A dead girl who walked amongst the living.
Chapter Sixteen
Tristan, Blessing noted as she clenched and unclenched her fists, had forgotten her eighteenth birthday.
In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t that important; she understood this. It was relevant only in relation to her impending test, for which they must remain vigilant. Birthdays did not matter to Hunters, or should not. She was being childish. She was expecting too much from someone who already had a great deal on her mind.
But she wasn’t stupid, either. Willfully blind to the clues, perhaps; after all, what did she know of those things? But not stupid. And that was the worst part, Tristan’s lies of omission, as if she thought Blessing a fool.
Blessing opened the tiny closet in the kitchen. She pulled out a black candle and a small silver bell from a nondescript box Tristan never noticed, tucked away as it was on a shelf behind their jackets, then sat in the middle of the floor and lit the candle. She had found the note in Tristan’s pocket while Tristan napped. The one who demanded Tristan’s free time. The one who would take her away.
Blessing rang the bell to invoke whatever gods might bother to hear her. The candle guttered and flickered as if blown by an invisible mouth.
“I call thee, Evil Spirit, Cruel Spirit, Merciless Spirit; I call thee, who sittest in the cemetery and takest away healing from man.”
The flame straightened and burned with a steady orange glow.
“Go and place a knot in Mira’s head, in her eyes, in her mouth, in her tongue, in her windpipe, and put poisonous water in her belly. I call thee and those six knots that you go quickly to Mira, and put poisonous water in her belly, and kill Mira because I wish it. Amen, Amen. Selah.”
Blessing licked her thumb and forefinger and pressed out the flame. She tucked the candle and bell back into their box, and the box into the closet, then locked herself in the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face. She had done it. Betrayed all she was. She had called death upon another human being, an innocent.
Another human being. As if she was fully human herself. Her mother, in her own primitive way, had recognized the truth. She had tried to spare the world her terrible offspring. And yet wishing harm upon a girl whom she had never met somehow made Blessing feel more human than she’d ever been.
~
Days had passed. Mira was not dead. She was not even ill. Blessing knew because Tristan continued to disappear for hours at a time, and her aura had taken on a distinctly jovial temperament. One who ought to be in mourning was instead preparing for a date, as well as she could. She fluffed her curly hair and tried to smooth out her wrinkled clothing. She should have been above petty emotions like infatuation, the same way jealousy should not have gripped Blessing’s own heart so easily. Perhaps they were both more human than they cared to admit.
“Where are you going?”
“Just…out. Scouting. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, and we can head back up to Kensington Avenue.”
“If that’s what you want,” Blessing said softly. Tristan cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Tired. Go, and I will rest until you return.” Blessing set down a copy of the Metro and drifted toward the window. She never slept much and was rarely even fatigued. Tristan would not believe her. She sounded completely unconvincing to her own ears.
Pale pink cherry blossoms fluttered down from the tree outside, one petal at a time, before plummeting to the concrete in clumps that withered and browned like shrunken heads strewn across the sidewalk. Something had awakened; not what she had intended, but something all the same.
“Abassi and Atai were disgusted with humans,” she said, remembering the old gods whom so many in her village had continued to worship even if by different names. “So disgusted that they lived alone in heaven and took no notice of mankind anymore. But before they retreated to heaven, Atai left humanity with two gifts. The first was discord. And the second was death.”
“Blessing?” Tristan stood beside her. Her voice was soft and, if Tristan were capable of such a thing, frightened. Blessing didn’t want her fear, and for a moment, she regretted whatever she had set into motion. “Did you do something?”
Blessing moved away from the window and back to the tattered loveseat. One of the cushions bore the symptoms of a mouse colony, its center shredded and a hole burrowed into the depths of the couch. Tristan stood in the hallway, staring at her before she retreated into the bedroom to dress. Blessing barely registered the sound of the front door closing with her departure.
