The Loss of Ofún's Daughter

“Father, I can see him. He's riding across the field now!” Ofún's daughter was gazing out the window. For what seemed hours, she had been waiting there, watching for her suitor's approach. The sunlight coming through was bright and unflattering to everything in the room, but on her delicate black skin it brought out her natural sheen and made her complexion glow.

“Oh, to be young again, and in love,” Ofún thought as he watched his daughter jump away from the window and smooth her dress. She was eighteen and barely a woman, but she had a grown woman's body, and it was lovely. “I don't know why you wait beside the window so impatiently,” he teased her. “He comes the last day of the week and arrives at the same time every day.”

“But I worry, father.” She pouted, and her full lips seemed fuller. “He comes such a long way from Oshogbo. Do you know how far a journey that is? It is dangerous.”

“He is a strong, resourceful young man, daughter. I am sure he can take care of himself.”

She giggled as a strong knock came at the front door. Throwing her shoulders back and lifting her head high, she answered it gracefully and curtsied just a bit at the knees and the waist as the young man came in. He took her hands and kissed her briefly on the cheek; and then, he turned his attention to her father.

“Sir, I have something important to ask you. Will you step outside with me?”

Ofún looked to his daughter, and she looked to him quizzically as he stood up. “Of course, if it is that urgent.” The two men stepped outside, and Ofún's daughter tried desperately to listen at the door. They spoke in unintelligible whispers.

When Ofún burst back in, his face was spread with a huge, joyous grin; and on his shoulders was the finest silk cloak he'd ever worn. “Look what he gave me, daughter. Your gentleman is most generous!”

The young man knelt at the young woman's feet and took her hands in his. “Your father has given me permission to ask you . . . to marry me.”

She almost fainted where she stood.

Ofún wasted no time with preparations. His daughter was his life, and he wanted nothing more than for her to be happy. “A man such as this comes along but once in a lifetime,” he told her. “He is young, handsome, and rich; but more importantly, he is a good man. I have no worries that he will care for you well, perhaps better than this old man.”

“Daddy,” she cried, and her tears were like diamonds on her ebony skin, “No matter how much he loves me, he could never love me more than you.” Father and daughter embraced; it was an embrace that seemed to last an eternity.

In the land of Ofún, however, it seemed that happiness was ephemeral, and suffering was eternal. A week before the wedding came the plague.

Coughs and sneezes, fevers and sores, delirium and insanity—these were the things that the plague brought. Ofún was a healer, and one by one the sick came to be healed, but no matter how many potions or salves he administered, everyone who fell ill died—including his daughter. By nightfall, all the villagers were dead and only Ofún was left alive.

Even in death, his daughter was as lovely as she had been in life.

Grief assailed Ofún like a terrible specter, and he wailed as he tore at his hair. In despair, he shredded his robes with his bare hands and lay in bed, praying that he, too, would die. After a night of trembling, shaking, and crying, convinced that Olófin would take his life as well, he fell into a deep sleep himself, so deep he was as one of the dead.

He didn't awaken when morning came.

The young warrior returned that afternoon; and his heart froze when he saw bloated, pox-marked bodies lying in the streets. Death's odor was strong, and even a cloth wound tightly around his mouth and nose didn't block the stench. He rode as fast as he could to his future wife's house. Furiously he knocked at the door, and when there was no answer, he kicked it in. There was only darkness and silence.

“My love?” he called quietly, and then he screamed, “Where are you?” Silence was his only answer.

Fearfully he walked to her chambers and saw her lying in bed, her arms crossed on her chest and her face frozen peacefully; even after a full night, she looked as if she were still alive—her beauty was that deep. The young man wailed; it was soulful and mournful, terrifying to hear.

And Ofún awoke at the sound.

The wailing he heard was deep and otherworldly; it was fatal, like that of a wounded animal. Fearful, his heart frozen, he rose from his bed slowly, mechanically; and terror made the color drain from his face until it was an ashen grey. He prayed to Olófin in the ancient tongue no one used anymore, trying to banish the specters he believed walked the streets, and his house; and his chanting sounded inhuman, even to his own ears.

In the next room, the young man heard Ofún's voice, but he, too, thought it belonged to the dead. Cautiously, he walked to Ofún's room; and when he saw Ofún walking as one of the dead with a pallid complexion, he screamed. Ofún screamed; and in their fear they ran in opposite directions.

Neither man stopped running until they were in separate yet adjacent villages.

Around midnight that same night, Ofún's daughter stirred; at first, it was a gentle flicker of the fingers, almost imperceptible, perhaps a reflex, but she sighed deeply and put her hands to her head. It was pounding. Although the plague had infected her, it had not killed her; it only made her breathing shallow and her heart slow until it seemed life drained from her body. The sores that erupted healed cleanly; not a single scar marked her delicate skin. She walked through the house, confused; and when she didn't find her father in his chambers, she walked back to the front of the house. The door was broken. Fear gripped her heart.

“What has happened here?”

She stumbled into the streets, still weak from the sickness, and screamed when she saw the bodies littering the roads. “Is everyone dead?” she asked the wind. And then she screamed, “Father! Ofún! Where are you?” Only an echo answered her.

Covering her nose and mouth with the collar of her dress, she wandered through town and cried. The devastation was nightmarish. She assumed the worst for her father, and kept walking.

No one ever saw her again.

The next morning, the young man returned with warriors: After a few days of death, the bodies were horribly bloated; they rippled and belched in the morning heat, and flies gathered, feeding off the dead. One by one, the men wrapped the bodies in white cloth and buried them in the forest. When the sun set that evening, no one had found the bodies of Ofún or his daughter; and so weak from mourning was the young man that he had to be lifted onto his horse and slowly guided out of town.

And the next day, Ofún returned with a band of warriors himself; and when they found the town empty of bodies, his heart sank. “The dead have risen,” he moaned, “and they have taken the bodies of everyone, even my daughter.” With a broken heart, Ofún sank to the earth and wailed; the men searched the town house by house. No sign of the living was found; and the dead were gone. Puzzled, they carried Ofún out of the town; and no one ever returned.

Since that day, Ofún's hometown was known as “the village where the dead steal the dead.” No one returned; no one remembered it; and we can assume that the centuries have eaten what remained of the people who lived there.

Tragedy and sorrow—these followed Ofún all the days of his life, and he never recovered from the loss of his only child.