Outside the boardinghouse window, the harmattan wind intensifies, wailing the grief and frustration none of them dare express. Eddie crosses and slams the window shut.
“Hell,” he mutters, “even if he is an athanor.”
Stinky Joe refuses to leave the Other Three Quarters Ranch, when Lovern requests magical assistance, but a significant coterie—led by Tuxedo Ar, Stinky Joe’s perpetual rival—departs in the Wanderer’s van, eager for new horizons and a chance to showoff in the company of the Cats of Egypt.
With their departure, something changes around the ranch, something the unicorns sense so that they pause more often in their grazing to sniff the winds, something the griffin feels and so intensifies her alertness, something that makes the hydra lurk in the back of their caves when they long to be out basking in the winter sun.
Frank MacDonald is not unaware of his companions’ changed moods. Riding Tugger, since the former plow horse doesn’t mind a saddle, he makes the rounds.
“What troubles you?” he asks the unicorns where they tremble in one of their hidden valleys.
Pearl shakes the pale whiteness of her mane as she tries to articulate a feeling. Her answer is not wholly verbal, but is constructed of foot stomps and ear twitches, of tail flips and snorts through her nose. Frank, however, hears it as if it were words—this is an old gift with him, so old that he is uncertain whether it is magic or experience.
“The air seems clearer,” she begins, then shakes her head. “No. Not that. But like that. We feel less well hidden, as if a fog has lifted and we discover that we are in the midst of an open plain.”
Frank nods. The unicorns can tell him nothing more. The griffin is more helpful, perhaps because she is a predator rather than an herbivore and so more accustomed to planning rather than reacting.
“Always,” she says, nervously preening her wing feathers as a person might chew a fingernail, “since I have come to live under your care, there has been an aura about wherever we have made our home. Like a song or...”
“A fog?” Frank suggests. “That is what the unicorns said.”
“A fog,” the griffin considers, “perhaps. More to me like a song saying, ‘Look over there, just to the side, not straight ahead.’”
She preens some more, clearly dissatisfied with her answer.
“Misdirection, then,” Frank says, “rather than concealment.”
“Yes.” The griffin scratches the dirt with a fore claw. “I thought that you had created it, if I thought about it at all. Most of the time I didn’t. You don’t think about the sun in the daytime until an eclipse makes it vanish. I just know that when I first came to you it was the thing that made where you were feel so different from the rest of the world.”
Tugger puts a word in then. “Frank, I think it has to do with the cats.”
“The cats?”
The former plow horse nods. “Yes. I think the cats created it, maybe not deliberately, but maybe by the fact that there were so many of them here.”
Frank considers this. “You may have a point, Tugger. I started collecting cats a long time ago—in the Middle Ages when people started killing them as witches’ familiars. They were good animals to have around, able to feed themselves, able to hide quickly.... I wonder if their hiding was purely physical?”
Tugger snorts. “I don’t think so. Sneaky creatures, cats. Even the cats I like are sneaky.”
The griffin, who after all is part-lion and so part-cat, does not comment on the behavior of her distant kin, but something in how she ruffles the feathers on her neck suggests that she agrees with the plow horse.
Frank nods. “They are sneaky, but that’s how they’re created. They could no more change their nature than you could—nor would they want to do so.”
“They do keep down the rats and mice,” Tugger concedes.
“And maybe do more than that,” Frank says. He turns to the griffin. “Could you pass along a warning to be extra cautious?”
The griffin gapes her beak, distressed. “I should not fly. If the protection is reduced, I might be seen.”
Frank frowns. “You’re right. I’ll get the crows and ravens to pass the word.”
“I’ll tell the hydra,” the griffin says. “They are so stupid they might eat a crow rather than listen. They won’t dare try to eat me!”
“Good.” Frank settles into his saddle. “Tugger, take me to the barn. I need to talk with Stinky Joe.”
