She was thirteen, and they were bougainvillaea but she thought they were hibiscus. Because she was thirteen, she didn’t know any better. What she did know was that in the dry season, they went very well with the blondes of the spear grass along the way. “Don’t touch the grass, people pee on them,” she had once been warned by a well-meaning stranger, but she didn’t mind. To her, it was the smallest price she could have been asked to pay for her art.

 

Her art, was the intricate weaving of bougainvillaea and spear grass and a third item that would often reveal itself eventually. On some days it would be a perfect white feather that would randomly drift down from the sky, on some other days it was the black tape from an old cassette. Most recently they were two plastic straws, one blue and one pink, she would weave them all together into a crown, a crown that she would wear for all of five minutes.

 

There was this gutter that always flowed with water regardless of the time of the year. A perpetual hotspot for all the chickens and goats, they would come by for a drink of water and a place to sit. The thick moss that clung to its sides kept thousands of resident tadpoles well-fed. She had even seen a little fish once during the rains. It would be at this point that Salome would take off her crown, gently placing it into the gutter just to watch it float away. That was of course until she was scolded by an old woman for throwing rubbish into the gutter and clogging it up. So she decided to just set them by the side of the gutter and keep walking.

 

Why didn’t she ever take them home? She should have kept them as a prize, a reminder of the beauty she was able to see and make. But no, she would not, because the flowers would surely wilt and be reduced to dust as will all beauty. The only thing that truly lived on was the spirit. That was what her mother believed. Her mother had been named Alice at birth but had since changed her name to Hagar; after the woman who had found rivers in the desert. Her story had been much like hers; counted out and cast aside by the man whom she had built her entire life around. Only to find herself pregnant with Salome.

 

With a baby and nowhere to go, she’d come to the end of herself but somehow, she had been spared and so had the child. Every moment after that would become a prolonged display of gratitude by the abandonment of all pleasures of the world.

 

They had no television, one CD player for listening to taped sermons and gospel albums. No smartphones except for the desktop that was powered on every Sunday so Salome could practice her typing. They went to church twice during the weekends and three times during the week. Her mother’s eyes were watchful, so watchful that they became oppressive.

 

It is said that no fingers are equal but Salome didn’t realise just how short the ones she’d been dealt had been. There were small differences at first, like being the only child in her Primary 1 class who came without a lunch box. As expected, children grow older and learn to compare their lives and by the time she was eleven, she was no stranger to the fact that her school fees were never paid on time or that her mother did not talk or dress like the other mothers at the school and that quite frankly, she terrified them.

 

Her classmate Stella had once pointed out that she smelt of fish, this could have been because their house doubled as a cold-room. It was all she’d ever known, but she learnt very quickly not to share as freely as she used to. How could she tell anyone that her mother still bathed her every night? Or that the real reason why she wasn’t at school last week was because her mother had been convinced that she was possessed by a demon. Or how that she was only allowed to have the first meal of the day by 6:00 p.m. and another just before midnight because to deny the body was the consecrate the spirit. The one that never wilted.

 

And so her days were governed by hunger, the kind that swirled like a whirlpool in her stomach all morning and then was reduced to the trickle of surrender by late afternoon. Sluggish, sleepy and unable to concentrate in class, every school day was a limerent blur, a long corridor leading to the next holiday.

 

Holidays meant time in Mama’s house. Mama was her mother’s mother and the only member of her extended family she was allowed to speak to or spend time with. That was until two years ago when Hagar came to the sudden realisation that just like all her brothers and sisters, Mama was also a witch. But Mama did not seem to be a witch to Salome, she only seemed to believe in a different thing.

 

She once told her of Tsav – magic, the light and the dark, and the mysterious wonder. She had just finished Primary 5 and was spending what would be her last holiday with Mama. She was sitting on the floor of the veranda, a few pages into Things Fall Apart while Mama sat on a stool, slicing up a yam for pottage.

 

“Hmm,” she set the book down on the floor, Mama kept slicing.

 

“This book is something else,” she added, hoping to pique Mama’s interest.

 

“What happened in it?” Mama asked setting the half-sliced yam down, giving Salome her full attention.

 

“There was this man that had a swollen stomach, instead of them to try and treat him, they sent him to the forest to die.”

 

“That’s how it was during our time too, although it was not that bad, there was a hospital but it was very far from my village,” Mama reminisced.

 

“So what if the person was so sick that he could not walk and did not have anybody to carry him?”

 

“That did not usually happen, somebody would always help unless he was known as a very bad person, like a thief or a part of mbatsav,”

 

“What is mbatsav?”

 

“Those witches and wizards, those wicked people that sit in trees at night and turn into birds.”

 

“My Social Studies teacher said that those are superstitious beliefs,”

 

“Then he doesn’t know anything,” Mama’s face grew serious.

 

“It’s a woman,”

 

“She doesn’t know anything. This book you are reading…it is this man; I’ve forgotten his name.”

 

“Chinua Achebe,”

 

“Yes! Achebe, Igbo man. I don’t know too much about their culture but for us it is different, that swelling of the stomach, for us is usually because of Tsav.”

 

“So, somebody caused it?”

 

“No, some people have that witchcraft, that Tsav inside of them, for some it’s in their chest around their heart. Some in their stomach, when they die like that it is because it is finally their turn.”

 

“How is it their turn?”

 

“Everything comes with a price, when these people see, it’s not with an ordinary eye, if they say something bad will happen, then it will happen. They are very dangerous.”

 

“Mama, you’re scaring me,”

 

“Yes, you should be scared, they look for little children like you to join them. That’s why your mommy is always warning you not to follow people to their houses or eat their food,” so she’d always known that it was wrong. In fact, her grandmother’s words came back to her at that very moment but how could she resist of all things in this world, the whirlpool?

 

She hadn’t always been an unusual girl; her name was Hadiza but they had once called her Izzy. For their first year of secondary school, she was that small and mild-mannered girl in class that everybody liked – to the secret envy of Salome, an emotion she so often denied. And then one day, with a of snap of the finger that took the passage of several months to actualise, everything changed. She was still the smallest girl in class but she was also intimidating to be around. And while she was still as mild-mannered, there was a lethalness woven into that nature. And so, no one liked her anymore, all her friends grew terrified of her. Terrified in the same way the other mothers were terrified of Hagar.

