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?