URENMA, THE RIVER GODDESS

Urenma (The River Goddess) – Episode 2

After ages had passed and the pain of the people of Ukeh over the loss of many of its sons and daughters—children of the gods who were born as men—had dulled, a princess of the river kingdom was born in Ukeh as a baby girl. A barren woman, Ngbankwo by name, who conceived after many years of barrenness, gave birth to a baby girl whose kingdom could not be determined by being thrown into the Nwangele River. When the child was thrown into the river, it sank; moments later, it sprang up.

It kept doing this until the priest who tested it in the river lifted it and gave it back to its mother, pronouncing the child to be of men. The priest did not understand what had happened, nor had he seen anything like it in all the years he had been testing babies in the Nwangele River. When the baby was handed back to Ngbankwo, she and her poor husband broke into celebration. They had thought the baby was gone when it sank into the river. They took the baby home and named her Urenma.

And so the baby began to grow. When the baby had grown into a girl, tales of her unusual beauty spread through Ukeh and beyond.

Men and women described her as beautiful as the moon, while others said her face shone brighter than the sun, and some even dared the gods, claiming they must be jealous of her beauty. Young boys of her age claimed she was no human; no one took the little boys seriously because she had survived the test at the river and so must be human.

When Urenma reached the age of seventeen, her father’s house became a sort of tourist center; men of different classes and from all climes began to flock to her father’s house to ask for her hand in marriage. Urenma’s father, Okeke, who had become a wealthy man since the birth of his daughter, was loaded with all forms of gifts and presents by men who sought to marry Urenma.

Those men hoped that their gifts would persuade Okeke to make them his choice for his daughter.

Though Okeke gladly received their gifts, the power to choose whom Urenma would marry was far removed from his hands. His daughter Urenma had made it clear to her parents that the choice of whom to marry would be hers to decide.

However, Urenma had no intention of ever getting married. She was a princess of the gods from the river kingdom who was granted permission by the gods to be born as a mortal and to dwell amongst mortals for a brief time, and then return to the water kingdom to fulfill her role as a princess of the gods. Okeke and Ngbankwo were not aware of this. Though they had often wondered how she was able to do some of the things she did, they did not think she was a child of the gods. How could she have been, after all, the gods returned her when she sank into the river? When her parents asked her about how she could do the unusual things they saw her do, she would explain that she saw them in her dreams.

Though she always visited the river world every night in her dreams, that was, however, not an explanation for the things she could do. Urenma was able to heal her parents’ sick animals, predict the weather, describe un-harvested farm produce, tell her parents the persons who would visit them before the guests arrived, and spoke to animals.

©️ Ifeoma Isabella Okeke

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