“It is true,” Nkiri told me the next morning, “I had a vision of the Ibeji. They are queen. We will take them to our homeland where they will rule.”
“You had a vision,” I said, “and were you going to tell me about it? Or just say ‘bye, see ya later’?”
“The vision was not something you would understand.”
“Try me.”
“Ok, but even if you do not understand, I am still taking the Ibeji to their home.”
Nkiri paused, I nodded.
“We - all of us - are standing before a great cave. So deep, it had no bottom. So steep the path that only one - the welcomed one - could enter without harm. I am the one. The one to enter untouched. The cave walls are ice cold, there is no light but for the torch I carry. I walk until there is no light behind me, leaving all of you to wait.
A great blast of air, like the breath of Earth herself, blows away the flame of the torch. I am in darkness. I know I must go forward, there is no longer a way back, only forward. So I stretch out my arms, feeling the damp cold wall, feeling my feet upon hard-packed earth. I feel warm, dry air on my face and I go toward it. My eyes are no good to me for it is as a blind person I walk.
I walk and I walk. No sound comes to me except the warm air rushing past my ears each time the breeze blows by me. Ahead, I think I see light, though my eyes might be playing tricks on me. I walk faster, losing touch with the wall. There is light. I can see it ahead of me. There is light and I run. I run and it gets brighter.
I come to the entrance of a great dome of cave. Crystals hang from the ceiling and others grow towards them from the ground. The light is not a torch or candle, but coming from behind a low wall. The air changes and I feel the warmth on my face, then cold air being pulled from behind me. It is like breathing, in and out, in and out.
The light is a glow from behind the low wall. I creep toward it and see. I see a great bear, golden fur shimmering with light. Her eyes are like caves, black and deep. She sits on her hindquarters on a massive black stone - I can see it is a throne - for carved above her head in the shiny black stone are markings that are familiar to me, yet I do not know their meaning.
My eyes adjust to the glowing light from the bear. Each breath she takes, I feel the wind I had felt from the start of the path. She is the one who created the warm, dry air. Now close to her, it smells of honey and damp earth. I breathe deep. I want to stay where I am, taking in her breath as she breathes out, giving her my breath as she breathes in. But I hear soft sucking sounds and mewing. Babies. Mewing as all babies sound.
I move closer to peer behind the wall that separates us and I see she has her two arms - each one as large as a full-grown woman - wrapped around babies. Cubs. Golden as she, and they suckle at her breasts. Deep in her throat I hear a growl - no, a purr of contentment. She looks down at the babies, holding them close to her, they pressing their mouths to her nipples, wet with milk.
She looks up and sees me, and I am afraid for I know of mother bears with young. I am so afraid I cannot move. But she does not come to take me, to kill me to protect her cubs. She looks into my eyes and speaks in my head.
Ibeji will be queen, she says to me, you must take them to the Land for all the people. The Land cannot survive without the queen. You must do this, Nkiri, the mother bear says to me. It is up to you. No one else can do so, only you.
I cannot breathe right for I am afraid. I want to ask her, why me? But I find no voice, my lips cannot move, my tongue is heavy in my mouth. How can I take these two cubs to my land? And she answers me in my head once more. They are not bear cubs as you see them here. You will know them for they are Ibeji.
And when she told me this, she began to fade in my sight. Through her fur, I could see the black throne to her back. The cubs shifted and fretted as their mother went further and further away. Then she was no longer there. The cubs gurgled as they looked at each other, wrapping their arms around each other’s necks. They stood on their hind legs and turned toward me, looking to me to understand.
They were not animals, not bear cubs. They were two little girls - the Ibeji. The Twins as you call them. I breathed them in as they did me and with their outbreath, they blew me backward, backward, backward out of the cave, where you and everyone here was waiting for me to return. To tell you what I saw.
This is what I saw, Betty. This is how I know. The Ibeji must be back to our land, back in our home.”
What could I say to this? There is more on heaven and earth than I could ever hope to understand. Including this vision of Nkiri’s. Including the little girls who would rule. But how was I to reconcile our need to go to the Inquisito and face Maddalena and the Malefici and the need for Nkiri and the Warriors to take the Twins to their land?
The answer was just as simple as Nkiri had said - they would take the other ship and sail home while we went on to the Inquisito. Yemaya, in bringing her syrens to destroy the men, had furthered a destiny for not only Nkiri and the Twins, but likely for an entire people. She did the same for my troupe - set us free without obligation to her daughters.
It was clear to me - whether to follow the will of a goddess or in the name of doing good - here we would part company.