DANUSHIKI

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

He was about to go and meet his Harshiri when he suddenly stopped, and beheld t his wife standing before him. Although it was dark, the oil lamp from the next room illuminated where husband and wife presently stood. He wanted to say something as Harshiri walked briskly out of the room, towards the backyard sobbing and trembling. He followed her until she stopped and sat on a small wooden stool while staring into the darkness. Both ignored the sounds of crickets chirping around the compound while searching for the right words to say to each other.   

“Harshiri,” he called at her in one of his ’fatherly’ tones, to which she refused to answer until she’d cried to her satisfaction, before sniffing deeply. The next moment she wiped her face with the edge of the white woven cloth wrapping her body.

“You’ll allow your only son to end up just like that,” she asked in a pathetic voice that could soften the toughest of men. A moment of silence passed before Darjer looked at her face in the darkness. He remembered it the first time he saw it while returning from a hunting trip. The most recent time he’d seen tears flowing down her face was when she gave was giving birth to her last daughter. Even at fifty-six, her beauty still radiated like the morning sun.

“It’s not my making,” he replied.

“If you were there from the beginning, you’d understand what I’m talking about.” He heard her sniff again before he continued.

“The sacred grove has predicted his future,” he continued. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

Turning his back on her with his head down, he said slowly, “Let’s wait and see what would happen after the training and initiation.” 

Without responding to his last statement, she walked away and slowly sat down on a low surface beside the entrance of the house.

”Nine months carrying that boy, giving birth to him, and eighteen years after, this is what the sacred grove wants… now tell me my dear husband, where was the sacred grove when you and I were taking care of him?” she inquired bitterly, with her gaze on the ground.

“Stop worrying yourself, if the sacred grove wills it, there’s nothing anybody can do about that…I’ll talk to Danushiki when he gets back.” Darjer walked away, happy that Danushiki’s two younger sisters were not at home that moment.

Moments later, Danushiki walked into the backyard with blood dripping from several cuts on a dead antelope onto his body. He looked tired while dropping the dead animal on the ground, followed by three sharp blood stained spears, which he gingerly laid beside the antelope’s horns. He was about to call out to his sisters when he heard his mother sobbing inside the kitchen. He hated seeing her or any other woman in tears and always swore to do whatever he could to stop the tears of such a woman. He began to walk towards his mother as he remembered with a smile, how he used to tease her, telling her that he wouldn’t mind wooing, ‘cornering’ and marrying her if he’d met her first due to her beautiful complexion which resembled the mud from which the house was made.

He knew the crying woman to be a strong-willed person, but was always surprised how she suddenly became like molten wax in her husband’s presence.

“Why are you crying?” he whispered, squatting beside her. She sniffed deeply, looked at him and shook her head in pity before mumbling some inaudible words.

“The sacred grove…” she began in a soft tone.

 “Let me guess,” He interrupted her, “it’s all about the sacred grove’s prophecy isn’t it? Don’t worry everything will be alright after all…”

The smile that was slowly developing on Danushiki’s face soon disappeared the moment his mother shut him up and raised her left arm menacingly towards him.

“Shut up and get out of my sight,” she barked at him, “you’re just like your father, always talking this way when you are aware of the ‘consequences.’ ”

Danushiki was not offended with his mother’s behaviour, but was rather amused, and wondered how he and his father spoke that could ignite his mother’s anger.

He was leaving his mother’s presence when he saw his sister Makiya entering the compound, and greeted him from a distance. Being the last child of the family, she automatically became everybody’s favourite, although she was always described as saucy by Danushiki.

“I don’t want to be stained with blood…” she grimaced while pronouncig the last word. Danushiki knew it was worthless replying her since she always exhibited the same trait for which she he resented her.  

“Papa said he wants to talk to you when he gets back, so you go in there, clean yourself up and put that dead animal where it supposed to be.” Danushiki smiled at the way she gesticulated, while talking and pointing to the dead antelope. She had barely walked five steps from her elder brother when Harshiri instructed her to pull the animal into the kitchen.

Danushiki rushed into the kitchen to have a quick meal, before rushing to have his bath. He dressed up in a white woven loincloth and hurried to meet his father, who was waiting outside the house, on a reclining chair, totally forgetting about the dead antelope and Makiya’s dainty remarks. He had barely responded to his son’s greeting when he sprang to his feet like a cat, and began to walk out of the compound. Thoughts of Sarme began to flood his mind as he secretly wished he was in her warm embrace, away from all the crying and shouting.

