“What are you?” ey says, knees drawn to eir chest. “You . . . you’re the one who killed all those people!”
“Where did you get this?” I ask, picking up the machination. Nearly identical to my mother’s. I hold it by the chain.
“I—I—I—I . . .” the streetwalker stutters.
“Tell me where you got it and what it’s for, and I’ll leave you unharmed.”
With trembling hands, ey reaches into the drawer and pulls out a sanjo pipe and match. Ey lights it, takes two drags, then sets it down, noticeably less unnerved. Ey takes the machination from me, and carefully twists it. It hums aggressively, vibrating in the palm of eir hand.
I jump back like the thing is betwixt by the devil. Why would my mother possess such a thing? To what purpose would she risk imprisonment or worse?
“There’s a subsecular group that meets across the hall. They gave me this and two hundred djang in return for my silence. And what it’s for . . .” Ey guides the vibrating sphere beneath a flat nipple, and it instantly puckers to the size of a small berry. Then ey moves it down, down, down until ey shudders with pleasure, once, twice, again. Drowsy, desperate eyes meet mine. “I’m yours tonight for a hundred djang.”
I kill tonight, for the first time—a mangy street dog rummaging through trash. With every gristly bite, I imagine it is the streetwalker’s flesh that fills my mouth. The blood is far from icing sweet, but it satisfies my need well enough. For now.
I sleep like the dead until sunlight warms my skin. I lift my groggy eyelids to see Munashe on the far side of our smoldering fire, snoring. I smell nothing other than smoky ash and the sourness of my own breath. My mouth is full of nice, blunted teeth. The details of last night’s escapade congeal, no longer muddied by my blood cravings. All I can think about is that machination, just like the one Mother had tucked away in her box of dirty little secrets. I try to deny the obvious, but after all of her duplicity, is it so hard to believe she’d once sold her body? A pretty, lithe lesser twin, broke and out of options? No, not Mother. I clench my eyes, willing my senses back on edge. I’d rather deal with the blood cravings.
I toss and turn, but the only smell to strike me is that of new leather and foot sweat. I open my eyes and find my face directly upon Kasim’s shoe. He’s staring down at me, frown stitched upon his brow.
“I’m fine,” I say. “You don’t need to watch me.”
“Don’t I?” He touches his left cheek. “You’ve got a little something . . .”
I press a finger to my cheek and pull back tacky blood. I wipe it into the dirt.
“You killed again.”
“Just dogs,” I say. No need to admit that it had been twenty-seven of them. My joints creak and pop as I stand, like they’re offended by my human form.
“And before?”
“Before it wasn’t me who was in control.” I clear my throat, trying not to think about what would have happened if the streetwalker hadn’t pulled out that machination when ey did. My brow tightens. “While we’re throwing accusations around, you nearly killed me last night. What if your little lackey, Sesay, had been here instead of Munashe? Would she have talked you down?”
“I—I don’t—” Kasim stutters.
“I’d be dead, now. Worse than dead. And you would be all alone.”
“I wouldn’t have been alone,” Kasim says. “The incantation—I don’t think it was meant to be spoken by someone like me. It was devouring me, too. And I was going to let it. Maybe it wasn’t the right answer, but it was an answer. I just can’t shake the feeling that I don’t belong here.” Kasim stares at me from beneath heavy, mournful lids. “You were right about the doubt. It really is the worst.”
I can’t have him talking like that. If we’re going to get through this, one of us needs to keep it together. I lay a hand on Kasim’s shoulder. We connect, and the world melts away. It’s like we are back in the womb, black and infinite, floating in the emptiness of space. There is me, and there is him, and there is us.
It is a short reprieve from the world, but we’ve steadied ourselves enough to take it on.
“The answer is out there,” Kasim says. “But I doubt we’re going to find it among dusty books.”
“So what’s our next step?” I ask.
“It depends how long you think you can stick to killing dogs,” Kasim says, eyes beseeching.
Indefinitely, I want to say. For a few months. But if there was ever a time not to lie to my brother, it is now. So how long can I allow myself to starve? How long can I deny myself these urges that tug at my entire being? “I can guarantee you a week, and I’ll let you know as soon as anything changes.” A week will be torture. I am ashamed to admit the depth of my depravity, but my brother rewards my honesty with an embrace.
