beyond the physical: Ejije was pregnant. But what Asika did not say was that the pregnancy which they sought with all their hearts were going to plunge the couple into another set of trials and tribulations. Akan provided everything that his wife needed and loved her more than ever. Out of gratitude for saving his wife from disgrace and punishment, Akan would usually go to the chief priest and offer him meat from the animals he hunted. Asika was grateful for this act of generosity of Akan's, but he did not understand it. Most people who brought him gifts were people that needed his help to intercede with the gods on their behalf. But he had waited to see what Akan wanted, and after months he realised that there may be nothing else to it except that Akan was a kind person. Asika looked for a way to show his appreciation, but he had nothing to offer a man who had everything he needed.

It was for this reason that Asika was the saddest of men when Ejije had not one, but two babies - twin boys. It was known in the kingdom that the god of fertility gave one child. When a woman had more than one child at once, then one of them must belong to the evil spirit. It would have been easy if the evil child could be identified by any person but it was not possible to tell the good child apart from the evil child. Over the years, the people had devised only one solution to this problem. The priest before Asika had advised that the gods instructed that such babies should be submitted to the evil forest: let the evil spirits take theirs and leave the good child. So when a twin was born in Umu-Ikenga, a unique basket was made for the twins, and they were taken to the chief priest who lived at the verge of the evil forest and the only person qualified to walk into the woods. This was the same place that every person who was inflicted by the gods with sickness was submitted before or after their death.

The problem with this solution was that every twin that was ever submitted to that forest died. Akan considered running away with the twins, but he was terrified of the wrath of the gods. People who disobeyed the gods in the past had symptoms that ranged from skin diseases and distended abdomen, then eventually came inevitable death. He knew that the gods had their way finally. So, with a broken heart, he rolled his twins in animal fur and placed them gently in the basket. Amidst the cry of his wife and neighbours, he carried the basket and walked to the chief priest's residence. He cried as he went and wished that the journey would never end. It was the shortest journey he ever took.

Asika was waiting for him when he arrived. He secretly hated the chief priest for being a part of the process that took his joy away. He was surprised to see the sadness in the chief priest's eyes when he walked closer to the hut. He was sure that Asika's sadness matched his own as he handed over the basket to him. Akan turned around quickly to hide the tears that quickly ran down his cheeks. The chief priest took the basket and walked into his hut, past the sitting room and into his backyard. By the time Akan looked back, he had disappeared from his view. As Akan walked home, his anger towards the priest dissipated as he realised that they were all victims of that situation. If anything, the priest was only carrying out the duty that he and the rest of the community had entrusted him with. By the time he arrived home, Ejije was inconsolable. He tried but could not find the words to console her for what she felt he also felt. He imagined that he would not have felt any worse if he was burned alive.

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The days turned into a week and into a market day before Akan could drag himself out of the house to go hunting. He was lucky though he did not feel that way. He shot an antelope. As he was returning from his trip, he passed Asika's hut and decided he could not use all the meat. So he stopped and knocked on the front door. One of Asika's servants answered the door and led him inside the hut. No sooner had he sat down when he heard the cry of a baby. He dropped the animal and quickly rushed to the back of the cabin. There, he saw the priest feeding one of two babies with a white liquid. Akan was giddy with happiness, and his legs could hardly support him as he walked towards the spectacle in front of him. As he got closer, he became more convinced that those were his babies.

"What?" he said as he knelt down and scooped up one of the babies in his arms. He could not finish the questions he wanted to ask. There was no use: the boys were safe. He hugged the baby so tight that he was worried that he would smother him. Asika turned and watched him and realised for the first time since the babies were first handed to him. He knew he was supposed to take them to the forest, but he could not bring himself to do it. Since he lived at the edge of the same wood, he decided that keeping them in his barn behind his hut was as good as leaving them in the forest unattended. They were gentle babies, but they got hungry and cried sometimes. Initially, he had not thought about the necessity of having to feed them. He had imagined that the evil spirits would have claimed one the first night so that at least one would be saved, but to his amazement, both babies had survived. He was still waiting for the evil spirits to come when Akan walked through his doors. He could not explain his actions, but from the look on Akan's face, he did not need to tell.

Akan could not return home with any of the babies because he still feared the wrath of the gods. He could not tell his wife either for fear that the secret would get out. He also believed that they may still lose one child to the evil spirits, so he kept their lives a secret that stayed just between him and the chief priest, but every day, he visited them with goat milk and meat. After eight market days, he began to realise that the gods had decided to spare his children and he was finally able to tell his wife of their good fortune. However, the secret was not safe to be out. Eventually, the new parents decided it was best if they moved away from Umu-Ikenga. They travelled far in the direction of the setting sun. There, they settled down with their boys and became a community of their own after many years. It took the people of Umu-Ikenga more than another one hundred new yams to realise what Akan and his wife learned through love, terror, tears and blood - there is no evil twin.