The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021)

by Oghenechovwe Ekpeki

  The guttering fire from the fire pit cast an interesting pattern of dancing shadows and warm light on the rough walls. An assortment of oddities hung from the ceiling, rotating on strings—a stuffed raven, yellowed clacking bones, old blackened carvings. A large water drum stood in the corner. I hesitated by the door, watching with great trepidation as Baba Seyi set his walking stick to the wall and unfastened his tie-dyed cloak, exposing a gaunt torso.

  “Why did you call me?” he asked.

  I could feel Rewa bristling with anger. “To... free myself.”

  He looked at me, his lazy eye boring into mine. “Freedom is a many-faced god. There are a great many things I could free you from. Do you want to be free of this shell that you’ve worn to house your spirit? Do you want to die, abiku?”

  What? No.

  Yes, Rewa whispered.

  “No. Baba. I want to be free of... Rewa.”

  “Mm-hmm.” He tore off a bunch of leaves and threw it in his mouth, chewing it methodically for a few moments. “Why do you want to be free of her?”

  Why did I want to be free of her? Because she was demanding. Selfish. Destructive. A bully. “She scares me.” I croaked, but I knew that was not enough. “She is bad... for my family.”

  Baba Seyi looked at me. “Hmm. So you’ve decided to stay.”

  “What?”

  “The last time you were here, I bound you to your flesh to keep you from dying. You have remained with us only by the spells holding you, and that, effective as it is, is not enough. It is why you are still visited by your spirit companions. But now you have lived with your family and have grown to love them. So much so that you’ve come to the decision to remain with them.”

  He paused here, and I had the feeling he was waiting for me to say something. “Yes, Baba.” I thought of my parents, of Dotun. I thought of the look on their faces when I gained back my body. It was a look I never wanted to see again. “I have.”

  He nodded, contented. “Take off your clothes.”

  I did not hesitate. Gooseflesh erupted over my skin the moment I peeled off the last layer of clothing. Baba Seyi placed me behind the fire before shuffling over to the large drum. He thrust a hand into it and came up with something brown and sticky—clay. And then he began to mould, chanting an earth song as he coaxed the clay into a shape.

  I didn’t know how much time passed. It felt like a minute, but it well could have been years. Time this high up the mountain was irrelevant. But after some time, Baba Seyi stepped back to reveal a clay image, eerily lifelike. It felt, oddly, like looking into a mirror; from the position of uneasy repose to the small mounds that were my breasts. The image was me in every way except for the face, which was smooth and featureless, a blank surface.

  “Where is the face?” I asked.

  “You see, I wondered how Rewa was able to steal your body,” said Baba Seyi. “You are, after all, not the first abiku I have dealt with. They all have spirit companions, but you... this Rewa seems to have much more potent hold and connection to you. And then I realized: she is your ibeji.”

  I was stunned. “My twin?”

  “Yes. You have taken turns in coming to this world, each living for a short while before dying to allow the other come. Except for now. You have... overstayed, and she is quite displeased.”

  It made sense now. I remembered asking her why she could manifest in a whole body but the other companions were just faces on the walls. She had only shrugged and said she was special. But then I also remembered her saying she wanted my family for herself. But didn’t I know? Hadn’t I realized, in the back of my mind, that she looked exactly like me?

  Baba Seyi nodded at the clay image. “I will attempt to invite her into this vessel.”

  A sister. I would have a sister. The prospect excited me. I turned to see what Rewa thought about it, but she was nowhere to be found.

  “I—I can’t see her.” But that wasn’t right. Rewa didn’t always make herself seen, but I could always feel her and now... there was a Rewa-shaped space in my heart where she always dwelt.

  Baba Seyi frowned. He sniffed the air and started to clap his hands and chant, stomping his feet into the ground. He stopped suddenly, his eyes growing wide. “No.”

  That one word was a spear through my heart. Before I could open my mouth to ask what was wrong, Baba Seyi took my hand, and we appeared in the town square beneath the iroko tree.