 

Everyone said that it was just puberty but to Salome, it was almost as though what lay at the very essence of Hadiza had shifted out of her body and floated away forever. She took no joy in the things she once did. During breaktime, she would go to the far end of the compound sit at the foot of the dogon- yaro tree and watch the vultures swarm in circles or the clouds as they go by. She spoke to no one except for some reason, Salome.

 

The first time it happened was during Science Class, they were taken out to the school field in search of mimosa pudica. She pointed at a mushroom growing out of a log of half-rotten wood and said, “This one is poisonous,”

 

“How do you know?” Salome asked, to which she shrugged and walked away. Over the next few weeks, she would drop in with an enigmatic one-liner and each one left Salome with more puzzled than the first.

 

“Birds are beautiful,” she said once when Salome stood behind her on the assembly line.

 

“I hate this man so much, he doesn’t know who he’s playing with” she declared after their maths teacher, Mr Sani sent them to kneel outside on the sharp-sand for being the only two people in class who didn’t get his ‘word problem’ questions right.

 

“The sun is competing with the moon today, but the moon will win,” she was wistful that mid-morning when the white of the moon had still not faded into the blue of the sky.

 

“He’s not coming back to school on Monday,” she said on the last day Salome or anyone else saw Mr Sani.

 

On Monday, the Vice-Principal called for an emergency assembly. She looked like she had tried to put powder on her face to conceal her puffy eyes but gave up somewhere along the line.

 

“Mr Sani, our beloved Mathematics teacher for the junior classes and Physics teacher for the senior classes has gone to be with the Lord,” the words escaped from her lips with a thin shakiness that was foreign to her entire vocal register.

 

It was pandemonium; starting with gasps, then murmurs filled with disbelief. Soon, several hands were placed on heads and it was not long before the tears came. And those tears quickly turned to wails, not because Mr Sani was the most beloved of staff or the most pleasant person to be around but because for so many of the children who stood in the sun that morning – although not strangers to the concept of death, it was the first time anyone they knew so closely had died. But Hadiza was not surprised, not even by the slightest and Salome looked back just in time to see her lips curl into a small smile.

 

Salome grew terrified of her, if Hadiza was taking the left, she would take the right. On assembly days she would stand at the front of the line so Hadiza would not speak to her. Avoidance was her strong suit; it was how she survived living with her mother, she could make herself small and invisible and passive and agreeable. And she had to, it was either that or running, which was something she wasn’t any good at.

 

She couldn’t break free and run down the street like other children did when their mothers descended on them with a cane. She couldn’t pack her bags and steal away into the night in search of a new life like her neighbour’s daughter once did, she just wasn’t brave enough. Hagar knew this, that was why she did what she did. That was why on the day she saw Salome speaking with a boy, she pushed her into the bathroom and pulled down her skirt to search her.

 

“Girls your age, you only think of one thing. How to know men! How to be used by them. You’ve let him spoil you, haven’t you?” her words were drunken with rage.

 

“No mummy, I’ve not!” Salome could only cry.

 

“No matter what I do, you’re dirty and full of sin. A waste of God’s mercy!” Hagar said all those things because the girl had nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to – just like her, and so she wanted Salome to feel just as dirty and as hopeless and as full of sin as she did. And after a full week of exorcism from the spirit of Jezebel was completed, Salome’s own spirit was almost as broken.

 

“Run, run, run!” The P.E. teacher clapped behind the line of girls and off they went. In the heat of the afternoon’s frustration, he’d set eyes on a group of girls sitting in the shade of a cluster of small trees, pleased to not partake in any of the sporting activities. Salome was one of them and probably the most nervous about being rounded up for a race.

 

To her surprise, she was off to a great start, Half of them were chubby girls who felt too self-conscious to put in as much effort and the other half were popular girls who thought they were much too pretty to be seen wholeheartedly running to win a race. She on the other hand was running just so the race could be over.

 

She was the first to touch the wall, turn around and head towards the finish line. Halfway through, everything started to blur and blend into each other. The white shirt of the P.E. teacher faded into the greens of the grass, the trees, the blues of the sky and the parked school bus. Her feet grew heavy, the whirlpool was taking over.

 

“Keep going! Don’t stop,” the P.E. teacher’s voice was adamant even through distortion.

 

‘I can’t keep going,’ she protested in her head but her body kept moving and she finished the race.

 

“Good job, you see how exercise is important?” Ignoring her teacher’s praise Salome went to the tree furthest away from where anyone could see her and leaned on it. Certain she was going to throw up, she wretched but nothing came out.

 

“Salome, are you okay?” A shadow stood over her, it was Hadiza.

 

“I’m fine,” Salome straightened up and adjusted her uniform afraid to look back at Hadiza.

 

“You’re always hungry in school but you don’t like to beg people for food,” Hadiza took one step closer, the sound of her shoes treading the fallen leaves were ominous crunches.

 

“You’ve been avoiding me, I thought we were friends” she added and Salome for the first time, looked back at her. She was holding a steaming hot eggroll gently cupped between her palms. The aroma hit her
nose instantly.

 

“I’ve not been avoiding you.” Salome’s lie didn’t sound believable, not even to her.

 

“It’s okay, I’ll still be your friend even if you don’t want to be mine, I bought this eggroll for you to eat.”

 

She thought of Eve and Esau, both cheated out of inheritances because of food, she knew she should not but she also could not help herself. If she did not have something to eat at that very moment, she felt as though she would die.

 

And so, she ate of the sugary dough, and the egg white and the sweet yolk.

 

Her mouth grew bitter on the walk home, her hands shaky as she wove green palm fronds into a wreath. On the dirt road, she saw the shadow of a bird hovering above her but whenever she looked up she only saw a perfect blue sky.

 

“Go away from here!” the old woman screamed as she set her wreath down by the edge of the gutter.

 

“And carry all that rubbish away with you, foolish girl, don’t you know your age?” the old woman kept going.

