Sipu’s Grove

In those days, if a bird flew over Emuhaya it would not be long before they came upon the impressive canopy of the mystical Nganyi Forest. The forest, being the home of the First Rainmaker who gave to her descendants and the other inhabitants of the forest the sacred science of making rain, held supernatural power; it drew and was home to many spirits-worldly and otherwise.

If a bird kept flying over the verdant canopy, they would come upon a suspiciously meticulous grove of mammoth black mulberry trees that stood in the middle of the mystical forest in a hard to explain symmetrical way. On some days, while flying over these mulberry trees, the bird would see a pair of multicoloured giant wings shimmering against the canopy; the wings, which covered the ethereal form of the hermit-like Moon Moth spirit, Sipu, were bejeweled with nine eyes – two in each top wing that when opened, looked down at the earth, two in each bottom wing that looked up at the skies and one at the center, where that seemed to be the point from which Sipu’s wings sprouted that could look into the higher heavens.   Sipu would, every now and again, lie face down on the canopy, wings wrapped around themselves to sleep or spread out with the four top eyes turned down to watch over the delicate creatures that made their home in the grove Sipu built for them.

Sipu rarely opened the eyes of their bottom wings because there was nothing to fear from the skies. The skies, in those days, belonged to the celestial gods Kumwesi, Neniesi and Enyanga, the birds and the spirits who rode on the wind;the earthly gods, with their mayhem, intrigue and chaos made their homes in the mountains. And so, Sipu only ever opened the eyes in their bottom wings to look into the sky on the night of the full moon.

It is Sipu, who raised the black mulberry trees to  their gargantuan height for the nourishment of the delicate creatures who had been given that home by the moon goddess, Kumwesi.

No one alive could remember when Sipu established the grove of black mulberry trees in Nganyi. Those living just believed it had always been there. A grove with trees three times as tall and two times as wide as other mulberry trees, whose leaves were food for the larvae that blossomed into the mouthless, multi-winged green and bright yellow moths that lived to beget beauty then die soon after to begin the cycle again.

The two tallest mulberry trees stood even higher at the opening of the grove and if you stood far enough, they seemed to bend to one another to form what was the entrance to Sipu’s grove. Even so, no one dared to enter the grove. It was well known that Sipu was a notorious misanthrope who did not shy away from shooing meddlesome, curious humans from the grove by any means necessary.

In all truth, it was more the legend of Sipu that kept people away from the grove more than anything else. By any standards, a bipedal humanoid with wings that had eyes in them would befuddle even the most open-minded human being. It was believed that the moon was Sipu’s first home, where they were born…if they were born. Those who knew better opined that Sipu was an ever-changing shape-shifting spirit who, enamoured by the beauty of Kumwesi’s children, imitated their form and the form of the children of the First Rainmaker and then took it upon themselves to be the custodian of the beautiful creatures whose sole purpose was to be beautiful and to beget beauty.

Sipu’s skin was the colour of the dark clay. Their large eyes were yellow, the colour of the wings of their favourite moon moth. A large nose, full lips and a gap between their teeth-Sipu was a thing to behold, the embodied manifestation of spirit.

If anyone who Sipu scared off had ever stuck around to see their cheeky chuckle as the terrified humans took off in fear, they would witness a softening of Sipu’s face that revealed their true nature. Human beings, though, when faced with things they could not understand responded either in anger or in fear and Sipu worked hard to make sure that they inspired fear.

It worked for centuries, inspiring bedtime stories intended to instill the fear of the gods in mischievous children who would otherwise let their curiosity lead them to seek out the spirits of the forest. It worked to inspire travelers to take the long way around the forest rather than walk through the centre.

 

It worked every single time except for one time.

It worked every single night except for that night.

It worked on every single person except Tundi.

#

 

“Can you ogre-brained mad boys unhand me?!?” Tundi shouted as she struggled against the strong hands that held her.

“Of course we can,” said the one who had his hands around her legs.

The two unnecessarily bulky, big-headed men she was addressing looked at her, then looked at each other before they laughed and together let her go so that she fell onto the floor of the hut. They then stomped their heavy selves inelegantly out of the red-clay hut, shaking their heads in laughter.

“You foolish boys! I better not catch you!”

Tundi, frustrated by her predicament, pushed against the sisal ropes that bound her soft hands and feet on the dusty floor where they had set her down.

Five days.

It had been five risings of the sun and five settings of the same since Tundi was taken from her home.

The practice was not a strange one, some women even welcomed it, lingering around the river, dilly dallying on the walk back, hanging around on the path in the dead of night hoping to be taken by a husband, snatched up and taken to the gods know where to be the wife of the gods know who. Perhaps these women were in on it and expected it. No one ever asked.

