Oba Ko So
A fiery mass traveling swiftly in an arc and leaving an incandescent trail behind suddenly appeared in the summer's early morning sky. With its outer surface melting and wasting away in the airflow, it plunged into the earth's atmosphere at high velocity. There was a loud explosion during which the stony fragments of that mass fell freely and slowly to the ground. Cooling as they fell, they landed near the center of a little copse of trees and bushes, by a stream that ran through the woods behind a certain village named Aiye.
A small boy, sleeping in a little house on the outskirts of that village, woke suddenly that early morning . He had been dreaming but the sound of the sonic boom woke him. He left his sleeping pallet and tiptoed into his mothers room . He wanted to climb into bed with her, but she had told that he was too old for that now; he was seven years old, and it was time for him to learn to be a man. So he shook her gently.
"Mama, wake up!" He whispered.
"What is it, Shango?" The woman replied sleepily . She was usually up at dawn, but sunrise was easily hours away.
"Mama, I had that dream again and this time I remember it."
Maggie, the village healer and secret leader of a small group of adherents of an ancient African wisdom sect, was the mother of this remarkable child whom she had delivered on the point of a knife, cutting him from the womb when his natural mother died in childbirth. She had named him Shango, after an ancient African god-king. The child's name had been told to her by her spirit guide, because he child had been born under conditions sacred to the god -- during the night of a violent storm, but also because it was revealed to her that the child was much more than what he seemed to be. She raised him as her own after his father refused to have anything to do with him.
All of the auguries she had cast for this child promised a difficult, but fully elaborated life . He bore the mark of the gods -- not a physical blemish or infirmity, for he was well formed, of good general health and pleasing to look upon -- nor was he prone to those brief disruptions of brain function that some believed to be proof that the individual was in mystical contact with a deity or possessed by an evil spirit. Maggie knew well enough the difference between a seizure and the powers and precognitive abilities manifested when the spirit that rules the head possessed an individual. No, this child was marked by his precocity and acuteness.
The boy had intelligence far beyond what might be considered normal. While Maggie was unsure of what exactly her spirit guide meant when he told her, cryptically, that the child was much more than what he seemed, she knew, however, with a certainty beyond her own experience that the boy was more than just a random victim or beneficiary of divine attention.
Knowing herself the pain and the sadness of an abbreviated childhood, Maggie sought to allow him his, for as long as she could . She did not burden him with chores and responsibilities. She seemed to know intuitively that young children learn from play; that they can, in fact, learn everything they need to know about how to function in the world from play.
In truth, much of what she learned about her son came from watching him play. Seeking to shield him from unnecessary cruelty and ignorance, she forbade any contact with the village children. Maggie feared that they might use the unusual circumstances of his birth and the superstitious prattle that sprung from the same as weapons against him . Consequently, the boys principal playmates were the animals she kept, the milk cow, a herd of five sheep, two goats and a dozen or so chickens and his natural sister, Emma, thirteen years his senior, who was apprenticed to Maggie and helped care for him.
Shango was particularly fond of the grumpy old ram that dominated the four ewes in Maggie's small flock. Pawing the ground with his foot and lowering his head as if he were going to charge, the boy would playfully challenge the animal. The ram would snort at him, lower his head and then lie down and allow Shango to pet him.
One of the first things people noticed about this child was that he had a way with animals. He knew instinctively how to approach them. All of the farm animals would allow him to pet and feed them without incident . When he spoke to them -- he talked to them like they were people be they cow, goat, sheep or chicken, they would respond as if they understood his words; knew what he was talking about. They were his friends.
The forest animals, especially the rabbits, squirrels and the deer, were no different. When Maggie or Emma took him out into the woods behind the house, he could walk up to most small creatures at put them at ease, petting and stroking them; making all kinds of comforting noises. They would not bolt. He'd pet them and they would nuzzle his hand looking for the bits of food that he kept in his pockets to feed them. Pigeons would light on his head and shoulders . Once, a wild pheasant followed him home and caused quite a stir in the barnyard when it refused to leave. Maggie's chickens were outraged.
Although the boy had shown on occasion willfulness and a fiery temper, Maggie learned that he could be gentle to those he loved. In her mind, these traits augured well.
