David Mogo Godhunter

by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

  “Ehn, let them come,” I insist. “I can take them.”

  “Shut up and listen to me,” my mother snaps, the growl of a battle commander present in her voice. “I have known these gods for as long as I have lived, and I have lived for very long, David. Long enough to know what living without someone or something to care about is, and I do not want that anymore. I do not want you to die.”

  I blink, shocked at the display of affection. It’s a strange thing to accept, like an old wool sweater that prickles. All my life, I’ve had one person in Papa Udi show anything akin to love for me, and mostly in a backhanded way. Since she appeared, she’s just picked up where Papa Udi left off. This is new, and I’m not sure how to react to it.

  “Okay,” I find myself saying.

  An awkward silence engulfs us for a moment, and we shift uncomfortably, trying not to look one another in the eye.

  “What are they like?” I ask, finally. “The triple gods.”

  “They are the best warriors Orun ever had, better than Sango even. They left Orun a long, long time ago and never returned, because they disagreed with Obatala’s systems. I have no idea where or how Aganju found them. I’m sure it mustn’t have been hard for him to convince them.”

  I nod. “And Obatala? Do you know where he’s been all this while? Why he has allowed all this to happen to us?”

  Ogun sighs. “All I can tell you about Obatala is this: there is nothing he is more interested in than keeping his kingdom. Since the war, he has sealed off all of Orun from everything and everyone, so not even those who once called it home can find their way back. He will keep it that way if it ensures that those who sought to destroy it never return, even if the rest of the world perishes as a consequence.”

  “So we’re on our own.”

  “Yes.” She holds up a finger. “But. We’re not done yet.”

  “What do you advise?”

  “Well.” She rises like an old woman, slowly, her robe rippling. “He found allies, yes? Maybe we can find some of our own.”

  “Are there any gods left who haven’t joined him? Who might be interested in joining us?”

  Ogun cocks her head. “I might just know a few.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  FOR THE FIRST time in years, I almost shed tears once I step out of the airport and see the bare, charred wasteland of Lagos. Everything is rust and smog and dust and death. We pass a few corpses by, some lying prone, their faces at peace as if they died in their sleep; some bent low in submission to the elements, unable to go on any longer. There are no animals, and only the odd tree struggling to survive. The only thing I recognise about Lagos is the smells of open gutters.

  Once in a while, we hear the shuffle of things in hiding, and we’re not sure if they’re human or divine. We figure that, whatever refugees are still out here might’ve become dangerous, robbing and murdering if they can, stealing if they can’t. But we believe that even if we come upon such a band, they too must realise, after one look at us, that it will be in their best interest not to interfere.

  Our troupe consists of Ibeji, Papa Udi, Shonuga, Femi and me, led by my mother. We are going to meet Aziza, who my mother has found a way to summon. He refuses to meet us in the airport, my mother says, because he isn’t sure if he is being lured into a trap. So he has opened a small threshold a few kilometres outside the airport for us to step through and meet him where he is. None of us have ever walked through a threshold or travelled between worlds before, so we’re all nervous and unsure.

  But no one is as nervous as Papa Udi, who has unfinished history with Aziza. This was something he never talked about at Cardoso House, but all of a sudden he’s fidgety now that he gets to meet the god whose work he used to perform, in his early years as a hot-blooded, powerful wizard. Whatever rift opened between them, Papa Udi doesn’t say, but it’s such a big deal that he almost refused to go. He got into a hot argument with Ogun before we left the airport, but finally succumbed to her steely eyes and grudgingly came with, chewing furiously and mumbling endless things to himself.

  We snake though the streets, clinging to the shadows of the evening. The sky is grey and expressionless, blotting out the sun and all its warmth and light. We’re all wrapped in identical hand-knitted ponchos, a gift from the newly-minted clothing group of the airport community—partly for taking them in, but mostly courtesy of Femi and Shonuga guilting them into it. We amble along in a line like nomads in a desert. Ogun insisted we all come along, that if we were going to convince anyone to join our war, it’s better if they see who they’re fighting with. We left the airport in the hands of the most loyal airport security personnel, but I especially asked Fati to get into the airplane, shut the door, lock it and not come out until we return.