After a time, Blessing rose again from the loveseat and trudged into the bathroom. Dots of mold spotted the cheap plastic wall behind the bathtub. A tiny window that frequently stuck served as the only ventilation.
“I did everything I was supposed to.” Blessing concentrated on the cold water filling the tub. She visualized hot springs, or water heating over a fire, and as her core temperature began to rise, so too did the bathwater’s. When steam curled up from the tub, Blessing poured salt into the bath and swirled her hand through it until it dissolved.
She would try again with stronger magic. She had no further need of the gods who had chosen to ignore her time and again.
She had smelled it on Tristan. Another woman. Perfume, a brand of cigarettes Tristan didn’t smoke… Tristan could take a thousand showers and Blessing would smell it on her. Once she had eased herself into the tub, Blessing lowered her head and confronted the ugly zipper of flesh where her clitoris and inner labia had once been, a roadmap of pain. The giver of pleasure but never the recipient. The ideal woman for a husband that never existed, that she didn’t want, and she was less than a woman anyway. Descendant of Lilith or of the Serpent Seed. Daughter of Hekate. Ogbanje, the child who comes and goes.
Butchered, deformed, not the beautiful flower blooming in secret between Tristan’s legs. The scars ached even now, five years later, if Blessing thought too hard about them. And she did not have to think hard at all, because only a small hole existed through which to suffer the singular agony of urination and menstruation, the rotten fruit of Eve’s sin, or of her own. She spent much of her time in a pain beyond Tristan’s comprehension and with which there were no words to express it anyway.
But Tristan had not consummated the relationship yet. Blessing recognized the scent regardless of her own inexperience, for she had often smelled it on others. There was still time.
She had never told Tristan about the rape. Partly because she thought Tristan would not care, and partly out of shame. She could have killed Papa Joe in a hundred pitiless ways for all the children whose lives he had destroyed, and fled before anyone found the body. But she did not fight him. She received their misery into herself, a sin-eater of sorts, and let him desecrate her.
Blessing ran her hands over her small breasts, over the dark bruises of her nipples. Her entire body a weapon, made for killing. Her frame muscled and compact in a mirror image of Tristan’s. Two bodies with a singular purpose, destined for one other.
You selfish, evil bitch.
An abyssal loneliness opened inside of Blessing, and out of it spewed a rage compelling her to scream and slam her fists down into the water again and again, splashing the walls and the floor and even the ceiling. She considered slitting her wrists and painting the room in an arterial spray, but she would heal before she bled out. The gods had seen to it her kind was vulnerable to only the most severe traumas, and she hadn’t the courage to bear even more pain no matter how fleeting.
The girl, whoever she was, might have Tristan’s body, but she would never appreciate her in the most intimate of moments, just after a kill, when Blessing’s and Tristan’s hearts pulsed in sync and the heat between them could have set the world on fire. Licking blood from one another’s fingers and throats and mouths to feed their orgasmic hunger. The girl would never understand what bound them together, because Tristan could never tell her. Tristan’s true heart remained conce
aled from her forever.
The rage slowly dissipated into steam and the steam condensed into tears. But Blessing found, strangely, that she could cry only three drops and no more.
~
She must give something of herself if she expected Tristan to share her heart. That was the missing piece. They had travelled extensively through the South on their return from Nigeria, and Blessing eagerly studied the workings of root doctors who plied their trades in backwater swamp towns. Magic saturated those tiny hamlets with a potency she’d not expected to find outside of Africa, hoodoo the common language spoken by black, white and Indian. Part of her wanted to stay forever.
Tristan found no usefulness in their spells, and so she let Blessing attend these sessions on her own. She learned all that Tristan would never know because Tristan, in her blind devotion to physical weapons, had chosen to cripple herself. Blessing would not teach her. No one, not even other Hunters, had earned that level of trust. She must maintain an advantage over them, even the one she loved.
