She came on the eve of his thirty-second birthday heralded by a pair of little white butterflies. He was with his fiancé then. He had been dreading the day, particularly since it coincided with the anniversary of his mother’s death. Kande knew this and had come to help him through the day. She wanted to make it a happy day for him. She had been toying with the idea of fixing their wedding for that date. After all, it had been almost two decades since his mother’s death. He ought to move on, she reckoned.

But that evening, the girl with the butterflies knocked on the door. Ohikwo had been watching a football match on TV. Kande, who had been in the kitchen, knew he did not want to be disturbed. He was so engrossed in the match she did not think he even heard. She came to answer the door. A little white butterfly fluttered across her face. She ducked. The butterfly floated giddily into the room and danced across Ohikwo’s face. He waved it away and the butterfly fluttered away only to dance right in front of the screen. He got up to get rid of it.

Kande turned to the girl that had knocked on the door. There was another white butterfly dancing about her. She was about five years younger than kande – probably no more than seventeen, Kande assumed. Her skin was luxuriant and beautiful. Her eyes were large and betrayed a sagacity that astonished Kande. She was clad in a flowing cream gown decorated with sequins down the front.

    “Good evening,” the girl smiled. She was confident.

    “Yes, good evening. Can I help you?”

    “Yes. I am looking for Ohikwo.”

    “Someone for you, honey!” Kande said over her shoulder.

    Ohikwo abandoned his futile pursuit of the fluttering butterfly and came to the door, fuming for having been disturbed from his match. His heart lurched when he looked into the girl’s eyes. There was something warmly familiar about them, yet he had only seen the girl once, in the dark, in the distance. She had been standing across the street from his apartment. She had been watching him that night as he came home. He had felt the same tingling inkling he was feeling then. He had wondered then if he knew her from somewhere but he was certain he had never seen her before.

    “Yes?” he asked, with a raised eyebrow.

    “Can I come in?” she asked.

    He looked at Kande and then made way for the girl. She floated past him into the living room. Her movement was seamless, the translucent veil over her head streaming behind her. The butterfly followed her in. She walked round the room, looking at the framed pictures on the wall. She stopped before the portrait of his mother, her back to him.

    “Excuse me, miss, can I help you?” He came and stood behind her. He could not help admiring her sublime figure beneath the gown.

 She walked towards the television and stood observing his picture. He was still a boy in his school shorts.

    “You did not join the army after all,” she said, still looking at the picture.

    “I beg your pardon?”

    “The army. You always wanted to be a soldier.”

He had nursed the ambition of joining the army when soldiers seemed to take over the government at whim. It had been every child’s dream then. He had wanted to be a great military ruler and perhaps have his face on some banknote someday.

    “That was a long time ago,” he said, wondering who the girl was.

    She turned with a faint smile playing on her lips. “It is tomorrow, isn’t it, your birthday?”

    “Yes.”

    She sighed. “It was always a happy day for you,” she said, but there was sadness in her voice.

    “Excuse me, who are you?” Kande asked, taking the stance of the belligerent girlfriend. “Ohikwo, who is this girl?”

    “I don’t know,” he said and turned to the girl. “What do you want?”

    She walked towards Kande and looked at her. The examination disturbed the older woman who tried to look back stoically. But she was beaten. She could not hold the stare and looked down, flustered.

    “She will make a good wife,” the girl said to Ohikwo. Her eyes still appraising Kande. “Your taste in women has always been...commendable. But as for you,” she said to Kande, “he has a temper. You should know that by now. You must be wise and patient with him.”

    “Who are you?” Ohikwo asked, now exasperated.

    She turned and looked at him. It was the look that first intimated him. “Ndagi,” she said.

    It was the way she said it – the way his mother used to say it with a slight, mocking lull. Only his mother had called him that. He had been named after her brother-in-law. And as he looked into her eyes, he somehow knew those eyes were older than the face that bore them. There was a disturbing light of erudition in them. He looked at her for long not knowing what to say or think.

    “Say it,” she urged. “You know who I am.” She came towards him and gently placed a hand over his racing heart. There was challenge in her eyes. He knew that look very well. “Your heart is telling you. You just don’t want to believe it.”

    “Wait, this is wrong,” he said weakly, pulling away from her. “This cannot be right. It cannot be possible.”

    “What is going on here?” Kande asked eagerly.

    “Sometimes, some things are beyond explaining,” the girl said sagely.

    “You must leave,” Ohikwo said determinedly. “I don’t know who you are or what you want from me. Whatever your mission is, you will not succeed.”

    “What is going on here?” Kande asked again, feeling neglected. Still, no one paid her any heed.

    The girl sighed. The two little white butterflies, having floated around the room, now came and hovered about her. She seemed untroubled by them.

    “You remember that time,” she began in a distant voice that echoed with reminiscence, “the time you saw the snake in the bathroom. You wouldn’t tell your father about it, but you told me the snake had sparkling fangs, remember. You tried to runaway from it and slipped on the slippery floor. You broke your arm right...here.” she touched his left arm lightly.

    He stared at her wide-eyed, frozen like a statue.

    “Remember how I applied snake fat to the arm after we had taken off the cast. The fat was stored in a little jar of ‘Robb’ and you remember it was the first thing you read on your own and you were so proud of yourself. I was so proud of you, Ndagi.”

    He felt the tinge of melancholy in her voice but did not immediately discern the tears in his eyes. When he did, he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He did not want to be seen crying. It was a sign of weakness, he believed.

    “Someone should explain all this to me, because none of this is making any sense to me,” Kande almost shouted. Her voice was un-modulated because of the wave of emotions she was feeling.

    “You said my arm was in cast,” Ohikwo addressed the mystery girl, too overwhelmed to address his troubled fiancée. “What kind of cast? Where did I get it from?”

    One of the butterflies perched on the girl’s shoulder and slowly flapped its wing. Then it took to the air dancing woozily close to the ceiling.

    “It was not a cast really. It was more like a bandage,” she said. “There was this traditional bone setter in Nasarawa, near the market. He worked in his courtyard. He set your arm in splinters and wrapped it with a piece of cloth. We went there several times until he thought it had healed enough to take off the wrappings.”

    It was true. He remembered the old man with a mean grin and bright orange residue of chewed kola lurking in the corners his lips. He was terrified of the man and screamed while he set his broken bone. Only his mother had been there to calm him. His father was away as usual. He saw him twice a year during the Eids when the man came with a ram for the slaughter and new cloths for his son. Ohikwo had been very young then. And this girl, with her entourage of butterflies, had not been born yet. She could not have been born, he assured himself. It was just some kind of elaborate ruse being played on him.

    “Look, I think you need to go now,” he said uncertainly. “This is a really bad joke. You need to go now. And whoever sent you...tell him...this is really wicked.”

    The girl nodded. Her butterflies converged about her, one on each side. She stopped before Kande and looked at her once more.

    “You have my blessings,” she said.

Kande was too dumbstruck to respond.

When she reached the door, the girl turned. “You remember the tree where we used to rest on our way back from the bone setter? I will be there tomorrow. You know the time.” She went away and gently closed the door behind her.

Ohikwo stared at the closed door for a long while, thinking. Then he heard Kande move behind him.

“Who was that girl?” she asked with a frightened voice.

He sighed and said. “I think that was my mother.”

*