The Marriage of Iku and Eyioko

Eyioko was alone in the forest.

It was night, and he warmed himself by the fire he had built. Over the pit roasted the meat from his day's kill; its juices snapped and sizzled as tongues of flame licked at it. Pleading for food, his stomach rumbled, and in response Eyioko poked at the meat. It was still rare. "Soon", he thought, eyeing it hungrily.

Later, when his belly was full, Eyioko spread his animal skins on the cool earth and curled up beside the fire. Sleep came quickly.

It was then that Iku slipped from the shadows and stood silently over Eyioko's sleeping body. For a moment he stirred and it seemed he would awaken. Iku put her index finger over pursed lips and whispered, "Shhh ..." Eyioko fell back into deep, dreamless sleep. This was but one of Iku's powers, for sleep is but a form of light death, the soul slipping into the world between heaven and earth.

"What a beautiful man", she thought eyeing the thick chest, slim waist, and muscled legs. His arms were toned, defined, and venous from handling the bow and arrow every day. She trembled with desire.

"And we are both hunters, he and I", for Eyioko spent all his days in the thick jungles, tracking game, and she was a huntress whose jungle was all of creation. There was only one animal Eyioko could not hunt: humans. They were her prey exclusively.

"And what a clever man he is," she whispered into the night. For hunt him she had, but Eyioko had the wisdom to make ebó and had thwarted her each time. Still, she thought, if I cannot eat him . . . I can have him another way. A lustful fire burned in her loins. "One way or another, I will have him inside me." She smiled a wicked smile and retreated into the shadows.

Iku thought she was clever each day that she followed Eyioko, but he, ever the hunter, knew he was being hunted. Time and time again he tried to focus his preternatural senses on the thing at his heels, and each time it melted into the forest so quickly he lost track of it.

"It's not an animal", he thought, breathing deeply and trying to take in its scent. "It's not a human either", he realized, when the air was filled with everything but the smell of humans. In that moment, Eyioko knew fear.

Slowly, quietly, he lifted an arrow from his quiver and loaded his crossbow. He lifted it to the sky and cried out, "Let this arrow pierce the heart of the evil that follows me!" His muscles tensed and then relaxed as the arrow sailed into the sky. He ran as fast as he could, following the arrow as it arced and came sailing back down, and at the projectile's end he saw a dark form, waiting. He watched in awe as its hand came in front of its own chest and caught the arrow, just mere inches before it would have sliced through.

It was then that he realized he was being followed by Iku, the one who had tried to kill him. And by daylight he found her most beautiful.

"No one has ever come so close to killing me," she said as Eyioko walked toward her.

"And no one has ever been able to track me so well," he answered.

"We are very much alike. We are hunters, you and I."

"Yes," agreed Eyioko. "We are." Desire flooded him, and he embraced her. They were wed that night.

Iku and Eyioko spent many years together, in bliss, in love, and making love.

But as centuries passed, it became painfully obvious to both of them that they would never have children, for Iku was the mother of death, not life, and her womb was like that of a dead thing.

Despite their love, this was the one thing that, in time, caused Eyioko to seek out the embrace of other women. Iku never knew he was cheating on her; Iku never knew of the children he fathered with his mistresses.

After many years and many affairs, Eyioko found himself in the arms of Nanumé. Of all the women he had known, none made love better than she. When he was with her, the world was timeless, and each night he spent more and more time away from Iku, and more and more time in Nanumé's arms.

One morning, things went too far. Eyioko awoke, confused, and was shocked when he discovered it was morning. Sunlight had slipped through cracks in the bedroom curtain.

"Have I been here all night?" he thought. He looked at Nanumé and sighed. Her body was youthful, supple, with ample breasts that rose and fell with each breath. He pulled the sheets down just a bit, exposing the narrow curve of her waist. Below that ...

"I could spend the night in worse places", Eyioko thought. Nanumé stirred and woke under Eyioko's lustful eyes. As she moved, a ray of sunlight caught her black skin. In the light, it dazzled like polished onyx.

"You're still here," she whispered, her voice tangled in sleep and dreams.

"I couldn't leave if I tried." Eyioko kissed her neck in the soft spot between the collarbones and nibbled at her throat for just a moment. His tongue tasted something rough and sour. He drew back, surprised, and saw a hard, crusty pustule where before he had seen only silky smoothness.

"What is this?" Nanumé brushed her fingertips lightly against her throat, and when she touched the tiny pustule, she drew in a deep breath.