  Baba Seyi was hurrying in the direction of my house. “Quickly, girl!” he called over his shoulder.

  I darted after him, a million thoughts hurtling through my mind. Through the chaos of it all I kept seeing Rewa’s black eyes, kept hearing her spiteful hiss: you will regret this.

  I expected to find the exterior of the house in disarray; the roof on fire, the walls caved in—anything to denote Rewa’s wrath. But everything was just as I left it. Nestled between the fishmonger’s hut and the seamstress’, it stood serene. Deceptively serene.

  Baba Seyi hovered by the door, unable to enter. I brushed past him, calling for Mama, Baba, Dotun. Anyone.

  I found them at the dining table. They sat transfixed, staring at the gesticulating griot of the cantikle, watching as bright sparks shot out of her fingertips to bathe the otherwise dark room in a wash of colours. Where before, the griot’s movements had been fluid and graceful, now they were the choppy and strained movements of arthritic joints. She had a painful expression on her face.

  Rewa sat in my chair, dressed in my best clothes, her dark eyes alight with malice. I did not want to think how she was there, how she was real.

  “Rewa, please—” I started, but she held up a hand.

  “Shush, now,” she said in a sugary voice, “we’re watching the performance.”

  I truly saw the faces of my family members then. They wore slack, nearly vacant expressions and their eyes—oh, gods, their eyes!—were white.

  The griot’s song sounded strangely detuned and warbled, and when she finally cut off mid-rendition, the silence that came after filled the air like a blanket of despair.

  “Ah,” said Rewa, wiping a tear from her eye, “wasn’t that beautiful, Mama?”

  I watched, numb with horror as Mama turned her head ever so slightly, settling her white eyes on a spot just above Rewa’s head. She nodded.

  “Rewa...” I croaked. “What have you done?”

  She drummed her tiny fingers on the table. “I have taken your place.”

  “You—you don’t need to take my place. You’re my sister—” her eyes snapped towards me and I rushed on—“I remember now. We’re twins.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You remember?”

  “Yes!” I cried. “We had a pact! I wasn’t supposed to stay this long. I—I left you, and I know that is bad, but I understand everything now, because I would feel bad if you did the same to me.”

  A genuine look of hope appeared on her face. She pushed herself off the chair and rushed to hug me. “Oh, I’m glad! You finally remember. You have no idea what it was like waiting and waiting for you to come back to me.” She pushed me back and searched my eyes. “I thought you were going to send me away, that’s why...” She looked over her shoulder at my family who sat immobile, staring blankly into space. “Wait. How do you remember?”

  “I—it doesn’t matter.” I said quickly. “We made you a body so you could come and join me here. But it looks like you have found a way.”

  She gave me a mischievous smile. “I always find a way.” “Oh, we’re going to have so much fun together. Just like old times!”

  I gave her my widest smile, darting a glance to my family.

  “We’ll find another family to torment.”

  My smile faltered. “Another family?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “I thought you wanted to stay with this family.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” she said, leading me to the table. “Besides, where’s the fun in that? We were never meant to stay in one place.”

  “But...�
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  She stopped to look at me. “Do I sense hesitation, sister?”

  “No.”

  A knife materialized in Rewa’s hand, which she pressed into mine. She nodded at Mama. “Kill her.”

  “What?”

  “Kill her,” she repeated, watching me closely.

  It was a test, I knew. And it was one I would fail. Even as I struggled to find an alternative, to say something, Rewa yanked the knife from my hands and plunged it into my Mama’s neck.

  “What, you think I’m an idiot?” she said calmly as my mother buckled and thrashed like fish out of water. “You have been a very bad girl, Sola, and you will pay the price.”

  The door opened, and my siblings—my real siblings—filed into the room. They were the lesser of us and had fashioned bodies for themselves out of anything they could find. Straw, wood, cooking pots and pans. Their faces were wood, the same wooden faces that had spied and tittered at me from the walls of my room. Grotesque aberrations of human forms, they moved in unison.