Most women hated it. Now, after being thrown about like a sack of dried millet being stowed away in a granary after harvest, Tundi was firmly in the camp of women who hated it.

She had been on her way back from Nundanyi, the medicine woman, who had given her something she said would help Mayi sleep. Ever since Baba died, all she did was wail and cry, stare out into nothing and then wail and cry some more.

Some days, Mayi would pray for Baba’s soul in the afterlife. Over and over and over…

              Luyali lwa Wasio,

              kumoyo kwa Wasio,

              kuronye wa papa Wele.

Mayi and Baba had been through fifty planting seasons together, and Tundi worried her mother would not have the courage to meet the next one without her companion. Tundi, hoping her mother would find a reason to live without Baba if she let sleep take off some of the edge of her acute sorrow, went to Nundanyi for a sleeping draught.

She should have known better than to go to Nundanyi’s hut by the river alone. But her only thought that day was to ease her mother’s pain. Did her mother realise Tundi was gone? Did she think Tundi had abandoned her?

In distress, Tundi rolled over to the wall nearest to the entrance and pushed herself against it until she was sitting up and could lean her head to look outside at the commotion. To her irritation, it seemed as though there would be a wedding that day and she surmised that the wedding would be hers.

Pots were over the fire, and she could smell the sweet potatoes boiling, no doubt in preparation for pounding with beans to make mshenye, the delicacy often prepared for celebrations. The savoury aroma of chicken as it boiled filled the air as it released its succulent fat into the broth. There were even goats being led to slaughter.

Tundi’s eyes narrowed as she looked over the busyness of what seemed to be quite the formidable homestead.

Had these people begun boiling sweet potatoes before she even got here?

There was nothing Tundi hated more than being the last to know things.

Being the last to know about her own marriage to whoever this apparently wealthy man seemed to be? She hated that the most.

She had no time to get married. Her mother needed her.

“Ei!! Mayi!” Tundi shouted to a svelte woman who was transferring steaming sweet potatoes into a mortar for pounding.

She did not respond.

Tundi called her again.

“Mayi!!”

The woman turned from what she was doing and placed a hand on her waist before responding, “Is it me you are calling “mother” like that? Do I look like a mother to you?”

“Tsss! Would you have preferred if I called you chicken?”

Tundi did not allow her to respond before she went on, “So, am I also here to be slaughtered seeing that I have been tied up like all the poor goats in this compound? Am I also for a stew? Are you the man-eating people we have been hearing about?”

The woman stared at Tundi curiously for a bit before she threw her head back in laughter.

By the time she was done, she was wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand as she said,

“Ah! A-ah. I think I will like you just fine. And you can call me Imali-stop that ‘Mayi’ business.”

Imali turned back to her task but kept speaking to Tundi, “It is my stupid brothers who have left you tied up like that.” She dropped another batch of steaming sweet potato into the mortar and picked up the pestle to begin pounding. “They struggle to put together even half a thought on a good day. Tell me, though, why so sour for a bride?”

Imali picked up a bowl of beans from a low stool next to her and dumped them in with the potatoes.

Tundi ignored the question and asked another one of her own instead.

“Speaking of being a bride, who am I to marry?”

Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! Imali brought down the large pestle in a steady rhythm that showed exactly why she had been responsible for the mshenye for many celebrations.

“Listen to this girl!”

Ta! Ta!

“‘To marry’,” Imali stopped pounding and leaned against the pestle with an amused chuckle. “You, my friend, are to be married. It is important you get that right.”

“Who am I to be married to?” Tundi asked, rolling her eyes as far as they would go.

Imali went back to pounding and a shadow came over her face.

“My Baba.”

“Your-your Baba???? How can I marry your father please? Are we not of the same age set?!”

“First, you were calling me “Mayi!” Now, we are from the same age set. Can you decide?”

“Please answer my question Imali,” Tundi asked again, worry finally leaching into her voice. “What do you mean I am to be married by your father? If he has children who are clearly of age he must be-”

“Old?”

“Well, yes!”

“My Baba is quite old. He is also quite lascivious even for his age. He has been known to take a wife even when it is not wedding season. I truly do not understand it. You will be his eighth wife.”

“Eighth??”

“Yes… I am quite tired of pounding sweet potatoes,” Imali said exasperatedly, letting go of the pestle, pushing aside the now empty clay bowl and setting herself down on the low stool. “How many wives does a man need, really?”

“And is your mother unbothered by your father’s behaviour?”

