Irenosen Okojie - Butterfly Fish

So far every officer I have met has a story to tell. This is to be expected; we are young, keen and hungry. There is something about putting young men in an enclosed, restricted environment that produces unexpected results. Not only the predictable strutting and competitiveness; it’s also how territorial some people have already become. Even over small, insignificant things like who misplaced so and so’s razor and who borrowed someone’s pen and forgot to return it. As if ownership of things keeps them sane.

It is nearly 3 am and I should really try to sleep. The ticking has stopped in my temples and the sounds of Lagos have dwindled to virtually nothing now.

Another thing; I have never set foot in England, but my fellow officers laugh, and tell me I have funny ways. And they call me the British gentleman despite my being a black African man.

Beyond the Benin palace gates, was a long, dusty, sweaty stretch of road that led to a vast clearing. One night, Adesua dreamt she was in the clearing trapped inside a twisted vine growing there. And at first, her voice was bold and loud. It shook the vine and its scraggly branches. But each day as the vine grew bigger her voice became smaller. She called out to passersby but they continued on their journeys towards the palace as though they could not hear her. The palm wine maker? Merely gave a shrug of his slack shoulders, relaxed from consuming too much of his own product. The court jester? Let go an audible cough midway through her cry as if to cover her voice with his. The tailor? Only paused to bite a chunk out of juicy, ripe pear, the aroma reaching her like a sweet, cruel taunt. She continued to cry, her voice like the murmur of a shrivelled thirsty leaf, inside the vine. But it only soaked up her tears. “Look what you have done!” she accused.

“No,” the vine replied “it is what you have done, have you forgotten? Each day you remember less and less.”

“Tell me why I am here,” she pleaded. The vine stayed silent, then said, “If you can remember why you are here you will be free.” So Adesua tried and tried… She prodded her thoughts till they formed a line, one behind the other, each peeping curiously over the shoulder of the thought in front. But the thoughts were all immediate, there must be another way to escape and her tongue felt irritatingly heavy. She was certain the vine was somehow tricking her. Then the vine said, “Since you have come, I no longer feel lonely.”

“Aha! I knew it,” she croaked, knocking her thoughts into a messy chaos just above the roots of the vine, and they clung to wherever the landed, jarred and frightened of being sucked under. “You caused this to happen. Don’t you know I am the bride of Oba Odion? I will have you pulled out and destroyed.” The vine laughed and rocked her sideways. She felt tiny and insignificant. Inside, the vine felt moist and warm. She stood and began attempting to tear bits off. “You can go when you accept what you have done; attacking me will not help you.”

When Adesua woke up she rushed around her chamber feeling her walls. There were cuts on her toes and she found herself craving the taste of sweet pears.

It is in the nature of beings to sometimes wield brutality with a gentle hand. A vicious blow can come from the most placid of characters, or a damaging whisper from the mouth of dear friend. Some motions once set loose outside of ourselves cannot be undone. It was with this thought in mind that Oba Odion made the decision to allow Sully to not only remain in the palace but appointed him his personal guard. The council fumed while the Oba appeared increasingly erratic, rebelling against their advice and making questionable decisions at which even a monkey would scratch its head.

A plan of action was required; the council members circled the palace grounds in fragmented groups, listening to everything that was said and endorsing it with silent approval. They scratched each other’s backs with ways to foil any more ridiculous decisions from the Oba. The plan was, they agreed, to present any decisions as though they were the Oba’s in the first instance. Wasn’t that what every good king sought from his council? They agreed to keep a watchful eye on Sully. It was no coincidence surely, they thought, that this stranger should find himself in the Benin palace. No, they could smell something was amiss, a subtle, sickly scent that wrinkled their noses and furrowed their brows. Meanwhile, the strange seeds the Oba discovered in his bedchamber continued to flourish in the place garden. They were above knee length now, and still shedding their leaves, their round, bulbous bluish heads still rotating watchfully over the palace. Their long green stems were a little bent, as though they leaned into each other to exchange conversations. But the plants were still bleeding; the soil beneath them tinged bluish green. They were moaning, low-pained groans that you could only hear if you bent your ear to the ground. But the Oba did not notice any of this. Nobody had.

Adesua waited till evening, when shadows fell across the sky. She wandered the palace grounds as she often did, just as the fireflies became restless, decorating the air with dots of green light that guided her to a sturdy, mango tree weighed down with fruit. In the palace garden, she sat at the base of the tree and listened to the sharp, shrill chirp of grasshoppers as they called to each other, jumping across the grass as though the waning heat still scorched their long hind legs. She followed their sound, crawling towards the bed of strange looking plants hemmed in by the sparse trees and high earth-coloured walls. On her knees, with her nose to the ground the waft of something rotten filtered through. As though the offending patch of earth had released a smelly belch and all it needed was the rain to come down to wash it away.

Omotole knew about the wish that had impregnated her, the desire for a son had danced its way into her womb. The Oba had done his share of work too but it was the sweet desire she’d kindled on their nights together that finally came to fruition. A son would firmly seal her position in the Oba’s life and the palace. Omotole had no real proof the child she was carrying was a boy, except that innate feeling in her bones, a deep tingling that began way down inside her stomach and spread right through her body. She could have consulted an oracle but there was no need. The stewing scowls she caught on some of the other wives faces before they vanished confirmed this. Only Adesua truly seemed unaffected either way and had congratulated her with an empty hug and a distracted smile. That one was an odd young woman, Omotole thought, recalling the way she bounded about the palace grounds, hiking her wrapper up to her knees. At times muttering to herself, a slip of uncontained energy.

Oba Odion was happy on hearing the news of her expectancy but these days he was not himself. Omotole like everyone else discovered he was regularly in disagreements with his council and becoming slimmer around his waist as if something was eating it away. Some nights he spent in her company would see him tossing and turning, at the mercy of some invisible hand flipping him from side to side, breath infused with the scent of worry. She asked him what was troubling him and unusually, he did not tell her. Instead, he lamented on how useless the palace cooks had become, that the spoils were making people lazy. A tiny gap opened between them, the Oba was now keeping secrets and Omotole’s mouth formed a grim, suspicious line at the thought. But she did not push; a man would reveal his secrets in his own time. Instead she would knead the worry out of his shoulders and use his back to plan her next steps. And she did not tell the Oba that on discovering she was carrying a child, small oval shaped blue petals had began to appear inside the moist pocket under her tongue.