The earth was shaking, the moon was out, and the sky was very dark; Kelechi was in the middle of nowhere. She was thrown out of the kingdom two weeks ago into this strange forest. She was said to have committed adultery with her 8 months old pregnancy. She denied sleeping with another man. Her husband raised an alarm and she was sent out of the village with her pregnancy.

Kelechi was able to survive in the bush for 2weeks; she lived only on fruits that were available in the bush. She plucked a fruit from a particular tree and immediately went into labor. There was no one in sight to help. She screamed and screamed, the forest was so dark she didn’t know what was happening. She fell on the ground; she managed to push the baby out. A large python crawled down from the tree went to her used its mouth to cut the umbilical cord to set the baby free and wrapped the child with its body.

Kelechi died immediately, leaving her child who she never knew whether it was a girl or boy to a python. The python wrapped the child for days with its cold body.

Days, weeks, months passed and she grew into a beautiful child. How she survived, only the python knew. He protected her. She didn’t have a name; she was just there with the python day and night. He climbed to the tree to throw down fruits and feeds the baby with its mouth. She got used to life in the bush in no time.

Five months later; Eke was sick, it wrapped itself round the child, the little one didn't understand why it does this all the time, but she plays with its skin. The Eke was a very old snake and has lived more than 50years on earth. The Eke licked her eyes with its tongue and died. She cried for days because she didn’t know why her adopted mother was lifeless.

The little child changes to a little python anytime the moon comes out. She crawls around to eat something and once it is day time, she changes back to human and stays in a spot. This went on and on for days. Eke’s body was still lying lifeless on the ground.

A hunter passing by heard the baby’s cry one afternoon and went after the voice. He wondered why an Eke was lying lifeless on the ground and what killed it. In the village, Eke was a respected deity and is never killed by a human, so the baby cannot possibly have killed the Eke, he thought to himself. The hunter carried the dead Eke round its neck and the child in his hands and went into the village to report to the king.

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Umunatoh Village was one of the villages that connected the three villages of the great Ekemu river in the east part of the Akanu town. It was described as one of the most fruitful village in the town. Any little crime committed by anyone was seen as a curse. They respected Pythons and some people kept them as pet in their huts.

The pretty girl was given to the king and he summoned the elders to deliberate on what to do with the child. “Egwe, I think this child is a curse and not a blessing, she caused a python to die, she should be killed” an elder said and many agreed. The king in his wisdom asked for them to take the child to the Eke oracle in the village square.

The chief priest asked for her to be kept in the shrine, she stayed in the shrine for seven days and night. Each time it was moonlight, the child disappears from its spot and what the chief priest sees is a small python. He observed this for days and came to the conclusion that she was the one changing to an Eke. He ordered for her to be kept in the palace that she wasn’t a curse, she was blessed by the Eke deities and she should be treated as a blessing. From then on, she was named ‘Ada Eke’. Ada Eke lived in the palace with the king, queen and their son. She changed to Eke during the night as usual and everybody was used to it. The older she grew, the bigger the reptile grew in size.

contimue reading at http://www.akosaseries.com/2015/10/episode-1-ekepython-story-by-joy-akosa.html