PodCastle

* Author : Tobi Ogundiran
* Narrator : Tobi Ogundiran
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Previously published in FIYAH Literary Magazine


Guardian of the Gods
by Tobi Ogundiran
Ashâke shed her priestly raiment and slid into the river.
The water was surprisingly warm against her skin, like falling into the embrace of a mother. Ashâke liked to think that the divine cocoon of the river goddess herself embraced her, and if she listened carefully, she could just hear Osun revealing deep mysteries.
Ashâke muttered an invocation: “Osun iya mi. Iya olodo, iya ajose ati iloyun, iya arewa ati ife. Ba mi soro. Si ona okan re kio si se afihan kayefi re.”
She sighed. The gods, like always, were deaf to her supplication. The other acolytes had long since been able to commune with the gods, to divine knowledge from the arbitrary patterns of cowrie-shells across divination boards. Soon they would choose their patron gods and become full priests, and eventually get sent out to other temples across the ten kingdoms. They would leave her, forever an acolyte, forever deaf to the gods.
Ashâke floated face-up, allowing the gently-flowing currents to sweep her farther away from the banks. Wispy clouds looped around each other in the deep night sky, as if mirroring the movements of the river below. The moon, a pale silver disk peeking out from behind the mountains in the east, spied on her nakedness.
Ashâke’s hands scraped the river’s shallow bottom as she employed a lazy backstroke. Her own peers had graduated two years ago. She would never forget her envy as she watched her friends enter the Inner Sanctum as acolytes and emerge as priests. She stood each time by the entrance, longing desperately to be among their numbers. She had learned the invocations word for word, knew the two-hundred and fifty-six verses of the odu ifa by heart. Why then, did the gods refuse to speak to her? She could hardly bear the pitiful looks the temple priests gave her, nor suffer the whispers of the acolytes. Deaf priest, they called her. Never to her face, though, the cowards that they were. And it was to these kinds of people the gods chose to reveal themselves?
Ashâke blinked the tears from her eyes, tasting salt as she licked her lips.
Floating in that river with nothing but the soft lapping of water and the cacophony of nocturnal creatures, she made a decision.
“Eyin orisa,” she said. You gods. “Hear me now. If you don’t speak to me, that means you don’t need me. if you don’t need me, then I don’t need you. I will leave the temple and never look back.” She paused, then added, “I give you one week.”
One should not give the gods ultimatums but she was done waiting for them.

Ashâke hurried through the forest to the mountain-temple. Though it was the hour of the owl, with some three hours left till dawn, it was best to be safely tucked away in her sleeping mat before the rousing bell, otherwise risk the wrath of the priests. They strictly prohibited sneaking out, but the temple was so far removed from civilization that night watch was an afterthought. Still, once or twice a priest would hold vigil, wandering the empty halls as they communed with the gods. It would not do to stumble into a priest this night.
Music. She could hear music coming from her left. The steady beat of drums, the rhythmic shaking of shekere, and ululating voices,