by Leye Adenle
Adesua responded with a simple, ‘Oh.’ She assured him that she didn’t have any piercings. None whatsoever. Odedina smiled and nodded. I wanted to tell him that
I knew she didn’t have any piercings.
The men led and we followed, all of us in white, all of us naked under the linen, all of us getting drenched in the rain Titus Titus had conjured.
From the time I’d voiced the thought, an urgency had gripped us all and set us in motion, so that we hadn’t had time to discuss and debate the merits and otherwise of my proposal. And so we walked in silence through the rain, each one of us, magicians and magician in training, weighing the implication of the serendipitous inkling I’d had, namely that Mr Magic was Rachel.
But had we talked about it, I would have counted on their magical senses to understand a secondary inference I’d since happened upon. The only way Rachel could be Mr Magic was if I wasn’t Mr Magic.
There was more than one reason that thought of her had risen to the top of my consciousness when Brother Moses suggested that the real Mr Magic would do good to be shadowing me, and my father in me. Rachel was in danger.
Titus Titus wanted her, not my father. He could not afford an unpredictable fight with me, but he could handicap me before the battle began, by securing a keepsake that I would fight a million battles or lay down all my weapons for. Titus Titus was Mr Magic all along. I dared not tell the rest, in case they abandoned the quest to rescue Rachel.
Chapter 37 A Walk in the Rain
‘Isn’t that your friend with the doctor?’ Odedina said and pointed.
At the end of the road, a hundred metres away, Titus Titus was walking away from us and he was holding Rachel by her arm. Like us, they didn’t have umbrellas, but unlike us, they were not shielding their faces or hunching their backs to the rain. They turned by a yellow house with red roof tiles and they walked out of view.
‘Rachel,’ I shouted.
Neither of them looked back.
I was about to run after them but Brother Moses held my hand and said, ‘No.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘It is not good to run in the rain,’ he said, looking into my eyes with a straight face. I understood that he meant something other than what he’d said and he expected me to understand it or at least accept his instruction to me not to run after the magician who had Rachel.
We walked on but with quicker steps. We rounded the corner and saw Titus Titus and Rachel ahead. Adesua held my hand so we both dropped back behind the rest.
Speaking quietly she said, ‘You must be careful. People must not know who we are.’
It took a second for me to realise she was explaining what Brother Moses meant when he said no and he held me back. What did he think I would do? Fly?
‘We can only do magic on stage or else they will call us witches,’ she said. ‘They will hunt us and they will kill us. They outnumber us. It has happened before.’
Titus Titus turned by another house. A bright green one this time, with blue roof tiles and a purple door. We got to the house not long after them. Behind the house was a long garden backing onto the forest. The houses had no fences, so each garden led to the neighbour’s. Titus Titus and Rachel were at the end of the row of gardens that made the block. It was impossible for them to have walked that far, unless they were running, and it was as if he had waited for us to catch up so we’d see where he turned next. With Rachel firmly in his grip, he walked out of the garden to the side of the house, and once again they were out of sight.
‘They are going in circles,’ Brother Moses said.
The village men began to sprint after them. I jogged past them.
When I came to where we’d last seen them, they had walked halfway up the road where we’d first spotted them and he was about to turn left this time, just after a row of five houses that backed onto the forest.
I shouted her name, ‘Rachel.’
Still, they didn’t look back. I waited for Brother Moses,
Adesua and the men to catch up with me. ‘Where are they going?’ I asked Odedina.
He looked at me but he did not answer. His face was creased with worry.
‘Is that the way to the magnetic garden?’ I asked. He looked up at me again. I knew the answer. ‘That’s not them,’ I said.
Brother Moses and Adesua looked at me.
‘It’s not Titus Titus. And it is not Rachel. He did what you did. That is the Asian girl and the white Rasta guy.’
I saw on Brother Moses’ face the instant he also figured out what I already realised. Adesua was as unreadable as usual.
I turned to Odedina. ‘Where is the hospital?’ Titus Titus already had Rachael. His assistants were only keeping us busy while he got away.
Odedina was torn between keeping his eyes on the two figures walking further away and giving me instructions.
Adesua took charge. ‘Odedina, you have to take us to the hospital, now. The girl’s life is in danger.’
Odedina looked ahead to where the two had disappeared. His confusion was understandable.
Adesua bent down to him and placed her hands on his shoulders.
‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘That man is not a doctor. He is something else. He is evil. Those two are his assistants. They are also dangerous. If we don’t get to the girl now he will do something terrible to her.’
She only managed to confuse him more.
‘Just trust me and take us to the hospital, please.’
Odedina looked at the empty road. When he looked back at Adesua he jumped and screamed and his mates had to catch him from running away. Whatever scared him, only he saw. She leaned to him again and placed a hand on his shoulder.
‘You see now? That is how they did it. Now, take us to the hospital before it’s too late.’
Chapter 38 Dragon’s Breath
The town of Faka fiki turned out to be really quite big. We passed several brightly coloured houses, a church, a mosque, a school with a large football field by its side, and even a building that looked like an office block. The further away from the centre we got, the fewer the houses became, and the taller the trees that surrounded them.
