The war had ended. We were marching back home. Many had died. Many were people i used to know. Many were people i used to love. We left them behind in the battlefield for the carrion feeders to gorge. We tried to bury them but we could not. They were many that we wanted to see one last time even though their bodies had been brutally torn open by life. So we watched rigor mortis meet them until it was too late to dig. We won that battle. We broke the enemy but they were not done. Even as we mourned all that we had lost, they crept back. They came, bigger and better. They came with venom in their sting. We fled. We ran until we stopped, then we marched the rest of the way and when we arrived home, we did not recognise the burnt fragments of our desire.
Now you see me in your vision, you wonder if i am a beast or a demon. You wonder if i am your ancestor, a messenger from the depths of the spirit world. I am not. You raise your arm to fight me but you are not strong enough. Tell me; tell me about the old lady across your home. What has she been about? Don’t scream, i am not here to hurt you. I just want to know her. She reminds me of someone i am used to forgetting. Your world seems broken. Here, the sun, the moon, the flowers that must bloom. Here the bone, the flesh, the skin of each day that must come. I understand that you are in pain but this is important. The cosmos depends on it. i am joking about her but you, you must listen.
The war was a broken thing. With the entire juju we had, what could we win from the gods? They had power, we had something close. Their powers almost infinite, our powers were almost charlatan. We fed the earth with blood. We learned cruelty. We learned pain from them but our brutal fingers were always ours. We watched them break the world. All the kingdoms fell. There was anguish in our meetings but we too played a role in the dance. It was in those times i learnt to forge spears. It was i who forged Ogun’s hammer. It was i who gifted Olokun with her harpoon. I built the war with my fingers. So i stood at the gates when they arrived, the gods you worship, still human then, broken, and empty. We sat in the night, our knees on our chins and drank palm wine until the moon fell.
The next day, Amadioha got up and left and so, each of the remaining fled into their grief. Understand that the war had not ended then. The gods were coming; a horde deeper than the sea, wider than the desert. We could hear their roar in the wind but we were weary. We wanted rest as much as we wanted to meet with our lovers. Suicide was rampant in the camp. Some fled with Amadioha. After a week of waiting, the enemy came and there was nothing to meet them. At the end, we all wanted to live.
The enemy was mopping up any resistance and their power was great. The moon fell on the derelict remain of our company. Who knew we would be heroes? Who knew we would become gods? One morning, the wind whispering cruel words into our bones, Oranmiyan got up and spoke. We knew the young captain, who had led the retreat with the quick thinking. He demanded that we disappear into the world, forget the war, forget all that tethered us together. Osun and Olokun refused, their love just newly flowering. You know them, they killed more divine than i can name. We named them. Though they are not together now, we still hear their song of longing when it rains. They were not enough to turn us away from Oranmiyan’s plan. Three days later, Ikenga, though unwilling, led the exodus from our lands.
You hear this now and think; what trash, but it is not my job to convince you. You know a war comes from across the seas, even if they paint it with different colours, even if they have paid all the players in the farce. You know this even if you choose to ignore it. i have power. I have great power. Even if you do not believe, it is the truth. The wars may have ended. We may have lost a lot in that fight but we gained something. In leaving our lands, we gained power. It would seem that the gods, in dying to our hands, bequeathed their powers to us. I move in the dark unseen by mortal eyes. I have lived thousands of years in this your world. I have stumbled. I have fallen. I have caused atrocities. I have caused pain and laughter and peace. I have trekked the empty paths of the cosmos where the divine breathe. They are empty, desolate places. The gods are gone. We are all that remains.
Understand that our oaths have separated us across the geography of your existence. Understand that i have not spoken to Oluwa in thousands of years. Understand that he too is my father. I am more child to him than Sango whom they disowned before the war. Sango only came when he realised that Osun will never return to him. He had broken his twin’s heart. Olokun will never forgive. It is thus lightning and water never meets eye to eye. As you will hear tell, Sango stole Osun one night, a long time ago. He had loved her from childhood. Her music had calmed his rage. Her figure had filled his soul. When he discovered that she was betrothed and loved by his twin, he had felt jealousy in his bones.
There was too much history between us. It was necessary that i find the beginning of our parting. So i embarked on a journey into the lands of the gods. I did not know we broke them. The temples, the cities, the rivers were empty. In trying to destroy us, they destroyed themselves. The sun was cracked like a plate and the air tasted bitter. I fled the place but not before i had tasted of the noxious fumes of their defeat. Now you look at me with distaste. You see my visage and find hate in your chest. But know this, i have only sought your survival. For you are the children of our regret. I accept the names you give me as long as you survive beyond the visions of an end that the Ifa oracles have seen. Survive, i beg you. For without you, there is no us. No one will tell you. You who worship are the true victors of this endless war but what comes will claim human, beast and god. Chaos worships nothing and loves nothing. My name remains Esu, the forgotten, the rejected, the broken.
