ONE
Alone in the heart of the Sacred Grove, Ashâke lifted her torch and peered into the darkness.
The trees here were old—hundreds of seasons old, their huge white limbs draped in moss. The priests said these trees had been old back when orisha roamed the earth, and still they stood. Ashâke found it hard to shake the feeling of being watched, as she did whenever she came here, and spent a moment wheeling about, straining to see into the darkness beyond the trees. But if there was something there, if there was someone there, she couldn’t see them.
Ashâke licked her dry lips. Perhaps it is the orisha who watch me. Waiting for me. The thought sent chills down her spine. Surely they knew what she was soon to do …
She approached the biggest tree, a great white baobab leaning over the river. It stood some eighty feet tall, with bark so wrinkled that it looked like an old, withered face had been carved into it. One could tell a white baobab’s age by how many leaves it had left; this one was leafless, limbs oddly naked as they stretched out from a massive trunk. Ashâke dug her torch into the soft soil at its roots. Next to it, she dumped her pouch—which was heavy with her divination board and cowries, and with the tome she’d pilfered from the library, the one that had shown her how to do what she planned.
Ashâke shivered. It was mad, building an idan to summon and bind an orisha. But it was their fault. All their fault for refusing to speak to her, for refusing to choose her when they’d chosen her peers, chosen the others.
A gust of wind howled through the forest. Ashâke looked up to see rain clouds lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. Shango is striking his axes, she thought. A few heartbeats later, an earsplitting thunderclap cracked through the air, and from somewhere in the forest came the frightened caws of ravens. An omen? Ashâke hoped not. Shango was quick to temper, but it was not him she wanted, not him she sought to summon. She was desperate but had no death wish. Shango would smite her at the first opportunity. She could almost imagine her fellow acolytes, their faces full of wicked derision when they learned of her fate. And the priests, would they tut and shake their heads, muttering about poor Ashâke, whose inability to hear the orisha had driven her to such extremes?
Ashâke gritted her teeth and pushed the voices from her mind. No use dwelling over unfavourable thoughts. She turned her attention to the tree, and the gaping crevice between its roots. It looked ordinary to the casual eye; a bough dammed up with the rot of several seasons, but that was because Ashâke had made it so. Grunting with effort, she began to pull away the dirt—rotted palm fronds, dead leaves and twigs and soil—to reveal—
Eshu, lord of roads and crossroads, messenger orisha, stood before her. His effigy, at least. The greater orisha all had effigies in the temple—towering bronze structures that lined the walls of the Inner Sanctum. But this was no such effigy. For one, it was made of white clay, which Ashâke had painstakingly retrieved from the bottom of the river, diving into the cold water night after night, carefully sifting the riverbed, then stumbling sopping wet through the forest, freezing to her bones as she tried to make it back to the temple before the rousing bell. Moons and moons of dedication had led her to this moment, to the idan before her, carved with the language of binding. And once she performed the final ritual, at last, it would hold Eshu’s essence. She would ask her questions, and he would have no choice but to answer.
Why, then, did she hesitate? Why did her hands tremble, her heart flutter? Eshu’s blank eyes regarded her, and it seemed to Ashâke that his lips were upturned in the suggestion of a smile.
You’re frightened. Simbi’s voice rang loud in her head. What you seek is dangerous. It is not too late to turn back now.
And then what? Turning back would mean accepting defeat, condemning herself to … how many more seasons of ridicule? Her own peers were five seasons into their priesthoods. Yet here she was, stuck as an acolyte, suffering the jeers of the little runts who had come up behind her and now thought themselves her equal.
No. She had to know why the orisha refused to speak to her, where she had gone wrong.
“Ok,” she said, taking a deep breath to steel her nerves. “What needs doing must be done well.”
Ashâke placed two bundles of loudh in the idan’s outstretched hands and lit them. The incense burned, its faintly sweet smoke tickling the back of her throat. Next, she took her knife and drew it across her palm. It stung, and she bit back a whimper as blood bloomed in the fresh cut. Once her hand was full, she poured it over the flames, which hissed, the smoke turning black and pungent, the bitter smell of copper sharp in the back of her throat.
“Eshu Elegba,” she intoned. “Messenger lord of the orisha. The one whose path is two hundred and fifty-six. The one whose path is uncountable. I bind you with ashe, which gives me life. I summon you with the breath of Obatala. Come. Come forth.”
