The breeze brushed against his skin. The atmosphere, hot as the sun made it, did nothing to dry the sweat that soaked more than his face. The dry air grated at his nostrils with each intake of air and his lungs expelled them with a labor telling of their hate for it. They were clearly not designed for these parts of Vayla.
Urden rode through the dry and dusty lands of the southern villages of Umunari, far beyond the borders of the kingdom. This had been one of the reasons he had chosen the class of Evangelist prior to his ordination. Scouring the reaches of Vayla, he met peoples he had not known existed. He doubted any other evangelists had gone as far from the realm as he had without express orders from the church.
Dainty picked up dust with each step but Urden ignored it, knowing his destination lay not too far from where he was. He had passed through the village once, but, then, he had stayed a full year. Today, however, he would only stay a night.
He had a specific purpose for coming, one that demanded no more than a night.
The people of Umunari were an enigmatic bunch. Here, their purposes in life were determined by their thirteenth summer, though they did not have summers. The Hallowed had a propensity for the path of warriors, and the Tainted mostly fell to the path of something they called babalawo. Where the villages distinguished the Tainted with ease, they thought the Hallowed simply men and women of greater prowess. However, they did not identify them by these names. They called them something else.
The men of the south had features that were different from the men of the kingdom and most parts of Vayla Urden had wandered across. Their skin was black as night. Their eyes a fixed brown, never varying. Their lips were considerably fuller than Urden had seen, and their flesh proved thicker than most. The hair on their head curled repeatedly, looking shorter than it was, whereas the women’s lay stretched out almost like those of the realm. Regardless of this, even the women’s hair bore more similarity with the wool of a sheep.
The last time Urden had ventured into the village he had taken his time growing accustomed to their meals that consisted mostly of corn and maize, with soups, thick and colorful. They often pounded their yam, a heavy delicacy that was cultivated and was required to be dug up from the ground in its harvest. Sometimes they ate it in slices with the oil they pressed from the fruits of tall trees they called palm trees.
Learning their language had not proved too difficult and, at the end of a year, Urden spoke it fluently. He had taught a few of their children the language of the kingdom in return, finding the elders did not mind the extra knowledge. But he had not been allowed to teach them his ways. Their tradition bore a great power unlike the kingdom, and it was their Credo. Suffice to say, if the church learned of their existence there would be a crusade to lead.
“Father Urden,” An elderly man wrapped in clothing unsewn and knotted over one shoulde keeping it in place, said his name in the Umunari tongue. It was a language that employed sounds that made the throat rumble on the consonants.
Urden pulled Dainty to a halt and dismounted. He turned and greeted the man. The land bore a lot of ceremonies that depicted respect to all elders, treating them almost as one would treat a lord in the kingdom wherever they met.
“Good morning, papa,” Urden replied in the same tongue, bowing his head slightly.
“How long has it been, Father?” the man asked with a laugh. “I see you now have white hair on your head. Your hair grows old too fast. It couldn’t be more than twenty years you came to us last.”
“Eighteen, papa.”
“Eighteen?!” the man’s voice rose in surprise. “Oh, my child, I’m not getting any younger. I cannot even remember eighteen years.”
Urden wondered what the man was doing so far from the village. It wasn’t rare to find travelers cutting between villages. However, a man old enough to be considered an elder on such a path was a rarity.
“Why are you away from the village, papa?” Urden asked.
“Oh, me?” The man displayed a set of teeth brown from tobacco with a missing few. “I’m going to see my daughter in Untula. You remember her now. Nienna. She married four years ago.”
Urden did not remember her but he nodded. After all, he did not remember the old man either. “Ok, papa. I will tell them I met you on the way when I reach the village.”
“Yes, yes, my son. Tell them.” Leaving him, the old man paused in thought. He turned back to Urden, he added: “Dinma has missed you.”
Taking the man’s words to memory, Urden mounted Dainty and continued his journey. The old man, showing no fear for the horse, walked past without caution. His feet raised sand as he moved.
When Urden had first come to the village, the people had looked upon Dainty with awe. It didn’t take him much to realize it was a rare sight for them, if not a nonexistent one. Upon his second visit, they had grown accustomed to the animal, relieving themselves of their fears by the first month and becoming dangerously free with it by the third.
Dainty had taken to the people easily, leaving Urden wondering if the horse just didn’t like people of the kingdom. That was eighteen years ago. The truth was, the last time he’d visited the village had been five years ago. The old man had his years mixed up and Urden had no urge to be specific.
As he rode into the bushes that claimed the boundary of the village, Urden remembered the one problem he had taken a while to adjust to amongst its people. When asked questions, they had a tendency to reply first with a question of their own. An answer to the one initially asked was only often given.
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The first men Urden came in contact with stood with spears of wood with sharpened stone tips attached at one end. It was a crude weapon but Urden never spoke of it. If the church or the kingdom ever came to these lands it was bound to be a one-sided massacre.
“Father Urden, is that you?” one of the men asked in something with a semblance to surprise. It was not the kind used at the sight of sudden discomfort but one of near concealed pleasure. He was a huge man with muscles perhaps too big for his skin and a smile too wide for his face.
Urden smiled regardless of his discomfort. “Yes, it is I.”
The feel of the village was coming back to him. His tongue and ears were adjusting to the language quite quickly.
“I will inform the elders,” the man said, turning to make good on his words.
