by Ayana Gray
“Return the splendor to me, child.” Her voice was urgent. “Do it now.”
“Not until you agree—” Something twisted in Koffi’s stomach, another sharp pain. “Not until you agree to come with us.”
“Very well,” Adiah snapped. “I will go with you to the Kusonga Plains.” She grabbed Koffi’s forearm and pulled her close. “But know this, child. If your plan is unsuccessful, I cannot endure this pain for another century.”
“You won’t have to—”
“Hear me.” Adiah’s eyes were fierce. Koffi felt a tug, felt her taking back the splendor with a viselike grip. She watched the young woman’s eyes grow colder as the power returned to its host. Her voice sounded more beast than woman when she spoke again. “I am not strong enough to fight Fedu if he captures me, do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Those were the last words Koffi managed before Adiah pulled her hand away; this time, she let her. The moment they separated, Koffi felt a terrible vacuum, a void. Her vision grew spotty, her mouth went dry, but there was no stopping it. Her legs trembled violently, then gave out beneath her. She felt herself falling.
The last thing she heard was a roar.
* * *
“Koffi!”
Koffi opened her eyes. Her vision wasn’t spotty anymore, and all around her she saw green. Green, and brown, and Ekon. He was staring down at her, worry etched into every muscle in his face.
“Are you okay?” His voice was tight. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” Koffi sat up and looked around a moment. The Shetani—Adiah—was standing a few feet away from them, watching. She stared a second longer before bowing her head in an unmistakable nod; an agreement, a consent.
“I don’t understand.” Ekon was looking between her and Adiah, his voice full of confusion. “What’s going on?”
Koffi smiled. “We’re going to the Kusonga Plains.”
CHAPTER 26
A Strong Like
The air grew cooler as Koffi, Ekon, and Adiah made their way south.
With each step, Ekon sensed the world changing around him. The sky was still blue, but it was darkening; the air clear, but tinged just slightly with the scent of ozone. He recognized the signs of the Zamani Region’s monsoon season fast approaching. In a matter of weeks—maybe less—most of the populace would be up to its ankles in puddles. Local merchants would change out their wares, offering inflated prices for more seasonally appropriate clothes that fared better in the constant torrents of rain; farmers would take short workdays and say more prayers for the welfare of their crops. As a boy, Ekon had liked this part of the year, when the world’s problems seemed to wash away in a deluge so that things could start anew a few months later. This year would be different, though.
“Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking . . .” He and Koffi had stopped again to consult with the map. It had been a few hours since Koffi had convinced Adiah to join them, and now they were less than a day away from the borderlands where they’d started. Carefully, he spread out the map between them in the dirt, tracing two connecting lines with his fingers.
“We’re here,” he said, pointing to their location. “As you can see, there are plenty of places for us to leave the Greater Jungle undetected; the border is massive, and there’s no way the Sons of the Six can cover that much ground. It’ll really just be about timing.”
“When did you have in mind?” Koffi asked.
“First thing tomorrow morning,” said Ekon. “Patrols are always heaviest at night, since that’s when they think the Shetani is most likely to attack. In the morning, the night shift trades with the morning shift. It’s a pretty well-executed hand-off, but if we go far enough south . . .”
“We could avoid them?”
“Right,” said Ekon. “The other challenge we’ll have is how to actually hide Adiah once we’re out in the open. It’s obviously easier here, but . . . the stretch between the Zamani Region and the Kusonga Plains is fairly flat, open land. We’ll be at our most exposed there.”
“We can hide in the lemongrass,” said Koffi. “And move at night. Incoming traffic to Lkossa always lulls at the start of monsoon season—Baaz complains about it every year at the Night Zoo. As long as we keep a good pace, we could get to the Kusonga Plains in a few weeks on foot. Then all we have to do is lie low and wait for the day of the Bonding.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Ekon rolled up the map. “We leave tomorrow.”
* * *
Their pace slowed as late afternoon turned to dusk; already, Ekon could tell it would be a cooler evening. Adiah trekked a few steps ahead of them, but Koffi walked in step with him. Abruptly, she cast an eye at the setting sun.
“We should stop here.”
“What?” Ekon glanced at the sun too, wondering if he’d missed something. It was a deep golden-orange and would be setting soon but not yet. “We should keep going while we have light. The closer we get to Lkossa tonight, the less time we’ll have to make up in the morning—”
“There’s a pond.” Koffi nodded a few yards to the right, to a small body of water glinting between the trees. Ekon looked from it to her, still confused.
“So?”
“So, we’re about to completely change terrain,” said Koffi. “For the next few weeks, we’re going to be in open grassland with no guaranteed access to any substantial amount of water.”
“So . . . ?”
“So, I’m taking a bath.”
Ekon froze. It took him a moment to find his words. “You’re taking . . . a what?”
“A bath,” Koffi repeated slowly. “You know, the thing you do when you’re dirty and would like to be clean? I won’t be long, ten minutes at . . .”
Ekon didn’t hear the rest of her words; he was trying to focus his mind. Bath. Koffi was going to be taking a bath. Near him. Without clothes. Thus far, they’d been good about giving each other privacy when they needed it, but this . . .