The men led us to one such isolated house in the middle of a clearing in the forest. Several metres away from the building, the townsmen stopped on the narrow road leading to it. Amazingly, it was not raining on that particular stretch of road, or the clearing it led to.
Odedina pointed. ‘There,’ he said.
‘You’d better go now,’ Adesua said to our escorts and then she stepped out in front of the rest of us and focused on the house ahead.
The men turned back and ran. We walked on to the edge of the large clearing. The building was about twenty metres away.
‘Can you see them?’ Adesua said, looking at the house. Brother Moses took out his phone from his afro and held it to the house as if to take a picture. I looked at the screen and saw an x-ray of the house. I also saw movement on the black and white image. I leaned in closer. I was looking into the building. A figure was climbing up the staircase. In his arms he carried a limp body. It was Rachel. It had to be.
Titus Titus suddenly stopped on the stairs and paused.
He placed Rachel down and began to descend.
‘He knows we’re here,’ Brother Moses said, ‘and he’s got her.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s coming out.’
‘Where’s his ship?’
Brother Moses moved his phone to scan above the building. He moved the phone higher and we saw it. Up above the house, just above the height of the trees, a massive, bright white disc spun slowly and silently, emit- ting a mist that clung to its body and swirled with it as it turned. It was so bright that it was uncomfortable to look at it too long on the screen of the phone. I had to look away. I looked above the house.
There was nothing there. I looked at the screen and there it was again, spinning slowly, its brilliance some- thing like looking at the sun.
The front door of the house opened but there was no one there.
Brother Moses put his phone back into his hair. Both he and Adesua stepped forward. He held his hand out to stop me following suit.
Titus Titus walked through the open doorway and out of the house. He stopped after just a couple of steps. The smirk on his face made him look like evil personified. He seemed pleased with himself.
‘Up to your old tricks, Moses?’ he said. ‘Spying on a fellow magician? Isn’t that against your magician’s code of conduct? Isn’t that forbidden, brother?’
‘We have come for the girl,’ Brother Moses said.
‘So you have. Let’s see, one, two, three of you. And there’s just one of me. Hardly a fair contest, wouldn’t you say?’
With the fingers of his right hand, he flicked the back of his left hand. The bees tattooed onto his hand slipped off like black paper cut-outs, then turned into real bees. He dropped his hand to his side and shook it. Bees poured out of his sleeve and circled his feet in a dense mass that kept growing. He raised his hands and thrust them at us. The bees flew towards us, buzzing.
With both hands, Brother Moses parted his afro in the middle and turned the crown of his head to the approaching bees, holding both halves tightly apart. White smoke poured out of the gap in his hair. The smoke moved like a living thing. It spread out to block the path of the approaching bees and curled inwards to envelope them. Any bee that tried to escape was caught by a tongue of smoke that flicked out like a hungry lizard. When all the bees had been captured, the smoke rose like a cloud, shifting and swirling as its prisoners tried to escape. It rose and rose, up and up, past the trees and into the sky above, and kept ascending into the heavens.
‘Impressive,’ Titus Titus said. ‘Now, just how much can you fit into that hair of yours? I bet they didn’t let you empty your pockets into that ridiculous toga. Let’s see what you can do with these.’
Titus Titus pulled his right sleeve up, exposing a forearm covered in black tattoos. With his left hand he scraped at the tattoos from the elbow down. Scorpions peeled off his arm. Thousands of them scattered onto the ground and started scampering towards us, their venom-laden tails hanging over their backs.
Brother Moses dug his fingers into his afro and searched. The scorpions kept coming. I was stepping backwards and so was Adesua. As if he was sitting on a stool, Brother Moses raised each leg off the ground, hunched forward, tucked his head into his knees, and wrapped his hands around his folded legs in mid-air, and just continued folding into himself until he folded away from sight. Without any noise or fuss, he just vanished. A moment later, out of thin air, he unfolded behind Titus Titus, silently stretching out his limbs until he was stand- ing behind the evil magician. He began to pull out a long glistening sword from his hair.
Grinning devilishly, his eyes on me, oblivious to Brother Moses folding out behind him, Titus Titus ripped his shirt apart. He had a huge, coiled dragon on his chest. The beast began to uncurl itself. It lifted away from his skin and took on a glimmering red colour. It flared its red nostrils and blinked its scaly eyelids over its green and black reptile eyes. Its wings unfolded as it grew in size to several metres wide. With one flap that swept the scorpions off the ground, it climbed above its master’s head. The beast turned in the air. It dipped its head to Brother Moses and bellowed out a jet of fire so intense I felt the heat on my face from where I stood.
Brother Moses had begun to fold away before the flame reached him but Titus Titus swung round and caught one of his ankles, holding him in the dragon’s fire. Adesua ran at Titus Titus and did a sliding tackle through the scorpions. Without fuss, Titus Titus lifted the leg she aimed for and she slid under his foot. He casually stepped on her belly, pinning her down with his foot. She kicked and grabbed at his leg but she couldn’t move him an inch. With fervour, the scorpions began swarming her.
