“Final act, final scene, final line from The Five Curses of Akerele,” Kasim says. “Did you know he played Akerele for six years in an acting troop in Nri before finding his way back to Grace? Sadly, I have to say I’ve lost my taste for theatrics.”
“I know you’re after my charity,” I tell Kasim, backing toward the window. I stretch my wings, smashing the glass with their taloned tips. Screams come from below, and I’m startled by the sheer size of the crowd gathered on the Sanctuary’s grounds. They came for Gueye Okahim’s announcement, but it seems like I’ll be the one giving them something to gossip about. All eyes look up upon my beastly form. Three flaps, and I’ll soar right over their heads and be safely out of Kasim’s reach. But in the midst of freedom, I keep looking back to Sesay, dangling there. Kasim killed Gueye Okahim so callously, it pains me to think of what he’d do to her. I grit my teeth. What a shitty time to start growing a conscience.
“Let her go,” I demand of Kasim. I pull harder upon my instinct not to care, but then I fall into the trap of looking into Sesay’s eyes. Damn it. What good is fighting for my charity if I’m not even going to use it? Saving this life won’t bring back the ones I’ve already taken, and it won’t prevent me from taking more, but it will make a difference to Sesay. And to her sister, Daki. And, I realize, to me. “Let her go, and I’ll give up my charity. Willingly.” Before I can get the words out, my voice catches as if a hand is at my throat. My hands rip at the nonexistent fingers pressing against my windpipe.
“Brother, you’ve gone soft. I thought you were a natural-born killer.”
“I kill, but only out of necessity. You, on the other hand . . .” I look down at the body before me.
Gueye Okahim’s mouth seizes open. His head lurches, once, twice, with the wet sound of flesh tearing. Then his tongue worms its way over his lips, bloody pulp trailing behind it as it makes its way over to the other talismans. Next, his eyes begin to bulge against partially closed lids. I look away.
“Oh, his death was definitely a necessity. You were right, brother. Duplicity and envy were his vices.” Kasim reaches into his pocket, and tosses his coins into the center of the room, then lets Sesay down.
“Run!” I tell her. “Get out of here.” My heart pounds, but Sesay doesn’t move.
“That just leaves doubt,” Kasim says with a grin.
My eyes dart to Sesay’s neck, and I hope beyond all hope that I could not have allowed myself to be so blind to the depths of my brother’s trickery and deceit. Yet again. Sesay looks up at me, her face etched with sorrow, and untucks her necklace. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” she asks Kasim.
“Of course, I’m sure.” Kasim rips the chain from her neck. “Go get the book.”
Sesay cowers, then retrieves a dusty tome from atop the stack in the corner. She opens to a dog-eared page, and begins to read, her lips moving flawlessly over the Sylla incantations. The invisible fingers at my neck force me down. Kasim takes a seat opposite me. The talismans stretch down the middle, equidistant between us. My mind snaps back twelve years to the first time we’d sat before these talismans. Our Discernment. I still taste the bitterness of the spirits Mother had let us sip upon beforehand to help dull the pain and help the memory of the event to slip away. It had worked on both accounts. But now, sober both in mind and soul, I feel the scraping at my nerves, the twitch of my fingers. My hand reaches out for the mirror. I try to draw my hand back, but something within me has overridden my control. I retrieve the mirror and set it before me, and likewise, Sesay’s doubt signet.
The envious eyeballs, the duplicitous tongue—I resist more for those, and am rewarded with my vision going white-hot with shooting pain at my temples. My temper flares, and the boiler along with it, shooting out heavy plumes of smoke. Glowing metal burns my hands as I remove the cast iron boiler from the fire. When I set it next to me upon the tile floor, the smoke doesn’t abate, but instead grows thicker. By the time my hands reach for the zekwenusi’s stone-cold cock, I am completely drained.
Kasim and I stare at the lone talisman left sitting between us. The coins. His eyes flash, and this time his fingers twitch. He reaches for the stack of gold, winces, probably from the same resistance headache I’d had. “Now,” he tells Sesay.
