coffieolore

[coffieolore]

Chapter Four

The End of Everything

The gate squeaks as Ama shoulders it. She saunters onto the open compound, a bag of water sachets drooping from each hand.

Music thumps from inside the house ahead, shadows in the windows twisting and swaying to the beat. And on the porch, a handful of Ama’s classmates drink and talk in pairs or small groups. Some of them still have their graduation gowns on.

Ama shed hers hours ago for the red dress underneath, right after the ceremony was over. Gone are the heels as well. The left one snapped off during her errand, and in her frustration, she had kicked them off to proceed barefoot. Whatever, they were cheap things anyway. Her friends had been begging her to let them replace them for years.

As Ama arrives at the porch, a classmate offers to help her with the bags.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she says, climbing up the front steps. Another classmate helps by opening the door.

Ama winces as the lights and sound hit her. It was dark outside, and she is not delighted by the sudden invasion of flashing colors. She can feel the bass of blaring Afrobeats music in her bones. Weaving between writhing guests and gyrating couples, she makes her way to the kitchen, where Joey is waiting for her.

Joey sighs with relief when he sees the bags. “You’re everything, you know that? Whoa, be careful!”

Ama is lifting the bags onto the counter, and one of them bursts when it lands too heavily on the linoleum. Water sachets tumble out and slide all over the counter top. Thankfully, none of them break.

“Sorry,” Ama says.

“You and your gorilla strength.”

“I thought we agreed to call it Herculean. Gorilla? Don’t make me smack you.”

“With those hands? I fear for my life. Seriously though,” he says with a grin, “thank you. I really need to keep these idiots hydrated. There’s beer everywhere, and I don’t even know where it’s coming from. Last thing I need is an army of blind-drunk graduates tearing my house apart.”

“Don’t mention it,” says Ama. “Thanks again for being so cool about Chi. There really is no one to watch her at home. I’d have had to skip this if you hadn’t let me bring her with me.”

He grins, running a hand through his kinky twists. “You don’t have to explain yourself. Chichi is my little sister too as far as I’m concerned. This party is just as much hers as it is ours.”

“Someone should tell that to them,” Ama says, nodding at the couple just outside the kitchen door. She and Joey watch for an awkward moment as their distinguished colleague twerks with spirited vigor all over her dance partner’s groin.

“Yeah,” Ama says, “bringing Chi was not a great idea, was it?”

Joey laughs. “On second thought.”

“Where is Chi anyway?”

There is a flash of mild panic in Joey’s eyes. “Um, Edem was watching her. Wait, here she is.”

It isn’t Chichi, but Edem who is walking through the door, emptying a beer bottle.

“Where’s Ama’s sister?” he asks before Ama can.

Edem burps. “Upstairs. She was getting sleepy so I put her in your bedroom.”

Ama frowns. “It is getting pretty late. I should find her before some horny couple tries to use the room for you know…hanky-panky. She’s already living through one trauma, she doesn’t need another.”

“Hanky-panky?” Joey looks like he might die of amusement. “What’re you, eighty?”

“You know what I mean, shut up.”

“Wait, I’ll come with you.”

Joey follows Ama back into the crowd. As they climb the stairs, he says, “You know I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.” The music is so loud here, he’s practically barking straight down her ear.

“Oh? What?”

They reach the upper floor, where the volume is a few notches below auditory torture, before he continues, “So we’ve been friends since primary school, right?”

“Class Four,” Ama says.

He nods. “Right. And we know each other pretty well. I mean, I like you, you like me.”

“Wow, you’ve really nailed the fundamentals of friendship, eh? You should start a podcast,” she teases.

He ignores the jab, suddenly looking nervous. “I’m saying we really like each other, and I’ve always admired you. I mean, to me you’ve always been all kinds of amazing, you know?”

Ama stops walking, as it dawns on her where this is going. She feels immediately self-conscious. “Joey—” she mumbles.

“No, please let me finish.” His laugh is awkward, as though he can already sense the situation going down in flames. “If I’m going to embarrass myself, I might as well do it right. I-I really like you Ama. Like, like you like you.”

Ama can’t look him in the eye as she lets him finish.

“I was wondering if sometime later this week, we could catch a movie. But not as just friends,” he says. “As…more.”

Ama struggles to lift her eyes off the floor, and by the time she does, he can’t look at her either. The sliver of hope with which he started this conversation has already faded. She killed it with unspoken words alone, and now, she attempts a few spoken ones. “Joey, I’m sorry—”

“No, I’m sorry. This was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“No, no, it’s not you. It’s just, I’m sort of seeing someone right now.”

This takes Joey by surprise. “What? Someone else? Who? Wait, how? How long?”

“You don’t know him. It’s been a little over a year.”

Joey is incredulous. “How could I possibly not know him? Ama, we go to the same school, and I spend almost every waking hour with you. Where did you meet him?”

Ama sighs. “I can’t really say. It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet it is.”

“Hey!”

“If you’re going to reject me, the least you can do is be honest with me, leave me with some dignity. But lying about some mystery guy? That’s insulting.”

“I’m not lying,” Ama snaps, annoyed now. “But you obviously have. How long have you felt this way? All this time I thought things were fine between us—”

“They were, they are!”

“But you’ve been harboring all these mushy feelings for me, and now I’m supposed to—”

“Mushy feelings? Oh, that’s really mature,” Joey says as Ama talks over him.

“—stop my world for you because now you have feelings?” Ama finishes, tears welling up in her eyes. “That’s not fair!”

Her last words are loud, and a girl walking by keeps her head down and tries to get away from them as quickly as she can. Joey looks away, and so does Ama.

“I…” Joey finally utters. “I should go down and check the water situation.” His anger has already melted away, as it is inclined to do, leaving behind a quiet sort of sadness that breaks Ama’s heart, in spite of her own ire.

Still, her tone is edged in ice when she answers, “You do that.”

She doesn’t look in his direction till a few seconds later, and by then she is standing alone. Their angry words bounce around in her head, only hurting so much more because she told him the truth.

Joey is more than just her best friend. He is the One, in a sense. The one with whom she shares her favorite jokes. The one she talks to when she’s had a hard day. The one around whom she plans most of her weekends. To top it off, Joey is one of the kindest people in her life. She knows in her heart that, were it not for Selasi—and the indisputable fact that she is in love with him—she might have considered Joey’s confession. That Joey thinks she would lie to him just to get out of giving ‘them’ a chance?

Ama stews in her wretched feelings for a moment longer, before storming down the corridor to Joey’s bedroom.

“Chi? You asleep?” she calls as she steps in. She freezes in the doorway.

There was movement in the darkness when she opened the door: a flitting of something small and slight, from the bed where Chichi is sleeping to the pocket of darkness in the farthest left corner of the room, just beyond the window. It looked like a cat. But that was no cat; the sunsum is all wrong.

Ama steps into the room, and gently closes the door behind her.

“I would step out if I were you,” Ama says, in the severest tone she can muster. “It may be the difference between whether or not you leave this place with your limbs attached.”

A moment passes. And then, the figure steps into the light from the window. She is a silhouette against the meager light, but Ama recognizes the lissome frame in its high-waisted, flower patterned kaba, and the dark hair tightly bound into twin buns, small and round like bofrot.

“Hemmaa?” Ama says.

Hemmaa is a member of Mama Wu’s inner circle of beyifo; the five exceptional warrior witches who accompany her on dangerous assignments like hired bodyguards. After Selasi, she seems to be Mama Wu’s favorite; or she gets the most attention anyway. Ama met her a handful of times during her training.

“Hello Ama,” Hemmaa says.

“Hi,” says Amma. “Long time.”

“Yes, it has.”

Ama waits.

“Oh yes,” Hemmaa says, as if only just remembering why she is here. “I was sent to ask you about something.”

“Oh? Mama Wu sent you?”

Hemmaa’s head bobs yes.

“I’ve been hoping to see her in person,” Ama says. “She still owes me, you know?”

“Owes you?”

“A cure?” Ama says.

Hemmaa is silent.

“For Chichi’s illness?” Ama pushes.

“Ah yes,” Hemmaa says, snapping her fingers. “That’s actually what I’m here to talk to you about.”

“Is that right?” Ama says.

“Yes, yes. I was sent to tell you the cure is on its way. She’s almost done. She eh, she can’t wait.”

“Wow. Thank you for telling me that. I appreciate it.”

Ama can’t see Hemmaa’s smile, but she can hear it forced in her next words: “Of course.”

Ama nods. “Good.”

Hemmaa nods back. “Awesome.”

Silence.

“So,” Hemmaa says, throwing a cavalier glance in Chichi’s direction. “I guess I’ll just head out then.”

“Alright. Thanks for stopping by.”

Hemmaa turns to slip back into the shadows. As she takes her first step, Ama says, “Hey, one quick question before you go.”

Hemmaa stops mid-step. “Yes?”

“If you’re only here to deliver a message,” Ama says, “then why is your aura cloaked?”

Time stops in the small pocket of semi-darkness.

Hemmaa flashes towards Chichi, and in the half-second it takes her to reach the bed, Ama flies across the room and crashes into her.

They smash through the window, surrounded by a splash of twinkling shards, flailing through free fall, the night sky swiveling around them, the concrete below swinging up towards them…

They hit the ground.

Ama breaks her neck.

OOO

Ama wakes up to the sound of her own neck snapping back into place. She lets out a sharp, guttural cry, as the broken femur in her left leg mends with a crackle, and then a pained gasp when the ball in her right shoulder thuds back into its socket. She scrambles to sit up, trying to shake the haze out of her head. Her sight is blurry, but slowly clearing up. Her hearing is muffled for the first five seconds, and then everything comes rushing in.

Her classmates are pouring out of the house, and there’s screaming. Some stare aghast from the porch, more spill onto the compound. A few are coming over to help her.

“No, stay back!” Ama screams, as she staggers to her feet. She is barefoot, and broken glass crunches underneath her feet. She can feel the flesh in her soles healing around the jagged pieces. They will be a chore to remove later.

Hemmaa is already back on her feet. Unlike Ama, she has no cuts and bruises to heal. Mama Wu’s beyifo are well-adept at self-fortifications and impact absorption patterns. She is built of tougher stuff, literally.

“What the hell?” Ama spits. “You came here to kill her?”

“Sorry, Ama,” Hemmaa says, as champagne wisps of light engulf her. There are gasps and screams from their audience, as the light twists and bends her bones, warps and reshapes her flesh, coating her in tan-brown fur. In two blinks, she is a hulking lioness the size of an SUV. “This isn’t about you,” Hemmaa snarls through the creature’s maw. “But if you make it, I’m happy to oblige.”

“This has to be some mistake,” Ama says. “I want to speak with Mama Wu. Let me speak with her first. Please!”

“Get out of my way, Ama.”

“Are you listening to me?” Ama’s frustration is boiling into anger. “You are not touching my sister!”

There is a flash of red light, and another round of gasps and screams from Ama’s classmates. Ama looks down to see her fingers firmly wrapped around the handle of her double-ended staff. She summoned her own witch-arm without even realizing it.

“Ama?” Chichi calls above her.

Ama looks up to see her sister leaning carefully through the broken window with frightened eyes.

“Baby, stay there!” Ama calls back.

When Ama looks back at Hemmaa, the lioness is springing towards her. Ama jumps back, narrowly avoiding two wild swipes at her face, the curved claws carving the air with glints of light.

Ama’s head is giddy with adrenalin, her muscles tensed into stone, as she and Hemmaa circle each other. Hemmaa snarls, her tail flicking left, right, and about. Ama rotates her wrists, spreads her feet apart, and settles into a fighting stance, ready for Hemmaa to pounce.

But the lioness suddenly buckles, her back lifting, her spinal column jutting up and out against her furry skin. Her throat begins to constrict and ripple, as her eyes bulge and her ears flatten back against her head. She hacks and shivers, as though on the verge of throwing up.

Ama looks disgusted. “What the fu…”

A spasmodic heave, a shudder that lifts its fur in a wave from muzzle to rump, a blaze of her eyes; Hemmaa belches out a shockwave. The stream of sound blows out Ama’s eardrums and catches her in the chest at the same time, pitching her across the compound and into the border wall. Juddering, vicious pain wracks Ama’s body as she spits up blood.

