I approached the cliff’s edge, Effie hovered, suspended over the cliff of the inlet, above the raging waters below.
Above her the moon was crystal clear and sparkling, looking luminous within the black void that surrounded it. There wasn’t a star in the sky. It looked so large I felt I could reach out and touch it.
The sky began to fill with storm clouds, like it did in my nightmare when me, Naira, and Sekou were on the boat. Like Naira and Luke when they were on their date. Thunder rumbled like an oncoming train and then boomed.
“I wish Nana Ama had finished what she started that night,” I said.
Effie looked down at us and for the briefest moment I could have sworn there was sadness there. Hurt. Disappointment. Betrayal.
“I wish your grandmother had,” she said, “because a true endwould have been better than the hell she imprisoned me in all this time, only to be awakened and betrayed once again.”
There was another crack of thunder, a ragged line of brilliant lightning that looked like it would rip the inky sky in half. The light was so bright I could see clouds gathering in the darkness, undulating and growing, looking as if they’d trickle down and swallow us up. It was like this was the end of the world. Or maybe, the end of my world.
The ground beneath our feet began to shift and then shake. Screams came from the islanders as they fell to the ground that rippled like a blanket being shaken out. A deep groan seemed to emit from deep within the island, as if it were wakening, as if it were wanting to roll over and die. The islanders were running now, running away, understanding what I was beginning to understand.
This would be our end, I couldn’t help thinking. Effie was going to destroy every last one of us. But not before I did everything I could to stop it.
I launched myself into the air and grabbed on to Effie. “You’ll sink the island. You’ll kill them.”
I tried to yank her arms down, to break the connection she’d made with the oncoming storm she was gathering. But I was no match. She was like a statue, her strength immovable and mine incomparable. She was a goddess and me… not even half of that, not even with the blood Nana Ama had given me.
She caught me easily by the neck, holding me before her. All the weight of her loss, her grief, the life she should have had flooded behind it. Her hands held me up in midair, and through them I could feel her, the real Effie, goddess and child of Nyame, the Sky God.
How she used to be before the invaders took her and Nana Ama, before her hell on Millner Manor Plantation, before her rage, before her thirst for human blood overtook her, and then her revenge. Before she was buried—asleep but alive—by the only family she had left, her sister. “I thought I wanted what Ama had,” Effie said. “I thought I’d come take this island and rule as Ama did. Have my own little oasis here, untouched, and perfect with nice little humans to adore me and drink my elixirs. Just as Ama had done. I’d put her to sleep for two hundred years as she’d done me.”
Beneath us, through the swirling typhoon of a storm that had gathered, lightning struck again, and this time, it struck the Gathering Tree where Nana Ama had held council and led this island and its people for hundreds of years. It split, shearing in two halves, while everyone ran.
“But now she is gone, I will not hide behind mists and superstitions. I will rule out in the world where I will be their superstition, their greatest fear, made real. They will fear me.”
Her last words came out like ice. I could see the world exactly as she said. More abalsoms, stronger, hungrier. A world of death and carnage all at her whim. She was the last god left.
“Will you join, my child?” she asked. The silence around us was louder than the storm Effie had summoned. “I won’t ask again.”
I gripped her iron-like claws, struggling to break free. “Never.”
Effie tightened her hand around my neck. She glowered at me, her glowing red eyes lasering into me, igniting a tiny spark that began to spin and spin and grow.
“Then have it your way.” She began to squeeze the breath out of me. It was like she was pinching a straw. I felt my vocal cordsand my windpipe crushing and all air being cut off. I pried at her rock-hard fingers, but she only squeezed harder and harder, preparing to twist my head off.
Effie began to transform. Her shoulders curved into a haunch and her arms drew in. Her eyes enlarged, becoming luminous disks, more bright red than amber. Her mouth elongated, as if she were yawning, extending lower to unbelievable proportions. Her joints popped and crackled, disengaging and rearranging. She was terrifying and beautiful all at once, both Effie and adze.
In her natural self, with the cuffs and the amulet, her strength intensified. Her long hands pulled, attempting to separate my head from my neck. I closed my eyes, focusing on the spinning ball of heat within me as it rippled, and grew, and heated.
Please, Nana Ama.I didn’t know if my grandmother could hear me. I wasn’t sure if she was with me, or if she was just dead and buried at the base of the tree under which we gathered. But I begged just the same.Show me what to do.
But a strange voice, thick with the heavy accent of my nsamanfo, my ancestors, whispered, the voice from my last dream. Anansi.
To kill adze, you must be adze.
I hadn’t understood it then. But I did now. My body took on a mind of its own. I gave myself to it. To the spinning orb glowing and growing in me, stretching itself to every limb, filling me with heat that grew and grew. I thought we’d made it to sunrise, but the Light, the heat, wasn’t coming from around me, but within. It was like looking into the sun, something Effie’s insect eyes couldn’t take. She let out a shriek of shocked pain, her claws releasing me. I began to fall back down to earth.
My body collapsed in on itself, the world spinning around me. I was not in control but only knew what I needed to do, what I needed to be.
For the first time, I was drinking the Light. Truly. I was becoming the obogya, the firefly with its golden orb, the part of me I had yearned for but was always too scared to accept. I stopped my downward spiral. I reversed, shooting up faster and faster, a rocket, launching myself into the very heart of Effie.
Effie audibly sucked in air. Her body bent inward from my impact as I took up residence within her, absorbing her essence from the inside out. She was too powerful with so much rage she’d siphoned from the countless lives she’d taken by force, so alone, so utterly broken—the storm of emotions and unbridled power she could barely control nearly expelled me from her. But I held on, refusing to give up because only an adze could kill an adze in this form.
When I had absorbed all I could, taking her core within me, I shot out, going through her back, and leaving a small hole. Exhausted and nearly passed out, my body started to fall. I almost passed the cliff’s edge, heading down to the sea, but with the last of my energy, I managed to launch myself at the cliff, hoping I wouldn’t miss.
