There was no time for any more thought before the mob of them turned their doomed, reddish eyes on me and lurched forward in a throng, throwing their bodies into me, slamming into me like a cement truck. My body reeled back, my hands windmilling to gain a hold on something, anything that would stop me from falling over. Nothing was there but air. And to the horrified screams of Hailey, and Sekou, and Sheriff Lyle below, I catapulted over the banister.
I sailed through the air, watching the falling zombie creatures coming in behind me. The world began to go out of focus. A ball danced in front of me, or dots of light from the stars in my vision, and there appeared a blurry image of a woman. She smiled down at me. Nana Ama? My mother? Come back from the sea?
Her whisper was a den of snakes coiling themselves in a tight ball around my brain. She pointed at me with her long-nailed finger. Touched it to my forehead.
“Go back, child, and learn.” Her voice was low and menacing.
Everything around me brightened, became hot. Too hot. I thought Effie had sent me to hell. I burst through the rotting floor below like it was paper. I kept falling, crashing through layers and layers of colors and temperatures, and smells and climates and times of day and night.
So this is how I’ll diewere my last thoughts.
Then, suddenly, the stale, old, putrid smell of decay was replaced with one of honeyed fragrances and savory spices. The air warmed and became as bright as the sun. As bright as the Light that would emit from my grandmother in firefly form. I hit the ground.
My body smashed to the earthen floor below in a plume of brown copper dust, the impact so hard my bones felt like they shattered, crunching, splintering apart.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Spurts of laughter forced my eyes open to blinding sunlight. Or what I thought was sunlight. It was too bright. I snapped my eyes back shut, afraid the brightness would burn my retinas.This was what it feels like to be dead. My body felt crumbly, like cookie dough with not enough butter mixed in. All signs pointed to dead. Yet there was sensation tingling in my body, my fingers and toes were wiggling. Wherever I landed must have been the afterlife because nothing else made sense.
The laughter came again, sounding like kids. I started taking a mental scan of my body, going down section by section from my head until I reached my toes. They wiggled back at me. I was fine.
I opened my eyes, adjusting them to the brightness of a sky. There was a slight breeze that was neither too hot nor too cold, soothing. The place, wherever I was, felt soothing. It’s the best I could explain it. I sat up, my hands landing in soft carpet-like grass, and took a good look around. I was in a garden. No, maybe woods. There were trees of every kind all around, from southern oaks to baobabs.
The forest surrounding me was filled with tall trees. Taller than I’d ever seen. The path I was on curved, cutting though them. It was endless. The flora, plants and flowers I didn’t recognize, were vibrant with colors, as if I was looking at them through the latest high-def TV screen.
From Nana Ama’s stories, I was in the world of the Skies, the Oosoro, which stretched over Akanland. Her true homeland.
I recognized it all. Ahead, a mountain loomed into the sky, its peak hidden, with lights of gold and white moving slowly around it like a wispy haze. Behind me, the path I was on continued down, and I could choose to head up to the mountain where the Sky God must live or down the winding path to the human world of Asase.
I heard laughter again, so close to me, and suddenly running past were two young women—maybe my age, maybe in their twenties. Both wearing white gauzy fabric that shimmered when it caught the sun. One had a top that wrapped like a bandeau around her chest. The other’s top came over one shoulder. They wore skirts that hung low in the back and swept up over both legs in folds in the front. With the skirts was a thin length of roped fabric, which knotted up beneath the belly button and cascaded down the front in several golden threaded ropes.
Sisters, wrapped in beaded jewelry of cowries and precious gems from head to toe.
The first sister, the one leading the way, wore what almost looked like a breastplate of golden chains and multicolored gems matching the cuff about her neck. Rows and rows of singular strands hung low between her breasts, and in the middle of thesehundreds of thin, golden strands sat a large blue gem, where they all attached and spilled out from.
The other wore a set of wrist cuffs that nearly took up the entire length of each forearm. They were thick, forged golden metal with intricate designs and etchings that crisscrossed around them. And in the middle of each sat brilliantly blue stones. Stones within a pair of cuffs that I’d seen all my life.
They were heading straight for me, looking nearly identical, looking like child versions of my grandmother and her sister, looking at me.
No, looking through me. They could not see me even though I was right in their path.
The sister who led them said, “Come, sister, let us go see if what Uncle says is true. You know he is known for his stories and his little tricks. I want to see if he tricks us now. Before the gates close.”
My breath hitched.No way.My real world colliding with the countless spoken tales of Anansi the Trickster God.
“We mustn’t, little sister,” the elder sister said. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows frowned with worry as she looked at the sky. “The time is getting late for the gates to close. And the baby…” She gestured to her sister’s stomach where the tiniest round bump could be seen beneath the armor-like amulet.
That was when the younger one, who had stopped to face her sister, rolled her eyes, annoyance clearly written on her face.
“The baby, dear worried sister, will be just fine.” She said it with the impatience and attitude of a younger sister done with her older sister’s overprotection. “As will we.”
The elder sister continued, “Father says we are not to go to thehuman world. We are not to interfere in their matters. No one is unless he allows it, and he never does. It is his command.”
The younger twin in the lead stopped suddenly, spinning on her heels to give her troubled sibling her full attention. I inched closer to get a better look at them.
“Father should walk among the people more often, as he used to do. Then he’d remember that sometimes it is necessary for us to intervene. Those of us with power have the responsibility to help those of us who do not.”
She left her words hanging in the air, heavy with meaning that would stand the test of time. She took a deep breath as she placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder and patted it gently. Her voice became light. “But fear not, we will not ‘interfere.’ You, nervous one, don’t even have to go.”