This time, their onlookers erupt into all-out pandemonium and scatter like terrified ants. Not that Ama can hear any of it.

Before Ama can react, Hemmaa retches and spews another sonic boom. Ama is already in so much pain, she barely feels this one; it is a dull, flashing sensation that spreads through her chest, sloshing darkness across her vision like flung water. The wall crumbles around Ama, as the thunderous force of Hemmaa’s beyie sends her tumbling into the middle of the road outside.

As Ama’s eardrums pop back into mint condition, she is assaulted by the sound of her own bones fixing themselves, healing. The cracking has always made her nauseous. Ama tries to sit up, shaking from the shock, gasping for air.

Hemmaa bounds through the jagged hole in the wall, and as she saunters towards Ama, tail whishing behind her, she growls, “How are you still alive?”

Ama grits her bloody teeth. “I can regenerate, genius.”

“None of us heal that fast,” Hemmaa snaps, and launches herself at Ama.

Ama rolls backwards and out of the beast’s reach. Using the momentum, she pushes off the ground and onto her feet, and wills her witch-arm to return. From somewhere on the street, it flings itself to her. Ama catches its movement out of the corner of her eye, and snatches it out of the air just in time to deflect another of Hemmaa’s vicious swipes in a burst of sparks.

Ama twists about to deliver a kick to Hemmaa’s flank so powerful, the air snaps with the sound of caving ribs. Hemmaa snarls in pain and loses her footing against the gravel for a frantic second, before throwing herself at Ama again. Razor-sharp claws whistle uselessly over Ama’s head, as she rolls over, and jabs her witch-arm hard into the lioness’s side.

Hemmaa roars furiously. Ama sinks the weapon deeper into fur and flesh. But with Ama’s iron grip, all it takes Hemmaa is a wild tumble onto her back, a lithe twist, a violent turn, and Ama loses her balance. This time when Hemmaa lunges, her powerful jaws find Ama’s shoulder.

Ama screams and swears. Wrenching the witch-arm free, she kicks at the lioness to let go. The force is enough to separate them, but not before Hemmaa has already ripped out a generous chunk of her. Blood sprays the air.

Hemmaa throws her head back, and with an eager decisive snap, swallows her bite of Ama whole.

Ama is revolted. “Girl, just…why?” she says, even as her shoulder mends itself.

“I warned you, brat.” Hemaa is speaking in a tone, a manner, that Ama has never heard her use till now. She sounds old. Almost elderly. “I will remove you. Piece by piece, if I have to.”

Shaken, Ama reassumes her stance. She is poised to strike when a stream of wind, focused into a savage cyclone, blasts all five hundred pounds of Hemmaa off her feet and sends her hurtling down the street like a crash dummy.

Ama spins in the direction of the attack. A few yards away is a girl, about sixteen, with shoulder length twists, a wax print jacket over a tank top, and blue jeans. The fact that she is wrapped in bright blazing blue sunsum doesn’t stop Ama from immediately recognizing her cousin.

“Mansa?” she says in disbelief.

Mansa’s hands are outstretched, and she looks a little startled by what she has just done. “Hi Ama,” she says meekly.

Ama is bewildered, but also too desperate to overthink this moment. Pointing in the general direction of Hemmaa’s fall, she asks, “Can you keep her occupied?”

Mansa nods. “Go get Chichi.”

Her head swimming with questions, Ama rips her skirt up to her knees. She tosses the bothersome fabric away, and dashes back into Joey’s compound, bounding through the break in the wall. The power is out, and the place is deserted. No one stuck around for the rest of the show.

Ama finds Joey on the front porch and stops. He is just standing there in the darkness, staring petrified into the distance, until he notices Ama in front of him. Then he’s like a computer booting up. “Ama!”

“What are you still doing here? Are you crazy? Chi!” Ama cries, walking past him into the house and heading for the stairs. “Come out, Chi! We’re getting out of here!”

“Ama, wait!” Joey follows after her, yelling, “What’s going on? Who’s that other woman? How did you survive getting thrown through a friggin’ wall? What the hell is going on?”

He grabs her at the top of the stairs and forces her around. There is weak light here from the emergency solar lights in the ceiling, and he notices the witch-arm in Ama’s hand for the first time. “What the—” He backs away, releasing a string of stuttered swearing.

“Are you,” he stammers, eying the weapon. “Are you…?” He whispers the last word. “An alien?”

“Joey, listen to me carefully,” Ama says. “You have to get out of here. It’s not safe. Do you understand me?”

He just stares back, confused. So Ama walks away, and to her frustration, he follows her to his bedroom.

“Chi!” Ama calls.

“I’m in here!” Chi’s small voice comes from the closet in the wall.

Ama throws the doors to the closet open to find her little sister curled up in the corner, partly obstructed by a row of hanging jackets. “Come to me, baby,” she says, even as Chichi leaps into her arms.

Their embrace lasts two seconds. Then, Ama is pulling her along, out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

“If we’re running, we should take one of the cars,” Joey says, behind Ama every step.

Ama whirls around. “Can we really?” she asks, wide eyed with desperate gratitude.

“Of course,” he says, running past her to the bottom. He goes into the living room. “The keys to the minivan should be around here somewhere.” He is like a flustered animal, scurrying from the center table, to the sofas, to the cabinets.

As he searches, Ama moves to a window to peep through the curtains. She can feel Hemmaa’s aura coming from somewhere over the wall, intensifying steadily for a few seconds, before stabilizing into a steady fire.

The aura is heading towards the house.

“Dammit Mansa,” Ama whispers, too afraid to imagine what happened to her. She spins back around. “We have to go now!”

Chichi is right behind her, and the sight of her terrified face lodges a lump in Ama’s throat.

“We’ll be fine,” Ama whispers.

“I found them! Let’s go!” Joey says, striding towards the girls with the car keys dangling from his fingers.

Ama takes them from him.

“I thought I was going to drive,” he says.

“You want to leave that to me, trust me,” Ama says, as they run to the door.

Ama opens the door to see Hemmaa, back in her human form, walking through the broken wall, swathed in roaring lemon-yellow sunsum.

Ama slams the door shut. “Please tell me there’s a way to the garage from inside the house.”

“You know there isn’t.”

“Hide! Just hide!” Ama says, pointing to the kitchen.

As Joey runs into the kitchen, Ama pulls Chichi with her to the farthest corner of the living room, where heavy curtains cover a row of windows. They slip behind the drapery, and closing her eyes, Ama concentrates as hard as she can to hide her aura.

She slows her breathing, and then her heart till it is almost still. Within herself, within her soul, she finds the core sun that radiates her sunsum and she douses its flames. Her body temperature plummets in response. She might as well be a corpse.

The light of Hemmaa’s sunsum is visible through the curtain, but it isn’t long after it enters the house that it fades. And then Hemmaa’s aura wanes and disappears with it.

They are both hidden now. A game of hide and seek.

Ama listens to Hemmaa moving around the room. Her attempt at stealth is thwarted by her unfamiliarity with her surroundings. Every now and again, Ama will hear the cloth of her kaba brushing against furniture, inaudible to an ordinary ear but harmattan wind and static to Ama’s.

She knows Hemmaa can hear Joey and Chichi too; their heavy breathing, their thrashing heartbeats. Despite the fact that the two are in separate rooms, Hemmaa seems to be moving ever so carefully towards her and Chichi’s location. Why Hemmaa has chosen to track Chichi’s sounds over Joey’s, Ama isn’t sure. Can she tell the difference between their heartbeats, or did she make a lucky guess?

Ama’s grip on her witch-arm is so tight, her fingers are numb. Now she can hear Hemmaa’s feet on the carpet. She is treading with all the delicacy of a feather, but the crunch of synthetic fiber is subtle.

Ama considers rushing Hemmaa now in the hopes that she catches her unaware. But there is a risk of putting Chichi in the path of a counterattack. Hemmaa’s steps sound more certain now, and if Hemmaa was initially worried that this was a trap, she clearly isn’t anymore. Ama wishes this were a trap. That would have been smarter.

Hemmaa is only three paces away.

Ama decides to make the only choice available. She readies to attack.

It is his heartbeat that she hears first. Ama’s ears were so trained on Hemmaa that she drowned out every other sound. But his rhythmic thumping cuts through the silence. Ama knows the sound of her best friend’s heart.

And she realizes what he is trying to do.

“Joey, no—!”

The explosion of sound is deafening, the sonic boom ripping through the air. The thunder swallows Ama’s anguished cry, and quakes the entire house, shattering every inch of glass in the room—the television, the center table, the cabinets, the windows. The sound of broken shards, like raining pocket change.

Ama tumbles out of the curtains, screaming Joey’s name in wild anguish. Hemmaa’s back is turned, and as she spins around in surprise, Ama runs the piercing end of her staff into her, lifting her inches off the floor with the force of the attack. They stagger backwards until Ama has her pinned against a wall. Hemmaa’s face ripples, her arms expanding and then retracting, her transformation failing in the wake of the pain. Instead, she scratches at the shaft of the staff, helpless, panicked, trembling. Their eyes lock as Ama leans in with the full weight of her body, pushing her witch-arm all the way through Hemmaa’s body and into the wall behind her.

Then Ama leaves her there to find Joey. Her vision is blurry with panicked tears, and her ears ring with a high-pitched whine. As she stumbles through the living room, her hearing begins to clear, and she spots a body on the floor.

“Joey,” Ama whispers, dropping next to him. “Can you hear me?”

Silence. Then a strained groan. “Ama?”

Ama almost cries with relief. She can see better now, and her breath catches in her throat when she makes out the twisted mess that is his chest. She isn’t sure if she can touch him, how she could touch him. She settles for placing a tentative hand on his cheek. The muscles in his face tremble and twitch. Ama’s do the same, but for different reasons, and with the added stinging of freshly forming tears.

“Hey,” Joey breaths. His eyes are half open. “What’s wrong?”

Ama’s tears drip onto his forehead. “You’re going to be alright,” she croaks. “I promise.”

“I-It doesn’t even hurt.”

Ama fights back a sob, and drops her head to plant her lips on his forehead, keeping them there for a lingering moment.

“But,” Joey murmurs. “I’m a little cold. D-do you mind?”

Ama sniffs, nods, and gathers him into her arms.

He sighs and stirs. “That feels better,” he whispers.

Ama nods, releasing measured, shuddering breaths. There is a gurgle coming from somewhere inside him that Ama really, really wishes she couldn’t hear. In that moment, she hates her abilities. She hates her life. She asks herself if she is just radioactive. A decaying isotope of suffering and death, afflicting everyone around her. And then, she hates herself more for revolving this moment around her own pain.

She finds his hand with hers, and trails her fingers up and down his open palm. The fear of breaking down into hysterical sobs is stark.

Joey’s eyes roll around weakly and then settle on Ama again. “Hey,” he breathes. “You…you should go.”

Ama shakes her head, even though she knows he’s right. She can’t stay here. She has to get Chichi as far away from here as she can. But what kind of monster leaves their best friend behind to die?

“I…called an ambulance…already.”

Ama wonders when, and then figures it must have been after she fell out of the window.

“I’ll be alright,” Joey says. “Go.”

Tears pour down Ama’s face as she kisses his sweaty brow again. “Don’t die,” she mumbles against his lukewarm flesh. “Do you hear me? You die, and I will hunt you down in the afterlife and kick you right in the balls.”

Joey’s lips twitch in an attempt at a smile. “D-don’t,” he whispers, “let the aliens win.”

Ama wipes her eyes and nods. “Chichi, come out! We’re leaving.” She stands as her sister runs out from behind the curtains. She throws one last glance at Joey. “See you soon.”

As Ama leads Chichi out of the house, she covers her little sister’s eyes to keep her from seeing Hemmaa’s skewered body.

Hemmaa lets out a gurgling chuckle as the sisters pass her by, blood dripping down to her chin. “This isn’t over,” she rasps. “She will pay for Saanga.”

Ama doesn’t know who or what ‘Saanga’ is, but there isn’t enough time to care. With a wave of her hand, Ama summons her witch-arm back. The staff dislodges itself from Hemmaa’s body, whipping across the room to fit itself into her hand while Hemmaa slumps to the floor.

The car keys Joey gave Ama are to a purple minivan, parked beside a luxury sedan in the garage. Chichi gets into the passenger seat as Ama starts the engine; then she lurches them backwards into the compound, swings them through a tight one-eighty degrees, and drives through the gap in the wall.

