‘Story,’ the children replied in a single voice.
‘Once upon a time?’ Baba-Ìtàn asked.
‘Time, time,’ the children answered. Completing the series of phrases that started every story told under the moon’s light.
L’?r? looked at the boy beside her. His tears had stopped flowing. His wide brown eyes now fixed on her father as he spoke from the other side of the fire pit.
‘A long time ago, the people of the continent were scattered across the desert; small tribes formed in settlements and villages, constantly at war with each other. One day, the king of one of those tribes asked his High Priest for a weapon to defeat his enemies and unite the continent. The High Priest discovered a way to summon the magic in the sun. The king convinced all the tribes of the continent to join his new kingdom, promising them the power of the sun. The tribes agreed, and on the day of the First Sun, gathered right in the middle of this kingdom ready for the coronation of the king, who was blessed with agbára oru – the power of the sun. And every generation since the day of the First Sun has been blessed with agbára – the gift from the gods of the sun and sands, as was promised in the days of old.’
L’?r? held her hands in a fist and tucked them around her sides. Being reminded of how she was the first person in centuries to be born without agbára oru was not how she’d wanted to spend her night. Her father’s brown eyes glistened in the flames as his words fell upon them like a song. As he leaned forward to speak closer to them, the streaks of grey in his short black curls sparkled in the light. When he told stories, it was as though he came alive in a way he wasn’t at other times. By the end of this story of bravery and loyalty, none of them would remember the tears they had shed moments before.
‘Years later, when it was nearly time for the High Priest to ascend into the city of light, the king asked who would succeed him after he was gone. The High Priest told the king that only someone like himself – someone empty of agbára – would be suitable to take his place.
‘You see?’ Baba-Ìtàn said, slowing his words. ‘Whoever the new High Priest was, it was his job to be a conduit between the gods and the people of Oru. And so only one without agbára could do that. Since that moment, every ten first suns, chosen ones have accepted the call of the gods living as priests of the Holy Order. They are our kingmakers, keepers of history, and through their sacrifice the gods keep agbára flowing in our blood from generation to generation.’
L’?r? felt her heart start to hurt again and grabbed at her pendant, rubbing its smooth cold surface to calm herself. It didn’t work. What Baba-Ìtàn didn’t say was the stripping ceremony before his yielded no survivors, and the one after his only ten first suns ago, also yielded no survivors. It was by sheer luck or the cruelty of the gods as far as L’?r? was concerned that both he and the Lord Regent, who now ruled the kingdom, survived.
Baba-Ìtàn’s eyes fixed on the children. ‘The child of a man with powerful agbára may inherit only half his agbára, but the child of a High Priest – an Àlùfáà, one touched by the gods – will always be the most powerful person in that generation. So, in addition to the Àlùfáà’s duties as High Priest, he’d also sire the next sovereign who’d rule after the king left the land of the living. To select the mother of the next sovereign, the High Priest told the kingdom to bring five brides, one from each ring, excluding his own – the capital.’
‘How were kings and queens chosen before?’ interrupted one boy, blinking.
‘Before that, the king’s eldest child was always the next monarch, so the crown stayed within the royal family. But this king was willing to sacrifice the continuity of his line for the sake of the kingdom, so that there’d always be agbára in Oru. The king knew that without the stripping ceremonies, our agbára would begin to fade. Without the sacrifice of thebrave men called to the Red Stone, the gods would take from us the powers they gifted us. Even more, their sacrifice was rewarded, and the children of those who survived the stripping had the greatest agbára in the kingdom. Knowing this, the new High Priest, a survivor himself, wed all five wives, and the firstborn of those unions was our next sovereign, and the siblings born to each of the other wives formed his sacred council. The call of the Àlùfáà keeps our connection to the gods and our agbára alive through time, from generation to generation, until the sun no longer burns in the sky.’
‘But the son of the new High Priest, he was just a baby. How could he be king?’
‘Yes, his father, the High Priest, ruled as Lord Regent until he was old enough to rule on his own, just as our Lord Regent Babátúndé took over the throne on the day our late king died and has held it for eighteen first suns. He will continue to do so until the crown heir’s coronation in just a few blood moons.’
L’?r? wrapped her arms tighter around her body. Alawani was now bound to the gods, the Holy Order and his maiden. Bound to everyone and everything that took him farther away from L’?r?. She remembered the warmth of his breath as his lips touched hers, and she shivered in her seat. The tears she tried to push back filled her eyes, and she felt herself on the brink of falling apart. Again.
‘Baba-Ìtàn, so why did you leave? Didn’t you like the palace?’ the girl who’d lit the fire asked. ‘Are you still Àlùfáà? My father said you are and that even if you left the Order, you’re still part of them. Is it true? And will our agbára go away because you left?’
L’?r? didn’t need to see her father’s face to know how he felt about questions like that. Even though his story was a cautionary tale taught to every child in their kingdom, stillit must have felt like a wound being reopened every time he had to talk about it. Even she’d never had the guts to ask why he left the life of an Àlùfáà. Still, on days like today she did wonder why, after all her father had been through to survive the stripping ceremony, he’d chosen not to live in wealth and comfort within the walls of the Sun Temple. The people called him a coward, but even though she didn’t know his reasons, she knew her father was braver than any of them could imagine. There had been no precedent for what happened to an Àlùfáà who left the Order, because it had simply never happened. No one dared, no one questioned, they all complied. Until him. The first of his kind. That had to count for something. Now she just had to get Alawani to do the same.
‘My mother said it was because –’ The voice belonging to another young girl broke off. As though whatever her mother had told her was too much to say out loud.
L’?r? raised her gaze to meet her father’s.
She sat quietly with the rest of the children, waiting for the answer she’d wanted to know her whole life.
L’?r? had known from a very young age that Baba-Ìtàn was not her birth father. Beyond knowing that ordinary priests could bear no children, he had told her many times about her mother the temple maiden, who had fallen in love with a palace guard, and how they both paid for it with their lives. Still, L’?r? occasionally wondered what her life would have been like if she’d been born of an Àlùfáà, with fire in her blood and the power of the sun in her hands. She looked at her hands and wished with all of her might that they would glow. Nothing happened. Nothing ever did, and now only the shadows of the night danced across her palms.
Baba-Ìtàn rose from his seat and said, ‘I think that’s enough for tonight. Go home.’
The children moaned as they left the compound.
When silence fell, Baba-Ìtàn turned to her. ‘All who go into the Order come out broken. Alawani should never have accepted that call.’ He added quickly, ‘But he did, and we must accept that. Don’t visit him, don’t beg for him, don’t write to him, don’t appeal to the Holy Order. Do nothing.’
‘Is that an option? An appeal? Will they –’
‘L’?r?! This is serious,’ Baba-Ìtàn said sternly. ‘If you get caught going near that temple you’ll be dead before dawn, and then they’ll come for me too.’
L’?r? felt her resolve melting away in her father’s teary eyes, and she crumbled into his arms and wept.
Bí a bá s? òkò s’jà, ará-ilé eni ní n bá
He who throws a stone in the market will hit his relative
11