  “Bad Sola,” they chanted in voices of metal and wood and straw. “Bad Sola. Bad Sola.”

  Hands reached out to grab me as Rewa yanked out the knife and turned to attend to my father, cackling with pure delight, her thin sonorous chant of “Bad Sola” adding a musical texture to the droning of my siblings. It felt like a dream. A bad dream from which I would soon wake up, shivering and sweating but otherwise safe, safe in the knowledge that nothing could hurt me, that my mother was alive—

  Something grabbed me. I looked down and felt the sudden urge to burst into maniacal laughter; a soup ladle, the same ladle Mama had used to pour soup into my plate, was now the arm of one of my siblings. It curled around my wrist in a vice-like grip while the sibling in question twisted his wooden face into a malicious smile.

  I smacked his head with my other arm, screaming in pain as my fist connected with the hard wood of his head. Hands snaked out to grab me before I could recover, pinning me to the spot. Gods, they were strong. Too strong. They lifted me off my feet and bore me to the table, still chanting. My father sat drooling, and when I saw that Rewa had carved out his eyes, I fainted.

  The pain woke me. Hands of spoons and wood held me to the table as Rewa carefully sliced the knife through my skin, cutting out my—

  My markings!

  “Be still, now, sister,” she said when I started to struggle. “I am going to free you.”

  Free me, no! I didn’t want to be freed. The markings were the only thing keeping me tethered to the world. Without them... I would be spirit again.

  I screamed as Rewa plunged the knife into my skin, meticulously hacking away at the flesh. “Please, Rewa—I swear I’ll do anything—please—”

  Rewa was deaf to my pleadings. She hacked, her eyes alight with malicious glee.

  One of my siblings, who had fashioned for himself a body out of my mother’s cloak, leaned in. “Finish it,” he said to Rewa.

  Just then, the roof caved in with a resounding crash, and in swooped the largest owl I had ever seen. It landed on the table just above me as my siblings scattered about. It turned its head to look at me, and I could see myself reflected in the huge glassy orbs that were its eyes. The left eye was a little slow. A lazy eye.

  “Baba Seyi,” I breathed.

  “Go,” He growled, and when I lay there stunned and transfixed, he spread his great wings and screeched. “GO!”

  I fell off the table and bolted out of the house, Rewa’s formidable shriek of fury chasing me down the street.

  I reached the town square when I noticed my feet were no longer touching the ground. The world took on that bluish-grey hue I had now come to recognize, and I rose, as if buoyed by an invisible wind.

  No.

  I flailed, grasping for something—anything—to keep me tethered. As I turned around, I saw my body lying facedown in the dirt, saw my bloodied arm where Rewa had hacked away at my flesh.

  Lying next to it was the torn patch of skin with my abiku markings.

  The world fell away, breaking off like little flakes of burning parchment, until all that was left was the void.

  * * *

  V: Rebirth

  First there was darkness; the cold, numbing darkness of the void. Then voices—whispers, really, a thousand sibilant words slithering over my skin like snakes. Then warmth.

  —I am alive. I am me, festooned in a cocoon of water—

  Then I am born. I see a face, teary-eyed and exhausted, the face of a new mother.

  11

  “A Love Song for Herkinal as composed by Ashkernas amid the ruins of New Haven” © Chinelo Onwualu

  Originally Published in Uncanny Magazine (Issue 35, July/August 2020)

  I slam the car door with more force than I mean to. It’s childish, but I don’t care; I want Ashkernas to see how angry I am.

  But my sister pretends not to notice.

  “Don’t worry about the supplies, Herkinal!” Ash calls with the false cheer she adopts when I am upset. “I’ll get Haba to bring them in.”

  I don’t bother telling her that I had no intention of helping in the first place. Instead, I storm past her and unlock the door of the front lobby. And there they are, all six of them, lounging on the leather settees across from the registration desk—as they have for the last two weeks.

