The War Of Arayé And The Osogbos

Lunacy was Ano’s child, but she was powerful on the earth and growing stronger all the time. Of all the afflictions, she was the strangest, always beginning as a small seed of confusion in the mind, or even the soul, then slowly taking root, growing and squeezing rational thought until perversity was all that remained. For centuries Arayé had been going mad, falling under Lunacy’s spell, although Arayé knew it not, and in her madness she hated the world of humans growing over the earth like a cancer. Her hatred rooted deep in her core, squeezing out the little bits of humanity she might have had hiding in her heinous heart. And like a pumpkin’s vine races over the plowed soil, once the roots were strong, Lunacy grew. Her influence held Arayé firm in its tendrils and crushed her with its vines, and something inside her head snapped. Arayé went insane. Finally, Lunacy had the power she craved—she had Arayé in her grasp.

It was late the night her mind snapped, and the full moon’s silvery light found Arayé pacing her halls. Her nightgown clung to her dark body; it was damp, wet with sweat, her sweat. For hours she had lain beneath her sheets, feverish, dreaming of a world free of the humans she so hated. Her hatred consumed her; it flushed her skin like a hot summer’s night, thick and sticky. For centuries Arayé had tried her best to rid the world of humans, to plague them and make them suffer. In her slow-growing madness she dreamed of a world in which no human lived; she fantasized about their misery and their slow, painful demise. She tried to destroy them one by one, and some gave up the ghost under her crushing weight, while others only crumbled in misery. But no matter how strong she was, there were always those who were stronger than she was. We need to work together, she thought, all of us together—if we united, we would have strength. The we, of course, were her brothers and sisters, the osogbos.

Her fever rose; it was fed by her anger, and so hot was her head that her temper flared. Centuries of trying to destroy humans while watching them grow despite her efforts, and grow stronger—it was all too much for her. Arayé, a creature who was all the wickedness in the world wrapped in one beautiful, seductive body, screamed; her house shook. She flew out into the night, a frightful specter, and she sought out her kin: Ikú, Ano, Ofo, and Iñá. She found them gathered in the forest, hiding in the shadows as the full moon slipped under the horizon.

“Sister,” said Ikú as Arayé walked into their midst, her gown clinging to her form, “what brings you to us?”

Had there been more than the ghostly glow of the Milky Way overhead, perhaps Ikú would have seen the madness in Arayé’s eyes, but instead she felt only her hot, damp cheek as she kissed her lightly. As Arayé’s dry lips grazed her own, maybe she would have seen the flush of her cheeks or the evil grin she cracked as she stood back and held Ikú at arm’s length. Instead, she stood still waiting for Arayé to speak.

“The humans—they plague me. They plague us.” Ikú heard the hollowness in Arayé’s voice. “I want to destroy them. I want to destroy all of them.”

Her voice echoed among the trees. Ikú froze in Arayé’s grip. Something is not right with our sister, thought Ikú. She reeks of . . . danger.

“We all want that,” said Ano, standing at Ikú’s side. “And that is what we do. I make them ill and the weakest die as easily as falling asleep.”

“And I create wars that kill humans by the thousands,” boasted Iñá, “and I laugh as Ikú carries them away to the next world.”

“And I,” said Ofo, “I bring loss to their lives, losses so deep that the human soul never recovers from its misery. We all work to destroy them.”

“One by one, that is what we do,” said Arayé. “And one by one, we fail. Sometimes we fail because the human spirit is too strong to conquer, and other times we fail because they go to the diviners and make ebó. But if all of us were to work together, to come down on the human race like a great, angry storm, we could win. We could destroy them all. And then . . . and then this world would be ours.”

Ikú shrugged off Arayé’s hands and stood closer to her sister, so close that she could feel her hot breath on her face. She saw, even in darkness, the wavering of Arayé’s body; she trembled and shivered as if she were cold. “The night is warm and yet you shake. Are you well?” Ikú was the mother of death, it was true, but when it came to her family, the osogbos, she was almost tender, almost concerned.

Arayé ignored her. Ikú felt something slipping through the night, something that brushed her skin so lightly it was almost not there. Arayé’s madness grew in the night around them; its ethereal vines reached out, spreading, elongating, and waiting to catch them all in its embrace. Ikú could not see it but she felt it, and then the feeling was gone. Lunacy, Ano’s child, was the sneakiest of all the creatures on earth. Now that she had Arayé in her grasp, she reached out to infect the other osogbos as well.

“If we come together as one and bear down on the human race like a great, angry beast, we can destroy them. They won’t have time to run to their diviners. They won’t have time to make ebó. No human spirit is strong enough to stand against us. They will crumble under our weight, and the world will be ours.” Her voice was strong and powerful, and Ikú felt her madness spreading to the others. She tried to fight off the invisible vines as they pierced her heart, but Arayé was both powerful and beautiful, and because of that even her madness was seductive.

