Stone & the Three Kings: Part 3

This is the point in the story that features my mentor, Omofarangbara – Faran for short (and I use the word 'mentor' loosely, as his 'lessons' mostly consist of condescending rants about how I know nothing of my heritage and the spirit world; a problem he could easily fix by actually teaching me something!). I dreaded our weekly training sessions, and now, I was in the unenviable position of needing his help desperately.

Sandra was out cold – as in, she was out like a light, and her skin was cold. I didn’t think she was dead – she seemed to be breathing - though that could have been me looking for reasons not to panic. But after shaking her for the umpteenth time, I realized there was no way she would wake up by normal means. That thing said its mission was to disgrace me. Then why go after Sandra?

I turned the spirit’s words over in my head again and again, but they still made no sense. There’s no time for this! I need to call Faran!

I reached into my bag and pulled out a small case. Inside were two cowrie shells not much bigger than an eraser. I replaced the case, held the cowries to my mouth, and muttered an incantation. The cowries tingled and let out a soft white glow, barely visible in the darkness.

I passed one of the cowries to my left hand and held it to my mouth. I held the other to my ear.

“Faran!” I said, speaking into the cowrie like a mouthpiece. “Faran! It’s Stone, o! I have a problem!”

A few seconds passed without a response. I was about to call out again when I heard something like static from the other cowrie. It took a moment to clear up, and for the familiar, husky voice to burst through the shell.

“Gbare!”

“Faran!” I cried. “Yes! It’s me! I need your help…”

“So you can’t greet again?!”

I hissed. “I don’t have time for this, Faran…”

“You don’t have time to show basic respect? You’re truly like your father, aren’t you?”

“This is serious!”

“I don’t think it is. And neither are you, to be honest.” I hissed again. I was running out of time. It was five minutes past seven by my watch. “E ka san, Baba Faran,” I droned.

“Baba who?” the voice crackled.

I sighed. “Baba Faran, the one who challenged the gods and won.”

“Now that wasn’t hard, was it?” He said. Then his tone became jarringly business-like. “Gbare, the oracle is doing somehow right now. Is there a reason you’re disturbing me this time of night?”

My elbow brushed against Sandra’s cheek. Her skin had gotten much colder. “Something attacked me and my friend…,” I said.

“A spirit, most likely. I suppose you’ve managed to destroy it…”

“I have,” I said, cutting off the sarcastic comment he would certainly have made. “But it did something to my friend, and I need you to help me fix it.”

The inhuman snort that emanated from the shell made me grind my teeth. “If your friend was stupid enough to get caught in your line of fire, that’s really not my problem. And it shouldn’t be yours either.”

I glanced at Sandra. Her breathing was getting shallower. “It shouldn’t, but it is.”

“I don’t have time to play doctor to your friends, Gbare.”

“Abeg na!” I begged. “Her parents will be home soon. If anything happens to her, it’s me everyone will be looking at. I can’t start explaining all this spirit world stuff to these people.”

“You can barely explain it to yourself,” he muttered under his breath. He probably didn’t think I heard him. I rolled my eyes.

“Okay, you can bring your friend to the shrine, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Relief washed over me, only to be replaced with confusion. “The shrine? In Ibadan? Can’t you come here with…like…a magical first-aid box or something…?”

“DON’T…YOU EVER…,” he screamed. I nearly dropped the cowrie. “INSULT MY CRAFT BY CALLING IT MAGIC! OR COMPARING IT TO…” insert snort here “FIRST…AID!”

I had to clutch my chest so my heart wouldn’t leap out. I’d forgotten how touchy he was about the word 'magic'.

“As to getting you here…,” he continued, like the outburst from two seconds before hadn’t happened. “…just put an elbow or something on your friend and hold still.”

“Okay?” I said, gingerly resting my elbow on Sandra’s stomach. I could feel the chill through the cotton.

Before I could blink or shiver, the street and houses around me disappeared into complete darkness. I was thrown into the void at a speed that I wasn’t sure I would survive. I closed my eyes and let out a scream.

