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The village of Achi was a small, beautiful village blessed with crops, clean water, fertile farmlands, and different kinds of animals for hunting. Among her neighboring villages, Achi stood out for so many reasons. The villagers of Achi were known for their long lives, slow aging amongst the old, and the abundance they enjoyed in their village. But despite being an envy to other villages around them, the villagers of Achi had one problem, and it was the killing of Twins.
For many generations, the villagers of Achi believed that the birth of two children was an abomination to their land and forbidden by the gods. They also believed that twins were harbingers of evil, evil that would ruin their village and anger their gods. So, to rid their village of such evil, the villagers of Achi would kill their twin babies as a sacrifice to appease their gods.
Because of this terrible tradition that had lingered for ages, pregnant women in the village of Achi would remain unhappy and restless until they gave birth and confirmed that they had not given birth to twins.
In the village of Achi, there lived a woman named Ego. Ego was a young woman in her early 20s who was newly married to her husband, Eze. Eze and Ego were well-known in the Achi as their parents were very prominent people, and everyone knew their marriage. After their marriage, the two couples lived together as a happy family until Ego realized she was pregnant.
Like every other pregnant woman in the village of Achi, Ego became worried when she learned of her pregnancy. Since she had no means to tell if she was pregnant with more than one child, Ego remained restless and concerned until she was due to deliver her child.
On the day Ego was to deliver her child, her husband, Eze, took her to the mid-wives hut early that morning. A couple of hours after they arrived, Ego began to feel the pains of labor and she was taken into the labour room.
While Ego was inside the labor room, her husband, Eze, was outside the labor room, silently praying to the gods of Achi for Ego to give birth to one child. Shortly after Eze said those prayers, he heard the cry of a baby coming from inside the room. Immediately after Eze heard the cry of the baby, he was relieved and was about to thank the gods for answering his prayers when he heard the second cry of a baby.
Before Eze could wrap his head around what had just happened, the next thing he heard was, “Abomination! Abomination! ” And the voices came from the midwives in the hut who had helped Ego with her delivery.
“What is it? Tell me,” Eze rushed to the hut’s entrance to ask the midwives what had happened, but they pushed him aside and ran out of the hut dramatically to alert the other villagers of what had happened. Sadly, Ego had given birth to twin babies, a boy, and a girl, and according to the tradition of their land, both babies had to be sacrificed to appease the gods.
After the midwives left to notify the other villagers of Ego’s twins’ birth, Eze entered the hut to check on Ego, and as soon as he entered, he saw his wife, Ego, crying bitterly as she held her two babies. Seeing Ego in that state really broke Eze’s heart. Eze had already envisioned that day ending happily, not knowing that things would turn out differently. He looked at his innocent babies, and tears of disappointment rolled down his cheeks.
“Everything will be fine; the gods understand best,” Eze said to Ego.
“But why? Why me? Why us?” Ego cried as she spoke.
Barely five minutes after Eze entered the labor room, he heard the voices of angry villagers chanting “Abomination! Abomination! We must kill them” outside the labor room. Knowing what was about to happen next, Eze went outside to talk to the villagers, but the minute the villagers saw him, they yelled at him to go into the hut and bring out the twin babies.
Without saying a word to them, Eze turned around and went into the hut. He walked to Ego, who was already clinging onto her babies, and took them from her. At first, Ego tried to resist, but when the chants of the angry villagers grew louder, she had to let the babies go.
As soon as Eze took the babies out to the villagers, the chief priest of the village collected them from him, turned both babies outside down, and raised them up so all the villagers could see. After he did that, he announced that he was taking the babies to the village shrine to sacrifice them and appease the gods.
After the chief priest left with the twins, all the villagers returned to their different homes one after the other, leaving only Eze and Ego there. In the village of Achi, it was taboo to mourn the death of twins, so no one wanted to associate with the grieving family.
Knowing that his wife was in a horrible mental state, Eze did everything possible to console her and take care of her, but despite all that he did, Ego still quietly mourned her babies. After the death of her twins, Ego turned into a shadow of herself and was no longer as active and vibrant as she used to be. She also stopped going to the market to sell her wares and would remain in bed for days.
Sometimes, Ego would be all by herself, and the next thing she would do was burst into tears for no reason. There were days when she refused to talk to Eze and the people around her, but despite how cold she had become, Eze still stood by her and supported her.
Thankfully, after about four months of her twin’s demise, Ego slowly returned to the woman she used to be. But she swore that she would never get pregnant again because of the pain her tradition had caused her.
For two whole years, Ego did her best to not get pregnant. She would drink herbs, concoctions, and almost everything that would not let her conceive, but after trying so hard to not conceive for those years, one morning, Ego realized that her nightmare had become a reality. She was pregnant again; this time around, her pregnancy was already a month old before she realized it.
When Ego broke the news to Eze that she was pregnant, Eze was both happy and sad. He was happy that he would finally become a father, but he was sad because he was unsure of how things would turn out. In the following months, Eze did everything a husband would do to support his wife until she was set to deliver.
