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Ọmọbirin Ọ̀sun, darí mi, s’amọna mi — Daughters of Osun, guide me

She sat across from him with a dry smile. They were at the restaurant’s corner, her eyes facing the exit. It was something she liked doing. She always sat facing the door where people came in and went out. She found it refreshing seeing the movement of people in and out, something she reckoned had more to do with how she understood the passing of souls through lifetimes. It was her inheritance from her deceased mother.

“So, do you actually believe in any of it?” The man’s voice broke into Zhay’s thoughts. She adjusted in her seat and smiled. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

“I was asking about the whole daughter of Osun thing in your bio.” He repeated and sipped the smoothie in front of him. 

She smiled wryly. 

“Yes, I believe in it.”

“Hmm, you don’t strike me as the pagan type though.” 

Zhay forced a smile again. “Maybe, because I’m not pagan.”

“But you worship Osun, isn’t that paganism.”

“No,” Zhay returned with a smile, “that’s what you define it as, not what it is.”

The clean-shaven, bespectacled man managed a smile that peered kindly through his glass frames. It was a warm smile of surrender to her logic. He had kind eyes and the wrinkles that creased on the corner of his eyes gave him a slightly older look. Zhay recalled that his smile had been the first thing that drew her to his profile. His smile was beautiful but his soul—

She usually only ever used the Bumble app to connect. It was perfect for how much anonymity it permitted, and she harnessed and perfected her soul-reading skills with it. Also, the limited swipes made it harder for her to get carried away with the thrill. Soul-reading was draining. She wasn’t too much a fan of online dating but thanks to her kind of work, it was the perfect pool to get clients. It felt exciting and sometimes scary how her skill made it easy to peer into another person’s soul through their photograph. 

“Your grandma, Iya Abike, taught me,” she remembered her mother had explained. “Soul-reading through pictures wasn’t even a thing until Iya Abike experimented with the transference of the palm reading incantation and tweaked and added more invasive manipulations to the spell.”

Zhay’s mother called her mother, Iya Abike. Abike was Zhay’s mother’s elder sister’s name. She was the firstborn and for some reason, the gift of Osun divinity skipped her and fell to her little sister. 

“So do you practice witchcraft and stuff?” The man asked, his voice misted in intrigue and mockery, bringing Zhay back from her wandering thoughts. 

She managed a mirthless smile. 

“I don’t practice witchcraft because I am not a witch.”

“Hmph.”

Zhay sighed. She hated how it often fell on her to educate people on what it meant to be a daughter of Osun, but she did her best to bear the burden.

“It’s a common misconception. Osun is a river goddess, and the daughters of Osun are goddesses and not witches.”

“Oh, I see. My bad.” He smiled and then took another sip of his smoothie. 

Zhay returned to the door when a couple with their young daughter stepped in. The little girl was dressed in a flowery gown and walked behind her father. She suddenly tripped and fell. She’s hoisted up almost immediately by her father who tried to console her, but it doesn’t stop the little girl’s pained wailing from echoing through the restaurant. Something about that moment felt comforting. 

“Does it hurt?” 

Zhay’s thoughts once again drifted to a memory of her mother.

“No, it just stings a little unless you find a dark soul and linger on too much.” 

Her mother was bent down in front of their little garden at the back of the house, plucking some herbs. Zhay never fancied learning about herbs. Her mother’s garden was surrounded by a ring of copper wire around it like a makeshift fence. 

“Why do we do it?”

“How do you mean?”

“Like I mean, why do we soul-read?”

“To help.” Her mother smiled. 

She could tell her mother had more to say but didn’t want to. 

“To help in what way?”

Her mother turned to her. “Contrary to what you may have seen in movies, a person doesn’t just have one soul. They have souls all tied throughout their past lives. Reading someone’s soul is like reading someone’s palms. Only deeper. When we read someone’s soul, we see through their past lives and souls; the good and the bad, and we can help them find peace or in extreme cases, help them—”

Her mother paused at those words. Zhay remembered waiting patiently for the conclusion, but it never came. There had been a knock on the front door and her mother’s attention was drawn to it. 