“Keep quiet, jare!” I heard.

When I opened my eyes, it was to see a young man, not much older than eighteen, looming over me. He wore nothing but a pair of dirty Ankara trousers and an enormous scowl on his face, which he directed at me.

“What happened?” I asked, shaken.

“Question,” the man said. The voice that came from his mouth – raspy and ancient – was strange coming from such a young body, but I’d gotten used to it. “If you’d bothered to learn anything, you’d be able to make this journey yourself.”

He was referring to my ability to travel through space and time, something I’d only done once and didn’t mind never having to do again.

When I said nothing, Faran hissed and looked past me. “That’s your friend, abi?” I glanced at Sandra and nodded. “Hmmn…she does look terrible,” he muttered. He turned and walked out of the room. “Bring her into the altar room. I’ll see what I can do.”

I got up and dropped my bag and sword on the ground. At first, I tried to lift and carry Sandra in my arms, newlywed style, but at this point, she was freezing cold besides being plain heavy, so that fell through faster than she did from my arms. I grabbed her by her armpits instead and dragged her out of the room with me. The cold dug into my hands, but I had to ignore it.

Faran’s shrine hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d been here. It didn’t look much different than the stereotypical shrines in those Africa Magic movies, except everything was much more authentic and dangerous. The oracle room was a large, open space shrouded in the darkness that the numerous candles allowed. The walls and floor were bare, cracked mud that allowed all kinds of creepy crawlies to wander about. I couldn’t understand how Faran could stand to walk barefoot all the time.

At the center of the room was a large mound of earth, which more or less served as an altar. Faran stood at the other side, gathering ingredients while muttering something to himself. He got more irritated the further his ramblings went along.

“But what is it exactly?” He was saying, in sacred Yoruba. “If you’re not going to tell me…”

He stopped when I approached the altar. I stood there for a few minutes, hoping he would assist me in getting her up there. But wishful thinking had always been my tragic flaw, and I found myself struggling to maneuver my girlfriend to the top of the altar as my mentor rambled on to no one in particular. It was rough going, between the cold and the distracting soliloquy, but I somehow managed.

“You can destroy all my ingredients if you like,” Faran snapped when one of his vials of questionable liquid started to shake. “I’m sure you’ll be able to take me to where I can get them back.”

I ignored him, and he turned his attention to the matter at hand. “Now, I’ll have to warn you. The oracle’s been doing somehow since you called me, so this is going to be a lot of trial and error. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite like this.”

I gulped. That didn’t sound good. Possible explanations for what had happened to Sandra started to run through my mind, each one more stupid than the last. And it was definitely not a good time to mention I needed her awake by eight.

“What’s wrong with the oracle?” I asked, trying to take my mind off my fears.

Faran was sprinkling blue powder all over Sandra while chanting an incantation, so I didn’t get an answer until he was done. “It’s neither respectful nor wise to interrupt an Ifa priest when he’s conducting a ritual, Gbare,” he said, putting away the jar of blue stuff. “But if you must know, the oracle seems to find something funny, and it refuses to tell me.”

That seemed dumb, and I said so.

“Well, the ways of gods would seem inane, especially to one who’s spent so much of his life separate from the spiritual,” he said the last part with a toxic sneer. “Gods also find our ways amusing from time to time.”

When they’re not finding it offensive, I thought.

“The point is, something has happened that the oracle finds hilarious,” he continued then paused to rattle something over Sandra’s body as he chanted another incantation. “I don’t mind that he refuses to say what it is. But it seems to be keeping him from giving me any of the insight I ask for.”

“I’d hate to be the idiot a god would laugh at,” I muttered.

It was quarter to eight when Faran gave up. “It’s only you, Gbare,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at me. “It’s only you that can enter this kind of problem, and then bring it to me at the worst possible time. I think you just exist to disgrace me.”

I looked up from the games on my phone. “Well, maybe if I had a better teacher, I could have saved her,” I said.

“A stunted maize stalk will always blame the soil,” he said in regular Yoruba. I can speak neither regular Yoruba nor the sacred one, but I had heard him say this before.

