One.

★

Her grandmother’s well was the door, but water was the portal.

The briefest contact

Between her barely parted lips

And a cool glass,

Fogged over with a sheen

Of crystal droplets,

Was enough to call her back.

As the liquid eased down her throat,

She would be pulled.   

From within and without,

Faster than she could swallow.

Aja choked on the other world.

Took in too much and too little.

Too fast and too slow.

She could not breathe.

In those gasping moments, as her lips went dry and her voice unexpectedly hoarse, she almost wished for death, though there was a certainty that it would not oblige.

She was meant to suffer through two worlds.

Two joined states of being.

“Aja,” the old woman had told her on her last journey.

“Your thirst cannot be quenched.”

Her throat had gone dry again.

She had only just returned from her most recent trip to the fountain, but Aja slipped from her desk in the back of the classroom and into the hallway as quietly as she could. Days had passed since her last journey, and until now she had been fine. Unpredictable as the calls were, Aja had hoped, perhaps foolishly, that she would be left alone for a while—at least as long as it would take to catch up on her classes. The only explanation she could offer her professors was that she had a rare, chronic illness, bolstered by a note from her doctor, who was a family friend and superstitious woman in all the ways that made sense—she knew there were things beyond the explanation of modern science, had been party to the supernatural occurrences which seemed to plague her adopted niece and patient on more than one occasion, and so, “diagnosed” her with a disease which, as far as Aja knew, had never been seen in North America.

Her throat was filled with chalk.

The fountain was just around the corner, in the corridor leading to the northeast exit of the old stone building where her classes were held. Her fingers brushed against its metal basin as she passed; her pace quickening to a trot. With outstretched palms, she pushed her way through the double doors and out into the gently curving garden trail that led to the bicycle racks.

Her throat was paper now.

Two pieces, stuck together.

Aja fumbled with the lock, but successfully forced the bike free—throwing it onto the path and heaving her body onto the seat. With one foot on the pedal, she kicked off from the ground with the other and was immediately sent downhill, expertly weaving between the few pedestrians dotting the way as she picked up speed, and made a mental note to call her doctor for a new note whenever she made it back from her impromptu trip.

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“You will grasp,” the old woman had said.

“And you will replenish your cup, over and over, but the dryness, the aching, it cannot be eased until you draw from the well.”

“Are you putting roots on me?” Aja had asked.

The smile the old woman returned was unpleasant for the pity in her eyes.

Aja knew she had only imagined the scorn in her voice.

“It is a curse,” the deep, husky alto went on in her thick, West African intonations.

“Life’s curse, dear child, and it cannot be beaten.”

Aja choked on her breath as she pumped along the road, eventually veering off the pavement to coast down a dirt trail that would carry her to her grandmother’s farmhouse, nestled in a quiet valley between forest and hills. She had never been so desperate for water.

“It will call to you, wherever you are. I suggest you keep a gourd on you at all times—fill it with just enough that you can take a mouthful when you need it.”

“A mouthful?” Aja repeated. “What good is a mouthful of water, if even a gallon can’t help me? Didn’t you just say that? Isn’t my only option going back to the well?”

Having skidded at last to a halt at the bottom of the hill, and kicked up quite a bit of dust onto her formerly pristine socks, she threw down her bike and shook the backpack from her shoulders, tearing it open.  Her breathing had worsened in the intervening minutes of her ride, so there was precious little time—or so she was made to believe by the severity of her affliction—before she would simply collapse, her corpse to be found by her brother upon his return home from wherever it was that he went while she was in school and their mother at work.

Or so she sometimes hoped.

“Fuck.”

It was hard to focus on the banal life of a student, so she had been forgetting to pack her phone at an alarming frequency.

“Anything could happen to you!” Her mother scolded her regularly. “What if you’re called again and have to go over? How would I know where you were?”

Aja held her tongue to keep from stating the obvious—that there were no cellular networks there, and the phone itself would only run as long as its battery held a charge, but she could not help but roll her eyes.

