10
(1 votes)
| Rating | Rated by |  | | 10 | Artrous | |
You must login to vote
|
|
|
Why Elegguá Goes behind the Front Door
It was early evening when the royal family sat down for their meal. The King, Ocuboro, and his wife, Ańiqui, sat alone on opposite ends of the table. Still, no food was served. Their son, Elegguá, was missing. Ocuboro’s arms crossed impatiently over his chest, and his wife sat at the other end of the table, tapping her foot nervously. They looked at each other, worry in their eyes.
“He’ll be here soon,” said the queen, Ańiqui. The silence was strained, and she wanted to break it. “He’s absentminded like this, always late for everything.”
“He’s never late for a meal,” answered Ocuboro, looking out the window, to the forest. Elegguá always played right there, at the edge of the bush, where he, his wife, or his servants could watch him. Worry creased his brow. No one knew where his son was. No one had seen him since late afternoon. “A king’s son would fetch a ransom,” Ocuboro muttered to himself.
”What?” Ańiqui wasn’t sure she heard her husband’s words correctly. Her heart skipped a beat. “What if he went into the forest and got lost?” she asked, the words trying to stick in her throat. Husband and wife looked at each other, worry creasing their brows.
“We cannot find Elegguá anywhere, sir,” said a servant as she rushed into the dining room, her voice soft and shaking. Remembering her manners, she gave a quick curtsey at the waist, and diverted her eyes to the floor in subservience. Ańiqui sobbed; she bowed her head and held it in her hands. Ocuboro stood, throwing his napkin on his empty plate.
“Call the guards. Now! Someone needs to find him.”
The palace became chaotic as all the guards and servants rushed to find the missing six-year-old boy. Soon, it was empty; and the royals stood at the window, embracing and staring at the darkening forest.
Elegguá didn’t know he was lost, nor did he know his parents were looking for him. He was right there, deep in the forest, resting under the shade of a great tree. Since late afternoon, he followed a well-worn path far away from the palace, stopping haphazardly to smell wildflowers, or chase birds and butterflies. An occasional rabbit or deer running from bush to bush tempted him to stray; but to his six year old eyes, the thick woods looked foreboding, and the path safe, so he kept walking, and running, and skipping. When his legs tired, he found this ancient Iroko tree, and sat against its ropy roots. There, in the sticky heat of the forest, he shut his eyes and napped.
When he woke up, however, he was afraid.
Forest shadows lengthened as the sun slid down the western sky and the woods were no longer filled with light. The bush on either side of the path was dark, and he heard breaking branches and hungry wails. Lonely bird calls that once sounded joyful were now sorrowful, at least to his childish ears, and he shivered as he pushed himself against the tree’s roots, trying to hide. Somewhere on the path behind him there was a great crash, a tree branch falling from a great height; and on all fours, he crawled to the other side of the Iroko, keeping his body low to the ground. With widening eyes, he saw darkness eating up the eastern sky, and a great shadow spreading down the path towards him. It seemed umbrous and sinister, a gelatinous blob that boiled and billowed as it blanketed the path with its blackness. With a deep gasp, he stood, and ran back the way he came.
So blindly did he run while looking over his shoulders that he ran straight into the arms of a well-muscled man, and he screamed. The man lifted him at arm’s length and shook him gently, calling his name, “Elegguá!” When Elegguá realized it was one of the palace guards, he grabbed him tightly and held on to him until they were back at the palace.
His mother, Ańiqui, and his father, Ocuboro, were waiting for him outside the front door. When she saw her son emerge from the bush with the guard, she ran to them; Elegguá saw that her eyes were red and teary. She grabbed him from the guard and hugged him tightly; she was happy to see her son was okay. With her fears relieved, happiness became anger. She dropped him on his feet, grabbing his arm and spinning him; with an open palm, she gave him a quick, stinging spank on his butt. “Inside, now!” she said. Elegguá knew not to argue.
By the door, his father grabbed the back of his neck tightly, pushing him inside. “March, young man. We’re not happy with you.” An angry mother was bad enough, but when his father took hold of him like this, he knew he was in trouble.