Her incantations change, her words becoming throatier, deeper, and sounding of a language much more ancient than Sylla. My gut twists and goes sour.
“Don’t do this,” I plead. “You’re the one who always told me that we are more than the sum of our virtues and vices.”
“I was wrong.” Kasim’s hands are inches from the coins now. His worried eyes cut at Sesay, who reads faster, her words like projectiles.
Then comes a chill, one so deep, it drives me into a shivering fit. It is as if all this time, I have never really known what it is to be cold at all. My blood turns to crystal ice, scraping its way through my veins, nicking away at my heart. My mind swells to encompass the infinite. I push back upon it, holding away eons’ worth of memories. My vision is a kaleidoscope—a hundred Kasims stealing both nothing and everything from my being.
When there is no more to take of me, nothing more to give me—when I am both spent and fully filled—Kasim lowers his hand. A warm yellow-orange aura fills in the gauntness of his limbs, the sunken patches at his cheeks. He looks satiated, eyes brimming with the silver-white of starlight that reflects all the knowledge of the cosmos.
I reach willingly for the coins. They are mine.
“It is done,” Sesay whispers with delight. “It is done! Grace walks among us!” she calls out to the onlookers below.
The masses cheer, but Kasim pays them no mind. Instead, he stares directly at me. I’m drawn to him, a beacon of light, and despite my best efforts, I can’t look away. “We are together again, one and one, as we should be,” he says to me softly. “Now we can start fresh, start anew. Grind these people down to dust, and start again. From the beginning. It’ll be fun.”
“You would murder the entirety of your followers for a little diversion?” My eyes narrow. Moipone, Moipone, up in flames . . . Historians could find no reason why that poor city had been destroyed. And now I know there was no reason. Just a selfish god who got his jollies kicking over anthills and watching the aftermath unfold.
“You don’t miss it? Having the planets and stars as our playthings?” Kasim raises his hand. A stiff, unnatural wind follows, and the sun arcs across the horizon, and dips below with a brilliant green flash. A moonless night is upon us in the span of seconds. I go dizzy as the world slows beneath my feet, my eyes rejecting what my other senses are telling me. And yet Kasim stands there on firm ground, so bold, so brazen.
“I suppose I am merely your plaything as well?” I yell at him, refusing to give him the pleasure of acknowledging his impressive trick.
“Oh, Auben. We have been among the humans too long. Open your mind to the possibilities. We could play hide-and-seek in nebula clouds, blow stars out like they’re dandelion seeds and flick moons like they’re marbles. We have the universe and we have each other. It’s the way it’s always been.”
The night is brilliant, the stars hang so close and succulent, as if they are fruits ripe to be plucked. They anger me. My temper swells, and it comes so quickly, it catches me off guard. Kasim notices and steadies me with a hand to my shoulder.
His touch is like a silk scarf—smooth, delicate—and it slips down into my gut to calm my rage, but there is far too much fuel this time. I am done being played with. I gather my true voice, deep and ragged. It trembles all of Grace Mountain. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me again.”
“You don’t mean that, brother.”
“I’d rather die than to be yoked to you a second longer.”
He looks into my eyes, and sees my truth. And for a moment, I see his. I’ve hurt him deeply.
Good.
Then his face goes stiff and unreadable as his hand rises to me once again. “Amawusiakaraseiya was right,” Kasim says. �
��You may be a god, but you will always be a lesser god. The same as all those lesser twins out there, anchors holding society back from its true brilliance.” He sighs, as if the burden is something he wishes he didn’t have to take on. Humble to the end, I guess. “So . . . I guess it’s time we put an end to this nonsense.”
His hand trembles at me, then moves over the masses as if he is about to convey some blessing. Scowl-lines crowd Kasim’s face. He may be free of vice now, yet I see nothing but pure malice in his heart. The masses cheer him nonetheless. Unsuspecting idiots.
Then the screams come.