Her mother caught the insolent gesture.

“I don’t care if it doesn’t work when you’re there—keep your phone in your bag at ALL times, and if you have to go,” she drew a deep breath. “If you have to go,” she repeated, her voice cracking, “Shoot me a text first. Just so I know you’re safe.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Now, Aja emptied the whole bag on the grass, her frustration mounting.

“Fuck!”

She still had not found the phone and could feel panic setting in, which, of course, made breathing all the more difficult. Certainly, she could ignore her mother’s request, but that would be cruel and irresponsible—there was no knowing how long she might be, so to torture her family in that way, disappearing without a trace…again… Her brother might correctly deduce that she simply had not had the time to reach them, but their mother, with the overprotective nature that came from having raised two children almost entirely on her own, would likely assume she had been kidnapped, or else veered off a dirt road somewhere and into a ditch where, injured to the point that she could not stand, she would languish for hours, calling for help, only to be answered by a wandering vagabond who would retrieve her and drag her out into the woods, never to be heard from again.

It was not lost on Aja that she was in fact being spirited away.

“Got it!” She freed the phone from a zipper compartment, keyed in the lock code, and feverishly typed “Ma, gone. Not sure how long. Love you,” before hitting “send” and tossing it and the rest of her scattered belongings back into the bag, which she threw over her shoulder, eager to be done with the dry fire now smoking in her chest and up her throat.  The slow, measured breath she attempted after setting her bike upright assured her that the pain would only worsen.

Gingerly, she wheeled the bike out of the clearing and into the thicket, away from her grandmother’s house, which was tucked further into the valley. Her thirst made every step of the short walk labored and agonizing.  

She could hear it now.

Louder and louder.

The well was built of wood and stone, likely erected by her enslaved ancestors, having stood for more than two centuries, perfectly intact, but for a stone here and there that had been dislodged by the overgrowth of brush. On each of its faces was bird, simple lines painted in a startling white that remained unmarred by the passage of time, perhaps touched by the divine.

Aja wheeled her bike to it.

She could hear the standing water; its peaceful song was an echo in her ear.

Her mouth began to water.

“Life’s curse,” Aja had repeated to the old, Ashanti woman.

“Only because of who mine is tied to, Auntie.”

“You are right…” Her voice drifted off.

She smiled, her brows pressing into a concerned knot, her mouth flattening out, the corners turning up ever so slightly.

Her eyes were sad.

The thirst had finally overtaken Aja—she sat on the well’s edge, gripping it, her legs to her chest, her body suspended just above the water, held there by the strength of her arms. She dug her fingernails harder into the rock and dirt, dislodging a few pebbles. The promise of relief was almost too much; she bit her bottom lip until incisor broke skin, wondering what might happen if, just this once, she did not heed the water’s call, did not pass beyond the veil to the place that stood outside of time, unaffected by the hands of men, but returned home and planted herself firmly in the soil of her grandmother’s farm, held her breath, and refused to be uprooted.

A burst of blood filled her mouth.

Something vibrated in her backpack—

A call from home.

If there was time to return,

There must be time to answer,

But she let it ring.

Lingered on the edge,

Maintaining her grip,

And when salt and nickel subsided,

She bit her lip again.

It was dangerous to stall for so long where the water called the loudest, when her thirst was so near being sated, but resistance was control; if only a little. She would give in, of course, her earlier thoughts having been a vanity exercise, but not until the final moment. Her plan was to hold on, her body suspended, until her strength gave out and her grip, already loosening, gave way, and she was sent beyond the threshold to the world that was calling. Just this once.

She willed the blood to fill her mouth.

Aja.

He was in her ear.

Down her throat.

Deep, deep in her lungs.  

Constricting her breath.

Fueling her thirst.

She tore the skin in the opposite corner.

Aja.

A command.

He wanted her now.

Against her will, she had been tethered to a god.