 

“You’re dirtying the whole neighbourhood, as big as you are what is wrong with you”

 

“Stop shouting at me!” Salome screamed back much to the surprise of the old woman.

 

“So you talk back to elders? Who is your mother? She must hear about this!” Salome was too out of it to feel immediate concern, she just walked away instead secretly wishing that if the old woman found out who her mother was, she would not be able to say a word about it to her.

 

But the bird never left her, its shadow followed her until she was inside the house. That night she heard a screech from outside her window and a tap on the glass. She covered herself with her blanket not daring to open her eyes.

 

The next day at school, Hadiza walked up to her with a big smile and asked her if she had slept well and before she could think of a lie to tell, Hadiza had walked away. That girl had done something to her. So she followed her; during break time, she walked to the far end of the compound where the tallest tree stood and hid behind a shrub. There, she saw Hadiza standing with her back facing the tree, she took slow steps backwards until her back was pressed against the tree, and spread her arms out wide, moving them backwards until they were wrapped around the tree trunk. And just like that, she started to climb the tree with her arms and her back. Salome’s heart was like an anvil pounded by a hammer, when she gained control of her shaking body, she went back to class, grabbed her bag and fled the school through the hole in the fence at the back of her class.

 

But the bird was with her at all times…

 

The bird would screech five times and by the sixth, it would materialise from the darkness and shadow, its tall silhouette framed by the stray spectres of moonlight. On the first night, she screamed and the bird vanished.

 

“What happened? What did you see?” Hagar burst into her bedroom seconds after, her wrapper clinging to her chest for its dear life.

 

“I had a bad dream.” Salome tried to slow her breathing.

 

“Yes, I know that but what did you see?” Hagar seized her shoulders as though she would draw the answers out from them.

 

“I saw a bird,” Salome responded at last, making no mention of Hadiza, afraid of what the consequences of that would be.

 

“Ah, a monitoring spirit!” Hagar declared, “I have fought their kind countless times and the victory has always been mine.”

 

Hagar soon sprung up from the bed and jolted out the door returning with an entire pack of salt and a pair of scissors.

 

“We will bind that evil from coming near this house,” Hagar snipped the salt open; she licked her finger and dipped it into the salt approaching Salome with her finger stretched out.

“Lick the salt” she said and Salome did as she was told. Hagar slowly lined a border of salt in a semi-circle around the bed and lines along the windowsills and the door. As she did this, she muttered unintelligible words to herself and the bird did not come the next night.

 

Then there was the first screech. The second. The third. And a brief pause, just to let the fear sink in. The fourth. The fifth. There was no way the bird could come inside, at least not with the salt in place, right? But after the sixth screech, the bird was there.

 

It took one step and then the next, looking down at the band of salt and then back up at Salome. It took a step back then three more forward, crossing the arch and Salome could feel her heart drop to the depths of her bowel. She should have screamed like she did the other night but the bird spread its wings and they were wider than her entire bed, it took one quick flap for it to perch at the edge of her bed, pulling the frame down with its weight.

 

It was then she saw his face for the first time and all thoughts of crying for help were abandoned. She had never seen a bird like that before. Eyes facing forward, those eyes were grey just like it’s feathers, and they stared into her eyes like a man would, intimidating her into the silence of a quivering lip.

 

Its beak was long, almost as long as it was and had something stuck between it, something that was dripping onto her blanket. It quickly fell from the bird’s beak, landing with a gentle thud and just like that, the bird was gone. She got out of bed and turned on the lights and the wetness on her bed was in the unmistakable shade of blood. The wetness on her bed was in the unmistakable shade of blood and at the centre of it all was a lump of flesh. A human tongue.

 

Salome couldn’t concentrate in class, she kept thinking about the tongue, how she folded her sheets and soaked them in a basin of water and bleach and flushed to tongue down the toilet. Although Hadiza was not in school, she felt her oppressive presence everywhere.

 

“Auhhhgh !!!” the old woman let out a throaty moan the moment she set her eyes on Salome, her granddaughters tried to soothe her but all she did was point at Salome and groan. With more eyes turning to her, Salome quickly hurried home and straight into her bedroom with the full knowledge of whose tongue had been delivered to her the night before.

 

The sun was setting and Salome had completely forgotten about dinner until Hagar walked into the room.

 

“Why didn’t you come to pray and eat?” Hagar squinted with suspicion.

 

“I was feeling feverish,” Hagar put the back of her hand on Salome’s forehead.

 

“Your body is not hot.” Hagar walked around the room, nothing was out of place, so she went into the bathroom.

 

“Why is your bedsheet still soaked in water? And why…” her voice trailed off and Salome knew that she had seen something. She emerged from the bathroom with wide eyes and dilated pupils.

 

“Why is there a tongue in your toilet?”

 

Salome got up from her bed backing off towards the bedroom door.

 

“You devil! Don’t you dare try to run? I command you!” Hagar’s voice held more fear than it ever did power.

 

And just like that, Salome took to her heels running faster than she ever had before. She ran past all the houses and all the unhappy street corners until she found herself on the very top of a hill. It was dark and she was all alone.

 

She saw the bird fly across the sky and then she heard Hadiza’s voice echo with the timbre of her grandmother until they were one and the same. ‘I’ve been waiting for you Salome, climb up the tree and join us. ’

 

“Which tree?” she looked up to the empty sky and asked.

 

‘Look around you , ‘It was only then that she finally saw the majestic tree that stood on the hill. She walked to the tree and leaned her back to it, of their own volition, her arms wrapped backwards against the tree. She saw herself go higher and she could hear her bones pop and crack, twist and shatter and the pain was the sweetest

Mr Ibekwe’s spit is raining down on my desk as he asks for my Maths note. I see the curl of his lip and his palm flexing against the smooth, skinny cane and I know I should be worried, but my entire body is humming with curiosity. There is no space beneath my skin for fear. He’s running his thumb against the cane, like it’s a comfort, like he’s appeasing it, reassuring it that it will soon bite into soft skin. I imagine it coming down on my palm, whistling through the air to land sharp and stinging.

 

I do not care. I just wish I knew what they were saying. They’re talking about me. I know from the way their whispers glide up my spine, the way their eyes slither down my face and chest and knees.