“Come on Mansa, where are you?” Ama mutters, scanning the street. “Oh thank god.”

Mansa is lying unconscious on the shoulder of the road a few yards away. Ama pulls up next to her and yanks on the handbrake. “Open the door to the backseat,” she says to Chichi over her shoulder, hopping out of the minivan.

As Chichi complies, Ama throws Mansa over her shoulder.

When Mansa is lying in the backseat, Ama floors the pedal.

They pass three speeding police cars and an ambulance on their way out of the neighborhood.

 

[coffieolore]

Chapter Three

White Lightning

Mansa is anxious. And she does not know which is worse: that she is failing to maintain her cool, or that she knows her friends can sense her composure giving.

“Are you alright?” Lololi asks, looking up from her work. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“I’m fine,” Mansa says without hesitation. “Don’t mind me. Keep drawing.”

There are five of them there at the graveyard, toiling beneath the cloudless moonlit sky. Lololi, Quartey, and Yayra are on their knees with Mansa, huddled around a small unassuming tombstone, their hands dusted in chalk and fine salt. Sumina is standing over them, a massive, weathered tome cradled in one arm, and his phone shining a light into its pages. At his feet, there is a stack of extra reference material—two more hardcovers, one soft cover, and a pile of dogeared papers with a sewn-together spine.

Sumina looks into his book, and then at the tombstone. Book. Tombstone. Book. “I think we’ve got it.”

“You think or you know?” Quartey asks.

“Come and look eh? You think this is easy?” says Sumina.

Yayra’s head snaps up. “Seriously? We’re the ones doing the actual work.”

“Give me that,” Quartey says, rising up and dusting chalk off his hands. He goes over to Sumina and takes a long hard look at the diagram in his book. Then he studies the magic circle they have spent the last hour trying to get just right on the tombstone.

‘Circle’ is a misnomer in this case. Their work, drawn in white chalk, is more an intricate entanglement of triangles, superimposed upon a series of concentric circles. The purpose of the inner circles is sunsum conduction; the triangles, frequency conversion; and the outer circle, binding.

It is a basic magic circle for astral summoning. Or at least, that is what the tome says. Then again, the tome also says to add salt to the circle without bothering to elaborate on what that means, so it hasn’t exactly been the most dependable reference. After a lengthy disagreement over what ‘add salt’ means, the group settled for covering the tombstone in generous handfuls of salt, not unlike curing a large fish.

“I…I think we’ve got it,” Quartey says after moments of intense scrutiny.

Sumina narrows his eyes at him. “You think or you know?” he mocks.

“This would be so much easier if we were just using natural beyie,” Yayra says. “I really don’t care for the White man’s endless circles and needlessly complicated theories. Also—what a waste of perfectly good salt.”

“Such a waste,” Quartey mutters.

“Mansa already explained why natural magic would be a bad idea,” Lololi says. “None of us is a very experienced asawfo, and the last thing we want is for anyone to end up possessed by a nasty stray. So yes, maybe this feels like an inferior method. But with our limited skills, it’s also a lot safer. Right, Mansa?”

Lololi turns to Mansa, who is lost in thought.

“Mansa?”

“Hm?” Mansa snaps out of her musing.

“She isn’t even paying attention,” says Yayra, throwing her hands up. “This is how I die. I just know it.”

“Lololi you’re the reason we’re here oh,” Sumina says, with a frown. “So ask your friend if she’s having second thoughts. If she doesn’t know what she’s doing, let’s go home.”

“We’re not going home,” Mansa says as firmly as she can, but the slight quiver in her voice betrays her nerves. She goes over to Quartey and Sumina to check the diagram herself.

Her eyes are fast. Book, tombstone, book. “It’s correct,” she announces. “Let’s start.”

Dropping the book on the ground, they surround the tombstone and hold hands.

Mansa closes her eyes. With a deep breath, she reaches inside herself, seeking out the core of her sunsum. A moment of earnest searching and she finds it. It is a wellspring, an overflowing source of magical power that sweeps through her veins, swirling out through her fingertips. Cool like spring water. Soft as rain.

But a torrent when she needs it to be.

As Mansa’s sunsum pours out, she shivers, the hairs on her arms and legs standing on end. Her heart quickens. Her breathing burns against her nostrils. Her sunsum connects with the others’, and the surrounding air shimmers and warps with energy.

The salt on the tombstone catches on fire. Brilliant variegated flames lap at stone, and the chalked circles and triangles begin to glow neon blue. A gale begins to blow around them, whipping dust into a frenzy.

“Remember to focus your intent,” Mansa yells over the wind. “We can’t afford to lure the wrong spirit!”

As their combined sunsum interacts with the magic circle on the tombstone, it pulses outward in waves, thrumming against space and time. All that is seen, unseen, and everything in between. It resonates in synchrony with the very frequency of the universe.

One second there are five of them there in the graveyard. The next second, there are six.

There is a woman at the heart of their ring.

Mansa flinches at the sight of her. As the others notice her presence, they are startled as well, and the flow of sunsum between the five witches is interrupted. The magic circle ceases to glow, and the wind dies immediately, leaving behind a deafening silence.

Mansa just now realizes how hard Lololi is squeezing her hand. “Are you…do you…” Lololi breathes.

“I see her too,” Mansa whispers back.

The woman is seated on the tombstone, draped in the traditional red and black cloth of mourning. Her hair is tangled with leaves and twigs. Her skin is plastered in soil and grey limestone. Her head is bowed.

She is motionless.

Sumina swears under his breath.

Mansa understands why. The spirit is emanating an aura that is less than welcoming. It isn’t hostile per se. But it is…unsettling. Mansa clears her throat, and asks shakily, “Obaa Daakuo, is that you?”

The woman doesn’t respond. Slowly, she lifts her head to lock her gaze with Mansa’s. Her eyes are empty voids of black.

It’s Yayra’s turn to mutter profanities.

But Mansa is undeterred. “Obaa Daakuo, if you’re the one, please let us know. We have come desperate for your help.”

The woman stares for one long, unblinking moment. Then she opens her mouth. And starts to groan.

The groan is deep, and orotund, and drowning in sorrow.

“Um, what’s happening?” asks Yayra.

“It sounds like it’s crying,” says Quartey.

“Yeah, no shit,” Sumina snaps.

“Someone check the book,” Lololi says.

“Obaa Daakuo, we only want to ask a few questions,” Mansa says. “We really don’t mean to disturb you.” She takes a step closer to the woman.

The groan spikes into a fever-pitched wail that threatens to rip the wind itself apart, and with it, every eardrum in the vicinity.

“Stop walking towards it, you idiot!” Sumina barks at Mansa. “It clearly doesn’t like that! Are you stupid?”

“Don’t talk to her like that, she didn’t know!” Lololi snaps back.

Quartey has the tome back in her hands, and she’s flipping wildly through it. “I don’t remember reading about anything like this. Maybe we used the wrong seal? Maybe we’re hurting her.”

“Something is wrong,” Mansa gasps. She can feel the spirit’s cry resonating with her innermost self, tuning her own sunsum to its design. It’s taking her beyie and adapting it for something else. A different frequency. Another summoning.

Quartey drops the book and clutches her chest. Lololi and Yayra are dropping to their knees. Sumina is rattling obscenities, clutching at his hair as if he means to rip it out.

Mansa’s head is swimming, and it’s taking every drop of willpower to resist this… This counter-pattern. This curse. Whatever it is. Darkness closes in from the corners of her mind, and her eyes sting as tears run down her face. She is fighting to stay conscious.

She becomes vaguely aware that Daakuo’s spirit has disappeared. But now there is a spike of new energy in the air. A dark aura, something sinister. It pierces through the residual sunsum left behind by the last spirit.

And it is coming from underneath their feet.

The earth quakes, and suddenly Mansa is more lucid than she has ever been in her life. “Scatter!” she screams.

Before they can react, the ground erupts, flinging the five of them apart.

Mansa flails through the air, activating a self-fortification pattern right before she lands hard on her back. The pain jolts through her body, ripping the breath out of her lungs. But she is unbroken, and panic and adrenalin make a potent cocktail. Gasping for air, she scrambles back to her feet and whirls around to find her bearings.

The eruption threw her against the side of a nearby hill. In the valley, a column of dust has formed above the burial plot where she stood seconds before. She can hear the cries of her friends rising from somewhere amongst the tombstones, but her view is obscured by rolling blankets of dust.

“Lololi!?” Mansa calls, as she weaves downhill between tombstones, jagged rocks, and wild shrubs. “Guys I’m coming! Hold on!”

She staggers to a stop, as something massive begins to emerge from the dust: a bone-white surface, curved and cracked. It rises into the moonlight, caked in rot, dirt tumbling off its face in waterfalls. Gaping hollow sockets. Spiked teeth. Mansa reels.

The giant skull rises from the canopy of dust, wisps orbiting it like planetary rings. The size of a shipping container, it is tethered to nothing but a writhing, thrashing spinal column. Bloody lights shine in place of eyes of flesh, and a low rumbling drone emanates from its walls.

Mansa is petrified. But only for a few seconds.

“Help me!” Lololi’s shriek snaps her out of her head. The voice came from somewhere within the dust, barely audible over the jarring rumble.

Mansa resumes her stumbling descent into the valley, shielding her mouth from the dust with the bend in her arm. “Can you hear me?” she cries. “Call out if you can hear me!”

There is no response from the swirling dust. Mansa looks up to see the skull tilting down to notice her. The lights in its eyes flash brighter, washing the air a bloody hue.

Mansa lifts a hand to her lips to weave a pattern, any pattern. But the gears in her head catch with indecision. A fire pattern? No, she finds fire beyie difficult to control. Maybe a water pattern. Is that appropriate for this situation? Even if it is, she isn’t confident she can weave one with enough pressure to do meaningful damage. Shift beyie is an option. But then the skull looks powerful enough to wrench free of her telekinetic hold. Ideas bounce back and forth between her ears. Her quivering graduates into trembling.

The skull parts its jaws, conjuring fire and wind into its hollow maw to attack.

So Mansa defers to intuition. Sunsum pulses through her muscles, as she lifts two right-hand fingers to her lips. The veins in her hand grow pronounced, going from a faint glow to blinding white forks of energy. “Nsateaa mmienu…” she chants in Akan and aims her fingers at the skull. “Anyinam fitaa!”

The lightning bolt streaks from her fingertips and explodes through the skull’s forehead with a deafening crack. Splintered bone flies in every direction like shrapnel, leaving the remains of the skull to crumble apart. As flaming chunks rain down around her, Mansa is equal parts surprised and relieved by her success.

But her relief is short-lived. The dark aura has not lifted, and while Mansa can only guess what that means, it is a bad sign regardless. They need to get out of here now.

“Lololi!” Mansa cries, as she wanders through the dust. “Lololi, where are you?”

“Here! I’m here!”

Mansa follows the direction of her voice, and finds Lololi on the ground behind an extra-large tombstone with her back propped against it.

“Oh Mansa!” Lololi sobs. She looks haggard and terrified. “You came back, thank god, thank god.”

“Where are the others?”

“I don’t know. I think they ran. Their auras are growing distant.”

Mansa kneels at Lololi’s side, and notices that her left ankle is twisted and bloody. “Can you stand on your other foot?”

“I-I think so.”

“Come on,” Mansa says, helping her up.

They are taking their first steps, when pieces of cranial bone start to rise off the ground. Slowly at first. And then, at blink speed, painting the surrounding darkness with fleeting, fiery streaks. Mansa throws her eyes to the sky, where the giant skull is reconstructing itself, its fragments edged with fire and stitched in light.

Lololi almost slumps back down to the ground. “We’re not going to make it,” she whimpers.

Mansa fears she may be right, but forces her back to her feet anyway. “Move!” she cries. “Just move! I’ll buy us some time!”

Lololi tries to limp away as quickly as she can, while Mansa whirls back around with her fingers to her lips. “Spirit within, fly—”

The skull’s spine whips out of the dust, lashing Mansa in the chest and pitching her through the air. She slams against a crooked tree and rolls to the ground, pain flashing through her flesh and swelling through her bones. She groans, coughs, and rolls over. She is shaken when she spots Lololi in the dirt a few feet away, unconscious. The attack must have struck her too. The last of Mansa’s hope evaporates.

