I don’t go into the overhead luggage yet; I just sit in first class and let my thoughts settle. I’m there for two, three hours before I let out a deep sigh and think: Fine.
I descend the airplane. It’s pitch black, but I know where to go already. I don’t even need to feel for the hangar door as I go around it.
Outside, there’s a fire-hot icy signature burning a few yards from my door.
“I have questions,” I say, moving closer.
“Good,” my mother says. “Let’s take a walk.”
GROWING UP NIGERIAN, nights without lights are not new to me. Even before The Falling, the Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria never provided power beyond a few hours a day. But the nights since The Falling have been extra dark, extra-stocked on bad promises. Losing the occasional warmth of Cardoso House has further adjusted my eyes to the darkness; I have become part of it, as it has become a part of me.
My mother and I walk down the runway in this stifling darkness, wrapped around us like a blanket. Above, there are stars, a rare occurrence these days. I keep my eyes on them as my feet scrape on the tarmac.
“I want to know why you left,” I say. “I want to know why you abandoned me and didn’t come back, why you kept teasing me with those visions.”
Even in this dark of night, I sense Ogun’s eyes of steel on me.
“I’m sorry, David,” she says, finally using my earthly name. “I know that’s not enough, and nothing I say or do will ever be, but I’m sorry. But I want you to know that if I had to do it again, I would do the exact same thing.”
“Eh-ehn?”
“You do not understand what I had to protect you from,” she says, “and still must. I’m sure the twins already told you what some pantheons do to people like you, and gods like me, when they find out. And they always do. I had to keep you safe, keep us safe.”
“And what pantheon is this?”
“All of them,” she says resignedly. “I, too, have suffered a shared world like you. From my first taste of existence, I was brought forth to be shared between pantheons. One of them is Orun, of course, that’s why the twins know and recognise me. But I have also been claimed by several others, from the Loa to the Vodun to the Candomblé. The Bini people of Edo consider me fully theirs, and their Erimwin Nohuaren don’t hesitate to remind me of that every time. That is how I even met Aziza, from when the pantheon was still one with the people of the Delta.”
Her feet slow for a second. “It might seem glorious to anyone that so many pantheons claim me as theirs, but what you might not understand is how that means I belong to no one and I am welcome nowhere. I have existed in the interstices for a long time, and I have only longed for something of my own. And this is why I sought to make that happen.”
I stop and stare at her, my mouth open.
“Selfish, yes, I know now, in retrospect. I unwittingly bestowed upon you the very thing I hated, the burden of struggling to find a place, torn between allegiances, doomed to live a life filled with confusion. This is why I say I am sorry.”
We walk for a bit. The night is full of the sounds of crickets and frogs, and there are one or two rustles in the grass, but aside that it’s all stillness.
“So, let me guess. My father isn’t anything special to talk about, then?”
“No,” Ogun says. “He was a pitiful man, a drunkard. I’m not sorry to say I picked him because brute strength appealed to me then. I simply thought it’ll be nice for you to have, that it could come in handy in the future. Besides”—she looks at me—“I wanted to know I had someone to take over who I am if I’m no longer… here.”
“To become god of war?”
“If you put it like that.”
“I don’t want to be your god of war.”
She cocks her head. “But if you think about it closely, David, you already are.”
When we walk a little again, I say: “David is just some name Papa Udi gave me, right? I’ve heard you call my True Name.”
“And never been able to remember it, right?” She chuckles. “Even I cannot remember it until the exact moment when I want to say it; I forget it right afterwards. There are unique beings in Edo called the Oboihoi—beings of memory and divination, who answer only to their supreme keeper. I was able to convince them to do this for me. It was they who shaved my head, and as long as I have no hair, I can never remember your name, and neither can you. If you or I keep it in memory, then that memory can be attacked; if your True Name were known, you and I would’ve been discovered a long time ago. Imagine all those pantheons looking for you, believing that their own god of war created an abomination. It would’ve been madness. We would not have survived as we did.”
“Is that why you’ve kept this… glamour?”
“Unflattering, isn’t it?” She snickers. “Sadly, no. I have fought many wars, my son. These wars have taken their toll on me, they have made me old and battered. I am weary now, and since I found the joy in creating something, for a long time I have no longer cared about destroying things. This form you see me in? This is who I truly am, a god who wants only to savour everything. I long since abandoned the taste for war, for blood, for iron, for fire. I am no longer that god, David.”
“Wow,” I say, almost laughing at myself. “So, you appeared all the way here like a badass, like everything is okay now because the god of war is here to protect us, and now you’re now telling me you don’t even want to fight?”
“No,” she says. “I didn’t come here to fight Aganju at all. I came here to help you fight him.”
Now I do laugh, a derisive, dry thing that punctures the night’s stillness. I’m not even sure why I’m laughing, but when I’m done, I realise it’s because she is right, and I’m going to have to do this shit after all because, point anybody for here whey go fit face Aganju, right?