“Then we’ve got a week,” Kasim says into my ear, “to impress the hell out of Gueye Okahim.”
Together we hatch our plan, huddled under blankets on my bunk to brace ourselves from the basement’s chill. Between us sits a model of Gabadamosi. Mounds of coconut husks represent important buildings, limp steamed broccoli for wilderness patches, and half-sucked glass candies for the quad’s statuaries. Kasim and I moisten the last candy pieces in our mouths, and when they are sharp and sticky, we press them into place.
“There,” he says with bright purple lips and tongue. “So this is what we have to work with.”
“The entire campus is our canvas,” I say in giddy agreement, sugar high itching at my mind. Twitchy fingers walk themselves along the lawn, around the statues of the Seven Ladies of Virtue, up the path to the school sanctuary and jump atop the domed roof. “What about here? You could fly off the roof and land over here . . .” My fingers touch down in the middle of the quad for everyone to see. “Ta-da!” I say, as if the feat were applause worthy.
“I think we’re going for something subtler. We want Gueye Okahim to take me into his confidence, not have us expelled for witchery. Besides, I can’t fly. Just hover.”
“Oh, right. Ooo!” My fingers suddenly lose their footing, and tumble dramatically down the library’s stick gum stairs. “I could put a slick of ice under his feet, and he could take an awful tumble, break a leg and a few ribs. You’d be waiting there at the bottom step to heal him up.”
Kasim grimaces. “Too morbid.”
“Walk across the surface of the turtle pond?”
“Too cliché.” Kasim scratches at his chin. “What if we do the whole caracal thing? Everyone’s already on edge. You could wander onto campus, attack Gueye Okahim, and I’d be there to turn you away.”
“With mystic mumbo jumbo? Like you can speak to the animals?” My brows bob.
“Sure, I guess.” Kasim tugs me out of bed. “Here, let’s see your best caracal.”
I stretch my muscles to warm them, not that I need to, but I enjoy putting on a show for Kasim. I pop my knuckles, and twist my neck from side to side. Take a few standing jumps. “Okay. Caracal.” My skin prickles and my bones go to dust as my body slips into the form, like pouring myself into an old familiar boot. I cock my head, the caracal’s mischievous smile tucked on my face.
“Can you look a little less like a house cat?” Kasim says, unimpressed.
I make myself bigger, broader. My long ears go from cute and perky to scraggly and sinister. Paws grow to accommodate intimidating claws. I open my mouth to reveal fangs.
“Bigger,” Kasim commands.
My teeth transform into the weapons I have used to sever a dog’s head from the rest of it. Something within me shifts, and my hunger resurfaces.
“Perfect,” Kasim says. He scratches between my ears, and I’m ashamed at how good it feels. I purr involuntarily and he pulls his hand away. As quickly as I can, I shake away the fur and rein in my muscles, until I’m standing shoulder to shoulder with Kasim. Human shoulders. At least human enough. With relief in his eyes, Kasim says, “Now we need to find a way to get Gueye Okahim on campus.”
We both stare at the Gabadamosi mode
l, flummoxed. My eyes travel up the pile of steamed broccoli that represents Grace Mountain, right at the ridge where the Sanctuary sits. “We don’t have to get Gueye Okahim here. We can go to him. Tiodoti is tomorrow.”
Kasim winces. Tiodoti, the day of dirt, was practically a cuss in our house, and we were guaranteed a soapy mouth if Mother ever heard us utter the word. My uncle-father tried to get us to attend Tiodoti once when we were kids. The Sanctuary’s distance away from the city and the duration of the services meant pretty much everyone needed to bring their twin with them to maintain proximity. I can’t help but wonder if that was by design, to keep families connected whether they wanted to be or not. In any case, all of us shoved into a single carriage in the heat of summer got old real quick. Mother gave us ink puzzles to keep our minds busy and our mouths quiet on the ride up. The cousins entertained themselves with a new game they’d learned at school called “pull my finger” and Uncle Pabio insisted that Grace wasn’t real, and they all might as well be praying to a puppet . . . which he conveniently had brought with him: an unwashed sock with button eyes and a mound of human hair that looked like it’d been culled from the shower drain at the gym. Anyway, after an impressive bout of flatulency, blasphemy, and a hand-shaped ink stain on a several-thousand-djang designer ciki, we all decided it would be best to just turn the carriage around and go back home.
