SURVIVAL[FICTION] BY CHUKWUEBUKA HARRISON ANINZE

# FICTION
# SURVIVAL
==========

“I can’t just stand here and watch you die,” Nkechi said, her voice laced with deep emotions. “I must go and find help.”
There on the floor, in the small hut, was her dying mother, shivering. She had been like this some days now, but now it seemed to be getting worse. The lamp that sat at the center of the hut, lighted the room poorly, but was enough to make the beads of silvery sweat on her mother’s face shimmered.
“My daughter!” her mother called, her voice lowering into something like a whisper. “What kind of help do you mean?”
Ever since her father died mysteriously, she and her mother had lived like strangers in the village. People heard and believed a lot of lies about them. Some believed that her mother had used her witchcraft on her father, while some believed that the gods of their land had placed a curse on them.
There were recent cases of goat disappearances at the time and the Chief priest with the consent of the King had placed a curfew.
“Eh..Nne! I must go and find a help anyhow,” she said, her voice with an edge of hope. But who can she possibly go to for help? Her uncle – Mazi Obuefi? A very mean man, who cared less about Nkechi’s welfare and her mother’s. If not him, Nkechi’s mother wondered who else her daughter was counting on.
Nkechi pulled a knife from her father’s bag that hung on the mud wall, slipped it into a sheath tied to her waist and zoomed off into the dark night. The little light that dripped from the sky was enough to light her path. Although, this was a skill she acquired from her father. “Learn how to befriend your environment,” her father had told her when she had stumbled over a stone when they were both walking back home one night.
Her somewhat thin legs swung very fast as she walked briskly closer to her Uncle’s hut. What was she going to tell him? Was he going to listen to her story? Does she have to seek help elsewhere? But who would care to listen? She hung onto these questions until she knocked on Mazi Obiefi’s thatched door. There was no answer, even onto the third time she had knocked. "He couldn’t have possibly be outside his hut, Maybe he had gone asleep,” she reasoned.
She turned and left. Some meters away from her uncle's hut, she paused to fix her gaze to the sky. “But I can’t go back and watch my mother – who has been the essence of my life, to die helplessly. I must do something and I must act fast. I’m sure that was a fever disturbing her. I must go into the forest, there has to be a solution in the forest.”
At this, she veered into a path that lead to a thick forest, still ruminating on her silly idea to walk into the forest. She had been told by her father that every leaf one could find in the forest was a potential medicine to a particular illness. She began to reminisce on the names of leaves and their medicinal usage, which she had learnt. She had walked into the heart of the forest, and she had not seen a single soul, not that she had expected to see anyone by this time of the night, let alone now that there was a curfew. What if she get caught? What if the spirit of the gods strikes her for disobeying the law of the land? She brushed the thoughts aside and advanced more into the forest.
As she was approaching a big tree – an Udara tree, grown by the river side, the one whose fruits were not edible for humans because according to the elders, it was an Udara fruit meant for the spirits of the river, she began to hear whispers. At first she thought it was from umu muo(Children of the spirit) but as the whisper grew into what she could hear very well because it was coming closer, she veered off the path, moved quickly into where there were intertwined meshes of grasses and at the back of a tree there, she ducked but continued to peep. She began to hear thuds of foot steps until three men met her sight, and they were dragging something, which she thought to be animals, as they hoofed. When she peered intently, they were goats. Something about one of the goats caught her attention. There was a notch at the neck of the white goat which she recognized as her neighbor’s style of marking his goats. Two men that trailed just behind the goats, whose voices she had heard from a distance, came into sight, and she was shocked when she recognized both.
When she moved a bit away from the tree to make sure she saw right, she felt a searing pain under her foot, she flinched. She must have stepped on something sharp. She held her throat to stop the wail and swallowed the pain. When she bent over to tender to her pain, it was a leaf that had punctured her foot. The leaf was covered with spines. “This leaf? Is this not mgbacheleke leaf? The one father told me that could cure one with fever? Yes. Exactly.” She smiled and pulled out her knife and began to cut the leaves and then hurried home as soon as she was done.