“My mother got a message to her people to return my father’s cows when he announced his fifth wife,” Imali laughed like she was remembering something funny. “ The next morning my father woke up to find my mother gone and the heavy stench of cow droppings in his sleeping chambers.”

Tundi laughed a little at that.

“Did she take you with her?”

The smile on Imali’s face died, “ She could not, the clan would not let her.”

Ta! Ta! Ta! Ta! 

Imali had picked the pestle back up again.

Tundi scrambled to lean more of herself out of the entrance, lying on her stomach to look up at Imali who was now closer to her; she needed to keep talking to this woman.

“Help me get out of here, Imali. Please, I…”

TA! 

Imali stopped and fixed Tundi with a look that said what she was suggesting was completely out of the question.

But Tundi was determined and continued her desperate supplication.

“Please, Imali. I can tell that if it were not for this unfortunate situation, we could be great friends. I just want to go home to my mother, we just lost my father, it has not even been one cycle of the moon, and I…”

Tundi’s voice broke as she tried to speak about her father. She cleared her throat and continued.

“Please. I am all she has now. I need to go back home.”

“Do you not have sisters or brothers?”

“I am all she has, Imali. Help me get away from here.”

Imali looked down at the woman’s round face peeking out of the hut entrance. The wide brown eyes, now filling up with anguished tears.

Imali looked away.

“Say, what is your name, friend?”

“Oh, I am called Tundi. Khatundi is the name I was given, but my mother calls me Tundi. So Tundi is my name.”

“Well, Tundi, can I ask…do you…have you ever wanted to be someone’s wife?”

Tundi looked up at Imali confusedly, tears now running down her face as she shook her head, “It is not something I have considered. I have always just known that I would care for my parents until the end of their lives like they cared for me, then go on with mine. I like to think I would have found my own path. So, no, I have never wanted to ‘be married’.”

Imali left the now overpounded mshenye and sat back down on the stool.

“I never wanted to be married either.”

“But…”

“…but I was married off nonetheless.”

“But I thought you said you are not a mother.”

Imali laughed bitterly. “Alas, dear Tundi! I am not. It is why he sent me back…apparently, I am no good if I cannot do that one thing. Now I am here pounding batch after batch of mshenye every wedding season for my father’s latest bride.”

“Imali, I…”

“Eh, wait first.” Imali interrupted Tundi. She reached for a knife and squatted to cut through the sisal ropes at Tundi’s wrists and then handed her the knife. Tundi took it and looked at Imali curiously, “You feel safe handing me this knife.”

“Great friends, eh?”

At that, Tundi smiled and reached down to cut through the ropes at her ankles. She sat up and moved outside the hut to lean against the wall facing Imali and handed her back the knife.

“Keep it. It seems you will need it.”

It took a moment, but Tundi realised what Imali meant and with relief, she closed her eyes and breathed a heavy breath.

“Now, you will need to listen very carefully.”

So Tundi opened her eyes to hear Imali properly.

Imali began by saying that wedding ceremonies among her people were conducted at sunset in the shrine that stood at the entrance to the sacred forest, Nganyi. At first, Tundi thought Imali strange for speaking about the forest as though it were alive. “Ask Nganyi to do this…tell Nganyi you need that…she will protect you.”

“She?”

“Yes, Tundi. I need you to remember this, we are running out of time. They are about to come to take you to the shrine. Pay attention.”

Imali told Tundi that the forest was home to supernatural spirits and creatures and the spirit of the forest, Nganyi, was always willing to help a forest traveler in need.

“How will she know I am in need, Imali?”

“Do not worry yourself about that, dear Tundi, Nganyi will know.”

#

 

Sipu was lying face down on the canopy, wings spread out, watching over the grove when they heard the pounding of feet against the forest floor coming towards the grove.

Who would dare move through the forest so indelicately?

As the hectic, frantic footsteps got closer and closer to the grove, Sipu picked up the current under their wings and began to fly down, ready to accost whichever harebrained idiot decided to satisfy their curiosity. No one ever came to the grove at night.

As Sipu’s feet touched the ground,a stocky but diminutive woman, well, diminutive compared to Sipu, ran into them crushing Sipu’s feet with her own.

“Akh! Where do you think you are going?”

“Oh. Thank goodness! Are you Nganyi? Imali told me that I could find you-are those wings?? With EYES??” The woman began to look curiously at Sipu, tilting her head this way and that as she stared at them.

