"Inyinya."

The prince was the one who spoke first, but she still had not gathered her bearings enough to utter a coherent word. She blinked twice, then turned to the man who she was holding onto.

In addition to her utter surprise, there was a wide, cheeky grin that made his face more boyish than usual—which would have been an especially endearing sight considering his strong, masculine jawline set underneath his two-day old stubble if she weren't so befuddled.

"Let me down, Gegbe." He instructed, and Ugegbe, who luckily had not lost the right senses needed to work for her ability to understand his command, nodded her response and lowered him gently to the ground.

"From whence did it come?"

"The man brought it. This is good for us." His whisper was quite impossibly loud when he motioned her ears close to his lips, or maybe, her heightened senses were the cause for the sensitivity she was experiencing.

"Good afternoon to you two." The voice that had become familiar, despite it having no business being so, spoke in their language. Ugegbe was surprised that he knew even a single word in her mother's tongue and regarded him with a confounded expression that she could not hide.

She opened her mouth to reply, but the sound of bustling feet forced her to hold her peace and settle her attention on the rotund man who had jostled past the animal at the cave's entrance and hurried to her side. No, not her side. It was the prince whom he rushed to.

Everything was happening at once. Ugegbe found it hard to keep up with all the information she was being barraged with. She placed her hands over her closed eyes and pressed firmly, a habit she turned to when she was confused or disconcerted. Right now, she was both.

When she finally recaptured the view playing before her, she was more mentally put together than the first time. The chubby man was still bending over the prince, his profile hidden from her. He was muttering indistinctly, and the prince from time to time did same in return. Ugegbe wondered what they were discussing in such hushed tones.

Even though she had not caught sight of the face of the newly added stranger, from Prince Uzochi's relaxed posture, she knew there was nothing to be worried about. In any event, the man's statue did seem familiar. She was certain he was someone she was acquainted with.

So she peeled her eyes from both men and squinted at the white fellow who was now rubbing down the sable horse, noisily chomping on a carrot. It was such a stunning animal. She'd never seen anything like it. The mules the king often used on his parades thrice a year did not in any way compare. Those were always of sickly nature and did not never seem like they were about to buck underneath the weight of the monarch.

This horse did not look like it would be keeling over due to the amount of fat present in any man. Its legs were long, sturdy and muscly. Ugegbe imagined that it would be an attractive individual among its mates.

She wondered if it was male, though she was fairly positive it was. Its long organ eventually confirmed her guess and the wheels in her head rolled as she attempted to figure out a befitting name for the stallion. She only pulled out of her reverie when a gentle sound called out to her.

The mellow vibrations were from the pale man. He had a grin on his soft, comely face, which, now when she took the time to truly behold him, cradled dark, tiny spots scattered over a small, button nose. She likened the picture to dull, brown soil being sparsely splattered on a small portion of his face.

His hair was the colour of the insides of fresh sugarcanes, and was about as light as his skin. She turned on his garb. While his bottom garment was extensive and came across as a wellspring of heat, the longsleeved shirt he wore was flimsy and white in colour.

Ugegbe had only seen such clothing on the white men. It protected them from the harshness of the sun, it appeared. Weird men with even weirder tastes. She noted eventually that his hands were quite large and they poked from the shirt in a repeated pattern.

What were they doing? She flicked her eyes upward to his open smile. The man was rather tall, and he was still gesturing his hands that way. Was he beckoning on her? Indeed, he was. He pointed at the distracted horse then signalled to her again. Did he want her to draw closer so she could admire the horse some more? Her lips parted way for a smile. She wouldn't mind that. In fact, she'd like it very much.

"Bia." He started anew in Igbo, and she couldn't help but cringe. She observed that whenever he spoke in her natal tongue, he shifted the intonations on his words. He made them sound less pure than they were supposed to be, as from him, they lacked the strength and force that should be behind them. Forming words carefully was not how to speak Igbo. You had to apply pressure to and not lighten the impressions.

