by Ayana Gray
“Please.” Ekon repeated that single word, then tried nodding over his shoulder to indicate Koffi. She hadn’t spoken or moved since the two women had appeared, and that scared him. “Please, my friend will die—”
“Yes, she will.”
Ekon jumped, searching for the new voice before looking back to the two white-haired women. To his surprise, both had lowered their weapons and bowed their heads at something behind him. Ekon turned and saw what they had.
A third old woman, smaller than the other two, was ambling toward them through the trees with unnerving quiet. It took Ekon a moment to understand the cause of the unease running down his length, but then he pinpointed it. There was something in the way the old woman carried herself, strong despite her feeble body, unbothered by the jungle’s danger. Her black tunic was simple but clean, and she wore a large head wrap that covered any hair she might have. Wooden hoops dangled from her ears, and when she waved a hand, the thick bangles on her wrist clacked against each other noisily.
“Your friend has eaten fruit from the umdhlebi tree.” There was a surprising touch of sympathy in her voice that contradicted her stern, dark eyes and hard-set mouth.
Ekon nodded. “We didn’t know it was bad.”
The old woman shook her head, and Ekon thought he saw a twinkle of something else in her gaze. “Not bad, merely misunderstood. The umdhlebi tree is very old, very wise, and rather temperamental when offended.” One eyebrow rose. “Though I expect Satao did not capture as much in his notes.”
“Satao?” Ekon started. “You . . . you know Satao Nkrumah?”
The old woman’s eyes turned distinctly sad. “I did, once.”
“But how—?”
She held up one of her hands, cutting off the rest of his question. “The umdhlebi’s fruit can be eaten and consumed, but not without the tree’s consent; otherwise it becomes poisonous. It is meant to be a lesson. Man is not always entitled to take what does not belong to it.” She looked from Koffi to Ekon. “How long ago did she consume the fruit?”
“Yesterday afternoon.” He hesitated, then added, “She has . . . abilities. She can—”
“I’m aware of what she is.” The old woman tsked, shaking her head. “But it matters not when it comes to things like the umdhlebi tree, which cares not who it poisons. It’s a wonder this girl is not already dead, though she will be within the next few hours.”
Ekon tensed. “Is there no way to stop it?”
The woman pursed her lips, thoughtful. “There may be one, but it is not guaranteed.”
“Please.” Ekon found he could barely form words. Koffi couldn’t die here in this jungle, not like Baba. He couldn’t let that happen. “Please, can you try?”
A beat passed before the woman nodded, then met Ekon’s gaze. “Come with me.”
CHAPTER 21
Blood, Bone, and Soul
Koffi didn’t open her eyes until she heard the rattling.
At first, she thought the sound was part of a dream, another small illogical part of the strange stupor she was in. But no, the longer she listened, the surer she was. That rattling—and whatever was causing it—did not come from her imagination. She pushed herself up to her elbows and at once regretted it.
Acute pain filled her stomach the moment she moved, as unforgiving as a hanjari dagger impaled deep in her entrails. Something a few feet away from her moved, and a whimper of pain escaped her lips. She started. She wasn’t alone.
“Here.”
Never before had she seen the old woman hobbling over to her from across the hut. She wore a modest black tunic and a head wrap to match. Without preamble, she pressed a large gourd into Koffi’s hands.
“Drink.”
It didn’t occur to Koffi to disobey. In fact, the minute her hands wrapped around the gourd’s hard shell and she heard that delicious slosh within, her mouth had turned as dry as paper. She’d never been thirstier in her life. The pain in her stomach subdued as she brought the gourd to her lips, even more so once she’d swallowed several mouthfuls of water. She sighed, relieved.
“Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
The old woman’s back was turned to her, but Koffi still heard the tension in her voice. “Don’t thank me yet, child. We must act quickly if you’re going to survive.”
Huh? The words didn’t make sense to Koffi. For good measure, she took another long swig of water. “What do you mean?” she asked tentatively. “I’m feeling better already. This water—”
“Is nothing more than a temporary balm.” The old woman was still not looking at her, and finally Koffi saw where the rattling had come from. She was shaking a small burlap purse clutched in her fist as hard as she could. “Your friend was right to bring you here, but as I told him just before, you are very ill. That water will not cure the true sickness.”
The true . . . ? Then, as though the words had conjured something, Koffi felt it. Her head began to pound mercilessly. It made that sharp pain in her stomach seem a trifle in comparison. The gourd slipped from her hands as she started to double over, but with surprising speed, the old woman was at her side again, holding her upright. Her eyes were pleading.
“Hold on, child,” she murmured. “Hold on just a little longer. They are coming.”
They? Even in her pain, Koffi found the words odd. The woman held her upright a second longer before turning back to the bag, and in her absence, Koffi looked around for the first time. The hut they occupied was larger and far grander than any at the Night Zoo. Every mud brick was precisely cut, and they were almost flawlessly masoned together around her, and the black, white, and green mudcloth rug beneath her was of a finer design than even the ones Baaz had back at the Night Zoo. It was an unquestionably beautiful place, but . . . She reflected on the old woman’s words.
They are coming.
