Beasts of Prey

by Ayana Gray

  “No.” The old woman finished untying her head wrap and let it fall to the ground. Koffi stilled, and the old woman smiled.

  “They called it . . . the splendor.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Myths and Folktales

  Ekon paced between the trees, hands clasped tight behind his back.

  Above him, the sky was changing. It had been an ominous gray when he’d first brought Koffi to this clearing, but now the sun seemed to be making its final appearance for the day, stretching long and bright over the sky in ribbons of orange, pink, and gold, only interrupted by the Rupture’s cracks. It was a cruel sort of mockery. The prettier the sky looked, the worse he felt.

  For what seemed like the thousandth time, he took in his surroundings. After he’d agreed to follow the old woman, she’d led him to a break in the trees where, to his surprise, he’d found a campsite bustling with people.

  Well, he wasn’t quite sure people was the right word.

  Like the two women he’d encountered before, most wore plain brown tunics, and some had even accentuated their attire with brightly colored leaves woven into their kinky white hair. The old woman had paid them no mind as she took Koffi from him and carried her to a large hut in the clearing’s center with surprising ease. It had been at least an hour since she and Koffi had disappeared into it.

  Every so often, he felt the strange people’s eyes on him, wide and curious, but he didn’t engage. They gave off an aura similar to the old woman’s, a certain oneness with the jungle that he didn’t understand. Sometimes he saw the people walk between trees and disappear among them. Other times he saw their children playing, with silhouettes oddly blurred in some places.

  No, definitely not normal people.

  “Ekon!”

  Ekon did a double take. A dark-haired girl had just emerged from the hut. Koffi. She looked . . . radiant. Heat crept up Ekon’s neck as he realized it, but it was impossible to ignore. Where Koffi had been clammy-looking before, now everything about her seemed to glow. Her smile was bright, her dark brown skin was luminescent, and even her twisted hair seemed to hold a slight, nearly imperceptible hint of gold in its depths. She stopped a few feet away from him, then paused.

  “I . . . feel better.”

  Relief surged through Ekon like a tide. He wanted to say the right thing, but he didn’t know what. I was scared. I was worried. I’m happy. Instead, he just nodded. “Good.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Um, I think we should probably get going. Those white-haired people have been eyeing me since I got here and a few of them have weapons.”

  Koffi’s smile held a touch of amusement. “They won’t hurt us.”

  Ekon frowned. “And you know that because . . . ?”

  “Because they’re yumboes.” She glanced over her shoulder fondly. As if recognizing their own name, some of the white-haired people looked up, waving. “They’re the caretakers of the jungle.”

  Ekon’s squinted. “How do you know that?”

  Koffi’s eyes lifted, taking in the forest around them. “My mama used to tell me stories about them,” she said softly. “All this time, I thought they were just made up from myths and folktales, but . . . I was wrong.”

  Ekon’s frown deepened further. As a rule, he didn’t trust myths and folktales; they lacked accreditation. His eyes went to his bag perched against a tree. “Strange, Nkrumah doesn’t mention yumboes in his journal—”

  A rustling interrupted him mid-sentence, and Ekon’s words died in his throat as his eyes dropped to the jungle floor. He froze. A massive golden snake was slithering toward him and Koffi, its jewel-like green eyes fixed on them both. At first, he was sure he’d never seen a snake so large and long—from here, he couldn’t even see the end of its tail, and its body was thicker than his own waist—but then he realized that wasn’t true. He had seen this snake once before, when he’d first entered the jungle with Koffi, before they’d wandered into the fog. Back then, he’d thought it was a hallucination, another one of the jungle’s illusions, but he saw clearly now. This creature was no illusion. Instinct urged him to pull out his hanjari, but he found he couldn’t move. He could only stare at the serpent as it got closer and closer. Every muscle in his body seized as it reached them, and he was so occupied by the very presence of it that he didn’t even notice Koffi hadn’t said a word. The giant snake lifted its head slightly and opened its mouth, exposing two long white fangs a moment as it hissed. Then, just as abruptly, it lowered and slithered past him into the jungle’s bramble. Ekon watched it go, stunned.