His father pointed to a short stool, and Elegguá sat down. His eyes were wide with fear, and Ocuboro looked at those eyes, and shivered. There was something about his son’s gaze that disguised his youth, making him seem older than he was. The boy was only six, but his eyes were wrinkled at the corners; they were wizened, like an old man’s eyes. Even grown men were fooled by that stare, and if one looked at Elegguá’s eyes for too long, a man found himself talking to him as if he were an adult. Every day of his life, Ocuboro wondered, “Where did he get eyes like that?”
Ańiqui’s shrill voice broke him from his reverie. She was lecturing her son, and she was losing her temper. “You have no idea what I’ve been through tonight. No idea!” An open palm beat at the air, becoming a fist in her anger. Ocuboro put his hand on her shoulder gently and she shrugged him off. “How many times have we told you to stay out of the woods? How many times have we told you to not go in the woods alone? How many times have we told you not to be in the woods after dark? How many times . . .”
“Enough.” Ocuboro cut her off. She looked at him angrily, and his stern gaze made her back down. He turned to face his son. “Elegguá, you are my only son. Just you. You’re all we have. And if something happens to you . . .” Ocuboro started to tell Elegguá that his wife could not bear another child; his birth was too difficult, and made her barren. He was about to tell Elegguá that he was the only heir to this huge kingdom and they had no one else to inherit the royal crown. Ocuboro was about to tell Elegguá a lot of things, because Elegguá sat there looking at him with the wizened eyes of an old man. Those eyes almost made him forget that he was only a six year old boy. But a boy he was, and instead, he said, “. . . if something happens to you, we would die. We couldn’t bear to lose you.”
That’s when the tears came to Elegguá’s eyes, and the family embraced; it was a group hug as full of love as it was fear. When the embrace broke, Ańiqui took Elegguá’s head in both of her hands. “Bad things happen to little boys in the woods after dark,” she said, looking into those ancient eyes of his. “Never, ever be outside in the forest after dark.”
Elegguá was known for many things; good judgment was not one of them. As soon as the sun broke the next day, he was up and about; and when his parents’ backs were turned, he headed for the forest. They were furious when they noticed he was gone.
Elegguá, however, was quite happy. He travelled a different path today, one that was older and a bit overgrown; and he pushed his way through the bush and brush that separated it from the forest. In the light of day, his six-year-old mind had no fear, and the sinister darkness of yesterday was hardly a memory.
When he was deep in the woods, far from home, he found a stream that wound through its trees haphazardly; it was filled with minnows that darted swiftly, and crawfish that hid under rocks, and baby snakes that sliced through its water. Elegguá followed it: he ran; he skipped; and at times he jumped from bank to bank, soaking his feet when the stream was wider than his leap. He spent all day following the stream as it turned into a creek, and then a river; and when the evening shadows lengthened he did not notice.
But when darkness fell, he was afraid.
“Please,” he prayed under his breath, his childlike fear sending chills that made his scalp crawl and his hair uncurl, “let me get home before trouble finds me.”
But he couldn’t move; the darkness was too thick, and the only light was that of the stars in the night sky. “Bad things happen to little boys after dark,” he heard his mother’s voice, almost a chant, in his head. “Not to me. Please. Not to me,” he whispered in the darkness. For what seemed an eternity, he stood there shivering; the night air was chilly, and when the moon slid above the horizon, casting a pale silvery glow over the forest, he sighed in relief. It wasn’t much light, but it was enough to make his way through the brush and trees.
Elegguá retraced his way home, back the way he came along the river, which turned to a creek and then a small stream; but now he walked because running in the dark was too dangerous, and fear pushed him each step of the way.
At home, Ocuboro and Ańiqui were delirious with grief and anger; they sent the palace guards out to find him. Elegguá had no way to know they were looking for him.
After what seemed like hours of walking blindly through the forest, Elegguá fell to his knees and cried. With blurry, tear-stained eyes, he saw a bright light in the forest. He thought it was torchlight.