But events soon overtook Maggie's best-laid plans . During his fifth year, Shango was playing in the woods with the rabbits and the squirrels, when a huge diamond back rattlesnake slithered close to the boy . So engrossed with petting one particular rabbit, the boy did not notice the snake until the frightened animal became as stiff as a board. By the time Shango noticed, the giant snake had assumed the posture normal to its kind before striking its prey. It had curled into a circle and elevated its head to almost eye-level. Instead of striking, the snake spoke to the boy, greeting him with an honorific given to his namesake, an ancient god-king from the world of spirits.
"Kabiyesi," the snake hissed, which means, "Hail your majesty" in the old tongue.
Later, when Shango related the incident to his mother, she knew in her heart of hearts that his days of carefree play were about over. She began to tell him stories about the old gods and the land of spirits, the same stories her grandmother had told her, made her memorize so many years before. She was careful, however, to withhold information about the particular deity he was named for . He loved these stories and plied her with questions. She had to tell him at least one before he would go to sleep each night. Usually, it took three or four . Maggie didn't mind . The stories were a means to teach him; all of them imbued with the values and core beliefs of the wisdom sect . Sometimes, though, she was the one that ended up being taught.
There was an evening when she told him a particular story about a goddess and her three sons:
The goddess who was to become mother to us all had three sons . Her third son was a hunter with hair like a ram . He was lean, handsome, and skilled in the hunt, rarely coming home without some meat for his mothers tab le. Her second son was a broad shouldered thickset farmer whose great skill was in growing things He, too, always had something to bring to his mothers table. Her first son, however, was troublesome, disagreeable and always getting into arguments or worse, fights .
The mother, tired of her first sons quarreling and fighting, put him out of her house and drove him away. What use was he, anyway, troublesome boy that he was . She was perfectly content to live in peace with her two good sons.
Then one day, worried about what the future might bring, she went to consult the oracle, an old man who lived alone in the forest who could read the future by tossing four pieces of coconut shell . The oracle told her that her third son, the hunter, would go on a hunting trip with his hunting companions but would not return because he would be bewitched by the one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged spirit of the forest.
The woman returned home and warned her third son not to go out hunting. But he disobeyed her and snuck out to join the other hunters under a large iroko tree in the middle of the forest. From that central place where they agreed to meet before returning home at the end of the day, they went off to hunt separately.
The third son was not long in the deep bush when the spirit of the forest appeared in front of him . The boy could barely hide his astonishment on seeing a man standing in front of him with one eye, one arm and one leg . The spirit, liking the looks of this handsome, wooly-headed boy decided he wanted the boy to stay with him in the forest, so he blew some dust in the face of the third son who fell to sleep immediately. When the third son woke up, he had become a hunting spirit, eternally engaged in the hunt . He had forgotten the world of the living . When the hunt was over at the end of the day, his friends returned to the iroko tree as agreed . They waited for him; called out to him. They even blew their horns so that he might hear them, but to no avail. He did not return.
When his companions reported to his mother that her third son did not return from the hunt, she became distraught. His brother, the second son went out immediately in search of him. He took some of his farming tools- a scythe, cutlass, pickaxe and a shovel- to help him cut a path through the deep bush of the forest.
The second son searched day and night until at last he found his brother in the deepest part of the forest, dressed in the feathers of an eternal hunter. His brother did not know him. The farmer grabbed his brother and began to rapidly return to their home, their mother, and their life in the world of the living. The farmer made his brother remember then picked him up and carried him home on his shoulders, just in case he changed or lost his mind again.
When they reached their mothers house, she turned her third son away. She said she would not suffer a disobedient child in house . The second son pleaded with her but her heart had turned to stone.
The farmer then declared:
If he cannot live here, then neither can . I cannot and will not live without him. I will follow him back to the forest and never see you again.
True to his word, the farmer followed his brother back to the forest to live and hunt with him. He, too, met the one-eyed, one-armed and one-legged spirit. As his brother was the spirit of the hunt, the farmer became the wild man of the woods the spirit of iron. The three of them lived as friends in the forest together forever.
The mother, desolate at having lost all her sons, threw herself on the ground and crying so hard, she became a river.