“Why is this order taking so long?” Zhay’s companion at the restaurant asked impatiently to no one in particular, jolting her back to the present. 

Daughters of Osun, guide me.

He looked at Zhay and smiled. “So, away from being the daughter of a goddess,” Zhay could sense the mockery in his tone and smirked. “Are there other cool things about you that I should know about?”

Zhay smiled. That line of questioning took her back to her first chat with him when he had typed, “I’m curious why you swiped right on my profile?”

She remembered smiling through the pain that had enveloped her body after she soul-read him.

“I mean,” he continued typing, “my bio just says here to have fun, and I meant that.”

Zhay winced, stretching her body to ease the weariness in her joints.

“Are you down to have fun?” He typed again and added a smirking emoji. 

She forced a smile and typed back. 

“Bring it on.”

“Oh, they finally brought it,” the man gasped excitedly. Their meal had arrived. 

Zhay smiled, shaking off the clouds of her rumination. 

“Only two things give me such unbridled joy,” the man said with a mouthful of Jollof rice, a wide grin curved his lips. 

Zhay’s eyes were once more drawn to how charming his smile was. 

“Food and—” the man continued, pausing for dramatic effect. He looked up at her with a mischievous smirk and winked.

She didn’t bother to ask what the other thing was. He didn’t elect to mention it. She knew.

Daughter of Osun, guide me. 

Zhay feigned a smile. 

***

Zhay washed the bloody dagger inside the bathroom sink with her hair dishevelled. She winced when she touched the corner of her busted lips. She closed her eyes for a moment, and flashes of her struggle returned to her mind. It wasn’tas easy as she had anticipated. Their arrival at his place was met with some unexpected turnouts. 

“I thought you said you lived alone?” She asked when he ushered her into his bedroom.

“Oh him, that’s just my friend, he lives some streets away and their transformer had issues, so he comes here to charge his devices.”

Zhay forced a smile. The explanation seemed suspect. She was always observant of her environment and was certain she hadn’t seen any devices being charged when she walked past the fellow in the living room, to whom he was referring. She also didn’t fail to notice the leering look he gave her when she greeted him. 

“You don’t have anything to worry about. If it bothers you, I can ask him to leave.”

Zhay shook her head. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking she was afraid. 

But she remembered being terrified the moment she raised her dagger and felt the force of a thousand hands push it down with her. The blade burrowed into the man’s neck on the bed. There was a gasp and blood splashed over her face. His body jerked in painful spasms, and she sat on top of him. She lifted the blade a second time.

Daughters of Osun, guide me.

She heard an echo reply in her head.

A wà pẹlú re. We are with you.

She let the blade fall a second time and a third and by the fifth, she collapsed on his bloodied body with exhaustion. 

The lights flickered in the bathroom bringing Zhay back to the present. She washed the blood off the knife, patted her hair, and wiped the sweat and blood off her face with water. She sniffed and wiped the tears from her eyes. She opened the bathroom door and was greeted by the gory scene. Laying sprawled on the floor was the bloodied corpse of the man’s friend. She didn’t have to read his soul. He had tried to sneak in during their tryst without asking and when she had protested, he struck her across the face, cutting her lips.

“See this ashewo,” he laughed, removing his shorts. 

At that moment Zhay had managed to crawl to her bag next to the dresser. 

“Where you dey crawl go?” He mocked and attempted to grab her legs. He was successful but not before she had reached inside her bag. She turned around when he pulled her firmly and in one fell swoop, she jammed the sharp end of her little dagger into his eyes. 

He screeched in agony, stumbled back, and fell. 

“Ah! My eye o!”

The shock stopped the other man in his tracks. He could not believe what had just happened. He knelt on the bed transfixed, watching her stand. Zhay took a deep breath and then stepped close to the screaming man clutching his bleeding eyes. 