The wind wailed in the trees, nearly snuffing out the fire. Ashâke waited … but nothing happened. Why wasn’t it working? The glyphs she’d etched into the effigy should be aglow. Instead, they remained dull white. Ashâke blew out a frustrated breath and squeezed her fist over the fire again, but it had stopped bleeding. She grabbed the bloody dagger, choking back a whimper as she worked it deeper into her palm, until the blood flowed anew, hissing into the flames.
“Eshu Elegba. Messenger lord of the orisha. The one whose path is two hundred and fifty-six; the one whose path is uncountable. I bind you with ashe, which gives me life—”
Her hand moved of its own accord, slamming down on Eshu’s outstretched arm. It broke off and tumbled to the ground, the burning loudh snuffing out.
“What—?” She gasped, even as her hand swung for Eshu’s second arm. It flew off, spinning fast into the darkness, until it splashed into the river.
She stood there, blinking, struggling to understand what had just happened. A heartbeat passed, then two, then three …
The statue erupted in flames.
Ashâke yelped, leaping backwards. She tripped on a root and flailed desperately to stop her fall. Twisting at the last moment, she landed with such jarring force that her jaw snapped shut and arrows of pain shot up her arms. She howled. The entire sculpture was ablaze, the flames climbing high, high, licking the great white baobab. It was an unnatural fire, and in it she saw—
She saw a burning hall, every inch of it wreathed in golden flames. She saw a table, and seated behind it were shadows, voids in the shape of men, which even the raging fire did not consume. She heard voices, all of them speaking her name, calling her. Hands reached out of the dark, grasped at her, seeking to wrench her apart. Ashâke felt stretched, as though there were things in her head, things that shouldn’t be there.
“STOP!” she screamed. “STOP! I’M SORRY!”
She pushed to her feet and fled, running from the voices, from the things grasping at her. She had overreached. Who was she in her hubris to bind an orisha? Now she had angered Eshu, angered them all, and the orisha were nothing if not vindictive in their vengeance.
The ground vanished beneath her, and then she was falling, tumbling head over heels down the steep riverbank, slamming again and again into the slope. She splashed into the water, cracking her head on a gnarled root.
The darkness took her.
TWO
A thin face leaned over her. An old, crusty patch covered the left eye, while the other one appraised her with mild curiosity. And out of a thatch of grey-white goat beard stuck a moonleaf pipe like a branch. A curious face, but it was one Ashâke would recognise anywhere.
“Hem. Good evening.” Ba Fatai, the witch doctor, frowned. “Although it is two hours past midnight and even the owls have gone silent. So I must wish you good morning.”
Ashâke moaned, trying to sit up.
“Yah!—don’t try to move just yet,” he cried, pressing her back to the bed with bony hands. “We don’t want your brain rattling loose, although you must already be severely lacking in that regard. That is the only explanation for what you’ve done.”
She was in pain. So much pain. Her head throbbed where she had cracked it against that root, and the bandage Ba Fatai had wrapped around it only seemed to make it worse. It felt like a couple of malevolent egbere had taken their little hammers to the inside of her skull. She reached up to ease the tightness of the bandage and Ba Fatai slapped her hand away.
“Don’t move, I said.” The witch doctor plucked the pipe from his mouth and offered it to her. “For the pain. Have three puffs.”
Ashâke sucked on the pipe, smoke filling her mouth and lungs. She managed two puffs before she burst into a racking cough, and the egbere renewed their hammering.
“Water,” she croaked.
Ba Fatai vanished, returning moments later with a cup of water. It dribbled down her chin as she drank greedily. Once she’d slaked her thirst she sank back to the bed, sighing.
She was in the witch doctor’s quarters. She couldn’t remember the last time she had come here—perhaps when she had been thirteen seasons and had eaten some poison mushrooms with Simbi—but the same wooden masks still hung from the walls, their sunken eyes scowling down at her; the same bronze-and-pewter cauldrons still bubbled with concoctions, their vapours, not to mention the ungodly stench of moonleaves, choking the air so that she felt as if she were suffocating. Ashâke wondered if the fires ever went out; it seemed the witch doctor was always preparing one potion or the other.
She had thought she was dead.
“Who … who found me?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“Who do you think? In all my seasons I have met many a foolish acolyte, but you, my dear, you are the most foolish of all.” He huffed. “The orisha must favour you. I was out collecting moonleaves when I found you—heard you screaming, more like. A most curious thing, eh? Because you see, moonleaves do not grow in the part of the woods where I found you. I knew that, and still I went there. And I never walk that part of the woods.” He glowered at her through his one good eye. “Why is that? Why don’t I walk that part of the woods?”