  They no longer bother playing the penitents with me; they know it won’t work. They only put on their act for Ash—whose indulgence they are aware is all that keeps them from the void of the lower depths where they belong. They look like typical wood sprites—except they’re not. Something has corrupted them and now they are like walking trees carved out of ice, their faces abstract sculptures. They radiate a cold that’s almost solid, and even if my sister and I didn’t have the Sight, we would still be able to feel the unpleasant clamminess that they bring to any space.

  I know this because we haven’t had any guests since they arrived. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve walked in here looking for a room and then found some excuse to leave as quickly as possible. They’re killing our business and for some reason, my sister doesn’t seem to care.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in room 306?” I bark at them. It was Ash’s idea to have them act as ACs for the tokoloshe who’d been complaining that his room was too hot, but they’ve yet to make their way to the first floor, talk less of the third.

  They begin a chorus of laments, but I tune out their tired excuses and begin prepping the front desk for the day. We both know they’re lying. Hell, I’d known they were lying when they’d first arrived telling a woeful tale about how the Accident destroyed their ancestral forests far to the north. I seethe, remembering Ash’s cheerful dismissal of my protests at the time.

  “There’s a reason for everything, even if we can’t see it,” she’d said, flashing that brilliant smile of hers. “Don’t worry, it’ll work out.”

  The old Ashkernas would never have let such obvious dupes pull that nonsense with her. Granted, I was the brains and she was the body, but she’d always been sharper than she let people think. I would plan the scams, and she would execute. Brick and Lace, they’d called us then. The Sisters of No Mercy.

  The front door dings as she enters, loaded down with foodstuffs and cleaning supplies. I pretend to review the guest register, ignoring her as she huffs towards the kitchen in the back. The spirits erupt in a chorus of effusive greetings when they see her, and she beams in response. I notice that none of them offer to help her, though. I kiss my teeth at the farce, which the spirits pretend not to hear.

  “Haba!” Ash calls from the kitchen. “Habakuk! Come help Mommy with these things!”

  The little girl sidles out from wherever she’s been hiding. It’s a disconcerting habit of hers. One moment you think you’re alone, then you turn around and there she is, staring at you with those odd yellow eyes of hers.

  I’ve never really taken to her. She looks nothing like either of us—small-boned and ebony where we are both
full-bodied and warm earth. And where other six-year-olds chatter and laugh, she seems to hoard her words, only wheezing quietly when one of her secret schemes has come to pass. Our grandmother would have called her an ogbanje, a spirit child with one foot in our world and another the afterlife. One who torments her mother with multiple births that all end in death. Except she’s Ash’s first and only child, and it was an easy birth.

  As usual, her clothes are filthy and her hair is a knotty mess because she won’t allow anyone to touch it. I eye her suspiciously; what has she been up to now? I suspect I’ll find out in due time—when the complaint reaches me.

  As if reading my mind, she hunches her shoulders as she passes me, skittering to the kitchen like some sort of furtive insect.

  I sigh. The Accident changed so much for us. Though, I suppose it changed things for everyone. I turn on the supernatural scroungers across from me.

  “So, you people just balanced yourselves here for the whole day? You didn’t do anything again?”

  “Madam, it’s not like that…” they cringe and apologize profusely, and I let loose a tirade of insults on them. It won’t dislodge them from their perch, but it’ll make me feel better.

  * * *

  I know he’s bad news the moment he walks through the front door. I don’t need the Sight to tell me that. From the middle-aged pot belly that speaks of more cheap beer than sense, to the expensive suit several sizes too small. Then there’s the overly shined leather shoes, the oversized gold watch, and the heavy cologne that assaults me long before he gets to the desk. I know.

  He surveys our small lobby with a disapproving sniff, as if he’s used to more luxurious digs. I stiffen. The Spirit Inn isn’t much, but it’s clean and I’ve worked hard to decorate it with locally made handicrafts. Some people just have no taste. On top of that, he’s untouched. I wonder how he found the place; the untouched shouldn’t be able to even read our sign. Then, the girl slips in from behind him. As she hurries to join him at the desk, she glances at the settee and shivers, and I understand.