The Legend of Hombarume (Legends Series, #1)

6.

Most of the day had been spent and the sun was now on its daily retreat into the unknown. The village had so far been torn about the disappearance of Chief Banga’s heir. Most of the villagers had their own opinions and version of events but nobody could care less than the inhabitants of the Eagle homestead that lay on the eastern border of the village. Yeukai Vhudzijena, the owner of this homestead was not one for gossip. News about what was happening at Chief Banga’s compound had not yet reached his ears and even if it had, he did not pay that man two thoughts any day of his life.

Yeukai was a man of many talents but he was known by most because of only one. He was a healer that had helped the villagers out of many a predicament. People marvelled at his amazing herbal healing skills and how the gods had blessed them by giving him such knowledge about the herbs from the forest. Yeukai and the Chief were not exactly people who would share a pot of beer and laugh over a game of tsoro. He had always had views that conflicted with the Chief's since the day he met him and what always made things worse for him was the fact that he was unapologetic about it. Yeukai had resorted to spending his life at the outskirts of the village away from the Chief’s toxic rulings. He provided most of the services he and his son needed so as to avoid frequenting the village and meeting people who would contaminate his sphere of positivity. He did his own farming, hunting, water fetching from a well he had dug and he was also an ironsmith.

Tapfuma, his son had spent most of his life in solitude because of his father’s growing obsession with preserving the sanctity of their home and their being. His father would dissuade him from making unnecessary trips into the village because it would allow the wicked to plot against them. He would also not allow him to make friends as that would result in them coming to the Eagle homestead all the time, bringing diseases and bad energy. Tapfuma had grown to loathe his father for this over the years. His very peculiar upbringing affected him immensely, he would waste the day away in the small forest that overlooked the Eagle homestead. The forest would then expand and head out into the mountains, another direction in which his father had warned him not to wander in. VaVhudzijena had precautions about everything that his son would find even remotely interesting. If he happened to develop a knack for pottery, tomorrow it would suddenly be deemed dangerous or bad for their aura.

In the forest, Tapfuma felt free, he felt like nature spoke to him. He felt like he could be at peace with the life that his father had made him live. There was a voice in his head that told him stories of a different world, a different era where gods would roam the world like man does. A time where everything suddenly became chaotic and everything changed so quick. This lonely life is all he knew but his father had had the best of both worlds unlike him.

Today VaVhudzijena had been working around the yard while his son had wandered off into the forest as he usually did. He knew that the boy hated him for keeping him from the world but he didn’t care, if only he knew the real reason why he had decided to shut the world out, maybe he would understand him. Maybe he would hate the world as much as he did, maybe even more. It was just before dusk when he saw his son struggling with what looked like another human strapped to his shoulder. Another villager looking to exploit his healing powers, he thought and sighed. He wondered what it would be this time, boils on the foot? Sharp thorns while hunting?

‘Baba, come and help me,’ Tapfuma shouted a distance away.

The man grunted and put the iron tools he had been working on down and started to get up to go help his feeble son. The boy knew that he wanted no disturbances when he was deep in work and also, this was more work for him and the daylight had almost slipped away. He met his son halfway and upon meeting, he realized that the young man he had been carrying was not sick but actually injured. It seemed like the boy had been shot on the belly and was in excruciating pain.