I wish I could tell you that when I rose from the dead, I rose with the mind, the morals, and the measured heart of Kalenji Oba’Rai, son of Aru‑Odan, heir to the sacred grove, protector of my people and keeper of my ancestors’ wisdom, but such a claim would be nothing more than a comforting lie whispered to soothe a frightened child, because the truth of what happened to me on that ship is far darker, far more violent, and far more sorrowful than anything I could have imagined in life.
There are no words in any language, not Yoruba, not Igbo, not Fon, not English, that can fully capture the nature of the thing I became that night, because I did not awaken as a man, nor as a spirit, nor even as something that belonged to the realm of the living or the dead. I awakened as hunger, as rage, as a storm given flesh, as a creature shaped by Oya’s winds and sharpened by the agony of betrayal.
When my eyes opened in the suffocating darkness of that ship, I did not see the world as I once had. I saw the sweat dripping down the beams above me, thick and heavy like the tears of the dying. I saw the trembling bodies chained beside me, their skin cracked, their breath shallow, their hope extinguished. I saw the pulse beating in every throat; a rhythmic drum calling to something primal inside me. I saw the blood beneath every bruise, glowing like embers in the dark.
And I wanted it.
I broke my chains as though they were made of straw, the iron screaming as it snapped beneath my hands. The floorboards splintered under my weight as I rose, not as Kalenji, not as a son of Aru‑Odan, but as a creature born from the storm Oya had placed inside me. I tore through the ship with a ferocity that belonged to no human being, driven only by hunger, vengeance, and the overwhelming need to destroy the men who had stolen us from our homeland.
I ripped open the bodies of our oppressors, drinking their lives until their limbs fell limp and empty. I did not think. I did not reason. I did not feel. I only fed, because feeding was the only thing that quieted the storm inside me.
And yet, even in that monstrous state, even with my mind drowned beneath thirst and rage, I did not turn on my brothers and sisters trapped below deck. Some small part of me, fragile and flickering like the last flame of a dying lantern, still recognized them as my blood, still remembered their laughter, still remembered their names whispered in the grove.
But I could not save them.
Their bodies were too broken, too weakened, too ravaged by disease and cruelty. Even when I shattered their chains, they begged me, begged me, to end their suffering in honor of the old ways. They asked me to send them home, not in flesh, but in spirit.
So, I honored them.
I killed them gently, quickly, whispering prayers over their bodies as their souls slipped free. I prayed that the Makhosi would guide them across the ocean, even though the Makhosi had abandoned me. I prayed that the ancestors would welcome them, even though I knew I would never again walk in their presence.
When the ship reached the shores of what the white men called the colonies, I set it aflame. I stood on the sand and watched the fire devour the vessel that had carried so much suffering, hoping that the smoke rising into the sky would carry the spirits of my brothers and sisters back to our motherland, back to the soil in which they had been born to, back to the ancestors who loved and awaited them.
As for me, I stood alone in a land I did not know, with no hope in myself or my future, cursed to wander, damned by the gods, and severed from the path of my ancestors. For a time, the hunger was quiet, and for a time, the thirst for vengeance was satisfied, but vengeance is a river that never stops flowing, and mine had only begun its course.
You wonder about Nalo, how I could make him face the consequences of his betrayal if I was far from our homeland, far from the grove, far from the place where justice should have been delivered. I will meet Nalo again, not as brothers, not as enemies, but as two men shaped by the same wound. The Makhosi and the Orisha do not forget betrayal, and they do not forgive easily, and they made him pay in ways I could never have imagined.
But I will not dwell on that now, because there is much that happened in those early years that shaped the creature I became.
You want to know how I handled being an obayifo, a vampire, if you prefer the modern word and the answer is simple: I handled it poorly. In the first days, I tried to deny my nature, foolishly clinging to the remnants of my humanity. I hid in the forests of the new land, avoiding the white men who lived in the colonies, not because I feared them, but because I did not want to be mistaken for one of the enslaved, not because I thought myself above them, but because I knew the danger it would bring upon them.
The few white men I encountered in the wild I rid the world of them. Never on their plantations, because I would not risk their deaths being blamed on the enslaved. Let their families believe they were taken by animals or misfortune. The enslaved suffered enough without my shadow adding to their burden.
You wonder why I did not free them, why I did not tear down the plantations and liberate every soul, and the answer is painful. Most of those enslaved were not of my homeland. They had been stripped of identity, culture, names, language. Many would have fled from me, seeing only a demon, not a brother. Some had been born into bondage, raised to believe servitude was life. Others held hope for freedom, yes, but hope is not the same as readiness.
I helped them in secret when I could. I provided them food, protection, a quiet death for their abusers, but I kept to the forest, learning the boundaries of the curse Oya had placed upon me.
Unlike the nonsense shown on television today, I had no issue with sunlight. Garlic was merely a foul smell. Crosses meant nothing. Churches and the cross those slavers prayed to did not affect me. I slept during the day only to preserve strength for the hunt. The thirst was relentless in those early years, but with time I learned restraint, not mercy, restraint.
I had no mercy for white slave owners, nor their spouses, but the children… the children I never touched. They were innocent, raised more by enslaved women than their own parents. Those women loved them in place of the children they were forced to give up. I would not harm what little love existed in that cruel world.
A few times, I encountered the indigenous people of the land. They kept their distance. They knew me as Tlahuelpuchi, a shapeshifting, blood‑feeding witch. We respected each other. We shared a common enemy. So, they left me alone.
That is how I lived for many years, a shadow in the forest, a storm without a sky, a creature learning the boundaries of his curse.
And that… was only the beginning.