She went into the bathroom with a small glass jar and pulled down her panties then squatted over the toilet and held the jar between her legs. Pain came in short, sharp jabs like the teeth of a ravenous animal tearing through her uterus. She tried not to squeeze, but her pelvic muscles disobeyed her.
The Christian missionaries hadn’t brought the fear of witchcraft with them. Such fear was as much a part of her people’s heritage as their mud huts, and it existed long before the Christian god. All the evangelists had accomplished was to give the villagers a sense of power they’d never possessed before, an authority they chose to wield with genocidal brutality against their own children. Perhaps her mother witnessed more than just a night of hunting in the forest. Perhaps her mother had stumbled upon a sacred circle by the river, had seen spirits in the current or heard their voices in the rustling of leaves. Had found the sacrifice and suspected her daughter was no ogbanje but something more, something worse.
Whatever the source of her innate abilities, Blessing had no qualms about augmenting them. But Tristan need not know everything, not if she were going to keep secrets, too.
Finally, a few drops of menstrual fluid. Blessing cleaned herself up then carried the jar back into the kitchen. Her uterine and abdominal muscles contracted in an agonizing, spasmodic cadence. That animal again, trying to slash its way out of her. She grasped the edge of the counter and doubled over, each breath slow and deep, until the pain subsided to a manageable level.
Someone whistled from outside the house. The tune sounded familiar, though Blessing couldn’t place it. She cracked open the front door, hoping it was Tristan, then cast a panicked glance at the jar. But Tristan didn’t whistle, no matter the good mood her new whore might have put her in.
When Blessing saw no one outside, she closed the door. The house was silent. Not even street noise penetrated the walls, as if the whole world had perished in an instant. A voice from within her own mind surrounded her, a brittle little girl’s voice, and the singing in her head grew louder as Blessing sat in the awful stillness.
Come little children the time’s come to play
Here in my garden of Shadows
Follow sweet children I’ll show thee the way
Through all the pain and the Sorrows…
Something thumped against the door.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her skin, her muscles, the blood in her veins, tingled. Blessing’s pulse pounded in her ears. She latched the chain lock before opening the door as far as it allowed.
In the space between the frame and the door stood a dark-haired girl, perhaps fourteen at the most and smiling as if greeting an old friend. She wore an outdated, ankle-length white dress with an empire waist and cap sleeves. Her startling paleness terrified Blessing, though she had summoned this child who was no such thing.
The obstinate silence held until the girl spoke at last.
“May I come in?” Her faint accent blended all the languages of all the ethnicities Blessing had ever encountered. The girl who was not a girl had lived a long time, and in many places.
The irises of her wide, impassive eyes contained no color. Nothing but blackness, like staring into dead space. Blessing’s skin erupted into goose bumps. All the warmth drained from the air, leaving only coldness. Such coldness it was hard to breathe, like being pushed facedown into a snowdrift.
“Are you…the one I asked for?”
The girl tilted her head. A down of fine, moth-like white hair covered her flesh. Even her mannerisms were vaguely insectile and no less unsettling than if a carpet beetle were crawling on Blessing’s skin. A girl who was not a girl.
So much like herself.
The darkness behind her smile turned Blessing’s blood to ice.
“Happy birthday, Blessing. God has sent me to you.”
Chapter Seventeen
She lay for a long time in the moat, floating, but just as her lungs did not take in air, they likewise refused to ingest water. Her arms spread and her eyes open, she stared into the inexorable nothing beneath her. Made by an imperfect creator, the world dwelled in darkness; few ever found the Godhead’s light. But there she was, raised from the dead like Lazarus of Bethany. Unable even to die.
O El Shaddai, when I go down in the living waters, let me die and be reborn…
Anasztaizia climbed out of the moat, the soiled shift clinging to her body. Most of Bodi’s squat, wooden buildings were still dark, though dawn’s first faint, gray threads had appeared on the horizon. Tall, corded white Komondorok guarded the livestock on the edge of town, patrolling for wolves along the perimeter of the pen until the shorter Pulik awakened. Anasztaizia had wanted a Puli of her own, an animal so valuable shepherds paid a year’s salary for just one. She’d become enamored of the little black dogs as she watched from her window the herding of sheep, their twined hair flying and their pink tongues the only insinuation of a face. The chamberlain refused her. A working dog in the castle? Was she mad?
