Mansa is anxious. And she does not know which is worse: that she is failing to maintain her cool, or that she knows her friends can sense her composure giving.
“Are you alright?” Lololi asks, looking up from her work. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I’m fine,” Mansa says without hesitation. “Don’t mind me. Keep drawing.”
There are five of them there at the graveyard, toiling beneath the cloudless moonlit sky. Lololi, Quartey, and Yayra are on their knees with Mansa, huddled around a small unassuming tombstone, their hands dusted in chalk and fine salt. Sumina is standing over them, a massive, weathered tome cradled in one arm, and his phone shining a light into its pages. At his feet, there is a stack of extra reference material—two more hardcovers, one soft cover, and a pile of dogeared papers with a sewn-together spine.
Sumina looks into his book, and then at the tombstone. Book. Tombstone. Book. “I think we’ve got it.”
“You think or you know?” Quartey asks.
“Come and look eh? You think this is easy?” says Sumina.
Yayra’s head snaps up. “Seriously? We’re the ones doing the actual work.”
“Give me that,” Quartey says, rising up and dusting chalk off his hands. He goes over to Sumina and takes a long hard look at the diagram in his book. Then he studies the magic circle they have spent the last hour trying to get just right on the tombstone.
‘Circle’ is a misnomer in this case. Their work, drawn in white chalk, is more an intricate entanglement of triangles, superimposed upon a series of concentric circles. The purpose of the inner circles is sunsum conduction; the triangles, frequency conversion; and the outer circle, binding.
It is a basic magic circle for astral summoning. Or at least, that is what the tome says. Then again, the tome also says to add salt to the circle without bothering to elaborate on what that means, so it hasn’t exactly been the most dependable reference. After a lengthy disagreement over what ‘add salt’ means, the group settled for covering the tombstone in generous handfuls of salt, not unlike curing a large fish.
“I…I think we’ve got it,” Quartey says after moments of intense scrutiny.
Sumina narrows his eyes at him. “You think or you know?” he mocks.
“This would be so much easier if we were just using natural beyie,” Yayra says. “I really don’t care for the White man’s endless circles and needlessly complicated theories. Also—what a waste of perfectly good salt.”
“Such a waste,” Quartey mutters.
“Mansa already explained why natural magic would be a bad idea,” Lololi says. “None of us is a very experienced asawfo, and the last thing we want is for anyone to end up possessed by a nasty stray. So yes, maybe this feels like an inferior method. But with our limited skills, it’s also a lot safer. Right, Mansa?”
Lololi turns to Mansa, who is lost in thought.
“Mansa?”
“Hm?” Mansa snaps out of her musing.
“She isn’t even paying attention,” says Yayra, throwing her hands up. “This is how I die. I just know it.”
“Lololi you’re the reason we’re here oh,” Sumina says, with a frown. “So ask your friend if she’s having second thoughts. If she doesn’t know what she’s doing, let’s go home.”
“We’re not going home,” Mansa says as firmly as she can, but the slight quiver in her voice betrays her nerves. She goes over to Quartey and Sumina to check the diagram herself.
Her eyes are fast. Book, tombstone, book. “It’s correct,” she announces. “Let’s start.”
Dropping the book on the ground, they surround the tombstone and hold hands.
Mansa closes her eyes. With a deep breath, she reaches inside herself, seeking out the core of her sunsum. A moment of earnest searching and she finds it. It is a wellspring, an overflowing source of magical power that sweeps through her veins, swirling out through her fingertips. Cool like spring water. Soft as rain.
But a torrent when she needs it to be.
As Mansa’s sunsum pours out, she shivers, the hairs on her arms and legs standing on end. Her heart quickens. Her breathing burns against her nostrils. Her sunsum connects with the others’, and the surrounding air shimmers and warps with energy.
The salt on the tombstone catches on fire. Brilliant variegated flames lap at stone, and the chalked circles and triangles begin to glow neon blue. A gale begins to blow around them, whipping dust into a frenzy.
“Remember to focus your intent,” Mansa yells over the wind. “We can’t afford to lure the wrong spirit!”
As their combined sunsum interacts with the magic circle on the tombstone, it pulses outward in waves, thrumming against space and time. All that is seen, unseen, and everything in between. It resonates in synchrony with the very frequency of the universe.
One second there are five of them there in the graveyard. The next second, there are six.
