It was an uncommon occurrence for a child to be exorcized; it was usually the old women that were found out as witches.

The pages finished setting the oil lamps and other miscellanea according to the rules of Feng Shui. They all stepped back and let the herbalist take their place in front of the girl, forming an outer circle. The said man started to chant in a strange tongue and sprinkle a thick, black liquid inside the chalk-line — and on the girl, in the process.

Eniiyi, head bowed, surreptitiously wiped her face on her sleeve. She tried not to breathe in the foul-smelling liquid. She wondered again what was going to happen to her now. The woman who gave birth to the man who gave birth to her, who was supposed to be her grandmother, had betrayed her. So what now? Hadn't they mentioned murder? Were they still going to murder her? Was this just a rite before the ritual? All this thoughts kept echoing through the valleys of her cranium, colliding with one another and the walls and  back, turning her into a more panicked mess with headache. 

That there was no one to answer her haunting questions, no one to save her, no one to comfort her, made her more and more afraid and she thought she'd die from fear. She seriously wished that death from fear would happen, it would beat the not knowing and the having to face the guillotine or whatever they planned to orchestrate her death with. She could feel her heart banging wildly against it's cagey walls and the resonation in her throat. Fear wouldn't let go of the pit of her belly, it held on tight to it with it's canine jaws, it's waves traveling the way up and down her spine and her whole being. She felt the urge to throw up but her throat was heavy and dry.

It was at moments like this that she wished tears would come.

The man's voice was now climbing higher and seemed to have reached a crescendo for he stopped abruptly and froze in front of the child in the circle.

A surprised Eniiyi had started to slowly raise her head when the first lash landed on her back, curving into her stomach. She gave a surprised yelp and tried to leap up in the pain but her bound limbs saw to it that she didn't.

'O evil one, I command you to evacuate from this human vessel!' 

The whip cracked again and Eniiyi fell down to her side in pain, screaming. She tried to wiggle away from the man but some white force was pushing her back to him.

'Stop, please!' she screamed in agony. Her whole  body stung and was on fire from the pain. The pain was nothing she'd ever experienced.

Deaf to the pleas of the cowering, small child the whip came down again. And again, and again.

'She's not even crying!' Now that the rites had been completed the people were now free to talk.

'This one is the devil herself!'

The voices continued to spew their own vitriol at the plight of a child the age of many of their own children.

The grandmother wouldn't stop weeping as she watched from afar. She knew that it was the required procedure and that there was nothing she could have done to heal the girl, even if she tried, but watching the girl in so much agony unsettled her lake of tears and turned it to flowing streams down her cheeks. Oh, if only the girl hadn't been brought to the village!

'Grandma, help me!' she screamed.

The old woman's heart couldn't rend more.

Then village doctor stopped screaming at the demon believed to be possessing the child. He touched a polkadotted, short stick to her head and jumped back, chanting incantations.

'Èèwọ̀! Abomination!' he shouted.

'What? What is it?' an annoyed baale tsked. The man was getting tired of sitting down there and watching them do the unnecessary, but he couldn't fully interfere in the decisions of the elders. His power didn't cover that. True he was the head of the village, but matters that didn't have to do with running the government of public policies and affairs were beyond his pale.

'This child is not only possessed but also an initiate in a dark circle.'

There were collective gasps at this. The white-garbed pages all stepped back  Many voices went up as they expressed their opinion. 

'She has to be taken in intensively and made to confess all,' the village native doctor concluded with a tone of finality.

'Why?' a person asked. 'What has led you to that conclusion?'

The bull of a man turned an angry gaze to the crowd. 'How dare you question the divulgation of the gods? May sanponna* tear your mouth to pieces for that!' Then he turned back to the baale and the elders. 'She has to be taken back with me for proper confession and exorcism! Did you see her cry at all after all the beating? No!' he answered his own question. 'She has been fortified over and over by the evil forces of her circle.

'They sent her to pronounce the death of Bewaji, and they would continue to send her if she is not made to confess and break her ties from them all.'

'For all we know, she may be the devil herself!' a voice in the audience hollered from the far end.

'Thank the gods I didn't let any of my children near her, she would have initiated my poor children.' A woman at the front row threw up her hands then spat on the floor beside her and wiped her mouth fiercely.

The people seemed to realize the implication of her comment and women whose children hadn't come in contact with the witch child or didn't have children her age threw up their hands and thanked their God and gods in different ways. Those who remained passive in horror or fear either were men or women whose children may have come in contact with the evil child.

'Everyone who has ever come in contact with the girl should be purged!' someone offered from the crowd and everyone else supported him at that.

'Of course! That goes without saying. Only thing left is the decision of the council.' The native doctor, together with the eyes of the crowd, turned back to the elders.

'Yes we agree to that,' the elders said.

'And so shall it be,' said the baale.

No one asked for the opinion of the guardian and blood relative of the child in discussion, nor did they the barely conscious girl. Her ropes were untied and an older page, fortified with more talisman and amulet than the rest, picked the child up, hoisted her over his shoulder and exited the building with their master.

After a while of walking in a file, they stopped in front of a small, single-room building. The building was a few feet tall rectangle mounted high on a graveled foundation. It was cement brick on three sides and cross-linked iron bars on the other long side which faced a dirt road. Old, rusted aluminum roofing sheet formed a semiconical cover over the top.

The village doctor pulled opened a rickety, creaking door to the short side they were at. He muttered foreign words and charged into the room.

'Drop her there.' He pointed to a ninety degree corner.

The mute page dumped the girl on the hard floor and she whimpered. All her red welts seemed to jolt and it was like she'd been ignited.

'Is she asleep? Ẹẹ̀, aṣèṣè bẹ̀rẹ̀ ní o, we have just started. Go and fetch the special water and sprinkle it on her. The rest get the instruments and let me set up the place.'

The pages scurried out to perform the orders, mostly glad to be out of the vicinity of the most evil child they'd ever seen.