Ashâke swallowed, looked away. “Because it is the Sacred Grove,” she mumbled. “Only the priests and High Priestess go there.”
“Ah. And here I was thinking you were green. Turns out you’re just daft.”
Daft, desperate, angry. It all depended on how you looked at it. Ashâke waited for the question: What had she been doing there? If Ba Fatai had pulled her out of the water, then he must have seen the blazing statue, must have seen the knife and her pouch with the stolen tome …
His eye travelled slowly to the empty pouch sitting on the table, then back to her. “Aye,” he growled. “Just daft.”
At that moment there came a knock on the door. Ba Fatai pushed up from his stool with a grunt and hobbled towards the door, vanishing behind the curtain of beads. The slide of a bolt, creak of hinges; and then hushed voices. Ashâke tried to listen but could not make out the voices, but she didn’t have to think hard to guess who they were or what they wanted.
“They want you,” said Ba Fatai some moments later as he reentered the chamber. “The priests, that is. They are like hounds at a feast, but I have kept them away, for now.”
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
“Rest,” he grunted. “There’ll be trouble come morning.”
* * *
Trouble did not wait for morning. The door rattled in its frame as someone hammered on it. Once, twice, thrice. Ashâke sat up, jolted from her moonleaf stupor.
“Coming! I’m coming!” yelled Ba Fatai, flinging a spatula on the worktable. It skidded across, knocking over a small decanter that spilled its black contents on the floor. He swore.
The knock came again. Louder. Harder.
“Orisha take you! That door is not a drum!”
No sooner had he opened the door than Priestess Essie pushed her way into the room, nostrils flared as her eyes searched for Ashâke. She wore a white raiment, three loops of coral beads, which marked her as a senior priestess, choking her neck, her hair pulled back in severe braids that stretched her eyebrows over her forehead.
“She is not yet recovered,” said Ba Fatai, pushing to block her path.
“She looks well enough to me,” said the priestess. “Well enough to answer my questions.”
“She is in no fit state to move. I am yet to ascertain if she bleeds inside her head. Any errant movement, emotional excitement, and she could drop dead—”
“If she drops dead,” said Essie, biting off each word, “it will be because she brought it on herself.”
Silence followed her words, broken only by the gurgle of Ba Fatai’s many potions.
“Leave, Priestess,” Ba Fatai growled. “The acolyte is in my care, and as such, is my ward. You cannot take her.”
The priestess’s eyebrows climbed even higher. “Would you deny the High Priestess? Would you have me tell the Mother of Mysteries that you denied her?”
The High Priestess? Shit. Ashâke, in all her twenty-two seasons at the temple, could count on one finger the number of times she had seen the High Priestess. The woman rarely left the Inner Sanctum and did not seem to concern herself with the daily workings of the temple—that was more Priestess Essie’s domain. Ashâke knew she was in trouble, would have to answer for what she had done. But to have the High Priestess personally summon her? That did not bode well. She wondered if now was a good time to pretend to faint.
“Well, obviously,” said Ba Fatai, “I’m not denying the High—”
“Then I suggest you step aside and return to your”—she cast about the chamber, an expression of thinly veiled disdain on her face—“concoctions and leave matters of import to priests. Yes?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Ashâke. “You. With me. Now.”
Ashâke looked at Ba Fatai but he shrugged. There would be no more help from him. He had done all he could. She pushed to her feet, staggered as the room wobbled around her, then shuffled out, the priestess in her wake.
Through the high windows of the corridor Ashâke saw the ink-black sky was already giving way to the azure of morning. The halls were empty, and as they marched across, it was hard not to feel as though she were walking towards her death. Her punishment would be swift and severe, there was no doubt about that. It was the uncertainty of the nature of punishment that worried her. She hadn’t simply broken curfew to engage in a midnight tryst; she had built an idan. Attempted to call and bind an orisha. It would have all been worth it had she succeeded, had she finally been able to speak with one of them. Instead, she … no. She didn’t want to think about it.
They passed through a courtyard where two acolytes on morning duty were leaning against their brooms, snoozing. Essie barked at them and they leapt into action, mumbling as they swept up dust and fallen leaves from the stone floor.
Copyright © 2024 by Tobi Ogundiran
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