Maggie's intent was to teach her son the virtue of obedience and the bad things that could happen if a child didn't obey his parents. She had hoped he'd learn something about the power of the love, especially for one's brother. She was totally unprepared for his reaction:
"Mama, you said the mother was the mother of us all, did you not?" He asked.
"That's right, little one," Maggie replied. "She was a goddess."
"Then why, Mama, did she behave so badly?
"What do you mean, Shango?" She asked, trying to keep the astonishment out of her voice.
"Good mothers don't act like she did. She drove her children away and could not forgive them when they disobeyed her . What kind of way is that for a goddess to act?"
He was stretched out on the foot of her bed on his stomach, his face resting on his hands supported by his elbows.
"How should she have acted, Shango?" Maggie probed.
"I think she should have acted like you do, Mama. Even when you are upset with me, you don't stay upset for long. And you never make me think that you don't love me. I don't think I could ever do something so bad that you would drive me away or take your love from me."
He looked up at her when he said this, as if to reassure himself. When he looked deeply into his mothers, he found his confirmation. His wide brown orbs grew deep like a river.
"I don't believe you would do that, Mama." He continued. "It would be hard for me to love and trust a goddess whom they say is mother of us all if she didn't treat me as well as you do. I think gods or goddesses should act better than we do. They should do right all of the time."
Shango looked away into a distant place, an old man in the body of a child.
Maggie was stunned. She could barely hide her astonishment. This was a six and half year old child. There were other questions:
Why did a goddess have to go to a man to know the future? Or Why did the forest spirit have only one eye, arm and leg?
Shango listened carefully as his mother struggled to remember and explain the significance of this or that detail as she had been taught them. But his simple, acute insight had shaken the wise woman to her very core.
"I think gods and goddesses should act better than we do. They should do right all of the time."
These words out of the mouth of this remarkable boy were like a small whirlwind churning up the dust and debris of a myriad of small doubts and questions accumulating between and surrounding some of her most unshakable beliefs. She experienced a precognitive moment, a space outside of time with no arbitrary divisions of past, present or future, where she could see her entire life. In this instant where single events or sets of events, which formed the points and supports upon which her life turned could see viewed with distinctness and clarity. The events of this night, the story and her sons response to it, comprised one of those points.
Maggie resolved in that moment of realization to be completely responsible for Shango's education. She would pass on to him all of what she knew, understanding that her role was to prime the pump of the boys mind and heart. She would pour into him her knowledge. This, she knew, would have the effect of the removing anything blocking the flow of the limitless knowledge she sensed in and about him. This knowledge she sensed seemed like wave after wave rising up from an infinite ocean. She was as sure as sunrise that he would in the course of time teach her.
But until that time, she had work to do. Maggie began taking him out on her frequent herb gathering excursions in the woods. Usually on these occasions, the boys sister, Emma, and one of her student/initiates, Ezzie, the wife of the village brass worker, accompanied her. Both were apprenticed to Maggie as healers. Ezzie, a regular at Maggie's ceremonies, had been initiated into the wisdom sect, that is, she had been mounted by a particular spirit guide during one of those ceremonies and was also learning from Maggie how best to serve and be used by that spirit. But the healing arts were the principal curricula taught them. As Maggie explained and demonstrated the virtues and the efficacies of various plants and herbs, Shango would listen.
He would surprise Maggie again and again with what he had picked up from those journeys, often asking questions at dinner.
"Mama, why does mustard draw blood away from bruises?" or "Mama, what makes a cold go away faster, lemon tea or bee balm tea?"
His curiosity was endless. He was almost as quick as the two women. Sometimes it seemed that he already knew the lore; that the instruction was merely causing him to remember something he had already learned. Maggie would test his knowledge regularly. By the time he was seven, she plied him with questions as difficult as the ones she asked Emma and Ezzie, both of whom were showing real talent for the healing arts. She was never disappointed.
Though she allowed him to participate in the herb gathering forays, Maggie had kept him away, however, from the ceremonies she held in the woods on the nights of the new and full moon, letting his former wet nurse, a farmers wife named Lela, who had no taste for those ceremonies, sit with the boy. She did this intuitively, rather than for any specific reason. She felt that when it was time for him to participate, she would know.
