David Mogo Godhunter

by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

  And because they cannot find me or head off any of the attacks, they all go straight into hiding. Onipede smuggles them into a small safe house in Ikoyi, where they regroup, to strategize, to see if they can get word about my capture. They have nothing, and Papa Udi remains restless, believes I cannot have given up so easily. So they break up: Onipede looks for me near the State House, while Payu and Fati/Ibeji try to track me from Cardoso House.

  They do not see Femi Onipede again, because after two days their Cardoso House trail leads them to a lone fisherman on an inland waterway, who says he hears of a godhunter who was in the Makoko Community. There, most people they meet, including the Baálẹ̀, tell them they know nothing of the sort. But then a young boy corners them and points out that I went that-a-way (Hafiz!), and they follow the path in a zig-zag manner, spending days on the road and sleeping in abandoned houses, trying to see exactly where I went. After a while, it becomes clearer: Payu has heard there is a community of wizards in Oshodi and believes I must be heading there for help, and they make haste for the Arena, only to find it up in smoke.

  They tell this part of the story in hushed voices. Most of the people at the Arena are dead, or dying. Papa Udi wanted to stay and help, and Fati too, but Ibeji insisted little could be done, so they focused on finding me. One of the militants, gravely injured, told them I escaped with Shonuga in the direction of the airport. They followed the route on foot, and here they were.

  PAPA UDI HAS aged a few years since I last saw him. His skin is dry, cracked, ready to peel off at the touch. His head seems completely bald now, and he speaks with a husk in his throat, like he is continually parched. He has lost his usual resist-dye àdìrẹ̀ buba-and-sokoto or khaki up-and-down, resorting to joggers and a women’s sweatshirt with P!nk written in front.

  Fati looks surprisingly rotund, fresh, as if she’s been away to a fattening room. I’m not quite sure if it’s the gods within her protecting their vessel from deterioration. She is dressed similarly, in trainers rather than Papa Udi’s loafers, and in jeans and a tank top. They look like they robbed a high-end sports store (or their Ikoyi safe house was a high-end sports store), and Fati particularly looks like an American teenager, which I’m unable to reconcile with the girl I met last year.

  Ibeji are still Ibeji: Taiwo is still annoying, and Kehinde is still a pain in the ass.

  “Papa Odivwiri,” Shonuga says, coming from behind me to bend a knee slightly in front of Payu. It takes me a while to remember she is still here, that she used to be his student, and that Papa Udi still has a surname.

  Papa Udi squints in the darkness, struggling to understand who she is and where he knows her from, and then Fati puts forth her hand and opens her mouth and speaks a word in a language akin to the one Sango spoke at Cardoso House, and a ball of light appears in her hand.

  “What the fuck?” I say, as Shonuga backs up, quickly. “When did you learn to do that?”

  Fati cocks her head and smiles. Kehinde says: “About time she started learning about these little things. Useful if we ran into the Fiery Ones during our endeavours, yes?” She holds the light for a few seconds, and then it goes out.

  “I remember you,” Papa Udi says now, squinting into Shonuga’s face. “You follow come with my LASPAC posting one time.”

  “Yessir,” Shonuga says, reverence in her eyes.

  “Thank you,” Papa Udi says. “Like say you no help am…” He motions in my direction.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I realise I never got to say ‘thank you.’”

  Shonuga looks sheepish, a look that doesn’t suit her one bit, while at the same time managing to look broody. Sometimes, I imagine her as a little girl trapped in a middle-aged woman’s body.

  “The Arena,” she says to them. “You passed there?”

  Papa Udi and Fatoumata look at each other. Fati looks down and says nothing.

  “Are they alive?” Shonuga sounds desperate for any news, any sliver of hope.

  “Sorry,” Papa Udi says.

  “Ugh, you humans,” Fati says, Kehinde talking. “Always holding back.” She looks Shonuga in the eye. “They’re all dead. All of them. Not a single person is alive. The whole place is destroyed. Even the person who pointed us here? Dead.”

  Shonuga opens her mouth, then turns about and walks away, beating her fists into the wind.