There is a woman at the heart of their ring.
Mansa flinches at the sight of her. As the others notice her presence, they are startled as well, and the flow of sunsum between the five witches is interrupted. The magic circle ceases to glow, and the wind dies immediately, leaving behind a deafening silence.
Mansa just now realizes how hard Lololi is squeezing her hand. “Are you…do you…” Lololi breathes.
“I see her too,” Mansa whispers back.
The woman is seated on the tombstone, draped in the traditional red and black cloth of mourning. Her hair is tangled with leaves and twigs. Her skin is plastered in soil and grey limestone. Her head is bowed.
She is motionless.
Sumina swears under his breath.
Mansa understands why. The spirit is emanating an aura that is less than welcoming. It isn’t hostile per se. But it is…unsettling. Mansa clears her throat, and asks shakily, “Obaa Daakuo, is that you?”
The woman doesn’t respond. Slowly, she lifts her head to lock her gaze with Mansa’s. Her eyes are empty voids of black.
It’s Yayra’s turn to mutter profanities.
But Mansa is undeterred. “Obaa Daakuo, if you’re the one, please let us know. We have come desperate for your help.”
The woman stares for one long, unblinking moment. Then she opens her mouth. And starts to groan.
The groan is deep, and orotund, and drowning in sorrow.
“Um, what’s happening?” asks Yayra.
“It sounds like it’s crying,” says Quartey.
“Yeah, no shit,” Sumina snaps.
“Someone check the book,” Lololi says.
“Obaa Daakuo, we only want to ask a few questions,” Mansa says. “We really don’t mean to disturb you.” She takes a step closer to the woman.
The groan spikes into a fever-pitched wail that threatens to rip the wind itself apart, and with it, every eardrum in the vicinity.
“Stop walking towards it, you idiot!” Sumina barks at Mansa. “It clearly doesn’t like that! Are you stupid?”
“Don’t talk to her like that, she didn’t know!” Lololi snaps back.
Quartey has the tome back in her hands, and she’s flipping wildly through it. “I don’t remember reading about anything like this. Maybe we used the wrong seal? Maybe we’re hurting her.”
“Something is wrong,” Mansa gasps. She can feel the spirit’s cry resonating with her innermost self, tuning her own sunsum to its design. It’s taking her beyie and adapting it for something else. A different frequency. Another summoning.
Quartey drops the book and clutches her chest. Lololi and Yayra are dropping to their knees. Sumina is rattling obscenities, clutching at his hair as if he means to rip it out.
Mansa’s head is swimming, and it’s taking every drop of willpower to resist this… This counter-pattern. This curse. Whatever it is. Darkness closes in from the corners of her mind, and her eyes sting as tears run down her face. She is fighting to stay conscious.
She becomes vaguely aware that Daakuo’s spirit has disappeared. But now there is a spike of new energy in the air. A dark aura, something sinister. It pierces through the residual sunsum left behind by the last spirit.
And it is coming from underneath their feet.
The earth quakes, and suddenly Mansa is more lucid than she has ever been in her life. “Scatter!” she screams.
Before they can react, the ground erupts, flinging the five of them apart.
Mansa flails through the air, activating a self-fortification pattern right before she lands hard on her back. The pain jolts through her body, ripping the breath out of her lungs. But she is unbroken, and panic and adrenalin make a potent cocktail. Gasping for air, she scrambles back to her feet and whirls around to find her bearings.
The eruption threw her against the side of a nearby hill. In the valley, a column of dust has formed above the burial plot where she stood seconds before. She can hear the cries of her friends rising from somewhere amongst the tombstones, but her view is obscured by rolling blankets of dust.
“Lololi!?” Mansa calls, as she weaves downhill between tombstones, jagged rocks, and wild shrubs. “Guys I’m coming! Hold on!”
She staggers to a stop, as something massive begins to emerge from the dust: a bone-white surface, curved and cracked. It rises into the moonlight, caked in rot, dirt tumbling off its face in waterfalls. Gaping hollow sockets. Spiked teeth. Mansa reels.
The giant skull rises from the canopy of dust, wisps orbiting it like planetary rings. The size of a shipping container, it is tethered to nothing but a writhing, thrashing spinal column. Bloody lights shine in place of eyes of flesh, and a low rumbling drone emanates from its walls.
