Beasts of Prey

by Ayana Gray

  “It . . . it attacked me!” Bi Mutunga jumped to her feet before her husband could get to her, tears and kohl streaking her face. She stared down at the embroidered hem of her dress, now in tatters, then looked to her husband. “My love, it tried to kill me! Look what it did to my clothes!”

  No. Koffi’s thoughts tangled together, unable to process what had just happened. This was very, very bad.

  The merchant took his wife in his arms and held her a moment before jabbing an accusatory finger at Baaz. “You assured me your show was safe, Baaz!” he said angrily. “I was told this was a professional establishment!”

  “B-B-Bwana.” Baaz, usually cool under pressure, was stuttering. “I—I offer my humblest, most sincere apologies. The next time you come, I assure you, this won’t—”

  “The next time?” Bwana Mutunga’s brows rose, incredulous. “My wife is traumatized, Baaz. We’re never setting foot in this wretched place again. To think we even considered supporting it . . .”

  “Wait!” Baaz’s eyes went wide. “Wait, sir—”

  He couldn’t even finish his sentence before the merchant took his wife by the elbow and steered them out into the night. Koffi listened to their footsteps until they faded. For a long moment, no one in the Hema moved. She glanced up to see that the other beastkeepers’ eyes were all fixed on either her or Baaz. It was he who broke the silence.

  “You didn’t secure him.”

  Baaz’s voice was dangerously low. No longer was he the jolly owner of a spectacular Night Zoo; now he was just Baaz, her master, glaring at her. “Explain yourself.”

  “I . . .” Koffi hated how small her voice sounded. She searched her mind for a decent answer but found none. The truth was, she had no good answer. She hadn’t secured Diko’s harness because she’d forgotten. Mama had reminded her, twice, but she hadn’t done it. Her mind had been elsewhere, so distracted by the idea of leaving . . .

  “You will pay for this.” Baaz’s words cut through her thoughts like a knife. “You’ll go to the whipping post, and a fine will be added to your debt—the sum of the two tickets I just lost. By my calculation, that’s about six months’ worth of your wages.”

  Tears stung Koffi’s eyes. The whipping post was bad enough, but the fine . . . six months’ wages. She and Mama would have to stay at the Night Zoo; they wouldn’t be leaving after all.

  Baaz turned to one of the beastkeepers near him, then pointed at Koffi. “Take her out to the post now. She’ll learn her lesson—”

  “No.”

  Several beastkeepers started, Koffi included. For the first time, she looked to her mother, still standing on the other side of Diko. There was a strange resolve in her brown eyes.

  “No,” Mama said again calmly. “I’m the one who forgot to secure Diko’s lead. The punishment and the fine should go to me.”

  Koffi drew in a sharp breath and fought a sudden wave of pain. Mama was lying. She was going to take the blame for this, even though she hadn’t been the one in the wrong. She was sacrificing herself, her literal freedom. Koffi blinked back fresh tears.

  “Very well.” Baaz sneered. “You can go to the post, then.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Take her away.”

  Koffi still held Diko’s leash tightly, but her fingers felt numb as she watched one of the beastkeepers grab Mama by the upper arm and offer an apologetic look. Her mother held her head high, but Koffi saw it, the slight tremble in her bottom lip, the fear.

  “No!” Koffi stepped forward, her voice trembling. “Mama, don’t—”

  “Be quiet, Koffi.” Mama’s voice was even as their gazes met. “It’s all right.” She gave the beastkeeper another nod, more final, and he started to escort her out of the tent. With every step, Koffi felt an acute internal pain.

  No.

  It wasn’t right, wasn’t fair. They’d been about to leave and be free. Now that glimmer of hope was gone, and it was her fault. Koffi ground her teeth and stared at her feet, determined not to cry. This Night Zoo had stolen many things from her in eleven years; these tears would not be one of them.

