Arrogance of Destiny Ep.7 By XBX

ARROGANCE OF DESTINY

EPISODE 7
NEAR IKPOBA HILL, BINI KINGDOM

C. 1513
Most of us have asked ourselves the best way to die. Between dying before you wake and burning to death; you can’t say death is death.

Esohe was out of tears. Her hand was tied at her back. Heavy shovel-full of fresh sands hit her face. She didn’t shake; she had long since resigned to fate.

A day before, she had learnt that she was daughter to the Oba; the king had laid with a woman – he later discovered was an outcast of a village --- on their way from a won battle; her house was near the old road to Eka.

When the king discovered she was an outcast and that she was pregnant, he made all the Chiefs that knew about it to swear with the Ogun of the royal home never to disclose it to anybody.

“I wash my hand from your death. The errand one is sent, does not remove the head. My hands are clean,” One of the grave-digger murmured.

Esohe saw that if they didn’t even try to kill her, she would have gotten around to doing it herself. At least then she would be able to decide her time and manner of death, that way she would believe she scored one against fate.

“In my next life, my soul, may you never lack happiness. May your joy never be taken from you, before you taste on it? May they never give you a sweet soup to taste before they cut your tongue. You shall not laboriously look for happiness before you see it. I have been given eggs to crack palm kernels.  Above all may I never be in chains again,” Esohe prayed in her mind.

She had fallen in love with a giant, and had been sleeping with him in the bushes; only to realize too late, she was pregnant with the child of his half brother, Prince Idubor.

The Ezomo had found out about the unborn children of incest and demanded she be buried alive; he can’t afford for the king to hear about the incest.

Now, her cells starved of oxygen, as though a fish on land. She became afraid as she wanted to stretch and her chest tightened. He didn’t have room to react to the face of death. She was dead before she died.

XbX