Mansa is petrified. But only for a few seconds.
“Help me!” Lololi’s shriek snaps her out of her head. The voice came from somewhere within the dust, barely audible over the jarring rumble.
Mansa resumes her stumbling descent into the valley, shielding her mouth from the dust with the bend in her arm. “Can you hear me?” she cries. “Call out if you can hear me!”
There is no response from the swirling dust. Mansa looks up to see the skull tilting down to notice her. The lights in its eyes flash brighter, washing the air a bloody hue.
Mansa lifts a hand to her lips to weave a pattern, any pattern. But the gears in her head catch with indecision. A fire pattern? No, she finds fire beyie difficult to control. Maybe a water pattern. Is that appropriate for this situation? Even if it is, she isn’t confident she can weave one with enough pressure to do meaningful damage. Shift beyie is an option. But then the skull looks powerful enough to wrench free of her telekinetic hold. Ideas bounce back and forth between her ears. Her quivering graduates into trembling.
The skull parts its jaws, conjuring fire and wind into its hollow maw to attack.
So Mansa defers to intuition. Sunsum pulses through her muscles, as she lifts two right-hand fingers to her lips. The veins in her hand grow pronounced, going from a faint glow to blinding white forks of energy. “Nsateaa mmienu…” she chants in Akan and aims her fingers at the skull. “Anyinam fitaa!”
The lightning bolt streaks from her fingertips and explodes through the skull’s forehead with a deafening crack. Splintered bone flies in every direction like shrapnel, leaving the remains of the skull to crumble apart. As flaming chunks rain down around her, Mansa is equal parts surprised and relieved by her success.
But her relief is short-lived. The dark aura has not lifted, and while Mansa can only guess what that means, it is a bad sign regardless. They need to get out of here now.
“Lololi!” Mansa cries, as she wanders through the dust. “Lololi, where are you?”
“Here! I’m here!”
Mansa follows the direction of her voice, and finds Lololi on the ground behind an extra-large tombstone with her back propped against it.
“Oh Mansa!” Lololi sobs. She looks haggard and terrified. “You came back, thank god, thank god.”
“Where are the others?”
“I don’t know. I think they ran. Their auras are growing distant.”
Mansa kneels at Lololi’s side, and notices that her left ankle is twisted and bloody. “Can you stand on your other foot?”
“I-I think so.”
“Come on,” Mansa says, helping her up.
They are taking their first steps, when pieces of cranial bone start to rise off the ground. Slowly at first. And then, at blink speed, painting the surrounding darkness with fleeting, fiery streaks. Mansa throws her eyes to the sky, where the giant skull is reconstructing itself, its fragments edged with fire and stitched in light.
Lololi almost slumps back down to the ground. “We’re not going to make it,” she whimpers.
Mansa fears she may be right, but forces her back to her feet anyway. “Move!” she cries. “Just move! I’ll buy us some time!”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Lololi tries to limp away as quickly as she can, while Mansa whirls back around with her fingers to her lips. “Spirit within, fly—”
The skull’s spine whips out of the dust, lashing Mansa in the chest and pitching her through the air. She slams against a crooked tree and rolls to the ground, pain flashing through her flesh and swelling through her bones. She groans, coughs, and rolls over. She is shaken when she spots Lololi in the dirt a few feet away, unconscious. The attack must have struck her too. The last of Mansa’s hope evaporates.
Red light pours down as the giant skull crawls down from the sky with dramatic grace. Mansa makes another attempt to lift her fingers to her lips, and yelps when a broken rib protests. She tries again, and this time the pain is so severe, she almost passes out. Her body is too battered to respond to her commands, and her thoughts are too scrambled to think up a new pattern.
And so as the skull gapes its jaws for the second time that night, and fire and wind twist into its mouth to form a raging fireball, Mansa finds herself helpless.
“I’m so sorry, Chichi,” she whispers tearily.
Shuddering, she closes her eyes and prays her death will be swift.
“Open your eyes, abofra ketewa,” a new voice says over her.
Mansa does as she is told.
There is a young woman in a white robe, with thick cornrows that snake down to her waistline. She is standing with her back to Mansa, her head raised towards the skull, a silhouette against the bloody light. “Open your eyes,” she repeats, her Akan flawless. “And see the fruit of your transgressions. Do not look away when your salvation is at hand.”