Life was always chaotic with our family, and oftentimes painful, and yet I manage to look back fondly on these moments we’d shared, however imperfect. To keep the tradition going, I’m sure my first Tiodoti with Kasim will prove to be just as excruciating.
“You really think we could pull this off on his turf?” Kasim asks.
“By His Hallowed Hands—” I say, remembering how loud Yeboah had screamed when my ink-black hand came down upon his hand-spun linen “—we can pull off anything.”
I’d gone barefoot much of my childhood, mostly out of necessity, so I thought I’d be used to the feel of dirt between my toes. But the dirt up on Grace Mountain is not the same sort found on the gritty streets of the comfy. Here it is cool and damp and red, and it sticks to your soles. I think it’s supposed to make us feel like we are connected to the mud clay from which Grace formed our bones, but it makes me feel like I need a shower. As Kasim and I push our way through the horde of parishioners, I notice that feet are the only body parts being bared. Everyone is conservatively clothed, and the body odor itself is enough to thank Mother a thousand times for never subjecting us to this. Babies are crying, the elderly are cooling themselves with decorative paper fans, and people of all ages are looking hot and miserable and anxious—clamoring to be one of the lucky seven thousand to get inside the great dome of the Sanctuary.
The Sanctuary beckons us forth, a wave of sleek sea blue stained glass on one side, gracefully overtaking the pitted limestone on the other. Within the stained glass, the seven virtues are represented in glorious detail. Within the recesses of the limestone, grotesque stone creatures frolic in stillness, representing the seven vices without a lick of modesty.
And not a rock’s throw away from the quartet of stone beasts caught in the graphic throes of passion, guards wind their way through the masses looking for parishioners in violation of dress code. A fem kigen is pulled out of line for a skirt that shows the slightest hint of shin. Ey tugs against the hem, argues with the guard, but in the end is turned away. The look ey gets from the parishioners is one of disgust. They pull away from the kigen as ey walks past, dejectedly, all the embarrassment of the world upon eir face.
“We should have gotten here earlier,” Kasim says, disappointment thick on his brow. “We’ll never get in, and even if we do, we’ll be nowhere near Gueye Okahim.”
“Ah, dear brother. Where has your diligence gone?” I tap the shoulder of the woman ahead of me, my mouth moist with the possibilities of duplicity. I can think of a hundred lies that would get us to the front of this line. I open my senses, assessing which might work the best on her. I catch the bouquet of hospice care beneath the mask of her perfume. Stale urine, concentrated bleach, boiled vegetables, tears of regret. “Pardon, miss, our uncle is on his deathbed, and he would like nothing more than to hear us tell of one last sermon from Gueye Okahim. Could we please move ahead?”
“Sure, you can pass ahead,” the woman grunts, “if you’re keen on having your uncle outlive you.”
Another woman gets called out by a guard. Her ankles and elbows are fine, but a scant amount of cleavage is deemed inappropriate. “Okay,” I say under my breath. “Lechery is one thing, but even Grace can’t be above appreciating a little mammary action. Especially with the view He’s got.” I look up into the clouds, and tug down the collar of my ciki to give Him a show.
Kasim slugs me in the shoulder. “You’re going to get us kicked out, and then our slim-to-none chances of getting in will be none-to-none.”
“It’s stupid is all I’m saying. Why are people so afraid of skin?” The bells toll. The sermon will soon begin. We’re running out of options and fast. I could turn into one of the guards and wedge my way to the front. People part for them, no problem. But last night, when we’d rehearsed, I’d felt my cravings for blood deepen with each transformation. I only think I’ve got a couple left within me before I need to feed again.
Cleavage girl passes by us, and everyone gives her wide berth, as if her breasts had been slapped onto her chest by Icy Blue himself. Exactly the same kind of berth we could use to get ahead in line. “I’ve got it,” I say to Kasim. “All we need to do to get to the front is show a bit of skin.”