Sipu’s eyes widened as the little human reached out and placed both of what turned out to be very soft hands on their top right wing. Her hands were so soft. The softest hands Sipu had ever felt. Sipu would not know; they had never been touched by anyone else before. Out of nowhere, Sipu found themselves wondering if her feet were soft too. Sipu looked at the woman who stood before them in the moonlight and thought she was shaped a bit like a gourd, but she looked softer somehow. How could someone look so sturdy and feel so soft? Everything on her body curved softly; her chin, her cheeks, her ears, her shoulders…like she had been made with ease. Her skin was also the oddest brown-red, smooth like a well-hewn pot.

Sipu looked back at her face and her eyes, which were a bright shade of brown, the kind that looked almost gold in the sunlight. Sipu liked the colour of her eyes. These eyes were also framed with lashes that reminded them of the cows that were sometimes grazing in the pasture outside the forest. Her lashes made her eyes seem like they had wings.

Was it right to think a person had eyes like a cow? Sipu thought. Sipu had never wanted hair but looking at the woman’s eyelashes, they wondered if maybe they should…

Sipu was pulled out of their wondering when they felt soft fingers trying to poke at the eyes in their wings.

“Stop that,” Sipu said, and abruptly snapped their wings closed behind their back.

“Oh!” came the surprised little scream as the woman startled and jumped back from the sudden gush of wind Sipu’s massive wings created.

“How would you feel if I started poking at your eyes, woman?” Sipu looked down at the woman with the round face in irritation.

The woman seemed to have gotten lost in thought, but she at least had the sense to look chastised. Sipu watched as she looked down at her hands in amazement, “I did not mean to do that. Forgive me.”

Sipu also took a step back.

“How do your wings do that?”

She was looking down at her hands, turning her palms in and out, watching them shine from the shimmering moth scales that now covered her palms.

Sipu, taken aback by a question they had never had to answer, remained silent.

“How do your wings shine like that, creature?”

“Sipu.”

“Sipu?”

“You called me creature, which I am not, I am spirit, and my name is Sipu.”

“Fine, then. Sipu the Spirit…”

“Sipu.”

“Sipu, how do your wings do that?”

“I made them that way.”

“Made?”

Sipu could tell they would be talking in circles if they did not find a way to send this woman on her way. “Where are you going?”

“I need help getting back home.”

“This is a strange place to look for directions, traveler.”

“Tundi”

“Tundi?”

“I am called Tundi.”

“Well, Tundi. This is not your home,”Sipu said, crossing their arms and leaning against one of the mulberry trees at the entrance of the grove looking at Tundi expectantly. Sipu could not recall ever having spoken to a human being for this long and something about this one made Sipu stand there waiting for a response.

“I know that. You think I think this is my home? Where is my mother? Is she here? No! She is not…so I know I am not home.”

As Tundi spoke, words spilled out of her as she told Sipu about being captured by ogres, then something else about being tied up like a sack. It was all so confusing. Were there ogres in Nganyi?

When she began to speak about her mother needing her because her father had not even been dead long before she was taken, her eyes began to shine brightly. And that brightness transformed into water that came from her eyes and ran down her face. Did she know her eyes were doing that?

Sipu quickly stood up straight and uncrossed their hands, but then did not know what to do with those hands when they realised the woman’s face was wet. Sipu had never seen eyes shed water. Sipu knew that sometimes that could happen, but they had never seen it happen.

Crying.

Just like Tundi had done with Sipu’s wing, Sipu reached out and touched Tundi’s wet cheeks with both their hands and asked softly,

“How do your eyes do that?”

“Oh, I did not realise I was crying.”

Tundi started to reach up to touch her face, so Sipu removed their hands from Tundi’s face and stepped back, leaving shimmering tracks of silver where Sipu had touched her face. Curiously, Sipu continued to stare at Tundi’s eyes-they were brown, and they shined with something that burdened Sipu’s naturally light heart with weight.

“Why are your eyes crying, Tundi? Is it not a happy thing to be heading home?”

“Am I heading home?” she asked, sounding sorrowful.

“Answer my question first. Why are you crying?”

“My heart is in pain.”

Sipu put a hand over their chest that had begun to ache watching Tundi cry. Sipu, by keeping away from people, had not learned that it can be pain to see someone in pain. Wanting to stop Tundi’s crying, and the unfamiliar aching of their own heart, Sipu had the idea of distracting her by showing her something no human eye had ever seen.

“Would you like to come in?”

“In where?”

“To my home, of course.”

On any other night, Sipu would have never offered.

And Tundi, being inexplicably drawn to Sipu by a pull she could not shake said,

“I would like to come in.”