The skull’s fireball is almost completely formed, when the woman lifts an open palm towards it. And then, with forceful resolution, she draws her fingers into a clenched fist.
The ice comes with a gust of frigid wind, materializing across the skull’s surface in thick, sparkling layers. Its spread is rapid. Disorienting even. In seconds, the frost dulls the red light in the giant’s eyes and extinguishes the flames in its jaws. Two heartbeats later, and the skull is encased in a crystalline block of pure frozen water. The block crashes down with an earth-quaking thud.
The silence that follows is absolute.
The woman turns around.
“Evening, Sister Frama,” Mansa says sheepishly. “You found us.” She wants to ask how. Instead she says, “Thank you.”
Sister Frama’s azure eyes pierce right through Mansa’s soul. The coven keeper is the only one Mansa knows with blue irises instead of brown, and they sit in unsettling contrast to her petite features and midnight skin. Tonight, those eyes are especially luminous…and not with joy.
“You are lucky your roommates were forthcoming when I asked where you had gone,” Sister Frama says, her tone as cold as her eyes. “Or you would all be dead by now.”
“It was important,” Mansa murmurs.
“Important enough to risk your life?”
Mansa stays silent, knowing her answer will only aggravate Frama more.
“The others, I expect this sort of kwaseasem from. But you? I thought you had more sense.”
“I’m sorry,” Mansa says, shrinking further beneath her gaze.
“You will be,” Frama says. “Go fetch your friends. It’s time to go home.”
OOO
On the vast grasslands of Shai Hills, there is a great white building hidden from ordinary eyes by cloaking beyie. It sits atop a rock, double-storied with tangerine clay-tiled roofing and black casement windows. The building has been around almost as long as Ghana has had independence, and it is home to a small fringe coven. A coven called Anansefie. And while Anansefie is considered a bastion of higher beyie education in the witching community, one would be forgiven for thinking otherwise if they were to visit the coven tonight.
The four teenagers standing in the common room are each their own distinct mess of mud, ripped clothing, and fresh bruises. They’re standing on the periphery of the sitting area because Frama threatened to toss them into a well if they so much as smudged the carpet or a single piece of furniture.
On one end of the room is Mansa, with her head bowed down and her eyes glued to her shoes. And on the other end are Quartey, Yayra, and Sumina, who have chosen to stand together and away from her, if only so they can direct the full weight of their displeasure at her via unrelenting glares.
None of them have spoken a word since Frama left to treat Lololi upstairs. It has been almost an hour. Mansa knows the wait is just as much a part of Frama’s disciplinary tactics, as the punishments she will dispense upon her return. But her anxieties are beginning to peak. Especially because Sumina looks like he’s on the verge of saying something venomous.
Mansa sighs with relief at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs.
“How is she?” she asks even before Frama has completed her descent.
“The restoration pattern will take some time,” Frama says. “But she will heal. The worst is behind us.”
Mansa runs her hands down her face, the weight of a dying star lifted off her shoulders. Nodding, she swallows the lump in her throat. “Thank you.”
“And now,” Frama says, folding her arms, “we come to the matter of you four.”
Sumina lifts his hand without shifting his glare off Mansa.
“Yes Sumina?” says Frama.
“Before you hand out punishments,” he says, “I would just like to point out that the only reason we were there in the first place is because she—” And there is no doubt to whom he is referring. “—tricked us into pitying her.”
“I did not trick you,” Mansa says.
“Like hell you didn’t. You said you needed to contact family. You told us she was your aunt, but that spirit had no idea who you were!”
“She was my aunt,” says Mansa. “My great, great, great aunt.”
“That is not the same thing you absolute kwasea!”
“That is quite enough,” Frama says.
“That grave was boobytrapped with a curse,” Sumina continues anyway. “And you let us weave beyie on it?”
“I didn’t know that!” Mansa says, wounded.
The other three burst out with, “Liar!”, “Bullshit!”, “I don’t believe you!”
“I would never knowingly put you all in danger,” Mansa says firmly, though her eyes are now wet with indignant tears. “I was just looking for some answers.”
“Answers to what?” Sumina asks.
“I said that’s enough—” Frama tries again, a little louder.
But Sumina answers his own question. “Oh wait, I don’t give a shit. Nothing you want to know is worth risking our lives. You’re lucky you’re Lololi’s little puppy, otherwise I swear on every vengeful river god I’d—”
“Ka wo ano tom!” Frama snaps with a wave of her hand.
