“Is that all right with you, my dear?” he added. Leona frowned and protested that she had not seen him long enough and that he was going to be working all day tomorrow and would spend very little time together. Tamura looked at her and embraced her reassuringly and said to her, “You know we are going to be together forever, so just hang in there until I make you my wife, then you can have me all to yourself!” He said taking a bow to her and she smiled. The two lovers gave each other a hug and kiss and bade each other goodnight a few moments later.
That night Mara had a nightmarish dream about the spirits in the woods. She saw herself walking home with Tamura from Huru and all of a sudden the trees rustled in the wind and there was a great shaking of the ground like an earthquake and these ugly, smelly hollow beings came running towards them.
Mara started shouting at Tamura to run as fast as he could, but somehow, she realised that he couldn’t hear her, neither did he appear to have seen the spirits heading towards them.
Mara shouted louder and louder for Tamura to run as she started running with all her strength towards home. She ran and ran and started reciting the prayer as she ran to repel the spirits. Somehow, as she looked back in her running, she realised that the spirits were still in hot pursuit but were somehow falling behind from when she started praying. Tamura was calling out to her to slow down, but she was not listening and so he decided to run alongside her with a worried look on his face. It was difficult for Mara to run and pray at the same time and she felt breathless.
Suddenly, she felt a slap across her face and jerked herself up from her nightmare and saw Tamura standing over her bed calling her name and shaking her to wake up.
Mara looked bemused and was breathing heavily. Tamura said to her, “You must have been having one of your bad dreams again. Are you all right, Mara?”
Mara stammered a laboured, “Yes.”
“Do you want me to leave the light on for you if you are scared to sleep in the dark?” asked Tamura.
“No, I am all right, I was just, I was just…” she stammered.
“I know, no need to explain, sis, you go back to sleep. I am right here if you need me,” Tamura said reassuringly.
Worried that her brother might have heard her praying, she composed herself and asked Tamura, “What did I say, what did you hear?”
Tamura looked at her and smiled, “You were not making any sense at all, just incoherent gibberish, that’s all, now go back to sleep, okay?”
Mara was happy to hear that and replied, “Okay, goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Tamura responded.
In the dead of night, well after midnight into the wee hours of the morning, when the entire compound was completely silent, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Mara and woke her up. “Mara, Mara, wake up!” Mara opened her eyes and saw the same Angel who had visited her before and she sat up in bed with her blanket pulled up to her chin for cover. She was once again gripped with fear as she was the first day the Angel appeared to her. This time she was even more afraid as she was wary her brothers would waken and see her conversing with an Angel and blow her cover.
The Angel reassured her saying, “I come in peace, do not be afraid. Your brothers are in a deep sleep and will not hear what we are saying. The time is now, Mara, that you should start teaching others how to pray and don’t wait a minute longer. The evils spirits are starting to awaken. I am sure you felt the atmosphere in the woods was not pleasant. That is to tell you evil is brewing faster than you can imagine. I am not here to scare you, but to equip you for warfare against the evil.”
Mara sat transfixed at the Angel, taking every word in and nodding in agreement, but said nothing as she didn’t want to interrupt and miss a thing. The Angel continued, “The prayer I asked you to write down the last time I was here. I want you to start teaching everyone in this village, every day until they recite the prayer without reading from a piece of paper. Because when the spirits strike in the dead of night, you cannot see to read from a piece of paper in the dark.”
The Angel continued, “This is also symbolic with when the world comes to an end and the Lord comes back to separate the good and the evil. It will be too late then to decide to serve Him. He will come with wrath in His feet and a rod of destruction will be upon the earth for the unrepentant sons of perdition. Well, that’s another matter for another day, so I won’t go into that right now.”
He continued, “It is very important you ensure everyone takes this task very seriously as it is a matter of life and death. Before I leave, I will breathe on everyone in this village to impart grace on all of them so that their hearts maybe convinced to listen and obey what you have to tell them to do. If you find the task difficult, call on the Lord to send me back to strengthen you. Peace be upon you.” The Angel departed.
Mara thanked the Lord for the visitation from the Angel and fell into a deep sleep again, which was Godsent, as she was by now wide awake with the anticipated mammoth task ahead of her in the morning