She got home and started preparing the leaves. She squashed them hard and squeezed out greenish liquid. She collected the liquid into a calabash from where she scooped some and fed her mother. What was left of the leaves she rubbed on her mother’s scaly-skin. Her mother slept as soon as she finished the medicine, and Nkechi couldn’t sleep. The two faces in the forest was a nightmare. People have accused her and her mother of being responsible for all the missing goats and it was the same faces she saw that had been propagating the false allegations, but in the actual sense they were the ones stealing the goats.
The next morning, people had crowded the king’s palace in the honor of the town crier’s message. The young and the old, men and women, the single and the married were present. Nkechi and her mother were also there. Her mother had bounced back to health. The mgbacheleke medicine worked like magic.
“Ndi be anyi kwenu!” Ichie Nwakaibu loudly trumpeted and his hands flailed into the air as he greeted.
“Iya!” the crowd responded in unison.
“Our king has summoned us here on a very pressing issue,” he continued. “It is about these recent cases of goat disappearances. Our king has made a promise to reward handsomely anybody who can report the thief/thieves with an authentic prove. If you know you have anyone in mind, speak up here and now. We are giving you enough time to brace up and open up. Don’t be scared of any harm, the King had promised to offer you immunity.”
At this, a thick silence covered them and Nkechi could hear the battle going on in her mind. The urge to expose the two faces she had seen in the previous night grabbed her. What if they have sold the goats? Can the people believe her? What if the mark was a trick her eyes played on her? Would her mother have supported her if she had known about this stupid idea? Won’t they question why she was outside despite the curfew? In all these questions, she felt that her need to be exonerated from the allegations of being the thief outweighed them. She hated to be called a thief.
After much struggle, she began to push forward and the people made way for her. Ichie Nwankaibu and Mazi Obuefi; her uncle, frowned at her. The murmuring sound from the crowd died down when Ichi Nwakaibu threw a wave of hand in the air.
“My daughter!” Ichie Nwakaibu called, “Who do you think is behind these heinous acts?” his voice softer than before.
She then narrated all that had transpired, ranging from how she had gone into the forest for the Mgbechereke leaves, the faces she saw in the forest and what they were carrying with them.
“Heeeeeeey!” the crowd roared, when she mentioned Ichie Nwakaibu and Mazi Obuefi in her story.
“What!” Ichie Nwakaibu exclaimed, with his grayish eyes widely thrown open. "You mean you saw me in the bush? Are sure?!"
The air was filled once again with uproar.
At this point, the king stepped down from his Chair and moved towards Nkechi. “Do you have a strong evidence, young lady?”
Nkechi shook her head. “No, my king. But I’m sure if we rummage through their homes, we might find the goats. They couldn’t have sold it since they had no time to," her voice bit shaky.
The king ordered two of his guards to go and check and they came back with a negative answer and then again the king ordered the same guards to keep Nkechi in the guard room while he investigated on the matter.
Nkechi’s mother pleaded with the king to pardon her daughter. “She must have acted under a spell,” she defended, sobbing.
Some days have passed and the king’s investigations seemed not to be making any head way. And he have had series of meetings with his cabinet on the issue.
“My King! The little girl had the effrontery to accuse me and Ichie Nwakaibu falsely, in public,” Mazi Obuefi had submitted in one of the meetings. “Falsely my King!” he stressed. “And you are not saying anything.”
“Watch your mouth, Mazi Obuefi. Who told you I’m not doing anything about the matter?” the king said, his voice edged with anger.
“For how long is your investigation going to last my king? Let us set her as an example for others out there who find it difficult to control their mouths to learn their lessons,” Ichie Nwakaibu voiced.
“Alright,” the king said softly. “What are your suggestions? What do you have me do?”
“Let her be flogged in public and then after send her into the evil forest,” Mazi Obuefi aired. And his suggestions seemed to go down well with the majority.
The next day, the King summoned everybody to his palace to pass his judgment. After he was done, Nkechi looked up to the King with bloody eyes. “Please my king, I have a request to make before I take up my punishment.”
Mazi Obuefi and Ichie Nwakaibu tried to shut her up but the king over ruled their objections.
“My daughter what is your request?” the king asked, his voice with an edge of sympathy.
“I need to pick something from my father’s hut which Mazi Obuefi had seized and taken ownership since the demise of my father,” she spoke quietly as though she had a painful growth in her throat.
The King obliged her despite Mazi Obuefi’s barking, and commanded Mazi Obuefi to release the key to the hut and to grant her access to the hut.
The whole crowd drifted along with Nkechi and the guards who steered her roughly to Mazi Obuefi’s compound. On arrival, Mazi Obuefi was called upon to come and open the door to Nkechi father’s hut. He reluctantly stepped forward and took time in meddling with the door lock and finally, when the door was thrown opened, Nkechi and the guards ambled into the hut. The inside was dark and had a distinctive smell. It smelled of animal dung. One of the guards pushed open a lid in the mud wall, which opened and let in a wisp of light and what they saw startled them. It was a herd of goat. Quickly and happily, Nkechi identified her neighbor’s goat and dragged it outside while the other guards dragged the rest.
The crowd roared strongly at the sight of the goats and made for Obuefi and Ichie Nwakaibu.

THE END.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Chukwuebuka Harrison Aninze is native of Ebe in Udi Local Government Area of Enugu State. He attended his Secondary school education at the College of Immaculate Conception (C.I.C), Enugu, were he obtained his SSCE certificate. He Studied Medical Laboratory Science in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Enugu, were he obtained his BMLS. Currently, he works at Paro Medicals as the Chief Medical Laboratory Scientist. He is a jovial man, who loves socializing with people and is open to learning. He was born into a Christian family and is still upholding the faith. He loves reading, writing, swimming and traveling. He likes to express how he feel about everything through writing.