  “It . . .” He couldn’t believe it. “It left us alone.”

  “Because I instructed him to.”

  He turned in the direction of the low voice that’d clapped across the clearing like thunder. Simultaneously, every single one of the white-haired people stopped what they were doing and fixed their strange pale eyes on the hut’s door flap. Someone—the owner of the booming voice—was emerging from the tent, and Ekon went rigid when he saw who it was. The old woman he’d entrusted Koffi to a short while ago was still wearing the modest black tunic she’d had on before, but she was no longer old. She was traipsing toward them with the grace of a dancer, the wrinkles once covering her face vanished. Tangerine-colored sunlight cast itself over her body as she approached, and by that time she was close enough for Ekon to see her face—to really see what he had not recognized before. Slowly the pieces came together in his mind, the giant golden snake that had just passed, the countenance he had seen carved in stone a thousand times inside the Temple of Lkossa. He knew who this woman was, and what she was not.

  “You’re not . . . you can’t be . . .” Words failed him.

  The goddess met his gaze directly, eyes piercing. “Be at peace, child,” Badwa commanded. “All is well here.” She turned to Koffi, and Ekon thought he saw a knowing look pass between them. “I would speak with the two of you together, while the yumboes prepare food and drink. We will dine after.”

  After. The words were like disconnected threads in Ekon’s mind that he couldn’t tie together. After. What came after a goddess—a real goddess in the flesh—looked you in the eye? What happened after she spoke to you? It hurt to even look at her too long, like staring directly into the sun, or trying to see the entire ocean all at once but never being able to stand back quite far enough to take it all in. What if he said something wrong, somehow offended the goddess? Would she turn him into a bug, strike him down with lightning? He jolted in surprise when a soft hand touched his arm, tearing him away from his thoughts.

  “It’s okay, Ekon.” Koffi held his gaze as she murmured the words. “I promise.”

  Ekon didn’t know what it was about the tone of her voice that slowly doused his anxiety, only that it did so instantly. Her fingertips on his skin held the warmth of a clay pot left out in the sun. He focused on that warmth.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  The horned goddess gestured for them to follow her into a clearing several yards away from the hut and the yumboes. Once the three of them were seated, she clasped her hands.

  “This place and its inhabitants fall under my domain,” she began. “I see every living thing and creature within it, and every one of them answers to me. Thusly, I want the two of you to know that I have watched you from the moment you came into my jungle.”

  In spite of himself, Ekon felt a fleeting annoyance. If what this goddess was saying was true, it meant she’d been watching them struggle through this jungle for a while. She’d seen them encounter mists, spiders, and a grootslang, and had done nothing at all to help until now. He tried to smooth his frown quickly, but Badwa caught it before he could. As though reading his mind, she smiled.

  “I do not expect you to understand,” she said softly, “the responsibilities I carry as the ruler of this realm. I am aware that several of my subjects have been less than hospitable since your arrival.”

/>   A polite way of putting it, Ekon thought, recalling Anatsou specifically.

  “But I cannot and will not punish the creatures of this jungle for being true to their own nature.” Badwa’s voice took on a more stoic tone. “To do so would defy my obligation to them as their guardian.”

  Ekon chose not to respond aloud. He’d grown up inside the walls of the Temple of Lkossa, memorizing scriptures about reverence to gods and goddesses, and he was fairly certain that nothing he had to say at the moment would be considered “reverent.” Beside him, he noted Koffi hadn’t moved, that she was still watching Badwa with perfect awe.

  “What I can do, however,” Badwa continued, “is provide you with answers to some of the questions you have entered this jungle seeking answers to. I can give you truth.”

  At once, Ekon sat up again, excited. This goddess had answers? Good, he already had a question. “If everything in this jungle is within your domain,” he said, “then you can help us find what we’re looking for, you can tell us where the Shetani is, and we can finish our hunt, right?”