Afraid that the same thing would happen again, Eze invited his family member, who was a midwife, to his house because he trusted her. He didn’t want to take Ego to the midwife’s hut in case the same thing happened again, and he believed his family member would keep her mouth shut no matter what happened.
That evening, Ego went into labor as expected. Two hours after Eze’s family member began the labor process, Eze heard the cry of a baby from inside his hut. Just as he was about to dash in and celebrate with his wife, he heard another cry; his wife, Ego, had given birth to two boys.
Unsure of what to do, Eze went on his knees and begged his family member not to say a word to anyone. Eze knew that the moment word got out that his wife had given birth to twins, the villagers, and the chief priest would all come to his compound that night. After begging for minutes, Eze’s family member agreed that she wouldn’t say a word to anyone, and she left.
“We must leave, Achi, now,” Ego cried in a loud voice, ” I cannot let them take my babies away from me again,” she added.
“We can’t leave,” Eze said in a teary voice, “if we leave, we will be banished,” he added.
“Which do you prefer? To be banished or to hand your children to those monsters,” Ego cried.
Despite being in so much pain, Ego got up from the bed she was sitting on and began to pack her clothes into a basket.
“But she has said that she will not say a word to anyone,” Eze tried to convince Ego.
“And you believe her? Didn’t you see the look of disgust on her face? She thinks your sons are an abomination, Eze,” Ego barked at him.
“But Achi is our home; I do not have any other place we can go to,” Eze said.
“Eze,” Ego called him and pulled her right ear. “If anything happens to my children, I will not forgive you. There are many villages around Achi that we can run to, so don’t say you don’t know where to go,” Ego said, then continued to fold her wrappers into the basket.
“Alright. We can’t leave now, so let’s wait a bit for the village to be quiet. If the villagers see us with the basket of clothes, they will ask where we are going,” Eze said.
“No, I can’t wait. What if your aunty decides to tell the villagers tonight? Will they wait? Ego said in an angry and frustrated tone, and with that, Eze took one of the babies and some money and helped Ego with her small basket of clothes. Without taking anything else out of their huts, Eze and Ego left the village of Achi that night.
Luckily for them, their babies were very quiet and did not draw any attention that night till they got out of Achi and entered another village. Just as Ego had suspected, about an hour after Ego and Eze left their village by foot, Eze’s aunt, the family member who helped Ego with labor, their village chief priest, and some villagers stormed Eze’s compound that night, but they were too late.
Angered that Ego and Eze had played a smart one on them, the village head placed a bounty on their heads and Informed the neighboring villages about the people they were looking for.
Two days after Ego and Eze ran away from Achi with their babies, word spread to other villages that they were wanted in Achi, and it became very difficult for them to settle anywhere. After trying so hard to get a place they could rest their heads until they came up with another plan, Eze and Ego realized they weren’t safe anywhere, and neither were their babies.
Left with no resort, Eze and Ego were forced to hide in a sacred cave not too far from Achi. The cave was believed to be the cave of the ancestors of Achi and the burial ground of all the chief priests in the village’s history. It also contained sacred scrolls and ancestral markings on the wall, so Eze and Ego were sure they would be safe there.
Even though the cave was the last place Eze and Ego would want to stay, they had no choice but to hide there until they had a plan. Also, Ego barely rested after the birth of her twins, and her body gradually weakened from lack of rest and lack of enough food, so Eze had to take his family there.
On the first night, Eze and Ego arrived at the Sacred cave; Ego noticed that her babies barely cried, and for some weird reason, they acted like some invincible being was playing with them. At first, when Ego noticed this, she dismissed that the babies were just acting like babies, but when the twins continued to act differently, she called her husband’s attention to it.
“Don’t you think there is something different about the babies?” Ego asked. Immediately she asked Eze, he admitted that he had also noticed a difference, but he wasn’t sure it was something to be bothered about.
Later that night, after Ego breastfed the babies, she and Eze fed on their leftover fruits and went to bed, but about an hour later, Ego woke up to a bright golden light shining in the cave. The light was so bright that she could barely see her babies and her husband, who was just sleeping beside her. While Ego was still trying to trace where the bright light came from, she spotted a tall, dark woman in a golden dress with long back hair walking toward her.
“Ego,” the woman called. The woman’s voice echoed, causing Ego to tremble in fear.
“Do not be afraid; I am Ato, the first priestess of Achi and the first mother of twin babies,” the woman introduced herself to Ego.
“But..but.. isn’t..” Ego stuttered.
“Forget about the stories you were told, I was a woman just like you, and I was forced to kill my babies, too,” the woman said.
“The lives of your babies are in danger, and you’re the only one who can stop this madness of killing twins. You must come with me; I want to show you something,” the woman said.
“Where are we going to?” Ego asked in a trembling voice.
“The beginning of it all,” the woman said, and without hesitation, Ego stood up, followed the woman into the light, and the light disappeared.
Meanwhile, in Achi, the villagers were actively searching for Ego and Eze because their village chief priest had told them that if they did not find and kill the twin babies in 7 days, the gods of the land would strike every woman dead at the end of 7 days.
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