 

It’s nice to be looked at. Not the suspicious way my classmates look at me, as if I’m going to report anything they say to a teacher. Or the bored looks teachers give me when I ask questions. Or the cursory glances my parents toss at me during the holidays to confirm that I’m still alive before their eyes glide inevitably to my brother Ime, like moths to his bright, charming flame.

 

They look at me like they’re curious.

 

Edisua and Grace are similar, but you wouldn’t know by looking at them. Edisua is tall and lean-limbed and plain-faced while Grace is the shortest girl in SS1, chubby with delicate, striking features that won her the title of Red House Princess last year even though she was a junior. It’s their eyes, I think. That’s what makes them look alike. There’s a knowledge there that makes them look older, wiser. I wish I knew what they know.

 

They’re best friends. They must be. I think of them as a unit, a single entity with one murmur of a voice.

 

Grace has been my classmate since JS1, but Edisua is new. Our class teacher Miss Benson ushered her in unceremoniously one Wednesday in the middle of Easter term, about a month ago. I knew the girl was strange from the first time I saw her with her lazy eyes and too-long neck. Who starts a new school during second term? Who steps into a new beginning on a Wednesday?Her eyes slid over our faces with mild curiosity, as if we were the ones who should be nervous. I felt her eyes on me and looked up. Looking her in the eye felt like electricity, like suffocation, like falling, a shock to all the senses. She cocked her head in mild interest and turned her gaze to Grace, where it settled. That’s when she chose her. Since then, they’ve been inseparable.

 

I watch them sometimes, taking leisurely walks around the field after afternoon prep, Grace listening intently to the words falling carelessly from Edisua’s mouth, their hands clasped between them as they giggle. I always wonder what they’re giggling about. I want to know what’s funny. I want to be interesting enough to make someone laugh. Maybe even Edisua.

 

I fish my textbook out of my schoolbag and hand it to Mr Ibekwe. He flips through the pages halfheartedly and passes to the next desk disappointed, with his cane hanging limp by his side. He stops abruptly at Edisua’s desk.

 

“You!”

 

Edisua turns her head to him slowly. Edisua never hurries. Whether she’s lifting a forkful of bland Tuesday coconut rice to her lips or skimming her pen across a page, there’s a measured quality to her gestures, as if she’s spent time considering each twitch of muscle, each jerk of her joints. As if she has all the time in the world.

 

 

By the time she turns her head to fully face Mr Ibekwe, his annoyance has risen. His temper has always been bright and hot, but what we all really hate about him is how plainly he enjoys inflicting pain.

 

He wags his cane at Edisua, “Where is your Maths textbook.”

 

“I don’t have one.”

Mr Ibekwe’s smile slices his face in two. He has thin, sharp canines which make his glee a ravenous-looking thing. Edisua looks almost amused.

 

“You don’t…have one.”

 

“No. The bookstore said…”

 

“Stand up!” he shouts, tapping the cane sharply on the floor. She should be pasting a remorseful look on her face, staring down at her shiny black ballet flats, anything but shrugging nonchalantly and continuing to speak. But she’s completely unbothered, and she does exactly that. I cringe as she continues.

 

“Mr Usman said there are no more copies of New General Maths at…”

 

We hear the cane before we realise what has happened, a high whistling sound like the wind whipping through the trees just before a storm. It lands with a crack on Edisua’s arm. He didn’t even bother to tell her to extend her palm.

 

Edisua touches the tips of her fingers to the spot on her arm where the cane landed, then slowly looks up until her eyes are locked on his. My skin prickles as they continue to stare at each other.

 

“Shut up! Stupid girl…did I ask you to–”

 

He chokes on his words.

 

Someone at the back giggles as he hacks out a cough. Then another. And another. The cough takes hold of his body, shaking his shoulders and snapping his neck forward. No one is laughing now.

 

The chords of Me Ibekwe’s  throat strain against the skin of his neck as he clutches it, struggling to speak. His eyes redden and begin to water as he falls to his knees and begins to wheeze. Tobe who sits in the front row begins to scream and the class prefect, Eni runs out to get help.

 

Edisua says nothing. She just continues to hold his gaze until he’s lying flat on his back, with drool leaking from the side of his mouth, tears streaming sideways into his ears as he whines pitifully. Then she smiles and looks away, and Mr Ibekwe sits up suddenly, coughing and gulping mouthfuls of air.

 

Edisua sits back down without being instructed to, smoothing the starched white sleeve of her uniform. She sees me staring at her and smiles. I smile back before I can catch myself.

 

*

 

That night, I don’t sleep. I toss and turn, my mind calling back the image of Mr Ibekwe on the floor, helpless and clutching for breath. I feel my heart slapping at my ribs, blood rushing to the tips of my ears. I can’t get it out of my head. Mr Ibekwe with his biting insults and smooth, long cane, curled on the floor like a rumpled gala wrapper, and Edisua standing over him. I let out a long breath.

 

On nights like this, when I can’t sleep, I like to sneak up to the balcony on the third floor of the hostel. It’s the only balcony that faces away from the teachers’ quarters, and Matron never has the energy to climb all the way up there. Because of this, the third floor balcony is a place where things happen.

 

Chizoba Ejiofor once waved a red bra like a flag at Jeremiah Cobham from there. Joyce Inyang insists she saw the ghost of one of the hanger-aborted babies the SS3 girls keep telling us their seniors used to throw away like rags. Or was it the ghost of one of the hanger-wielding seniors? I try to remember as I push open the termite-eaten door. Slowly, so it doesn’t creak.

 

The night air is different here, like a cold palm caressing my cheek. It’s only when I’ve shut the door with a conclusive click that I realise I am not alone.

 

Edisua and Grace are leaning on the chipped popcorn concrete of the balcony railing. Edisua is whispering impatiently at Grace. Grace’s eyes are watery and red.

 

“I can’t!” Grace says.

 

That is when Edisua turns to me.

 

“What’re you doing here?” she asks, like I’m a fly she’s found nestled in the middle of her Saturday morning akara.

 

“The same thing as you,” I respond. I try to punctuate it with a sharp hiss, but it comes out wrong, like the buzz of a drunk mosquito. Why does this girl always make me feel like an insect?