  We get to the appointed place just before dusk, a four-way crossroad in a clustered neighbourhood, parallel to the expressway but closer to what used to be the Agege neighbourhood. Now it’s just a jumble of abandoned buildings, brick and zinc shanties skewed at various angles and lacking any sort of planning. The perfect place for an ambush.

  At the edge of the crossroads is a small pile of food: mangoes, guavas, a small watermelon, five fingers of plantain, and a clay pot with roasted yam in it, spread with palm oil. Scattered amongst them are large chunks of chalk in different colours.

  Ogun goes over, picks up a piece of the chalk, chews it, draws a line in the road, steps over it, and vanishes before our eyes.

  “Shit,” Femi and Shonuga say together.

  Papa Udi sighs, then repeats the action, chewing the chalk, drawing a line, stepping over it, and is gone as well. Ibeji follow next, Taiwo and Kehinde performing the rite together, like two halves of the same person.

  I let Femi and Shonuga go before me because I’m the one with the machete. They hold hands and steel themselves before doing it. I go last. The chalk tastes like what I imagine brick dust would taste like.

  When I step over the line, there’s a whoosh, like I’m standing atop a high-speed train, but without the wind. Then I’m standing in the exact same spot, at that crossroad in Agege, but this isn’t really the Agege I just left. This is something else, as if someone took an eraser to everything human and possible and existent and perceptible, and left it with a drab, soulless background, like I’m standing on a beach without the sand in my toes or the wind in my face, the rush of the waves, the salt in the air. It is like I’m standing in space, and Agege is a grey, static painting wrapped around me.

  Before us is a one-handed, one-legged dwarf. Every inch of his body, from his dreadlocked hair to his nailless toes, is smeared in white powder, presumably more chalk. His face carries the weight of ages, but is unlined. He stands smack in the middle of the crossroads, resting his weight on a stick, which looks like it’s made of wood but also like it can slice iron.

  “Ukrobogbowovo,” my mother hails him.

  “Ọsìn ìmọ̀lẹ́,” Aziza says. His voice is like a ripple, like blowing air through a cloth. Now that I think of it, so does my mother’s. We likely all sound this way here.

  “Thank you for having us.”

  “Hmm.” His eyes run across us, then stop at Papa Udi.

  “Odivwiri.” He says it like he’s working on a piece of chaff that needs to be spat out.

  “Ukrobogbowovo,” Papa Udi says, then goes on a knee.

  “Keep that praise out of your dirty mouth,” Aziza says, his eyes flaring. For the first time, I see the àshẹ behind his pupils.

  “I only honour you, Aziza,” Papa Udi says, his head still bowed, refusing to look at him.

  “I don’t need honour from the likes of you.”

  “Okay,” Ogun says, her tone snipping the conversation like a pair of scissors. “Aziza, you can do that later. Just say if you’ll join us or not.”

  “I wanted to get a good look at them,” he says, roving his eyes across us. “I’m not impressed.”

  “We are all that is left,” my mother says.

  “Then you are
not enough,” Aziza says. “You want me to go up against Aganju, of ash and dust and magma, and against Sango’s sisters of wind and water and making, with these?”

  Everyone is silent.

  “Do you still believe in me, Aziza?” Ogun asks.

  “You are the mighty conqueror. I can’t stop believing in you, my old friend.”

  “You have supported the decisions I have made in the past. Without hesitation.”

  “Without hesitation.”

  “And none of those choices have failed before. If anything, they’ve birthed bigger, stronger, better things.” She looks at me as she says this, and I step forward. Aziza studies me, nodding approvingly.

  “He makes a fine complement to you.”

  “Not complement,” she says, looking at me with—is that pride? “He is of me. He is me, but even better than I have been. He knows these people. They are as much his people as we are. He is best to lead them, much more than I am.”

