Lobatse, a town tucked into the southern cradle of Botswana, an ancient cradle nestled in the southern belly of Botswana, wore its history like a second skin weathered, enduring, and quietly proud. Surrounded by the granite-boned hills of the Kalahari Basin's edge, the town was more than just a collection of streets and homes. It was a heartbeat in stone and soil, pulsing quietly beneath the rhythm of rural life. Hills rose like old, sleeping giants around its edges, heir rocky spines catching the first blush of sunrise and holding onto the last sighs of dusk. Here, amid winding dusty paths and whispering acacia trees, a boy named Timothy Angle came of age.
This was where Timothy Angle was born a quiet boy with wide eyes and a heart tuned to the language of birds and books. His mother was a schoolteacher; his father, a retired train station clerk. They lived in a modest whitewashed house near the foot of one of the lesser hills, where the morning sun fell earliest.
Timothy's world was steeped in routine early morning Bible readings, midday chores, and evening debates between city logic and village wisdom. The town raised him slowly, with care, like it did all its children. It gave him discipline, a curious mind, and an unshakable belief in the power of learning. But it also gave him solitude a sense that somewhere beyond the ridges, life was waiting to be discovered.
He would sit atop the rocks, sketching dreams in a journal, watching eagles glide overhead. The land made him reflective. God-fearing, yes but also quietly romantic, shaped by the poetry of the hills and the discipline of faith.
Timothy had the kind of quiet strength that made you trust him, even before he spoke. Raised in a modest home near the edge of Lobatse's inner valley, he was a boy molded by faith, structure, and the rhythmic call of purpose. Scripture was his compass, but dreams often drifted him elsewhere dreams of a love that would make his life feel less like a schedule and more like a song.
And then came Molly.
Molly Whitmore's world was equally shaped by Lobatse, but from another angle. Her family lived in a more modern part of town, close to the regional council buildings. Her father, an aging British-Batswana civil engineer, had fallen in love with the land and married a local woman thirty years his junior. He was gentle and graying; her mother—radiant, mysterious, with an unsettling presence that people whispered about behind closed doors.
Her upbringing was a study in contrasts. The father gave her logic, balance, and support. The mother gave her ambition and unknowable silence. It was her mother who insisted she become "a girl of power," and her father who taught her that love was worth more than pride.
Molly was beautiful in a way that made time pause graceful, light-skinned, with the kind of presence that stirred both admiration and unease. Her voice was soft, but her laughter had music in it. Even in school, teachers said she would either be the downfall or salvation of any man who truly loved her.
At 19, she aspired to be an accountant not because it was romantic, but because it promised order in a world she often found too unpredictable. Yet under her logic beat a tender heart, desperate to belong to give love, and be someone's forever.
She would walk alone in the late afternoons, past the town's edge, where the grasses began to rise. It was on one of those walks that she saw him a boy with a journal, sketching the hills like he was trying to memorize them before they disappeared.
She was in her final year of senior school when their paths crossed an effortless beauty with a laugh like river water and eyes that made you forget where you were. Molly Williams, only nineteen and destined to be an accountant, carried herself with a glow that was not just youthful but spiritual though even she didn't yet know how spiritual.
They'd seen each other before, of course in passing glances at the local library, at church on Sundays, or near the small tuck shop where she sometimes bought chocolate after school. But one golden afternoon, just after a light rain had cooled the earth, their eyes met for more than a second.
Timothy was sitting on a flat rock sketching the ridgeline, his pencil dancing between lines and curves. Molly had stopped a few feet away, barefoot on damp ground, the hem of her school skirt damp from tall grass.
"Are you drawing the hills or dreaming them?" she asked, half-teasing.
He looked up, startled. Then smiled. "Maybe both."
She tilted her head, curious. "Do you always come here alone?"
"Only when I need to remember something important."
"Like what?"
He hesitated. "That the world is still beautiful."
She didn't say anything at first. Then she stepped closer and sat beside him not too near, but near enough. They didn't speak much after that. Just listened to the breeze. It was quiet, but charged like something beginning to unfold.