“All this time, I have watched you. I have lived in echo realms, in the spaces between, keeping you from recognition of who you were. During the wars, Obatala put cloaks around the realms, and I’ve been trapped in those in-between spaces since. That’s why you could see me only in trances, in dreams and visions. Those were the only places I could reach you.
“Then, after you killed Sango, Aganju split the cloaks open, and suddenly I was free again to return. This is why I’m here.”
“You don’t sound so excited about that.”
“No,” she says. “Do you know why Obatala put those cloaks?”
“To prevent the outcast gods from returning to Orun?”
“Exactly. Now that there is no more Orun, where do you think most of the castaway gods have come to?”
I sigh. “So, what do we do now?”
“Aganju knows we’re here,” my mother says. “You killed his brother, and you have become a firebringer. He knows you’re a threat to his plans to establish his own version of Orun here in Lagos. He is going to come for you.”
“Then let him come,” I say, gritting my teeth. “I’m ready for him.”
“Don’t be foolish,” she says. “Aganju is not Sango. He is a cunning, intelligent god. He will not underestimate you. And he is no longer alone. He has freed many gods who have joined with him. Like Sango’s sisters: Oba, Oya and Osun. They are just as notorious as their brother. They will finish you off at his command.” She draws a breath, as though steeling herself. “David, we must prepare to go to war.”
She stops and waves her hand. Suddenly, she’s holding two things: a thick chain of heavy iron and a bolo machete with gold and silver worked into the grip. The iron gleams even in the dark, reflects the stars, the weapons alight with the fire of the gods, the àshẹ of the divine.
“I was the god of war, my son,” she says. “But your time is now. This mantle belongs to you now, and so do these.”
“No, mother,” I’m saying, shaking my head, stepping back. “No. I’m not ready. I can’t do this.”
“No, you cannot do it alone,” she says, moving closer to me. “This is why I have returned. I am here f
or you now. We will do it together. You have the twin orishas of all abundance. You have two wizards with you, and you have the humans of Lagos behind you. You, David, have gone in the ashes and arisen a firebringer. You are iron and war and blood and chaos. You will lead us to war. You will lead us to victory. You will save us and this part of the world.”
She places the weapons in my hands. They are cool, then hot, the same feeling I get when I sense an orisha. They are heavy, but do not feel so. They feel natural in my hands, like something I’ve been missing all along and did not know. They feel like a part of me has returned.
I squeeze the iron in my hands, and the godessence within me roils, gurgles, blazes in response.
Shit.
I’m the fucking god of war now, dammit.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
THE FIRST THING they make me do as the god of war is draw blood. They are Ogun and Ibeji, and the blood is mine. Taiwo calls it activation, says I need to build a connection with my weapons. So Kehinde cuts me with an ebo-tinged knife and smears my blood all over the chain and machete. She tells me I will need to do this every time, that there must be blood on my weapons, either mine or others’. She says I am at the height of my power when I have drawn blood. I look to my mother, who nods in confirmation.
The first time I do it, my insides boil. I’m like a worm wriggling in salt, with the pain of almost bursting, of power that feels like it will consume me any second. The weapons themselves are difficult to hold once charged with blood, becoming hotter and hotter until I have to drop them. I push my godessence into my hands to try to cancel out the heat, but before I know it, my fire has ignited the weapons, and I feel like I have taken cocaine and all my nerve endings and pleasure centres are activated, and it is the most pleasant thing I have felt in ages, but also the strongest need to murder that I’ve ever felt, so that I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.
I vomit once it is over. I also realise I have ejaculated into my trousers. My mother regards me without expression, but Taiwo and Kehinde let me have it, laughing their heads off, pointing at my crotch and threatening to share stories about it at the bonfire.
My days are split three ways here on out. Taiwo takes me first in the mornings, sitting on abandoned boxes in my hangar, which I’ve now opened up to everyone. Fati likes to hang around in the plane, and she usually comes with Taiwo in the mornings.
Taiwo provides me with all the details of history, information about pantheons and gods, and carefully breaks down my complicated self to me.
“See, first you were astride a threshold, right?” he says. “Neither god nor man, but both. Then opening up the well of fire in your fight with Sango shifted your godessence closer to the divine. With these”—he taps my weapons—“each battle you fight will take something of what you currently are and replace it with the god within.”
“Hmm.”
“War is blood, fire and iron, and you are all three,” he says, animated, excited to be teaching. “You bleed, and that makes your connection stronger. You have unlocked the fire within, and as you connect to iron through blood, you become unstoppable.”
Afternoons are for Kehinde, Femi and Shonuga. Kehinde (and sometimes Ogun, when she’s in the mood) teaches me how to reach into myself and use my fire. She teaches me to channel it into different parts of my body, to use it as a weapon. She takes me through her own bodybeats, showing me how she channels them into her arms and voice and weaves them into charms. After failing spectacularly for the best part of three days (burning off half my eyebrows and my choicest clothes), we settle on channelling out of my hands only. She shows me how to shoot it out of my palms, how to pull it out in the middle of a fistfight, how to use it as a decoy or to dissuade an attacker, how to propel myself above the ground like a jet engine. We practise all this out on the runway, and everyone stays away.
