Immortal Souls- Prologue

There shrilled a bitter scream, a woman’s scream with an echo of a tortured soul. She wailed as if hell’s fires were burning hot metal rods through her weary soul. The villagers were gathered outside her mud hut, apprehensive about what was befalling their peaceful village. It was a birth, but a birth different, and more profound, from all the births they have ever witnessed, for as ancient legends spoke, a woman was giving birth to two children at the same time, an abominable and blasphemous occurrence indeed, and a first in their long history.

As the first infant forced itself out of her convulsing loins, the skies changed their pleasant mood and became dark with anger; announcing their bitter distaste with a sharp, piercing light that tore the heavens in two, as if God threw a bolt of lightning from the heavens, frightening the already tense onlookers and rendering cold shivers through all, as the unbelievers started to believe the reality of their nightmares, that an inevitable evil was truly being born.

In the red and orange dusk’s horizon, another howling cry pierced through the tension-thickened air. It was the cry of Del‘heshaar, The Old Eye, the villagers called her, the oldest and wisest witchdoctor alive, who had been waiting diligently for this cursed day from the day she was born, more than two hundred years ago. Her strong, muscular hands and arms were raised to the darkening heavens as if pleading with God for mercy, tears making little streams down her youthful yet wise face with bitter relief, and fear clearly visible in her weary and wise eyes.

Del’heshaar’s eyes showed only their bright whites and her mouth frothed with a little foam around the edges, as they hinted an empty smile as she shouted, “Kudala ngilindile. Ngilande Nkulunkulu.” It’s been a long time that I have been waiting. Fetch me, Oh Creator Almighty. “Angifuni ukuphila kulezinsuku ezilandelayo”, I don’t want to live during the coming days, begging the sky to relieve her. As if she was seeing something in front of her, she froze like a lifeless rock, and before she could speak any further, she heaved a huge and deep breath of shock, falling to the rocky and rough ground with a soft thud and then, as if a heavy blanket was thrown over her, all became dark to her.

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The first baby was crying longingly as the second one entered the world, as if crying to be united with its sibling. After a few minutes, both were screaming in deafening cries, in unison like a choir of lost souls, at opposite ends of the small stuffy room while the mother slumbered lifelessly with exhaustion, trembling slightly as if from the cold and subdued as if drugged by the fading climax of the pain.

The baby’s were still wailing in a high-pitched cry, tortured as if their little bodies were being pierced with a thousand hot needles, their cries not hinting any sign of decreasing. The tired midwives, with all their efforts of rocking the infants to silence, hushing them and singing lullabies to them, could not silence them in any way. As soon as the mother came to from her brief rest, they rushed her sons to her to escape any possible curse before it rubbed off on them, leaving the room to tell the tale of the superstition to the curious villagers who had been waiting for hours, since her labour pains begun, to hear if the rumours of twin souls birth were going to turn out to be a real fact.

The mother, Bhadelihle, took her bundles of fear in her arms and as soon as she touched them, they stopped their beastly wailing and reached for each other, one child taking the hand of the other, playing and touching each other in surreal recognition of each other’s tiny faces. During the long birth, the midwives had coldly announced that the infants were both boys and her heart, yet afraid, was glad because all was as Del’heshaar had predicted. Bhadelihle had only one formidable thing to do before her time of departure came, acknowledging all that had to unfold.

She looked at her two baby boys and began to speak quietly, “You, on my left, I shall call Busuku, after the dark, cold night, for you will be the weaver of deadly silence of the deepest slumber amongst a world filled with noise, cooling the heat like the night breeze; and you on my right I shall call Khanya, after a bright sunny day, because you will bring much heat to those who bring the cold to comforting, warm bodies of the earth, for you will light up the world like a raging fire and melt the ice away.” She then paused to look at her twin boys once more. “And like day and night,” she continued, “one will be nothing without the other, opposites yet compliments of one whole.”