Their first real conversation was under the stars, sprawled on a patch of earth behind Timothy's church where the valley opened to a sky so wide, it made you feel like you could fall upward.
"Do you ever wonder if the stars are watching us?" she asked, tracing one with her finger.
Timothy chuckled. "All the time. Sometimes I think they pray for us too."
She turned her head toward him. "That's beautiful."
"So are you," he said, more surprised at himself than she was.
Their love bloomed like wildflowers in the rainy season. It was innocent, real, and woven into every rock, hill, and stream they touched. They would walk hand-in-hand along the Lobatse ridges, talking about dreams, children, and someday.
That someday came sooner than expected. Molly graduated. Her future was unfolding. Then the unexpected happened: she fell pregnant.
At first, it was shock. Then silence. Then joy- at least between them.
But when Molly's mother, Elizabeth, found out, everything changed.
Elizabeth was no ordinary woman. She was feared in the township, not just because she was cold and calculating but because she was whispered to be a woman of "the night wind." People said she once walked into a river and returned dry. That she knew things before they happened. That her first husband went mad talking to shadows.
And then there was the prophecy she carried like a second name: "You will never bear fruit from your womb. Your seed is claimed."
She had heard it as a girl during a trance at the old healing grounds. She never forgot. Nor did the spirits who whispered it.
So when Molly announced her pregnancy, Elizabeth did not rejoice. She did not plan a baby shower or sing praise. She locked herself in her room for three days and when she came out, she simply said:
"It will not come to pass."
From that moment, strange things began.
Timothy started feeling weak at work. Files vanished. His computer reset itself at odd hours. He dreamed of caves, blood, and a woman with no eyes whispering his name. Molly's body ached constantly. Her appetite failed. Then came the night terrors, moaning in her sleep, shadowy figures standing at the foot of her bed.
They turned to doctors. Scans revealed nothing. Then came swelling. Pain. Then bleeding.
"We don't know what's wrong," said one doctor.
But the church did.
A woman of faith, Timothy's grandmother, stood up.
"That child is under attack. The womb is a battlefield. We must war."
And so began the intercessions. Prayers roared through the night. Psalms were sung like war chants. Elizabeth watched from a distance, face blank, but eyes always knowing.
Days passed in a haze of holy fire. Molly barely slept. The house pulsed with the rhythm of prayer mornings soaked in anointing oil, nights cracked open by midnight cries. Timothy fasted until his shirt hung loose on his frame. Scriptures were taped to the walls. Psalms whispered over her belly. But the heaviness never left. Shadows lingered near doorways. Mirrors cracked for no reason. Birds stopped nesting in the tree outside her window.
Then came the seventh night the night of silence. No dreams. No pain. Just an eerie stillness. Molly lay on the mattress with Timothy's hand resting on her stomach, his voice low with Scripture.
"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." he began.
Suddenly, Molly gasped her fingers clutching his. A warmth spread between her legs. Then a sharp, twisting pain.
"It's time," she whispered.
Timothy didn't panic. He nodded once, stood, and called the prayer team.
Then the labour came. Long. Violent. Terrifying.
They carried Molly to a church retreat site at the edge of the hills, where fasting had prepared the ground for miracles. A tent became her ward. Intercessors her midwives. Timothy, her anchor.
"Don't let go of me, Tim… don't let them take him," she pleaded.
Outside, a storm was building. Wind howled. Trees danced like they were afraid.
Then Elizabeth appeared at the forest edge. Barefoot. Black wrap. Bone knife.
"Give me the child and I will go," she said. "He was never meant to be born."
But Timothy stood firm.
"This child is not yours. He is not cursed. He is covered."
The prayers intensified. Elizabeth screamed and vanished into the trees. Molly screamed louder then silence.
Time held its breath.
Then came the cry.
The baby's cry. Pure. Loud. Alive.
"It's a boy!" someone shouted.
Molly collapsed, whispering, "He's free… we're free."
Timothy held him. Small. Beautiful. Radiating peace.
"We will call him Eliam," Timothy said. "God of my people."
The wind died down. The hills sighed. A new dawn broke over Lobatse.
And with it, the curse was broken.