Shortly after his seventh birthday, Shango began to dream a different kind of dream, something more than the common images, ideas and sensations occurring involuntarily during certain stages of sleep. He would call out in the night. Maggie, careful not to wake him, listened closely to the words he uttered in his sleep. They were in the old tongue and his voice was not that of a child but of a man. The boy, usually, could not remember anything about those dreams except that he had them.
On this predawn morning things were different.
"What do you remember about this dream, Shango?" She asked, when they were both fully awake. The songs of a choir of crickets featuring several night bird soloists filled the room with predawn sound.
"Oh Mama," he said almost breathless with excitement, "I dreamed that I was all grown up, and I was a king. I wore a red pointed hat with a bird on top and strings of red beads covered my face so no one could see what I looked like. I wore a big robe made of thick red cloth and gold thread called Ase oke. There was a man walking beside me holding a shade over my head to protect me from the sun. I walked with a beaded walking stick. Every where I went they called me Kabyesi."
"How did you know it was you, little one?" She asked carefully, sitting upright on her sleeping pallet.
"I just knew it, Mama. When I looked into the dream, I felt myself inside the man. I could see out of his eyes; I could feel what he felt."
"And how did he feel, my son?"
"He felt sad, Mama. He knew he was going to die."
Maggie was nearly certain that Shango was describing an incident in the life of his storied namesake, an African king who was deified and became a god in the spirit world. She thought this might be the sign she was looking for to begin including him into the ceremonies, but she wanted to be sure.
"And did he die, Shango?" She asked.
"Yes, Mama."
"How do you know this, little one?"
"I saw him, Mama, hanging from a tree. I knew he was dead."
Maggie knew the story well. She had learned it as a child sitting at the feet of her grandmother. She had taken great pains not to include this story with the ones she told the boy at bedtime. Now, she wanted to know just how much of the story his dream had revealed to him. So, she continued to probe:
"Who hanged him, my son?"
"He hanged himself, Mama."
"Why did he do that?" She asked, drawing him out.
Because he killed his family. He struck them down with fire and lightning. He didn't mean to, but that's what happened.
Maggie knew the story. According to legend, this king was sent to earth by the creator god to turn the people away from their wickedness. The people were not following the ways of the creator; they were poisoning each other, stealing from each other, bearing false witness, committing adultery and engaging in all sorts of activities that did not please the deity. Shango was the emissary sent down to study the people and then to clean up the society. From a child, he was said to be of a very wild disposition, fiery temper, and skilful in sleight of hand tricks. He could spew fire and smoke out of his mouth. People were afraid of him.
His greatness apparent, he became the fourth King of the kingdom. The creator had endowed him with the power to call down lightning, but it was through sorcery that he learned to control it. During the seven years of his kingship he increased the size of his realm through constant warfare. He became a punishing moral presence, Outraged by impure human acts, seeking out and targeting the homes of murderers, adulterers, liars and thieves, he destroyed them with his lightning bolts. If the offense were grave enough, he would kill the offender. He would often punish evildoers by burning their most precious possessions. He would also take revenge on anyone who hurt or offended his favorites by burning them or their property in a raging inferno.
Evildoers and the righteous alike feared him, for he meted out his terrible justice swiftly. His violent retribution helped make divine justice victorious and granted spiritual protection to the righteous.
His palace was built at the foot of a hill. One day the king ascended this hill accompanied by his courtiers, some of his slaves, some of his cousins but none of his children. He was of a mind to practice his sorcery, to try a particular charm he had procured from Eshu the messenger of the gods. He wanted to be the greatest magician in the land and had asked the trickster god to help him. He was not sure if the charm would work. But he took it orally and a violent storm of fire lightning spewed forth out of his mouth and struck his palace, setting the buildings aflame. Many of his wives and children were killed in this catastrophe.
Distraught by this turn of events and overcome by remorse, the king abdicated his throne and hanged himself on a Shea butter tree and descended through a hole in the ground into the house of the dead.