Ofo smiled at the thought of piling loss on human beings, and Ano dreamed of a world filled with endless sickness. Iñá himself shook as he thought of a world filled with war, and Ikú—even her stomach growled when she thought of the thousands of lives passing through her at once. The fear Ikú felt melted. Lunacy’s vines crushed them all as she spread among them; it was as easy to cover them as it was for the ocean to slip over the shore.

“We must be careful,” said Ikú, wrapped in madness. “We must plan carefully.” Even though her mind was tangled, she still retained her common sense. But not for long; the invisible vines of Lunacy thickened and tightened around her as Arayé spoke.

“There is no need to plan, sister,” said Arayé, “for if we move together as one, quickly, no one will see us coming. We will win before they know they have lost!”

Madness is cruel, like a leopard, and when it leaps and catches its prey in its claws, there is no escape. Madness is contagious like a plague; in a group it spreads quickly. Among the five osogbos Lunacy roared, angrily. That night, for the first time, five of the world’s sixteen osogbos were lost in her grip, and they were in agreement: they would work together and come down hard on the human world. Total destruction was their goal, the destruction of every mortal creature that walked, crawled, or crept on the earth.

Dark clouds rolled through the night, blotting out both the stars and the ethereal glow of the endless Milky Way above. In darkness their pact was made, and in darkness the earth trembled. Lunacy laughed among them; with five of the osogbos in her grasp, she had more power than she knew how to control.

The old man woke up as the earth trembled. Just minutes before dawn he felt his bed shake and he knew: something wicked is coming for us all. The old man was a diviner with senses sharpened by decades of divination, and those senses warned him of what was coming before even his diloggún hit the mat. As the sun broke the horizon he was out in the streets, banging on the doors of his two young students, both olorishas who spent their days training with him in the art of diloggún. “Something wicked is coming for us,” he said, shaking. “And we need to make ebó before all of us suffer.”

“How do you know this?” his oldest student asked, wiping sleep from his eyes. “We have yet to divine for the day.”

“When you get to be my age and have as much practice as I do, you know,” he said. “You know when something bad is about to happen.”

And so while the rest of the village was just waking up, the three olorishas were already preparing ebó. To Elegguá they gave a black goat, catching some of the blood in a large jícara. When the sacrifice was done, they took that jícara to the village gates, and with it they laid out a jícara with blue water, a jícara filled with epó, a jícara filled with cool water, and a jícara through which the sacrificial cudgel had been driven into the earth. “This,” said the old diviner, “is how we will save the world.”

The younger olorishas looked at the meager ebó, the five jícaras sitting by the town’s gates. They knew that all the osogbos were, after all, stupid but powerful creatures—they always entered a town through its front gates or a home through the front door; never did they sneak in through the back. That was just their nature. And while the goat to Elegguá had been a huge ebó in itself, these five gourds sitting by the gates seemed so small. Silently, not wanting to upset their elder, they whispered to themselves.

“How can such a small ebó save the town if a great evil is coming?” asked the younger olorisha.

“I don’t know. But the old man’s wisdom is great. Let’s hope his wisdom is great enough to fight whatever is coming for us. Better yet, let us hope that his feelings are wrong. Has he ever been wrong before?”

“Never,” said the younger olorisha.

After that they were silent, walking home behind the old man. Finally, the eldest reminded the younger, “We’ve seen him work miracles before. I trust that he is about to work a miracle again. The old man has never failed us before; the entire town is prosperous and happy because of his work.”

That night, just to be safe, the old diviner insisted that his two apprentices sleep at his house. In part it was out of fear, for he was afraid. But mostly it was because if something awful were to happen in the village that night, the three of them together under one roof had a greater chance of survival together than if they were alone. While the old man pretended to sleep in his bed, his two students unrolled mats on the floor in front of his orishas. They, too, lay awake all night but not feigning sleep; their eyes were wide open and their ears were listening for strange sounds in the night.

Despite the old man’s wisdom, they were afraid.

That day, everyone in town knew that their priests were by the village gates making ebó, and somehow word had spread: we are all in danger. When the sun set that day, there was no one in the streets. Everyone was at home behind their own locked doors with the drapes drawn.

As midnight came, there were great screams from the town’s gates. The old diviner still feigned sleep, unmoving in his bed and unsure that his ebó would work. His two apprentices huddled together in fear. The townspeople, locked away in their homes, hid in darkness and prayed. Mothers kept their children close and fathers stood beside their doors with machetes drawn, waiting for an unknown evil to come crashing through at any moment. Everyone prayed that night; they prayed that the orishas and Olódumare would keep them safe.

And safe they were. For when the osogbos came to the town, the first thing they saw was the ebó that the three priests had left for them by the town gates.