The room started to heat up, her body started to feel as if it was on fire. Her midwives came to take the babies somewhere where she had no strength to enquire about. Her eyelids were shutting slowly from slumbers sweet seduction and before her eyes closed she said to an empty room in a hoarse voice, “My children. I wish I could say I loved you to sweeten my last words before I leave, but I do not love you for you are an ugly curse upon the earth. Those who desire you shall raise you, not I,” she swallowed hard, and then continued to speak for the last time. “We will meet again, but before that, good ridden. I have to die because I would not have been able to be the mother to such grotesque power.”

As she sank deeper and deeper into the abyss of the afterworld, she heard a familiar voice. “The one handed to you on your left, you will name after the night, and the one on your right hand, you will name after the day, to seal the two into the ancient covenant. We have slaved for thousands of years for this to unfold, therefore do everything as I command.” The voice continued, now a little softer, “Do not be afraid, my daughter for we will not let you endure your children’s short lives, but be comforted that you shall see them again in a time when they will need a mother’s guidance the most.” With that, her eyes closed and Bhadelihle died silently.

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Del’heshaar’s blood shot eyes opened slowly but faster than they would have opened had she not been impatient to see the world around her; curios to see how the spirit world looked when in it, compared to how she usually saw it in her living days, from a hazy trance state of mind, from a translucent film of distortion. To her disappointment, and maybe to her little relief, it looked similar, if not the same, as the dimension of the living, clear, hot and humid. She had hoped that she would wake up in the company of her ancient ancestors and elders, but it looked to her that she was in the same place where she had died, on a little hill above the town centre.

Pain was also another element that she thought would not exist on the other side because her head was pounding, and her ears were ringing. As she lay on the ground she realized that the light indicated that it was still dusk, but the sound of morning birds told her that it was dawn instead. She didn’t move for what was an hour, trying to make sense of why she was where she had fallen and not in the company of her dead relatives, hoping that soon, her great grand parents and masters would pick her up and give her a place next to them, in their throne, as one of the great witch doctors of her time, but to her dismay, no one came for her.

She decided to get up and get a better view of her surroundings, and as she sat up, she saw a dying fire where Bhadelihle’s hut used to stand. There was a lot of activity for that time of day as she could hear voices coming from below, some crying softly, some talking in murmurs and some even laughing in jubilation.

Then quite close to her, a boy started shouting for its mother, she was startled by the noise, jerking her head to the direction of the boy’s screams, looking at the boy in amazement, wondering when the boy died because he had been alive the day before her death.

“Nigm’tholile uDel’heshaar!” the boy screamed. I have found Del’heshaar!

With that, the villagers gathered and started running up the little hill towards Del’heshaar. More people began to shout, “We have found her! We have found her!” and Del’heshaar was afraid and plagued with confusion. In her confusion, she wondered what catastrophe had hit her former village to kill everyone as all the villagers were on the other side with her. She did not even consider the possibility that she might still be alive.

When the villagers got to Del’heshaar, the gathered around her, with venomous looks on their faces, looking down at her, without speaking a word. She could not speak back either, only being able to look back at their furious faces. Then, like a veil, the mob of villagers separated in two, making a passage in the middle of the horde. Through this passage, a woman walked towards Del’heshaar, carrying something in a large basket. She couldn’t see what the basket carried, but neither did she try to see. When the woman was standing in front of her, Del’heshaar couldn’t see anything but the woman’s dirty knees under a short attire worn by virgin women, as the woman held the basket above her head.

Without a word, the woman spat on Del’heshaar’s head, mumbling curses and foul things, and with a thud, the woman threw the basket at Del’heshaar’s feet, turned around and walked away without looking back. As the woman walked away, the rest of the villagers joined her down the hill. None looked back, none spoke, and a few minutes later, Del’heshaar was sitting by herself as she found herself, but now, with a basket in front of her.

Before she became curious enough to see what the basket held, the basket started crying, prompting her to open it, to find a pair of identical babies, staring at her, crying for her and reaching for her. As tears rolled down the little faces, her own tears fell also, as all the pieces of the puzzle came together. She realized that she was alive and in front of her, in the cursed basket, were the two abominations, Busuku and Khanya