The Eleventh Wife’s Child
No one remembered when the chief took his eleventh wife. Some said she came with the rain, arriving barefoot from a distant town no one had ever heard of or been to. Others whispered that she was a test from the spirits, for the chief. They say she would be his greatest test. Some said she was payment. But for what? No one really knows.
From her womb came Tami, the child who did not look like the others. Her eyes carried the colour of ash, they had flecks of gold in them,and her skin, though dark, shimmered in sunlight. The palace women called her a spirit child. Spirit children were considered to be the greatest misfortunes. So, the town was weary when her birth was announced. But she was the chief's child, so mute they would be.
Tami learned early that silence was safer than speech. Her mother’s compound was the quietest in the palace, tucked near the old kolanut tree where lizards sunned themselves. The other wives sent their children to mock her, and her father, the great Chief, barely remembered her name.
But the river did.
Each night, when all but the frogs, the crickets and and the children of nature were asleep, and they began their songs, Tami would sit by the stream and listen. The water spoke in ripples and murmurs, its voice soft but urgent. The sprites would sigh and whisper. She could never quite understand its words, only that it called to her, as if it carried a story meant for her alone.
Then, one harmattan morning, the river stopped flowing. The fish died. The yam fields cracked. The people wailed that the gods had turned their faces away. The diviners cast their cowries and said, “A debt has not been paid.” And though no one said it aloud, many eyes turned toward the chief’s eleventh wife and her forgotten child .
Her father summoned the oracle. The old woman’s eyes were milk-white, her lips dark with kola. After her incantations, she looked directly at Tami and said, “The river remembers what men forget. The blood that built this house was never cleansed. The one who hears must answer.”
The chief dismissed her words with a wave. “Enough of riddles,” he barked. “My daughter will not be made a sacrifice for your foolishness.”
That night, Tami’s mother packed a small bundle of food and placed a clay pendant in her hand. “You were born on the night the moon burned,” she whispered. “I first saw your face in its glow. The river was the one who celebrated your birth. Go, my child. Listen to what it asks of you.”
So Tami left before dawn, walking barefoot through the sleeping village. The air was thick with dust and silence. The stream she had always known as gentle now whispered like a restless spirit.
She followed it past the farms, past the sacred forest, until she reached the old trade road that led toward the hills. There she met a boy sitting beside a broken calabash, staring into the distance as though waiting for something that refused to come.
“Are you lost?” she asked.
He turned, surprised. His clothes were fine, woven cloth dyed the most beautiful shade of purple, but his eyes carried the tiredness of someone who had never been seen for himself.
“I am Aro,” he said. “My father owns half the markets between here and Lafaye. But I do not know what I own.” He smiled faintly. “Maybe I am lost.”
Tami almost smiled back. “Then we are two lost ones.”
He laughed softly and, for a moment, the heaviness around her eased. When she told him where she was going, he hesitated, then stood. “If you are going toward the river’s source, I will come. I have followed caravans my whole life but never followed a purpose.”
They journeyed together, through forests humming with unseen life. They slept beneath trees that whispered their names.
On the third day, they reached the sacred hill where the old shrine once stood. Only ashes remained, blackened and cold. Tami felt the pendant in her hand grow warm. The wind carried the faint sound of weeping.
“The oracle said the river remembers what men forget,” she murmured. “What did my father forget?”
Aro pointed to a half-buried stone carved with symbols. They brushed off the dust to reveal words etched long ago: To the gods who gave us water, we owe our first harvest and our purest blood.
Tami closed her eyes. “He took the land of the shrine for his palace. He promised an offering he never gave.”
The wind rose around them, carrying the scent of rain long vanished. The ground trembled beneath their feet. “Then it must be paid,” Aro said.
Tami walked to the edge of the dry riverbed. She knelt, pressing her palm to the cracked earth. “If my birth took what was theirs, let my blood return it.” Before Aro could stop her, she drew a small blade and let a drop fall onto the ground.
The earth sighed. Thunder rolled across the hills. Then, with a roar like a thousand drums, water burst forth, clear and strong, rushing through the valley. The river was alive again.
Aro pulled her back as the water rose around them. “You’ve done it,” he said, his voice trembling. “You brought it back.”
Tami’s arm burned where the blade had touched her, but when she looked, the mark on her skin glowed faintly, like silver fire. The river goddess had accepted her offering but left her mark as proof.
When they returned home, rain was falling for the first time in months. The people danced in the streets, their faces to the sky. The chief stood at the palace gate, his robes soaked, tears in his eyes, his pride washed thin.
He stared at Tami, astonished. “My child,” he said, voice unsteady, “you have saved us.”
Tami only bowed. “The river has forgiven, but it remembers.”
Her mother gathered her into her arms, weeping. And as the village rejoiced, Tami felt something unfamiliar blooming in her chest, peace.
Later that evening, she found Aro by the riverbank, skipping stones across the surface.
“What will you do now?” she asked.
He smiled. “Maybe I will stay until I know what I am meant to be.”
Tami watched the river shimmer under the fading sun. The air smelled of wet earth and new beginnings.
“When the river sleeps,” she said softly, “I will ask it to dream of us.”
And as night fell, the river sang again, its voice full of gratitude and promise.
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