  Papa Udi gives Fati a stinky eye.

  “What?” Kehinde says. “I just told her the truth.”

  “You for no talk am like that,” Papa Udi says. “Wise god my bumbum.”

  We watch Shonuga lead the horse away, speaking to him, petting him, her own therapy of sorts. I think of Shonekan, a fine man who gave himself up for a cause that seems to be near useless now. The thought places a heaviness on my heart; I shake it off and turn to Fati.

  “Amúnáwá. Tell me what you know about it.”

  Fati’s reaction is visible awe. “Where did you hear that name?” Taiwo asks.

  “Olokun,” I say. “At Makoko. They told me I would find it here.”

  Fati cocks her head. “Really.” Taiwo’s sarcasm.

  “Well, not here, technically. They told me some stuff we’ve been trying to interpret and it led us here, but... look, the story is long, but the short form is I didn’t find jack here, so tell me what you know.”

  Of course Taiwo already knows about this. Of course he tells me the exact same thing Olokun has already said, almost as if they both read it from the same textbook: where iron lives, fire smothered by bone, etc, etc.

  “Yes, yes, heard all that, but what does it mean?”

  Fati looks taken aback. “You mean you don’t know?” Taiwo asks.

  “Well, we guessed where iron lives means here, the airport because, you know, airplanes are metal and are housed here? But of course, we haven’t found anything else relating to fire, which we thought was going to be a salamander because of the stories in the history books and whatnot, so.”

  Fati frowns. “I’m confused,” Kehinde says. “That is what you came up with?”

  “Yes? And not without effort, together and individually. I had a professor and everything.”

  She looks at me, flabbergasted, then begins to laugh. A duality of cackles; both gods are really having all the fun of it.

  “Wow,” Kehinde says. “Just when I thought you couldn’t be dumber, you prove me wrong. Wow.”

  I roll my eyes. “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “Orisha ’daji,” Taiwo says, the patronizing teacher tone back in his voice. “Olokun wasn’t talking about the airport, or a salamander, or a place, or any other thing.”

  I remain quiet, waiting for the bombshell.

  “Na you,” Papa Udi says finally. “Na you be Amúnáwá.”

  SO, HERE’S WHY I’m stupid, Ibeji tell me:

  I should’ve known that iron and fire were references to war and chaos, the tools of destruction. Death and destruction follow everywhere you go was not just a statement of fact or history: it was also prophecy.

  I am where iron lives. I am iron and fire because I descend from a god of war, which Taiwo has since told me my mother is. My refusal to come to terms with this has caused my fire to be smothered by stone, to be tied up in my physical and become impossible to access or wield. I am my own biggest obstacle.

  And to become Anumowa, I must dig deep into myself, into my bones, free that fire from within, and use it. I cannot burn if I do not first become formless and non-rigid, become open, like smoke.

  I PACE THE tarmac with my hands akimbo, thinking about everything Ibeji have told me. Payu and Fati watch me silently, sometimes whispering between themselves. For a minute, I marvel at how close they have become, at how much of a family we have become, and then it hits me that this is what they mean: that I am too human, too rigid, too restricted, too wrapped up inside my own head to understand that I am bigger than what I think I am, and all I have to do is to accept it, accept the divinity within me and make it my one true identity.

  T
o overpower a god, I have to become one.

  I return to Ibeji.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’m ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Kehinde asks.

  “To become Amúnáwá.”

  Fati facepalms. “David, David, David,” Taiwo says. “You cannot become Amúnáwá now. You have spent years burying your godessence, placing layer upon layer upon it. To unearth it like that will require a, uhm, a sort of—”

  “Kaboom,” Papa Udi says.

  “Explosion, yes,” Taiwo says. “A shattering.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the attack,” Kehinde says. “Did you feel anything after you got struck by all that power?”

  The vision. “Yes. I saw my mother in a vision. She was telling me something.”

  “Well, that is a good place to start,” Taiwo says. “Anything since then?”

  “Nope,” I say. “Dry as a husk. In fact, my esper went away for a while. I couldn’t do anything.”