While Frank is conferring with the great golden tomcat, working through the cat’s natural secretiveness to confirm Tugger’s guess that the cats’ concentrated presence conferred a protection on their home (and coming to suspect that the cats themselves had been unaware of what they were doing), another resident of the OTQ Ranch is sensing that something has changed.
A haze that has blocked her best efforts to reach out is lifting, a clarity of thought is returning. For the first time, she can touch minds that are not untethered and drifting in dreams. Most of those she touches are either too stupid to be of assistance or are dangerous, for they may recognize her for what she is—an intruder.
Still, there are possibilities here. Her whiskers twitch and her little pink nose quivers with excitement. She leaps onto her exercise wheel and runs.
The Wheel of Fortune turns. When those who are at the top fall, those who are at the bottom must rise.
12
No quiero el queso sino salir de la ratonera.
(I don’t want the cheese, I just want to get out of the trap.)
—Spanish proverb
“Who,” Aduke shouts to Oya, as they carry their baskets from the market to the factory through the buffeting of the harmattan, “would ever think we want to raise a wind!”
She laughs as she says this, and her eyes are sparkling. Over the last two days, she has felt more alive than she would ever have believed possible when worry and fear over her baby’s illness first touched her, followed by the smothering blanket of grief.
Each day has begun with a visit to Oya’s floor of the factory building, a journey Aduke makes in stealth so that the little children will not become curious. There, while the day is still somewhat cool, Oya has been teaching her dance steps; the thick concrete floors have muffled their barefoot stomping.
In the afternoons they have scoured the markets for the appropriate ingredients to offer Oya of the Winds. Today they have succeeded in finding the last and most difficult item, a set of perfectly matched buffalo horns, polished smooth. These once probably belonged to some devout family’s shrine or were set in an egungun mask. Now, remnants of a “pagan” past so many Yoruba are anxious to relinquish, they had been sold.
Oya had paid the first high price the seller had asked for them, explaining to Aduke that to bicker and barter their cost down to only a few naira would be to diminish their value as well as their price.
Aduke actually understands this, a thing that amazes her. It is not that she has turned off her brain and become some unthinkingly superstitious village woman. Instead, she has embraced an entirely new way of thinking, one that makes her brain feel full of fire and her heart beat hotter.
She wishes that Taiwo would answer her letters and come to Monamona for a visit, but she wonders if her most recent letters have even left the city. Every evening Yetunde has been full of market tales about how few people are permitted into the city—and how even fewer are permitted to depart.
Most merchants are being forced to sell their wares at cut rates to city government agents and then trudge away unsatisfied, but unable to protest. Certainly those low prices are not reaching the average citizen. The cost of food rises higher and higher each day, and that which can be bought is not good quality. Aduke wonders how long it will be before the poorer people begin to starve.
But with the harmattan wind blowing hot and dry, full of the breath of the goddess, she cannot worry for long. She and Oya will summon the wind....
She almost stops in mid-step as the immensity of their plan tou
ches her. They will summon a wind? How? How to speak with it? How to hold it?
Oya, ever sensitive to her moods, reaches out with the hand that is not holding her basket and touches Aduke’s cheek.
“Tomorrow morning, on the rooftop, high above most of the buildings in the city, open to the eyes of the orisha, we will dance. Our gods know to look for us in the cities, for the Yoruba have always been city people, and Oya’s wind is the element that comes into our homes, even uninvited. How can she miss us when we are calling to her?”
Aduke nods, holding on to Oya’s promise as firmly as she is holding on to her basket. Tomorrow morning, with the dawn.
Padding barefoot, Aduke sneaks from the room she shares with Malomo and Kehinde about an hour before dawn. Neither mother nor son stirs. Licking her dry lips, Aduke finds her way through the familiar corridors in the dark.
Passing the open door of the nursery room, Aduke hears the soft breathing of the children, a few whistling snores, a murmur of sleep talk. Then she is up the stairs and into the haunted section of the factory.
She had been distinctly afraid the first time she had come here to meet with Oya, but Oya had reminded her that the Yoruba had no reason to fear the dead.