 

Edisua walks toward me until her nose is an inch from mine, “Are you sure?”

 

I feel my head nodding, even though I didn’t instruct it to. I swallow and rub my fingers together nervously. My palms are sweating.

 

“Alright,” she nods, “You can stay.”

 

“What do you mean she can stay?” Grace whines.

 

“You heard me. Now do it.”

 

“Edisua, I can’t. I really can’t.” Grace shakes her head vigorously.

 

My curiosity beats my confusion and I ask “Can’t what?”

 

“Jump,” Edisua says simply, pointing over the balcony.

 

“What?” I ask. But she’s already turned her attention away from me.

 

“Do it…” she pauses for a second, a thick, weighted second.

 

“Do it now…or you’re not my best friend anymore.”

 

“I said I won’t!” Grace snaps, then runs back into the hostel with a click of the balcony door.

 

“Well,” Edisua says when she is gone. She considers my face like I’m a shirt she’s assessing for stains. She walks up to me and holds my hand tentatively. She looks so sad. I want to fix it.

 

“Do you want to be my best friend, Ini?”

 

I’ve never heard her say my name. It sounds like a discovery on her tongue. Last week during morning devotion, the chapel prefect, Esther Oghenevo spoke to us about old things passing away. When Edisua says my name I feel my sins sloughing off. Sins of silence, of fear, of unimportance. On her tongue, in her hand, I am a new creature.

 

Suddenly my mouth feels full of spit. I’m afraid that I’ll drool if I speak, so I just nod.

 

She smiles, and it’s so stunning, so brilliant—like the sun has risen at midnight.

 

“Good.”

 

She reaches into the deep pocket of her thin sky-blue nightgown and removes a packet of biscuits.

 

“Let’s share,” she says, handing it to me.

 

The pack fits neatly into my palm. The packet has no brand name, just a swirling red and black logo that makes me dizzy after a few seconds of staring at it.

 

I tear it open, and the biscuits inside are round and cakey. Edisua watches as I bite into one. It’s sweet and thick, sticking my teeth together as I chew. I have to struggle to swallow it. I almost spit it out, but I don’t want to insult Edisua by not enjoying her gift.

 

When I’m done, she smiles at me and takes one for herself. We chew in companionable silence, and she tells me about her mother’s chicken stew and a new pair of high, high silver heels her sister has just bought. I nod along smiling, swallowing spit to try and get the taste of sweet metal off my tongue.

 

 

*

 

 

They find Grace’s body the next morning. Folded neatly on the ground below the third floor balcony. She is unbroken, unbleeding and still, lips peeled back from her teeth, mouth wide in a final scream.

 

The matron calls the guards to clear away the body before the breakfast bell, but not before JS2 chatterbox, Ibinabo Green sees it through her room window. She is the one who describes the body and face that once belonged to Grace to us, between gasps and sobs.

 

“She…she…she…” the girl mutters, the first time any of us have ever seen her short of words.

 

Classes are cancelled that day. During night devotion, Matron says a tearful prayer for Grace’s spirit. I hear a muffled sound from Edisua. Joy Akande, the most wicked girl in SS2, walks over to her and rubs her back with a pitying look on her face.

 

But I know Edisua is not crying. She’s holding back a laugh.

 

The next morning, while I’m swirling my watery oats in my breakfast bowl, Edisua sits next to me.

 

“Hi,” she drawls.

 

“Hi,” I respond, after a pause.

 

My heart is slamming against my ribs. My breath is catching against the rungs of my throat. I feel every hair on my forearms stand at abrupt attention. Self-preservation is a muffled whisper in the back row of my mind, telling me I should be afraid. Mrs Bala taught us about animal instincts in Biology last term. About lust and fear and hunger. She said fear is a safety mechanism, nature’s way of warning us.

 

“Grace,” she says the name like it’s something rotten, something she wants to use the roof of her mouth to scrub off her tongue, “Grace was a bad friend. She didn’t trust me. Will you trust me, Ini?”

 

Her eyes are wide and watery as if she’s scared I will say no. As if I could.

 

I know then that something is broken in me, that something has overridden sense and safety and nature, because when Edisua whispers “If you trust me, meet me at the third floor balcony tonight.”, I simply nod and swallow a spoonful of oats.

 

*

 

My roommates should not be sleeping so soundly. The door to the third floor balcony should not be unlocked. It should not be so easy for me to oblige Edisua. But it is. And I’m here on the bacony. And so is she.

 

She takes my hand, and my lungs cease to function.

 

“Do you know why you’re here?”

 

I shake my head, afraid to speak, afraid to shatter the moment.

 

She frowns at me, “Yes you do.”

 

She pulls me to the railing and taps it with her slender index finger.

 

“Climb over.”

 

I can’t refuse. I throw a leg over so I’m straddling the railing, then cast her an uncertain glance.

 

She nods encouragingly, “The other one.”

 

“I…I’ll fall.”

 

“I won’t let you. Don’t you trust me?”

 

“I do.”

 

And that’s all it takes. I inhale a deep, shuddering breath. I keep my eyes on hers as I lift my other leg over the railing. I’m dangling, gripping at the pockmarked paint of the thick railing. I feel my fingernails scrape against it, but I don’t let my eyes leave hers.

 

She peels my thumbs off the railing, then my index finger. I gasp helplessly, but I don’t scream. She takes both of my hands and for a moment I think she’s going to pull me back over and tell me I’ve passed her test. That I’ve proven my loyalty. And then she lets go, and I drop.

 

But I don’t fall.

 

Her eyes are holding mine, and I am standing on air.

 

She giggles and claps as I levitate, gasping at the impossibility of it. She lunges over the railing and spins around me.

 

“Come,” she takes my hand, “Let’s fly.”

 

Crisp wind floods my nose and chest and throat as I let a wild laugh escape me. Edisua’s hand is in mine. Her eyes are on me and for tonight, we are the swirling sisters of the wind.

 

 

*

 

I’ve never had a best friend before. Yes, I talk to my classmates. I eat dinner with them. I lend them my pens. But no one has ever mattered as much as Edisua.