Red light pours down as the giant skull crawls down from the sky with dramatic grace. Mansa makes another attempt to lift her fingers to her lips, and yelps when a broken rib protests. She tries again, and this time the pain is so severe, she almost passes out. Her body is too battered to respond to her commands, and her thoughts are too scrambled to think up a new pattern.

And so as the skull gapes its jaws for the second time that night, and fire and wind twist into its mouth to form a raging fireball, Mansa finds herself helpless.

“I’m so sorry, Chichi,” she whispers tearily.

Shuddering, she closes her eyes and prays her death will be swift.

“Open your eyes, abofra ketewa,” a new voice says over her.

Mansa does as she is told.

There is a young woman in a white robe, with thick cornrows that snake down to her waistline. She is standing with her back to Mansa, her head raised towards the skull, a silhouette against the bloody light. “Open your eyes,” she repeats, her Akan flawless. “And see the fruit of your transgressions. Do not look away when your salvation is at hand.”

The skull’s fireball is almost completely formed, when the woman lifts an open palm towards it. And then, with forceful resolution, she draws her fingers into a clenched fist.

The ice comes with a gust of frigid wind, materializing across the skull’s surface in thick, sparkling layers. Its spread is rapid. Disorienting even. In seconds, the frost dulls the red light in the giant’s eyes and extinguishes the flames in its jaws. Two heartbeats later, and the skull is encased in a crystalline block of pure frozen water. The block crashes down with an earth-quaking thud.

The silence that follows is absolute.

The woman turns around.

“Evening, Sister Frama,” Mansa says sheepishly. “You found us.” She wants to ask how. Instead she says, “Thank you.”

Sister Frama’s azure eyes pierce right through Mansa’s soul. The coven keeper is the only one Mansa knows with blue irises instead of brown, and they sit in unsettling contrast to her petite features and midnight skin. Tonight, those eyes are especially luminous…and not with joy.

“You are lucky your roommates were forthcoming when I asked where you had gone,” Sister Frama says, her tone as cold as her eyes. “Or you would all be dead by now.”

“It was important,” Mansa murmurs.

“Important enough to risk your life?”

Mansa stays silent, knowing her answer will only aggravate Frama more.

“The others, I expect this sort of kwaseasem from. But you? I thought you had more sense.”

“I’m sorry,” Mansa says, shrinking further beneath her gaze.

“You will be,” Frama says. “Go fetch your friends. It’s time to go home.”

OOO

On the vast grasslands of Shai Hills, there is a great white building hidden from ordinary eyes by cloaking beyie. It sits atop a rock, double-storied with tangerine clay-tiled roofing and black casement windows. The building has been around almost as long as Ghana has had independence, and it is home to a small fringe coven. A coven called Anansefie. And while Anansefie is considered a bastion of higher beyie education in the witching community, one would be forgiven for thinking otherwise if they were to visit the coven tonight.

The four teenagers standing in the common room are each their own distinct mess of mud, ripped clothing, and fresh bruises. They’re standing on the periphery of the sitting area because Frama threatened to toss them into a well if they so much as smudged the carpet or a single piece of furniture.

On one end of the room is Mansa, with her head bowed down and her eyes glued to her shoes. And on the other end are Quartey, Yayra, and Sumina, who have chosen to stand together and away from her, if only so they can direct the full weight of their displeasure at her via unrelenting glares.

None of them have spoken a word since Frama left to treat Lololi upstairs. It has been almost an hour. Mansa knows the wait is just as much a part of Frama’s disciplinary tactics, as the punishments she will dispense upon her return. But her anxieties are beginning to peak. Especially because Sumina looks like he’s on the verge of saying something venomous.

Mansa sighs with relief at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs.

“How is she?” she asks even before Frama has completed her descent.

“The restoration pattern will take some time,” Frama says. “But she will heal. The worst is behind us.”

Mansa runs her hands down her face, the weight of a dying star lifted off her shoulders. Nodding, she swallows the lump in her throat. “Thank you.”

“And now,” Frama says, folding her arms, “we come to the matter of you four.”

Sumina lifts his hand without shifting his glare off Mansa.

“Yes Sumina?” says Frama.

“Before you hand out punishments,” he says, “I would just like to point out that the only reason we were there in the first place is because she—” And there is no doubt to whom he is referring. “—tricked us into pitying her.”

“I did not trick you,” Mansa says.

“Like hell you didn’t. You said you needed to contact family. You told us she was your aunt, but that spirit had no idea who you were!”

“She was my aunt,” says Mansa. “My great, great, great aunt.”

“That is not the same thing you absolute kwasea!”

“That is quite enough,” Frama says.

“That grave was boobytrapped with a curse,” Sumina continues anyway. “And you let us weave beyie on it?”

“I didn’t know that!” Mansa says, wounded.

The other three burst out with, “Liar!”, “Bullshit!”, “I don’t believe you!”

“I would never knowingly put you all in danger,” Mansa says firmly, though her eyes are now wet with indignant tears. “I was just looking for some answers.”

“Answers to what?” Sumina asks.

“I said that’s enough—” Frama tries again, a little louder.

But Sumina answers his own question. “Oh wait, I don’t give a shit. Nothing you want to know is worth risking our lives. You’re lucky you’re Lololi’s little puppy, otherwise I swear on every vengeful river god I’d—”

“Ka wo ano tom!” Frama snaps with a wave of her hand.

Sumina’s mouth is immediately clamped shut. He tries to pry it open with his fingers for a moment, but gives up when he notices the hard look Frama is giving him.

Frama then shares that look around the room. “Bearing in mind that he isn’t going to be able to use that mouth again till morning, does anyone else have another cruel remark to share? Perhaps some more swear words? I’m dying to hear them.”

The room is dead silent.

“I thought so,” Frama says. “I won’t even waste my breath on a lecture. You know the rules. The four of you will scrub every inch of floor in this house, from top to bottom. And then you will clean every window. You will also alleviate the rest of the house of its kitchen duties and laundry duties for the next four weeks. Also no more Sunday kelewele for you.”

Yayra is alarmed by this news. “No kelewele?” she cries, because gathering to play board games and eat peppery fried plantains is a house favorite. “For how long?”

“Until I say so,” Frama says, without a drop of sympathy. “While the rest of the house communes, you will stay in your rooms and study your pattern books.”

Yayra throws Mansa a glare even more scalding than Sumina’s. “I hate you.”

“Watch yourself,” Frama warns. “Your first chore begins at dawn. You will start with the children’s bathroom. For now, wash that filth off yourselves and head straight to bed. Try not to wake the rest of the house. Go.”

As the exhausted teenagers start towards the stairs, Frama adds, “Not you, Mansa. Stay behind.”

Mansa’s anxiety returns to weigh her down. She stares longingly after the others on the stairs headed for their beds. Sumina turns back one last time to flip her the bird. With both hands.

Mansa sighs.

“Follow me,” says Sister Frama.

On the opposite end of the staircase, there is a door that leads down a second flight of stairs to the basement level.

The basement floor of Anansefie is broader than the building above suggests. There is a narrow corridor here flanked by four classrooms, two on either side. The corridor leads to a large mahogany door, which opens into Frama’s office.

“Sit,” Frama says, as she goes around her desk to take her own seat.

Mansa does as she’s asked, musing as she looks around. She has only been here once before, two years ago when she was first enrolled into the coven. The space is exactly as she remembers it. Walls lined with bookshelves and laden with leather-bound volumes on all things beyie; traditional and new age theories, local and foreign patterns. Glass cabinets hold magical artifacts—masks, bracelets, and charms, parchments, jewels, and knives. And then, there is Frama’s massive desk, which looks like it was carved whole out of a giant tree, and could not possibly have been moved down here without the help of some space warping, matter bending skills.

Mansa realizes Frama has been observing her quietly since they sat down. She squirms in her seat.

“How are your injuries?” Frama finally asks.

Tentatively, Mansa presses her fingers against her ribs. “My impact pattern mostly held up. I should be fine in a few hours.”

“Good,” Frama says, with a nod. Then she folds her arms. “Now, why were you at the graveyard tonight?”

Mansa doesn’t meet her eyes, doesn’t speak, doesn’t move a muscle beneath the coven keeper’s gaze.

Frama tries again. “You said when I found you that it was important? How so?”

Mansa might as well be a statue.

“Really?” Frama says. “This is how you want to play this?”

“It’s personal,” Mansa mumbles.

“I’m sure it is,” says Frama. “Let me tell you what I know. I know that grave you were working on belongs to Daakuo Yeboah. And I know what kind of beyie she was famous for. Or rather, infamous.”

Mansa realizes what she’s insinuating. “That’s not why I summoned her.”

“The path to immortality is a futile one, littered with bodies and drenched in blood,” Frama continues, speaking over Mansa. “It has destroyed witches greater than you, and it will destroy many more long after you are gone.”

“That’s not why I wanted to talk to her,” Mansa insists.

“Even if it wasn’t about immortality specifically,” says Frama, “most beyie related to that field are ruinous. Especially when they seem innocent. You are not the only one who has sought that kind of knowledge with good intentions. Do you even know how Daakuo died?”

Mansa doesn’t respond.

“Daakuo had a rare degenerative disease. It began with the twitching. And then, exhaustion, weakness. It affected her ability to walk, talk, eat, think. It came with constant pain. It’s said that it would have worsened until she was too paralyzed to breathe. And healing beyie couldn’t help her, so she tried to find her answers…in darker techniques,” Frama says. “Her venture into immortality beyie wasn’t driven by malice or greed, but forbidden magic isn’t forbidden because of its motivations. And when her sunsum was inevitably corrupted, it did not matter that she was merely trying to save herself.”

Mansa shrinks into her seat.

“When they found her in her home, she had lost all sanity. Worse still, she was disfigured beyond repair. One of the descriptions of her was, and I quote—as if someone tried to glue together a person’s weight in worms.”

Mansa fights back the bile rising in her throat. After she is certain she can keep down last night’s dinner, she utters meekly, “I…didn’t know that.”

Sister Frama stares at Mansa for a long uncomfortable stretch of silence. “Anyway, that’s not why I called you here,” she finally says. “You’re from Akropong.”

She doesn’t frame her words like a question, and Mansa is unsure how to respond. But more silence would be unbearable.

“I am,” Mansa says. “Well, I was born in Akropong, but my family moved to Accra when I was three. That’s where I grew up until…well, you know what happened. My parents sent me back to Akropong after that.”

“And how old were you then?”

“About ten.”

“To live with the old woman. Nana Tawiah, correct?”

Mansa is growing confused. Frama should already know this. “Yes,” she answers anyway. “Nana was my grandma’s roommate when she was alive. She’s become a family friend. She’s very strict and she goes to church a lot. I guess they hoped that meant she would know how to…fix me.”

“Yet she’s the one who gave you your basic training in beyie.”

Mansa nods. “For three years,” she adds, even though by now, she is sure Frama already knows these details. “And then of course, she moved me here. She said I needed more advanced lessons, and she wasn’t cut out for teaching. Because that’s what she wasn’t cut out for, right? Not the witching, not the beyie, not the bleeding a chicken out into a calabash under a full moon to placate a vengeful spirit. The teaching. I’d known her for so long until I moved in with her, that I just never would’ve thought. Was she a little strange? Sure. But a witch? Then again, I never would’ve thought a lot of things back then.” Mansa’s voice has grown soft at this point.

“Mm,” Frama says thoughtfully. She leans in slightly, sounding almost conspiratorial when she asks, “During your time with Nana, did you receive supplementary tutoring from anyone else?”

Mansa snorts before she can stop herself. “Sorry,” she says quickly. “It’s just…Akropong is a very religious town. I didn’t know anyone else there, and Nana was paranoid. I was shocked she even trusted you enough to bring me here.”

“What about before you moved to Akropong?”

“What about it?”

“Did you receive any beyie tutelage before moving in with Nana?” Frama asks. “Do you have relationships or connections with anyone powerful or influential in the witching community?”

Mansa shakes her head. “I was confused when my beyie showed for the first time. And my parents were simply terrified. I didn’t know magic was real until then,” she says, with a sullen shrug. “There are still days I wish I didn’t.”