"Something must have bit me. A bug, perhaps." She sat up, pulling the sheets to her chin. She inhaled deeply, arching her back and shrugging her shoulders.

"I love you so much," she whispered, leaning over to kiss him. Eyioko forgot about the small pustule rising like a grain on Nanumé's skin; Nanumé, however was worried.

"Not again", she thought "How many more times must I suffer the family curse?"

Iku was furious with Eyioko when he came home that morning. "I was lost in the forest," he said. "It was dark, and I was confused."

"Don't lie to me," she wailed like a banshee.

"No one in the world knows the forest better than you. You do not get lost."

Eyioko hung his head in shame. "Forgive me," he said. "But I was. I was lost, and all I could think about was getting home to you."

His face was sincere, for truly, he was lost, lost in the arms of Nanumé, lost in her embrace. Iku believed him when she saw the sincerity on his face. Forcefully, he took her into his arms and kissed her. Desire rose in her loins, and for the moment Iku forgave him. She forgave him all day and all night. So intense was their love-making that Eyioko forgot all about Nanumé. It was as if he knew Iku for the first time.

It took only a few days before the sores broke out on Eyioko's skin. Soon, Iku's skin erupted. "Smallpox!" Iku cried. "We have smallpox."

Eyioko healed quickly, with only a few scars hidden in places that most would never see; perhaps it was because Nanumé's love was like a healing ashé and had spared him the full scourge. He never knew.

Iku's skin became ugly and deformed, and Eyioko never forgave Nanumé for infecting him and, in turn, his wife. He never, ever went back to see her. Nor could he bear to look at the deformed face of Iku; disease had marred her beauty and turned her into an evil looking creature.

Nanumé could not forget Eyioko. She was with child, his child.

As sores erupted over her body, her belly grew, and her agony was great. So disfigured was she that she did not go out into the world to look for Eyioko; she hid in darkness and waited for the contagion to pass. He never came. He never knew that she was pregnant with his child. Nobody came to help Nanumé with the baby's birth: not Eyioko, not the doctors, not the midwives, not even the other orishas.

For nine months her flesh ripened with life and was ripped with foul, pus-filled pustules that filled the room with an acrid odor. Her beauty was still there but marred by disease; her womb, full, was stretched and painful as her belly tore around the sores with the added pressure.

A contraction came, sharp and earnest; she cried out as wetness poured from between her legs. She screamed, and only the echo of her own voice answered her. There, exhausted, lying on the floor, with consciousness fleeing her like a shadow, she gave one final cry and heard another faint one, not unlike her own.

Her child was born out of her misery.

Eventually, the sores on Nanumé's body healed, and as was her ashé. When the sickness had passed she was again young and beautiful. The child born that painful night grew quickly into a toddler, and to ease the loneliness in her heart, the longing for Eyioko, she spent all her days in the fields playing with her. She was walking, and until now had shown none of the family's curse, the scourge of smallpox. Nanumé smiled. "Maybe", she thought, "it all ends with her."

Unbeknownst to Nanumé, Iku had been stalking her.

Since Eyioko had brought home the rotting disease, she had been an outcast, forced to wander at night and stay in the shadows. Unlike Nanumé, smallpox was not her ashé, and her form remained blighted. Rumors spread in the world, and eventually she knew that Eyioko had slept with Nanumé. She left him and set out to exact revenge on the woman who had dishonored and disfigured her.

Iku found her in the forest; Iku watched as she played with her child. . . her husband's child, and she realized, "This is her source of happiness now that my husband has left her."

Iku drew herself up to her full height; she blocked out the sun, and a great shadow fell over the girl. Nanumé looked up at the sky; horror melted her beautiful face as she saw Iku, menacing, so strong that not even the sun dared shine on her.

She rose from beneath her tree and ran toward her daughter to protect her. Instinctively she knew that Iku was about to exact revenge on both her and Eyioko for their adultery. But before she could reach her, the child's step faltered; her body went limp, and the breath left her as she crumpled on the earth, dead.

Nanumé collapsed over the child's lifeless body and wept.

For years, she wept over the corpse of her child. The pain seemed eternal.

After that, Iku banished herself from the light of day and crept in the shadows, a horrible figure that brought fear and despair to those who saw her.

In anger, her two sisters, Arayé and Arun, rose up and swore to destroy Eyioko and all his children on earth.

Their sole purpose became vengeance, and they sought to destroy any good that Eyioko brought to the world. But before they could do that, they had to destroy his iré.