Lunacy burned inside Ikú. Throughout the day it became more than a fever; it was a hot furnace that roared in her stomach like the flames of a forge. Her throat burned and her lips were parched. She saw the gourd of blue water sitting on the earth; she reached for it and drank it. “What are you doing?” asked Arayé. “Don’t you know that water could be poisoned? It could be an ebó!” She reached out to smack the blue water from Ikú’s hands, but Ikú whipped around and turned her back to Arayé.

“Let me be,” said Ikú. “We have traveled for miles and I am thirsty.” In one large draft, she emptied the gourd. While Arayé glared at Ikú furiously, Ano smelled the blood that was in the second gourd, and before Arayé could see what Ano was doing, she picked it up and drank it down. Some of the congealed goat’s blood dripped down her chin and stained her gown; she didn’t care. Ofo and Iñá saw the remaining two gourds, and when Arayé heard Ano give a huge belch from drinking the blood too quickly, she turned just in time to see Iñá drinking the jícara of fresh, cool water and Ofo lapping at the one that held the red palm oil. Arayé realized that she, too, was thirsty, and she reached for Ano’s gourd—it was empty. Lunacy, infecting all five osogbos, was unable to control the power they had—it was too much for her. Arayé, overwhelmed with madness and thirst, trembled with anger as she realized that none of her siblings had left her anything to refresh herself with.

It was then that she saw the final gourd with a cudgel thrust through it.

“Greedy, ungrateful idiots!” she screamed. “You are all so selfish. Did you not think that I, too, might be thirsty after our long journey?” With both hands she grabbed the cudgel and pulled it from the earth. “Maybe I should drink your blood instead!”

Lunacy could not stop what was about to happen, nor did she care to stop it, because madness cares not who suffers its wrath. Those in her grasp, the lunatics, only care that others suffer, and they destroy, leaving misery and anguish in their wake. Arayé broke that night, and since she was the only one with a weapon, the four osogbos, Ikú, Ano, Ofo, and Iñá, were powerless as she bore down on them like an angry beast. When she was done, she crouched on the earth like a leopard and began lapping their blood from the earth. And when her thirst was sated, she stood, holding her cudgel high, prepared to destroy the town with her own ashé.

But none of the osogbos noticed that standing by the town’s gates was Elegguá. He stood alone, and alone he watched. Elegguá watched Arayé as she took down her brothers and sisters one by one with her own angry hands. He applauded as he told her, “That was a job well done, Lunacy—you infected your aunt, Aro, and you made your own mother, Ano, sick. You even caught Ikú in your madness and forced Arayé to do what no one else has ever done: you killed death. And you, Arayé, were quite the willing hostess to your niece. I thought you were smarter than that. But now you need to leave. Neither of you have any power here.”

“But power is all I have!” It was Lunacy herself who screamed with Arayé’s voice, and she lifted the cudgel high, shaking it at the heavens. “I am Lunacy and I am Arayé; I am madness and I am the soul of all things wicked, and I feed on the wickedness living in every human heart. My power is supreme, and I will kill everyone, starting with this town!”

“There can be no death without Ikú,” said Elegguá. “There can be no sickness without Ano, no loss without Ofo, no war without Iñá.” Elegguá crossed his arms over his chest, smiling. “Without your siblings, you are wicked and you are crazy, but, more dangerous still—you are making me crazy! With just my bare hands I can rip you to shreds, and without Ikú, you can never die. So I can do it over and over and over again.”

Arayé froze; the madness lifted as Lunacy realized her defeat. Still, Arayé held her ground.

“Take just one more step toward this gate,” said Elegguá, “and you will discover how powerless you are before me. For I am Elegguá, and I will make you wish you were dead!”

Arayé dropped her cudgel and fled. Like the wind, she ripped through the forest, and the town was safe.

Elegguá blew his breath on the blood and flesh remaining on the earth. It bubbled, and soon it boiled, and from the gore rose four hideous forms: Ikú, Ano, Ofo, and Iñá. “Once you were all beautiful,” said Elegguá, “once you were all seductive, but now you are repulsive. You have Ano’s child, Lunacy, and your sister, Arayé, to thank for that.”

They wailed, a collective cry so depraved that even Elegguá covered his ears, and then they were gone. Elegguá knew—he just knew—that they were searching for Arayé and Lunacy, and he knew that never again would they let themselves be fooled into working together again.

“Are we safe?” the youngest olorisha asked his brother. “That cry—it was so evil.”

The old man had risen from his bed when the second cry shook the earth. Weary, he walked into his orishas’ room, where his two students sat huddled together on their mats and sat on the floor. “We are safe,” said the old man. “Our ebó worked. There is still osogbo in the world, but for now it is not coming for us. I can feel them running after one another.”

Exhausted, the three of them lay on the mats and slept.

Ikú, Ano, Ofo, and Iñá spread out through the night, not trusting one another, but all four looking to destroy their sister, Arayé, and Lunacy, one of Ano’s own children. Even now they seek revenge. And whenever any misfortune plots against us, we consult with the orishas, and they, in their wisdom, teach us how to overcome the osogbos that rise against us.