  “But something is different now, isn’t it?” Kehinde says. “We felt you a reaching out from a long way away. It was how we knew where you were.”

  “If you can get another hit like that,” Taiwo is saying, “you might be able to even take this power and turn it. Use it, wield it against the owner.”

  “Wait, wait,” I say. “Am I hearing what you’re saying correctly? When Sango finds us here, which he will, like any time now since my esper has dropped a Google Maps pin on our heads, I will have to—what, let him strike me with lightning or something? So that I may or may not be able to take this power of his lightning and use it against him?”

  “Precisely,” says Taiwo.

  “Then make we fight am,” Shonuga says suddenly behind us. We turn around at once. Her face is set, angry.

  “If we have a weapon, then we must strike first,” she says. “Make him come. We fight him here, on our own terms, on our own ground.”

  The four of us look at one another, hold our eyes in the dark, giving room for the plan.

  “This could to be our one chance.” Kehinde breaks the silence. “Best not to ruin it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  CALLING SANGO IS not a problem. Seeing as my esper has become a telecoms network, all I have to do is—under the incessant chants of Taiwo and Kehinde to push, push, push—extend my esper as far away as past the whole airport, in a radius almost reaching the Arena. Might’ve even gone further if I didn’t promptly collapse in exhaustion, retching continuously.

  Cue a shaken head by Ibeji.

  Now we stand, a small army of us five, horse included, at the entrance to the airport, awaiting Sango’s arrival. Intermittently, I push out my esper to see if I can catch anything. Luckily for me, Papa Udi has seen fit to bring with him a new War Kit—a small Nike sports bag in which he has managed to assemble an assortment of recipes and a couple of implements done up with some rituals, all sourced from the LASPAC men at Ikoyi. One of these, a worn machete with motor tyre rubber wound about the handle, is what I get to ward off a possible first wave of attacks. Shonuga, lacking her firearms, has to make do with a similar blade, but hers is only a long knife, something quite similar to those that mallams use in selling suya barbecue. Papa Udi himself, diversion specialist, only requires a couple of recipes like water bombs (actually, ebo), as well as one or two powders I’m not quite familiar with. Fati and Ibeji get nothing because they don’t need any.

  Sango doesn’t take long. Soon, I catch the searing signature of an orisha, and I don’t have to linger much on it to know it’s Sango. I’m not sure if when I got struck, he left some of himself in me, but the Lichtenberg figures on my chest sing in the same way my collarbone does, and that’s how I know.

  Downside, however, is that I can sense nothing else, though I’m a hundred percent certain that shadow horde of his is present too.

  “He’s here,” I say to the group.

  “Move,” Shonuga says.

  I get on the horse. Aburo, of course, does not approve of me riding him without Shonuga there, but she pats him and whispers a few words and the horse snorts and steadies. I have him step away from the group and into the shadows, where I can watch without being easily seen.

  Then Papa Udi drops salt in a circle, rounding himself and everyone else off within a ward, speaking quickly, writing quickly in the salt with his fingertip, drawing the Nsibidi symbols. As he speaks, clouds begin to gather, and then the first few rumbles of thunder begin, and beneath the clouds, flashes of light jump and snap.

  Then a figure emerges from a cloud of blackness in front of us.

  Sango glides forward on a trail of lightning, like a cape of silvery-blue light, his robes wreathed in never-burning white fire. His thick muscles of translucent godskin ripple, the heavy stench of kola-nut hitting us. His superimposed hammerhead statue with the cross-hatched beard frowns down on us in the same way Sango himself does, twirling his thunderstone axe, the àshẹ in his eyes boring holes in our chests.

  Papa Udi speaks quicker, quicker, and then Shonuga is down on her knees next to him, helping, drawing more and more symbols, hustling up the ward. Fati and Ibeji ready themselves, beating and singing the beginnings of a charm into form.

  Then Sango speaks a command, and out of the murkiness behind him spills a mass darker than nightfall, gunning for us, the shadows hooting in that ululation between victory and pain.