“We have always honored our ancestors, built them shrines and carved egungun masks so that they can dance among us as if alive. It is the Europeans who fear their dead—lock them away below the ground with heavy rocks over them, tell them to ‘rest in Peace’ lest they return. Even Jesus Christ’s followers were afraid when he came back among them.
“We welcome our ancestors, name our children—as your own sister Yetunde is named—to celebrate when the oracles tell us that a beloved ancestor has chosen to be born among us again. The Christians must rely on name saints to carry their petitions to God, but our own family members intercede for us in Heaven.”
Aduke had frowned. “Then why did the factory need to be closed?”
“Because those who haunted it had not been treated correctly,” Oya says matter-of-factly, “and the Belgian Christians would not permit any ‘pagan’ nonsense. I, however, have built a shrine, poured out libations, and tried to comfort these lost ones. They seem peaceful enough to me.”
And to Aduke, as she opens the door into the top floor that predawn, it does seem as if the spirits in the factory are calm: calm and even welcoming. She dances a few measures of one of Oya’s dances by way of greeting, then she hurries down the long corridor to where she can hear Oya arranging their supplies.
This level of the factory is laid out much like the one below, even to the bathrooms, but where the common room is are a series of offices. At the end of the office section is a smaller break room, meant exclusively for the bosses and office workers. At the other end is a stairway up to the roof.
Oya has opened the roof door, and Aduke sees that the sky has lost its stars and is turning that shade of deep grey that says dawn is not far away.
“There is hot coffee in the bosses’ room,” Oya says, “and some sweet rolls. Eat something, then help me carry things up.”
Aduke obeys, knowing that if their plan goes according to schedule, she will not breakfast for several hours. There will be food—ample food, hot and cold, spiced and sweet, succulent and delicious—but this will be for the orisha, and most particularly for Oya.
Walking down the hall to get her breakfast, Aduke wonders for a moment about the wisdom of this, of offering food to insubstantial spirits when Famine is considering Monamona as potential real estate. Then she remembers the babalawo’s old stories. Eshu, the trickster god, punishes no crime with more severity than holding back offerings to the orisha. Of course, that could be because Eshu gets a cut from every offering...
Giggling at this thought, she goes back to where Oya is just coming down from the roof.
“What makes you laugh, little sister?”
“I was thinking that Eshu, at least, will enjoy our offering this morning, even if Oya cannot grant our petition.”
The human Oya smiles mysteriously at her. “Remember, Eshu rewards the faithful. I am hoping we will gain his help from this offering, as well as the help of the wind.”
Aduke nods, sets down her coffee and partially eaten sweet roll, and gathers up a bundle of colored fabric.
“We won’t know until we dance. Let’s get to it.”
They dance around a standard arrayed with nine streamers in Oya’s colors, three each: crimson, brown, and purple.
Life colors, Aduke thinks. Blood wet and blood dry and blood seen running beneath the skin.
Her skin is reddened, too, rubbed with a salve made from camwood so that the dark brown seems to glow in a permanent blush, the blood brought to the surface. Two of Oya’s colors and the third runs beneath her skin.
The harmattan wind whips the streamers around, snapping them so that they point away from the wind’s origin in the Sahara, then going wild again for a moment, rattling the windowpanes and stripping the top layer of the soil and flinging it into the air, into people’s mouths, into eyes scoured red and raw.
Mysteriously, the things they have placed upon their altar to Oya are not disturbed by the wind. The cowtail whisk, the two small swords, the bowls of food, the heap of little white cowrie shells that the Yoruba once used for money, a few old British shillings, the pile of Nigerian naira.
The bata drum that human Oya will beat from time to time, when appropriate to the dance, stands to one side of the altar. Sometimes, in some places, a man would beat the drum so that the women could dance unimpeded, but here on this rooftop there will be only Aduke and Oya, making their plea to the goddess.
Then, with the first glow of dawn, they begin.
