05:00 am, September 14
Kogi State, Nigeria.

It was a very early Saturday morning when the unfortunate incident happened. It was in the wee hours of the morning when the sky was inky blue and the orangish-pink tip of the sun could barely be seen struggling to peek out from behind the mountains.

The village was empty at this time of the day save for the watchguards retiring from their overnight posts and one or two religious fanatics jingling bells loudly and forecasting doom.

It was at this exact time that the beginning of what would spell her doom arrived with it's family of trouble.

Soon, as was tradition, pageboys were sent around to circulate the sepulchral news.

Taiwo had just risen and was sweeping the house when a loud series of knocks came on the front door.

He hissed and dropped the broom wondering who the dumb as a post idiot could be, that couldn't respect people's privacy. What if he was still asleep? Would the idiot break the door down?

'Ta nì yẹn, who's that?' he wanted to know on getting to the door.

'Àlááfìa fún onílé o, peace. Ẹ káàárọ́ o.'

'Ẹ káàárọ́,' Taiwo answered back still annoyed. 'What has brought you here so early in the day? The roosters have barely crowed.'

'We've come from Baba Agbanila, the renowned village doctor. To announce that Bewaji has kicked the bucket.'

Taiwo instantly pulled the door opened. 'What?!'

'Mrs Bewaji, the first daughter of the Baáálẹ̀*, has gone to meet her maker,' repeated the young man dressed somberly in all black. He sighed sagely. 'The death of someone never fails to remind one of our mortality. I have to get on to the next house.' He turned back and stepped down the porch.

Taiwo kept staring ahead, in shock. Fear gripped his heart in it's tight leathery fist, hindering his normal breathing. And it wasn't the death of the woman that brought him to his knees in front of fear, it was the repercussion that was sure to come.

                      ♟️🍒♟️🍒♟️🍒

It was now early morning, the sun had made it and dissipated the gloominess of the sky and now brightened the earth, already making it's slow journey to the western cradle.  The streets of the village had resumed it's normal lively bustle: okadas moving up and down and a few occasional lorries and commercial cars, dirty naked children crying and laughing, household members sweeping their compound, and the likes.

But the day had a cloud of suspicion hanging precariously in the air, threatening to fall down by the slightest provocation and galvanize into action. Men and women unusually hung about in loose clusters, apparently finding something in common to talk about.

A particular group garnered the most crowd. Roughly in the center was an emaciated tall woman. Iya Idowu she was called and Ẹlẹ́nu résò at her back, a name brought about by her sharp mouth and intense ability to insult, gossip and curse. The moniker gave her less justice than she deserved, for with her sharp tongue, she could easily raise the dead from it's grave. Many had wondered where the Idowu** was or the twins that must have come before him or her.

'I said it!' she kept on shouting, her hand on the edge of her wrapper to hold it from falling of.

'I told you people. Eh, did I not say it? I know evil when I see one. That day she opened that evil-infested mouth of hers and insulted me was when I knew that devil resided in her!'

'It's true o! You should have seen the way she forecast the poor woman's doom,' another voice in the river of bodies put in.

'Poor woman, chai!'

'How did she even know about the woman?' a whiny voice asked.

This stirred up a frenzy of irritated replies. 'Have you been stone deaf since morning?' 'They said the child is evil you're still asking nonsense' 'She's possessed!' 'What do you think, her evil society, of course!' 'She's a witch, yes that is what she is!'

Iya Idowu realized that the attention had been shifted away from her and hurried to salvage it. 'So I say the evil child should be burnt to death,' Iya Idowu pronounced at the top of her voice and spat to a side in disgust, returning the attention to herself.

There was a chorus of approval from the angry crowd. It really looked like they would go and do just that, but, thankfully, some people still had reasoning.

'Let's not haste to act, she has to be taken to the village council. Let her case be decided by the elders,' An old man said, raising his walking aid in anger and shaking it animatedly in anger at the throng of people. 'Killing a child is not something you just do like that!' He turned his angry gaze to the emaciated woman. 'Iya Idowu, you child of a scum, so you want other children to die the way your own children died.'

Iya Idowu gasped, hit heavily by the weight of the old man's words. Few people knew the truth about what really happened to her children as it had been long ago. Her elder twins, a boy and a girl, had been known for being light fingered since they were toddlers and due to her constant protectiveness and blindness to their ways, they'd grown up to be hoodlums. At the age of seventeen they were busted in a big heist in Lagos city and burned to death by the angry mob. The boy that came after, Idowu, at the age of twenty one, had recently left for the south, after he'd been caught having an affair with a middle-aged, rich married woman and banished by the village council.

Most of the crowd didn't feel the impact of the man's words to the woman but had heard what he'd said earlier.

So they agreed on having the council of elders summon the evil child and decide her case. With this agreement the crowd gradually thinned as people went to carry out their own mission, leaving Iya Idowu speechless in front of her house, seething in anger the size and mass of a sea.

Grandma had just finished plaiting Eniiyi's hair into cornrows when the messenger arrived.

Her grandmother stood up from behind the girl, deep in thought. When her houseboy had relayed her the news she'd known to expect them any minute. She was only surprised and grateful that it hadn't involved an angry crowd.

'Eniiyi, get your scarf and follow me,' she said monotonously.

The nine-year-old stood up, unaware of what was about to happen to her. 'Grandma, I've not yet eaten,' she grumbled.

'I said follow me!' Grandma shouted.

Eniiyi shut up, shocked to silence. What was this all about now? After that fateful day Gma had resumed to treating her like normal, so what had she done wrong this time? She trudged to her room, stopping to glare at the man who had come to tell them that the elders requested her immediate presence. Who were these idiot elders by the way, and what right did they have over her life to be commanding her like that? What did they even want from her?

The man blinked in fear when she glared and touched a red and white amulet at his neck, muttering.

Freak!

She went into her room and got a chiffon scarf as requested and went back, hoping she would at least be allowed to drink water before leaving. She'd hardly eaten anything the whole of yesterday because all the meal served were what she didn't eat; bread and tea in the morning, ẹ̀bà*** in the afternoon and boiled beans in the night. Now her poor stomach rumbled lightly.

She was disappointed on reaching the porch when Grandma just took hold of her hand and pulled her along, face grim and mouth tight. Eniiyi knew not to dare breathe a word when Grandma was like that. Instead she just stared ahead unfeelingly and let herself be dragged along.

Soon they arrived at a very large, very round pillared building made mostly of clay and palm frond. The floor was bare but clean swept orange earth, the roof made of freshly changed, green, woven palmfronds. The building was about eleven feet tall and open save for the pillars each planted at about four feet interval from the next.

There was a larger space in-between two larger pillars — about six feet — through which the man ahead of them went and her grandmother pulled her through. She guessed it to be the entrance and smirked. Why the need for an entrance when there were so many spaces to go through?

An hiss ahead made her look up from her bemusement, and she gasped in surprise.

To her right, rows of numerous wooden benches had been arranged to the shape of the building all opening out to the face farther to her left wherein there were grander chairs with tables.

What surprise her was not the sitting arrangements. No, it was the fact that the seats, both the ones to the left and to the right, were filled up with people and they all had their pairs of eyes on her, glaring.

* Village chief.

**Name given to the child, be it boy or girl, that immediately succeeds a set of twins, in Yoruba tradition.

***Food prepared by pouring boiling water on garri (cassava flakes).