“Who’s . . . coming?” Koffi’s words came out more slurred than she intended as her vision began to tilt and spin. A black fuzziness was growing in the corners of her eyes, making it harder and harder to see anything. As though looking through a tunnel, she watched as the old woman ambled back over to sit cross-legged directly opposite her again, this time holding a large black bowl between her knees. Curious, Koffi leaned forward slightly to see what was inside it, and what she saw made the hair on her arms stand on end.
“Are those—?”
“Your forearm.” The woman did not even give the collection of bones a cursory glance. Her eyes were locked on Koffi. “Now.”
Instinctively, Koffi recoiled, but the movement was too fast. The dizziness amplified tenfold as she clutched her left forearm—the one with her birthcut on it—protectively against her chest. “Why?”
The touch of impatience that crossed the old woman’s features was unmistakable this time. “If you wish to live,” she said forebodingly, “you will do it.”
If you wish to live. Simple words, but they recalled something old in Koffi’s memory. In the moment it took her to take another labored breath, she fell backward in time and remembered another day, another hut. The one she was thinking of was nothing like this one; it had been small, and dark, and dirty. No rattling had filled its mud-brick walls; instead, it had been filled with the sounds of people coughing, and spewing, and moaning in pain. The Night Zoo’s infirmary hut, the place Baaz sent sick and injured beastkeepers. Koffi remembered the crude beds of old hay, crammed together to fit as many people as possible inside, all suffering from the same mosquito virus. She remembered Baba lying on his own, withered, forehead shiny with sweat as fever ravaged what was left of him. Mama hadn’t cried the day Baba had died, but Koffi still remembered the fleeting look that’d crossed her face. It had been a look nothing short of agony, a look of unfathomable pain. That look had frightened her as a little girl, haunted her, and she’d never wanted to see it again. A kind of resolve suddenly built in her chest.
&
nbsp; If you wish to live.
She would not be the reason Mama felt that kind of pain ever again. She had to survive this, she had to go home to her mother and Jabir, and she’d do whatever it took to make sure of it. She waited a beat before meeting the old woman’s gaze again.
“All right. Fine.” She started to extend her arm but wasn’t quick enough. Like a striking snake, the woman snatched her arm with both gnarled hands, and Koffi didn’t see the blade until it was too late. She cried out as a stinging pain erupted in a spot just above her birthcut, and nausea crept up her throat when the old woman rotated her arm and held it directly above the bowl of bones. They watched together as one, two, three droplets of dark crimson splattered against them. The moment red touched white, the bones began to tremble.
“What—?” Koffi scrambled away from the bowl in horror, not caring as more blood dripped down her arm to stain the beautiful rug. “Wh-what’s happening?”
The old woman hadn’t moved from her spot, but laid the bloodied knife at her side. She held the bowl perfectly still in her lap as the bones within it trembled more and more violently. When she closed her eyes, her words were soft.
“It is in their hands now,” she murmured. “They will decide.”
Koffi had just opened her mouth to ask, for the second time, who they were, but no sooner had the words formed on her lips than she saw it: sparkling particles of light. At first, she thought it was a trick of her imagination, a by-product of the pain still throbbing in her head, but . . . no, this light was real. The particles floated in the air before her, glittering and twirling as though dancing to a song of their own. She didn’t just see them, she felt them, felt a kinship with them. Without warning, they grew larger, and an echoing boom reverberated through the air. There was a flash of white light, so bright Koffi had to shield her eyes. When she opened them again, she started. She was still sitting in the hut, and the old woman was still sitting a few feet away with her bowl of bloodied bones in her lap.
But the two of them were no longer alone.
Dark-skinned women sat around her on all sides, each clad in gleaming white linen. Some wore gold-beaded wraps atop their heads; others had hair coiffed into short Afros, Bantu knots, twists, and dreadlocks. It was unnerving; Koffi hadn’t heard their entrance, the hut’s flap certainly hadn’t opened, but here they were, at least twenty of them. They varied in age—several of the women had cottony white hair, while others looked to be no older than her mother—but all of them shared a sameness she couldn’t place. It wasn’t because of the way they looked or because their white clothes were the same; there was something else. Finally, Koffi realized what it was. Each of the women was staring at her with an identical kind of wonder, as though they were just as amazed to see her as she was to see them.
“She’s gotten so big,” one of the younger-looking women whispered to her neighbor. “Goodness, they grow fast.”
Koffi’s mouth fell open. The younger woman had not only spoken in Zamani, but in her own dialect; she was a Gede like her. She stared around the circle, marveling. Were they all Gede? She hoped so. Never in her life had she seen even one of her own people with visible wealth, let alone several. These women carried themselves like queens, chins jutted out defiantly and eyes blazing with confidence, with power. She’d never seen anything like them before.
“Who are—?”
Abruptly, one of the women stood, and Koffi shut her mouth. There was no explicable way she knew it, but she sensed this woman was the leader of this peculiar group, its matriarch. All other eyes went to her, and the other women stilled. Strings of cowrie shells were tied to the wooden staff she held in her varicose-veined hands, and she leaned on it with each step as she approached. A few feet before Koffi, she stopped to stand over her. Unlike the others, her hair was shorn clean from her head, her dress long and flowing like a river’s waves. When she spoke, her voice was impossibly sonorous.
