David Mogo Godhunter

by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

  He puts a stem in his mouth and begins to chew. He offers me one, for the first time ever. I’m about to decline, then decide last minute that I’d like him to keep opening up, so I take the stem and roll it around in my mouth without biting. It’s tasteless, exactly like a fresh stem should be.

  “When them hear say I survive, them come for me. Them for roast me alive like say I no run.”

  I watch him tell the story without emotion, as if he’s spent so many years burying what he should feel that he no longer knows what that is. I realised why he was so incensed with Ajala—the man’s ebullience, his self-destruction must’ve reminded him too much of his own younger self—and I wonder the kind of trauma the burning of Cardoso House must’ve brought back to him. I wonder if this is why he decided to live apart from everyone else—did he fear himself too much?

  “And Aziza left you after this,” I complete for him.

  “Yes. He say him no fit give him power to person whey go use am destroy. I no know whether Isiokolo find new Odibo later, but I no hear from Aziza again. Until you.”

  I wonder how much of my life was about him making reparation to Aziza, to his lost family and town, to himself. I wonder if he’s now found what he’s been looking for.

  Papa Udi rises. Almost everyone is up now, having something to offer Ogun. I rise too, looking at my mother, who stands behind the fire, her face back to her permanent faint smile. She looks across the crowd at me, and winks.

  Chapter Thirty

  OUR NEXT TARGET meets us at the airport runway in the wee hours of morning, away from the prying eyes of the terminal. Aziza pulls out his chalk, draws a line on the tarmac, speaks some words in another arcane godtongue, then steps across it and is gone. We wait one, two, three minutes, then he reappears on our side of the line. And someone is with him.

  Eshu is the picture of the biblical angel. His skin is so fair it’s almost white, and his hair is albinism-white, in large kinky curls. Even his eyebrows are white. And everything combines to make the àshẹ in his eyes so bright you almost have to squint when you look at his face. Radiant is the word. He is dressed in an all-white robe without a speck of dust, cinched around the waist with a golden belt. His feet are bare and unsoiled. He is perfect in every way, except for one tiny thing: he looks exactly like a mirage, like a mirror reflection without a subject. He is either an old man or a young boy, or both at the same time; it feels almost as his identity is a choose-your-own-adventure game, where you decide what you’re seeing.

  As one, we slightly bow our heads and greet him with the praise song Ogun has taught us:

  Ìbarabọ̀-o mojúbà

  Ìbà kò ṣe ọmọdẹkò

  Ẹlégbàále

  Èṣù tiriri

  Ọmọ́júbà

  Bara abẹ̀bẹ̀

  Tiriri lọ́nà

  The god throws his head back and laughs long, hard. It’s a striking laugh—literally, like the clatter of metal sheets in heavy wind. If he were completely human, spittle would’ve flown out of his mouth and he would’ve held his chest and gasped. But he laughs and laughs without taking a breath; and the longer the laughter lasts, the longer the winds beat against zinc in our ears, the more goosebumps rise from our skins.

  When he finally winds down, he looks at Ogun.

  “You know,” he says, and when he speaks, there’s a whiff of black pepper in the air. All the humans amongst us blink rapidly and sneeze. He laughs again. “Learning the words is good, you know, but without the right enunciation, what a loss, eh?”

  Ogun was right. I don’t like this guy at all. He stinks of bad news and laughs like a fucking psychopath. But what was I expecting? This is one of 256 iterations of Eshu, the god of pathways and manifestations, Orun’s version of Aziza. This guy is not a person—he is an it, a thing, a hologram. He cannot be trusted.

  The tricksters are very tight across pantheons (even though Aziza warned us never to use the word trickster to openly describe any single one of them), and Aziza was the first to offer the news that Eshu hadn’t yet joined any side. He seemed like a clear fit for Aganju’s army, so we wondered if he’d already joined but was only faking to get into our ranks. We wanted to meet him fully armed, but Aziza pushed against it vehemently. And now we’re standing right in front of him, open to his pocketful of deceit.

  “We welcome you,” Ogun says without expression. “We come in nothing but peace.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Very sensible thing to believe, coming from a god of war and”—he turns to me, studies me for a second—“and another god of war! How many of you are there?”

