The crowd sat back in their seats and watched the village native doctor and his pages set up the rites for the exorcism. Nobody stood up to defend the scared, small girl bound and on her knees in the middle of the white chalk circle.

It was an uncommon occurrence for a child to be exorcized; it was usually the old women that were found out as witches.

The pages finished setting the oil lamps and other miscellanea according to the rules of Feng Shui. They all stepped back and let the herbalist take their place in front of the girl, forming an outer circle. The said man started to chant in a strange tongue and sprinkle a thick, black liquid inside the chalk-line — and on the girl, in the process.

Eniiyi, head bowed, surreptitiously wiped her face on her sleeve. She tried not to breathe in the foul-smelling liquid. She wondered again what was going to happen to her now. The woman who gave birth to the man who gave birth to her, who was supposed to be her grandmother, had betrayed her. So what now? Hadn't they mentioned murder? Were they still going to murder her? Was this just a rite before the ritual? All this thoughts kept echoing through the valleys of her cranium, colliding with one another and the walls and  back, turning her into a more panicked mess with headache.

That there was no one to answer her haunting questions, no one to save her, no one to comfort her, made her more and more afraid and she thought she'd die from fear. She seriously wished that death from fear would happen, it would beat the not knowing and the having to face the guillotine or whatever they planned to orchestrate her death with. She could feel her heart banging wildly against it's cagey walls and the resonation in her throat. Fear wouldn't let go of the pit of her belly, it held on tight to it with it's canine jaws, it's waves traveling the way up and down her spine and her whole being. She felt the urge to throw up but her throat was heavy and dry.

It was at moments like this that she wished tears would come.

The man's voice was now climbing higher and seemed to have reached a crescendo for he stopped abruptly and froze in front of the child in the circle.

A surprised Eniiyi had started to slowly raise her head when the first lash landed on her back, curving into her stomach. She gave a surprised yelp and tried to leap up in the pain but her bound limbs saw to it that she didn't.

'O evil one, I command you to evacuate from this human vessel!'

The whip cracked again and Eniiyi fell down to her side in pain, screaming. She tried to wiggle away from the man but some white force was pushing her back to him.

'Stop, please!' she screamed in agony. Her whole  body stung and was on fire from the pain. The pain was nothing she'd ever experienced.

Deaf to the pleas of the cowering, small child the whip came down again. And again, and again.

'She's not even crying!' Now that the rites had been completed the people were now free to talk.

'This one is the devil herself!'

The voices continued to spew their own vitriol at the plight of a child the age of many of their own children.

The grandmother wouldn't stop weeping as she watched from afar. She knew that it was the required procedure and that there was nothing she could have done to heal the girl, even if she tried, but watching the girl in so much agony unsettled her lake of tears and turned it to flowing streams down her cheeks. Oh, if only the girl hadn't been brought to the village!

'Grandma, help me!' she screamed.

The old woman's heart couldn't rend more.

Then village doctor stopped screaming at the demon believed to be possessing the child. He touched a polkadotted, short stick to her head and jumped back, chanting incantations.

'Èèwọ̀! Abomination!' he shouted.

'What? What is it?' an annoyed baale tsked. The man was getting tired of sitting down there and watching them do the unnecessary, but he couldn't fully interfere in the decisions of the elders. His power didn't cover that. True he was the head of the village, but matters that didn't have to do with running the government of public policies and affairs were beyond his pale.

'This child is not only possessed but also an initiate in a dark circle.'

There were collective gasps at this. The white-garbed pages all stepped back  Many voices went up as they expressed their opinion.

'She has to be taken in intensively and made to confess all,' the village native doctor concluded with a tone of finality.

'Why?' a person asked. 'What has led you to that conclusion?'

The bull of a man turned an angry gaze to the crowd. 'How dare you question the divulgation of the gods? May sanponna* tear your mouth to pieces for that!' Then he turned back to the baale and the elders. 'She has to be taken back with me for proper confession and exorcism! Did you see her cry at all after all the beating? No!' he answered his own question. 'She has been fortified over and over by the evil forces of her circle.

'They sent her to pronounce the death of Bewaji, and they would continue to send her if she is not made to confess and break her ties from them all.'

'For all we know, she may be the devil herself!' a voice in the audience hollered from the far end.

'Thank the gods I didn't let any of my children near her, she would have initiated my poor children.' A woman at the front row threw up her hands then spat on the floor beside her and wiped her mouth fiercely.

The people seemed to realize the implication of her comment and women whose children hadn't come in contact with the witch child or didn't have children her age threw up their hands and thanked their God and gods in different ways. Those who remained passive in horror or fear either were men or women whose children may have come in contact with the evil child.

