Rose of Numen

by Olatunde, Biola;

  “Maybe if you allow your personal feeling to become clear to Babatunde it might help him fight for his life right now,” Josephine’s replied. She explained that she had no intention of coming between situations that she could not pretend to understand. She gave Ife a friendly smile, said it was unfortunate that they seemed to have become inadvertent rivals for the affection of Babatunde but unlike rivals she was not interested in contesting with Ife because she sensed Babatunde’s true feelings. She offered to help Ife in whatever Ife had in mind to unravel the series of strange accusations against Babatunde.

  Ife sat down on the couch feeling drained.

  Josephine went over to sit next to her and clasped her hands. “Listen, Ife, Babatunde could not make love to me, he was half-drunk and mumbled a strange girl’s name. I was really frustrated. I assumed when he was sober we could have a talk and evolve a friendship. He woke up in the night in pain grabbing his stomach, hated the sight of me and I knew it was the worst reaction that could ever have happened. He doesn’t know that he did not succeed in his love-making attempts and some form of pride did not want me to disabuse his assumption. Sometime later he will realize a man can’t make love drunk as he was. I guess that is what brought on the stomach cramps. I really don’t know what to do next, but I know I do not want to inflict further pain on either of you. I have enough of my own.”

  There was silence for a while then Ife simply said, “Thank you.” She asked if Josephine had eaten as she would like to have breakfast. She stood up and felt a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She gave her friend her first real smile and the friendship of old burst forth between them washing away the strain they had both experienced. Josephine gave Ife a friendly smile and was gratified when Ife returned it.

  “You know I got help much earlier, went to visit Dad and he explained that Babatunde was just a man. I didn’t understand then but he sent someone to remind me and in a nice way the intense pain I felt lifted. It means I am normal after all. I understood what jealousy was but I liked you too much as a friend so it was really painful not knowing what to do.”

