Once upon a time in a certain city, there lived a handsome young rich and successful man who had acquired almost every good thing life has to offer except one thing. And that was LOVE. He had no girl to call his own. He had no girl in his life to show him love. The girls he came across either loved him for his money or his personality. None of them truly loved him for who he really was, although they pretended to have so much fallen in love with him to the extent that they even fell sick when he wouldn’t go out with them. But he was a wise guy; he wasn’t born with a silver spoon. He worked his way to wealth and had become familiar with various moves people would make to try and manipulate other people and things to work to their interest and as such, it became very impossible for any of those girls to successfully deceive him into believing that they truly loved him. Certainly, he would know his true love when he found her. So he began his search.
It crossed his mind that good girls could only be found in good places, so firstly; he hit the church but didn’t find his true love there. He then tried the gym but to no avail. He went to many wonderful places all-round the world and found many wonderful girls everywhere he went but didn’t find his true love until one day as he was driving along a street in town; he got into a minor accident that recorded no casualties. But the people of the town became so raged with the young man for no particular reason and advanced to assault him. But just before the violence went out of control, a young pretty maiden showed up at the scene like an angel spoke to the people to quit ill-treating the young man. Amazingly, the consented to her plea, and let the young man be. The young man thanked the maiden for rescuing him but wondered what made the people consent to her plea without an argument and concluded that there must be something special about the maiden, something he had to find out. Perhaps, that could be his true love. Haha, let’s find out. The young man wanted to meet the maiden and get to know her personally. But how was he supposed to do that without being looked at as a flirt, which he wasn’t. So he pretended as though he really wanted to settle the matter with the people and stayed back with them to discuss on some things which didn’t really matter. The idea was to stay back with the people and pretend to want to make absolute peace with them in order to give the maiden time to walk some distance away from the scene before he would hop into his car and drive towards her to pick her up and have some time to discuss with her. His plan worked perfectly! After he thanked the girl for intervening, she received his thanks and went along because she was on her way to somewhere important to her. A little while after she had left the scene, the young man drove gently towards her and asked to drop her off, to pay her back for her kindness. She resisted initially but consented after many pleas from the young man. The young man had all the time in the world to discuss with her and he found out almost all he needed to know about the maiden. On dropping her off, he asked to meet with her again another time and she agreed, for she loved his sense of humor.
As time passed, they fell in love and initiated plans of marriage. The young man was convinced he had found the girl his heart desired, but she was more than he asked for. There was something about the maiden. She was so pretty and only got prettier as years passed by. It became very obvious that there was more to her beauty than meets the eye. Everyone honored this young man for having found that sort of girl for a wife in an age where it is absolutely impossible to find such. Her regenerative beauty became a song on the lips of everyone, both great and little. Some girls envied her, while some others got jealous. Truly, there was something more about her beauty that no one else knew except herself and her mother. She thought of letting the cat out of the bag before tying the nuts with the young man so that she won’t end up appearing awful when the truth is later discovered. And also that she doesn’t end up hurt along the line. After much deliberations with her mum, they finally concluded on letting the young man know what regenerates the beauty of the maiden he’s about to get married to. Two days to the wedding day she approached him in a rather unusual manner and asked to speak with him privately in an island. She chose an island because she wanted to be sure the information she was about to spill out doesn’t get into the ears of anyone else but her husband to be. On arrival at the island, they chatted, played and did a couple of other things before she finally broke her silence. She said to him,
Oh’ my dearest,
The one my heart yearns for in earnest.
Your love has set my soul on fire,
And your kiss remains my everlasting desire.
Your arms is better refuge than the mansion of a king,
And your warmth is good medicine for my skin.
Thoughts of losing you threatens my whole being,
But I fear for what will become of your beauty queen,
When the secret of her beauty takes off the veil,
The very thing I brought you here to tell.