Sister Frama lets out a deep sigh, and sits back in her chair, regarding Mansa with some skepticism. “So essentially, you are a fledgling witch with no prior exposure, no real connections in the community, three years of informal training, barely two years of proper education here, and no particularly outstanding beyie to show for it.”

Mansa is stunned. “If you asked me all those questions just so you could remind me that I’m unremarkable,” she says, dropping her eyes again, “trust me, I know.”

“No. I’m just curious. I’m trying to understand why exactly you were chosen.”

“Chosen?”

Frama gestures at something between them, and Mansa follows with her eyes.

“Jesus!” Mansa lurches back at the sight of the frog sitting at the center of the desk.

The frog blinks at her and ribbits.

“Was that here this whole time?” Mansa asks, incredulous.

“It woke me up to fetch you, which is how I discovered you and your friends were gone. So in a way, you owe your life to that frog,” Frama says. She almost sounds amused.

As Mansa’s initial disgust wanes, she leans in for a closer look at the creature. It is about the size of a tennis ball, but its form is tapered, and its limbs, slender, with skin that is slick, glassy, and wonderfully iridescent. “This is a messenger frog,” she says in surprise.

“Good, you’ve been reading your textbooks.”

“I didn’t know anyone still used these.”

“Messenger frogs may be archaic,” Frama says, “but they’re probably still the most secure form of communication. It makes them perfect for extraordinary circumstances.”

“Like in captivity, or when you’re stranded without enough sunsum to use a gate,” Mansa says, recalling her studies. Her stomach turns as she remembers one more example. “Or in times of war.”

Frama raps her fingers on the table. “So you weren’t expecting any messages then?”

Mansa shakes her head.

“And you have no idea whom this is from?”

Mansa shakes her head again. “Other than Nana, I don’t know any other witches that aren’t already in this house.”

“I see.” Frama purses her lips, speeding up her finger rapping as she thinks. Suddenly, she stops. “Do you know who Mama Wu is?”

Mansa’s eyes widen at the mention of that name. Of course she knows who Mama Wu is. Rumors about the arch witch are manifold and wild. So much so that despite Mansa’s late entry into the witching world, even she can recount the legends by heart. Mama Wu and the mystery of the infinite well. Mama Wu and the curse of the evil eye. Mama Wu and the battle for the kakai throne.

Mansa reckons most of them are exaggerated. Although there are two stories most witches believe. Firstly; that the arch witch’s sunsum is blood-red—a color typically only associated with kakai and malicious entities. But it’s the second rumor that really turns stomachs. Supposedly, the arch witch can take another’s beyie from them, just by the touch of her hand, and bend it for her own arcane purposes. It is what earned Mama Wu her moniker.

The Scarlet Reaper.

“I mean, I’ve heard of her,” says Mansa.

“But never made her acquaintance I suppose. Strange.”

Mansa sees where this conversation is going. “You don’t mean to say…”

“I do.” Sister Frama looks down at the frog. “The message is from her.”

It feels as if the room has run out of air quite suddenly. “I don’t understand,” Mansa whispers.

“Now you see why I asked those questions.”

“And you’re absolutely sure she sent it?”

“It is marked with traces of her aura. Yes, I am sure.”

To Mansa’s horror, Frama gets out of her chair and starts towards the door.

“Wait, where are you going?” Mansa asks.

“The message is meant only for your ears. It will not be delivered if I stay.”

Mansa’s heart is racing at a full sprint. “But—”

“Whatever she asks of you, do it,” Frama says. “Small covens like ours aren’t in a position to deny her requests. Her reputation may be frightening, but she is reasonable. For the most part.”

Mansa is shaking. She doesn’t know what to say.

As Frama opens the door, she says, “For the record, I never said you were unremarkable. On the contrary, I think you sell yourself short. That lightning pattern at the graveyard was good, but you can do better.”

“You were watching us?” Mansa is taken aback, but she is already too shaken to be angry. “For how long?”

“Long enough. Like I said—I was curious.” Frama hesitates, and then adds, “It’s been my observation since you got here that you hold back when you weave. It’s almost like you’re afraid of your own beyie. And that’s a shame. Next time, test your limits. Your life may depend on it.”

“Next time?” Mansa says.

Sister Frama eyes the messenger frog briefly, and then gives her a small smile. “Remember the dove and the mouse.”

“The dove and the mouse?” Mansa repeats, puzzled. What an odd time to bring up the fable.

“Be careful,” Frama adds, before exiting and closing the door firmly behind her.

Mansa is alone with the frog. She stares down at it. It stares back and ribbits.

“Sorry,” Mansa says, “I don’t actually know how to do this so—ah!”

She is startled when, with a croak, the frog starts to inflate. It glimmers as it grows larger and larger, till it is almost the size of a basketball, and Mansa is scared it will burst. She is decidedly against seeing a small amphibian pop like a balloon.

But then the frog begins to shine—a brilliant silver glow that casts hundreds of tiny lights on the walls and ceiling, like a mirrored disco ball.

A gossamer image begins to flicker to life, suspended above the frog’s swollen body. The image takes form…

A head of locs, bound in cloth. The small face of a woman who somehow looks impossibly ancient, and also in her 40’s. A lean neck, sharp shoulders, toned arms. The image stops building around her waist, the bright blue of her kaba dissipating into tendrils of smoke.

“Hello Mansa,” says the image of the woman. “Do you know who I am?”

Mansa swallows and nods. “You’re Mama Wu. It’s an honor to meet you and—”

Mama Wu smiles. “I kid. This is pre-recorded. I cannot hear you.”

Mansa immediately feels silly. But the joke allays her nerves. This is probably a simple matter. Maybe she was worried for nothing.

“If you’re receiving this message, it must mean my worst fears have come to pass. So listen carefully,” says Mama Wu. “This is a matter of life and death.”

 

[coffieolore]

Chapter Two

A Negotiation with Mice

Two men play draughts in an abandoned warehouse. Besides the game board, the table between them is littered with empty fast food cartons and bottles of beer. Rusty farm equipment, stripped cars, and an assortment of grime covered junk take up most of the space in the warehouse. But a few feet away are two mattresses covered in dirty blankets and old clothes. The men have been sleeping here for days.

The older-looking man, Oluman Shi, moves a red piece, capturing four of his opponent’s pieces. “Heh, I’m simply too much,” he laughs as he adds the white tiles to his mounting stack. “Aren’t you tired of losing?”

Bald and heavily wrinkled, Shi wears an unruly grey beard that covers his jaw entirely, coiling down to his chest like wild bougainvillea. But the old man is also well-built, and his attire leaves little to the imagination, consisting solely of the cloth bound around his waist, traditional leather sandals, and the large black beads on his neck, wrists and ankles. He flexes his muscles in celebration, and they ripple and gleam even beneath the weak fluorescent lights in the high ceiling.

“Give up already,” he says. “This is just getting sad.”

Kiira, the second man, is unmoved by Shi’s looming victory. He is heavily built as well, albeit leaner and several inches taller, with platinum blonde braids that cascade down his back. Unlike his companion, he is outfitted in something modern—blue jeans and combat boots. “So you won a board game?” he mutters, crossing his arms over his bare, tattooed chest. “What do you want, a medal?”

Shi lets out an exasperated sigh. “What’s your problem? Please don’t tell me—”

“Oh excuse me for being concerned about our safety,” says Kiira. “I’m only trying not to die.”

“How are you still worried about her?” Shi says. “You wanted us to leave Ghana, and so we did.”

“I was thinking overseas, not bloody Nigeria.”

“You were worried about protection, and so we lifted over a dozen concealment beyie.”

“I would lift a hundred more if I could,” Kiira says.

“We even installed, what, thirty-six warding talismans? What more do you want?” Shi says.

“I want to have never agreed to this batshit plan in the first place!” Kiira snaps.

“You would rather we remained that witch’s servants for the rest of our lives?” Shi says.

“Better that than no life at all,” mutters Kiira.

Shi shakes his head. “You have chicken balls, bro.”

“Your mother has chicken balls.”

“You have chicken balls,” Shi says again. “And so does that immortal cow you’d rather be serving. Say what you will about Oluman Shi, but at least he’s got vision. We deserve more than what Wu allows. And I’m tired of pretending like we don’t.”

The lights in the ceiling flicker, and the two men look up. Kiira is immediately panicked, and he rambles a string of swear words under his breath.

“Will you shut up?” Shi hisses. “It’s just a fluctuating current.”

The lights start flickering again. There is a spare chair next to the mattresses on the floor. Neither notice when, during one of the flickers, the chair disappears.

When the lighting steadies, the men look at each other and Shi rolls his eyes. “Told you. Big baby.”

“Hello boys.”

Kiira and Shi jump to their feet, jerking their eyes up to the source of the new voice. Their chairs clatter backwards across the floor.

Floating high above them, seated in her own chair with her legs crossed, is Mama Wu.

Kiira lets out another obscenity, and this time it is more a wail of despair than fear. He and Shi immediately draw witch-arms—Kiira’s a spear, and Shi’s a whip—and poise themselves for attack.

“Give me an excuse,” Mama Wu says. “I dare you.”

And suddenly, neither Kiira nor Shi can find the will to move.

As Mama Wu makes her slow descent from above, she speaks:

“So a curious thing happened about a week ago. I received a distress signal from Korkor. Showed up to find one of the villagers wandering about two miles outside the village, a raging fiery monster. As it turns out, somebody had corrupted his sunsum and, with the keepers too preoccupied trying to stop his rampage, launched a devastating firestorm beyie on the village. The community I spent the last century painstakingly seeding, grooming, and building? Reduced to dust. Worse still, I was left with the very unpleasant task of ending that villager’s life myself—the last of his people, my handiwork. To call it excruciating would be an understatement. And the entire time, you know what I was thinking?”

Her chair ceases its descent to hover just about an inch above the floor. “Where. The hell. Is my team?” says Mama Wu. “Did I not recruit a circle of the most talented beyifo in the sub-Saharan region,” she continues, “specifically to prevent this level of catastrophic loss? So where were they? Because other than Selasi, not a single one of them showed up. I thought: ‘Surely this is some kind of misunderstanding. Maybe they’re at a wedding? A funeral? In bed with their lovers? Inexcusable still, but at least, not suicidal.’” Her smile is taut. “Because there’s no way this was on purpose, right? Surely they wouldn’t be foolish enough to betray me?” Her eyes narrow. “And yet, here I find them in hiding, reeking of beer and guilt and fear.”

Kiira’s ramping terror reaches a peak. With a delirious cry, he shoots towards Mama Wu with his spear drawn, at a speed on the cusp of sound.

He doesn’t quite reach Mama Wu before some unseen beyie obstructs him, igniting him on impact, a bright and sudden blaze like phosphorous fire. The momentum sends him flaring past an unfazed Mama Wu. His body skims across the floor, a shooting star on crash landing. And when he comes to a stop, there is nothing left of him but a pile of smoldering bones teeming with squirming, incandescent maggots.

Oluman Shi drops his whip, horrified.

“I’m not sure what I’m more ashamed of,” Mama Wu says, as she gets out of her chair, leaving it still hanging above the floor. “That you would hide at all…” With a wave of her hand, she snatches Oluman Shi off the ground, flips him upside down, and yanks him to her. “…or that you have resorted to petty tricks.”

She waves her hand again, and his body begins to morph. His muscles compress, his frame lengthens, his beard shrivels and blows away like desiccated grass. His facial features liquify into wet clay, squeezing, twisting, and molding themselves back into their original state.

“It makes me question what I ever saw in you,” says Mama Wu.

A different man now hangs before Mama Wu. But for his bald head, this one bears a fraternal resemblance to Kiira. He fights back tears of rage as Mama Wu bends over to address him, her face inches away from his.

“Kamari,” says Mama Wu. “Where is Oluman Shi?”

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” Kamari stammers through gritted teeth. “So why would I tell you?”

Mama Wu’s smile does not meet her eyes. “Because I could make your end swift, like your brother’s. Or I could turn this into a very, very long night.”

Kamari shakes his head so hard, his neck bones are making gentle pops. “We face neither East nor West, neither East nor West, neither East nor West,” he drones, his voice deepening into a pitch as deep as the sea. His facial muscles slacken, and his eyes roll back into his head. “We march eternally forward, eternally forward, forward. The revolution…has come.”