While dwelling among the dead, he met a goddess who years before had become so obsessed with him that her father, the god of earth, had sent her to the house of the dead to preserve her virginity. She had become the goddess who consumed the bodies of the dead and rendered the waste of inert flesh into nutrients for the earth.
Shango seduced the eternal virgin and impregnated her. She bore him a son from the union. By inseminating the eater of men with the seed of life in the outermost realm of desolation and loss, and he triumphed over death.
He rejoined the creator as a god in his own right and continued to punish wickedness from the sky. The rumble of thunder was his anger in the face of iniquity. Lightning strikes were his godly chastisements and a sign to the believers that he was just as vigilant in heaven as he was on earth. When true believers saw a lightning bolt and heard a clap of thunder, they would shout Kabiyesi, Oba Ko So! which meant, Hail your majesty! The king did not hang!
The boy related the events of the dream as if he lived them himself. He seemed to know with certainty that he was that ancient god-king. This was the sign Maggie had been waiting for. The new moon of the last month of the year was days away. It was time for Shango to meet the ruler of his head.
The mild wintry night of the new moon on the next to the last day of the last month of the year required a large fire to illumine the copse where Maggie conducted her ceremonies. The moon, directly between the Earth and the Sun, was invisible this night because the sun cast its rays only on the far side of the Moon. All day long, the sky had threatened rain, but not a drop had fallen. Lightning, though, had streaked across the sky at regular intervals. Maggie wondered if the night would bring a storm.
It wouldn't surprise me at all, she thought. She had come to the thicket earlier than usual to make the special preparations for the evenings events. That was when she discovered the thunderstones.
Scattered uniformly across the center of the copse, where the once tall grasses had been flattened by frenetically dancing feet lay six thunder stones of varying size, smallish spheres of formerly melted minerals fused together with other mineral matter to form solid rock.
Another sign, thought Maggie, as she gathered up the six stones.
It was believed that Shango, the god-king, created thunder and lightning by casting these thunder stones down to earth. Wherever lightning strikes, thrown stones could be found in the surrounding areas. These stones (actually meteorites), according to legend, have special powers, and devotees enshrined the stones in temples to the god.
Maggie gathered up the stones in a wooden bowl. She would place this bowl on top of a wooden mortar just before the ceremony was to begin. She washed the mortar in water containing the crushed, hairy leaves of the field poppy, dried hibiscus flowers, nettle, the juice of a snail, and oil squeezed from a palm kernel. In the wooden bowl she poured the blood of a rooster and a ram she had secretly bought and sacrificed for the occasion over the thunderstones. She placed the bowl atop the mortar in front of the old ironwood tree at the rear of the copse on an intricate magical symbol she had traced on the ground with corn flour. With this done, the preparations were complete, save for the building of the fire.
Tonight, although dressed in her traditional white dress, her head was uncovered. She wore her hair braided on one side of her head. Her spirit guide would offer the sacrifice to the thunder god and she would wear her hair as his devotees were purported to have done to show her respect.
"I wonder if he will mount the boy," she thought to her self. For more than thirteen years, Maggie had presided over ceremonies held in this thick et. She was the leader of the wisdom cult and knew more than anyone else the rites and ceremonies sacred to the spirits summoned on these nights. What she didn't know, the spirit who ruled her head did, and provided her the guidance to get through unknown territory.
But the wise woman was very much concerned about what effect the ceremony would have on her son. She did not really know if there was a proper age for possession, and even if she did know, her strong maternal instincts, whatever his age, would still try to protect the child from pain or injury.
Soon after dusk, the celebrants began to gather at the thicket. As was their custom, the drummers came first. Young adults now, the two brothers and a cousin, had been the principal drummers for Maggie for nearly ten years. They had grown up with her. In that time, they had recruited and trained another six so that any one of them could take over a principal drummers rhythm, if his spirit guide called him to dance.
Tom, Simon and Peter were each initiate/drummers. Tom, whom Maggie called the knife for his cutting, slashing style of drumming, served the spirit of iron and metals. Tall, black and extremely strong, by day he was a blacksmith, having picked up that trade shortly after he had begun drumming for Maggie . He played the deep cow-skinned bass drum.