  He knew at once that he’d said the wrong thing. Badwa’s face darkened, like a gathering of clouds before a monsoon. Her expression turned stony and the lines pulling between her brows and at the corners of her mouth seemed to harden. When she regarded Ekon, she looked distinctly cool.

  “You speak a false name.”

  Ekon exchanged a glance with Koffi, who seemed just as nervous as he was, before addressing the goddess again.

  “Uh . . . pardon?”

  “You called her a shetani, a demon,” said Badwa. “That is a false name.”

  Ekon had opened his mouth to say more but stopped suddenly. Something the goddess had just said repeated in his mind.

  “Her?” he said again. “Did you just call the Sh—um, the creature—a her?”

  Slowly, Badwa nodded, and it was a sad gesture. “The being your people have hunted for the better part of a century, the one they’ve named a monster, was not always so.” She looked between him and Koffi. “She was once human, like you.”

  Ekon did not instantly comprehend her words. He didn’t know how much time passed before they truly sank in.

  “What?” He felt numb, detached. He didn’t look at Koffi, but beside him, he imagined shock rocking through her too as she stared in disbelief. “How . . . how can that be?”

  Badwa folded her hands in her lap and sighed. “It begins and ends, as everything does, with the splendor.”

  Ekon frowned. “The what?”

  “A power known by many names,” Badwa went on. “But best known by what it was called in the old tongues.”

  “But what does it—?”

  “Shh!” Koffi pressed a finger to her lips, silencing Ekon with a sharp look, then gestured for Badwa to continue. The goddess looked between them and spoke again.

  “The splendor is an ancient, primordial energy,” she explained. “It is a raw, natural power. My brethren, sistren, and I were born of it, and we Six used it to build the temporal world as you know it to be now. When our work was complete, and the realms of the world were partitioned, we locked the great majority of the splendor away, deep in the heart of the earth itself. We made only one exception to this: The mortal beings we deemed worthy to wield small amounts of that power. We called those mortals darajas. Eventually, when those mortals died, they passed their abilities on to their descendants and created a subset of the human race. We gods, content with what we had created, then decided to take our rest.” A shadow passed over Badwa’s face. “All of us, except for one—our youngest brother.”

  “Fedu.” Ekon said the name before he could help himself. “The god of . . . death.”

  Badwa nodded. “As the earth aged, my brother began to see its flaws, its worst attributes. Over time, he came to believe that only darajas were fit to exist in the world we gods had created. He planned to use the splendor we’d locked away to start the world anew, but he could not do it on his own. So he sought out a daraja powerful enough to help him realize his vision, to be his tool. Eventually, he found one—a young girl born of the same region the two of you are from. Her name was Adiah. He pursued her.”

  Ekon started to ask a question, then thought better of it. Badwa seemed to appreciate this, because she went on.

  “My brother understood that, during specific times, the splendor locked in the earth’s core becomes more powerful, more easily accessed and channeled. Such an opportunity only happens once a century, regarded as a holy day—”

  “Wait.” Ekon sat up, unable to keep from interrupting. “Are you talking about something like . . . like the Bonding?”

  “The very same,” said Badwa. “You mortals observe it as a day of annual reverence and respect to us, but we gods have always known it to have a centennial significance as well. Using deception, Fedu tried to convince Adiah to help him unleash the splendor, but when she realized his true intentions, she thwarted him, at great personal cost.”

  “What happened to her?” Koffi’s voice was soft; she almost sounded frightened. The foreboding in her expression was so strong that Ekon felt it emanate in the air. He looked to Badwa, and she bowed her head.

  “Adiah did do a part of my brother’s bidding mistakenly,” she murmured. “She released some of the splendor from the earth and used it to wreak havoc on Lkossa. The marks of that destruction are still infamous today.”

  “The Rupture,” Koffi whispered. “It wasn’t an earthquake. She caused it.”