“Will she live, at least?” I asked, hopeful.

“I don’t even know,” he said. Those were words he rarely ever said, and he reeled from spitting them out. “Whatever this affliction is, it’s immune to all my spells. I can’t even tell what it is.”

There was silence. “But…,” I said. “If you were to hazard a guess?”

He shook his head. It was foolish to hope. It always was whenever I was concerned.

I'll try to make this as brief as possible.

My name is Stone, my father wants to kill me, and an evil spirit has frozen my girlfriend.

I am dead serious.

I am not a regular teenager, and it was pretending to be one that got me into this mess.

Now, I have to enter the realm of dangerous and unpredictable spirits to fix my mess.

Will I succeed? I won't bet on it.

Excited for Part Four? We are too! We wonder if Stone will make it back with Sandra by 8 pm. What do you think?

One Eighty: Finale

Day Twenty of One Eighty

I don't remember

I close my eyes tight trying to make something of the void between my head

Flashes

That's all I see

The lady had returned with a mouthful of empty information

He is dead

That particular one leaves me with a sick feeling each time I think about it

And yet...I don't know why

The lady is my mother

And I am home with my family, she said

Yet, I know she's wrong

I only remember being alone

Alone alone

And I remember one eighty days

In one eighty days, everything would be fine

I can be happy again

Happy

Day Forty of One Eighty

I joined the Utopian Peace Corps

He would be proud of me

I see him in my dreams smiling at me

His eyes, sometimes grey sometimes greenish brownish, calling to me

I know him and yet I don't know him

I don't want to think too deeply about it

I can't trust what I think, sometimes I think my mind is lying to me

I don't know if what I know is what I know

I don't know what is a memory and what is just a dream

I can't make sense of anything

So I'm just going to keep myself busy helping people out there

Outside Utopia

Utopia

Day Sixty of One Eighty

I am passing through the underground tunnel again with my group

We need to get food and medical supplies to the inner city of the outside

But the outside government do not want us to help the 'rebels'

Only, at this point, every citizen of the outside is a rebel

The government is fighting its own people!

What we are doing is dangerous, I know

But it must be done

There are children there and they will starve

A water disease is breaking out too

We make our way through the dark, humid subway amid the sound of each other's groaning

The air is stagnant and breathing is hard labor

A single but large flashlight illuminates our path, further heating up the atmosphere

A sudden but slight breeze is a well-received sign of the end of the tunnel

Soon after, the ladder to the surface is finally visible

Just above, moonlight is streaming through an opening

I am standing in the middle of the woods looking up at the moon above my head through the branches of giant trees

And I am painting what I see

Painting with such speed that I can no longer see my hands' movement

Someone packs my hair into a ponytail behind me and wipes my face dry with a soft silk piece of cloth

I am sweating in streams

My eyeballs. They've rolled out of focus

When I finish, I collapse and he's there to catch me

He kisses my forehead and lays me down somewhere

Day Hundred of One Eighty

I no longer want to stay 'home' with strangers

I know they call themselves my family

But I don't know them

I have boarded with the Corps in their housing unit close to the fringes of Utopia

Every day, my group journeys through hidden tunnels, risking discovery by the outside government, to feed and treat victims of the chaos

Some of the victims, soldiers

When I meet the soldiers I find myself searching their faces

I think I am looking for the face in my dreams

His face

In fact, I think something inside me needs to find it desperately

I want to know why I feel this way

But I can't

Day One Fifty of One Eighty

He is dead

He is dead

She said

The lady that calls herself my mother

Stop looking for him, she said

I know what you're doing, she said

But how can she know what I am doing

When I myself do not

He is gone

You need to let go

Chance is gone

My eyes scorch as tears stream down unbridled

What does she mean

What is she saying

And yet it seems my heart knew

I don't know what you are talking about

The tears are gone as soon as they came

Chance simply went on a trip, I told her

He'll be back very soon

And I can leave this house and be with him

A tight smile slips up my lips

And suddenly I feel so sure of what I said

His name is Chance?

