"Unfortunate things that happen are not always sudden and visible like deaths or accidents. There are other things too such as the one you are passing through. Your destiny has been changed with another."

Biyai's eyes widened at the discovery. The room was a blackout except for a kerosene lamp that gave a dim glow. It was yet darker as the fortune teller leaned forward to say more words. Her spine chilled in fear for what she heard and as well for the thin strip of evening breeze that came in from the corners of the almost closed windows.

"This did not happen at your birth. Your destiny was changed as a little child by a stranger who saw it. It shined brightly into the stranger's eyes, she came and snatched it away"

The last three words were said with underlined secrecy so that Biyai began to imagine the whole scene of playing in the sand as a child and a woman coming to take her destiny away.

"But I cannot help you, your father still owes me thirty pence"

The woman leaned back, increased the glow of the lantern and pushed the windows open wider.

This greatly reduced the aura of mystery that was hanging in the air.

"That's my father! this is my destiny, please" Biyai pleaded still seeing her destiny carried away in her mind.

The fortune teller snapped angrily.
"What do you people think of me! I don't eat? I don't go to the market?"

"Please help me" Biyai begged, palms sweaty.

The woman ignored and picked her cowries one after the other into her leather bag.

Biyai sadly stood and turned to leave, on a second thought she reached into the money folded under her shirt, and counted thirty pence of it, her life savings, as she did so, the woman hissed.

"I will not take your money, it is your father's bills, not yours"

Biyai spun around and knelt, the woman still picked her cowries.

"This is the money, my father asked me to give it to you but I wanted to keep it to myself"

She bowed her head in shame.

"I am a truant child"

"You're lying" the woman looked straight into Biyai's eyes and through the deception.

"But I will help you because of your determination"

She untied the bag and brought out the cowries again, one by one.


Biyai watched the fortune teller's precision and decisiveness with the cowries. After what seemed a very long time, the woman looked up and said plainly..

"You have the power over your destiny, if you can discover yourself. Find your true self in nature and..."

Biyai fumed with irritation, "I thought you would..."

"Give you your destiny back?" The woman cut in.
"I am not with it, so I can't give you anything, I can only tell you what to do" she opened her palms to show that she hid nothing.

Biyai rose and quickened her steps home. Her thoughts moved from the strange dreams she experienced to what the fortune teller said, and to the things said about the fortune teller; that she had no mystery about her just a basic knowledge of herbs, and all she told were fables, deceiving people to collect their monies.

The moonlight guided Biyai's steps into her father's compound. Only one light from her father's hut, everyone had slept off so early. She slid into her own hut, a figure rose from her mattress. Her eyes adjusted to the room, the window was open wide. It was her father.

"Where have you been?" His voice relayed his concealed anger.

Her heart increased it's pace and beat loudly into her ears. She saw pain and disappointment on his face.

The moonlight cast a long shadow of him on the ground and wall. Beside his shadow, a bitter leaf branch rested on the wall. He picked it up.

"You have gone to see him again, this night"

Biyai's heart loosened at this. It was a better accusation than hearing of her visit to the cursed woman, as her father sometimes referred to the fortune teller.

"So you will not leave Piriye alone?"

He advanced to her with the bitter leaf branch. She knelt to beg. It landed first on her back, then everywhere else almost at the same time. When the branch had turned to pieces he left the room.

As she lay on her mattress that night, she knew she had to visit Piriye the next day to tell him everything including the woman's words. She slept off and dreamt of trees growing out of every opening in her body.

#storytelling
#fiction
#Ellafearless