  Her lungs strained as she took in a deep breath and held on to it fiercely. Blood roared between her ears in protest, her heart pounded harder, but she refused to let the breath go. It was the smallest resistance, a losing battle from the start, but she relished the gesture. If she could control nothing else in her life, for a few seconds she would control this, the very breaths she took. A distinct sense of triumph filled her body as she finally exhaled, releasing the pressure in her chest.

  And then, beside her, something shattered.

  CHAPTER 4

  Faith and Fortitude

  The eyes of two young men flicked to Ekon as he reached the Temple of Lkossa’s landing.

  Twenty-seven steps, divisible by three, a good number.

  He moved into his place at the left end of their line without a word, but the boy nearest him still chuckled low. He was almost as tall as Ekon, built like a stack of boulders, but his long, narrow face had the twitchy likeness of a meerkat. After several seconds, he nodded Ekon’s way.

  “Nice of you to finally join us, Okojo,” said Shomari.

  Ekon didn’t answer, fixing his gaze on the front doors before them. They were carved from aged iroko wood, as unforgiving as steel. Any minute now, the city’s saa-horn would sound and they would open. Then the rites would begin. He let his fingers find a new rhythm at his side.

  One-two-three. One-two-three . . .

  “So . . .” This time, Shomari made a point of jabbing an elbow into Ekon’s ribs hard, messing up his count. “Where were you?”

  “We’re not supposed to be talking, Mensah,” Ekon said through his teeth, hoping his use of the boy’s surname was enough of a hint.

  “Let me guess.” Shomari’s black eyes grew flinty. “You were holed up somewhere reading the ancient ramblings of some crusty old master. Tuh, I’ll bet the ladies love that.”

  “Your mother loves it,” Ekon muttered.

  At the other end of the line, Fahim Adebayo snickered. Shomari gritted his teeth, as though he meant to fight, and for a second looked as though he might try it, but then he seemed to think better of it and stared ahead. Ekon barely resisted a smirk. As the sons of prominent Yaba families, he and Shomari had grown up together, but that didn’t mean they liked each other. In recent months, their once somewhat-cordial rivalry had changed drastically. The old rivalry was still there; it just lacked the cordiality.

  A moment of silence passed among the three of them before Fahim cleared his throat. He wasn’t tall like Ekon, or burly like Shomari, and his face still held a softness that didn’t allow him to ever really look serious. “What do you think he’s going to make us do?” he whispered. “For the last rite?”

  Shomari shrugged too quickly. “Dunno, don’t care.”

  It was a lie, but Ekon didn’t bother to call the bluff. Deep down, he knew they all had good reason to be afraid. Mere weeks ago, they’d stood on these very steps crowded among fourteen other Yaba boys who, like them, had spent their whole lives dreaming of becoming Sons of the Six. Now they were the only ones left. The reality of it should’ve been exciting—if not slightly intimidating—but Ekon struggled to focus on it. He was standing before the city’s most revered site, but his mind was still down in its bowels, remembering what he’d heard, the strange things the old woman had said.

  Does it call to you often? . . . It calls to me too sometimes. I couldn’t tell you why; magic is a peculiar thing, as are the things it touches.

  He didn’t know which part of the encounter he found more unsettling in recollection. On the one hand, it was frightening that he’d heard Baba’s voice so far away from the jungle, but worse still, the old woman had known it. She’d empathized with him, and even said she sometimes heard things coming from the jungle too. How? How had she known? He’d never told anyone about wha
t he heard when he got near the trees, the disturbing things hoarded in his memory. Even thinking about them now made his hands clammy. His fingers were twitching, eager to restart their tapping, when a low tremor interrupted his thoughts. His ears rang with the metallic bellow of the saa-horn up in one of the temple’s towers, rattling his bones from head to toe. There was a pause, and then—as if on cue—the scrape of weathered wood against stone. The temple’s front doors opened, and all three of them immediately straightened as a figure emerged from its shadows.