“What do you mean? Take our cikis off?”
“Take our everythings off.”
“I’m not going nude. Especially not here!”
“These people are ridiculous. You can’t tell me that Grace spent so much time sculpting our bodies, beautiful bodies, just for us to keep them hidden. Would you buy a million-djang piece of artwork and then hang it in the broom closet so that no one would see it?”
“I don’t have a million djang, so it’s impossible for me to say either way,” Kasim says with intentional bite. I’ve got the feeling that convincing Kasim to part with his clothes is going to be a lot more difficult than convincing him to part with our uncle-father’s money.
I wave to the statues inset into the limestone. “What about those? What if they kept them locked away in the back of the Sanctuary’s vault, and we could not marvel at the fine detail that went into them? And what if Biobaku had decided to keep his plays bound up tight in a foot locker for all eternity?”
Kasim’s eyes narrow at the mention of Biobaku. I’m hitting all the wrong nerves, reminding him of how my unyielding duplicity has led us into darker and more desperate situations—the comfy tour with Ruda and Nkosazana, the secrets in the back of Mother’s closet, the grand ruse to get the truth from our father . . .
“Okay, so maybe I’ve come up with some bad ideas,” I say. “But at least I’m coming up with ideas. Where would we be if we hadn’t discovered who our father is? If we hadn’t confronted him? If we hadn’t gone to Gabadamosi? We’d still be at home with demons holed up inside us. And we’d be no closer to getting them out. Come on, Kasim. We have to do this. Yes, it’s a bad idea, but it’s the only idea I’ve got. So unless you can come up with another one in about thirty seconds . . .”
Kasim spends a whole twenty-five seconds in disgruntled silence, then starts looking around. “What if someone recognizes us?”
“Keep your head down. Run fast, and stay close.” I heave a sour laugh. “Trust me. No one’s going to be looking at our faces.”
Kasim opens his mouth to say something, but I’m out of my clothes, buck naked before he gets the chance. A woman screams, and the crowd parts, shrinking away from me like oil from water. I run. Kasim follows, undressing as quickly as he can along the way, then clutching his ball of clothes to his crotch. We cut through the crowd, all eyes upon us. Au natural, the way Grace intended. No worry, no shame. It’s hard to expl
ain, but in this moment, I feel I’ve made a cosmic connection with Him.
“Yeow-hoo!” Kasim exclaims from behind as we near the threshold.
“Yeow-hoooo!” I concur. Two elderly women faint. Several guards are upon our heels, but it is too late for them.
We step through the doors, seep into the shadowed crevices and into anonymity. Kasim and I grin at each other, eyes wide and full of mischief, then he dresses as I stand watch, and then vice versa. Clothes back in place, we sneak around, trying to look like we fit in. Like we aren’t completely blown over by the sheer vastness of the Sanctuary’s interior. Domes gilded and glassed to rival the sky’s beauty, archways lousy with painstakingly carved statues of men, women, kigen, beasts, birds, and everything in between. Sunlight trickles down, and thin windows stand open, giving the place an impression that air is in fact circulating, and not stagnating to the point of everyone suffocating, which is exactly how it feels.
“Mom! Mom!” I whisper harshly as we push our way toward the center aisle—one of many aisles, but the only with an unobstructed view of the pulpit. Thankfully, we’re not too late. There are several hundred empty spots remaining, but we still need to get through the thick of the crowd to get to them. I wave to an imaginary woman. “Mom, I found him!” I point back at Kasim. People look at us dubiously, but part anyway. “Mom! He’s okay. You can stop worrying now. I found him!” As we wedge through, I feel the brush of quality fabrics against my skin. I notice the stitching of coats, tags of designers I will never be able to afford. The farther we get, the more inadequate I feel in my school-issued pants and ciki. I know that all these people cannot be wealthy, and I can see the comfy blight on many faces, but despite that, they have come dressed to impress. I can only imagine how long they’d scrimped and saved and cut corners to pay Grace service in style.
Halfway up the center aisle, Kasim lays a hand on the rope railing. “Here,” he says. “I think this is as close as we’re going to get.” He looks back at me. “Are you ready to—” He looks me up and down. “Auben, what did you do?” he whispers.
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