Daughters of Osun, guide me. 

She stabbed. 

Daughter of Osun, guide me.

She stabbed again. And again, and then from behind she felt a hand grab her hair and yank her back. She screamed and swung her dagger, slicing his midsection when she stumbled to the side of the bed. He winced, grabbing his stomach. His eyes were red with murderous rage. It was the same rage she had seen in the many souls of his past lives. All the images from all the times he had hurt, and raped women came flooding back to her like the first time she soul-read him. Their pleas and cries echoed in her head. She saw it clearly; the way she saw the blood leaving his body. It terrified her. She edged back and brandished her knife. He lunged at her, but she managed to dodge and with another slice, she cut him deeper. More blood gushed out of him. He groaned in pain, staring at his blood-soaked hands before collapsing back into the bed. 

“You fucking witch!”

The jolt of adrenaline in her body sent her into feral mode. She grunted and pounced on him. He tried to fight her off, but the full weight of her body was too much for his weakened state. She pinned his arms to the side and raised the dagger. And like her mother had taught her, she recited the chant. 

“Ẹyin ọmọbìnrin Ọ̀sun, mo fi èmi to sọnù yi sínú odò yín. Ẹ tẹ́wọ́ gba wọn.  Ẹ jẹ kí ìgbésí ayé wọn tó kọjá kó máṣe padà láti ṣiṣẹ ìparun. Kí ikú wọn mú àlàáfíà—

“—what the fuck?” He cursed, splurting blood out of the corner of his mouth. 

She could see the fear in his eyes. 

“—wá fún gbogbo àwọn tí wọ́n ti ipasẹ̀ won di olùfaragbá títí láé àti láti ìrandíran. Àṣẹ.”

Daughters of Osun, I put these lost souls in your river. Let their past life not return to work destruction. May their death bring peace to all those who through their footsteps became victims forever and from generation to generation. Amen.

With trembling hands, she closed her eyes. He continued to wriggle and grunt under the weight of her body. She let the dagger drop to his neck and—

—Zhay was brought back to the present. She heard a knock at the front door of the man’s apartment. Someone must have listened to the screams, she reckoned. She had already worn her dress and opened her bag to take out a piece of white chalk. She scribbled some runes on the floor next to the corpse of the man’s friend and drew a circle around it. She stepped into the circle when she heard the knocking intensify. 

“Ẹyin ọmọbìnrin Ọ̀sun,” she chanted, “Gbé mi lọ sílé” take me home.

A bright light shone from underneath the runes and soon enveloped her in a spec of dust. She vanished. 

Zhay opened her eyes to the familiar comfort of her one-bedroom apartment. A wave of nausea hit her, and she dashed into the bathroom to throw up. She could never get used to travelling between time and space. She emptied her insides into the toilet bowl and collapsed on the floor. 

“Daughters of Osun, guide me,” she muttered under her breath. 

***

Why do they always have kind eyes? She pondered. She was about to swipe right on another Bumble profile she had just soul-read. Her hands felt sweaty. The drain of soul-reading this person took a toll on her. It had been a week since her third kill and instead of just one person she had had to kill two. She had locked herself indoors. She found comfort in her dreams. It was the one place she could meet and interact with her mother and Iya Abike. She remembered the first time she asked her mother to teach her.

“I want to learn how to soul-read.”

Her mother had smiled and shook her head.

“You’re not old enough yet.” 

Zhay was fifteen. 

“But I already saw my period and I once saw grandma in a dream.” 

Her mother laughed. “Seeing your period or seeing your grandma in a dream is not the criteria for learning this.”

“But I have the gift, you said so yourself.”

“Having the gift isn’t the same as mastering it.”

Zhay frowned. 

Her mother continued. “You need to be old enough to understand what it means to soul-read and bear the consequences of what you may see in the souls you’re reading and what actions you need to take. It’s a big responsibility and you must be of strong will and body, Omo mi. You are still a child.”