The dragon hovered above, tree branches blowing as it flapped its massive wing and belched out fire onto Brother Moses’ leg that Titus Titus had seized. Adesua was beneath Titus Titus’ foot, brushing off scorpions that had completely covered her body and struggling to breathe under the pressure of the magician’s foot. I stood, feeling the heat of the dragon’s breath on my skin, and the anguish of my friends in my heart.
There was nothing I could do to save them.
Chapter 39 A Super Woman
The red dragon continued to hover above Titus Titus, flapping its wings and breathing down fire onto Brother Moses’ leg. The scorpions climbed over each other on top of Adesua’s motionless body under Titus Titus’ foot, and Titus Titus looked at me, grinning mockingly as he killed my friends.
I could have run. He would have sent one of the pesti- lences tattooed onto his skin after me, but at least I would have died running rather than standing there watching my friends die and not being able do anything. But I stayed and I waited, not knowing what for.
I looked up at something in the sky that had caught my eye. Or did I know to expect it? In the distance, tearing a fiery path through the clouds, a tiny shooting star was rushing down from the heavens.
It was coming in fast. It got bigger quickly. It was a person flying in.
They were coming in too fast. They flew in over the red dragon’s wings and landed somewhere between me and Titus Titus, the velocity of their approach carrying them onwards along the ground, tearing a path into the soil as they slid to a stop, inches from my feet.
I recognised the combed back, shoulder length black hair, the ankara blouse and the long wrap. But it couldn’t be. Still crouching, she looked up at me. Her eyes were as impassioned and unreadable as they had always been. Without a word or any kind of acknowledgement, or even hint of the slightest awareness of how she had just freaked me out, she stood up and turned to face the carnage.
The dragon filled its lungs. She held her hand up at it and the beast coughed black smoke.
‘Itohan,’ Titus Titus said. He looked surprised.
He let go of Brother Moses. The charred smouldering limb vanished and a puff of smoke marked where it had disappeared. He threw off his ripped shirt. Tattoos slid round from his back onto his chest, peeled off his body and charged at my mother. An army of warriors with bodies covered in scaly, reddish exoskeletons, and armed with axes and clubs and daggers.
My mother held out her arms by her sides. Long shimmering swords grew out from both hands. The charging army slowed down and formed into two straight lines. On each side of her, the warriors took turns walking though the blades, slicing themselves in two at the waist as they did so.
Titus Titus stepped off Adesua. The scorpions climbed over each other to reach his hand. They rushed onto his arm and settled down onto his skin as tiny black tattoos. The dragon shrank and snapped onto his chest and coiled back into place.
The swords retracted and my mother’s hands formed into fists.
Hunched forward she marched towards Titus Titus. At first he held up his hand as if to stop her, then he took one step back, turned around and ran into the house.
My mother ran after him and I ran to Adesua.
‘Mum, wait,’ I shouted as she was about to enter the building.
I was on my knees by Adesua. Her skin was covered in reddish bruises where she’d been stung. She was motion- less but breathing with difficulty, making a rasping sound that was painful to listen to. But she was breathing.
‘We have to help her,’ I said.
With her hands on the doorframe, my mother looked at Adesua for a second then she turned back to look into the house, up the staircase where Titus Titus had escaped. Rachel was still in there, but Adesua was dying. I couldn’t let her die again, and especially without her soul.
‘Mum, please.’
From about the height of my head where I knelt, and about a foot or two away, out of nothing a hand stretched out, followed by another. Then Brother Moses’ head emerged, and his torso, and one leg, and finally the burnt leg. He groaned when his injured limb touched the ground.
<
br /> ‘Itohan,’ he said.
My mum looked at him.
He limped and groaned as he knelt by my side next to Adesua.
My mum let go of the doorframe and walked to us. As I watched her, and as my eyes pleaded for her to help Adesua in whatever way she could, her hair stretched up, straight away from her head. So did Bother Moses’ afro. From where she lay on the ground, Adesua’s hair curved around the sides of her face and rose straight up towards the sky. I felt a tingling on my own scalp.
I looked up. Above the house the ship had become visible. It was metallic grey and it rotated slowly. Evenly spaced white lights lined its rim. Rows of light stretched from the edge to a large circle of bright white light in the middle.
As we watched, light poured out from the belly of the ship and fell onto the top of the building. The light was like a liquid current that flowed downwards on its outer surface and upwards in its core. Titus Titus rose through the light, Rachel’s lifeless body in his arms. They went through the white hole into the ship, then the current of light fell away, collapsing into the building as the ship rose slowly away. It came to a silent halt for a brief moment, then it suddenly shot straight up into the sky and vanished from sight.
My mother’s hair fell back into its normal sweptback style. She watched the ship go, then she turned her attention to us, first inspecting Brother Moses’s leg then slowly sweeping her eyes over Adesua’s body.
She bent down and picked Adesua up as if she weighed nothing, and held her to her body with one hand. Next she offered her other hand to Brother Moses. He limped over, grimacing, and put his hand on her shoulder. She held him tightly to her body.
‘Do you know the way to the magnetic garden?’ she asked me.
‘No.’
‘Can you fly?’