  Aziza keeps his eyes on me. “So it is you we follow.”

  My first inclination is to be modest, to say, Ah, well, you know. But something in me straightens my spine, keeps my feet on the ground.

  “Yes,” I say. “I will take Lagos back for us.”

  He chuckles. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I can see how fear washes over you. You are afraid, because you care about these people, this place, and you are afraid that you will lose.” He nods. “That is good. Use it.”

  His eyes remain on me for a beat, then move, surprisingly, to Papa Udi.

  “You have done well, Odivwiri,” Aziza says. “You have done your part in a task that you did not ask for, a burden you did not need to carry for me, and for this, I have forgiven you. You have shown me what it means to be loyal.” He turns to my mother. “I have been loyal to you, conqueror, for a long time. I will continue to. I will stand with you in every battle, this one and those to come.” He taps his stick on the ground twice, as if to seal it.

  There is a sense of tension easing, a collective unvoiced sigh of relief, and Papa Udi, who never rose from his knee, rises now, his back straighter than ever, the glistening of tears in his eyes and on his cheeks.

  AZIZA OPENS UP another threshold, and we step through and are back in the airport runway. I half-expect him to have abandoned us, but he is right there in the airport. He has ditched the one-legged, one-handed form, and has all limbs complete, but has retained the stick-sword, the chalk, the dreadlocked hair, the dwarfism.

  Femi and Shonuga go on to check with security, discussing a prank to scare them to test their reflexes, then deciding against it after realising they could get shot. I head right for my plane in the hangar to check on Fati. Ogun suggests Aziza goes with me and stays in the plane as well, until we can announce to the community that we’ve been hiring. I agree, because just the look of Aziza alone will scare the living daylights out of the residents.

  Fati is indeed in the plane, but she didn’t shut the door as discussed, and I see why: the whole plane is smoky with the fire from a makeshift lamp she’s managed to make from a hollowed-out sandstone rock, burning twisted tree bark in a pool of fat. She regards me with a bored look when I get into the plane, and I see she’s been reading a book.

  When Aziza comes in right behind me, I expect her to yelp, but she only starts, then watches him carefully, like one would a tamed wild animal. I see her other hand reach behind her for one of Papa Udi’s long skinning knives, hidden under the seat.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “He’s the one we went to meet.”

  Aziza pays her no attention, but instead navigates to the very back of the plane and stretches awkwardly in a seat like someone who has never been in a plane. He probably hasn’t.

  “What’re you reading?” I ask Fati.

  She flips the book, cover to me. We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

  “Where did you get that?”

  She shrugs.

  “You know how to read?”

  She shakes her head. “Only small small.”

  “Here, lemme read to you.”

  She hands me the book reluctantly.

  I read a section where Chimamanda says men and women are different biologically, and how men being dominant historically was based on physical power, but physicality is not required to be stronger in these days, that intelligence, knowledge and creativity are not defined by hormones, and that anyone can be on top. Fati listens intently.

  “You believe?”

  “What the book says?” I shrug. “I guess, yes.”

  “So I can good too, be on top?”

  I want to tell her that our world has changed a lot from the one Chimamanda was talking about, but I don’t bother to complicate things for her, so I just say, “Yes.”

  “So why you no take me? Because I’m woman?”

  I want to say I left her behind because she’s a teenager, but then remember there are teenage boys in other groups in the airport, from security to hunting and gathering, and Fati is not assigned to any of these. I’m forgetting this is a girl who literally walked into a heavily guarded house where I was held captive and rescued me.

  “You know what? I’m sorry,” I say. “From now on, we do things together, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to see Papa Udi, then we’re going to see if we can find another god. Want to come?”

  She nods.

  “Good.” I rise, and after a pause, say, “Come with your knife.”

  PAPA UDI IS nowhere to be found until the evening bonfire, when he reappears, looking very tired. I realise it’s not just him: apparently, travelling across thresholds has left all the humans fatigued. Even Shonuga and Femi suddenly have bags under their eyes, accentuated by the flicker of the fire.

