Time, when you are no longer human, becomes a strange and fluid thing, not a river that flows forward, but an ocean that folds and unfolds around you, swallowing years whole and then spitting out memories with no warning. In those early decades of my cursed existence, I wandered through the vastness of the new land with no sense of direction, no sense of belonging, and no sense of purpose beyond survival, vengeance, and the slow, painful process of understanding what I had become. I gave myself time, centuries of it, though I did not yet know how long I would endure; to learn the boundaries of my strengths and weaknesses, to test the limits of my hunger, and to understand the land upon which fate had cast me.
I did not remain in one place. I drifted along the great river the white men called the Mississippi, following its winding path through forests, marshes, and plains, listening to the stories of travelers who passed along its banks. It was from them, from overheard conversations, from stolen letters, and from whispered fears that I learned how these people kept track of the year. The year I was stolen from my homeland, the year my village burned, the year my mortal body died, was 1823, though at the time I did not yet understand the significance of numbers or calendars in this new world.
The indigenous people of the land, the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho were locked in conflict with the white man, who encroached upon their territories with the same greed and arrogance that had driven them across the ocean to steal my people. The white men wanted their lands, their rivers, their hunting grounds, their freedom. They wanted to build railroads, towns, and plantations upon soil that was not theirs. I saw echoes of Aru‑Odan in their struggle. A people fighting to preserve what the ancestors had entrusted to them.
I encountered white cavalry men on more than one occasion, men who believed themselves righteous as they planned ambushes on native villages under the cover of night. They mistook me for an escaped slave. A mistake that cost them their lives. I rid the world of them without hesitation, and when the warriors of the villages returned from their hunts, they found fields littered with the bodies of their enemies. I felt a measure of guilt for leaving such carnage for them to discover, but I learned later that the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho began to see these acts as the work of a vengeful spirit; a protector who struck down those who threatened their people. I always left quickly, never lingering long enough to disturb their lands or their customs, because unlike the white men, I had no desire to settle on soil that did not belong to me.
I may have been the living dead, but I still carried the respect of my homeland within me. The understanding that land is sacred, that ancestors dwell in the earth, that spirits walk among the trees. The names of their gods and spirits were different from those of Aru‑Odan, but their reverence for the land, their devotion to their ancestors, their understanding of the unseen world felt familiar to me. I would not taint that with my presence.
As I traveled, I kept to the forests and shadows, watching the world change in ways I could never have imagined. The enslaved men and women, my stolen brethren, became aware of my existence. Unlike the white men, the Black men and women saw me as a spirit of vengeance, a shadow of salvation, a whisper of justice. They did not speak of me aloud; fear and pain had taught them silence. They had been forced to worship the god of their oppressors, forced to abandon the gods of their ancestors, forced to bury their own identities beneath the weight of chains.
Before I continue, I must say this: not every white man or woman I encountered was cruel. There were plantations where the enslaved were not beaten, raped, or tortured. There were white families who treated their slaves with a measure of decency. But decency does not erase the sin of enslavement. Kindness does not absolve the crime of owning human bodies, of selling mothers away from their children, of tearing husbands from wives. The practice itself, the buying and selling of my brothers and sisters, was a stain that no amount of gentleness could wash away.
The most heartbreaking thing I witnessed in those years was the auction block. The sight of enslaved women being sold, separated from the children they birthed, while their husbands stood helpless, forced to watch their families torn apart. It was during one such scene, one such moment of unbearable cruelty, that I found my brother.
Forty years after the betrayal, forty years after he sold me and our people to the white men, Nalo stood on an auction block, his body broken, his spirit shattered, his face unrecognizable. I learned later, as he lay dying and begging for forgiveness, that he had forced Oyinkansola into marriage. She and a few others had survived the assault on our village. At first, none knew what Nalo had done. Not until more white men returned, demanding more slaves because the ship carrying the first group, the ship I destroyed, never reached its destination.
It did not take long for Oyinkansola to understand the truth. She had lost her brothers, her father, her mother all murdered in the raid Nalo orchestrated. She had married the man responsible for the destruction of her home, her grove, her lineage. How could any woman bear such a revelation? In her grief and fury, she gathered men and women to her cause. They rose against Nalo, removed him as king, and delivered him, bound and beaten, to the very white men he had once served.
For forty years, Nalo lived as a slave. For forty years, he was beaten, tortured, starved. For forty years, he was sold, traded, used as breeding stock. For forty years, he suffered every cruelty he had once condemned me to.
The first time I saw him on the auction block, I watched from the shadows. I did not move to help him. I did not turn away. I remained rooted to the spot, listening to Oya’s voice whispering in my mind, telling me to watch carefully, telling me that the ancestors demanded reparations for the wrong he had done, telling me that this suffering was the price of his betrayal.
Afterward, I stayed close to the plantation where he was held. I watched him endure the pain and torment he had once tried to deliver me to. I felt nothing. No satisfaction, no pity, no anger. I did only what the Orisha demanded: I watched.
When the end finally came for Nalo, I stepped out of the shadows to hear his final words. I did not know then that I could have saved him by turning him into what I was. I was still learning the boundaries of my curse. But even if I had known, I would not have done it. Nalo, no matter my love for him, had to answer for his crimes. I would not interfere with the justice the ancestors demanded.
When Nalo died, I left his body in the small, worn cabin where he drew his last breath. Unlike the men and women on the ship, I did not honor him with the rites of our homeland. Nalo no longer belonged to Aru‑Odan. His body was thrown into an unmarked grave by his white owner, discarded as if he were nothing.
I grieved my brother, not for the man he became, but for the boy he once was, the boy who ran beside me through the grove, the boy who laughed at my side, the boy my mother asked me to protect. Even now, as I speak of him, I feel nothing but regret for what could have been had he not allowed envy and jealousy to consume him.
And so, time passed, carrying me forward into a world that changed again and again, while I remained; cursed, immortal, and forever haunted by the memory of the brother I could not save.