  Nobody responds.

  “Well at least if you’re going to welcome me, you should come without weapons.” He raises his hand, and there’s Papa Udi’s—now Fatoumata’s—long knife in his hand. Fati, who’s standing next to Ibeji, gasps, then reaches behind her and pulls… Papa Udi’s knife from the band of her trousers.

  “Ha!” Eshu says, and giggles. The knife in his hand disintegrates before our eyes.

  “Caught you,” he says.

  Fati’s face grows dark. Taiwo slowly pulls the knife out of her hand, and she lets go reluctantly.

  “You know why we called you,” Ogun says, impervious to Eshu’s antics.

  “Yes,” he says. “And I’m here to tell you, without any hesitation whatsoever, that I’m ready to join your cause.”

  We look at one another. Now, that’s unexpected. And not worrisome. Not worrisome at all.

  “Why?” I ask. “What do you get out of this?”

  Eshu regards me properly for the first time, and I realise I can’t stare at him for too long. His dual face creeps me out, and the whiteness of his face hurts my eyes.

  “What if I told you I have nothing to gain or lose?”

  “Then we’re done here,” I say. “Thank you, Aziza.”

  “David...” my mother says softly.

  “No,” I say. “I don’t like this guy. Coming in here, trying to shit on all of us.” I point at him. “I’m not fucking scared of you, you hear me? Go and join Aganju if you like. I will see you there, and I will rip you to pieces.”

  “David,” Papa Udi says. “Easy.”

  Eshu has a smile on his face, and then he laughs again, clapping his hands.

  “Now this is who I want to be on the side of! You know what Aganju and his lot lack? Creativity.”

  “Is this a joke, though?” Kehinde says, her frown deepening. “Everything is just a game to you, Eshu, isn’t it?”

  He shrugs and shows his palms. “Nature, Kehinde. You can’t fight it.”

  Ogun gives all of us the eye, and we calm down. She returns her attention to Eshu.

  “Fine. We will need one more thing from you, then. Show how you can help us and that you mean good.”

  Eshu cocks his head. “Which is?”

  “Take us to Olokun.”

  OGUN HAS EXPLAINED our plan of attack a long time ago. The one thing she’s learnt from all those battles, from the Nigeria-Biafra War to the Orisha war and everything between, is that there are three ways to win a war. The first is to outnumber the enemy and crush them by the strength of numbers. The second is to outsmart the enemy, to defy expectations and surprise them into defeat. Sadly, we’re bound to fail on both counts with Aganju, so our plan is the third way: try to match the enemy in every way possible—resources, strength, turf, et cetera—and hope for the best.

  So far, we’ve established that when it comes down to it, I’m to face Aganju the way I faced Sango, one-on-one, while Ogun, Kehinde, Femi and Shonuga will lead the force’s charge against the rest of the horde, supported by the offerings of Papa Udi. But there remains the little issue of Sango’s sisters, and hence our recruitment drive to find people to match them in their respective abilities. Aziza, being the god of whirlwinds and thresholds, will meet Oya in the air. We picked Eshu, who is god of manifestations and mirages, to match Osun’s powers of fertility and rebirthing. And to negate Oba’s whirlpools of des
truction, we need a water god, and what better one than Olokun, who’s already aided us in the past?

  So, with all of us armed and ready, Aziza and Eshu combine to convey us: Aziza does his chalk magic, while Eshu manifests a large door on the runway right in front of us. He opens it, we all step through with the now familiar sense of disorientation, and fuck it, we’re suddenly standing on a deck back in Makoko.

  The place has not changed a bit. The smell of faeces in stagnant water is still there, overpowering. Papa Udi, Fatoumata, Femi and Shonuga cough and choke, wrapping their palms around their noses. Mosquitoes buzz around us. The familiar swish of lagoon water is a welcoming sound; I’ve missed it, holed up in that airport for months. I get a flash of Hafiz’s orange ankara cloth and Justice’s Pasuma Wonder t-shirt, and realise I’ve missed them too—I should stop by and greet them once we’re done here.