His name is Chance

I remember why I had to leave that house

Now, I can think clearly

And not feel nervous, anxious

Alone, I know everything will be fine

When I am not surrounded by worried, gloomy faces, I can be sure everything will be fine

And I can keep myself busy helping those who have the right to be gloomy

Today, I volunteered to go to the more dangerous part of the outside

They call it the Eastern Center

And I know immediately I hear about it that I need to be there

We will stay there for thirty days

This time our mission is to soldiers particularly

Day One Seventy of One Eighty

My dreams are becoming clearer

I dream of Chance every time I close my eyes

I see him

I touch his thick, curly, raven black hair

I feel his thin, pink lips

His strong arms around me

I long so much to hear his voice

But he doesn't speak in my dreams

And it drives me insane with need

Take me with you, I want to say

Take me to where you are

But I don't want to speak and ruin the moment

Or maybe I too cannot speak in my dreams

I feel joyful by day after I have seen my heart by night

I feel the time coming when I will finally see my heart in the light of day

One eighty days

And then I can be at peace

I remember something and go in search of our Corps Zonal Inspector to ask about it

A large warehouse I noticed a far distance from the wounded soldiers' camp we visited daily

It seemed all but abandoned but I couldn't stop watching it

And for days, I have watched it

For what? I don't know

Today, I noticed men enter and not retreat until a full hour after

Then, I see them leave one man less, through a dirt road across the sparse field surrounding the terrain

The ZI warns me against venturing towards the vicinity of the warehouse

And I know that I must go there

According to him, it is a pseudo detention camp kept by rebels and the prisoners there are beyond our helping capacity, it is too guarded

And yet I saw no guards nor any restrictions whatsoever in all my days surveying the area around the structure

If there are soldiers held there, they need help just as much as any other soldier they've helped

Why help some and not help others?

Why help only when it's safe or easy?

Day One Eighty - D-day

I'm ready

Today, I visit that warehouse

I planned a course of action, as much as I can manage

The ZI disapproves, so I am not going with my group to the house

Nobody can know I am going at all

They'll want to stop me

They'll try

But it's OK, I have everything well planned

I have mini food and drug packs for thirty people stuffed in a Peace Corps goodwill carryall

Detached hard work has its benefits, I am group leader

I will give my members instructions about today's campaign and head off immediately for a 'special assignment'

Everything has worked out perfectly

And now, with the warehouse door towering in front of me, I break into a sweat

I shiver with a sudden bout of anxiety and I hold on desperately to the handle of the heavy carryall

I gingerly open the great door and I am swiftly bathed with the smell of death and decay

My eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness of the interior of the warehouse, a sharp contrast to the bright, sunny outside

There are no windows here

Or the windows are all shut

There are bodies on the floor tied to poles

The bodies start to move

And moan

Before I am conscious of it, I'm on the floor leaning towards the man in front of me

The big gaping wound on his leg looks infected

This man would die soon, why would anyone bother to tie him up, what harm can he do?

I lift his head to look at his face

I need to make sure his eyes aren't grey, greenish brown

I move to the next then the next

Searching their faces

I don't find what I am looking for

The men are not all wounded but they are all hanging on to life by a thread

I reach the last man, he lifts his head to look at me before I have to do it for him

And confirms my unconscious fear

He is not here

I collapse to the ground

He is dead

He is dead

And again I feel completely disconnected from my mind and my body

I am weeping and yet I don't know why

He is dead

I don't understand my mind's pattern

He is dead

I feel myself convulse with the intensity of my tears

I pull at my hair in desperation and anxiety

And then I hear it

Heavy footsteps from just outside the building

Like boots crushing dry leaves on the ground

I hear voices, angry voices

I left the door open

I tremble with sudden fear

I should have left while I had the time

And then all thought drains from me as I relax into a comfortable resignation

I sit on the floor and wait for the worst

The men walk in and one shines a torch in my direction

They throw angry questions at me

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

Who sent me?