  They embraced both laughing and crying.

  ~~~

  Numen felt a sense of relief the minute she walked into her room and was able to shed her clothes and move into the falls of sheer clean invigorating water. She felt the last stress drop off and she closed her eyes only to open them to the restful music that seeped into her mind. Mae Rose walked in and Numen smiled.

  “Kind of hard this time, right?” Mae Rose asked with a gentle smile as she sat gracefully next to Numen.

  Numen sighed. “I am learning again a human emotion that is teaching me quite a few things and I am puzzled, hence I asked permission to come and discuss with Mae.”

  “Yes I know, she will see you in a few beats. By the way, Raingirl sends her wishes.”

  Numen smiled as amusement came into her lovely eyes. “I am not so sure she is pleased with me at the moment.”

  They both smiled as they received summons from Mae that she was ready to see Numen after the sixth hour had been observed.

  Numen donned fresh clothes and decided to walk through the gardens by the east side of the Blue Mountains. She called for her horse and allowed the animal to take her to wherever. Her horse sensed her mood and settled for a gentle trot. Numen felt safe and at some peace. What had intensively bothered her while she was on Earth looked remote and far away.

  This was one of her rare visits here since she started working as a doctor. She had been given the grace to be able to experience her second world consciously and until her feelings flowered for Babatunde she had been a happy working spirit. Her new feelings had become confusing because Earth vibrations were coloring them and she needed to understand. So many strange feelings had been assailing her that it became imperative that she should ask for help and guidance.

  After her ride she had a long walk and heard the soft call of Mae, so she made her way to the east wing of the temple of worship. Mae gave her a smile and indicated for her to sit.

  Numen expressed her happiness that Mae was willing to see her.

  Mae smiled. “Guidance is always available to all spirits who seek to understand the laws and would like to understand more.”

  “Everything became very confusing, Mae,” she replied.

  “It became confusing because you were looking for answers with your intellect which you have developed and not with your spirit. There is a difference, my friend. When issues assail us, we should be calm and try to understand the rationale for our existence. Close your eyes and try to picture in which exact part of Creation you are situated right now.”

  Numen was startled but obediently closed her eyes. She opened them immediately, a bewilderment coming into those sea-green eyes.

  Mae smiled again. “Have you ever wondered why you have wings while here and none when you are on Earth?”

  Numen answered softly that she guessed it was because she had asked permission to be allowed to serve. Mae nodded agreement and explained that she could be allowed existence at this level because over several incarnations she had earned her wings. It indicated her submission only to serve and obey without questioning.

  “All that is spiritual carry the human form but not all that carry the human form are necessarily of the Earth. You have confusion about your true feelings for the male representative of the lion because physical passion is not a concept you can readily grasp. That is the cause of your concerns. The idea of sex is an earthly thing and not being completely human you find it hard to comprehend. As the earthly human progresses he will find he has less need of the fiery passions but will allow things to flow naturally.

  “You should not be alarmed at your lack of physical subjugation to the dictates of the flesh. Sex is as natural as your need for sustenance in order to maintain the balances and be able to follow the law of balance. Your body on Earth belongs to the animalistic and is the cloak to help you function, but it should not govern your being. You are expected to use it effectively, care for it so it can cloak you for the span of time allotted to it. You are however not to abuse it. Your inability to be submerged in it helps you to have an even equilibrium.

  “It is a beautiful experience and will be helpful for you. It is good to observe that you handled the approach of jealousy well. It shows you have understood the dangers of unnecessary emotions that may cloud you.”

  “Oh Mae, you knew my questions all along.” Numen was relieved and happy she was going to be able to handle her problems when she returned to the Earth. “I still feel I have quite a lot to learn and lot to do.”

  “Yes you do. We follow and encourage you as you teach about what it means to be a woman. Your friend and cousin still has to learn that love does not have to be personal nor does it have to concentrate on self. There would have been no Creation if the father had held love only within His Holiness.”

  She opened her eyes to find Tinu sitting by her bed, watching her.

  “Hasn’t anyone told you it is bad manners to watch over a sleeping person?” Ife smiled to take the sting out of her words as she tried to determine where she was. Ife realized she was in her room. She remembered the events that had happened between her and Tinu earlier that day.

  She asked why Tinu had felt slapping her was going to solve the problem.

  “You know, the rites for Adejare was supposed to start immediately after the announcement. I must learn to stop calling him by his first name. Imagine I have to kneel and say kabiyesi every time I see him or open my mouth.”

  “Tinu, stop being dramatic, it is the norm that everybody has to kneel before him.”

  “You are exempted from that indignity,” Tinu cut in, and Ife raised her eyebrows asking why. Tinu explained that as the priestess of the town she is not allowed to kneel before a mere mortal.

  Ife laughed out loud, then grew quiet as she remembered she was embarrassed when Babatunde had knelt before her at the grove. Now she understood and felt funny inside. S
he invited Tinu to finish her story and tried not to interrupt.

  Tinu was long-winded telling a simple story of her mother walking out in the night when the town criers had expressly warned villagers to stay indoors. The result of that disobedience had been her mother falling into a strange coma. Tinu explained that they were banned from fetching the medicine man as it was the king who would decide at his own leisure if he would step over the body to enter the palace.

  “What do you mean ‘step over the body’?”

  Tinu showed all her terror as she whispered that it meant her mother would be killed and her blood used to wash the feet of the new king as he steps into the palace to spend his first night alone with the ancestors.

  Ife shivered in disgust. “For goodness sake, nobody is killing anybody in the twenty-first century.”

  Tinu sniffed. “Remember you are always protesting about how barbaric we are and for goodness sake do something about it. You are the goddess; don’t you have a magic wand that can make you render all of us incapable of doing silly things like killing my mother for instance? That son of your friend too is something else as well. I have seen some strange people watching him and when they think nobody is watching they want to touch his arm. I had goose bumps the other day when they walked past. Even Babatunde…have you heard that one of the Alasiri boys died in his room with a snake coiled by his side and nobody said anything? Honestly, Ife, these are dangerous times.”

  Ife started in total horror. “Shut up! And stop that drivel right now.”

  Tinu gave her friend a pleading look. There was despair in Tinu’s voice. “I am not speaking drivel and you know it. My mum is not educated but I don’t want her as a sacrifice so Adejare can sit on the throne of his forefathers. Not much fun being a cannibal eating the heart of a corpse that has been dead for years and drinking or washing your feet with human blood. That is the tradition for you. All blood, injustice and fear. I don’t like him anymore. I would not have been able to stand for that anyway. Yuck, just let him leave my mother alone—he can go eat somebody else’s flesh.” Tinu collapsed in tears. “Somebody please help me ask the Almighty why He would allow such a thing to happen, and Lord while you are answering that question, how about letting me know why you sent me here to this country and this race of blood-sucking vampires”

  Tinu turned puzzled eyes to Ife. “But how can you be high priestess to that lot, Ife?”

  Ife felt confusion and fear rise within her. It was as if she was drowning in something slimy and sickening. Her skin crawled. She swallowed but her voice was calm when she spoke. “Look, Tinu, I will not subscribe to murder under any guise or for any religion. I have not the slightest wish to be bound by such terrible things you are saying. I have to go see Babatunde at the police station and will discuss the issue of your mother when I get back.”

  Tinu did not look convinced stating that her mother may be killed this instant and Ife shook her head.

  ”Haven’t you heard? The rites have been stopped. Prince Adewunmi just won a court injunction stopping the rites and Babatunde is being sued as well.”

  Tinu was shocked by the news and stood up, spontaneously bursting into a song of praise thanking whatever god that had intervened in her mother’s imminent murder.

  Ife sharply told her to keep her voice down.

  Ife suggested she could come with her to the police station and as they made ready to leave the door opened and Yomi stood framed in the doorway. Ife groaned; she had enough surprises to last a lifetime and asked Yomi to come back another time as she needed to be someplace urgently. Yomi nodded grimly and announced he was the lawyer for Babatunde so he had come to escort her to the police station.

  Tears came to Ife’s eyes in gratitude as she quietly grabbed her bag and followed Yomi out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ”The Lord is not served in blood and pain, or with fear. The most dangerous thing that man must protect himself from is fear. Have you not noticed that the animals in the field have no fear? They just swing in the will of the instinct to just be. The mercy and love of the Creator precludes fear. A courageous and cheerful heart is an expression of childlike trust in the laws of Nature and its fulfillment.”

  Numen sat quietly by the stream and trailed her fingers in its pristine clarity as she listened to Mae’s words. She heard the tinkle of bells in the distance and there was peace in her heart.

  “Worship is an act of intense reverence for the grace to be. Olodumare holds justice and has given us love, Ela, to show us the way. When they came down they found the gardens full of thistles and thorns—the bird and the calabash held a string from here to the eternal abode. He uses a sea of fire to wrap HIS BEING because we can only imagine his glory.

  “He sent us Ifa and the Odu to understand His language which you will find in the seasons as they change, the trees as they grow and the roses. We are the substantiate beings who are his workers.”

  Numen looked at the height of the Blue Mountains as they gleamed with light and she had a sudden longing to stay. The longing was fleeting as she prayed for understanding and strength. She had felt selfish petitioning for Babatunde. Mae had given her a gentle smile and explained that it was natural that she would want to pray for him. She remembered doing the same for Lije.

  “Life is simple, Numen, but man can’t comprehend it that way so he has contorted it into a complexity that he can no longer handle. The only sacrifice ever required of Man is to be simple, clear and joyful in the creation provided. Mother said, ‘All creatures can’t change the strand of hair we carry unless the grace of the Father has first permitted it’.”

  “But how can I make them see that human sacrifice is not necessary?” Numen asked.

  “You must first pick roses from the East side where the sun comes from. Tell them the meaning of the Roses, Numen—let the women plant roses, understand that the roses cannot bloom if they are not watered with tenderness and cared for with thanksgiving. The roses must be more important than the Cocoa or Yam festivals, then the light of the sun can be lit in every heart.”

  Numen nodded.