Some afternoons, Femi and Shonuga bring over the airport force they’re grooming and we train together. More people have come to our little settlement since, some with weapons. Along with the few LASPAC guys who arrived with Femi, the airport force is growing. There are lots of skilled people now: ex-servicemen, former vigilantes, former policemen (they begged me for these; I almost sent them back again). There are a few teenagers hardened by the streets and a few thugs who joined more reluctantly, having never been bossed before.
We practise shooting and combat and formations, Femi and Shonuga putting all their years of experience into us. Femi draws the awe of the group every time she picks up a rifle, hitting tin can targets further than anyone, even against the wind. Once, the wind knocked over her target, and she hit it as it fell.
Shonuga is more into close combat, teaching us how to use our ebo-tinged weapons toe-to-toe. In the heat of the sweltering sun, our backs glistening with sweat, we duck and swipe and swivel and thrust and jump and kick and duck.
Fati joins us in these sessions, always next to Taiwo, who comes just to humour her. The two have developed a weird relationship, where Taiwo just talks and Fati just listens. I see how being unable to make words for so long could make it feel like work to make them now. Fati is full of one-liners, but I only really see her animated out on the runways. Here, her face is set, fierce, focused. She yells when she kicks, when she punches, when she shoots. She yells only then.
In the evenings, I sit with Papa Udi, while he makes ebo and other recipes, amulets and rituals. Papa Udi is always out all day, scavenging for materials, then returns in the evening to select the best to dice, grind, mix. On the days the force isn’t training, Shonuga goes with him, with her gun. Papa Udi doesn’t like it, but she lies to him that she’s also interested in re-awakening her wizardry training, and that lightens the man up.
Much later, we realise doing all these by the fire unsettles a lot of the community who aren’t familiar with his wizardry and otherworldliness, so we make our own special fires elsewhere.
The community grows into something bigger than us. The whole of the airport seems to be occupied now, including the old domestic terminal; new arrivals cleaned out that portion a few days ago and settled there. Femi and Shonuga have to work overtime to keep the peace, but the airport force does its job well. My mother goes sometimes, a god presence that does its job just by appearing. The biggest culprits are the former street gangs who have already forgotten their fight for survival and want to try their hands at some bullying.
But the biggest vices here cannot be solved by gods. There are petty quarrels and personal feuds that involve things like people rubbing shit into other people’s belongings. People are always stealing stuff, with food, water, clothing and soap at the top of the list. People are always fighting and need to be broken up. People are always hungry and irritated and ready to start something. I ask Shonuga how she dealt with all this at the Arena, and she replied, “We had food and separate quarters, oga. We didn’t need to.”
But for the most part, a certain sense of belonging has settled into the airport community, the way one lives in a big house with family members whom they dislike, but know they must live with anyway. Despite the drama, most people care for one another in a way that says, I hate you, but I hate the gods who took my life more, and that is just fine enough for me.
But peace and contentment don’t last long in Lagos.
One day, my mother calls me into the plane and tells me we need to leave the airport.
“WHY?”
For the first time since my mother has arrived, her face shows some other emotion than her usual faint smile. Today, her brows are furrowed in concentration. This is the first mark I’ve seen of the real Ogun.
“I’ve been keeping my ears to the ground on Aganju and his band,” she says, “following the gods he’s been able to convince to join his cause.”
I don’t need to ask what his ‘cause’ is. As Taiwo says, they just want to go home, right? I also have not seen my mother leave the airport in days, but I don’t ask how she’s getting this information because she’s the O
gun after all.
“And?”
“He has made himself some very powerful allies,” she says. “Allies that are capable of wiping everyone here off in one go.”
“And our response is to run?” It sounds so weird coming from her since, last time I checked, she used to be the god of war.
“No,” she says. “But whatever we’re doing here will not be enough. I hear he has started expanding into the neighbouring states in the west. Their governments sent forces against him, and he decimated them, every single one. He’s expanding his base, making more space for his conquest. It’s no longer a question of your precious Lagos now, it’s everyone. And it’s only a matter of time before he turns his sights back this way.”
“We will be ready,” I say. “I will be ready for him.”
She tut-tuts. “Few weeks as a god of war and your blood already boils.”
“As it should. We thrive on chaos, remember?” This is the first time I’ve used the collective to describe my mother and me. The word tastes strange.
“Yes, but Sango’s sisters are leading the army.”
Taiwo has described Orun’s pantheon tree to me and often mentioned Sango’s three sisters, but nothing about why they deserve attention.
“What’s so special about them?”
“A lot.” I’ve never seen my mother look this serious. “Many of your people down here will know them as Sango’s ‘wives’ from the folklore they’ve passed down. But the stories have been downplayed, made them softer. Don’t be deceived by that; their ferocity knows no bounds. Sango was slow, methodical, brutish and arrogant. His sisters are fierce and intelligent and they do not waste time asking questions. They will kill you before you can draw breath.”
David Mogo Godhunter Page 20