Sumina’s mouth is immediately clamped shut. He tries to pry it open with his fingers for a moment, but gives up when he notices the hard look Frama is giving him.
Frama then shares that look around the room. “Bearing in mind that he isn’t going to be able to use that mouth again till morning, does anyone else have another cruel remark to share? Perhaps some more swear words? I’m dying to hear them.”
The room is dead silent.
“I thought so,” Frama says. “I won’t even waste my breath on a lecture. You know the rules. The four of you will scrub every inch of floor in this house, from top to bottom. And then you will clean every window. You will also alleviate the rest of the house of its kitchen duties and laundry duties for the next four weeks. Also no more Sunday kelewele for you.”
Yayra is alarmed by this news. “No kelewele?” she cries, because gathering to play board games and eat peppery fried plantains is a house favorite. “For how long?”
“Until I say so,” Frama says, without a drop of sympathy. “While the rest of the house communes, you will stay in your rooms and study your pattern books.”
Yayra throws Mansa a glare even more scalding than Sumina’s. “I hate you.”
“Watch yourself,” Frama warns. “Your first chore begins at dawn. You will start with the children’s bathroom. For now, wash that filth off yourselves and head straight to bed. Try not to wake the rest of the house. Go.”
As the exhausted teenagers start towards the stairs, Frama adds, “Not you, Mansa. Stay behind.”
Mansa’s anxiety returns to weigh her down. She stares longingly after the others on the stairs headed for their beds. Sumina turns back one last time to flip her the bird. With both hands.
Mansa sighs.
“Follow me,” says Sister Frama.
On the opposite end of the staircase, there is a door that leads down a second flight of stairs to the basement level.
The basement floor of Anansefie is broader than the building above suggests. There is a narrow corridor here flanked by four classrooms, two on either side. The corridor leads to a large mahogany door, which opens into Frama’s office.
“Sit,” Frama says, as she goes around her desk to take her own seat.
Mansa does as she’s asked, musing as she looks around. She has only been here once before, two years ago when she was first enrolled into the coven. The space is exactly as she remembers it. Walls lined with bookshelves and laden with leather-bound volumes on all things beyie; traditional and new age theories, local and foreign patterns. Glass cabinets hold magical artifacts—masks, bracelets, and charms, parchments, jewels, and knives. And then, there is Frama’s massive desk, which looks like it was carved whole out of a giant tree, and could not possibly have been moved down here without the help of some space warping, matter bending skills.
Mansa realizes Frama has been observing her quietly since they sat down. She squirms in her seat.
“How are your injuries?” Frama finally asks.
Tentatively, Mansa presses her fingers against her ribs. “My impact pattern mostly held up. I should be fine in a few hours.”
“Good,” Frama says, with a nod. Then she folds her arms. “Now, why were you at the graveyard tonight?”
Mansa doesn’t meet her eyes, doesn’t speak, doesn’t move a muscle beneath the coven keeper’s gaze.
Frama tries again. “You said when I found you that it was important? How so?”
Mansa might as well be a statue.
“Really?” Frama says. “This is how you want to play this?”
“It’s personal,” Mansa mumbles.
“I’m sure it is,” says Frama. “Let me tell you what I know. I know that grave you were working on belongs to Daakuo Yeboah. And I know what kind of beyie she was famous for. Or rather, infamous.”
Mansa realizes what she’s insinuating. “That’s not why I summoned her.”
“The path to immortality is a futile one, littered with bodies and drenched in blood,” Frama continues, speaking over Mansa. “It has destroyed witches greater than you, and it will destroy many more long after you are gone.”
“That’s not why I wanted to talk to her,” Mansa insists.
“Even if it wasn’t about immortality specifically,” says Frama, “most beyie related to that field are ruinous. Especially when they seem innocent. You are not the only one who has sought that kind of knowledge with good intentions. Do you even know how Daakuo died?”
Mansa doesn’t respond.
“Daakuo had a rare degenerative disease. It began with the twitching. And then, exhaustion, weakness. It affected her ability to walk, talk, eat, think. It came with constant pain. It’s said that it would have worsened until she was too paralyzed to breathe. And healing beyie couldn’t help her, so she tried to find her answers…in darker techniques,” Frama says. “Her venture into immortality beyie wasn’t driven by malice or greed, but forbidden magic isn’t forbidden because of its motivations. And when her sunsum was inevitably corrupted, it did not matter that she was merely trying to save herself.”