  A corpulent man dressed in a sweeping blue robe met their gaze. Ekon tensed. There was no explicit way to know that Father Olufemi was old—his umber skin was unwrinkled, and his thin black hair was betrayed by only a few strands of gray near the temple—but something about the holy man always exuded an agelessness. As the Kuhani, he alone led the temple’s Brothers of the Order, and in more ways than one, he was the city’s leader. Ekon felt the shrewd evaluation in the man’s hawkish eyes as he looked over each of them.

  “Come with me,” he murmured.

  Ekon’s heart pounded like a goatskin drum as they followed him into the temple.

  Dozens of white prayer candles illuminated the stonework of its worship hall—one hundred ninety-two at a quick count—arranged on built-in shelves that reached all the way up to its vaulted ceilings. Wafts of burning cedarwood suffused the air with every step as Father Olufemi led them deeper inside, and Ekon knew the scent came from the offering fires the brothers of the temple kept stoked at all times. It was the smell of home. The Temple of Lkossa housed worship halls, a library, studies, even a dormitory where candidates and unmarried Sons of the Six slept when off duty. It was magnificent, reverent, and like no other place in all the city. He noted the multicolored banners folded in woven baskets, to be shared with the rest of the populace in two months. The temple was already preparing for the Bonding, a celebration of the gods; to be initiated into the Sons of the Six just before such a holiday would be a special honor.

  “Line up.” Father Olufemi still had his back to them, but his voice cracked through the quiet like a whip. Ekon scrambled to move back to his assigned place, standing shoulder to shoulder with his co-candidates. He balled his fists to keep his fingers from moving. Father Olufemi faced them again, eyes appraising.

  “Candidate Adebayo, Candidate Mensah, and Candidate Okojo.” He nodded to each of them in turn. “The three of you are the last remaining candidates eligible for warriorship this season. You stand on the cusp of joining a hallowed brotherhood, a covenant eternal and divine. There are men who would lay down their very lives for membership, and many who already have.”

  Ekon swallowed. He thought about Memorial Hall, a quiet corridor in the temple that bore a permanent list of fallen Sons etched directly into the stone walls. He knew about men laying down their lives for this brotherhood. His own father’s name was on that list.

  “You have completed five rites on the sacred passage to warriorship. Now the time has come for you to undergo your last,” Father Olufemi continued. “If you are successful, you will be anointed as Sons of the Six tonight. If you are not, your journey will come to an end. Per holy law, you will not be permitted another chance to take the rites, and you may never speak of them again.”

  Ekon knew he should have been paying closer attention as Father Olufemi went on, but it was next to impossible now. Both excitement and anxiety warmed his skin, pumping blood hard and fast through his veins and making it harder and harder to keep still.

  This is it, he thought. It’s finally happening.

  When none of them raised objections, Father Olufemi gave an austere nod. “Very well, then, let us begin.”

  He gestured for them once again to follow him out of the worship hall and down one of its connecting halls. Ekon kept his strides even as they ventured deeper into blackness, turning and twisting through corridors until he was sure they were lost. He’d spent the last ten years of his life here in the temple, but he doubted he’d ever know the full extent of its layout. In time, they reached a weathered door illuminated by a single sconce mounted to the wall. Father Olufemi opened the door and ushered them into a small, windowless room. Ekon stilled as he saw what was in its center.

  The woven raffia basket on the floor was large and round, not unlike the ones he sometimes saw women balance atop their heads down in the market, but something about this basket was wrong.

  It was moving.

  Without a word, Father Olufemi ambled over to it, leaving them at the door. If he was at all concerned about its contents, he made no outward sign of it as he faced them again.

  “Recite chapter three, verse thirteen, from the Book of the Six.”

  Ekon’s mind went frighteningly blank for a few seconds before the memorized words tumbled from his mouth.

  “A righteous man honors the Six as he honors each breath,” he said in tandem with Fahim and Shomari. “He honors them constantly with the words of his tongue, the thoughts of his mind, and the acts of his body, for as long as he should live among gods-fearing men.”

  Father Olufemi nodded. “A holy warrior, a true Son of the Six, must be obedient at all times. He must answer only to the six gods and goddesses of our faith, and to those through whom they speak. Do you understand that, candidates?”