  “A mistake she lives with each day, I am sure.” Badwa blinked, eyes glistening for a moment. “When Adiah realized what she’d done, she took back the splendor Fedu had convinced her to misuse and held it within her to prevent him from inflicting further harm on the rest of the continent. When my brother threatened her, I offered her refuge in a place where he could not follow. No god can enter the realm of another god without consent. And so she has remained here ever since.” She looked to Koffi. “Except for briefly one night, when she felt the call of another daraja.”

  “But there’s something I still don’t understand.” Ekon spoke slowly, trying to bring the many pieces of the puzzle together in his mind. “If Adiah has been here all this time, in refuge, how did she become”—he hesitated—“the Shetani?”

  Badwa’s face grew drawn. “The amount of the splendor that Adiah absorbed at my brother’s behest was unnatural; no god should have been able to absorb it, let alone a mortal being. The power has preserved Adiah, allowing her to live well past a human’s normal years,” she said. “But she paid a price for it, and a terrible one at that.”

  Koffi stiffened, and the hair on the back of Ekon’s neck stood on end.

  “The splendor feeds off her body,” Badwa explained. “It has distorted her appearance savagely. Her mind remains human and intact, but her body is that of a beast and will remain so until the splendor is extracted from her.”

  “She’s been sacrificing herself.” Koffi’s voice was hollow, her expression full of horror. “For all these years. Lkossans have called her a monster when . . . when actually she’s been protecting us, all of us.”

  “Yeah.” Ekon frowned. “When she’s not slaughtering people in droves.”

  Badwa’s eyes cut to him. “Adiah has dwelled in my realm for ninety-nine of your mortal years,” she said sharply. “Not once has she killed a human being.”

  Ekon shook his head before he could stop himself. “That’s not possible. The Shetani has single-handedly been killing Lkossans for years. There are record books of its death—”

  Badwa’s chin lifted. “You question the word of a goddess?”

  Like that, Ekon remembered himself. He didn’t want to contradict a goddess—it seemed like an exceptionally bad idea at every angle—but in this, he couldn’t think of another possibility. He knew what he had seen with his own eyes all his life, the mutilated bodies and
pools of blood at the Greater Jungle’s border. Something twisted inside him when he thought of his father. Baba, who had died in this very jungle . . . Baba, who had died so violently . . .

  “I don’t want to question you,” he said to the goddess slowly. “But that doesn’t match up. I know what I’ve seen with my own eyes, there are lists of the Shetani’s victims—”

  “Unless . . .” Koffi was staring ahead, doing her own kind of silent figuring. “Unless those people weren’t the Shetani’s victims.”

  “What are you—?”

  “Bear with me for a second.” Koffi’s eyes were narrowing. “What do we know to be fact now?”

  Ekon paused. “We know that people in Lkossa have been getting brutally killed for decades in the same location, in generally the same manner every time.”

  “Right,” said Koffi. “And until today, we thought the culprit of those killings was the Shetani, but . . . now we know that’s not possible.” She looked up. “Think about it, Ekon. Why would Adiah bother to hold all the splendor inside of her body to protect Lkossa’s people, if she was just going to go around killing its citizens anyway?”

  “Because she’s been turned into a monster with an insatiable bloodlust?”

  “Or”—Koffi folded her hands—“because she hasn’t been the one killing people—something else has.”

  At the words, Ekon felt a chill. “Something else?”

  “Something methodical,” Koffi continued. “Something that wants the blame for the killings to go to Adiah.”

  They came to the conclusion together. “Fedu.”

  “He’s been behind the killings,” said Koffi. “He’s been using something to kill Lkossans and blame Adiah for it.”

  “Because if everyone thinks Adiah did it, she’s hated,” said Ekon. “It would make people want to find her and hunt her down for him, like people have been trying to do for a century.”

  “Like we’ve been trying to do,” Koffi murmured.

  Ekon sat back for a moment, stunned. It was as though his entire world had been suddenly and violently uprooted, shaken to its very core. For as long as he could remember, he’d both feared and hated the Shetani. He’d blamed it for most of the bad parts of his childhood, for the death of his own father. That constant anger at it had been like an energy of its own, fueling him. It felt strange to know that anger had been misplaced all along, that it belonged somewhere else.