Look Death In The Eye If IT Had One

Her father would have said something else as she farted. But he had laid helpless like that for the past two weeks without shaking. Ava knew he will soon stand on his feet and start walking again. She needs someone to tell her to watch over the goats and fetch water from the borehole. She wants someone who will continue to direct the women of the house around. But not her father again in the last two weeks. 

Yesterday, she had gone to visit the old medicinal man in the neighboring village and the old man had accepted to brew a medicine for her father only if she can talk to death on her father's behalf. Though trembling, she felt the urge to do so. Her father means a lot to her. But looking at the medicinal man in the eye is like looking death in the face especially when the man started rolling his eyes like a dead chicken. She had to make an escape without thinking twice and also not taking the medicine. Ava had to run for fifteen minutes nonstop. 

Ever since the last two days since she escaped death, her father's condition had continued to aggravate. And now today, his friend had brought medicine for him in a black bottle which prevents the content inside from being seen. Somehow, Ava felt probably the medicine also belong to death for it to aid her father's death too soon. She had to do something. 

At night when they had all gone to bed and her mother had slept beside the father, she took the medicine and throw it out the open window. And it was dark outside but she can see a movement towards the bottle. She couldn't see the face. Perhaps that was the death she dare not look in the face. To her, the bottle belongs to the death and should therefore be returned.

But the following morning, Mr. Gray beside their house who was also ill had regained his strength. Could it be Mr. Gray who had taken the bottle?

she made another move the next day to the next village in search of medicine to revive her father away from death. The medicinal man asked her to perform a sacrifice to death to avert her father's death. Ava thinks for a while before talking. She is ready to do it. But the skulls the medicine man hung around his shrine were pointing in another direction in her brain. She felt the whole shrine crying to her and pictured the death usurping the skulls. The first thing that came to her mind was escaping away from that den as she would have called it. She can't look death in the face. Why should she die when others are still living? Is she to die young? And now? Of course not. She has to do something. She escaped through the window. 

By the time she got home, her father's friend was there with the village priest to pray for her father. She believes the village Priest is closer to the gods and would at least be able to look death in the face. She looks at her across the bed. His smiling face had worn out and his curved lips are as flat as the surface of a hand fan. His whole body is pale and he looks as good as dead.

She watched as the priest began the incarnations. He is chanting praises to death. Ava was afraid. Why should he?

Questions

1. Why do you think Ava can't look death in the face?

2. Do you think the medicine she threw away had healed Mr. Gray?

3. Is Ava the cause of her father's aggravating health?