 

We do everything together. From the wake up bell to lights out, we’re attached at the hip. And everything is so much better with her.

 

We walk past a pack of sneering senior boys and they split like the Red Sea and allow us to pass. Teachers think twice before scolding me. During devotion, Matron punished everyone in SS1 for not clapping hard enough. Except me and Edisua. I am untouchable now.

 

One night, as we stand staring down from our spot on the balcony, Edisua passes her fingers over my scalp, trailing them between the ridges of my braids.

 

“Your hair is rough,” she notes.

 

I run a self-conscious hand over the top of my head.

 

“I hate how tight the hairdressers braid. And whenever I ask Vivian or Temi to do my hair, they tell me they have to finish doing their friends’ hair first so…”

 

Edisua smiles and places a reassuring hand on my shoulder, “Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to do your own hair.”

 

“You will?”

 

“Yes,” she nods, “Get a comb, a mirror, some hair cream…and a towel.”

 

When I come back with the implements, Edisua is sitting on the night-cooled tile. I join her there. She unwraps the towel and takes out the comb, mirror and cream I’ve nestled within it, handing them to me before gently spreading the towel over her thighs.

 

“Now, watch me.”

 

I don’t know why she thinks I need to be told.

 

I stare unblinking as Edisua grips her slender neck with both hands. And then she begins to twist.

 

I swallow a gasp, but I sit still. I don’t want her to think I’m a baby or a coward.

 

Edisua’s head begins to inch to the side, little by little, cracking and popping with every movement, until she’s rotated it completely and I’m staring at the back of her head.  Her neck is corkscrewed into a misshapen mess. The way her skin twists and strains reminds me of the Saturdays when my roommates and I wash our towels, the way we wring them out, two girls to a towel, straining as we try to get out every last drop of water.

 

She keeps contorting her head until she’s facing me again, smiling. And then she grips it firmly, her thumbs just below her ears, and takes it off.

 

The beginning of a scream leaks from my mouth, but I suck it back in as quickly as it escapes. I will not disappoint Edisua with my fear.

 

She drops her head on the towel and wipes her palms on it. Her neck is a wet open wound, like a tender, jagged rose blooming from between her shoulders. I wish I could reach into it, feel warm flesh in the heart of my palm, have her blood seep under my nails and dry there, stay there.

 

“See?” Edisua’s head says from its perch on her thighs, “Now you can do your hair whenever you like.”

 

I nod shakily.

 

“Okay. Your turn.”

 

“What?” I feel a knot form in my throat.

 

Edisua picks up her head and places it neatly back on. I squint to check for gaps, for scars, but I find none. The skin of her neck is soft and smooth and seamless, like it’s always been.

 

“Don’t worry,” she grazes my cheek with a bloodstained thumb, “It’s easy.”

 

And it is. As she twists my head off my neck, I focus on her palm against my cheek, her nails digging gently into the back of my head. She lifts it gently from my shoulders and I feel the night breeze tickling at my bared flesh. She laughs at the shocked look on my head as she drops it on her lap. What little pain there is is swallowed by my awe.

 

The pain is a gateway to discovery, to the knowledge that a girl can come apart bloody and bleeding and raw, and then reassemble herself into an intact thing with a full-bodied laugh.

 

Edisua tugs at the end of my braid. “Next time, you’ll do this yourself. But tonight, I’ll help you. What style do you want?”

 

“All-back.”

 

*

 

The day Mr Ibekwe returns from leave, it rains.

 

Edisua and I are bundled in duvets, reading borrowed books and enjoying our Saturday, when a junior barges in, panting.

 

“Edisua, Mr Ibekwe is calling you. He says before he closes his eyes and opens them, you should be in the staff room.”

 

I don’t expect Edisua to care enough to hurry, but she does. The rain beats down on my newly braided hair as we run to the admin block without an umbrella. I wait outside the staff room as Edisua goes in to answer Mr Ibekwe.

 

After waiting ten, fifteen, twenty minutes outside the door, I start to worry. Not for Edisua, for Mr Ibekwe.

 

When Edisua comes out of the staff room, the shoulders of her shirt and the tips of her hair are still wet with rain, and her smile is almost sad.

 

“What did he say?” I ask as we walk back to the hostel. It’s only drizzling now.

 

“He said I was never going to pass his class and that he’s going to make my life miserable.” Edisua giggled, “And he called me a little witch.”

 

I’m silent for a moment.

 

“Are we?” I ask, “Are we really witches?”

 

Edisua stops walking and turns to me, “What is a witch?”

 

“I…I don’t know.”

 

Edisua frowns and shakes her head impatiently. She doesn’t speak again until we get to the hostel.

 

As we head upstairs, she says “We’re not going to the balcony tonight. But we’ll still meet up.”

 

“Where?” I ask, confused.

 

Instead of answering my question, she says: “Make sure you don’t eat dinner.”

 

*

 

That night, I dream of flying.

 

I’m twirling weightless through a bloodred sky, hand in hand with Edisua, and my chest feels so light I could float into the sun and burn into a joyous burst of ashes.

 

And then the dream shifts and we are in a white room, wearing white robes.

 

In front of us, there’s a table with all my favourite foods. I see the egg rolls I used to buy every day during break time when I was in Primary 4, my mother’s abak soup with melt-in-your mouth fresh catfish, the Sizzlers shawarma my father would buy to apologise after calling me useless, the roadside zobo Mrs Bassey bought us after we won the spelling bee in JS2 and in the middle of the table, a heaping plate of peppered chicken thighs perched with translucent rings of onion and chunks of tomato, like the ones Edisua got a cleaner to smuggle into the hostel to cheer me up after tmy parents missed visiting day.

 

My mouth waters as I stare.

 

“Is this for us?”

 

“Yes,” Edisua smiles.

 

I reach eagerly for a piece of the chicken, but Edisua grips my wrist.

 

“Before you eat,” she says, “Let me ask you something.”

 

I nod, waiting for her question.

 

Edisua’s face straightens abruptly, with no trace of the smile that was just there. In a flat, thick voice, she asks:

 

“Are you a witch?”

 

Red light stains the white walls of the room, and the smell of blood floods my nose.