Zhay wanted to protest but knew her mother was right. Despite looking older than her age, she was aware of how naive she was to some of the things adults did. Their reasons for things baffled her. Only a child would not understand why her mother who was so powerful and independent chose to remain with her father, a drunk degenerate, who was abusive. 

Zhay had witnessed a few instances where his fist had cracked her mother’s jaw and sent her crashing to the floor. One such incident caused Zhay to dash at him and push him to the floor. She hated him and even more hated how weak she seemed to be in defending her mother.

“Mommy, why won’t you leave him?” She later asked when she was seventeen. Even then, in some ways, she was still a child.

“Omo mi,” her mother replied, “it is complicated.” 

On her eighteenth birthday, she had another dream of her grandma, Iya Abike. Iya Abike appeared to her, hovering above an ocean where its horizon blended with the skies. She’d only seen pictures of her grandma in photographs when she was older but in the dream, she looked younger. She was dressed in a white lace with a white gele. She had beads around her neck and wrists. Her eyes were bright and warm and reflected the tides of the ocean. She flashed a welcoming smile that creased the corner of her eyes as she floated toward her. 

“Ọkọ mí, my little one,” Iya Abike greeted, her voice echoing like the hollowed cave of a waterfall. 

Zhay didn’t remember moving but soon found herself encapsulated in the warm embrace of the old woman. She smelled like salt water and efo riro like the meal Zhay’s mother always made in remembrance of her. Zhay only met her grandmother when she was an infant. She passed away when Zhay turned one. 

“Ah! You’ve grown so big!” Iya Abike complimented beaming with joy.

“Eka ro ma,” Zhay genuflected, unsure if it was morning or noon in whatever plain they were in.

Iya Abike chuckled. “I know you don’t understand Yoruba like that.” 

Zhay’s face went pink with embarrassment. 

“Don’t worry, we can speak Oyinbo. Anything is possible here even though I never saw the walls of a classroom,” Iya Abike chuckled. 

Zhay smiled. 

“What bothers you, Omo mi?” Her voice was kind and gentle like the winds from the ocean. Zhay looked up at her and instantly they were seated by the beach. It was jarring the way they shifted in time and space. Even in her dreams, she had always felt the familiar pangs of nausea whenever she teleported. She looked to her side to see the reassuring smile on Iya Abike’s face.

“Nothing is wrong, Grandma,” she lied.

I am worried about my mother.

Zhay’s thoughts echoed around her. It startled her. 

Iya Abike laughed. “I forgot to tell you. In this dream plain you can’t hide your deepest thoughts.”

Zhay felt a lump in her throat. 

“You are worried about your mother. Is it because of your father?”

“Grandma, why doesn’t she just leave him?” 

“Hmm, I think your mother ought to be the one to tell you why. But I can see it bothers you and I can offer you a little clarity.”

Iya Abike leaned forward and clasped Zhay’s hand together in hers. Her hands felt soft and warm. Zhay didn’t want her to let go.

“We come from a line of divine women loyal to the orisha, Osun. Sadly, our ancestors didn’t always use their powers for good. Things only changed a few generations ago. My great-great-great grandmother ushered the great change in how we wield our powers. A bargain had to be struck. There was a price to be paid for all the evil we had wreakedbefore and the orishas reached a pact with us. Olodumare decreed that anyone in the bloodline with our gifts had to pay a cost for the entirety of their lifetime. I paid for mine. I had six male children who all died after two weeks. Your grandfather abandoned me after I gave birth to your mother, another girl. I never heard from him again. I paid my price; your mother pays hers too.”

Zhay looked on bewildered.

What is mummy’s price? 

Her thoughts echoed again. 

Iya Abike smiled. “You need to ask your mother about it. She has to prepare you for the price you will pay when it’s your time.”

“But what if I don’t want to pay the price? Do I have a choice?”