“This one has given blood on the old bones.” The bald woman’s words seemed to hum through the tent. “She has called to us, and she is in need of our assistance.”
Koffi didn’t understand what she meant, but it seemed the women around her did. They began to murmur among themselves, casting curious eyes her way and whispering behind their hands.
“We will help her.” The bald woman made the declaration with a tone of finality. “Rise.”
It was one simple word, spoken softly, but at once every woman in the circle obeyed, getting to their feet. For her part, Koffi stayed seated. She wasn’t sure why, but something kept her rooted to the floor as the white-clad women towered over her, watching.
Then, they began to sing.
It started low and wavering, like a fula flute’s careful notes, before it grew. Like the particles of light Koffi had seen before, she felt the nameless song’s movement in the air, notes of a song she could not name but knew. She held her breath as its octaves rose, the tune climbing higher and higher until it reached an impossible crescendo. Something powerful moved through her body, and suddenly the pain that had resided in it vanished. She felt a peculiar sensation on her face, and it wasn’t until she touched her own cheeks that she realized they were wet with tears. The white-clad women finished their song, and the bald woman knelt so that her gaze was level with Koffi’s.
“Shed no tears, child,” she murmured. “We are with you, always.”
There was another flash of light then, so luminous Koffi turned away. When it faded, the bald old woman who’d been there was gone, as were the others from the circle. The hut felt oddly empty in their sudden absence. An immeasurable collection of seconds passed before Koffi spoke, awed.
“They . . . healed me.”
“Of course they did. I expected nothing less.”
Koffi looked up. She’d entirely forgotten about the first old woman. In her black attire, she was a stark contrast to the white-clad ones who’d just been there, but a smile touched her withered face. Koffi thought, in some strange way, she even looked younger.
“Where did they go?” Koffi stood, actually looking around the hut. “And why did they help me?”
The old woman did not rise. “It is not my place to answer your first question,” she said sadly. “As to the matter of why your foremothers healed you? Darajas look after their own, even when they have passed on. Their connection to you is born from an old, almost forgotten magic, but not one that is entirely lost.”
The words settled on Koffi like dust, each layering its own kind of understanding.
“You knew,” she whispered. “You knew that I had magic?”
“From the moment I saw your handsome friend carrying you.” The old woman smiled. “When you have lived for as long as I have, you learn what to look for.”
Koffi was massaging her temples, still trying to make sense of the words, when abruptly, she noticed something. The cut that had been sliced across her forearm was . . . gone. The skin had stitched back together, as seamlessly as though there’d never been a cut there at all. She looked up, confused.
“I don’t understand.”
The old woman folded her hands. “You ate of the umdhlebi tree without its consent,” she explained gently. “The poison in its fruit is not like others of this jungle. It takes a tremendous power to expel something like that from a mortal body. What I just did is called a summoning, a ritual that allows those still tethered to this mortal world to call on those who are free from it.” She gave Koffi a meaningful look. “You gave blood, and so you summoned those who share that blood. You called on your foremothers, and they answered.”
“My . . . foremothers,” Koffi repeated the word slowly. “As in, my ancestors? Those women were . . . related to me?”
“Some more directly than others, but yes.” The old woman nodded in confirmation. “The specific connection that summons them is ethereal, a bond of blood, bone, and soul.”
Ko
ffi stared at her, letting the gravity of the revelation sink in. “The power that my foremothers used to heal me,” she asked, “I have that same power too now, don’t I?”
The old woman smiled. “You’ve always had that power, child. If your foremothers have done anything, they’ve merely further awakened it.”
“I feel it.” Koffi stared at her arms and legs. They looked the same as they always had, but warmth was traveling to them. It stretched into the tips of her fingers and all the way to her toes until it felt as though she’d been sitting in the sun for hours. It was marvelous but terrifying. “I’ve felt it for a little while in fleeting moments, but . . . it’s like it’s moving through me all the time, constantly.”
“As it should,” said the old woman. “As it always should, for a true daraja.”
Daraja. Koffi recognized that word. The first time she’d heard it, she’d been in the marketplace. It had been the first time she’d learned that magic was real, that it was something she had and something that could change her life. She hadn’t asked that old lady in Lkossa’s marketplace—a different old woman from the one before her—for help or more information, but she wouldn’t make that mistake twice.
“I want to learn,” she said in earnest. “I want to learn how to use my power properly.” She swallowed. “Can you teach me?”
The old woman regarded her for several seconds, as though evaluating her, before nodding in acquiescence. “Yes, child,” she whispered. “I believe fate has deemed that I am meant to do so, and so I will.” She stood and reached behind her head to begin untying her black head wrap. Koffi rose too.
“Really?” She almost couldn’t believe it. “You mean, you’ll teach me everything? About magic, and how to use it?”
“Yes, child.” The old woman threw her a look touched by a hint of amusement. “I will teach you what I can. But the first thing to know is that your ancestors never called what you can do magic.”
Koffi frowned. “They didn’t?”