'Everyone who has ever come in contact with the girl should be purged!' someone offered from the crowd and everyone else supported him at that.

'Of course! That goes without saying. Only thing left is the decision of the council.' The native doctor, together with the eyes of the crowd, turned back to the elders.

'Yes we agree to that,' the elders said.

'And so shall it be,' said the baale.

No one asked for the opinion of the guardian and blood relative of the child in discussion, nor did they the barely conscious girl. Her ropes were untied and an older page, fortified with more talisman and amulet than the rest, picked the child up, hoisted her over his shoulder and exited the building with their master.

After a while of walking in a file, they stopped in front of a small, single-room building. The building was a few feet tall rectangle mounted high on a graveled foundation. It was cement brick on three sides and cross-linked iron bars on the other long side which faced a dirt road. Old, rusted aluminum roofing sheet formed a semiconical cover over the top.

The village doctor pulled opened a rickety, creaking door to the short side they were at. He muttered foreign words and charged into the room.

'Drop her there.' He pointed to a ninety degree corner.

The mute page dumped the girl on the hard floor and she whimpered. All her red welts seemed to jolt and it was like she'd been ignited.

'Is she asleep? Ẹẹ̀, aṣèṣè bẹ̀rẹ̀ ní o, we have just started. Go and fetch the special water and sprinkle it on her. The rest get the instruments and let me set up the place.'

The pages scurried out to perform the orders, mostly glad to be out of the vicinity of the most evil child they'd ever seen.

                        ♟️🍒♟️🍒♟️🍒

It was nightbreak and the whole vicinity was getting sucked into darkness. The red, huge sun which had hung comfortably in the sky had bid the earth goodnight from the day's job well done and, gradually, had been replaced by the brightness of the moon, basking in her own ecstasy of monthly cycle and turning the darkness to silvery-blue light.

Weary people trudged the road on foot, returning home from a long day's work, thoughts of food and and sleep on their minds and Eniiyi squeezed tighter into the corner of the single room, the thought of the thought of food making her belly rumble audibly.

She had been starving since morning and hadn't been offered anything. When her grandmother had brought her some food the decorated bull of a man had turned it down and sent the old woman away then had unhygienic water delivered to her. He believed that the supposed devil in her was thriving mostly because it was healthy and well-fed. She'd turned the untouched, dirty bowl upside down not long ago.

The poor girl kept on whimpering in pain. She'd never suffered like this before in her entire nine years on Earth, as a matter of fact, she'd never suffered before in her whole life. Her whole body was heavy and throbbing and covered in huge, angry, red welts. Some as big as her thumb and the length of her arm.

She sniffled and hacked a cough from her sore, dry throat and tried to draw her weak knees closer to her chest. It was cold, so cold. Her whole body was shivering. She was sure she could feel her weak heart shivering too. The iron bars at the front was open to the road and had no covering whatsoever, so all the cold night breeze came directly in penetrated to the bone and the hard, unplastered walls of the small building didn't help. She'd been shocked when she realized they had actually left her like that to the cold, after all the beating and starving and punishments. If the pain didn't get her this cold surely would.

She tucked her head weakly against her chest and moaned in pain when the rough walls cut deeper into her back. She knew she was ill, seriously ill. Despite the cold she felt hot. Her whole body seemed to be on fire, someone could have broken eggs on her and it would have fried brown. Her eyes were hot and her eyelids heavy, her limbs were hot and stiff and sore, and it felt like she was in a pot of boiling water. Yet she still felt oh so cold and wouldn't stop shivering.

The young girl knew she was going to die very very soon if nothing was done about this. She found herself wishing that it would come quickly and rid her of all this woes. That way her selfish parents would regret ever turning their backs on her in the village, Uncle Felix would wish he had taken her with him, Gma would repent of not fighting for her.

But, wait, that would mean she wouldn't live to see them bite their fingers in regret.

'I don't want to die!' she cried out weakly to the night sky.

All day she had been whipped and commanded to repent and confess what she didn't know of. The man had continued flogging her and his resolve had gotten stronger by the hours, when she didn't shed a single tear.

How could she have conveyed her intense pain and agony by tears when she couldn't cry? If she had the ability to shed she'd cried rivers and it'd have turned to sea. Trying to explain her disability to the bull man had been futile; he hadn't listened to anything she had to say that didn't have to do with confession. The beating had only gotten worse, if that was possible.