Mansa shrinks into her seat.
“When they found her in her home, she had lost all sanity. Worse still, she was disfigured beyond repair. One of the descriptions of her was, and I quote—as if someone tried to glue together a person’s weight in worms.”
Mansa fights back the bile rising in her throat. After she is certain she can keep down last night’s dinner, she utters meekly, “I…didn’t know that.”
Sister Frama stares at Mansa for a long uncomfortable stretch of silence. “Anyway, that’s not why I called you here,” she finally says. “You’re from Akropong.”
She doesn’t frame her words like a question, and Mansa is unsure how to respond. But more silence would be unbearable.
“I am,” Mansa says. “Well, I was born in Akropong, but my family moved to Accra when I was three. That’s where I grew up until…well, you know what happened. My parents sent me back to Akropong after that.”
“And how old were you then?”
“About ten.”
“To live with the old woman. Nana Tawiah, correct?”
Mansa is growing confused. Frama should already know this. “Yes,” she answers anyway. “Nana was my grandma’s roommate when she was alive. She’s become a family friend. She’s very strict and she goes to church a lot. I guess they hoped that meant she would know how to…fix me.”
“Yet she’s the one who gave you your basic training in beyie.”
Mansa nods. “For three years,” she adds, even though by now, she is sure Frama already knows these details. “And then of course, she moved me here. She said I needed more advanced lessons, and she wasn’t cut out for teaching. Because that’s what she wasn’t cut out for, right? Not the witching, not the beyie, not the bleeding a chicken out into a calabash under a full moon to placate a vengeful spirit. The teaching. I’d known her for so long until I moved in with her, that I just never would’ve thought. Was she a little strange? Sure. But a witch? Then again, I never would’ve thought a lot of things back then.” Mansa’s voice has grown soft at this point.
“Mm,” Frama says thoughtfully. She leans in slightly, sounding almost conspiratorial when she asks, “During your time with Nana, did you receive supplementary tutoring from anyone else?”
Mansa snorts before she can stop herself. “Sorry,” she says quickly. “It’s just…Akropong is a very religious town. I didn’t know anyone else there, and Nana was paranoid. I was shocked she even trusted you enough to bring me here.”
“What about before you moved to Akropong?”
“What about it?”
“Did you receive any beyie tutelage before moving in with Nana?” Frama asks. “Do you have relationships or connections with anyone powerful or influential in the witching community?”
Mansa shakes her head. “I was confused when my beyie showed for the first time. And my parents were simply terrified. I didn’t know magic was real until then,” she says, with a sullen shrug. “There are still days I wish I didn’t.”
Sister Frama lets out a deep sigh, and sits back in her chair, regarding Mansa with some skepticism. “So essentially, you are a fledgling witch with no prior exposure, no real connections in the community, three years of informal training, barely two years of proper education here, and no particularly outstanding beyie to show for it.”
Mansa is stunned. “If you asked me all those questions just so you could remind me that I’m unremarkable,” she says, dropping her eyes again, “trust me, I know.”
“No. I’m just curious. I’m trying to understand why exactly you were chosen.”
“Chosen?”
Frama gestures at something between them, and Mansa follows with her eyes.
“Jesus!” Mansa lurches back at the sight of the frog sitting at the center of the desk.
The frog blinks at her and ribbits.
“Was that here this whole time?” Mansa asks, incredulous.
“It woke me up to fetch you, which is how I discovered you and your friends were gone. So in a way, you owe your life to that frog,” Frama says. She almost sounds amused.
As Mansa’s initial disgust wanes, she leans in for a closer look at the creature. It is about the size of a tennis ball, but its form is tapered, and its limbs, slender, with skin that is slick, glassy, and wonderfully iridescent. “This is a messenger frog,” she says in surprise.
“Good, you’ve been reading your textbooks.”
“I didn’t know anyone still used these.”
“Messenger frogs may be archaic,” Frama says, “but they’re probably still the most secure form of communication. It makes them perfect for extraordinary circumstances.”
“Like in captivity, or when you’re stranded without enough sunsum to use a gate,” Mansa says, recalling her studies. Her stomach turns as she remembers one more example. “Or in times of war.”
