The Marriage of Ikú and Ejioko

Ejioko was alone in the forest. It was night, and he warmed himself by the fire he 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, Ejioko poked at the meat. It was still rare. “Soon,” he thought, eyeing it hungrily.

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

It was then that Ikú slipped from the shadows and stood silently over Ejioko's sleeping body. For a moment he stirred, and it seemed he would awaken. Ikú put her index finger over pursed lips, and whispered, “Shhh . . .” Ejioko fell back into a deep, dreamless sleep. This was but one of Ikú'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 to herself, eyeing the thick chest, thin 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,” she thought. For Ejioko 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 Ejioko 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 Ejioko had the wisdom to make ebó, and 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.

Ikú thought she was clever each day that she followed Ejioko, 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, Ejioko 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 Ikú, 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 Ejioko 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 Ejioko. “We are.” Desire flooded him, and he embraced her. They were wed that night.

Ikú and Ejioko 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 Ikú was the mother of death, not life, and her womb was like that of a dead thing. In spite of their love, this was the one thing that, in time, caused Ejioko to seek out the embrace of other women.

Ikú never knew he was cheating on her: Ikú never knew of the children he fathered with his mistresses.

After many years and many affairs, Ejioko 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 Ikú, and more and more time in Nanumé's arms.

One morning, things went too far: Ejioko awoke, confused; and was shocked when he discovered it was morning. Sunlight 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,” Ejioko thought to himself.

Nanumé stirred and woke under Ejioko'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.” Ejioko 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.” 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. Ejioko 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?”

Ikú was furious with Ejioko 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.”

Ejioko 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. Ikú believed him when she saw the sincerity on his face. Forcefully, he took her into her arms and kissed her. Desire rose in her loins, and for the moment, Ikú forgave him. She forgave him all day and all night.

So intense was their lovemaking that Ejioko forgot all about Nanumé. It was as if he knew Ikú for the first time.

It took only a few days before the sores broke out on Ejioko's skin. Soon, Ikú's skin erupted. “Smallpox!” Ikú cried. “We have smallpox.” Ejioko 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 spared him the full scourge. He never knew.

Ikú's skin became ugly and deformed, and Ejioko 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 Ikú; disease marred her beauty and turned her into an evil-appearing creature.

Nanumé could not forget about Ejioko. 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 Ejioko; 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 Ejioko, not the doctors, not the midwives, not even the other orishas. For nine months, her flesh ripened with life and 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 an echo 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 in her misery.

Eventually, the sores on Nanumé's body healed, and as was her ashé, when the sickness 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 Ejioko, 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?

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

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

Ikú 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 Ikú, menacing, so strong that not even the sun dared shine on her. Nanumé rose from beneath her tree and ran toward her daughter to protect her; by instinct, she knew that Ikú was about to exact revenge on both her and Ejioko for their adultery. But before she could reach her, her daughter's step faltered; her body went limp, and the breath left her as she crumpled on the earth, dead. Nanumé collapsed over her lifeless body and wept. For years, she wept over the corpse of her child. The pain seemed eternal.

After that, Ikú banished herself from the light of day, and crept in shadows, a horrible figure that brought fear and despair to those who saw her. In anger, her three sisters rose up, and swore to destroy Ejioko and all his children on Earth: Arayé, Ano, and Aro. Their sole purpose became vengeance, and they sought to destroy any good that Ejioko brought to the world.

But before they could do that, they had to destroy his iré.