[showad block=3]
The young man was so impressed by her lines, especially by her soft and gentle voice which transported her message, but was puzzled by its content. So he asked; how can you ever think of losing me when we have become almost inseparable? Yes you indeed are my beauty queen and you need not have fear of anything, for whatever is your beauty’s secret will only make me love you increasingly. So the maiden gave voice to that ancient secret which had remained untold through generations. This she said; from the day of my birth till this very moment I have known no man. In my linage, it is forbidden to do so before the wedding night. And we are also forbidden to remarry. Breaking any of those laws attracts very drastic measures. But not as drastic as the measures that will be attracted if the law surrounding my beauty’s regeneration is broken. For me to keep getting more and more beautiful as the years go by instead of diminishing in beauty, the one whom I truly love must not take another woman to his bed after our wedding night except me until the day of his death. The day he does so, my beauty will vanish and I will look like a woman four times older than my age. It is like an irreversible curse. Once done, it cannot be undone. That will be the end of my beauty, and I will become an undesirable sight to behold. It will all be the fault of the one who has my heart, and everyone will get to know that my condition is as a result of unfaithfulness on the part of the one my love burns for. And I know you wouldn’t want anything to do with a woman four times my age, so definitely, even you will cast me away then. But it can be prevented if you stay faithful to me until death. And since you love me so much, that wouldn’t be a difficult thing to do will it? The young man paused for a while and went deep in thoughts. Not that he was thinking about the possibility of remaining faithful to his wife all his life, but was wondering how what the maiden had just told him could be. The maiden almost thought he wasn’t going to consent due to his reaction and the look on his face, but he did. He said to her; it won’t. The maiden heart was so gladdened by his response and she straight way kissed him.
After the wedding day and the wedding night, their lives went on peaceably. But the many girls who had always pretended to love the young man never stopped bugging his life even after knowing he was married. They didn’t mind being his mistress. They tried their best to seduce the young man and get him to cheat on his wife but were unsuccessful until one of them with an art of seduction more appealing than that of Delilah came unto him, and he fell for it. After the act, it dawned on him what the consequences of what he had done would be, and began to weep bitterly. He wept all along the way until he got home. His wife could hear his voice from her chambers where she had run to hide herself when the curse came on her, for she knew that her husband had acted unwisely. Her husband went to their room and didn’t find her there, and then he made his way to her chambers and found his wife lying on a mat, looking as old as a hundred year old woman. When he saw her, he wept more bitterly, for his conscience troubled him unstoppably. His wife, in her misery and depression couldn’t do any more than sob, for she had accepted her fate and regretted ever giving love a chance, unlike her mother and grandmothers who didn’t get married to the men they loved but to the men they didn’t love in order to prevent the fate she now has to endure for the rest of her life. All the while she said nothing to him but later on she lifted herself from the mat, sat up and said to him;
Oh’ my dearest,
Of my body I gave you the very best,
Indeed, I was your very first,
Why did you forsake me for a mere guest?
You passed exams with flying colors, how could you have failed a mere test?
My bosom was to be your only rest,
But you defiled our bed and have made me a thing of jest.
Will you now still show me off and beat your chest?
Or shall you leave me to my doom just like the rest?
.
He got so irritated by her. He couldn’t stand being spoken to in such manner by an old woman, so he left her chambers at once and screamed to the top of his voice because of what his conscience was doing to him. He screamed so loudly that the neighbors knew that there was something wrong with him. They made their way to his house one after another to inquire of him what the problem might be. After a long while of being pressed to speak out, he broke the silence. Then everyone became aware of what had remained a secret for nearly ten generations, because of a young girl who decided not to follow the footsteps of her ancestors.
But then, after many thoughts and opinions on how to get the problem solved, it was realized that the tragedy that had befallen the his wife cannot be undone, but can be transferred if there is someone who is willing to take the curse upon him or her and get the woman restored to her original state. No one was ready to do that. Of cause no one would be that silly trade his or her youth for old age. If anyone should do that, it should be the man who provoked the curse to come on her in the first place. But was he willing to do so? Guess what? He was! He asked for the necessary ritual to be conducted as soon as possible because he couldn’t bear the thought that the woman who risked her life to love him was suffering so much because of him. He willed everything he had to his wife and asked for the curse to be transferred to him, and it was. His wife was restored, but he became old. When that happened, he retired to the jungle and dwelt there till the day of his death while his remained unmarried but ever beautiful till she died. Finally, the curse was broken because she had no child to continue with it. The curse was broken because she decided to marry the man she loved, unlike her mother and grandmothers who married men they didn’t love and bore them children to continue with the curse for nearly one hundred years. LOVE BROKE THE CURSE.
***THE END***
PLEASE COMMENT IF YOU ENJOYED THE STORY