Frama raps her fingers on the table. “So you weren’t expecting any messages then?”
Mansa shakes her head.
“And you have no idea whom this is from?”
Mansa shakes her head again. “Other than Nana, I don’t know any other witches that aren’t already in this house.”
“I see.” Frama purses her lips, speeding up her finger rapping as she thinks. Suddenly, she stops. “Do you know who Mama Wu is?”
Mansa’s eyes widen at the mention of that name. Of course she knows who Mama Wu is. Rumors about the arch witch are manifold and wild. So much so that despite Mansa’s late entry into the witching world, even she can recount the legends by heart. Mama Wu and the mystery of the infinite well. Mama Wu and the curse of the evil eye. Mama Wu and the battle for the kakai throne.
Mansa reckons most of them are exaggerated. Although there are two stories most witches believe. Firstly; that the arch witch’s sunsum is blood-red—a color typically only associated with kakai and malicious entities. But it’s the second rumor that really turns stomachs. Supposedly, the arch witch can take another’s beyie from them, just by the touch of her hand, and bend it for her own arcane purposes. It is what earned Mama Wu her moniker.
The Scarlet Reaper.
“I mean, I’ve heard of her,” says Mansa.
“But never made her acquaintance I suppose. Strange.”
Mansa sees where this conversation is going. “You don’t mean to say…”
“I do.” Sister Frama looks down at the frog. “The message is from her.”
It feels as if the room has run out of air quite suddenly. “I don’t understand,” Mansa whispers.
“Now you see why I asked those questions.”
“And you’re absolutely sure she sent it?”
“It is marked with traces of her aura. Yes, I am sure.”
To Mansa’s horror, Frama gets out of her chair and starts towards the door.
“Wait, where are you going?” Mansa asks.
“The message is meant only for your ears. It will not be delivered if I stay.”
Mansa’s heart is racing at a full sprint. “But—”
“Whatever she asks of you, do it,” Frama says. “Small covens like ours aren’t in a position to deny her requests. Her reputation may be frightening, but she is reasonable. For the most part.”
Mansa is shaking. She doesn’t know what to say.
As Frama opens the door, she says, “For the record, I never said you were unremarkable. On the contrary, I think you sell yourself short. That lightning pattern at the graveyard was good, but you can do better.”
“You were watching us?” Mansa is taken aback, but she is already too shaken to be angry. “For how long?”
“Long enough. Like I said—I was curious.” Frama hesitates, and then adds, “It’s been my observation since you got here that you hold back when you weave. It’s almost like you’re afraid of your own beyie. And that’s a shame. Next time, test your limits. Your life may depend on it.”
“Next time?” Mansa says.
Sister Frama eyes the messenger frog briefly, and then gives her a small smile. “Remember the dove and the mouse.”
“The dove and the mouse?” Mansa repeats, puzzled. What an odd time to bring up the fable.
“Be careful,” Frama adds, before exiting and closing the door firmly behind her.
Mansa is alone with the frog. She stares down at it. It stares back and ribbits.
“Sorry,” Mansa says, “I don’t actually know how to do this so—ah!”
She is startled when, with a croak, the frog starts to inflate. It glimmers as it grows larger and larger, till it is almost the size of a basketball, and Mansa is scared it will burst. She is decidedly against seeing a small amphibian pop like a balloon.
But then the frog begins to shine—a brilliant silver glow that casts hundreds of tiny lights on the walls and ceiling, like a mirrored disco ball.
A gossamer image begins to flicker to life, suspended above the frog’s swollen body. The image takes form…
A head of locs, bound in cloth. The small face of a woman who somehow looks impossibly ancient, and also in her 40’s. A lean neck, sharp shoulders, toned arms. The image stops building around her waist, the bright blue of her kaba dissipating into tendrils of smoke.
“Hello Mansa,” says the image of the woman. “Do you know who I am?”
Mansa swallows and nods. “You’re Mama Wu. It’s an honor to meet you and—”
Mama Wu smiles. “I kid. This is pre-recorded. I cannot hear you.”
Mansa immediately feels silly. But the joke allays her nerves. This is probably a simple matter. Maybe she was worried for nothing.
“If you’re receiving this message, it must mean my worst fears have come to pass. So listen carefully,” says Mama Wu. “This is a matter of life and death.”