The mere thought of Sarme sent shivers through him as he pulled the white woven cloth around his body. He never thought he’d fall hopelessly in love with any girl on the island, even if she dropped from the sky, clad in glittering white woven cloth. Sometimes he tried to imagine how her father’s face would be if he ever caught them kissing or being wrapped in each other’s arms. Darjer and his son walked in silence until they arrived at a junction, took a left turn and walked to a large tree close to a blacksmith’s lodge. It was a large compound which housed at least seventy men, under the leadership of a famed blacksmith called Dojami. Dojami and his assistants dedicated all their time to making and sharpening farm implements and other metallic objects. His blacksmith lodge, (though not surprisingly) like the few others in Shaingwa made everything out of iron except weapons.

Darjer always felt an urge to ask Dojami why his craft excluded the making of weapons but he always discarded it, alongside several ‘concerned’ inhabitants of the island.

“The place hasn’t changed a bit,” Darjer spoke as he cleared dry leaves from a spot.

“I remember bringing several cutlasses here to get sharpened before going to work on the farm…after all the youthful thirst for blood - enemy blood. I don’t know which craft you’ll engage in after the war is over but a combination of farming and hunting won’t be a bad idea for you…”

Danushiki listened while his father spoke, but paid more attention to passers-by with their oil lamps, as they chattered endlessly, paying no attention to the man conversing with his son under a large tree.

He watched his son’s face with the light coming from the oil lamp above him and secretly hoped it would not end up with hideous scars like Dojami’s, which had a cut running from his chin to the back of his right ear.  Although he’d seen several of his fellow warriors who had their wounds healed mysteriously seconds after it’d been inflicted, he always believed Dojami’s cut was caused by his clumsiness, or self-inflicted due to his carelessness with one of his numerous spears he’d used as a young warrior.

“In a place like Cobra Land all your feelings leaves you, and you are immediately replaced by the desire to conquer Shaingwa’s enemies by one way only - killing them.”

He paused and looked at his son and thought of how Harshiri’s little baby of yesterday was soon to become a ruthless, bloodthirsty killer. It was such a cruel fate.

”Why was mama crying?” he suddenly asked, interrupting his father, who seemed to be enjoying the cool breeze blowing around.

“Come,” his father told him, directing him to a large rocky surface near the tree.

“You’re not ignorant of what’s going on,” he began, “You and I were at the sacred grove where you heard everything…one thing you must understand is that all these are all about sacrifice for Shaingwa, and I believe the gods and goddesses have chosen you.”

Danushiki was silent while Darjer allowed him to digest this last bit of information.

“You have to accept your fate that way, because there’s nothing anyone can do about it, I’m afraid it’s your destiny.”

“Maybe I can prevent it” Danushiki began with excitement in his voice. “

“After the final battle has been fought and won, I’ll get on a fishing boat and get away from here as   far as I can, and never return.”

Darjer seemed to laugh at his son’s suggestion, while he recollecting the last time he set his eyes upon one of his instructors for the last time. Darjer’s own future-telling session with his late father had been less frightening that fateful day. This was due to the atmosphere of the sacred grove, which seemed to be ‘bored’ with its task that particular day. Thinking about his son made him feel weak, especially when he remembered that someday he’d need a wife to bear him children.

Darjer shook his head as he thought of his own lover at that time that was predicted to die before his return from battle. This was the only piece of information that seemed to arrest his attention that cold morning inside the sacred grove, as his father kept looking at him with a questioning eye till they left the place. The sacred grove had been true to its word after Darjer returned from the final battle. When later met her younger sister three days later and inquired about the cause of her death, she informed him that his beloved (at that time) had died in her sleep.

The thought of his son dying without an heir didn’t bother him as much, as the emotional trauma he imagined Harshiri to be going through. Someone like Harshiri had to be toughened in Cobra Land, he mused. At least there’d be no more crying and sobbing after her return.

”Your soul is the main issue here,” Darjer said in his usually fatherly manner, while ignoring the noisy birds in the tree.

 “Your soul goes to the sacred grove when you die, and your body will be preserved with the gods and goddesses alongside other warrior commanders of the past, whom the sacred grove chose.”

As he heard those words, he stood up as if he had just seen a ghost and walked some few metres away from his father. Danushiki stared at him in a trembling voice and began to speak slowly, ignoring the passers-by who were walking by.

“If it’s killing, I’ll kill, and if I’m to fight in any war, I’ll fight because that’s what every youth and warrior in Shaingwa believes in…to fight and defend this island till he drops.”

He was still standing when his father walked up to him, dug his hands into a small pouch on his side and brought out a ten horned necklace.He held the object as if it was the most fragile thing in the world, before wearing it around Danushiki’s neck. Thereafter, he placed both hands on his son’s shoulder and spoke to him for the last time that evening.

“I don’t know when you’ll go for the training, but if it has to end this way, may the gods and goddesses be with you.”