IN THE SHRINE OF DESTINIES: WHAT THE MAD MAN SAW (1)

By the time the mystic song of the weird men ended, I saw the bizarre faces of the living dead settling with the blissful dust that had risen in dance to the esoteric rhythm of the demonic angels, then I knew the strange voices in my head were not only those of my ancestors, the wind also spoke with them, silence and the spirits too. That night, darkness had a strange physique, it looked like the mighty giants the medicine man had drove into the evil forest for their sizes. It had a magical sword and it slew the little candle light that was burning within us. It put off the flame of fire I had in my eyeball and I saw the shadow of the night masquerade walking the land. I followed the spirits that bore answers pass the mystery and shadows to the place of the cowries.

The faces in the shrine were all hidden behind the masks lined up in the sacred place; they looked like the face of our ancestors and every one of them was afraid of what they know the mad man would see. The gods were looking at me in affirmation when I quickly shook my face off the terror that appeared betwixt the cowries. They had no answers for the terrified questions bottled up within me and they too had lots to ask. The horror almost threw me off the stool but the secret had me down. One of the gods in the shrine touched my mind. The touch came with the peace of the wind and it was gentle and mild. I thought I was asleep but I was seeing the mind of the mad man. I lived in the dream of the mad man and the sun there was bloody and also like the diamond. There the mermaids were happy, happier than the angels but with lots of reservations no one could unravel.

‘Welcome to heaven,’ a sharp voice told me. The sharpness excruciatingly pierced through to my mind and I saw a third eye on my forehead. I had ears all over my head and they all stood tall; up to the thatch above me. Fear of the unknown could not let me turn round in search of the voice that spoke to me. And it kept speaking to my mind - ‘welcome to this world.’ I was standing on the songs of the souls partying beneath me. The mermaid took me by my left hand and led me to the cliff at the track through which the senses of those chanting receives inspiration and comprehends their various reasoning. As I sat on the stone with the inscription ‘The Ancient Rock,’ the mermaid left with the wind into the song. It was a dwarf mermaid. My eyes, even the third one burnt with forbidden sights I could not imagine. The celebration in that world had brilliant tongues of fire that even the spirits danced with both legs.

I thought I could confine myself within the limit of the mystery before me but a stronger mermaid, more demonic, drove me, as if in a magical chariot into the dream of the mad old man that had been wandering the streets of our dark village. Our elders told us he was possessed by the wicked spirit of the night, thus the gods of the day never allowed him wake up from sleep until it was dark. I saw myself in the dream of the mad sorcerer that had made the shrine’s sacred cemetery her eternal habitation. I saw myself in the dream of the mad young man shouting tirelessly in our farms in the afternoons. I saw myself in the nightmare of the little child next door possessed with the spirit of insane times and I saw myself in the thoughts, world and dreams of the mad dogs, herd, antelopes, birds, lions, fishes and also in the world and dreams of our mad ancestors, even the dream of every living thing. And I saw what the mad man saw.

‘Look at the parable of reasoning’ another mermaid said pointing to the cowries.

‘Many are the troubles of the ignorant’ it added amidst a sigh. I looked around in terror but silence steered back at me.

‘Open your eyes’ the stone beneath me said. With the stiffness of a corps, I peeped down still and behold I was sitting on my fear. And I saw it.

I saw their spirits chanting, it was chanting the riddle of the sorrowful. I saw their sorrows boiling in a cauldron sitting above the flame that was beyond magical understanding. It was the spirit and souls of the insane and the sane. They too had a place in blood of the lamb offered at the shrine on the mountain. Their rainbow was blurred and they all had something to say. One of them reached out his hand from the rainbow, plucked three stars and handed them to me. The ancestors were at the other side of reality and they were miserable. They sighed at the condition from the seas and the leaves of the oldest tree in the village waved in despair. My hands suddenly caught magical powers that I collected the stars without having contact with the giver. Soon my new powers went all over me and I become afraid of myself. I knew then that I had not known myself.

My powers notwithstanding, the stars disappeared as though my hands were defiled. I busted into a great wailing and a great laughter echoed back at me. The laughter cleared my tears with wonder and the ancient rock on which I’ve been sitting spoke to me -

‘They are kept in the pocket of your mind’

I looked within and I saw the stars safely locked in my mind.

‘This is the ancient wisdom’ the ancient rock revealed.

‘Many have sought for it but few shall drink thereof.’

I stretched my hand to the chalice laying aimlessly in the space, went deep within me, fetched from the well of mystery dug in me by the ancient stars and drank of it. The taste was as bitter as the gale, like the poisoned portion of the village wizard. The content got me pregnant, my stomach protruded strangely and I couldn’t drag myself off the stone that had been speaking underneath me. I struggled to shake my face off the cowries laying before me but the mystery held me spell bound. The masquerades watched me as I laboured in pain. I died in labour but my spirit came back to the same torment, it gave me nine lives and I couldn’t die again but the pain refused to let me go. They all watched in grave silence while I laboured - the mermaids, the gods, myself, the demons, the ancestors, the water-maids. The universe, they too watched with mortified interest. All things watched while I sneezed for the pepper in the air. And soon the first wonder cried, followed by another and then the third.

I gave birth to three wonders and the content of the chalice that I drank brightened my face. Then I saw the other side of reality. Light followed me in their legion to the place where purpose was born, and the three wonders too, they went with me to where the definition of time was given. There I saw reasons, I was told parables, riddles and fairy tales, and I saw what the mad man saw. When I thought my troubles were over, they came; my spirit friends; they too were oracles. They appeared betwixt the cowries – mysteries, answers, all struggling for a place in my head. They all wanted to be revealed for they had all been shrouded in a cloud that has defied our comprehension. But the three wonder…

They spoke words to heavy for the ordinary to understand. The three wonders – one was older, another was younger and the other was in between. They spoke hard words, words from the land of the antiquities; words that lived with us and words that would be spoken by our unborn children. The ancient landmark the gods showed me betwixt the cowries was meant to be a permanent place, no one should have any reason to have drawn closer to the sacred tomb of the oracles but our ancestors had moved the stone of realities away from its original place and had left legacies of darkness. That was what the first wonder revealed. The second came with the vision of the former revelation. That was what came upon us for our generation stabbed the little remaining hope to death with impunity, expanding beyond measures an evil place for the birth of a saviour.

The second spoke of atrocities grown from the demonic seeds our fathers sowed in the soil of time. Light too had no better legacy; we also had the dark blood in our veins. It spoke of sins greater; graver than that spoken of by the former. My visions become distorted when what the third wonder was saying came forth. Even the cowries, all laid in discomfiting positions for the bleak future that awaits the unborn – that was the destiny of light. The ancestors were ashamed when I looked back at where the tread of doom had its root; alas it was in the soil of their time. The thundering voice that accompanied the other wonders was not possessed by the third. It spoke with a despairing voice out of the wail of what would befall our light. The wailing was much.

The future wailed, they rolled themselves on the mud and sobbed for the rain of blood that darkens in the cloud. My spirit companions turned round and saw the three headed spirits of the three wonders looking at us. Their six eyes radiated through the streets of our time. Every tree, the seas; everything that had breath; all wept for the strange languages spoken from their different mouths. I saw through their eyes, I saw through meaning of the spirits, I got gold of the prophecies and riddles of the gods. Our ancestors saw that too, we saw it and our children would see it – the riddles of reality; what the mad man saw in the shrine of destinies.