Mama Wu steps aside, just as a light shines out of the whites of Kamari’s eyes. The light projects a fluttering, washed-out image in the air.

An image of Oluman Shi. This version of the bald, bearded old man is wearing a camo uniform of dark, muddy and olive greens. He stands with his back to Mama Wu, his hands clasped behind him, every muscle more pronounced than when Kamari wore his likeness. He speaks over his shoulder in a deep and rumbling Akan:

“Back in my army days, we had a word for commanders like you. Nsamuden. They did a little too much, tried a little too hard, to control everything around them. It sounds perfect for the military at first. But even the dove pecks at your eye if you squeeze it too hard.”

Mama Wu walks up to the image. “You recount your past with such sweet fondness, Shi. If you long for the days when you were human, come here. Let me remind you what mortality tastes like.”

“Of course you would say that.” Oluman Shi turns to face her, his tone chiding as he switches to English. “Your paths to resolution have always been drowned in blood, Mama Wu. No wonder you cannot see the footprints in the sand, never mind where the road leads. But this is the blessing of my truth-eye beyie. It does more than reveal the truth in spoken words. It reveals the truth about the world. And our world is ready for change.”

Mama Wu nods thoughtfully, and starts to sit into empty air. Her chair glides across the floor to catch her in time. “So, that’s what this is?” she says, as she is seated. “A coup?”

“The word ‘coup’ implies you were ever put into power,” Oluman Shi says. “But you weren’t given your authority, Wu. You took it.”

“From flesh-eaters and megalomaniacal coven keepers,” Mama Wu says, with the calm of a millpond. “What’s your point?”

“That you are far from the benevolent god you make yourself out to be. You are a false god. And our brothers and sisters are finally ready to be free. They see how your laws weaken our people. Your disdain for any authority other than your own has only resulted in stagnation. You are a boulder around our necks, weighing us down from our true potential. The old ways must die.”

Mama Wu’s smile is unfaltering. “And I with them, I suppose.”

“Only if you resist. Unlike you, I am open to diplomatic paths.”

“He says, a week after mass murdering a village.”

Oluman Shi pauses, and takes a deep breath. “Korkor was…unfortunate. I mourn the dead in Korkor,” he says, “like I mourn the dead in Saanga.”

Mama Wu goes quiet at the mention of the second village. Otherwise, she offers no other physical reaction. Her smile stays up. “So you know about Saanga,” she finally says.

“That’s the problem with infamy. All those myths and legends about the great Mama Wu; truths buried beneath lies, convenient when you have secrets to hide. Right up until someone comes along…” Shi taps a finger against his forehead. “…who can tell truth and lie apart. In this case, the truth sealed Korkor’s fate. Their destruction was inevitable. And their blood is on your hands.”

Mama Wu cocks her head ever so slightly. “I see.”

“Korkor was only a show of resolve. We mean business, and are willing to take more from you if necessary.”

The image pans with Oluman Shi to reveal a second person, bound to a chair by what appear at first to be coils of shiny black rope. But as the rope shifts, the head of a snake slithers from around the person’s hip, and flicks its forked tongue. Shi stands behind the captive, reaching around to tilt their head up by their chin.

Selasi’s face is bruised, battered, bleeding. His eyes are so swollen, it is impossible to tell if he can even see Mama Wu.

Mama Wu’s smile falters, but doesn’t drop.

“He came looking for Kamari,” Shi says. “He found me instead.”

“If this is your big bluff,” says Mama Wu, “you’re about to be disappointed.”

“Give me some credit. I know your heart is little more than a lump of coal. But I also know that it beat once. And once is enough. I know of the girl.”

Mama Wu goes still. A moment passes. Her smile is now lifeless, as if stitched into her skin. But even then, it still does not drop. “What girl?”

It is Shi’s turn to smile. “Ah ah ah, don’t bother,” he says, with the self-satisfaction of an elder putting a child in their place. “Truth-eye. Denial only wastes your time and mine. As we speak, I have associates on standby, ready to act upon my command. One word and the girl dies. And if for any reason at all, they do not hear from me in twenty-four hours, they will kill her anyway.”

Mama Wu purses her lips. “I see,” she says again.

“You will not be able to stop them,” says Oluman Shi. “Without a doubt, you noticed the measures the boys have taken to cloak their hideout. Except, those talismans aren’t there to keep you out, Mama Wu. No, they’re there to lock you in. They’re part of a special beyie of interlocking seals I designed with two simple conditions—to activate upon your arrival, and to strengthen by absorbing the sunsum of any living thing killed within its field of effect. You killed Kiira so that’s already one exponential increase in strength. Kill Kamari, and that will be two.”

“You sound so proud of yourself,” says Mama Wu.

“It took years to develop. I am.”

“I could blow it apart with sheer brute force. Surely you know that.”

“Yet I am confident you won’t. You should ask yourself why,” Shi says. “By the time you’ve discovered a safe way to free yourself, it will be too late to save the girl, or Selasi, or to stop what is to come. And now that your team has betrayed you, who is to say the community will not turn on you as well? Whom can you trust? Face it Mama Wu. You are alone. You always have been. Do not allow pride to be your downfall. Yield.”

Mama Wu’s composure has seemed unrelenting thus far. But finally, her smile falls, leaving behind a countenance as cold as the moon. “Alright,” she says, “what do you want?”

“You know what I want,” he says. “Step down as arch witch.”

Wu smiles. “So that what? You may lead? You just think you want my authority, Shi. But you are a child wailing for the flame. Its dance mystifies you, but you will only burn yourself and burn everyone and everything down with it.”

“My truth-eye tells me otherwise,” Oluman Shi snaps.

“I don’t care what your beyie tells you. I cannot offer you something you do not deserve.”

“Then the girl will die.”

Mama Wu shrugs. “I guess she will. Look,” she says, moving her head from side to side, loosening her neck muscles, “you get a nine for effort. But a three for overall execution. I’ll admit I’m curious to know who told you about Saanga. And I’m furious you know about the girl. I’ll even throw in a ‘kudos’ for your little trap. But even if I could give you what you want, I don’t negotiate with mice. There is only one way this ends, Shi.” A flash of crimson light as Mama Wu summons her witch-arm. “With your heart in the palm of my hand.”

And for the first time since their conversation began, Shi looks unsure of what to believe. “You would really sacrifice Selasi? The girl? You’re bluffing!” he says, his brow furrowing with doubt. “Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Mama Wu stands, and as she approaches Shi’s image, she says, “You’re the one with the truth-eye.” She leans in close. “You tell me.”

And then, spinning around, she flings her scythe at Kamari. The blade separates his head from his body in one clean cut, dropping it to the floor with a series of soft thuds. The head rolls to a stop at Mama Wu’s feet, and Oluman Shi’s image—now partly projected onto her body—begins to fade.

“You’re mad,” Shi says, as the light from Kamari’s eyes begins to flicker.

“I resent that word.” Mama Wu catches her witch-arm overhead on its way back. “See you soon.”

And with that, Kamari’s eyes go dark.

On cue, a hundred curtains of roiling smoke appear around the warehouse. Strange shapes trudge out of the swirling doorways: two-headed lions, howling wolves with wings, sinuous serpents with pincers and pedipalps, giant prey mantises and butterflies with flickering arachnid eyes embedded in their wings, a carnival of monstrosities. Hulking, snarling kakai of every bestial persuasion multiply around her with each passing second. The creatures twitch and growl as they advance to surround her.

Mama Wu begins to understand what’s happening. If every life taken will strengthen the seal trapping her here then—

She curses Shi under her breath as the horde begins to surround her.

The ancient witch whips out a strip of cloth, gathers her heavy locs over her head, and wraps them in one fluid motion.

“It’s plan B then,” she mutters.

The creatures attack.

OOO

Elsewhere, in another world…

Beneath an ocean of stars, across a sea of sand…

Atop a truncated pyramid, with a massive floor paved in pearly grey slabs…

Oluman Shi stares at the defunct magic circles inlaid in a stone altar, bewildered by his last conversation and simmering with rage. Just beyond the altar, arranged in an arc, are eight standing mirrors framed in silver and rimmed with glowing Adinkra symbols. Each mirror contains a shadow shrouded in fog. One of the shadows, the second from the right, lets out a bellowing laugh.

“What did we tell you?” says the shadow in a man’s voice. “This your plan, it will not work. That evil shrew cannot be blackmailed.”

“Crossing Mama Wu is tantamount to suicide,” says one of the shadows in the middle, a woman this time. “We should have never agreed to this.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to anything,” says a nervous voice from the leftmost mirror. “I only agreed to hear you out. I will deny anything else!”

“Fool, just being a witness to this one’s schemes puts our houses at risk,” says the adjacent mirror. “She will visit her wrath upon us all.”

The voices begin to squabble.

Shi lifts his hands. “Please, please, illustrious ones. The battle has only just begun. We are not alone in this fight. I have sought some special help.”

One of the shadows kisses her teeth. “The kakai? What are kakai to a god?”

“Not just any kakai,” says Oluman Shi. “And not just any kind of help. I ask you to be patient just a little longer. Give me two more days. And if I cannot deliver you Mama Wu’s surrender, I will take my life upon this very altar before you.”

“Save your dramatic lines for your lackeys, Shi,” hisses the second mirror from the right. “Just do what you promised or leave us out of it.”

The mirrors go dark, their adinkra symbols fading out slowly. When Shi is sure the meeting is concluded, he drops his keen expression.

“Hers is the side you’ve taken?” Shi says, turning around. “That is your redeemer?”

Selasi doesn’t respond. His head remains bowed, his breaths sharpening as the snake constricting him to the chair tightens its hold. The chair creaks and threatens to snap.

“At least now you have seen for yourself how little regard she has for your life,” Shi adds, as a burst of purple light draws a witch-arm into his hand—a silver revolver damascened from end to end in waves. He points it at the base of Selasi’s neck, just above the serpent’s heaving body. “You swore loyalty to the wrong god.”

“Just get it over with,” Selasi rasps.

The shot is deafening in the small room, reverberating against the walls, and ringing out into the wilds outside the castle.

Selasi gargles on his own blood. But as he takes his final breaths, he lets out a faint, shuddering chuckle.

Shi shakes his head in disgust. “Maybe you and that she-devil do deserve each other.”

“Go-,” Selasi wheezes. “Go-,” he husks. “Go…tcha,” he finally croaks, as his head drops to the side and the life fades from his eyes.

Every inch of Selasi’s skin is suddenly ablaze in fiery, red runes. A hundred and one chains, made of candescent platinum light, shoot out from the walls, the floor, the ceiling. They latch onto Oluman Shi’s muscular limbs before he can blink. The elderly beyifo struggles and flexes, but the chains are ruthless. They bind his arms and legs, layer after layer, from his elbows and knees to the tips of his fingers and toes. In less than three seconds, he is restrained and his sunsum is nullified.

Shi roars, spewing a cascading series of vile curse words in Akan. And then he calls: “Kwaakwaa!”

A messenger crow arrives in the lone window of the room, flapping to a stop on the sill.

“Send the word,” Shi barks. “They must move on the girl! Now!”

The crow caws, and flies into the night.

[coffieolore]

Chapter One

The Afro-Haired Witch

Ama is scrolling through her social media feed when she feels it—like a phantom limb, its frozen fingers wrapped around her heart, trembling, tugging. Dread drains into her veins, as she looks up from her phone, and blinks at the semi-darkness around her.

Her prey is close by.

It’s almost midnight, and for the last hour, Ama has been seated on the outdoor deck of a café. The café is technically closed; but it is attached to a 24 hour fuel station, and none of the pump attendants have bothered to shoo her yet.

Ama stares into the face of her smartphone one last time, hoping it will sense her unease and offer some fleeting distraction. A dumb joke. A clever meme. Anything to temper her anxiety before she begins her hunt. But tonight, her feed is chock full of arguments over sex and politics, and the bad takes make her gag.

“Thanks for nothing,” she mutters, rising out of her seat.

As she leaves the fuel station, she receives a notification. Someone has mentioned her in her group chat, made up of her friends from school.

@Afro_Mage Weather app says it might rain tonight, and I’m dying at the thought of it lol. Try not to look into a mirror kid, you’ll turn into stone!

The message is from Joey, one of the few people in her life who knows that cold weather turns her hair into a frizzy disaster.