After concluding that it was not his fault that he did not know the ways of letting his words dance, Ugegbe permitted her growing angst to float away. He was a foreigner, after all. She mused that he should not be forced to learn her language just as she should not feel the pressure to learn his. For this reason, she would have to purposely choose to ignore his awful mispronunciations, even though they made him appear as if he could not be bothered to try.

"O malu mma." It is beautiful.

"O malu mma." He repeated after her. She had to laugh at his features, scrunched up in deep thought. It was such a simple sentence, but with the concentration he employed, one would think he was solving a riddle from the village's eldest woman.

After a long while in which it was clear he'd laboured over the apparent meaning of her words, he was ready to give up. Ugegbe could tell he had no resolve left to continue testing his luck as he called out loudly to the paunchy man. "Paul!"

"Yes masta!"

"Pliz com ova year and help me wif dis mattar. I cannut undastand what she's sed." The fair man said in his weird tongue. Ugegbe noted grudgingly, even though she could not comprehend a thing of what he'd told the other stranger, that the white man's language had its own odd charm. It was pretty and silky with scarce energy expended in bringing it to life. She wasn't sure she'd want to speak anything of what she'd heard, but she did know she wanted to understand, at least a little, when she was the main subject of discussion.

"Ugegbe, my daughter." Yes, she thought. She was fully aware of who the other man was. There was no living soul in the village who did not know him.

"Mazi Njeze. Ndeewo." She greeted the uncle of her closest friend and renowned spokesman of the village, lightly bending forward in respect, as noon had now come. The sun was racing through the cave with a viciousness to its hurry. Nothing could be hidden under the almost-blinding yet persistently intensifying brightness.

"Ndewo. Nnọọ o. Kee kwanụ?"

"I am alright, Mazi. I am in health and well." Was her quick reply even though she knew she was everything but so. Her head felt too heavy on her neck, and she could not deny the headache that was forming at the nape of her neck and thundering forward to her forehead. Her body, now that she paid it mind was also thoroughly exhausted. She did not have a good night's sleep, and the effects the inadequate rest was having on her were only a scant short of profound.

"Good. That is good to hear, my daughter." He nodded at her before hurrying to the white man who had been grinning at them. For an unknown reason, it seemed like he was enjoying watching them talk. Well, he had to not hate it as he'd quietly witnessed their conversation without interrupting even though he called Mazi Njeze first before he'd been distracted by her.

They both conversed for a while, with Njeze seeming to explain the situation to the white man who paid rapt attention. Ugegbe, on the other hand, regarded the prince who had an arm slung over his face. He was clearly resting. She quietened down so not disturb him and alternately eyed the horse, who nickered softly after it finished with its prolonged chewing.

"Ugegbe, the white man only wanted to speak with you before. His name is John, mister John."

"Mista Jon," she repeated slowly after him, her tongue weighing the name for the first time. She thought it to be an alright name. Of course, it was strange—the man's language itself was weird—but it wasn't an appellation that made her want to dislike the owner. Surprisingly, she found that maybe it even suited the man.

From experience, she had come across people who bore names that did not match their souls' nature. One of the children she often encountered in the market, for example, was named after a god of revenge and death; she dared not say his name for his bewitching skills were alarming. This, however, did not match who the boy honestly was as his behaviour was that of a gentle child.

According to rumours, it was said that his mother named him so because her husband had been severely maltreating her during her pregnancy. Without it being her intention, she'd transferred the target of her hatred from her husband to the child who was only a victim of circumstance. Since then, the poor boy had been saddled with the hateful name, which was shortened to not incur the wrath of the being.

Ugegbe shook her head pitifully as she remembered how good-natured the little one was, gingerly helping his aunt—since both his parents were deceased—at her shading-spot at the market. The truth about names was they followed you all your life, and whether a man liked it or not or whether he chose to believe or not did not alter the fact that the name he bore would become a compass directing the path later taken in life.

Those who had unfortunate names were mostly affected in miserable ways. Some of them ended up becoming outcasts in the village, afflicted with a mysterious illness or journeying through a life bedewed with thorny paths at every corner taken.

