Genre: Mystery
“I know a shortcut”
Those were the words beginning any unnecessarily long journey. They echoed about in the room as if the person who spoke them was there, with them.
“What is this?” Xinyori asked slightly unnerved
“Keep looking, stare deep into the heart of the bottle, tell me what you see.”“I see people planning for a traditional wedding ceremony, slaughtering a cow, I see many sleepless nights dressing chickens and cutting vegetables. I can feel the anticipation, it’s like watching a film on TV but its somehow different, I don’t know how to explain it. Is this a prediction how are you doing this?”
“It’s a little trick I picked up on my many years of travel, if I told you how it all worked, well I would have to take your soul in exchange” he laughed then added “ I am only joking, don’t be so serious, think of it as a vision, when you look into the bottle, you see a possible future or maybe you see what you wish to happen, or what you fear to happen so much that it happens, either way these events may or may not come to pass. Whose wedding is it, do you see?”
“I do not know. I do not see anyone I recognize.”
“Do you recognize anything?”
“Yes, the cow that was slaughtered, the brown heifer with the white spot the shape of a heart, that’s Perfection. I named it Perfection after the soap, its’s mine, that’s my cow, my grandfather gifted it to me. This can only mean that it is in preparation for my wedding, unless I gave it to my brother or someone else.
I also recognize a walking stick, the cow before it was killed, was hit over the head with the stick. The walking stick has the likeness of a snail’s shell carved onto its top and from that shell, what seems like a flame is coming out. It’s the symbol of my family and tribe.
The people are now just waiting almost anxiously for the arrival of the bride. The aunts are ready with pieces of cloth which they will throw on the ground, so that when she does arrive, her first step into the homestead will not be onto the dirt, but like a queen they will lay down cloth for her to walk on, as they chant “the bride is here”
Whispers have started among some of them they are silenced quickly but now the thought is already running loose in the minds of those who heard “what if she does not come……”
“Where is the bride? Look deep into the bottle tell me if you can see her”
“She is in a car, but something is wrong with the car, no, not the engine, it does not have the proper registry papers, it’s a new car, a recent import, no license plate, so the driver sought to avoid police roadblocks and the tollgate as the car would have been stopped and impounded.
He is the one who said “I know a shortcut” He took a detour into a dust road track that should have halved their travelling time, but its been raining, he did not take this into consideration, the car got stuck in muddy creek and the is no mobile phone service to call for rescue__”
“Did you see who the bride is?”
“No, her face was veiled with a scarf around her head and she was draped with something like a sheet. “
“Some secrets, the universe keeps to itself. Right then.” He said taking the bottle away from X, “That concludes the free demonstration of just a little bit of what I can I do, anything extra you will have to start paying, and you happen to be in a money fix, yes?”
“About tha___”
“Ah the world is full of things money can’t buy that is why favours and such go a long way, you do a little something for me, and I do something for you.”
“It depends what you will have me do” alarm in his tone of voice.
“Oh don’t look alarmed, nothing illegal dear boy, well mostly non illegal, maybe the ethics might be slightly questionable but, your family is no stranger to bending the moral compass, yes?”
He winked and Xinyori felt as he had signed away a tiny piece of his soul.
The thing with souls, you never lost a part of it, you lost all of it.
~The End
My entry this week for the #BlogBattle themed arrival…
the story continues from here
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