#

 

Tundi was eating the giant black mulberries Sipu had placed in her lap in their first act of hospitality towards a human being. Sipu, being a spirit, did not eat, they had no need for food; the moon moths, being of spirit themselves, fed on mulberry leaves in their infant form to burst out of their cocoons mouthless, to give life then pass on into the spirit realm after seven days in the land of the human-living. The mulberries were often left for the birds except for today, when Sipu had Tundi to feed.

Tundi had stopped crying, and she and Sipu sat together, legs crossed, facing one another, in the middle of the grove. They were surrounded by the circular wall of Sipu’s giant mulberry trees whose canopy above the grove was a leafy ceiling that seemed to touch the heavens and let the rays of moonlight in through the spaces made by the leaves in the canopy. Lining the thick branches that protruded from the thick tree trunks, cocoons of delicate silver and white silk, of varying sizes, hung in threes like trios of frozen raindrops, and when the light of the moon peeking through the canopy touched the fine string of the cocoons, they would sparkle like gems.

The grove smelled sweet and earthy from the combined fragrance of ripened mulberries and the slightly damp moss that they sat on. And the only sound inside the grove was the gentle fluttering of wings every now and then.

Sipu sat there watching Tundi eat. Wondering why she still seemed sad even though she was no longer in tears. It was this thought that Tundi interrupted when she asked,

“Sipu, do you have a mother?”

Sipu uncrossed their legs and spread their wings, hands behind their head to lie on their back, looking into the night sky.

“I do not know, Tundi. Or maybe, I do not remember?”

“Do not remember. How do you forget your mother?”

“You have to understand, I have been here longer than even I know, it is possible I may have forgotten.”

“What exactly are you, Sipu?”

“I told you. I am Spirit.”

Although Sipu was no longer facing Tundi, Sipu could tell she had a look of confusion on her face. Sipu had never asked where they came from. They just knew they were.

Did they have a mother?

What did it mean, the longing they felt every night of the full moon, when they gazed at the sky rock that was Kumwesi’s home?

Was Kumwesi their mother?

Sipu had never asked where they came from, and they found they were uncomfortable with not having the answers.

“Tell me how you came to be here, Tundi. Then I can decide if I want to help you.”

Sipu, oddly, felt the brightening of Tundi’s spirit at their request. Sipu smiled, glad they had said the right thing.

Before she began to speak, though, Sipu was aware of Tundi moving closer and lying down beside them.

Tundi’s mother, Nasike, was the fifth daughter of her father’s fifth wife, and had been given in marriage to the quiet blacksmith, Wasio, after his parents took it upon themselves to arrange his marriage when it became evident that Wasio, well past marrying age, would not seek a wife on his own accord. Tundi told Sipu that her mother told her that her wedding day was insignificant. Wasio’s parents had come into their homestead with bride wealth and her father had given Nasike because she was the one he could see at the time.

Sipu was concerned by how far back Tundi had begun her story but said nothing of it. Why did it matter that her mother had an insignificant wedding day?

Tundi told Sipu that Wasio had been busy at work forging a garden tool when his parents brought Nasike to him. Tundi said that her father used to say he had never really seen anything until he looked at her mother that first time. Wasio was the first person to call Nasike by her name. He was the first one who worked to make her smile and laugh and sing until it became all Nasike did. And when twenty planting seasons passed without them having a child, Wasio only loved Nasike more.

When he saw that Nasike had begun to long for a child and knew she was worried she was getting too old, Wasio went and made a sacrifice to the gods that live in the mountain and Nasike was carrying Tundi in her womb by the next full moon. If Nasike had been happy being loved by Wasio, she was only made happier by loving Tundi.

However, each year as Tundi grew stronger, Wasio grew weaker. It was when Tundi saw her tenth planting season that Nasike and Tundi realised the sacrifice Wasio had made. By the time Wasio breathed his last, when Tundi saw her twentieth planting season, he was barely hanging on to his life on the earth.

Tundi knew Nasike blamed herself. She also knew Nasike could not bring herself to love Tundi any less. So, her Mayi punished herself instead.

That moment was when Sipu realised why Tundi’s skin and eyes were something a bit more than usual. Whether she knew it or not, Tundi had been made through earth-god magic. That was why they were drawn to each other.

She was human. But she was spirit too.

As Tundi finished the rest of her story explaining how she was waylaid before she could get back to her mother, Sipu could only think about the revelation they had made and wanted to share it with her.

Before Sipu could speak, Tundi stood up abruptly and looked down at Sipu with pleading eyes.

“I fear if I do not get home soon, she will die.”

Her eyes began to shine bright with tears again when she asked,

“Can you help me, Sipu? Will you take me home?”