Tens of thousands of people below, all at once, let out a monstrous howl. They twist, contort, fall to the ground as if the life is being yanked from them one breath at a time. The winds turn, and I can smell the sick and loosed bowels and blood. I try to avert my gaze, but it is so horrific, so awful. Only no one is actually dying. My vision slips, and though I haven’t moved, it’s as if I am standing among them. The details become clear upon the back of a shirtless man. His chimeral stripes peel away, rough and ragged like a snakeskin. What’s left behind is smooth dark brown. He stands slowly, still pained, confused. Looks over at his twin. They reach for one another in comfort, but upon their touch, agony sets in on their elongated faces. They step apart. The farther they go, the more relief they have from their physical pain, but the emotional pain is painted too clearly upon upturned mouths.
My vision snaps, and I glare at Kasim. “What have you done?”
“Only what needed to be done. What should have been done a long time ago.”
A thin part cracks its way through the crowd, growing larger and larger until two distinct groups have formed, amassed on opposite sides of the mountain—like two piles of marbles divided evenly among bratty kids who no longer know how to play nicely. Their numbers are the same, but even without keen vision, it’s easy to see that the piles are not truly equal.
Kasim glares at me. “Take your people and all of their vices. They are no longer needed here.”
He raises his hand, and the sickness infects me. The sky goes pure white, the thousands of stars now like chips of obsidian. I close my eyes against the pain, and I feel him within me. Every cell of his within my body starts to die. All at once. It takes longer than I would have thought—he makes up so much of me. And I of him. I open my eyes. His teeth are clenched. He was a wisp before, and is even more brittle now.
When the pain recedes, I am half the man I was . . . or rather half the creature I was. I feel so hollow. So . . . free. I take to the air, like a corn husk on the wind.
Kasim stands there smugly, waiting. For what? For me to thank him? For me to apologize? For me to beg him to put things back the right way? I glance back at my people—a collection of misfits and social outcasts—poor, mistreated, tinibru-addicted, barely educated fools trying to make the best of the paltry life they’ve been given.
I see myself in every single one of their vice-filled faces.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I say to Kasim. “But this is the best thing you’ve ever given me.”
I catch tears forming in his wide eyes, but I do not care to see if they drop. A new desire burns within my gut . . . one to put as many miles between Kasim and me as I can, as soon as I can. And like one of those bratty kids, I gather my marbles and go home.
Temper
The skies open and spring rain falls in big warm drops, turning the backside of Grace Mountain into treacherous slopes of mud. I’d never thought anything of it before, but this side of the mountain seldom appears in paintings or drawings. It’s rounded and plump instead of concave and stately. Littered with scraggly brush instead of lush greenery. A long unsightly crag works its way through the ass-end of the mountain, top to bottom, and trails off into the distance. My people and I, we follow it, and finally park ourselves among the mud huts of a sleepy fishing village, overwhelming it with our numbers by several hundredfold. It takes much of my energy to hold human form now, but in the midst of so much change, I need something of my old life to cling to.
Bellies are empty, but there is not enough to eat. Bodies are tired, but there are not enough places to rest, to shit, to cry. The misery is contagious, and their eyes beat at me, bidding me to do something. Anything. While I stand here like an impotent god, a chicken squawks as it is quartered alive, several sets of bloodied hands bringing back fistfuls of meat and feathers and organs. Desperate people squabble over mere scraps, gnashing teeth, pulling hair, gouging eyes. An entire enclave of mud huts is looted and destroyed, torn down to nothing, like we are locusts on the wind.
I imagine Kasim judging us from atop the perch of his mountain, laughing. I clench my fists, feeling the earth tremble beneath my feet, feeling the winds swirl up and around me, feeling my temper roil in my gut with all the strength of a hurricane. These terrible, vice-ridden creatures . . . taken from the dirt and clay and formed by my own hands, cannot be what I’d intended. Something shifts within my anger, subtle vibrations run through me, and an odd stir of power sizzles at my fingertips. I rub my fingers together, and they glow with a soft blue light. I feel tethers—to the earth, the moon, and the planets beyond, as fine as spider silk, but strong enough to move mountains. I think of how Kasim had caused the sun to arc across the sky. I’m tempted to try to do the same, but I stand perfectly still, so as not to snag a line and send the earth crashing into the sun. The sensations subside as quickly as their onset, but my temper remains.