  ~~~

  Ife was sitting cracking kernel nuts in the house of Yeye and there was a determined set to her jaw. What was that understanding that Mae was telling her when she had gone to the Blue Mountains in distress on learning about the rituals and sacrifices? For days she had been horrified and disgust at what she learned. Tinu couldn’t tell her much. It was actually the most unlikely person that had explained it to her. She had sought out Tope and demanded he should tell her everything.

  He had at first been reticent until Ife demanded an answer. Once recovered from the shock of the visit he gave her quite a few shocking details of what is believed to be the process of choosing a king.

  “All that story about the Oracle deciding solely is not a hundred percent true. I have my suspicions on that. There are nine houses that the chosen prince must learn from. Some take different lengths of time. The last house however is the most critical. The first thing though is the confirmation night. Every true-born male child of the town is free to present himself to be king for as long as he can claim the very first king as his forebear. Now what happens after that, he is led to the inner recesses of the palace and asked to point out the grave of the first king. He must know it blindfold.”

  “But that is not fair. What if he has never been to the palace before?”

  “And he wants to be king?” Tope asked, snorting.

  “Okay, so he has to know the resting place of the king?”

  “Not the king, the first king.”

  Ife was puzzled. “So you said so first time.”

  Tope smiled. “That is the joke. I understand that none of the princes who came forward this time could identify the resting place of the first king.”

  “But they didn’t have to because they could point to the resting places of their own ancestral kings,” Ife said.

  Tope laughed, enjoying his own joke. “All dead kings get to
know the final resting place of the very first king, because the Lion tells them if they are true princes. You see, that was the riddle Babatunde set for all the princes. He asked them to collect the will of the people from the resting place of the first king and bring it to the palace. That was the only criteria he gave them. He told Papa because he suspected someone was going to play smart and two of them did actually.”

  Ife smiled looking at Tope in surprise. “So no potential king had been announced?”

  Tope scowled then shrugged and gave Ife a strange look. “No, plus Babatunde said there was a vital piece of information because a riddle had to be solved hence the princes were asked to keep quiet while the riddle was resolved. Don’t ask me because he did not even tell Papa. I assumed you knew all this because Babatunde says you know everything.”

  “No one knows everything; we all try to search for answers.”

  Ife heard Babatunde from within her mind say that Prince Adewunmi knew what was meant as the will of the people, as he had seen a symbol of it in his office before. Her eyes went wide as she listened and she smiled. Tope had been watching her, shaking his head.

  Ife thanked him and went back to the grove. She needed to have a quiet place to contemplate.

  ~~~

  Ife surprised Babatunde’s mother by paying a visit to her room, where she knelt down properly in greeting. The older woman was very shocked and did not know how to place Ife who simply smiled and said very little. Ife spent the evening attempting to help out with the family chores. When Babatunde’s father came in from the farm, he was stunned to see her in their home. He however was a real gentleman and tried to act as if he was in the habit of receiving such a visitor from the city regularly. No one talked about Babatunde, nor the present challenges he was facing. Later in the night Ife came over to Babatunde’s father to take her leave. She told the old man that there was a lawyer for Babatunde and there would be bail for Babatunde the next morning. She told him quietly that the issue would be resolved and thanked the old man for his patience and understanding.