She stopped to reflect on her own name. It did not mean much, as it was what a mirror was called in her language. Ironically, she had only seen the reflective surface once in her entire existence. This was while she had been cleaning one of the female palaces.

The second queen of Osisi, Queen Nkolika, was her husband's favourite wife—the apple of the king's eyes—and so was entitled to the choicest items imported from kingdoms overseas. She was deemed the utmost definition of the cream of the crop, and for this reason, deserved every piece that cried of perfection. The shiny, lustrous object that flashed back her face, which the villagers acknowledged was of sophisticated beauty, was one of such articles and was so in abundance in her abode.

It was once that Ugegbe was allowed to appear in her presence, for she was a very picky woman and preferred to be attended by only the people she chose with her own hand. On that very day, her personal maidservant had fallen ill, and so the need for a temporary replacement arose.

When she first beheld the shiny object, she had not known what it was. It was in the middle of her dusting off the queen's wooden boxes of treasure. The mirror was tucked into the chest, hiding at its farthest corner.

But she caught sight of it. There was no way she could have ignored the glare of the light on an object that reacted as if it were the silent waters, weaving and spinning the embodiment of whatever stood before it.

All she could tell was it had to be expensive and an item of luxury and rarity. It surprised her that there was any such that existed. How could it cast back an image of oneself? How did it do so? Was it made by a witch?

She'd put it back in its resting place afterwards, but the queen had already caught her. The expectation she'd held was that she'd be punished, but nothing of the sort had happened. The queen merely asked Ugegbe if she knew what it was called. Naturally, she did not, and she'd replied in the negative.

"You bear its name. Ugegbe."

Then, she'd realised what her father meant when he told her that she was named after an object that was elegant, valuable and denoted status. Mostly, it spoke of her beauty. He'd narrated the events of her birth to her a million times before, pointing out that she was the most beautiful child he had ever seen at birth.

She'd stopped him then and called out the fact that she was his first child, and so the first baby he'd glimpsed at its first breath on earth since men were not allowed near birthing rooms if they were not the husband of the woman in labour.

Recalling how loudly he would laugh at the accusation made Ugegbe tear up and sniffle. She thoroughly missed the sweet man whose heart was like gold. It hurt her that she could not be by his side even though he often fell ill. His quest for a better life for his only child landed them in the pit-hole that they were in. One too deep to crawl out of once tumbled in.

"Gegbe, my dear. It's time to leave." The prince's booming voice caused her to hop back into reality.

"My prince," she curtsied, conducting herself as manners would have her now that she was not holding him up. He was leaning heavily on a staff, she concluded must have arrived with Mazi Njeze, and his smile proved that he was pleased. About what, she wasn't so sure. "We are leaving now?"

"Yes. Look, the horse has been saddled. We can go back home now. Njeze has explained to the white man what happened. It appears that this one is better than his fellows. He might not be as wicked as the other pale, sickly beasts."

"As you wish my lord." She said, pressing down the questions that were roaring to be let out of the cage she'd forced them into. Then, she stared at the pale human as if weighing her options. But there were no options to weigh, Prince Uzochi had made the needed decision, and they would be departing with the white man in the lead.

Outside of the cave, the sun battered down on her eyes, which squinted in return. However, they could only do so much as her sight burst with streaks of colours when she glanced back at the dark dugout.

The white man trod on at the mount of the procession. He was first, then she followed by the side of the prince, who was deeply seated on the horse. Uzochi bared the upper row of his teeth in a mesmerising smile that was almost as blinding as the sun.

There was no denying that he was a handsome man. His scruffy appearance from the hardship of the previous days made him even more attractive, but Ugegbe could not find the part of her heart that should beat for him.

She swung her head away from his direction, avoiding his gaze as if it seared her; whereas, it was the guilt that burned her. Would she ever love the man like he loved her? Would she ever return his affections? Did she want to know the answers?
•
A/N: Please don't forget to vote and comment your thoughts loves!💛