 

I look down at the table and scream. The plates are filled with meat. Raw, red, bloody meat. No, not meat. A body in pieces. Shy pink lungs. A gleaming liver. Two plump eyeballs. A large , muscled, twitching thigh, jugs of thick, syrupy blood, and at the center, a still-beating heart nestled in a butterflied ribcage.

 

At the back of my mind, behind the fear and panic, is a stray thought that this is almost beautiful. Did she do this herself, I wonder. Lay this all out so prettily for me?

 

“What is this?” I finally manage to ask.

 

“It’s Mr Ibekwe.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I asked you what a witch is earlier, and you couldn’t answer. Well I’ll tell you. A witch is a girl who is free to fly at night, a girl who can take herself to pieces and remake herself whole, a girl who takes revenge in flesh and blood. I’m a witch, Ini. Are you?”

 

I consider the table carefully. I pick up the pumping heart. It’s warm in my hands. I dig my teeth into it and blood bursts on my tongue. It’s sweet. I didn’t know blood could be sweet.

 

I look up from the heart in my hands, at Edisua’s face. She looks so proud of me.

 

“What else do witches do?”

 

Edisua smiles and takes my hand, “Whatever they want.”

As soon as Asàgà realized that the sudden wetness pouring down her thighs was yet another miscarriage, she decided that the devil in her womb would have to be plucked out by force. She had been lenient for long enough.

 

This was her fourth miscarriage, her seventh lost child. The other three had been kind enough to be born, stillborn as they were.

 

It had stilled her, how easily she had learnt neither loss nor grief in the face of her dead children, but a shame so pungent, it seeped into every pore of her being. Her husband had taken a second wife after their fifth child was born with vacant eyes and hands that were so tightly fisted, she could not pry them open. It was during that time that the whispers came. She heard them everywhere, in the presence of her in-laws, in the bustle of the market, in the quiet stillness of her dreams.

 

Barren woman.

 

Her womb is bewitched.

 

She must have sinned against the gods!

 

I pity her!

 

I pity her!

 

I pity her!

 

During that first week when the whispers started, mere days after Ifenkilinnaya—her husband’s new wife—moved into the family compound, Asàgà would startle awake from dreams of hands pressing down her throat, hands poking her stomach as though to pry her womb open and forcefully cause her to conceive a living child.

 

She began to avoid public gatherings, started to walk to Obunigwe stream only after midnight, when she was sure she would not meet any person on her path; started to finish her chores very late into the night or very early in the morning and then resigned herself to her hut for the rest of the day. And in this, her self-imposed isolation from the world, she bore no grudge against her husband, Nnaka.

 

He was a kind man and he had resisted the pressures of taking a new wife for as long as he could.

 

I am only doing this so that our people can finally rest easy. If you do not want this, I will wash my hands off the matter. 

 

But she had asked him to go ahead, had donned her prettiest smile and assured him that she understood, that it was a good idea for him to marry a new wife. He needed an heir and she was willing to share. He did not resist her acquiescence and she had wanted to resent him for how easily he smiled and hugged her, how earnestly he said, Thank you, as though he’d desperately needed her permission in the first place.

 

When the new wife arrived, pretty and fair skinned as she was, Asàgà took one look at her and knew immediately that she would bear healthy children. There was a quality about the girl that caused Asàgà to want to wrap her in banana leaves and preserve her forever. An innocence that was neither naive nor performative, a strength that did not wholly show itself.

 

The first words Ifenkilinnaya said to her were, I understand it if you hate me. I am the daughter of a second wife and so I know very well how these things play out. But do not hate me because you are expected to do so as the first wife. It will be shameful if you do not at least have a valid reason to do so. If you think you cannot like me, then you can ignore my existence and I will keep to myself. I am not here to usurp your place. If I had my way, I would not even be here at all. I just wanted you to know this.

 

Asàgà had been stunned by her bluntness, by the way her words had come off as curt but not impolite. She had expected a bratty teen who would try to walk over her and she had been met by a young woman who had no such interests. She had been too stunned to say anything other than, Okay.

 

True to her premonitions, Ifenkilinnaya did bear healthy children. By her fifth year, she had borne two healthy boys, three years apart. They both looked like their father, same flat nose and wide foreheads and mischievous eyes. It pained Asàgà to look at them—for in the place where she should have seen their beauty, she saw only the absence of her own children, the color of her own shame. She had lost two more children during that time.

 

It was then that she decided to exorcise the devil from her womb.

 

Her parents had brought her up in the path of the true religion but she had grown agnostic over the years and so, in her desperation, she decided that the only way to free herself of the child eater in her womb was to rekindle her link to the deities.

 

At midnight, three weeks after the unformed fetus was induced out of her body, she took a gourd of jojoba oil, a live cock and three tubers of yam and began the long trek to the Agbala’s cave in Idú.

 

As she walked the path, she recited the prayer her mother had taught her as a child, Ogé; Time, the great witness of all that has been and all that is and all that will be, be my anchor. Uwà; Space; the infinity of the universe, the being that never ends, the land that never dies, be my home. Ndú; Life, the great mother, the first breath, guide my path. Onwú; Death; the malevolent eater, the end of all things, turn away from me..

 

And as she spoke this prayer over and over again, every step came to her lighter than the last, every breath unknotted something within her, and she felt renewed by it.

 

Asàgà prayed for a week at the cave and when she returned to Ukpo, she arrived with an assurance that her next conception would live. She had felt it on her way back from the cave; a sense of something unbecoming, of something happening and unhappening at the same time.

 

She conceived on the second month after her visit to the cave and despite Nnaka’s unenthused reception of the news, Asàgà was determined not to hold any ounce of doubt in her mind because doubt, too, was a child-killer.

 

She nurtured her newest fetus with the fastidious excitement of a first-time mother, singing to the child at night and paying no mind to the whispers around her. 

 

Every night, she willed the child to live, to be so brilliantly alive and beautiful, even the deities would marvel at it.

 

As the ninth month neared, Ifenkilinnaya began to offer to help her with her chores, to sweep her hut and fetch her waters and cook her meals.

 

This is the most delicate time of your pregnancy, she said. You must not put any strain on yourself. Let me help.

