The Dance Of Arayé

From the Olodu Unle (8)

It came to pass that Unle wanted to have a great party, a night to celebrate all the good he had created in the world. Carefully, he handpicked his guest list. Iré, the spirit of blessings, was the guest of honor, since Unle’s kingdom was truly the most blessed. He invited the most powerful men and women from his land to attend.

Not a single osogbo was invited.

The night of Unle’s party, Arayé sat in her chambers staring into her mirror. She was enraged, and so hot was her anger that her breath steamed its glass. How dare he honor Iré! she said to herself. And not a single one of us is invited to his party. Did we not make a pact years ago? Were it not for misfortune, Unle, the simple diviner, would have never become rich; he would have never become a king; he would have never built such a prosperous kingdom! The mirror cracked and then shattered, glass spraying Arayé but only tickling her skin. And when pacts are bro__ken, they are broken—for good!

Arayé pulled a red dress over her lithe body. Glass crunched under her bare feet but left them unscratched. She would teach Unle the value of a pact.*34

It was late when the woman in the red dress arrived at Unle’s party; with a red mask on her face, she stepped into the ball.

The room went silent.

First, they noticed her hair: it was woven into a thousand thin braids carefully piled on top of her head, but still, they cascaded around her shoulders to her waist. Then they saw her dress—it was tight, seductive, not the modest robe of a noblewoman but instead like the thin undergarment a worldly woman would wear to her lover’s bed. Finally, they saw her feet: they were bare, but clean, too clean to be feet that had walked even a single step on the earth.

No one thought it strange. The woman in red was too beautiful, too seductive, to be criticized or questioned.

The drummers broke the silence with a single beat of a drum, and Arayé moved her hips. The room sighed, and the drummers beat again, slowly, as Arayé moved through the room. She greeted the women with a slight curtsy; she pushed her own body into each man’s and kissed everyone on the lips, but lightly. Matching their own excitement, the drummers beat the drums more frantically, and the woman in red came to dance before them. Unle, in his thoughtlessness, had not lifted the consecrated drums of Añá to play; instead, he had invited drummers from the street.*35With nothing to fear, Arayé danced behind the drummers, kissing them lightly on the backs of their necks, and then she danced right up to Unle himself.

She stopped. The drummers stopped. And everyone at the ball fell down dead.

Unle was in shock when Arayé caressed his shoulder, removing her mask.

“How dare you,” she whispered. Her voice was almost a light breeze against his skin, and he was afraid to move. “How dare you honor our brother Iré and not invite any of us! How dare you not invite me, the oldest of all the osogbos on the earth! Since humans were first born there has been wickedness on the earth, and I have been here, even before you were born, feeding on their wicked hearts.”

Unle looked to his right where the guest of honor, Iré, was seated—only now he gone. There was only an empty chair. “Without us, there can be no blessings. Without Osogbo there can be no Iré. You broke our pact.”

“I did not think . . .,” stammered the old diviner.

“You did not need to think!” Her voiced echoed off the ballroom walls. Before only a breeze, it was now a gale, a hurricane, and everything in the room seemed to spin and clatter around Unle and Arayé. “Even Olófin himself saw the balance between us. Without misfortunes there can be no blessings, and without blessings, osogbo is all that remains, and I am the only one here with you now. I will be the only one with you always. And everywhere you go in the world, no matter how much good you do, when you leave I will be the one who remains in your place.”

There was a great crash as the room settled; the wind ended as abruptly as it began, and everything stopped. Bodies, chairs, tables, food, the drums—it was all chaos and death in Unle’s palace. And for the first time in his long, blessed life, Unle found himself alone.

For him, a lonely old man, there was no greater punishment.