Who am I?

Someone shouts a loud and precise 'STOP'

And my head is up instantly because I know that voice

I have longed for that voice in my dreams for a long time

He walks towards me and I want to scream

He looks straight at me, stands right in front of me

I can touch him if I want to, yet I can't

I don't remember him

The only thing I know of him is what I see in my dreams

His eyes lock with mine

Greenish Brownish

Am I really looking into the eyes of my heart?

And I am up away from the ground and in his arms

April

April

He repeats over and over again

I want to disappear into him as he is crushing me with the strength of his embrace

They lied to us the council, the government everyone

Everything we thought we knew is all a lie, he is saying

But I don't care about any of that

The one thing I care about has returned to me!

I am laughing and crying and wailing and convulsing

I lift my hands into his hair to feel the silky strands again

I am overwhelmed with a barrage of emotion and I can make no sense of it

I don't want to

I was right

In One Eighty days, everything would be fine!

Am I really in his arms?

Can I really finally hear his voice whispering words of love and other deep emotions only our hearts would ever comprehend?

My face is safely buried just below his shoulder and I am content

Happy

I hear scampering and shuffling around but I don't want to move an inch from where I am

Suddenly I feel a sharp, piercing metal-like thing graze the top of my head just as His hand tightens more around me

I lift up my head as a dizzy spell washes over me and see blood on his shoulder

I am just about to check if he is okay

When I feel another hard substance hit me squarely at the back of my head and pierce through faster than I can conceive my next thought

Light flashes before my eyes for a split second before I blackout

My last vision is of grey eyes under the sun.

END

Stone and the Three Kings: Part 2

But there was nothing. Only people going about their day, and a lone firefly buzzing about my field of vision.

“What’s wrong?” Sandra asked. She was concerned.

“Nothing,” I said, quickly relaxing myself so she would relax. The firefly buzzed around my face, so I swatted it away. “Let’s just go.”

While this wasn’t my first time being followed by something I couldn’t see following me, it was the first time it was happening with someone who didn’t know my secret. You can understand the intense pressure I was under - assuming you’re the kind of person who should be reading this. If not, I recommend you give this to your local akara or suya dealer; they’ll know what to do.

“You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?” Sandra asked for what was probably the third time. At this point, we had turned into her street; deathly quiet in contrast to the bright boisterousness of the main road.

“Wrong?” I asked, looking behind me. “Why would anything be wrong?”

“I wonder for you, na,” she complained. “You keep looking back at every little sound. Are you expecting us to be robbed?”

I scoffed. “Of course not.” I was expecting us to be murdered in cold blood on this quiet, lonely street. My head and body taken as a trophy for the powers that be, her corpse left to rot as a warning to my friends. I felt no need to tell her that, of course.

Her house was farther down the street, and I was counting the seconds until we got there. My fear of my father was no longer driving me – although it was still at the back of my mind. The world was deathly quiet, and the night was pitch black, save for some lights in some houses. My sword continued to shiver in my bag, and I shivered along with it. Sandra shivered as well.

“Chai,” she whispered, hugging herself. “How did it get so cold suddenly?”

I made an attempt at a nonchalant shrug. “Climate change, I guess.”

She laughed. I laughed too. My sword shook violently.

I gave a little backwards glance, but I saw no one behind us, save for a sliver of light buzzing about my face. Another firefly. I swatted it away, irritated.

There was a loud, derisive snort to my side. “You are jumpy tonight, aren’t you?” Sandra said.

I chuckled. “Streets are rough,” I said sheepishly.

“Not these streets…oww!” Sandra winced and slapped her neck. The firefly escaped, disappearing into the darkness.

“Sorry, eh,” I said. “Does it hurt?”

“It does.” Sandra moaned, rubbing the sore spot. She groaned and hissed. “I didn’t even know fireflies bit people.”

She collapsed faster than I could say, “They don’t.”

A movement to my left (I was now facing Sandra, who was unconscious on the road) drew my attention. A figure stood shrouded in the darkness. He looked like a regular human (who was naked or in skin tight clothing), but my instincts told me it wasn’t. I reached into my bag and pulled out my sword, holding it ready for the attack.