  The flimsy scrapwood deck we’re standing on sways under our weight. Everything is literally unchanged. Everything is peaceful and calm, and that is exactly the problem.

  There’s not a single sound that says humans live here. Not a human being in sight.

  “Something is wrong,” I say.

  “Trap...” Ogun says softly as if thinking aloud, then turns back to us all and yells: “Trap!”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  SHE DOESN’T NEED to say it twice. From the first word, the water in the channel next to us bubbles, becomes choppy, twisting into a tempest, a raging monster; then it opens its mouth and yawns, forming the largest whirlpool I’ve ever seen, and tosses three wildly grinning, massive crocodiles at us.

  The first one crashes onto the platform, the creaky pier finally giving in to the weight and breaking in two. Kehinde grabs Fatoumata and hops onto another platform, Taiwo following with that smooth sailing motion the gods use, like bees flitting between flowers. The impact hurls Femi onto the opposite platform. Shonuga and Papa Udi are standing right in front of the croc’s massive jaws as it turns to face them.

  The second croc lands with a massive splash of smelly water in front of my mother and me. The third lands in front of Aziza and—

  Eshu. Not there. Gone.

  My mother yells something that sounds very much like a battle cry, and then her arms are lit and burning, the fire within her hot and consuming. She fires one, two, three darts at the croc in front of us. They strike the animal right in one eye with pinpoint accuracy, leaving a large, burning hole. The animal reels like a hurt dog. Then I hear a gunshot, and another. Femi’s gun is smoking, and the croc in front of her retreats. Both crocs sink back into the whirling water.

  Papa Udi is screaming; I turn to see the first croc pulling at his leg, his calf disappeared into the thing’s massive jaws. His hands hold its massive jaws, veins straining with the effort. Then Aziza is there, rotating his stick, and there is the fiercest of sharp winds, a tight dust devil that knocks the croc off Payu. Aziza sails on the whirlwind and plants himself between man and animal. Holding his staff like the rod of Moses, he dips it in the water, and a barrier of air—a sort of shimmer sheet, knocking the returning croc back—shuts off the whirlpool and separates us from the danger.

  Shonuga pulls Papa Udi away from the water. He’s not fatally hurt or whimpering, but he’s an old man with a wounded leg. His tightly clenched teeth and blood dripping onto the wet wood of the broken platform are bad enough.

  “Weapons!” I call through my teeth.

  Everyone draws their respective poison. I pull out my cutlass and chain and charge my godessence for the ready.

  Then something I’ve only seen on TV emerges from the whirlpool and walks on water.

  Eyo masquerades, part of the Eyo festival—held in honour of an Oba or ruling family member’s death, or to add colour to an event at a ruler’s request—are barely ever seen up-front, but every Lagosian knows what an Eyo looks like. The thing that emerges from the water is an exact representation, covered from head to toe in white cloth: a flowing, white agbada, from neck to calf, with an arópalé beneath covering calf to feet and trailing behind. It wears the fìlà, a wide-brimmed hat, white with black stripes and frills dangling from the brim like wind-chimes. Hanging from inside the hat, draped to cover its face, is the ibori, a lace veil with holes for eyes, though I see no eyes there. Usually, there is an ọ̀páḿbátá, a long staff, the one thing that strikes fear into every Eyo watcher, but this one carries none.

  The Eyo stands atop the water and stares at us for a moment. Then a second Eyo arises from the same place, identical in every respect, so that we cannot tell them apart. Then a third. All three stand on the water and watch us.

  I try to reach my esper across Aziza’s air barrier and read them, but apparently the thing is some sort of ward, preventing godessence from passing through either way.

  “It’s Sango’s sisters,” my mother says aloud, as if sensing what I’m doing. “We’ve been delivered into their hands.”

  “And that’s not the worst part,” Taiwo says, and the colour’s completely drained from his face, something I’ve only seen once before, when it was I who hunted him. “That’s Oya, Oba and Osun; yet we have no idea who is who, and who can do what.”

  I turn to Aziza. “Can you get us out of here?”

  “Yes,” he says. “But, I have to drop this barrier before I can open a threshold.”

  Ogun shakes her head. “They’re waiting for us to do that. They will come for us once this thing goes down.”