Ama smiles and taps out a reply: @KupOfJoey Find a bucket of water and drown in it. Send.

But her best friend is right, and it isn’t long before the first drops plop against the sidewalk. With a groan, Ama pulls over the hood of her jacket, and tucks her hands into its pockets. She has never liked rain. Her tangled mess of black curls is unruly enough, and it never agrees with precipitation.

The sounds of the city are soon dampened by the rise and fall of capricious showers. Traffic lights blink amber. Cars whoosh past, their headlamps gleaming off the slick street. The world is a blur behind the curtain of rain.

As Ama ventures into quieter and quieter neighborhoods, she lets her foreboding lead the way. At each new junction, she stops to mind her heartbeat. And with every correct turn she takes, it quickens. A visceral game of hot and cold. Even after three years of doing this, she still isn’t quite used to the way her heart pounds tracing sunsum.

The rain has softened by the time she arrives at the gated community. As she looks through the bars of the metal gate, her heart goes into overdrive. She’s close.

There is a guard asleep in the security booth with his feet on the counter. His radio is still on, the wails of an exuberant gospel singer muffled by the glass. He isn’t waking up any time soon.

Ama clears the twelve-foot gate in a single bound, and lands half-crouched on the other side, noiseless as a cat. She throws curious glances about the neighborhood as she walks down the street. Double-storied homes, manicured lawns, and luxury vehicles in the driveways. Everything nice and clean and in its place.

It never ceases to shock her how far removed places like this can be from the rest of the city, with its littered streets, noisy traffic, and tired people. She can practically smell the money in the air. The circles in which Ama runs have a significant lack of that. Well, except Joey. But even he gets shit from the rest of the group for having a whole second house just for vacations.

Turning a corner, Ama finally spots the object of her tracking. The wolf kakai is almost as tall as the lamppost under which it is seated, the grey of its fur lending its form an almost ghostly quality. Its tail swishes slow, serpentine paths upon the pavement. Its ear twitches against the swarm of mosquitoes drawn to the light. Its eyes are trained on the second-story window of a house across the street.

Casually, Ama walks up next to the wolf kakai, and turns on her heel to face the same house. The demon does not react to her presence.

After a stretch of silence, Ama says, “What are we up to?”

The kakai looks down at her in surprise, and Ama tilts her head up to meet its blood-red eyes. There are four of them, and they glint like rubies beneath the lamplight.

“So you can see me,” it growls.

“Yup.”

It cocks its head at her. “And yet, you are calm.”

“Not much escapes you.”

“Ah,” It says. “Then you are one of those. I have met hundreds of your kind over the years. Fewer of you this century. But still. Remind me what you call yourselves in this region. Beyifo?”

“Yeah,” Ama says. “But more specifically, I’m beyisafo. Same cloth, similar colors, very different cut. The thing about us beyisafo is—”

The kakai has lost interest now. “A witch is a witch,” it says, returning its attention to the house across the street. “And I abhor competition. Do not expect me to share my prize.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” says Ama.

“Although you may remain to witness my glory.”

“How kind,” Ama says.

In a manner of speaking, Ama already knows this creature. The kakai has been loitering around Accra for weeks now. Ama will sense its presence and track it to a location, only for it to be gone just before she arrives. Kakai are usually smart about where, when and how they hunt to avoid drawing attention. Most will even devour their victims whole to limit the evidence of their activities. This one though has been brazen. It leaves anything from bones, to entrails, to half-eaten bodies behind, out where anyone can find them. The news stations don’t know what to make of it, and the police are on a fruitless hunt for god knows what.

But here their culprit is. A big dog. Ama cannot imagine how it has avoided being exorcised this long.

“So what’s the plan?” Ama asks.

“There are two humans in that dwelling,” says the kakai.

“I see.”

“They spawned a newborn only days ago.”

Ama’s stomach turns. “I…see.”

“I have been craving something tender, and the new ones are always so tasty. I find it delightful how their tiny bones crunch when—”

“I get the idea,” Ama cuts in quickly. “What are you doing out here then? Waiting for the parents to fall asleep?”

The lupine demon lets out a low, rumbling chuckle. “Why, they’re the main course. But you may feast on the scraps I leave behind if you like. Your kind enjoys the innards, yes? I myself am not fond of livers, awful things. You may have those.”

“As generous as that sounds, I do have a small confession,” says Ama. “I may have misled you with the way I walked up to you. And now you’ve obviously assumed I’m the eats-human-flesh-to-grow-more-powerful class of beyifo. But actually…”

Slowly, the kakai tilts its head down to focus its bloody gaze on Ama again. “Do not dare say—”

“Yeah sorry, I’m the other kind,” Ama says. “You know…”

They stare at each other.

“The kakai hunting kind,” Ama finishes with a smile.

The demon’s claws whistle over Ama’s head. She ducked just in time. And when it takes a second swing at her, she leaps back to create some distance.

The wolf kakai drops into a slinking prowl as its hackles rise. “You humans always did have an excess of audacity. Standing at my side, addressing me as though you were in no danger at all.” Its steps are slow, calculated; Its four eyes brim with violent lust. “Damned glorified apes. Do you really think just because you have witch’s power, I cannot make you my dinner as well?”

Ama, only now slipping her hands out of her pockets, flexes her fingers. “Actually, I talked to you because I like to think understanding kakai makes me better at my job.” There is a flash of wispy, scarlet energy, and a double-ended staff with broad, curved blades materializes before her. She snatches it out of the air. “My job being, of course, to take your head off.”

“I will rend you limb from limb, and draw the marrow from your bones till every drop of that tasty witch sunsum is mine.”

“I don’t know,” Ama says skeptically, as she settles into a fighting stance. “I am notoriously hard to kill. But you’re welcome to try.”

The kakai launches into a relentless flurry of swipes, lunges, and snaps. Ama is a spinning blur, the blades on the ends of her staff whipping about to intercept every flash of its claws with a resounding clang. Sparks rain down around her.

She lifts her blade-staff when the demon pounces, practically landing on top of her. Razors clash against her snath; more sparks fly. Ama grits her teeth, resisting the creature’s weight.

“Runts! Insects! Vermin!” it snarls over Ama. Globs of sulfurous drool drip down from its jagged mandibles, and plop onto Ama’s forehead. “We were here before you were a drop in whatever primordial soup spawned you.” It shoves her, sending her skidding back. “And we will be here long after you are gone!”

“Maybe,” Ama says, flipping laterally over a swing aimed at her torso. “But the question is…” Spinning her blade-staff around, she redirects another clawed swing from slicing her feet. “Will you be around to see it?” She twists on her heel to deliver a powerful kick to the side of the kakai’s head.

The beast tumbles off the sidewalk and onto the lawn with a howl. Before it can scramble back to its feet, Ama springs high into the air. With considerable might, she brings the flat of her staff’s blade crashing down upon its head, and the sound of a sharp crack splits the night.

Almost instantly, the kakai’s thrashing becomes a feeble stir. Its body heaves as it gasps for air. Its tongue dribbles spittle into the grass.

Ama draws closer, rests her foot upon the side of its twitching face, and says, “Any last words?”

“Please…” It pants. “Spare…me…”

“Like you spared those innocent people?” Ama says. “Like you would’ve spared that child?”

“S-spare…” It croaks. “M-me…”

Ama narrows her eyes at it for a long stretch of silence. “Amanehunu. You’ll stay there if I cast you back?”

Ama knows little about Amanehunu except it is supposedly the home realm of all kakai-kind. How the creatures make it from there to Earth is above her station. How to send them back permanently however, is another story.

It takes the kakai a moment to respond. It seems to be struggling harder and harder to breathe. At this rate, Ama wonders if it will survive either way.

“I’ll…never…return…” It says.

Ama takes a deep breath, and sighs. “Hold on,” she mutters, taking her foot off its face. She turns around to open a rift. Pretending to let down her guard is her go-to test. A final offer of mercy.

Ama senses movement behind her. She whirls back around to an empty lawn, as a shadow passes over her.

“Of course,” she mutters.

The kakai lands on the nearest rooftop, and leaps onto the next. It appears to be making a beeline for the main entrance to the housing estate.

But Ama endured long-distance runs as part of her training to become beyisafo. And when she ran, she was clocked every single time. Eighty miles per hour is her time on a bad day.

She sprints down the street and around the corner, her sneakers a blur against the asphalt. From the corner of her eye, she spots the kakai on higher ground. She makes it to the entrance just as it begins to bound over the main gate. With a jump, Ama ricochets off the top of the gate to intercept the demon. It makes one last-ditch effort at clawing her mid-air.

Ama arches back, the attack missing her chin by an inch, as the tip of her staff’s blade sinks into the soft underside of its neck. Her blade runs along its body as they fly past each other, slicing it completely open to spill fire and sulfur and blood.

Ama lands on the balls of her feet, stands, and in one fluid motion, whips the blood off her blade-staff. The kakai falls behind her, a flaming, lifeless mess.

“Weird,” Ama says, dismissing her witch-arm. “You guys never choose home.”

The demon’s body will have disintegrated by morning. Not that it matters; no one without beyie can see it.

But Ama is still just as visible as anyone else, and there are lights turning on in the windows now. The commotion has woken the neighbors. People will be outdoors soon.

Ama jumps the gate, seconds before the security guard bursts through the door of his booth. He scans the area in a panic, his flashlight useless beneath the bright lampposts, his baton at the ready. He looks up, and scratches his head in confusion.

There is a dent in the wrought iron gate.

And Ama is gone.

OOO

Ama’s neighborhood is not the kind one roams at night. Not if they are looking to pass through with belongings and limbs intact.

A glance at her phone tells Ama it is quarter past one, and some of the older boys in the area are still awake, loitering. ‘Area boys’, they are called. They hang around in packs of four or five, leaning against walls, or seated in plastic chairs on the dirty patches that pass for lawns around here. They talk loudly, swig beers, and smoke, jeering at anything that crosses their path, from people to stray cats.

They’re always nice to Ama though.

“Ey Ama, wossop?” a pack leader calls to her from a lawn as she walks by.

She throws a peace sign back, and they nod their appreciation.

The night after Ama’s first patrol, an area boy tried to take her phone from her. She broke three of his fingers. The next night, another punk tried the same thing. She broke all ten this time. Finally, six of them ganged up against her to try and teach her a lesson. The only teacher that night was her, her knowledge in the form of cracked ribs, shattered wrists, two misaligned jaws, and one displaced pelvis. She and the area boys have an understanding now. They don’t bug her; she doesn’t send anyone else rushing to the emergency room wailing like a two-year old.

Ama crosses the street and frowns as she draws closer to her house.

Ma forgot to pay the light bill again. Theirs is the only home on the street without power, a lone assemblage of shadows in a line-up of bungalows with lit porches.

The front door is always locked this late, so Ama goes round the back. Stepping into the darkness, Ama shuts the screen door gently behind her and blinks, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

She finds Ma in the living room, curled up and asleep on their battered couch. Her mother is damp with sweat, wrinkled with fatigue, and hasn’t bothered to change out of her nurse’s scrubs. She moonlights most nights. And in four hours, she will be up again and in the shower, preparing to return to the hospital. Anything to make a little extra money.

There is a half-empty glass of water on the center table, next to an open bottle of pain pills and a plate with a half-eaten sandwich. Ama stoops to pick up the dirty dish, when she spots the dark rash on Ma’s wrists. If not for the weak light from the living room windows, she would have missed it. She doesn’t even need to check her mother’s ankles to know she’ll find the same bruise-colored welts.

“Dammit,” she mutters. It feels like her mother has had those rashes, on and off, for as long as she can remember. No matter how many different remedies they try, the rashes always come back.

Ama considers running her hand across the irritated skin to check how bad it is this time. For a second, her fingers hover over her mother’s hand. But she doesn’t want to risk waking her. On second thought, the dirty dish can wait too.

Ma has always been her sweetest asleep.

Ama sighs and mutters, “Goodnight,” before heading to her bedroom.

Ama could feel him long before she entered her house. The feeling only grows stronger as she steps into her room. This aura is nothing like the one she tracked earlier tonight. Her reaction to him has always been…different.

Heat rises up her face, and her stomach turns somersaults. She is suddenly too aware of every step she takes, and annoyed with the placement of her arms. Are they too stiff? Did they always feel this unnatural when she walks? She does not like that he can hear her heart going a hundred miles an hour. She does not like that he knows the effect he has on her.