When Tom's guardian spirit took his head, he would demand red wine and tobacco to smoke . When he spoke, all around were compelled to be quiet and listen. Like his guardian spirit, Tom was violent, impulsive and liked to argue. He did not suffer fools gladly nor did he readily forgive offenses. He was persistent in the pursuit of his goals and did not discourage easily. He was impetuous and arrogant, always ready to remind someone of the services he had rendered, but because of the sincerity and the frankness of his intentions, he was difficult to dislike.
Simon, who played the medium sized cow-skin drum, made his living hunting and fishing. As would be expected, he served, the hunter god who was also known as the sorcerer of the invisible path who brings good fortune. Simon was a member of the villages small volunteer constabulary. He had a deep and abiding sense of justice and was a relentless tracker of wrongdoers. When his guardian took him, he moved about like a hunter tracking prey, then stopping, standing up erect and waving his arms and hands like a spell caster.
Simon was beautiful black man. He was quick-witted, clever, alert, and innovative. Although not as talented a drummer as his brother, Peter, he nevertheless strove for perfection. Few could determine who was the better drummer.
Peter, the only man in the village apprenticed to Maggie as a healer, served the one-eyed, one-armed, one-legged god of the forest, the owner of all the plants and trees that grow wild in the woods. The drums used in the ceremonies were consecrated to his guardian spirit, who gave them their spirit voice and transformative power.
Peter, strong-willed and a loner, was small framed and very light skinned. He was studious and reflective; he liked to think things out and tried to never respond to anything -- except his drumming -- emotionally. He played the small goat-skinned drum, often the lead drum. He gave himself over to his drumming completely and was the first of the drummers to be mounted by his guardian spirit. When his guardian came, he closed one eye and danced about nimbly on one foot. Sometimes he would hop into the surrounding woods and pluck a leaf from some plant or herb. He was the most gifted drummer and the most adept of all of Maggie's apprentices in the healing arts. So much so, that she tutored him privately, because to do otherwise would be to hold him back.
The three led their six apprentice drummers to the customary place in the copse where the drums were set up in front of the old swamp dogwood tree, two apprentices behind each drum. They were all males, between the ages of fourteen and twenty, and each showed tendencies toward the guardian spirit who possessed the initiate/drummer who played the drum to which they were apprenticed . None of the drumming apprentices had been mounted as yet, but that could change at any time.
Six new female initiates had joined the ceremonies within the last two years, bringing that number also to nine. They joined Mava, the middle-aged domestic, who served the spirit of the ocean, the mother of all; the beautiful Ezzie, wife of the village brass worker who was possessed by the orisha of love, creativity, abundance and passion and the mysterious Aida, who served the serpent, guardian of the trees and waters and the cosmic treasure at the end of the rainbow.
Ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-three, each of the new women had been mounted by a guardian spirit. Dawn, the eldest, was a young farmers wife. She served the hermaphroditic orisha of creation. The orisha of home and marriage mounted Sarah, an unmarried teacher and a year younger than Dawn. Yansa, nineteen and married to the village cooper, was bound to the orisha of the winds. Although normally close friends, when their guardian spirits took their heads, Sarah and Yansa seemed to be bitter enemies, sometimes attacking each other when they danced.
Marissa and Marassa were eighteen-year-old unmarried twins. They served the god of duality who ruled the elemental forces of the universe. Finally, there was the modest and severe Awey, the seventeen-year-old servant of the goddess of the death, who, like her guardian spirit, communicated with those who had passed on.
When all were assembled, she gave the signal to Ezzie to go fetch Emma and the boy. The willowy beauty disappeared into the woods and soon returned leading the boy and his sister into the middle of the copse.
Maggie pointed Emma to the customary place where the women sat, and took Shango by the hand and sat him down beside the wooden bowl atop the mortar. She nodded to Peter, who began to play the cadence of her guardian spirit, whom she referred to as her husband. Simon and Tom soon joined in the familiar rhythm and Maggie began to dance. As she danced, she invoked her spirit guide.
He came swiftly and violently, throwing her to ground, twisting her body until she resembled man with a huge penis. Yet she nimbly got to her feet, never missing a beat. One by one she beckoned each of the women to join her in her dance. She formed them into a circle and called each one to its center . When each woman danced in the circles center, the rhythm of the drums altered subtly into the rhythm of the guardian that woman served . Even Emma, who normally stayed away from the ceremonies because she had to baby-sit Shango, danced this night.
