It was a strange eerie sight and site with fetish scintillating huge clay pot, the size of a small house and measuring about sixteen feet in diameter and could accommodate ten persons comfortably. I have never seen a pot so big and slanting from the river side as if feeding the river with water but it was hollow empty, dark with the blackness of the night. This hollow rugged clay pot was later historically discovered to be dug out physically and possibly used by slave traders to house slaves. Strange beings with sonorous female like voices emanated from the pot, singing or rather chanting incoherent eerie sounds. This sound had awoken Ikem, alias Jerry Boy. A strange pot reeling out strange songs and adoring a strange site!
Chapter One
It was a strange eerie sight and site with fetish scintillating huge clay pot, the size of a small house and measuring about sixteen feet in diameter and could accommodate ten persons comfortably. I have never seen a pot so big and slanting from the river side as if feeding the river with water but it was hollow empty, dark with the blackness of the night. This hollow rugged clay pot was later historically discovered to be dug out physically and possibly used by slave traders to house slaves. Strange beings with sonorous female like voices emanated from the pot, singing or rather chanting incoherent eerie sounds. This sound had awoken Ikem, alias Jerry Boy. A strange pot reeling out strange songs and adoring a strange site!
“By the river?” as Jerry Boy got more frightened.
“Where am I,” he contemplated.
Jerry boy remembered he slept in his cozy well-furnished condominium of beige colored outlook, the night before. How come he now woke up on a bamboo bed by the river bank amidst these strange objects and bizarre strange looking human beings? The strangest thing was that the only sense he could decipher from the chanting of these beings was the mentioning of his native name, “Ikem, Ikem you are welcomed to your call. You must answer the call of destiny, the ultimate call,” as they reeled out of the sparkling huge pot and hopping round Ikem in an unusual dancing steps. These odd, hairy, half naked young women were smiling at Jerry Boy, bowing and never looked like a threat. Then after some chanting and theatrical displays, there emerged from the now smoking pot a beautiful blond hairy lady adorned with gold and jewels all over. The sparkles from her eyes, hair and crown shocked Jerry Boy as he robbed his palm across his eyes for clarity, expecting the worst. Inside, Jerry pleaded for God’s intervention to save him. Jerry rejected the welcome song of the marine ladies and as he tried to brave it to escape that river vicinity a huge magical fire was coming to consume him as if to drive him back to the slave pot. "You belong here - you belong with us. You were meant to be the chosen one," sounded the creepy voice of the leader of the marine ladies shattering the early morning quietness and tranquility thereby disturbing the ecosystem.
Jerry, a medical doctor and a technology savvy person thought he could offer his people help with his background. Just back from his sojourn in the United States of America to Lagos and was welcomed by magical marine forces - his life was torn between the God of heaven who called him, sending angels on assignment and the evil creatures who hold on to their grandfathers bill to enforce the blood covenant. When pleased these odd visitors will turn to beautiful ladies but when annoyed they assume weird similitude. The chosen one! Chosen both by God and the marine magus just to do their biddings - to liberate or enslave. It is like the war between good and evil, fire and water or light and darkness. But Jerry has chosen the God of Angels.
“I cannot come back to this land to die in a weird way. I thought it was all a dream but sadly it is happening again. Oh God it is happening again. They are coming back predictably in different shades and shapes, guises and disguises, from arithmetic to geometric ratios. With all my sincerity and innocence, they still singled me out, out of this whole lot to pay the penalty.”
He just came back from the land of strangers, faraway country of no man’s land – where you sleep with one eye closed and the other open, where you give halfhearted commitment, partial trust if you do not possess your legal documents. He thought he had escaped the darkest war and world by coming home, no more fear of the unknown, or of tomorrow. But now in his own country side, a son of the soil and free citizen, he cannot explain this sudden threat like one suffering from claustrophobia, agoraphobia, aqua phobia or whatever other phobia there is. Ikem screeched and screamed like the giant panda bear’s cub under siege reaching out for its mother’s help.
During the yam festival when Ikem lodged in a Lagos suburb , it was the challenge of the charlatan magus of the maji clan or school. Angus, the sorcerer had used his magic disc to remote control and manipulate Ikem but failed as his evil projections backfired and his paraphernalia caught fire. People ran away thinking it was his usual display not knowing it was the invisible angels on assignment protecting Ikem that fired the warning shot. Magus conjuring his traveling whirl wind escaped when he saw fiery and fierce looking angels on guard, clad in immaculate sparkling white rays, following Ikem.
“Now in my own Ehie village is domiciled a stronger force or cult. The captivity of this land is over. I have the commission for this mission home. The curse is obvious and manifest everywhere among my people - the women bore no male, the ladies cannot marry, seasonal strange sicknesses that defy medical knowledge, the bareness of the land and of the women, the extinction of the male voice. The dignity of any society is the availability of men, not just men but able bodied, hardworking warlords. Where are the Okonkwos, the Okekes, the Okafors, the veterans of the market place? Where are the Izuchukwus, the Chukwunyeres or their replacements or signs of it? ‘As a bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying so a curse causeless shall not come or alight.’ The source must be cured to replenish our resources. The cause must be dealt with to remove the curse. The cause of the curse – the consequence of the cause and the cure! This is the last curse.”
Quite imaginative, but very hard to follow. I think one might have to be Nigerian to understand much of the reference to tribal rituals and superstitions.
Book Three of The Jade Owl Legacy Series: The China Hands a beset with new troubles and challenges as they search for the source of the Jade Owl's power.
Since committing an environmental crime on the post apocolyptic planet Klairn is grounds for execution, investigating the guilty is quite dangerous for a Protector of Klairn.
The rookies joining the ranks of this elite core of environmental spies
Chapter One