Trying to ignore him, Ama moves through her room to the larger of the two beds, where her little sister Chichi sleeps. Ama is careful not to wake her when she sits beside her.

Chichi looks so much like Ma. Ama watches the subtle rise and fall of her chest, tracing her tiny features with her eyes. She looks so frail underneath her sheets, curled into a fetal position, her scalp perpetually stubbled with new hair. Sometimes, Ama worries that she is too small for her age. Surely, eleven year olds are bigger than this. But the doctors insist otherwise. Chichi is doing decently, they say, always leaving out the rest of the sentiment. Ama knows they mean to say her sister is lucky anyway, considering.

Considering the cancer.

Ama’s visitor clears his throat.

“Where is she tonight?” Ama asks without looking. “Mama Wu?”

His voice floats out of the darkness behind her. “Here and there. It’s…been a hectic week.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Ama murmurs. “Is she still trying to find us a cure? Or was that always a lie?”

There is silence for a moment. “I know she’s been working on something,” he says. “But she doesn’t say much about it.”

“I’ll bet.”

“You know how she is.”

Ama isn’t sure that she does. “What are you doing here then?”

“Me?” He sounds surprised. “I just wanted to see you.”

New waves of warmth rush over Ama’s cheeks. She steels her expression before turning to face him. “Alright then,” she says. “Good evening, Selasi. Well, good morning.”

Selasi is in the corner of the room, shadows clinging to shroud his form like a cloak. His eyes hang in the darkness like silver moons. There is light from the house next door coming through the window, and when he steps out of the darkness, it illuminates his lean form.

Tonight he is, as usual, in a simple suit and dress shoes. He smiles and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Hello, you.”

Ama stands to meet him under the light. He is not much taller than her, but Ama still has to tilt her head slightly when they’re standing this close.

“You’re so annoying,” she says.

Selasi looks taken aback at first, and then he laughs. “What have I done this time?”

“You’re too tall now. Did you get taller while you were away? I could swear you weren’t this tall the last time I saw you.”

“Since a couple of weeks ago? I haven’t grown an inch, I don’t think.”

“Well, I’d know better if I saw you more often,” Ama says, regretting the words even as she utters them. She isn’t trying to guilt him, but that’s what it sounds like. “Not that I’ve missed you,” she adds. “At all.”

His smile weakens. “Sorry. We’ve been a little—”

Ama waves off his apology. “I know, I know. So many kakai to banish to realms of eternal darkness, so little time.”

Selasi’s smile doesn’t quite recover, but he manages to maintain what is left of it. “More or less. How are you?”

“Only a little more tired since the last time you saw me. One more week and I’ll finally be done with high school. Can’t wait for that nightmare to be over, so I can focus on the regular nightmare I already live doing this job. Yay.”

This time, Selasi’s smile is more sincere. “Long night?”

Ama shrugs. “No longer than usual.”

“Were the kakai any trouble?”

“There was only one tonight, but yes. I dealt with it. Gave her a stern scolding and made her promise never to hunt in Accra again. She left politely.” Ama releases a strangled laugh. “I’m kidding. She tried to rip me to shreds, so I cut her down. I’m sorry. I’m tired.”

“No, I’m sorry that you’re tired.”

There is a momentary lull, and Ama wonders if he wants to tell her something. Or do something. Maybe hold her. It has been a while. She notices his eyes moving past her to rest on Chichi for a second.

“Don’t worry, she’s asleep,” Ama says.

“I have to go.”

Ama blinks. “Oh. That was quick.”

“I have to be somewhere.”

“Okay.”

“Mama Wu has me chasing a lead. It’s important. I…might be gone for a while.”

Ama smiles weakly. “Sure.”

Selasi cups Ama’s face in his hands. His battle-weary palms are jute against her cheeks, but gentle. Her heart stops, as he slowly leans into her. His breath caresses her upper lip, and he brushes his lips against hers.

“I’ll be back…” he whispers, kissing her. “…as soon…” A second kiss. “…as I can.” A third, this one stronger, deeper. Ama kisses him back, exhilaration exploding through her chest like fireworks.

Maybe she has missed him a little.

“And where’s Mama Wu sending you again?” she whispers back, when they finally pull apart.

Selasi only smiles, and then plants a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll see you soon.”

Ama watches him step back into the shadows, and melt into the darkness. His aura disappears with him.

“Ammie?” Ama hears Chichi’s small, confused voice utter.

“Hey…” Ama slides into bed with her, so she can stare inches away from her chocolate browns. “You should be asleep.”

“I heard you talking,” she whispers.

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Are you okay?” she murmurs sleepily.

“Mm, don’t worry.” Ama places a hand on her face, and gently strokes the baldness behind her ears with her fingers. “I was just making sure there were no monsters under the bed.” As she speaks these words, it occurs to Ama that they may not be wisely chosen. Speak of monsters can rouse old persisting fears, and keep her sister awake for hours.

But tonight, it seems that sweet slumber supersedes fear. Chichi gives Ama a small, barely conscious nod as she shuts her eyes and with a sigh, resumes her sleep.

Ama listens to her gentle breathing, hoping to distil for herself some peace of mind. Something about her conversation with Selasi left a knot in her stomach. He has always had secrets, a requisite for his job as Mama Wu’s right-hand. She thought she had grown used to it. Apparently not. His words echo in her head, and she tries to push them out.

Eventually, Ama’s eyes grow heavy, and she welcomes rest with desperate gratitude.

But anxiety pursues her into her dreams.

It is only ever the one dream.

A sweltering afternoon. A living room. Ama is eleven, Chichi is five. They have a cousin over and nothing to do.

Boredom is its own special class of sin.

A tattered book. A shadowy creature plucking a child out of bed. Singing vegetables, snickers, and laughter. Ama’s voice saying the same words again, and again, and again, and again…

Like I’d ever be so lucky.

[coffieolore]

Chapter Zero

Corrupted

The explosion sends Selasi flying back across the moonlit desert floor. Touching down on the heels of his leather dress shoes, he skids backwards without losing his balance. By the time he comes to a stop, he is almost crouched. He swats at the purple flames on his trousers, quenching them as he rises: a svelte, dusky boy with close-cropped hair, in a slim cut black suit. He tightens the grasp on his witch-arm—the slender, silver sword in his trembling hand—and frowns.

About a hundred yards away, a pillar of lilac fire rises from the ground, shredding its way through the night air and into the sky. The earth quakes beneath the raging pillar, and the wind whips into a swirling frenzy, drawing eddies of sand around the fiery column, up to the darkening clouds.

It is a catastrophe. One that Selasi has tried and failed to approach six times thus far. He isn’t injured. Yet. But his skin is glazed with sweat, and his otherwise fine clothes, covered in layers of dust he will never successfully wash off.

Just as Selasi’s despair brims, a voice next to him says, “How did this happen?”

There is a woman at his side who was not there a second ago. She is petite, with the visage of a middle-aged woman, although Selasi knows better. Her chunky dreadlocks, too large for her head, tumble down her stern face to rest on the shoulders of her bright blue kaba. Her sable skin is already sheening from the heat of the pillar. But there is an unmistakable toughness about her that suggests ancient baobab roots grow in place of flesh and bone beneath her skin.

Selasi fights back the impulse to weep gratefully at Her feet. Where have you been? He wants to cry.

Instead, he fights the quiver in his voice when he answers her. “I don’t know. I came as soon as I got the call, but I have no idea how things got this bad. I’m sorry, Mama Wu.”

Mama Wu sweeps her braids off her shoulders and binds them into a headwrap. “And the others?” she asks, right before the pillar blows another gust of burning wind.

“Kiira and Kamari said they were busy.”

Mama Wu narrows her eyes at him. “Busy?”

“Hemmaa didn’t even respond to my texts.”

“And Shi?”

“Oluman Shi has still not arrived.”

Mama Wu’s expression is dark, severe, still. Her gaze is bottomless.

“I know,” is all Selasi can say.

Mama Wu turns back to the pillar of fire. “Go. Check on the village.”

With a nod, Selasi leaps away, each bound distancing him from the ancient witch by several hundred feet.

Mama Wu rolls her head around to loosen her neck, and throws a hand out to her side. An item begins to materialize in her grasp, drawn into this world by crimson forks that snap and crackle off her fingertips. The item is a sickle—broad, crescent, forged from moonlight and damascened with ribbons of sun-fire. And across its argent face, runes of other worldly beyie stir and shift in an eternal dance.

She begins towards the pillar of fire, her steps slow but firm. “Hello!” she calls into the flames. Her voice carries a haunting reverb. “Can you hear me? Do you understand me?”

There is a silhouette at the heart of the pillar. A man’s. His eyes are lightning, and his screams thunder, the fire engulfing but not consuming him. He stretches his palms towards her and—

The fireball is the size of a truck, streaking out of the pillar to strike Mama Wu with an ear-shattering explosion. Fire and dust twist and swish at the point of impact. With a wave of her hand, Mama Wu dismisses the purple flames, casting them off her body like a dirty blanket into the wind.

“I’m sorry,” she says, as she spreads her feet apart and poises for attack. “This is mercy.”

Her movement is wind, a crack, a trail of light. In one blink, she is outside the pillar; the next, she is within the roaring fire, right behind the tortured silhouette. Her sickle is slick with blood.

It takes a second for the man to realize the gash in his side spraying ruby life. He lets out a low moan, and shudders from shock. The pillar dissipates with a resounding rush, like the final breath of a dying giant.

Silence settles upon the desert.

The man grabs his side, as Mama Wu’s sickle fades away. And then he crumples. Mama Wu breaks his fall and they drop into the sand together.

On closer inspection, this isn’t a man. This is a boy. Fifteen at most. “I-I couldn’t help myself,” the boy whispers, his eyes filling with tears.

Mama Wu wipes away the wet trail forming down his dusty face. “I know, child,” she whispers back. “I know.”

The darkness of the Sahara seems to grow infinitely around them, closing in like a vignette as Mama Wu cradles the dying boy. An eternity passes.

Mama Wu sings a lullaby under her breath:

Babi kaa fo

Ŋgbɛ o mami ete?

Ete lai

Mɛni hewɔ eshi bo?

As she sings the same four lines on repeat, her voice grows softer and the boy gasps for his last breaths, his fingers clutching at her clothes. Desperately at first. Then weakly. And then, not at all.

Mama Wu feels the exact moment his sunsum leaves his body. She makes sure to hold his gaze as it happens, knowing his eyes no longer see her.

Still, she sings. She rocks him. She runs her thumb over his cheek. Gently back and forth, back and forth.

Eventually, she feels Selasi’s presence again behind her. And she can sense his trepidation. If he is reluctant to speak, that can only mean one thing.

“The village is gone, isn’t it?” she asks.

Her back is turned to him, but Selasi still cannot lift his eyes when he answers. “It is. Every inch of it. Reduced to ash.” He swallows. “None of them survived.”

Mama Wu is silent for a long time, her body motionless.

“This wasn’t an accident,” she says.

“I didn’t think so,” Selasi says.

“Somebody deliberately corrupted his sunsum. They wanted him to lose his sanity. To turn on the village.”

“You don’t think it could be… I mean, there’s just no way they would…”

“We’re the only ones who showed up, Selasi,” Mama Wu says, finally letting go of the boy to rise to her feet. “What do you think?”

Selasi clenches his fists. “Shit.”

As Mama Wu turns around, sunsum begins to rise from her body like a luminous vapor. It is a dense, sizzling, seething aura; one notch away from bursting into a full-on inferno like the one she stopped this very night.

“I have theories. But until I know for sure what’s going on, we handle this with the utmost discretion,” Mama Wu says. “Not a word to anyone about our suspicions, do you understand?”

“Of course.”

“And—” Mama Wu hesitates. “I cannot stress this enough, but that means Ama too.”

“Ama?” Selasi is taken aback, confused. “Why would I tell Ama? What’s she got to do with any of this?”

“Just a precaution,” Mama Wu says. “We must tread carefully. One mistake and I fear it will mark the end of everything.”

Selasi throws a glance at the dead boy in the sand. “And what’s the plan when we find them? The ones responsible for this?”

“Is the answer not obvious?” Mama Wu says as she walks away. “We will kill them all.”