“Help me,” he screamed, his voice shrill with the fear of what might be hiding in the night. “I am lost!”
No one answered. The light didn’t move. Cautiously, Elegguá walked towards it. What he saw was surreal.
It was a coconut, glowing with an otherworldly, preternatural light.
Carefully, he picked it up; and the light brightened. Against the backdrop of night, it seemed a small sun that he held in his hands. It was barely warm to the touch.
The glowing coconut gave him enough light to find his way home. By chance he found the path that he traveled to the stream, and when he cleared the forest and saw the palace torches lit, he slipped the coconut in his backpack, and ran, breathless, for the front door.
At first he was met with a sigh of relief by the palace guards; but then, once his parents recovered from shock, they scolded him, and smacked him on his butt. “How dare you be out after dark like this?” his mother wailed, an accusation and not a question.
His father’s face was sallowed with fear and anger. “Your mother was sick with grief. What were you thinking, boy?”
They towered over him, twin pillars of grief and anger ready to topple and bury him with their fury, and crying at the embarrassment, Elegguá reached in his backpack and took out the coconut. He held it up high so all the adults could see it clearly. “I found this,” he said. “A coconut?” they asked together, almost one voice. Their eyes widened at the absurdity.
But when the room got bright and warm as if the child held a bonfire in his hands, it no longer seemed absurd. It seemed bizarre. Shock froze every adult’s face, from the exasperated parents to the puzzled guards who stood in the corners of the room. When the shock faded, the King and Queen called the palace diviners. Elegguá was left holding the coconut in his hands, because no one else knew what to do with it. He sat on the floor, cradling it in his lap.
The preternatural light made his youthful face seem even more ancient, and as he smiled, it seemed the wizened smile of an elder. He was safe from his parent’s wrath, for now.
“It is a miraculous thing,” the diviners told the royal family. “Elegguá was meant to be lost today, and he was meant to find this glowing coconut. Put it in a clay dish; worship and feed it as if it were a living thing. For according to the oracles, it is a living thing, and its worship will bring a new era of prosperity to the kingdom.”
The royals did as the diviners demanded: They built a small shrine for the magical fruit, and invited all the people to come worship. Every time a supplicant approached the coconut, its glow brightened and warmed; and as promised by the diviners, a new era of prosperity came to the kingdom.
Like most new things, however, the miraculous coconut soon grew old in the minds and hearts of the people as they busied themselves with their businesses; the management of wealth ate up all their time, and even the king and queen forgot to tend the fruit. In time, its light went out. No one noticed.
No one noticed, that is, until the prince Elegguá fell ill, and died in his sleep. With his death came the demise of the kingdom’s wealth. The coconut lay forgotten and rotten in its clay dish.
Ańiqui and Ocuboro were in mourning when the diviners were called again. “Elegguá died because the coconut’s light went out; and because it lights no more, the prosperity it brought died as well.”
Ańiqui wailed in sorrow while Ocuboro hugged her head close to his heart.
“But there is an ebó to keep Elegguá’s memory alive, and to bring back the wealth we all once enjoyed.”
“I will do anything,” Elegguá’s sorrowful mother said between sobs.
“What is the ebó, priest?” asked Ocuboro.
“Find a stone in the forest the same size as the coconut,” the diviner told the king. “Wash it, and name it after your dead son, Elegguá. Honor this stone in Elegguá’s memory as you once honored the coconut. Your son will live on in spirit, and prosperity will come back to the town.”
In their sadness, the king and queen did as the diviners directed; and all the villagers paid homage to the stone once a week on Monday, in honor of Elegguá. Prosperity came back slowly, but it did come back, and as the years passed, Elegguá was honored and worshipped as a stone behind the front door of everyone’s home. For while Elegguá died that day, he was born again as a spirit, and in that stone. And to this day, his spirit is honored in a stone, behind the front doors of all those who wish to attain happiness and prosperity in their lives.
|
One of the cuts from the chapter about Ejila Shebora