  “Yes, Father,” they replied in unison.

  “And you understand”—Father Olufemi glanced at Ekon—“that when ordered to act in the name of the Six, you must always obey, without question or hesitation?”

  Ekon had the distinct feeling that he was teetering on the edge of something, preparing to leap into some unknown abyss. He glanced at the strange moving basket again before answering.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Then you are ready.” Without warning, Father Olufemi stooped to lift the basket’s lid. There was a faint sound, a stirring. He gestured for the three of them to approach. With every step closer, Ekon sensed it, a wrongness that implored him to turn back, but he forced his feet to move until he was within a foot of Father Olufemi. When he saw what was inside the basket, however, his blood ran cold.

  A tangle of golden-brown snakes writhed among one another, twisting and coiling in an indistinguishable mass. They didn’t hiss, nor did they seem to notice that they had new spectators, but a chill erupted across Ekon’s arms anyway. It was impossible to tell where one serpent’s body began and another ended. His fingers tapped, trying to find a cadence.

  Too many. Can’t count. Can’t count. Can’t count . . .

  Fresh anxiety rose in his throat, and he found he couldn’t swallow it. He didn’t know much about snake species, but he was almost certain he knew what these were. Atop their interlaced bodies, three small scraps of parchment rose and fell with their movements. There was something written on each one, but he was too far away to read them.

  Three scraps, a good number at least.

  Shomari moved first, reaching for the slingshot hooked to his belt loop, but with surprising speed, Father Olufemi blocked his hand.

  “No.”

  Shomari’s eyes widened with surprise, but Father Olufemi spoke before he could.

  “These are eastern black mambas,” he explained. “There are six of them, one to represent each of our gods and goddesses. They have been anointed by this temple, and shall not be harmed.”

  Ekon tensed. He didn’t like where this was going at all. Father Olufemi had said there were six snakes, but he couldn’t separate them in his mind, which meant he couldn’t count them. That frightened him to his core. Every instinct in his body told him to run or, at the very least, to distance himself from them, but he found he couldn’t move.

  “A Son of the Six is a man of faith and fortitude,” Father Olufemi went on. “Tonight, we will put both to the test. Each of your family names has been written on a piece of parchment and placed inside this basket.” He pointed. “Your final rite of
passage requires you to retrieve your name without being bitten by one of the snakes. We will proceed alphabetically, by surname.”

  New beads of sweat slicked Ekon’s neck, and it wasn’t from the small room’s stifling heat. Frantically, he racked his mind, thinking of what he knew about black mambas. They were said to be the most venomous snakes on the continent; a single bite could kill in a matter of minutes. From his brief readings, he knew they weren’t particularly aggressive by nature, but provoked . . . He looked to his co-candidates. Fahim’s nostrils flared as he took hard breaths in and out through his nose; Shomari’s pupils were dilated. Both were visibly shaking. As if on cue, one of the serpents lifted its head slightly from the basket to eye them with curiosity. It opened its blue-black mouth, and in the low light, venom glistened wet on its fangs. Ekon froze.

  “Candidate Adebayo,” said Father Olufemi. “Proceed.”

  Ekon watched Fahim shuffle toward the basket, trembling from head to toe. He started to bend at the middle, then, as though thinking better of it, lowered to his knees. The serpents turned toward him, six pairs of glittering black eyes watching and waiting. Fahim started to reach out but withdrew his hand when one of the snakes hissed. Father Olufemi shook his head.

  “They are anointed, which means they will only bite those who are unworthy,” he murmured. “You must act without fear, and you must act with faith.”

  Fahim nodded, chest rising and falling as he steadied himself. He shifted his weight, flexed his fingers, then—so fast Ekon barely saw it—snatched a scrap of parchment from the center of the basket. He stumbled backward, landing on his bottom, then held the paper up to his eyes to read the name scrawled on it. Every muscle in his body instantly relaxed, and he handed the paper to Father Olufemi, who nodded.