17 - A secret birth

Chapter 17 (A secret birth.)

The woman reached up to hold his face with rolling tears. Tsote did not move. He felt like his whole body was frozen. 

“I am you mother…” she finally said it. Tsote felt embarrassed. He took her hands from his face but she automatically took them into her hands. Now this was too much and Tsote couldn’t help it but to think she was manipulating him.

“How sure are you… because the king is my father. And he is Yakunko!” Tsote began. 

“Mama Erusa must have told you…”

“She mentioned your name when she returned to Marakusha…”

“Naruba?” Came the woman. “My name…”

“That does not make you my mother…” Tsote replied. The woman started away and with her face back on him, she took a deep breath and looked out at twelve foot high grey pyramid several yards away in the open.

“You are the best thing that has ever happened to me child!”

“My mother died…” Chief Thalko told me…

“He said what he was told to say to you… but you came in search for truth about you. Not for stories and tales. I can show you if you don’t mind son.”

“Okay.”

The woman waived again and the calabash of water returned. This time alone and levitating. 

“You need to trust me then…”

Tsote hesitated when he saw the water but when she requested for his trust, he took the calabash and drunk the water.

“At this point, the woman quickly tapped on his fore head and Tsote saw darkness close in…

“The tree possesses knowledge and truths of all ages.” She Confessed to him while walking over. Tsote listened and waited to see what was to happen after having taken the water dripping from the tree’s roots. She stood in front of him and tapped him twice on the forehead and darkness began to consume him. 

‘Tsote saw her face; Naruba had him in her arms and was caring him. She lay back on top a little bedding inside some tunneled shelter in the depths of the woods. She had just given birth there was blood everywhere. Mama Erusa there and she was rushing this and that way cleaning Naruba’s blood with a little cloth and dressing some wounds on her legs.

And arms. Mama Erusa looked younger than Tsote but she was blind still. When she was Done, Naruba called her over… Mama Erusa came. She seemed very familiar with the placement of things around the shelter coz she moved like someone who could see with so little difficulty.

“Take this and go up the cliff. Play from it and summon for my sisters… I disappointed them but still they alone can defend me from them…”

Naruba handed Mama Erusa the little flute the likes of a snail. The flute belonged to the Vulko people. Tsote could see. When Mama Erusa was gone, the mother started humming a little song to the child. It was a song of the Vulko people too. He was crying and the song had the power of calming and returning peace to a chaotic or painful situation. However, Tsote could not remember the words.

Close to thirty minutes after Mama Erusa’s departure, Yakunko horns sounded in the forest. They were responded to by other horns from different directions and this terrified his mother. She struggled to roll him up in one of the dry cloths Mama Erusa had brought for the child. She stood up from the bedding shivering and stumbled under weak and wounded legs. 

However, she did not dare let the child out of her arms as she stumbled. At least she supported herself with her shoulders. There were two beads next to the clothes. She took them started towards the fireplace were the fire still burned to warm the shelter. She kicked the pots on the rocks mama Erusa left close to the fireplace. The pot topped and broke into many pieces emptying its water into the fire. There was sizzling and the rising of ashes to fill the air. Now she was chocking only to hear snorting Kurota warriors. 

They had found the shelter were climbing to the top of the shelter with their spears ready to end her life. Tsote saw sweat flowing down her mother’s face! By all means, she was scared about his life.

“I love you.” She uttered to him and this is when saw a movement on the top of the shelter, the warrior was Yakunko and transforming. He tore the shelter’s roofing away with a few slashes of his blades. There was a large hole and as the warrior prepared to jump down fully transformed. Naruba waved her hand at the roots interlacing the structure such that the moment the Kurota warrior landed inside the shelter and tempted to attack her them with its blades, the roots caught it midair and pulled the creature back against the wall on the right!

Big spears shot through the side of the shelter damaging much of the things inside. Things were falling over and spilling here and there. Next thing, the Yakunko warriors came charging and crushing straight through the sides of the shelter like monster moles. 

She went through the tunnels to the next wings of the termites-like shelter but the warriors were already inside. They shot arrows into the wall where they saw her. They missed her as she staggered out through another exit the warriors hadn’t notice. She ran with her heart pounding fast. she staggered fell to her knees and got up again. one thing she never let go of was her baby. A horn sounded and the Kurota warriors burst out from the shelter after her.