  We stand there for a beat, our minds racing. The three Eyos don’t move.

  “Aziza,” I say, “listen carefully. You are going to drop this thing and open a threshold. You’re going to get everybody out of here.”

  “And you?” Kehinde asks.

  “My mother and I will hold them.”

  “They will kill you in seconds,” Taiwo says matter-of-factly.

  “I’ll be right behind you guys.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Kehinde says. She steps forward and stands between my mother and me.

  “Nor I,” Femi says, and cocks her rifle. Shonuga does the same without a word.

  Fati steps forward to stand in the front line with us.

  “No, eh-ehn, no,” I say, shoving her back. “Go with them. You take Papa Udi to the medicine group.” I turn to Taiwo. “You too.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t staying before,” Taiwo says, pulling Fati to him, who resists, her long knife tight in her grip.

  “Go,” I say, sterner. “Go. Protect them.”

  She glares at me, then gives into Taiwo’s pull. They huddle next to Papa Udi, behind Aziza.

  There’s five of us on the line now. The Eyos still haven’t moved.

  “Aziza, on my word.”

  The whirlwind god nods.

  And then before I can open my mouth to say the word, the first Eyo steps forward.

  I’m not sure exactly what it does, I swear it does no more than touch the barrier with a finger, and the whole thing shimmers and fizzles, and we’re suddenly staring into the void where its eyes should be.

  “Go!” I yell at Aziza.

  I push flames onto my weapons and charge into the water. Ogun and Kehinde splash closely behind.

  The first gunshot goes off, from Femi or Shonuga. The Eyo waves a hand, the abgada sleeve collecting the wind in front of it, and the bullet strikes an invisible barrier, emitting sparks.

  Oya, god of whirlwinds.

  Kehinde darts off to face her in Aziza’s absence. I reach within myself, charge my godessence, shove fire onto my chain, and hurl it at the remaining Eyos.

  The second Eyo steps forward, draws water from below and opens up a whirlpool in the air. The end of my chain goes right through it, returns like a boomerang and slams straight into my chest. I’m in the air, then suddenly in the water, my chest hurting like fuck.

  Oba, god of waves and whirlpools.

  I come back up to see one of the crocs before me, charging on stubby limbs with an open mouth. I raise my cutlass and aim for its head. The
thing dodges, then leaps for me, jaws parted. I shoot fire into its mouth. It drops and is pulled back into the whirlpool. Another gunshot, Femi and Shonuga firing at the second croc, which takes their bullets in its hide. It lashes out at Shonuga, who lands in the water, the whirlpool pulling at her. Femi fires one, two shots, then leaps into the water and grabs her.

  I fling my chain at the second croc and catch it on the head; the thing turns to me. I fling again, and the croc snatches my chain it in its jaws, pulling me. I’m this close to ts jaws when I lift my machete and bring it down on its head. It screams and slinks back into the whirlpool.

  I rise and turn, expecting to see the last croc, but instead am just in time see Aziza’s threshold snap shut. A severed tail splashes in the water.

  Shit, shit, shit. The croc followed them.

  Kehinde is cornered by Oya, her blue robe rippling in the goddess’s whirlwinds, large and small, from every angle. The twin goddess is working hard, beating charms out with hand-claps and body-beats to counter the wind. Femi takes aim and fires a shot at Oya, who waves her arm in another wind block, then conjures a whirlwind to lift Femi and dump her somewhere in the channel, away from the fracas. Shonuga screams and follows the wind, wading and splashing in the water.

  I turn back. My mother has engaged Oba, fashioning a whip out of fire and lashing out at the god, who sidesteps and lashes a whip of her own, sometimes water and sometimes ice, trying to catch my mother and pull her into the whirlpool. There is a lot of steam between them, obscuring their fight, and they soon disappear into the mist.

  The third Eyo, which hasn’t moved since, stands up and faces me now.

  Osun doesn’t come at me. Instead, the god spreads her legs wide and howls, something inhuman, ear-rending. She howls again, and suddenly I’m not sure if it’s just me or if there are black wisps of cloud gathering about her, preparing to rain death.