They inched along the bushes, trying not to be seen. They hid behind big ones and I could see them arguing between themselves, so deep into what they were saying—I could imagine it, Ama begging Effie for them to turn back. Effie shaking her head vehemently, refusing to come back without helping the captured people in some way. Intervening as their father had told them to never do among humans. They didn’t know they’d been heard. They didn’t see four of the invaders coming up behind them, their guns pointed. Didn’t see them at all. But I did.
“Behind you!” My warning was absorbed into the ether. I wasn’t really here. I was just a witness to something that already happened and couldn’t be altered.
Screw the cold. I placed both hands to the gates, ignoring the sting, and pushed. The gate didn’t give, not an inch. I pushed again with more force this time. Nothing. I backed up a couple steps, trying to see where the gates ended or if there were places where I could get through. Nothing.
But it was too late. The men were upon them. The twins turned, fear so plain in their eyes that it pierced me where I stood—where I had to watch, unable to help, unable to do anything at all.
“How’d we miss these two?” one of the men asked. He pointed at them. “And what are those markings on them?”
Ama shielded Effie and her little round belly. Ever the protector, ever the big sister even if only by minutes. Her arm was fully exposed, showing that instead of the gleaming, golden cuff, dark raised markings like a tattoo and a fraternity brand were embedded in her skin. And when another of the assholes yanked them apart, Effie’s regal amulet was revealed, now embedded into her skin, the once brilliant blue gem having lost its luster in this setting.
The man gripped her face, though she fought hard to get from his grasp, and twisted her head left and right as he decided if she’d be too marked up to sell.
“Just markings of her people. That’s what they do, paint and cut each other. They think it makes them beautiful.”
“Nothing will ever make them that,” another sneered.
But the man on the horse studied them keenly. “These two are the most beautiful I’ve seen yet. Black or not, they are striking. Plus, have you looked upon a mirror yourself lately, Thorson? No woman would have you. Not even one of these savages.”
In a blur, Effie lashed her hand out as if she were throwing something at him, like a beam of godly light, a curse, something that would spew forth and strike him where he stood. Nothing happened.
She stared down at her hands, first the backs, then the palms, in horror and disbelief. She looked up at Ama, wide-eyed, who stared back. They could not fight. They’d lost not only their way back home, but whatever powers they possessed as well.
The men gathered the twins without any more fight, and neither of the goddesses reacted. They only stared past the gates and through me at their home in the Skies, their eyes giving away their anguish and disbelief that they were truly lost. Then they were carried down to the shores where the last of the rowboats would push them off to the looming, dark ships waiting just beyond.
As they set sail, the twins watched their home—with its majestic gates, the bounty of multicolored flowers, the outline of the highest mountain draped in mists, with a ringlet of golden Adinkra signs circling its peak just as they had in my dream—begin to fade away, as they were warned it would. Their world folded into the thickening mist, closing itself off to them forever, their keys no longer able to open it.
There was a sensation building in me, and I touched my lips. My fingers came away red with blood; the rich metallic tang filling my mouth tasted like life. My tongue ran across the ridge of my top teeth, stopping where my canines had descended.
I flipped around, pressing my back against the gates, nestling against fragrant foliage to see the last images of the Oosoro, wavering before me like rising heat. The deep sadness was overwhelming, was nothing I’d ever felt in my life. The grief cascaded over me because I knew what would come next for Ama and Effie, for all of those African souls on that ship with them, the ones who came before and after, and the people who’d be born enslaved on foreign soil for years to come. There was nothing I could do to stop it. There was nothingtheycould have ever done. Even when they were gods.
This was how the story of the adze had begun.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
For the second time, I woke up, but instead of to the tranquility of a magical forest, it was to chaos. My head was pillowed in a lap. She was calling my name, bringing me back from the past, from the time I’d spent in Ama and Effie’s world. I woke up feeling the pain of their loss and their fear in my heart. And a sense of disbelief that I was a descendant of Nyame, the maker of gods, that not only was I an adze, but half goddess—or a quarter. Something like that.
Not only that. Ama wasn’t my actual grandmother.
It was Effie.
I tried to sit up, woozy, and held my head in my hand until my vision cleared. I realized then a couple of things: I could move without any problem when I knew that every bone in my body broke when I hit the ground. And the person with me was Effie.
I startled, moving quickly away from her as she remained kneeling on the floor. She put her hands up in the air as if to say she meant no harm. Blood trickled from her chin and my own mouth tasted of iron.
“This batch was faulty,” she said, moving to a more comfortable position on the floor. She propped her arm on her knee and studied me. We were in another room, maybe the parlor. I had been lying on an old dusty lounge chair that had become hard and brittle over time. The room was clotted with thick, swirling dust, and the rot from the abalsoms permeated the air, even in here, though it was not as strong. There was the faintest whiff of gas in the air, and I remembered what Franco had said about the renovation. I looked back at Effie with new eyes.
“Where—where is everyone?” I stammered.
“Awaiting our return. Because I am going to give you a choice.” The way she looked at me was unnerving, so calculating and curious, like she was trying to learn me.
Effie’s voice was like honey, but there was poison and the promise of death lacing every syllable. She spoke like she was from an ancient world and was trying to become accustomed to our way of speech. Hers was old and rustic whereas Nana Ama’s had been softened and molded over the time she’d spent living among the Gullah Geechee people, the people who had reminded her most of home.
Franco, haggard and aging, looking nothing like the vibrant picture of him I saw at the Endowment offices, walked in.
“My abalsoms are still a work in progress, as I am still figuring out the—what is it I heard the human say the other day, Franco? The arrogant one who simpered like a baby before I drank him and his arrogance dry?” She grinned wickedly, her long, curved teeth showing.
“Kinks,” he volunteered.
