Feather of Death

Mutuma was alone in the forest, busy piling up his beans harvest in his favorite sisal basket. As he was about to lift his basket, a feather from nowhere fell on his basket, with a soft landing. He could tell that this was a strange event. “How can this be?!” he asked himself. The forest was not an abode for birds, especially the ones that had blue, as a chief color! “I’ll become mad!” Before he could run away from this mystery, an elf appeared right in front of him! “Don’t be afraid. I have great secrets and mastery of all world languages,” the elf told him. Mutuma was told if he called out a person’s name and dropped the feather, the person would die by sunrise! “Maybe it is my destiny to tame my fellow villagers of all the evil that they have absorbed in their way of living, like white cotton in dye,” the boy thought. As the Sun set, Mutuma called each name he felt carried deceit, malice, hatred, gossip, and many other vomit of the Evil One. Exhausted from calling out names, and bending to pick up the feather, Mutuma returned to his village, and slept in his hut. When the Sun later woke up, the boy noticed something strange. His village was as silent as a dry well! When he visited his parents’ hut, tears and guilt welled in his heart. His knees became so weak, that he knelt on the ground. Some villagers lay lifeless outside their huts! All the elders sat breathless around their fireplace! “You could have refused my offer when you had the chance,” Mutuma heard a whisper. It was the elf’s voice! “I am sure that now you are aware of the feather’s power. It drifts in thin air, but brings down thousands and thousands of people!” “You should also have known by now that everyone, including you, has some evil in his or her heart”….. The poor boy was appalled when he later learnt that the elf had conspired to kill every villager around him, so that he could be the destined possessor of the feather. “Immortality will be your blessing; loneliness will be your curse,” the elf once again whispered to him.