She picked up speed but the Kurotas were still on her with arrows and spears tearing through the trees stumps and logs she was jumping over down the slope. This is when another arrow hit through her stomach side and another in her left leg sticking out on the front end. Tsote saw the fear in her face but also her persistence not to let them kill him. They came to the edge of the river and here she stumbles over a rock. She crawls towards the water in pain and her strength was failing! A trail of blood followed her until she touched the water. 

She tried to push but could not. Her bleeding left a trail of blood in the sand. She was bound to give in. She had one last option and this was to stop fighting and calm her child. This when she started humming for him again but in reality her life was going. She was dying!

“I love you… always!” The mother tried to whisper to the baby with blood in her mouth. “Never forget that.” She tried to hum again but then her breath failed. She had lost so much blood and could not last longer. Soon she stopped breathing. Tsote felt tears form in his eyes.

This is when a group of three rhinos with glowing tasks rose from the water. They had riders resembling the Shorango but dark with pointed ears. Their physique resembled the Vulko figures painted on the rocks along the lower banks of river Ulewo. They had turquoise green eyes and crustal shin guards on their shoulders and legs, breastplates and strange blades made of stone. They collected her but as they did, the two beads Tsote wears today fell back down, not far apart. 

The female among them came to pick up the baby but the moment she touched it, the plague spread up her arm painfully. She let go of her and this is when Yakunko warriors started popping out from the woods. In lead was the commander in chief of the King’s men. Thalko. He stopped the other men when he heard a crying baby. And when he bent Tsote saw his face.

“The woman is gone…?” A captain next in command reported with an over-voice.

“How? Hey don’t… we can no kill the child…” Thalko interrupted his men and motioned them back from the baby. It was crying from the moment the River rhino riders touched him. He looked into the child’s eyes but the child looked as harmless. He reached down and took up the baby in his arms. Before he could looked further up and down the river but there was no sign of the mother.

Tsote felt two fingers tapping on both side of his head summoning him back from his wanderings. Tears were flowing down the sides of his eyes but Mama Erusa rubbed them away and smiled at him. He looked at her in the eyes and she was the very woman who died at the banks of the river with him in her hands. 

“Mother?” He uttered.

“Fortunately I did not die…” Naruba responded summoning him to follow. She walked past him towards the back end of the tree. 

“Come…” She added and Tsote sprung to his feet and followed without hesitation. The owls were staring down at them from the tree’s branches. 

From here the strange network of roots exiting the hill’s sides extended to the north east and south east  before it curved slightly inland to meet the old sea. Naruba led Tsote to an isolated pyramid about a yard or two away. It is as if the Pyramid sank into the heart of the hill. Surely it did he learned later. How this was possible, he had no idea! However, he dared not ask yet.

The pyramid covered forty feet of the ground at the very center of the hill and its tip was yet lower than any usual pyramid you know today. Six pillars stood on top this pyramid three either side making the top of the pyramid look so sacred. Each pillar stood on top a square block curved with the ancient twenty-one Kuoka species faces on different sides. The pillars stood sixteen feet high from the ground and a thick square slab of stone sat on top this to act like roof. However, the roof had a rectangular hole the size of the altar at the center of the pyramid.

The roofing had ancient writings glowing from the heat of the sun above. How the light made it through the thick rock, god knows but they reflected down on the ground surrounding the altar.

The writings were made in the Kuoka language and unreadable for a normal human. The woman led him up. She performed a certain sign of respect with a little bow before she led him up. From here, the hill’s fell like it was sliced by a giant hoe. The falling cliff curved away to the left and right. Symbolic rocks lined the edge of the cliff away to the left and right. Behind them, a garden of fruit trees grew leaving a space pf thirty feet between them and the pyramid both sides.

The birds Tsote normally saw on the banks of River Ulewo were here as well flying around through the trees but singing with such a beautiful sound unlike those down below! Naruba took a seat facing the great fog concealing the great forest on the eastern side of the hill as he waited for Tsote to quench everything that was fascinating to him around here. After a good look at everything, Tsote joined her on the right.

Naruba did not rush to speak. She focused out into the fog beyond the hill. It was orange and yellowish with the rays of the ancient sun cutting through the greyness.

“Why did you never return for me…?”

“I without my beads, I could not locate you but I requested mama Erusa to find you… ”

“Then why don’t you get them back from him. After all he comes up here every season…?”