“Is there a problem?” Koffi’s voice flooded back to him, all too sweet.
“Uh, no.” Think of something else, he pleaded with himself. Think of something that’s . . . not that. Think of the temple, the brothers of the temple. Gross Brother Apunda . . . anything . . .
“Good.” He jumped when Koffi patted him on the shoulder. He didn’t like the glint in her eyes one bit. “You can get started on dinner, then. It’ll just be us eating, I think. Adiah, are you okay to fend for yourself?”
In response, Adiah, who’d stopped a few feet ahead of them, blinked. Then she bowed her head in what looked like a nod, and stalked into the darkness. In different circumstances, Ekon would have been unnerved by how quietly she moved.
“What’s she having for dinner?”
“It’s probably best we don’t know.” Koffi grimaced.
“You know,” said Ekon after a pause, “I almost feel bad for her.”
Koffi looked his way again, visibly surprised. “Why? She isn’t going to be like that much longer. Once we get her to the Kusonga Plains, she’ll be human again, free from the splendor and the pain it causes her. She’ll go back to the way she was.”
“But her world won’t,” said Ekon. Koffi opened her mouth, but he went on. “She’s more than a century old, nothing of the Lkossa she knew from before the Rupture would be there anymore, and none of the people she used to know would still be alive. Her friends, her family . . .”
“They’d be dead,” said Koffi, her voice hollow.
“I don’t know what that would feel like,” said Ekon. “Returning to a home and a life you know is yours, but you don’t recognize.”
Koffi’s expression was inscrutable a moment before she shrugged. The gesture was casual, but something about it felt slightly forced. “We can worry about helping Adiah acclimate after we’ve gotten her back to normal again.” She nodded affirmatively before looking t
oward the pond again. “In the meantime, worry about our meal, I’ll be back.”
“Don’t forget to check the water for snakes!” said Ekon to her retreating back. “And nkalas!”
Koffi didn’t turn around, but he thought he heard her laugh. Fine. If she wanted to have her shadow eaten by a giant mythical crab-monster, that was her business, though in fairness his readings suggested those usually lived in larger bodies of water.
He turned to the matter at hand—dinner. The ingredients he had to work with were about as scant as his skill. Growing up in the Temple of Lkossa for the last ten years, the food hadn’t been special, but it’d been all right, prepared by a cook. He stared for a moment at the piles of fruit, bread, and dried meats the yumboes had packed for him. And then the idea came to him.
* * *
“Okay, I’m done.” Koffi announced.
By the time Ekon was putting the finishing touches on the meal and a small fire, Koffi had returned. Her clothes were slightly wet, but her face was scrubbed clean of the mud that had caked it before. Ekon glanced over his shoulder.
“Your hair looks different,” he noted, careful not to look at her too long. He still didn’t trust his mind. “Did you wash it?”
Koffi arched an eyebrow. “That’s funny.” She settled beside him on the ground, and a sweet smell filled the space between them.
“Did you find more ponya seed?”
“Nope.” She unfolded her dirty tunic to reveal several light brown nuts tucked within its layers. They looked similar to ponya seeds, but bigger. She picked one up and held it to his nose. “These are shea nuts. You use them to make shea butter for your hair and skin.”
“Shea . . .” Ekon leaned in instinctively. Without warning, something constricted in his chest. It took him a moment to figure out why.
“That . . . smells like my mom.”
“Oh.”
All this time, he’d known the scent, but he hadn’t known where it came from. His eyes stung. His mother was gone, but this . . . this was like finding a whole new part of her, a part of her he’d thought was lost forever.
“You’ve never talked about your mother before,” Koffi said quietly.
“Yeah . . .” Ekon scratched the back of his neck. “Well, that’s because she left our family when I was little. I don’t know where she went, haven’t seen her in years.”
“Oh.” Koffi dropped her gaze, studying her fingernails. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”
A long silence followed, too loud to be comfortable. Ekon was familiar with it. He didn’t talk about his mother often, but when he did, the same things happened. Silence, and then the pity. Silence, and then the apologies, the platitudes. Everything happens for a reason. Sorry for your loss, as though her leaving their family was his fault, the consequence of his irresponsibility. He changed the subject.
“She used to make this dish,” he said. “I think it was made up, but we had it for breakfast a lot. It was this fruit salad thing. This is my version of it.”
Koffi looked at the pile of cut-up fruit, carefully arranged in a small ring. “You minced?”
“Twenty-seven delectable pieces.”
“I’m impressed.”
Ekon laid out two giant leaves with a flourish. “A feast fit for gods.”
Koffi grabbed one of the makeshift leaf-plates and sectioned off part of the fruit pile for herself. Ekon didn’t want to watch her eat necessarily—that would be strange—but he did want to know whether she liked the food. It was a silly thing, to care about what someone thought of a bunch of roughly chopped fruit, but for some reason, he did. He hoped Koffi liked it. He made himself look down at his own leaf-plate and count to eighteen before looking up again.
“So, how was it?”
Something in his chest plummeted when Koffi answered with a weak smile.
“That bad?”
“No!” She shook her head. “It’s not that, it’s just . . .” She looked down at several slices of fruit. “There are papayas in this.”
“Yeah?”
“I sort of hate papayas.”
Ekon blinked. “You . . . hate them?”
“Rather passionately.”
“Of course.” A real laugh rose from Ekon’s stomach. He massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to keep it in. “Let me guess, you like some weird, suspicious fruit like . . . honeydew?”
Koffi frowned. “Honeydew isn’t suspicious.”
“I knew it.”
She gave him a withering look before selectively pinching a piece of banana from the fruit pile and popping it into her mouth. “I have a question for you.”
Ekon tensed. “What sort of question?”
She set her leaf-plate down for a moment and grinned. “It’s about Nkrumah’s journal. You said he captured notes about all the creatures and plants that live in this jungle.” She looked up. “But what does he say about stars?”
“Stars?” Ekon followed her finger. The sky above them was dappled with more stars than he could count, a thousand diamonds dropped into an inkpot. They were beautiful.
“Actually, there’s not much about stars in the journal,” he finally said. “Maybe because stars don’t just belong to the Greater Jungle or the Zamani Region. We see them the same no matter where we are on this continent.”
“That makes sense.” Koffi was still staring up at them, but there was a touch of disappointment in her voice.
“But.” Ekon scrambled, trying to think of something else to say. “I do know some stories about them, ones my brother taught me.” He pointed. “See those two really bright ones, to your right?”
“No.”
“They’re just over—” He nearly jumped from his skin when Koffi scooted over to sit beside him, so close their shoulders brushed.
“Go on.”
“Um, right, so the stars.” Ekon’s tongue felt clumsy in his mouth. “Those two are called Adongo and Wasswa; they’re named after two brother giraffes,” he explained. “The story goes that each brother wanted to be taller than the other, so they just kept stretching their necks to make them longer and longer until both their horns got tangled in the night sky and they turned into stars. Now they argue about which one of them shines brighter.”
Koffi nodded. “Interesting.”
“Sorry,” said Ekon. “That . . . wasn’t a good story.”
“Yes it was.” Koffi turned to him, and Ekon swallowed hard. He’d thought they were close before, but their faces were inches apart now. He could count the eyelashes framing her eyes.
“There’s just one thing.” As abruptly as she’d faced him, she looked at the sky again with a frown. “How did the giraffes actually become stars?”
Ekon started. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you said their horns got stuck in the sky, and they just turned into stars—but how?”
“I’m not sure.” Ekon scratched his head. “But I don’t think that’s actually the point of the story. I think it’s really just meant to be a lesson about jealousy—”
She turned to face him again, eyebrows knitted. “How can it be a lesson if it doesn’t make sense?”
In answer, Ekon shook his head and chuckled. “You really do argue about everything.”
Her frown deepened. “I do not.”
“You do.”
“I do n—”
He wasn’t sure what made him do it, what made him obey the strange sudden impulse, but he closed the gap between them and kissed her.
He hadn’t planned it, and he certainly hadn’t prepared for it, but his lips found hers, and she didn’t pull away. They were soft to the touch, warm. Her hand, feather-light, grazed his neck, and a pleasant shiver ran down his body. All at once he couldn’t breathe, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. They came apart, chests heaving.
“Sorry.” Ekon
didn’t recognize his own voice; it was lower, raspier. He couldn’t stop looking at her mouth. “I meant to ask before I . . .”
Koffi pulled his mouth back down to hers, and something erupted in Ekon’s brain. A roaring filled his ears, and every one of his senses went haywire. Suddenly Koffi was all he could see, smell, taste, and feel. It was consuming. After a moment, he pulled back again.
“Wait, is this okay with—?”
“You—are—hopeless.” Koffi’s voice was low too, barely a murmur. “Why do you think I moved to sit next to you?”
Ekon pulled back farther. “You—you wanted me to do that?”
“Of course I did.” She dropped her gaze. “I like you.”
And those simple words were enough—Ekon didn’t need any more. The world around him tilted as they both sank to the ground, adjusted so that they were lying there side by side. He let his fingers trace along her outline, falling and rising again as they moved down her hips. A new heat pooled somewhere, low in his stomach. They pulled closer still, and suddenly he was keenly aware of all the places their bodies were touching, the places he wished were touching. All of these feelings, all of this want, was strange, like a thousand hummingbirds trapped between his ribs, but he liked it. He heard her words again in his head.
I like you.
He liked her too, a lot, and suddenly that seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. He liked the twists in Koffi’s hair, the midnight color of her eyes. He liked the sound of her laugh, and the way she always argued with him. He liked everything about her. It wasn’t love—he wasn’t even sure he knew how to do that properly yet—but it was something good, something he wanted more of, a strong like.
Ekon kissed her again, and she made a small sound against his mouth. His eyes closed, and a thousand new questions came to mind. Was he supposed to do something else? Was she? What happened next? He opened his eyes slightly, curious to find out, and then he went rigid.
