Deep in the bowels of the ship, I lay chained upon the floorboards like an animal; wrists bound, ankles shackled, my body connected to dozens of my brothers and sisters by iron links that clattered whenever someone shifted or cried out. The wood beneath us was slick with sweat, blood, and filth. The air was thick, unmoving, suffocating. Every breath tasted of rot.
Some of the captives were from Aru‑Odan, but many were strangers. Many men and women taken from villages scattered across the western coast. Different tribes, different tongues, different customs… yet all of us shared the same blood. The same land. The same ancestors. We were Africa’s children, stolen from her arms.
How my heart hurt to see so many of us beaten and broken upon that ship. Covered in dirt, bruises, and human refuse. Treated as though we were worth nothing but the flesh these white men intended to sell.
We were not seen as human in their eyes. We were cargo. We were profit. We were bodies to be bartered.
I cannot tell you how long we remained on that ship. Time dissolved into suffering. Days blurred into nights, nights into nightmares. The only markers of time were the screams, the beatings, and the bodies that grew cold beside us. We were starved, beaten, and slowly dying from diseases none of us had ever known. The air itself seemed poisoned.
As my brothers and sisters passed, I shed tears for them, but inwardly, I celebrated the end of their suffering. Though taken far from our homeland and the fields where they once walked with their ancestors, they were no longer bound to a fate of pain and servitude. Their spirits were free, even if their bodies were not.
But what hurt me most as I lay dying was not anger toward Nalo. Not the death of my future. Not even the cruelty of the white men.
My anguish lay in the silence.
I could no longer hear the voices of the Makhosi.
The sacred grove, the breath of my ancestors, the place where I had always felt their presence, was gone from me. Severed. Silent. Even now, in this immortal body, I no longer feel or hear them. I have been cut off from the path of my ancestors. That loss was a wound deeper than any chain could inflict.
For many days and nights upon that ship, I prayed to the Orisha. Not for myself. Not in anger. Not for vengeance.
I prayed for deliverance for my brothers and sisters. I prayed for their forgiveness, for not being able to free them from their torment. I prayed over their spirits as they died one by one around me, so their souls could find their way home to walk with the ancestors.
It was only when I lay dying myself, fevered, weak, drifting between worlds, that my thoughts turned to Nalo. To what he had cost our village. To the death of my father, who had been a good man. A just king. A flawed man, yes, but one who did not deserve such an end.
I thought of my mother. Her gentle hands, her quiet wisdom, her final request that I watch over my brother. I had failed her. I had failed them both. Far from home, far from the grove, I feared I would never join them. That if I died on that ship, I would wander the afterlife alone, without my family to greet me.
It was then that an overwhelming anger, deeper than anything I had ever felt, gave me the last bit of strength to pray for myself.
Not for life. Not for mercy.
For strength.
Strength to rise. Strength to return. Strength to make Nalo face the consequences of his treachery.
In my delirium, I recall looking up and seeing a woman unlike any other. Her form shimmered like heat rising from the earth. Her eyes were storms. Her hair was wind. Her presence was death and rebirth intertwined.
I knew her instantly.
Oya. Goddess of winds and storms. Embodying transformation and change.
I reached for her with the last of my strength and prayed in my native tongue:
“Oya, iya mi, fun mi ni agbára. Fun mi ni ìfẹ́sẹ̀mulẹ̀. Má jẹ kí ẹ̀mí mi parun ní ibi yìí. Jẹ kí n dìde. Jẹ kí n padà. Jẹ kí n koju arákùnrin mi.”
Oya, my mother, grant me strength. Grant me resolve. Do not let my spirit perish here. Let me rise. Let me return. Let me face my brother.
I prayed not for life. I prayed for strength.
I cannot explain in full detail what happened next. I can only say that I remember dying.
My body died, breath stilled, heart quiet, flesh cold. But after a moment, something inward began to consume me. A fire without flame. A hunger without mouth. A storm without wind.
I heard Oya’s voice deep within my mind.
She told me she would grant my desire, but at a cost.
I would no longer be Kalenji Oba’Rai of Aru‑Odan. I would no longer be human. I would no longer walk the path of my ancestors.
That night upon that ship, by Oya’s will, I became what you see before you now.
Not a man. Not a ghost. Not a monster.
Something older. Something sacred. Something cursed.
Something reborn.