 

Asàgà cried in the face of the other woman’s kindness and nodded her agreement.

 

This child will live. I know it. She said these words so often, she feared that the others would deem her mad. But every time she said the words to Ifenkilinnaya, the woman nodded in a way that did not seem patronizing or pitying. She agreed that it was true, that the child would live.

 

On the day that the child came into the world, a storm took over the skies in Ukpo, sent trees toppling over each other, houses crumbling and rivers flooding. But the child came, bright and beautiful with a cry as sharp as a hunter’s whistle and Asàgà wept at the sight of her daughter.

 

She named her Nkebialu’uwànandú: ‘the one who came into the world alive.’

 

***

 

The Agwu struck Ukpo in the eighth year after her daughter’s birth.

 

The Living Madness was what everyone called it. A sickness that seeped into the heads of children and caused them to gouge out their eyes, to claw open their skin until they bled to death. 

 

Sometimes, parents bound their children’s hands away from their body to keep them from the madness. Sometimes, they cut off their children’s hands entirely. Anything to stop the Agwu from taking their lives. But even then the madness persisted and caused children to bite their tongues or caused their lungs to reject air until they asphyxiated on sheer unwillingness to live.

 

By the fourth moon, every family in Ukpo with a child below ten had a freshly dug stump of earth in their compounds.

 

All except Nnaka’s household.

 

It did not take long for all of Ukpo to notice this quirk. Most of Nnaka’s children had grown beyond ten years except for his last daughter, Nkebialu’uwànandú. She was eight. And the sickness that had spared no child within the hundred mile radius had simply passed over her.

 

It was not long before their grief and confusion coagulated into a searing rage, a damning hunger for retribution.

 

They flocked as one angry mob to Nnaka’s house, eyes blazing in shared fury, mouths spewing threats coated in lava.

 

The girl is a witch.

 

Her mother has cursed us all.

 

End their lives.

 

Give us back our children!

 

Give us back our children!

 

Give us back our children!

 

Asàgà was the one to meet them at the fore of the compound. A mother ready to smite anyone who would dare harm her child. Nnaka was notably absent but Ifenkilinnaya stood with her and together, with their desperations combined, the mob halted.

 

Why have you come here? What crime has my child committed against you? Asàgà asked, her voice quaking with thunder. Her eyes brimming with determination. 

 

Your child lives when all of ours are dead. What do you say for yourself, witch? They asked.

 

She lives only because the gods have willed it so. If you have any qualms, take it up with them. Ifenkilinnaya responded on her behalf, hands folded against her chest in a show of resistance. Asàgà felt her heart bloom with gratitude.

 

Don’t you have a man to speak for you, gbo? Have you eaten your husband’s tongue, witch? They asked.

 

Speak one more foul word to her and you will eat your own tongues this very day, Ifenkilinnaya said back to them.

 

And in all of this, Nnaka remained absent.

 

The mob threatened and they cursed and they raged, but in the end, they left. Defeated.

 

Where is our husband? Asàgà asked, her relief and her trepidations coalescing into anxiety. Why does he abandon me in my hour of need?.

 

In the days that passed, Asàgà kept close watch over her daughter, Nkebialu’uwànandú, frightened that the raging villagers would hunt her in her moment of vulnerability.

 

Ifenkilinnaya urged her not to worry too much. It does the heart no good to be this anxious all the time, she said, and yet Asàgà’s heart would not sit still. Always it thudded. Always she jumped in fright at the most mundane of things.

 

At night, she would startle out of sleep and hurry to her daughter’s cot to make sure she was okay. To make sure she had not been taken by death in the night.

 

I will go to my father’s place in Ifite, she said to Ifenkilinnaya one day after her daughter woke up with a rising fever. I cannot stay here another day knowing that these people harbour plans to harm my sick child. 

 

Do you think your daughter’s fever is a result of evil juju from the villagers? Ifenkilinnaya asked, her worry evident.

 

Grieving parents can do heinous things sometimes, Asàgà answered.

 

She did not tell Nnaka of her plans to visit her family, still aggrieved as she was by his absence on the day when the mob came. From his hut, he watched her on the morning when she left with Nkebialu’uwànandú and a supplies bag strapped to her back. Something in his eyes spoke of a malevolence directed at her, but he said nothing. Did nothing.

 

The journey from Ukpo to Ifite took half a day and by the time they arrived, the sun had set in the horizon and her daughter’s fever had spiked alarmingly, but Asàgà was not too worried by it.

 

Ada’m, her father said upon her arrival, pleasantly surprised.

 

He hugged her to his frail chest and she felt relief course through her. She remembered her late mother’s words: ‘There is always love at home.’

How is your husband and your co-wife? Her father asked.

 

They’re fine, she answered, the lie stale on her tongue.

 

We heard of the horrible things happening in Ukpo. All those dead children. Tueh! Gods be praised my granddaughter was spared.

 

Gods be praised. 

 

That night, Asàgà slept at ease despite her daughter’s fever. She slept calm as a dove, and she dreamt of the day when she went to the Agbala’s cave to pray for a child.

 

She dreamt of the witch doctor; a buxom, middle-aged woman with sharp eyes and a chalk-painted face telling her, in very clear tones, that her womb was a harbinger for doom and that it was only by the mercy of the gods that she had not conceived or borne a living child.

 

For this one child that you seek, the witch doctor had begun, thousands shall fall. Do you still want this?

 

Yes. She’d answered confidently and irrevocably before the effigies of her gods. A bargain sown in blood. A covenant crested in death.

 

In the morning, Asàgà was roused from her sleep by the anguished cry of a nearby mother screaming over the body of her dead child.

 

She rose, daintily, and walked up to her daughter’s cot. The little girl was still soundly asleep. Still so marvelously alive and beautiful. Her fever had broken in the night.

 

Asàgà remembered the witch doctor’s last words to her.

 

For every decade of that child’s life, a hundred unlived lives must be found and sown.

 

As she caressed her daughter’s head, Asàgà wondered where next she’d go after Ifite had paid its due.

 

Maybe Igbariam or Otimkpu, she thought aloud as the wail of yet another mother rang into the morning air. I hear they have many children there.