Iya Abike cleared her throat and smiled. “You always have a choice. But remember that as ọmọbìnrin Ọ̀sun, we have a duty that far outweighs our fears and hopes and dreams. Ours is a service that demands sacrifice.”

With those words, she turned around and looked toward the ocean. Zhay’s eyes followed and widened with wonder. She gasped at the view before her. From the ends of the sea, where her eyes could see, floating apparitions of allọmọbìnrin Ọ̀sun from different generations, appeared, smiling at her. Iya Abike smiled and waved at some while Zhay remained stunned to silence. A little tear escaped the corner of her eyes. Iya Abike turned to her, cupping her chin in both hands and wiping the streaming tears with her fingers. 

“You’re not alone, Ọkọ mí. Whenever you need us, just say these words Ọmọbirin Ọ̀sun, darí mi, s’amọna mi.Daughters of Osun, guide me. We will be your strength.” 

With that, Iya Abike placed a warm kiss on Zhay’s forehead and almost instantly, her eyes blinked open to birds chirping by her bedroom window. It was morning. She would later narrate her dream to her mother who listened and smiled warmly. 

“It is good to hear from the old woman, again. I guess it’s time then.” 

And indeed, it was time. 

“I can soul-read and see into the many past lives of men who have and who continue to hurt women,” her mother explained. “And I help make sure their souls never return in another life to continue the pattern.”

Zhay remembered feeling uneasy. She didn’t ask what her mother meant by “help make sure their souls never return,” and she didn’t have to. Her mother read the question in her eyes. 

“You’re wondering if I mean I kill such men, right?” She sighed. “To the untrained eyes, it is that —death. But to the trained eyes of all Ọmọbirin Ọ̀sun, it is peace to their souls.”

Zhay gulped. A question lingered in her throat and clawed at her thoughts, scratching the walls of her mind. 

“W-what—” she stuttered. “What about daddy?”

Her mother closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She opened them with tears welled up inside. She turned to her daughter. 

“He’s the price I get to pay.”

Zhay’s cheeks were already wet with tears. Her mother continued. 

“In the wisdom of the orishas, plaguing me with the reality of the women whose pain I have to live, was enough to ensure I never lose sight of why I do this.”

“So, you don’t have a choice?” Zhay’s voice was mixed with tears and anger. 

“I don’t.” Her mother replied with a smile. 

“But grandma says you always have a choice.”

“Yes, but some choices are far more important than others. And for the good of Ẹyin ọmọbìnrin Ọ̀sun, I have to stay true to this choice. You will have to do the same too,” she added.

Zhay gulped, hot tears streaming down her face. 

“And what if he kills you?” She asked later. 

Her mother went silent for a moment. Zhay could see the sadness in her eyes. The sadness was soon covered with the veil of warmth when her mother replied, “Then I’ll welcome death with open arms.”

Two years later, her mother died in a car crash, driven by her drunk father. She died on impact, and he died in the hospital a week later. Zhay never visited him. Her mother was buried next to her grandma in their old ancestral home in Ado Ekiti. It was the same spot that Zhay remembered her mother had taken her to begin the initiation process for her to join ọmọbìnrin Ọ̀sun. 

It was now four years after her mother’s death. She still saw both in her dreams and got guidance from them. But in reality, she was alone. Her father’s relatives had laid claim to all his properties after his death. She was forced to drop out of the university. She lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in the heart of Ikeja and at night, she would dress up and hit the streets of Allen Avenue for her daily hustle.

Zhay was brought back to the present when she swiped right on her phone. Her phone chimed. It was a match. She smirked. 

“Ọmọbirin Ọ̀sun, darí mi, s’amọna mi,” she muttered to herself.

She typed a message and hit the send button. She took a deep breath and lay on her bed, twirling her fingers on her chest. Her phone chimed again. She lifted it to her face and smirked. 

Daughters of Osun, guide me.