Sally Island 3

 

It was like I saw her, like I was conscious in slumber, blinking my eyes in my dreams visualizing the transformation that happened with Eve. She developed gills and her fingers stuck together creating a fish's flap as she walked into the water. My mind wasn't clear, the palm wine must have had me hallucinating in my dreams. I know dreams are where we see things. But things like this wasn't one of the expected lot. I still managed to focus on her body, not minding the transformation that took place on it. She was sexy still. Her figure was vivid in a shadow walking into the water under the pitch black sky, the moon was blue; illuminating above her. It was like the waves that splashed at shore paid attention to her and gave way like she commanded it with her hands spread like she is giving in to the spirit of the water to take over her body in total submission in order to access fully the power she was already exhibiting. 

She walked gracefully into the middle of Achike River as the water gave way and slowly overwhelmed her like she was walking down a pathway leading to the River bed. Mild claps of thunder sent lightening down the River from the sky, illuminating her fully transformed body in brief flashes in a repeated pattern of appearing and disappearing manner within splits of seconds, until she totally vanished into the water. The River became calm again like nothing happened and there was no sign of Eve, just the mild thunder claps and lightening that gradually faded into the waves moving farther away from the shores of the River bank. Within the next ten minutes, she came walking out through the water dragging something with her as the moon followed her lead to the shores as she transformed back to a human, loosing her fish gills and then suddenly disappearing into thin air. 

Being used to late to bed, late to rise the past few days. It was same routine again. We still slept through the long night with a smile on in full assumption our fun times would repeat daily and last for a while, since it doesn't cost much to have a good time on Sally Island. We took our time to have a good rest and as the sun came up, we followed suit. I stretched and yawned then looked around, I was searching for Eve. Instead of finding her, my eyes met other wandering eyes, the other boys were searching for her too. The eyes meet reminded us of our folly and we instantly pretended we were looking for our clothes and belongings, not Eve so as to make it less obvious we are love struck on the strange new friend we just made. Just as we looked behind us towards the Achike River, we saw a box, a chest; a chest looking like a lost artifact from a buccaneer ship. 

We sat and stared at the chest for hours and refused to touch it. There has been tales about chests and conflicts between a certain pirates deck crew where all the deck hands plotted against the captain and killed him only to open the treasure chest that sucked life out of them all. We were all pessimistic about opening the chest especially after seeing marks on the beach showing it was dragged from the banks to the spot where we slept at night; this might be a setup. We wondered if a buccaneer ship landed on our shores. It would be bad business for our village, considering we don't have a strong army to repel the looting forces of buccaneers and pirates who have a habit of attacking islands like ours and looting all they can find, so we went in search for the possibility of finding a pirate ship within the perimeter. After a long search of finding nothing, we came back and sat around the box in total silence wondering what next to do, totally forgetting about Eve until we heard her voice from the middle of the River asking us to open the chest repeatedly. We were happy seeing her but wasn't so sure about opening the chest. But the more she urged us to open it, the more the chest glowed from inside out. At this point Omin's curiosity and mine couldn't sit still, we both had the highest crush on Eve and trusted her the most and if she says we should open the box, we opened it. The excitement on our faces was for sure more than we had on when we first met her. It was a treasure box filled up with Pure Gold and Jewelries worth a lot of money. 

Eve stood in the water waving and saying 'it's yours, live a good life, be happy and make others happy like you made me happy'. At first it didn't strike us that those were goodbye words, we were still hooked to the excitement we didn't pay attention until minutes later. I quickly recalled the few days she was with us, as she turned fully to her being, flapped her fish tail and dived into the deep blue. She was a mermaid, a mammy water as we locally called it. She wasn't one of us, she was from the spirit world. There have been lengends like these and myths, we just experienced one. But I loved her, Omin loved her too, I love her still, Omin loves her still. I swore to find her again, He swore the same. It wasn't much of a surprise because we have heard legends of spirits walking among humans and depending on how you treat them, you might get cursed or get blessed. Eve blessed us, but blessed me more with her company more than that treasure chest was going to bless me. I was determined to find her. So I went in search of the chief priest, the chief priest will tell me how to go about finding her 

Story: Nnagoziem The Vyrus Udensi 

Illustration: Joseph Kenedy