The world stood still, or at least, we did. The figure was unmoving in the darkness, and I was not going to move away from Sandra. The sword shook in my hand, but not from its power. I didn’t know what that thing was, and I had a policy against fighting things when I didn’t know how they could kill me. It’s a sage policy I wish more people would adopt.

After some time passed, I decided I would be proactive.

“What are you?!” I asked, putting down my sword. (What did you expect? I’d actually attack that thing? In the night? With no backup? Like an idiot?)

The thing said nothing, so I repeated the question, this time in the sacred tongue. It was still silent.

“Do you know who I am?” I cried. “I am Obagbagbare, the son of Obajobalai. How dare you stay silent when I command you?!” (Be not fooled by the authority in my words, I could not back them up. As I said before, my father wants me dead. Disowning me was no problem for him).

The figure moved. It put its hands to its stomach and made an odd, guttural, otherworldly sound that caught me off guard, so much so that I moved forward a step. It took me a while to realize it was laughter.

“You? The son of what? The son of who?” The thing said when it was done holding its sides. It spat before continuing. “Let me warn you: don’t you ever call my master’s name in vain again! Ever!”

“My father sent you?” I was not surprised, of course. “Then, why do you stand in the shadows like a coward. If you’re truly a son of spirits and not of man, come and fight me!" (What I’d meant to say was, 'Okay, how about you come over here and we can discuss this as rational individuals without resorting to violence,' but I guess I misplaced a few words here and there. The sacred tongue is complicated like that. We’ll let it be what it is.)

The thing laughed again. “And why would I fight an insect such as you?”

“You said my father sent you after me? I didn’t think he rewarded failure.”

“True. Your father does punish the failure of his own,” the figure replied. “But your father didn’t send me to kill you. Only to disgrace you.”

Disgrace me? That didn’t sound like old man Lai at all. Maybe he’s losing his touch. And disgrace me how? I asked the last question aloud. He replied with laughter that rattled my brain.

“They told me you were ignorant. But don’t worry. My work is already done.” He didn’t give me a chance to reel from being called ignorant (spirits put so much pressure on me for not knowing all the nuances of their world in the little time I’ve known of its existence. They’re like parents in a way) before continuing. “But if you insist on doing battle with your better, who am I to deny you your doom.”

The figure let out a quick laugh and bolted towards me at top speed. And this wasn’t human top speed. This was the top speed of the spirits, meaning he was upon me faster than I could cry “Arggh!”

“Arggh!” I cried. I shut my eyes and swung my sword blindly.

My sword exploded with a light so bright that it pierced through my eyelids. That’s how I knew I managed to hit it. (Fun fact: My sword is made from a steel sharper than steel, and can cut through reality like tissue paper).

I opened my eyes, and focused through the now dimming light. What I saw…would have horrified me months ago. At that point, I’d seen worse.

The thing looked pretty close to human, even with the four eyes and fangs sticking out its mouth. Its skin was golden brown, and it seemed to reflect the light from my sword. It was naked, and I saw a huge gash on its bare chest. Golden light, not blood, poured out of the wound, evaporating as it touched air.

The only thing I could note as odd was the smile on its face. Is it…happy? Proud, even? I told myself it was a trick of the light, but that was an obvious lie.

“And if you’re satisfied now, my prince,” it said, a mocking emphasis on the words 'prince' and 'satisfied'. “My work here is done.” And then, it vanished with the light into thin air, leaving me alone in darkness with my confusion...and Sandra.

I'll try to make this as brief as possible.

My name is Stone, my father wants to kill me, and an evil spirit has frozen my girlfriend.

I am dead serious.

I am not a regular teenager, and it was pretending to be one that got me into this mess.

Now, I have to enter the realm of dangerous and unpredictable spirits to fix my mess.

Will I succeed? I won't bet on it.

Part Three is Coming Soon. Tell us what you think of this story so far, in the comments section!