The peasants would also awaken soon, to tend to their crops or prepare for a long day in the soap house; craft weapons, clothing, or horseshoes; or embark on their journey to the next village for trade. If not content with, then resigned to, their lot in life. Forever in darkness.
If one of the peasants saw her, it would be just as disastrous as her encounter with Father. The trees, however, offered protection from all eyes. As night disintegrated over the village, she slipped away into the wood. Purple and yellow butterflies clung to the tree trunks. She tried to catch one but it fluttered off, high into the branches. Then a cloud of the insects ascended at once, swirling upward and away from her, where unseen birds sang love songs to each other.
A memory stirred within her, but the butterflies carried it with them. It was not time.
What little sky peeped through the treetops brightened, and a breeze transported the far-off echo of children’s voices. They were playing a game of hide-and-seek. Anasztaizia wondered if, were she still like them, they would want to play with her in the castle, with its endless supply of hiding places. She’d never had anyone, or anything for that matter, to play with except a set of small dolls, given to her many years ago by her mother.
No, not her mother. She’d spent little time in the lady’s presence, so little the lady all but forgot she had a child at all. Another woman had cared for her and brought her meals. She was quite certain it was not the nursemaid. How maddening, the memories that teased at the edges of her mind but never fully materialized; how exasperating that she recalled unimportant matters like dogs but not the people with whom she’d spent her life.
A girl with a red kerchief tied over her head peered around a tree trunk. Anasztaizia smiled at the color’s garishness. It did not help her in her game, for it was like a beacon in the greens and browns of the forest, alerting the other children their seeker approached.
Children, Anasztaizia understood later, saw her true nature just as animals did, for they had not yet learned how to lie
to themselves.
The child gasped, her vivid blue eyes growing so wide Anasztaizia expected them to roll out of their sockets like marbles. “I thought my friends came this way, but I can’t find them. I’m not very good at this game.”
Anasztaizia held out her hand. “Would you like to play with me?”
The girl swallowed. Her stare was a beam of concentrated sunlight, almost painful in its clarity. “Are you a monster?”
A hard, cold lump formed in Anasztaizia’s stomach, like clay on a pottery wheel. “Why do you ask that?”
“Our parents told us not to play here, because this is where the demons live. And you have sharp teeth like a demon.”
“I promise I won’t hurt you. What is your name?”
“Evike.” The girl haltingly stepped forward. Anasztaizia, her arm still outstretched, responded with one of her own. She closed her hand around the child’s. The gentle thump of her pulse, the whisper of breath from her lungs, entranced Anasztaizia with their power. The songs of the birds and the insects, the rattle of wind through the trees, faded from her consciousness. Life, so much of it, flowed through this little girl.
Life, of which Anasztaizia was cheated.
She knelt down. She was tall for fourteen, taking after her father. Now, face-to-face, the child gazed into her eyes. Her breath caught. “You were a little girl, too.”
A curtain of blood descended over Anasztaizia’s vision, like tears. “Is that what you see?”
“Yes. And that someone did something bad to you.” She balled her hands into fists. “I want to go home.”
“May I give you a kiss first? It was kind of you to visit with me.”
Evike offered a hesitant nod. Anasztaizia placed her lips upon one cheek, a cool and rosy pillow of silken flesh rich with baby fat. It reminded her of the cushions that had propped up the lady in her deathbed. Tiny puffs of air from the girl’s nose and mouth warmed Anasztaizia’s face. Evike’s chest rose and fell, and her heart drummed —faster now, with a child’s intuition of impending danger.
Those of My Kind Page 12