Feet thumping, they chant praise songs to Oya, songs that tell of her greatest victories and her terrible powers. They sing how she stole lightning for Shango but kept some for herself, how she is a warrior to rival Ogun, a witch to be revered—and feared.
Most of all, they sing how she is in the wind, of the wind, more potent than thunder (which is only noise), more dangerous than lightning (which only strikes in one place). They sing and they dance until throats are dry and feet are sore. They sing and they dance until the dark grey sky takes on light, and the light, even in a sky hazy with harmattan dust, takes on color. They sing and they dance and, just as Aduke’s secret heart is feeling doubt, a miracle occurs.
The miracle is carried in the wind, as it should be. At first, Aduke believes that the low rumbling sound which penetrates her exhaustion is Oya beating the bata drum. Then she realizes that, though alike, this sound holds the beating of many drums, a thumping no one drum could make, no matter how skillful the drummer.
Like an old-fashioned train running hard, huffing and puffing, rumbling and grumbling, the sound rises in volume. It overwhelms the sound of the bata drum, overwhelms the sound of their singing so absolutely that Aduke must touch fingers to her throat and feel the vibrations to be certain that she has not fallen silent. The she sees something forming in the air directly over the rooftop.
Spinning, colorless, but visible, the whirlwind takes form from dust and air. It starts small enough to twirl like a top in a street magician’s palm, but rapidly gains both mass and color. That color must come from the dust in the air, the light in the sky, but to Aduke’s eyes, the whirlwind is tinted with Oya’s colors: crimson and brown and purple.
As the whirlwind grows in size, the streamers on Oya’s standard ignore the harmattan wind and reach upward and outward, in a twisting dance of their own. The offerings on the altar, unmoved until now, begin to jump and hop, as if an invisible hand is touching them, lifting the lids on the dishes of food, examining the akara, the shea butter, the snails, the kola nuts, and all the rest.
Once, Aduke is certain she sees a mark like an invisible finger going through the orange mass of pounded yam: Oya sampling the food prepared for her.
The two women keep dancing, even in the face of the miracle, their song reminding the orisha of what they need:<
br />
“Oya, who has fanned fires, Oya who has been water, Oya who is wind, give us a wind to cloak us!”
Growing ever larger, the whirlwind rises, no longer a mere whirlwind, but a full-fledged tornado. Aduke can hear her own voice again, loud amid curious stillness, for the rising tornado has wrapped them within itself. The steady beating of the harmattan wind has ceased. And the tornado swells, growing larger.
“Oya who is wind, wrap a wind around our city, blow us a barrier like that between the world of the living and that of the dead, that sacred barrier of which you are customs keeper.”
From the altar, the offerings rise, spinning in the tornado’s hold: the two swords which symbolize the lightning Oya stole from Shango, the whisk with which she beats the unfaithful, the buffalo horns now reddened with camwood salve, and, last of all, the food.
To Aduke’s astonishment not one of the many bowls is upset. The lids stay in place as they float serenely into the sky. Lastly, Oya’s standard, with its nine colorful streamers rises, the streamers whipping about like the blades of a helicopter, snapping against the stiff wind.
The tornado grows and grows. Beneath its funnel cloud, all is still and silent, even the birds and little animals say nothing. Respecting this new law, Aduke and Oya whisper the praise songs, keeping them for the orisha’s ears alone.
Once dusty, the air now seems fresher, the light brighter as if the tornado has sucked all the dust, all the pollution, up into itself. Then as sudden as a thought, the tornado disperses, its cyclonic energy becoming a swirling wall about the city of Monamona, an opaque wall at the base, but becoming clearer as it rises, as the orisha takes mercy on her children and does not rob them of the sun’s light.
Oya’s altar is empty. Later they will learn that in the Grove of the Gods the shrine to Oya has also been emptied, as has every little household shrine dedicated to the goddess.
“We did it!” Aduke says, letting her feet stop dancing, her eyes round with disbelief.
Changer's Daughter Page 21