Urden urged Dainty past the other man as his partner ran into the village, his cloth flailing just below his knees from where it was tied around his waist. It was a blatant display of skin for which the kingdom would’ve frowned upon.
Urden did not understand why the man felt the need to announce his presence. He could probably get to the village before him without having to push Dainty beyond a canter. Disregarding the lack of logic, he consoled himself with the fact that he’d at least not had to introduce himself and wait while the news of his presence was broken.
His arrival was welcomed by most of the villagers numbering not more than a hundred people. It was a small village, and so were the neighboring villages. Unlike the kingdom, they had no king, only a group of elderly men too old to walk fast even with a stick. They gathered at specific times in specific places to make decisions and pass out judgement except in times of emergency.
When judgement was to be passed against taboos, the elders convened in the presence of their babalawo with the culprits where their gods passed judgement through the babalawo. In his first visit, Urden had stayed a month with them and had met the babalawo a few times. Then, he had deemed it best not to cross the man. In his second visit, however, he stayed a year during which he had learned their language and, against his decision, had crossed paths with the man.
The man had sworn fire and brimstone by his gods. Urden had shown him what fear felt like and, after moments of resistance, the man had succumbed. He could have killed the man easily. But it would have done naught to help the case.
Urden found himself wondering if the man still ruled the shrine of their gods as the chief priest. He may have to check out of nothing but spite.
Among the choruses of greetings and welcomes as he rode into the village, Urden kept his gaze searching for the purpose of his visit. To his fascination some girls discreetly exposed the plumps of their breasts, giving him looks that promised fulfilling nights. Holding back his laugh, his gaze glossed over them in search of his purpose. Most of them were but children the first time he’d been here, and others had not even been born.
He brought Dainty to a tree where he tied the reins and stepped through the crowd. He replied their welcomes—the actual words lost to the jumble of voices—with smiles and nods. At the other side of the crowd the expected elders stood waiting for him hunched over their walking sticks, their cloths wrapped around their aging bodies and knotted above a shoulder. A few of them spewed spittle onto the dirt at their feet. It was a side effect of the tobacco they enjoyed chewing.
In the kingdom, the lords smoked it.
“Elders, I greet you,” he hailed with a slight bow.
“I see you have returned again from your journeys, priest.”
When these men spoke, they spoke with a mastery of the language and an intricacy that left Urden filling in translations that seemed to fit best from the little he understood. Sometimes he wondered if they did it on purpose.
“Yes, elder,” he replied. “But I will not be staying long.”
His words brought a sound of disappointment from the crowd behind him.
One of the elders laughed. “You have just broken the hearts of more than half the women here eligible for marriage.”
Urden found the joke in poor taste but, keeping his mouth shut, he kept his opinion to himself, presenting them a smile.
He caught eyes with the youngest of the elders and the smile broadened in recognition. The first time he was in the village the man had not been an elder. The man was a Hallowed and Urden had saved him from four lions. He had wondered how the man had gotten himself in such a situation only to find out he had ventured into the forest to prove his might to a woman. The people called the place the evil forest but Urden doubted they knew what truly resided within it.
“Father Urden,” the elder greeted him. He was the only man in the village that called him by the name and spoke in the language of the realm. Despite their friendship, he remained an elder and Urden favored him with a curt bow.
“May I have a word with elder Okoli?” he requested of the elders.
They gave their nods. And as elder Okoli took him to the side, the elders ordered the villagers scatter.
“How is Dimma?” he asked when they were free of the crowd, walking together.
“No, no, no,” the man protested in the realm tongue. “You speak to me in your language or you not speak to me at all.” The words came with a nostalgia that brought a genuine smile to Urden’s lips.
“How is Dimma?” he asked again, returning to the language of the realm.
“She fine.” Elder Okoli’s mastery of the realm tongue was poor, but the man had always demanded they speak in it ever since he had learned it. “She is good girl since you leave.”
“Where is she?”
“She at home,” Okoli replied. “I take you to her.”
As they walked the man told of his experiences in the five years Urden had been away. The last Urden knew, the elder had married the woman that made him meet four lions, but now the elder told him of how the woman had taken a lover while they were still married. Their marriage had been childless and Okoli had made no complaints, knowing the village would blame his wife. It was no one’s fault.
Okoli’s wife had fled with her lover three years ago. A year after, she’d come back showing signs of constant physical violence and Okoli could not get to her before the elders. He had stood in silence as the village cast her out. Later, they’d found her dead at the entrance of the evil forest.
“It must have been hard,” Urden consoled.
“Yes, but we pay for our sin.” Okoli’s voice bore a union of sadness and regret. “She pay for hers.”
The man still loved the woman.
Urden, deciding to change the subject asked, “Is Nwagene still the chief priest?”
Okoli barked out a laugh. “Yes, but he’s been quiet since you dealt with him.” The man was likely unaware he had returned to his native tongue.
“I may pay him a visit before I leave,” Urden said, maintained the tongue of the realm.
Okoli chuckled and, just as easily, shifted back to the realm tongue. “Don’t go without me. I will like to see look on his face when he see you.”
It was a good walk later when they stopped at a building as the sun went down, and Urden deeming it the man’s house wondered what had happened to his former home.
“Pull it down,” Okoli told him, understanding what he was thinking. “Too small, Dimma need space.”
Urden nodded. “I see.”