  The first ones reach the edge of the salt circle just as Shonuga writes the last Nsibidi symbol, and there’s a pop as the ward is sealed, and the shadows smack against it. Shonuga slashes at the shadows with her long knife and they howl and collapse to the ground. The next set come, and Ibeji chant a charm into form and slam it against the group, sweeping them away.

  A crowd of shadows closes over the ward and soon I can no longer see any of the three, surrounded by the reaching, howling shadows, the odd falling shadow the only assurance that my friends are still alive and kicking.

  I turn my attention to Sango. True to word, he is advancing directly for me, riding the lightning like a ghost.

  I turn and goad Aburo into a gallop, heading for the runway. Thunder rumbles overhead and lightning crackles, a bolt of light flashes past me and heats up the right of my face. My collarbone buzzes ceaselessly. I glance back and see the orisha following me, then duck my head and drive the horse.

  The runway opens up ahead of me as I round the corner. I run Aburo into the middle, dismount and slap the horse on his hind quarters. He neighs aloud, then gives off in chase of nothing.

  I turn around.

  Sango stands before me, his robes caressed by silver-blue, his axe gleaming. His eyes, as fiery as Ajala’s last year. He lifts the axe, points it at me, and in a voice like many cannons, speaks a word.

  I open my mouth, my body, my spirit, my self.

  The lightning hits me like a thousand hot knives, a thousand wounds doused in boiling water, leaking magma. The strike is one and many, like giant pinpricks, shaking my body like a leaf in the harmattan wind. I feel them travel through my nervous system, hit every nerve ending in my body, and exit my mouth in a throat-rending scream.

  I reach around inside myself for my esper, struggling to find it. It’s like searching for a pin in gravel on a dark night, buried under all the pain, cowering under the hurt.

  The lightning ceases, and my knees give way. I fall.

  Sango approaches, slowly, silently, his feet barely touching the ground. Shadow howls fill the background, the eerie death-heralding ululation drowning out every other sound of life in the airport.

  “How you live?” he is saying in Yoruba, his voice like a car revving. “How you no die?”

  I struggle to my knees, breathing heavily, spittle dangling from my lower lip to the ground. My tongue is swollen, a washcloth in my mouth, tasting like I ate a spoon. My limbs are lead, my abdomen tight like my intestines have worked themselves into knots.

  “How you no die?”

  I reach in again, sense my esper beneath the pa
in. I plunge deeper, deeper into the murk and grasp it, but before I can pull it out, Sango lifts his axe again and points it at me.

  Thunder rumbles.

  Another jolt of pain racks my body, numbing my limbs completely. My neck is stiff, my spine curved into place. I feel the beginnings of a burn on my back, the nape of my neck. My head hurts, my brain going into overdrive.

  The pain ceases as I fall on my back, my face to the sky. Wisps of smoke rise above me, smelling of singed fabric. I find myself blinking, of all things thinking, Why do I listen to gods? Why do I listen to anyone?

  Sango appears above me, a crackling colossus, his face like an angel in a graveyard.

  “You’re supposed to fear,” he says in Yoruba. “Courage without wisdom is foolishness, don’t you know?”

  “Why—?” I cough, the jerks sending pain ripples along my body. “Why—why are you doing this?”

  Sango cocks his head.

  “You no know?” he says, matching my English. He goes down on one knee, brings his face closer. “Me and Aganju, we have work to finish here. You’re spoiling it. We must finish, whatever the cost.”

  “But why?”

  Sango seems to be confused, as if he’s never thought of it before. Then angry, as if I’m forcing him to think of something he doesn’t want to.

  “Because you people think you’re something,” he says, waving his axe over me. “We can’t go back, you know? Orun is gone. We must make new home here. But you people make it difficult, running around like cockroaches, refusing to accept your limitations. You want to control us, control things bigger than yourselves. You must understand, you people deserve to be corralled, and those who refuse, put down. You, most of all.”

  He rises now, points his axe at my nose, a glint of finality in his eye.

  “I don’t know why my brother say you’re special,” he says. “War god, my foot.”

  I see the lightning leave the axe. I smell the metal in the air, feel the heat of the silver fire. I close my eyes, breathe, clench my esper in my grip, his last word washing over me: