Upstairs.
I take the stairs in threes, flashing my daggers as I bound down the corridor, screaming Payu’s name.
The door to his room is closed. It’s never closed.
I would break it down, but too much of the house is already in ruins. Slowly, I turn the knob and ease it inwards.
Payu is seated on the bed, chill as anything. Behind him, a woman, a god, stands with her hands on his shoulders. There’s the stench of humus, of rich earth, in the room, alongside a smell I don’t recognise, yet somehow know is the smell of birthing, of childbearing.
She’s taken on the form of a young woman, twenties or thirties, light-skinned, with massive coffee braids that sweep down to her waist. Her neck and arms are layered in blue markings that give the impression of beaded jewellery, and her dress is a rainbow of blue and white over denim trousers. Behind her, within her, before her, like superimposed imagery, is the exact wooden carving juxtaposition of a dwarf with a long head and a crown that I saw with Taiwo.
Her eyes are white cold fire, and they’re glaring at me.
“Orisha ’daji,” she hisses. “Where is my brother?”
Her voice sends thoughts of salt and stone and fields and graves through me; thoughts of markets and mines and nurseries and chasms. I blink it all away, trying to concentrate.
“Kehinde,” I say, slowly, my palms out to signify I mean no harm. “He’s not here. But calm down. Maybe remove your hands from Payu, right? Let’s talk.”
She breathes, says: “Okay.”
Then she kicks Papa Udi across the room.
The old man flies and crashes into me. Payu is not heavy enough to knock me over, but him falling into me means I toss my daggers out of the way, which is exactly what Kehinde is counting on.
The woman sails across the room, too fast for my human eyes. I shove Papa Udi out the doorway and roll out of the way myself. I catch a glimpse of Kehinde’s shoes as she lands—carton brown, suede, monk buckle, not at all godly, not at all made for fighting—and then her foot is coming for me and I have to duck and roll again.
I get up to face her, my arms in front of me.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I’m saying. “Lemme explain.”
Kehinde yells and claps her hands once, thrice, once, thrice. A drumbeat rhythm. She chants in a language akin to the one Taiwo had sung in. She bends, links her arms as if cradling a baby, then opens up, as if for an embrace.
The air crackles. A soft whoosh.
Something slams into my chest.
I’m picked up a few feet and my back slams into the wall; I drop to my hands and knees, the wind knocked out of me. My head pounds, mega migraines, like someone installed a nightclub in my head. My skin tingles, like my blood isn’t sure where to accumulate.
Charmcasting. She’s charmcasting.
She chants and beats another charm into form, blasts it against me. I roll away just in time. The spiritual energy smacks the wall, leaving a huge dent.
Then she screams.
I push my hands to my ears, opening my mouth to contain the pain, but her screaming just gets louder, louder. She stamps her feet, claps her hands, chants something between a playground song and a war cry. The pounding in my head grows so that I can no longer hear her, lost in a world of agony. I don’t know when I drop to my knees, to the floor, clasping my ears, squirming as a wetness trickles through them into my fingers, in too much pain to even remember to appeal.
Then, the sound of dull impact, of something slamming into something.
A thud. The pain quenches.
Papa Udi stands over me with a piece of broken rafter in one hand, dripping something that smells of garlic and scentleaf. His other hand is on his waist. He grimaces, shakes his head and tsk-tsks.
“Gettup,” he says. “See how you don’ go put us for wahala?”
WE ROUSE KEHINDE in Payu’s tiny workroom, an old garage annexed to the side of the house. We do this after Papa Udi writes a ward ritual about her.
He does it in the usual way: first we cast a circle to keep the spiritual energy contained, but using salt as our material instead of an ǫbę iṣèṣé or candles or chalk or a censer. We do this because Payu believes the things my esper picked up reveal that Ibeji are earth gods.
Next, he invokes Kehinde into the circle, writing her into the salt with Nsibidi script. He uses what the Yorubas loosely term an oriki: a sort of True Name and/or title, sung in poetic verses that carry the embodiment of one’s past, present and future. Anyone knowledgeable enough in a godtongue to weave a story using one’s oriki can weave a charm to affect their very character. Hence, why Nigerian mothers frown at kids who’re too forthcoming: tell the wrong people enough about yourself, and they can harm you with your own name. Technically, one mustn’t use an oriki to weave a ritual; if one is versed enough in a godtongue, they can cast a general ritual, and if particularly powerful, can do this by simply speaking the words. But Kehinde is too strong for that.
Papa Udi narrates in song as he writes; and I listen, catching the little Yoruba I can. The story tells of twin gods who came down from Orun and made home on earth. One is hunted and captured by a demigod (he uses the expression orisha ’daji, half orisha, something I really hate to be called). The other twin is angry and vows to get him back, but ends up also captured.
Then he binds Kehinde into the tale, drawing an earth pentacle across the ward to seal her in. That about does it. With the subject ensconced within the circle, the ritual is complete. Payu tips a few drops of peppermint oil into a handkerchief and holds it to her nose for a few seconds. She comes to, coughing, her braids wild and feral.
Instantly, she lunges for Papa Udi, smacks the edge of the circle with a pop. She’s taken aback for a second, confused, then she’s back up again, smacking herself against the air about its circumference, hysterical. She chants, beats a rhythm with her hands and feet. The ward does its work well—containing not just her, but also whatever spiritual energy she’s exuding.
After one final try that throws her to the ground, she sits up, takes one good look at herself, at the ward, then starts to sob.
I look at Papa Udi, who shrugs, as if to say, this is your problem.
“Kehinde,” I say, squatting.
She covers her face in her hands, her body racking with real, human sobs.
“Kehinde.”
“You took him,” she says between sobs. “You took him.”
“Listen, I didn’t take your brother. Someone hired me.”
“But you took him?”
“Yes.”
She drops her hands and looks at me. “Why?”
I’m not sure what the answer is. I could say I did it for roof money, but is that really true?
“Who is this person?”
“He’s the Baálẹ̀ of a former community in Agbado. His name is Lukmon—”
“—Ajala,” she completes, then starts to wail again. “You’ve killed us, you’ve killed us.”
Papa Udi stares pointedly at me, crosses his arms and hmphs. I breathe, then:
“Okay, so you know this man.”
Kehinde shakes her head, long, slow. “You do not understand for how long we have fought, how long we have fled, how long we have evaded this man and his kind.”
“Wizards?”
She shakes her head again. “He is much more.” Then her face emerges from the mass of braids. “But you are worse, orisha ’daji, for bringing Taiwo to him.”
I flinch at the name. How many times must I tell people I’m not half of anything?
“Look,” I say, “calm down. This is how I make money, okay?”
“Do you care at all?” she says. “I know you’re half them”—she motions to Papa Udi—“but do you care for your people at all?”
Papa Udi senses my rising anger and pulls me back, eases me aside, then faces her himself.
“Ajala. How you know am?”
There’s a command in his statement that even Kehinde recognises. She calms a
little.
“He has been hunting us,” she says. “Taiwo and I migrated to Tafawa Balewa Square after we came down. First, he sent men. But our charms, it bled their ears, drove them back. Back in Orun, we could’ve swiftly destroyed them, you know? Bound them into earth or called on their bodies to rotten. But Orun left us only this one way to defend ourselves. Somehow, this man knows, and it makes him relentless; he keeps sending and sending. Once, he came by himself. He was very strong; too strong. He uses charmcasting.”
Papa Udi and I look at each other.
“That one no possible,” Papa Udi says.
“Are you stupid?” Kehinde says. “I know what I saw.”
“Humans can’t charmcast,” I tell her. “They even die if they try too hard. It burns you up.”
“Yes, I know,” she says. “This is how I know he’s not ordinary—he has something... more. He chased us deep into the island, then gave up. We believed he feared us rallying other orishas and defeating him. We didn’t know he was rallying one of us against us instead.”
She looks at me then, in a way so unsettling that I go perch in a corner.
“So una two separate,” Papa Udi says.