She sighed, her hot breath fanning her chest. She still regretted not telling her parents about her disability. When she'd suspected herself of it she'd done her research and confirmed her suspicion in the name of alacrimia. Funny, such a bad ailment had a name fit for a human being.

But her parents' ignorance about her condition hadn't been her fault in the least. They were never at home. True, they woke up together in the morning and went to their respective school and work, but then she came back in the afternoon with the driver or went to a friend's and then they'd come back late in the night, at times she'd be asleep already with nothing to watch over her save for the security cameras and the whole thing. It'd had been like that since Talatu, the last nanny, had left.

There was a time, on a weekend — the only times she ever gets to really see them — she'd remembered and had tried to tell her daddy, she'd actually started about the signs with which she found out when his Samsung Galaxy phone, the one they'd all nicknamed 'for business only' , had rung and that had aborted the bitch of a discussion that hadn't even been fully born.

She shivered and moaned. She was dreading the coming daylight. The Decorated Bullman had promised to come prepared with more torturing if she didn't start spilling her guts by the time he was back.

'Eniiyi.' The voice blew in with the wind and rolled quietly around her. She started, almost jumping out of her skin. A fresh wave of pain slammed against her and she whimpered. She'd forgotten her pain in shock.

'Sorry, sorry en? It's me.' A silhouette of a boy solidified in front of her. She squinted her eyes weakly and sighed out in relief when the shadow took shape and substance before her eyes.

'Oh Lord, are you okay?' the boy's face wrinkled in worry.

'I'm . . . I'm okay, not.' She  whizzed and paused to even her breathing. 'Lastborn, help me,' she pleaded.

The concerned boy grasped the iron bars in his two hands and peered in at his cousin.

'I'm so sorry. You must be so cold and starving.'

He ducked his head and disappeared from view. Eniiyi's frail heart started to sink. Then he appeared again and the shriveled organ rose to new heights when she saw what he had gone down for.

A thick blanket draped over his left shoulder and he had a polythene bag in his other hand.

'Oh, Lastborn!'

Lastborn smiled weakly, still worried. 'I brought you something to eat, I knew those bastards would starve you.'

He squeezed the blanket through the gap and passed the bag next.

'Thank you,' was all she could say.

She managed to cover herself with the blanket as best as she could and brought out the contents of the bag. A flask filled with warm vegetable soup that smelled like heaven and a bottle of water.

'Sorry, I could scavenge only that from my dinner without baba** noticing.' He chuckled lightly.

She didn't say anything as she devoured the whole soup, banishing the fact that she hated vegetables. She  tipped the flask higher to her mouth when it stopped pouring out and then noticed it had finished. She went sad at this. But at least she had a little something in her still rumbling stomach.

She stared sadly up at Lastborn and felt guilty about how she'd been to him since that day of Uncle Felix's departure. She'd pointedly ignored him and had even insulted him on one evening in the presence of his friends to leave her alone.

'I'm sorry,' she said shamefacedly. 'You have no idea how sorry I am.'

Lastborn understood what she was referring to. 'It's okay. Really, it is. I have forgiven you.'

She smiled weakly at him and leaned back against the wall, this time the thick, soft blanket cushioned her back. She screwed the bottle opened and weakly raised it to her lips. Her hands were still shaking and water splashed on her. She yelled in fright, almost dropping the bottle then settled to whimpering in pain. The water had been like icy needles to her hot-cold body.

'Eniiyi, you're sick!' Lastborn had stretched his hand through the bars and touched her skin. He now rubbed at the hand like her skin had scalded him. 'You're burning up!'

She continued shivering in reply and sluggishly swallowed water. It was hell, coursing it's way down to her stomach. She finally dropped the bottle and pulled the blanket up to her neck.

Lastborn fished around his pocket and finally came up with a small ziplog bag. 'Thank God I still have them with me.' He removed a small, cylindrical, white pill from the bag. Here, you've finished your water, try to chew on it then. It's paracetamol.'

'Grandma must hear about this! I will talk to Grandma tomorrow and convince her to get you out of here, I promise. But I am so, so sorry. I have to go, my father might wake up anytime now and find me gone.'

It was then she noticed that everywhere had been consumed by loud silence. While she'd been thinking of her woes the time had flown by.

She sighed. 'Okay, I understand. Thank you very much, Lastborn.'

'Try to take care of yourself. You have to stay strong.'

She nodded and he turned to go.

'Lastborn,' she called softly.

He turned back to her.

'Why aren't you scared of me?'

She thought she saw him swallow. 'I do not believe you are capable of doing all they said you did.'

She continued staring into the space he once was for a long time till she finally fell into the pockets of fitful sleep.

*

** Father.