Chapter Nine
"Lati, if I can't grab him, then, I have to put all my hope on King, I have to use this spell how it ought to be used."
She took a survey of herself in the mirror and walked out to see the king.
She has to pocket him as Mama Sara says. But could she depend on him with the mandate ringing the bell in her ears?
"Capricious girl, you have again started." the jester's voice came.
She saw King going to his apartment after the meeting.
" Princess Abigail was not his blood, by implication that was what he said and it's on record. I'm going to test him on other things but it's going to be gradual because this is not my area," she said.
What did she mean? She meant that using any other power apart from her Christian power or physical power is not her choice, it bites her conscience.
This principle may throw her into jeopardy or prolong her goal.
"King, the meeting is over?" she asked him.
"Yes, my queen," responded King.
She widened her eyes and walked into his front, both stepping up the stairs.
" King," she paused in the staircase and turned to face him. "You love my backyard?" she asked him.
"Can I ever be tired of it?" replied King, a furrow in his fleshy face
"Is this a dream!? Wonders shall never end!... King, what did you say?" she asked and King repeated himself.
"Have I ever hated you?"
"King." She looked hard at his face…you pushed me out and I was cascading down this stairs we are in now…you can't remember?"
" I can't remember," said King.
She turned, going up with him. "Tonight I must test this spell all around."
The purpose of the spell was to pocket him, keep him away from other women, and make him a sex slave so that he will fuck her and fuck her until she becomes pregnant and bears for him the child.
Not that she will still marry him.If he did not impregnate her, and Jackson did…"Oh!" She shook her head," he would have been the one to marry me but the law…the law is sacrosanct. He must die," she affirmed, " and whoever that poked nose and had an idea of this affair must, I said, must die too!" It was an Oath she had taken.
Upstairs, King's phone rang.
"Good. I'll test him with this."
She motioned him not to pick up the call and found a pen and a piece of paper. " Say what I wrote," she instructed him and told him to answer the call now.
He picked up the call.
She put it on speaker and wrote: am okay, Yemi.
She passed it to him.
"Am okay Yemi," King replied to her sister, Yemi.
She was Queen Lati's arch-enemy, what else could she say than to know if he has found the wife or if that mad woman is still there?
So, having pre-knowledge of his mind, she was writing in advance, King's responses.
"Have you seen somebody or should we find one again?" asked Yemi.
She passed the paper to King.
"I am no longer searching."
"What? Why?" Yemi lost herself.
"The Queen will give us a child." said king Shina.
"Which queen, Shina? Which queen? She broke into tears, she must have danced about with her questions before wailing.
She took the phone and left with it.
"Mummy, is this what it means to pocket a husband? is this what it means to cast a spell on someone?" she was asking Mama Sara who came in.
"Your Highness. This is what every wife with a stubborn husband is looking for," she told her and stared at her face.
"He lost his sense, he's just like a servant," Queen Lati explained her dislike.
" And so? What then does Her Highness want? A freedman? A wife abuser?" asked Mama Sara.
"Lati, this is not your way. I reject the use of charm in my marriage in Jesus' name…." she prayed after Mama Sara had gone," I want him to love me with his mind, and to impregnate me with his mind. I don't want a servitude husband, Lati." she said it all as she wants in her marriage
* * *
"No! Even, his phone, I took it he did not tract, something no man tolerates. I'll return it now," she said, and turned round before the mirror," Lati, Lati...you can naturally seduce him, not by juju."
She ran down and climbed the twelve steps of the staircase, King was at the door, she did not know what came upon him, he gave her the hottest slap only a wicked husband could give his wife and snatched the phone from her and kicked her down the staircase.
Blinded with stars in her eyes, she found her way into the flower hedge and passed out.
It was about 7:30 pm when she managed to beat off some ants crawling and eating her flesh, even inside her skirt.
Still lying half comatose, she called Jackson multiple times he did not pick up.
"Oh God…why?"
Then, he picked and crawled as he was instructed till he located her.
He forced her onto his back.
Oh, God, he has to escape from the site because the maids' windows were open and shadows were moving behind the curtains, and up above them was the king's sitting room. The window was still open and there was a voice speaking and pausing. It must be the King making a call.
On Jackson's back, her long legs were coiled tight around his waist, and her arms chained around his neck too.
Because of her tallness, her breasts rested on his head but there was no current passing through each other. She was dying of fear, heartbreaking and the ant bites inside her skirt and underwear. One bit on her private part." Oh, Gawd!" she muttered, breathing severely.
Jackson kept stooping with her weight on his back until he was out of sight.
At her apartment, Jackson set her feet down and took her key out from her jean skirt, sweat, sweat all over her, and her long hair disheveled.
He opened her kitchen door and carried her in his arms, horizontally
like a boyfriend carrying a drunk girlfriend.
He carried her with all his muscles, and by his own volition, dropped her gently into the bathtub and stood akimbo watching her.
She slept without telling him what next.
It was 8:00 in the morning when she woke up. She was wrapped with a linen cloth that was in her wardrobe. She has not used the linen cloth for over five months but twice she had just washed it and after each washing, folded it back and kept it in its position.
She searched on the bed sheet, but there was nothing suggestive, her body was normal…you know what that means.
She looked around, she could remember all that happened. "Where's him?"
She went into the bathroom, and her skirt was washed and hung on the railing. She touched her hair."Oh, Heaven!"
"He tied my hair into a pony?"
With much annoyance, she coiled in the bed and wrapped herself.
Husband material…, she was soliloquizing.
"But I can't marry him, God forbid…my target is my target. Give them a child. Anything I do is an act of necessity, nothing more."
She called Elder Mary. "King must pay for this heartbreak!"
The old woman was a sister to the late King Shina's mother.
"I have been listening to the tape. with Ruth. How are you sure," she asked her.
"Ma, he said it. Probe it, greet Ruth.
Probing Princess Abigail's paternity.
How will Elder Mary start?
The more the delay the more her craving for Jackson increases.
From whom will this child come?