The muscles in my neck twist into a fierce knot as it channels the storm of my voice. “We are not our vices!” I bellow. My people are knocked to their knees, and anything left standing in this wretched town is plowed over in the wake of my words. For a split second, the world stands still in complete silence. I fold down on myself, reining in my power and voice until I can speak in a way that won’t kill them. “Forget what you have been told. We have been lied to our whole lives. We are not less than. We are not feral mongrels at each other’s throats for a scrap of meat. Now is our time to prove that to ourselves, and to them.” I point up to the ridge of Grace Mountain.
I speak my truth, but they all look upon me as if my duplicitous tongue is capable of nothing but cold lies. Perhaps it is not fair of me to expect to change what has been ground into their beings in the course of an afternoon. Perhaps it is unfair for me to expect anything righteous from them at all. But if I cannot mend their souls, the least I can do is mend their bellies.
With a sigh, I shed my cloak and take to the skies, then speed along the coast, flapping over the throng of fishing boats bobbing upon the clear blue ocean. I pierce the water—my wings become fins, my thorny scales become sleek. It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for, but I’d underestimated their beauty by several factors. A school of yellowfin tuna. They swarm, movements slick and graceful, eyes full of focus and distrust. I slip into their group as one of them, the clumsy awkward one, for sure. I concentrate, tapping into the rawness of my temper. Invisible tethers sizzle at my fin-tips, and I cautiously tug at the one that binds me to the earth, like it’s a kite bobbing at the end of a taut string.
Nothing happens. I take that as a good sign that at least I can’t screw things up too easily. I pull harder, more deliberately on the tether. It resonates through me, filling me with a sharp, high-pitched twang that rattles my skull. An achy rumble erupts from below. Bubbles rise, a few at first, but then the tuna school is surrounded, uplifted in a whirling frenzy. Above the surface, cold air catches us as a waterspout furiously spins around us. The tether becomes an unwieldy web of gossamer, and with minute movements and delicate attentiveness, I steer clear of the boats as I maneuver back to the coast with my bounty.
I dump the fish at the feet of my people, then lie back, beyond exhausted. Beyond hungry. A hundred-and-some-odd tons of fresh tuna sit before me, but it is not the type of flesh that will settle my appetite. My eyes stick to my people as they feast, pressing back my own cravings. They dare not approach me, dare not l
ook in my direction, like they are ashamed to have me as their god. Over the course of several hours, the catch dwindles down to scrap and bone without a single thank-you. The sun has taken its toll, the smell of fish rot as rank as the ungrateful attitudes of these people. Kasim was right. It would have been easier to wipe the slate clean. Start from scratch. My mind drifts, imagining the sound the moon would make if it came crashing down on top of us . . . wondering how many times the earth would skip across the surface of the sun if I tossed it at just the right angle.
“Excuse me, Lord,” comes the grit of a voice caught between childhood and manhood. Its cadence is familiar, and yet when I look upon the face, the features are only partially recognizable. I stare harder into the eyes and something clicks. The eyes, yes, they are the same.
“Chimwe?” I find myself disengaging from the moon’s tether. It resonates from my mindless touch.
“I wanted to thank you.” He holds up the bulk of a tuna’s head, lightly charred, its dead stare filmed over with white. Testosterone steams off Chimwe like a wet sidewalk on a hot day. Off him? All traces of Chiso’s feminine genes are gone. His hips are narrow, face angular, chest firm and muscular. He looks as exhausted as I feel, and I recognize the unease of suddenly finding oneself trapped in a foreign body. Chimwe and I are kindred in so many ways.
“I—” My words catch in my throat. I’m not sure what to say. “Are you okay?” I ask him.
“Yeah, sure. I guess.” He smiles, as if that will help make me believe the words coming from eir . . . his mouth? Either way, I can tell in Chimwe’s eyes that this situation is about as okay as waking up with a mouthful of blood.
“What about you?” Chimwe asks. “You look hungry. Perhaps we can share a meal together?” He steps closer. I think that he is about to offer me a taste from the fish head, but instead, he pulls a small knife and pricks his index finger.
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