She nods. “For safety. I didn’t want to leave him, but Taiwo is stubborn. He thinks himself my elder.” She sniffs again. “He stayed on the island, to be more connected, so he could defend himself better.”
“And you?” I ask. “I searched the whole island and you weren’t there.”
“I’m strong enough without a centre.” She twists her lips. “Plus I was busy hiding, from the likes of you. If any one of us got captured, I felt I’d be in a better position to retrieve Taiwo than the other way around.”
Papa Udi shrugs and looks at me. Did I have more questions to ask?
“Ajala wants you,” I say. “So unless there’s something I’m not understanding, give me a good reason not to deliver you to him.”
Kehinde’s eyes narrow.
“You think you know what you’re playing with,” she says. “You think you know what this man is. You think you know anything.”
“You’re right. Maybe I don’t. So tell me.”
“Do you know what I am?” She’s rising now, the weeping woman gone, the authority of a god returned to her voice. “Do you know what we are?” She stands tall, towering over me at almost seven feet, staring me down. Her tattooed beads ripple, shimmer. “We are Ibeji, orisha of the Divine Abundance.” She steps forward to the edge of the ward. “We are the keepers of the essence of all things. We are wisdom, growth, prosperity, fertility. We are life. We are existence.”
Papa Udi is nodding to me, telling me she’s right.
“So,” I say again, “why does Ajala want you?”
She shakes her head. “If we are the keepers of existence, why else will anyone want us? Why else have people hunted us for ages long before you were born?”
Papa Udi blinks. Disbelief is written all over his face. “Ajala wan—”
“—make orisha, yes,” Kehinde says, sitting back into the circle, hugging her legs to herself. “He wants to make gods, and you, orisha ’daji, have just given him the ingredients.”
Chapter Five
WE LEAVE KEHINDE in the ward and try to catch an hour or two of sleep before dawn. It’s a pointless venture, because my mind ticks like clockwork, my belly roiling from hunger. Half of my bed is still wet with dew, and though I lie in the dark corner of the moonlit room—thanks to my new skylight—aiming for sleep ends up a pointless venture.
I go downstairs and mix cocoa and milk into a bowl with garri and sugar. As I eat it with lukewarm water, I’m reminded again that if we had a bigger gen and a refrigerator, this snack-meal would’ve turned out much better with chilled water. This causes my thoughts to run the gamut from Ajala to Fatoumata to Taiwo to Kehinde, and back to Papa Udi and—you’ll never guess—my mother, whom I barely think of.
Pacing and restless, I find myself back at the workroom, garri bowl in hand. Kehinde is seated in the circle in a lotus position, her eyes shut and her breathing even. I don’t know if she’s asleep (do gods sleep?), so I just sit in a corner and munch my snack quietly, watching her.
“How did you become so?” Kehinde speaks suddenly. Not even her eyes twitch or a braid moves, just her lips.
“I don’t understand.”
“How did you become so corrupted? So much like them? So much that you turn on your own people?”
I slam my bowl on the floor. “First of all, you dunno shit about me, so end this your people talk right now. I don’t turn on anybody. I do my job—I relocate the infestation you people brought down here. I help! Is it my fault they go where they don’t belong?”
She opens her eyes and frowns. “What’re you talking about? That’s not what I asked.”
I breathe out. “Know what? Forget it.”
She studies me for a second. “You’re conflicted. You think yourself misjudged.”
“Whatever.”
“Of your parents, who is divine?”
“My mother.”
“I see. And the other?”
My shoulders stiffen. See, of all the questions that should truly require asking, this is one I’ve never asked myself. I’ve broached it with Papa Udi a few times. He’s as clueless as I am. My father might as well have fallen off the face of the earth.
“I don’t know.”
“Hmm,” she says. I suddenly feel like I’m at an interview, like I need to defend myself.
“I don’t know anything about where I came from, about who I am. My mother is—or was—a god, that’s the much I know. I don’t know what pantheon she’s from, or where she is. Papa Udi doesn’t know either—everything about me was revealed to him by Aziza, a whirlwind god he used to proxy with back when he was in Urhoboland. They’ve long parted ways, he and this god, and all he knows is what was revealed to him, and how he came to find and raise me. Our best guess is Aziza was a friend to my mother’s, and simply helped deliver a message.” I look to her face. “So, there. Story of my life.”
