The Twins spent seven days and seven nights in the forest, sleeping peacefully, protected by the cedars, ácanas, jocumas, yayas, and yabas. Amongst the vines and creepers nothing evil and absolutely nothing of note happened to the Ibeyi. In time, even the Chichicates, Mamelitas, and Guaos—the three evil sticks of the forest—disappeared. Thusly the Ibeyi went on under the open sky, through unremarkable stone dotted-land, which smelled of the esparto and granadillo plants. Further on was a hill, which led to a highpoint and then graded down from there to the sea.
For another seven days they wandered about the mountains, and upon coming down early in the morning they found themselves in the throat of a small valley. Everything was still and there rested amongst mountains of human bones, the Devil. He slept deeply, standing up, in a kind of eternal drowsiness of heavy silence. The Ibeyi went right up to him. Taiwo, scurrying like a lizard, hid in under a Piñon de Botija.
The Devil opened his sleepy eyes and showed his teeth, long and filed like knives, and without moving went off to sleep once more.
Kaindé, noting this, got closer to him defiantly and grabbing hold of the thick hair that hung from his shoulders shook him hard, shouting with all his strength, “Taita, get up, wake up!” The Devil stirred and started to awaken and the peaceful valley bellowed like a bull.
“What are you doing here mokekeré? Watch out; I’m really hungry because no one has been through here in many years and I haven’t tasted human flesh.”
“Let me pass through,” the Ibeyi replied sweetly. “Open up the road odara.” The Devil answered, “I will open it for you, but before that you have to submit to my law, which is that you have to drum for me so I can dance. If you succeed in wearing me out, the road is yours. But if you don’t, I’ll eat you too.”
The Ibeyi said, “give me the drum,” and when he had it in his hands he began to play a rhythm the Devil hadn’t heard before. The devil danced four hours without stopping and the Ibeyi began to feel his fingers getting numb and painful, and at the point of almost falling out he said, “Taita, I’m thirsty. Let me get a drink at the spring I see over there.”
“Drink,” the Devil answered. Without stopping the drumming, Taiwo replaced Kaindé. Taiwo continued drumming while Kaindé rested, and the Devil kept on dancing contentedly. When another four hours had passed, Taiwó said to the Devil, “Taita, I’m thirsty.” And the Devil replied, “look, beyond that jagüey tree a river is the beginning of a river. Drink all you want; but don’t stop the drumming,” and he showed his filed teeth. So now Kaindé began drumming again, coming back refreshed and nourished, after having devoured six eyelé out of twelve that an eagle had offered him.
The sun went down and night came. When the moon rose all the birds of the darkness swarmed in thick flocks around the Devil’s head of knarled hair. The mountains of bones crackled and came alive as the valley filled with skeletons. The Devil shook it up until he was tired out and dumb and at the end he fell, almost defeated. But the Ibeyi, sounding the drum with even more force said to him, “this is your law; keep dancing while I play.”
The Devil got into it again, falling over like a drunk, dancing morbidly, this time accompanied by owls and bats. And without realizing it and in the middle of the night, he fell flat out on his back with the face of a defeated moon.
“Your time has come,” the Ibeyi said in unison. They ripped his guts out and burned them in a bonfire and pulled off the cruz de asta from his necklaces.
The twins took three iron rods that they pulled from the forest, a malva tree, and a clay pot. They ripped out the Devil’s heart, shredded it with the leaves, and threw it in the pot. Thusly they did it—beating the Devil and opening all the roads. That night, the Ibeyi brought back to life all number of people who had been lost, and at the Palm Tree they all went up to the sky and petitioned Obatalá that he never deny them anything, that he return those old skeletons their old bodies and souls that the okuní burukú had devoured.
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(c) Copyright English Translation David H. Brown 2013
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