  While my mother gathers the community to explain Aziza’s presence and unveil him alongside our plans, I find Papa Udi and settle beside him without comment, both of us silent. Fati finds us and settles between us, a welcome change from her being glued to Ibeji or my mother. For a moment, it feels almost as if we’re back at Cardoso House.

  My mother rises and stands before the airport community, standing behind the fire so it lights her properly and downplays the àshẹ in her eyes. She has altered her form slightly, now in an iridescent sleeveless robe the colour and texture of palm fronds. Her head is still bald, her forehead and scalp shining by the fire, but her arms are covered shoulder to wrist in tattoos, all of them faces of people frozen mid-scream. The combination of the firelight and my mother’s steely eyes and stoic demeanor sends a hush through the crowd.

  She opens with the story of the tattoos. They are reminders of the wars she has fought, she says, of the conquests she has made as the god of war. They are her reminders of why she no longer makes war. They are the repercussions of all the pain she has already caused, and she will continue to bear them as a symbol of who she’s supposed to be.

  “But this war we have is one I will fight,” she says, “and becoming the person I once vowed to leave behind is a sacrifice I will make, if it will prevent further destruction. And every one of us”—she points a finger at the crowd, pricking every chest as if it’s pointed at them alone—“will have to make a sacrifice like this.”

  With that, Aziza appears out of thin air to stand by my mother. This provokes a gasp from the crowd, and more murmuring and whispers. My mother watches silently until they die down.

  “Aziza, Ukrobogbowovo of the Urhobo pantheon, will join us. Many more will in the coming days. And I do not compel you, but if you have something to offer, we will need it. We will need everything we can get, if we are to go against Aganju and his army.”

  No one says anything, until one woman rises, carrying a child in her arms. She starts talking quickly in Yoruba. Most people nod in understanding.

  “She say she can make…” Fati translates, struggling for the word. “Long stick-and-knife.”

  “Spear?”

  She frowns at me. “What is spear?�
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  After the woman, more people come forward and explain what they can offer. I use this time to turn to Papa Udi and say:

  “So you go tell me now?”

  He looks at me. “Tell you wetin?”

  I motion with my chin towards Aziza.

  “But you already know.”

  Well, I did see some of what happened between them when he mirrored a Reveal charm at the 81 Division. I know he was chased out of Isiokolo for doing something bad, and Aziza abandoned him at about the same time. He came to Lagos and built a life and never returned.

  “I don’t know what you did, though.”

  He hesitates a second, then taps Fatoumata. “Go meet Ibeji.”

  Fati eyes him, but Pap Udi puts on his mean stare before she reluctantly rises and shuffles over to where Ibeji sit a few feet from my mother. They ensconce her between them.

  “So?”

  Papa Udi sighs, chews a bit, then sighs again. “My wife and my two sons. I kill them.”

  My chest lurches. How and why leap to my mouth, but I ask nothing, and just wait for him to chew some more.

  “At that time, I reason say I fit do anything. For the whole of Isiokolo, only me get power. I use my power help sick people, heal them. I protect them from thieves, from attackers, from even police. Na me be their Odibo, their Seer. Na only me fit connect to Aziza.”

  He spits whatever he’s chewing. “And I dey like try new things, most especially charmcasting. I start, small small first. People warn me say the thing dangerous, especially Karo, my wife. She say make I stop Odibo completely. Aziza too tell me once, say make I no take this thing too far. Even the local chief then, call me come the palace, tell me say if I no stop him go send me commot. But the thing just make me vex, so I even try bigger, bigger things.

  “Then one day, one of my stupid experiments scatter. I join one new ritual with one old recipe whey I no too understand. I no even remember wetin I dey make, but I remember say the thing just dey boil, dey boil. Then the whole thing just explode for my face. My whole house, fiam. Almost half of the village, fiam. Just like that. Like say I no cast ward around myself, na so me too, fiam.”