“Hmm.” She nods again.
“What?”
“Nothing, I’m just thinking,” she says. “You’re definitely not of Orun. Where I come from, things like you are curses. We seek your halfbreed kind and slay you instantly. That you’re still alive says your mother is definitely not from my place.”
I stop eating and just look at her. I’ve been called many names, but never thing or curse.
“Your pantheon is probably looking for you, if they know you exist. Especially if they’ve twisted the truth out of your mother.”
The thought of this makes my ears hot, but I swallow down my anger and ask a more reasonable question instead:
“What d’you know of other pantheons?”
She shrugs. “Not much. I’m the warrior half of Ibeji. Taiwo is the knowledge half.” She says this wistfully. “My brother knows the songs of a thousand pantheons. He would entertain with their stories and histories. He was a scholar back in Orun, pooling knowledge for the growth of your earthkind and the peoples of other worlds.” Then she stares at me, filled with purpose. “Help me get him back, and maybe we can find what song holds your oriki.”
I scrape the last garri out of my bowl, gulp it down and smack the plate on the floor.
“So.” I dust my palms together. “I believe you need me to help you confront Ajala. This means you believe Ajala is too strong for you alone. I’m curious: is this why you came for me instead? Because you think I’m weak?” I chuckle. “That hasn’t worked out well for you, has it?”
“I came for you because your very unique essence is all over Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó,” she says. “From the chatter of the godlings—I understand them, if I listen just right—I gathered what happened. I tracked you to your wizard’s house.”
“Or you’re just afraid of Ajala.”
“I fear no one. I am Kehinde.”
“Says the god who can’t handle one-and-a-half humans.”
I
’m riling her up, I see. Her fists clench, then release.
“Taiwo and I, we are connected,” she says. “I sensed my brother’s distress throughout the time you hunted him. He was afraid, confused, just like during the war. I knew he was gone the minute I could no longer feel him. May you never get to experience that; but then again, may you.”
“You held Papa Udi when I came,” I say. “I’ve felt it plenty.”
“I see,” she says. “So you’re on their side now? Do you think the same thing they do? You think us alien, an infestation of parasites come to take over your world? But you see, there’s no difference between how you, David Mogo, find yourself in this world, and how we find ourselves here.”
“How so?”
“We didn’t ask for it. We’re both here by accident.”
“I’m not an accident.”
She stares at me, unblinking.
I breathe. “How did you come here?”
“You don’t know?”
“We know you guys fell from the sky, and that’s it.”
She frowns. “So you don’t know about the orisha war.”
“A war? A war brought you here?”
Kehinde looks up at the ceiling. “It is a long story, and my brother tells it better. But I’ll try.” She clears her throat. “One of us, Aganju, was a thinker, a philosopher. He did not share the raging fire that was his brother, Sango. For this, we considered him barely a menace, and thus we did not see his search for the meaning of life, not until it had consumed him. First, he brought his case before Obatala—what if we recreate the divine, form life of life? Imagine all we could do, all the ways we could make Orun better. Of course that would require drawing from a fount of the essence of all things—there are other sources besides us Ibeji, you see, but not a single one is easy to procure.
“Now Obatala—Obatala is our supreme guardian, yes?—he was having none of it. But Aganju has a thirst that cannot be sated—the fire that burns in his brother burns in him, after all. He was determined to make Obatala see how much better things could be if he could bring beings to fruition. And like that, Aganju, aided by his brother Sango, conspired to take a healthy dose of godessence and cross it with the weakest of us whom they could suppress by their strength.” She shakes her head. “He made these... these senseless things you have running around, failing woefully. And, unlike you humans believe, one’s creator does not hold supreme power over the created: such is the freedom of being. Aganju and Shango wielded their essence over them, but they were too much. Some got away, many wreaked havoc in Orun. It was a mess.”
David Mogo Godhunter Page 4