And the gods and goddesses came down. Even the heads of the drummers were taken. Peter, who left his drum first to dance his one-legged dance, was joined in the center of the circle by Emma who also hopped around on one leg. Simon and Tom were also called away from their drums and took on their guardians personalities in intricately executed dance steps. The tall grasses of the thicket were stomped flat within minutes.
Maggie, still overshadowed by her husband/guardian, hobbled away from the circle's center to stand before the boy. Shango had been sitting quietly as she told him he must do:
"No matter what happens, little one, she had said to him earlier that day, just sit quietly in the place where I sit you down. Do you understand?"
"Yes Mama"
He really seemed at that moment a seven year old. His eyes wide because of his mothers seriousness, but there was no fear in them. Nor did he have any questions. He knew what he had to do and what was expected of him.
"Mama may seem a little strange to you, tonight," She continued. "You may see a lot of people you know dancing and doing strange things, but you will be safe and they will be all right. Do you understand, Shango?"
"Yes Mama. Please don't worry. I know I will be okay."
The boy sat unmoving as a stone statue all through the invocation, the dance, and the procession of the spirits and the mounting of the believers. Only his eyes betrayed him, for in them were neither fear nor panic but the sharp intensity of rapt attention.
Maggie, in the hoarse voice of a man, sang to the boy:
The king snarls like a leopard and the people run away;
One whose eyeballs glow like charcoal.
The famous one of the city;
One who uses hundreds of lightning bolts to win victory in war,
Who used pieces of broken walls to defeat his enemies.
We honor you! So be it!
Shango, unprompted, responded to the ritual greeting, a deep male voice booming out of his child's body:
Divine Messenger, I greet you! Speak with power.
Man of the crossroads, dance to the drum
Tickle the toe of the drum; move beyond strife
Strife is contrary to the spirit of heaven.
The word of the divine messenger is always respected
"How is it that you speak through the boy without mounting him, Kabiyesi?" This was not a ritual question. Maggie's guardian seemed genuinely puzzled.
"Will you let your horse speak for you?"
"The boy and I are one." Shango replied.
Although his voice was that of an adult, nothing had changed in the boys demeanor to suggest possession.
"I see through his eyes and he through mine. I hear through his ears and he through mine. I speak through his voice and he through mine. Though he is a child, he has all of my memories, all of my powers and... all of my failings. All he needs do is remember."
"But Kabiyesi, this is not the way of the elders. What does this mean?"
"Divine Messenger," the boy instructed, "this child points to a new way; blazes a new trail. The spirit that animates him is more than you or I, but from the great mystery itself. I am but a garment put on to aid him as he remembers who he is; nothing more than a memory cue. Although he has taken on some of my failings, which he must overcome, he will triumph. He will take us beyond strife. He will take us to touch the great mystery. This is more than even you can do, old friend. The great mystery requires that some human children have direct knowledge from the godhead and through it the grand cosmic plan and order of the universe. This boy will show the way. He will take even me beyond where I have gone before."
"But what of the rest of us? What will we do?"
"Fear not, respected one. There is much to be done and many will be unable to make this change. Each of you will be needed to do as you have done. The great mystery has never abandoned its creations. But while you are doing your work of old, you will be changing, growing. Soon, even you will be more than the Divine Messenger, but will look with the eyes, hear with the ears and speak with the voice of the great mystery itself."
The boy stopped speaking. His attention taken by the rhythm of drums.
Maggie's spirit guide, realizing that the reading had come to an end, repeated the ritual greeting:
The king snarls like a leopard and the people run away;
One whose eyeballs glow like charcoal.
The famous one of the city;
One who uses hundreds of lightning bolts to win victory in war,
Who used pieces of broken walls to defeat his enemies.
We honor you! We thank you for your prophecy.
So be it!
The boy stood up. He reached for his mother's hands. Taking them both in his own, he looked her in the eye:
"Now Mama and Papa Eshu, it is my turn to dance!"
And the child, who was not a child, danced the night away.
Joseph McNair 