“My sister would have done so long time but with Olko magic around his neck and an advantage of the Kurota, he is untouchable. Olko magic cannot work against anyone or anything in possession of Olko magic.”

“Why is the wall fading there and there…?”

“The invisibility shield was caused by the Vulko Enchantment after the rise of the Yakunko. The Vulko people wanted to keep protect something special from the reach of the Yakunko. Hence the Yakunko cannot breathe in the fog.”

“So the Vulko people are real…!”

“Very…”

“Have you ever met a Vulko?”

“Yes… when I was still a child.” The woman replied. 

“Wow…”

“When Klode used the black seed to create the Yakunko Kurota, the seed broke into two parts, Oladiya took one and the Vulko people retrieved the second. Only the gods could keep it but they too had lost their power of control on nature and their respective realms after the breaking of the black seed. They were gone and the Vulko people knew not what to do with the black seed because they feared keeping it amongst them lest it darkened the Vulko realm.”

“What did they do…?”

“When they found out Olkai was alive, they requested him for a favor.”

“Which?”

“Whatever, they needed an audience with Untu the goddess of the woods which Olkai did not deny them. Untu, the goddess of the tree gave them refuge under the fog down there where they have been to this day.” His mother explained. At once, Tsote stood up and took a few steps to the edge of the pyramid’s top. He squinted into the fog below.

“You won’t be able to see anything…” Mama Erusa told him. 

“Is it true we all originate from the sea…?”

“Yes…” Mama Erusa told him adding, “However, many Yakunko story tellers have lied much about them.”

 “Many Except for Mama Erusa.”  Tsote replied.

“Sure, except for her…”

“How do  you know?”

“I taught her all she ever knew apart from Yakunko language.”

“She never told us that…!”

“Why would she…?” His mother asked.

“So its you that taught her how to play with the fire and smoke while she told her tales …!”

“She loved stories and it was her talent as well. adding a few skills to her talent would grant her dream as the best Yakunko story teller of this generation…”

“She was…” Came Tsote. “Everyone loved her and her stories could make her the most… but how, I mean where did you two meet?”

“When father told me she would leave the M’Jeda…”

“What’s the M’Jeda?” Tsote asked his mother.

“It’s the fellowship of the Oladiyan keep. The twenty one guarding Oladiya’s eye…” The Shorango Priestess spoke.

“Oh… Yes. I understand.”

“When I inherited my father’s beads, I qualified to join the M’Jeda. Before he left the M’Jeda, he had to mentor me. It was during our training with your grandfather when we encountered a wounded she Kurota hunting team.”

Tsote listened taking hold of her hand. She smiled lightly and tightened her grid. Then continued

“They were pursuing a young woman close to my age. She had fallen off a cliff near the edge of the river. Good enough there were two large rocks there looking like two deformed figures leaning back on each other. She crawled and hid in a gap below them.”

“Where were you?”

“I was with my father somewhere on the other side of the shallow river where she couldn’t see us as we could see her. A few seconds after, the tracking team appeared all the way to the cliff. They did not see her but a young man whom the young woman later revealed was a captain on the hunting team spotted the sensed her presence and motioned the others past.”

“Did you get to know who it was… the young man?”

“Renso. Renso was his name and she said they loved each other. Which made it reasonable why the young man let her live!”

“Impossible…” Came Tsote.

“Renso is master of the Kurotandi. He trains us and…!”

“Well, I don’t know for sure but what mattered most was the young woman’s condition. She was in such a painful state. -wounded and bleeding out. And if I did not make a move, she was left for dead.”

“Could she see by then?” 

“Not well, her sight was already failing by the time we rescued her. She completely got blind two weeks later. It still hurts that I could not assist her on that.” His mother replied sorrowfully.

“How old was she when you first met her?”

“She was eighteen and I was thirty three. The youngest member of the M’Jeda ever.” The Priestess said.

“You…!” came Tsote in confusion. 

“But you have not aged at all…!”

“Olko magic does this. It brings our aging rate to that of the Yakunko Kurota warriors.” The woman replied. Tsote reached up and touched her face curiously. She looked like she was just turning thirty this year. It was hard to believe but truth was!

“Also, its common for the Kurota to kill its female hosts after ten years of age because they never trained to control it. How then did she survive to the age of eighteen with her Kurota…?”

She glanced aside at him. But before even responding, she reached for a smoking pipe and light it magically! He had seen enough today. The birds chirped in the trees.