“Some soldiers left a car at my house. Yemaya thought you’d like it.”
“Car? One of them fresh ones? I got no use for the rot in the originals—those’re held together by hopes and dreams.” He stepped past them with a bowlegged gait without waiting for an answer. Yemi and Selah followed to the car where it rested against the woodpile. If he was blind, he had no problem finding his way around.
“Why didIthink he’d like it, now?” Yemi whispered.
“A transaction. Just wait,” Selah whispered back.
Javid walked around the vehicle and ran a hand along its clean lines. He didn’t strike Yemi as a motorist. She suspected he’d use it for scrap. A shame, now that she was finally getting the hang of driving. It was certainly easier than horseback.
Javid came back to them, hands on his lower back to straighten his posture. He spit on the ground. “Alright. What do you want for it?”
“Nothing, Javid. It’s a gift. Old masters waste away without their tribute, and we’d much rather have you here,” Selah assured him.
“Gal, webothold. I just got the grace to look it.” He waved her off, but Selah chuckled. And then he turned his attention to Yemi and blinked. “That Donovan’s spear?”
“It is,” Selah said.
“You know it?” Yemi asked, relinquishing her hold on the spear as Javid gestured for it.
“Designed it and its twin. They put me out to pasture for making ’em ’cause the young king couldn’t stop beheading statues and shit. Thought it ended up marking his grave.” Immediately he began whipping it about, slicing through the air in practiced form and inspecting its shaft for knicks and flaws.
“It did. I just… borrowed it.” Yemi eyed Selah, lingering over the words in case there was something she wasn’t supposed to say. Selah, instead, busied herself lighting a cigar.
“?‘Borrowed,’?” Javid repeated, setting his gaze on her again, long enough this time to make her squirm. He took the spear back to the car and leaned it against the trunk before snatching off the hood ornament and chrome door handles as if they were leaves plucked from trees. Yemi watched him rub the metal pieces and press them together until they were a single malleable blob in his hands. He wrapped it around his fist and his fist around the key—a column of engraved characters along the middle section of the spear meant to be rotated to activate its heated core.
“You want a regular spear, you go find you a regular spear,” he said. “You wantthisspear, you use it the way it’s meant to be used.”
Yemi saw at once that he’d molded the metal into a set of chrome knuckles, the palm side fitting into the strip of glyphs that activated the core of the spear the way her father’s battle glove once had. With a yank, he ratcheted it to its active position, and the glowing orange core made itself known in the veins that wrapped the staff from baseto tip. A single slash sliced in two what appeared to be the wrought-iron hollow of an old cannon amid a cluster of dead leaves and other metal scraps. He ratcheted the spear back to inactive and turned it and the key over to Yemi.
“I—thank you,” she said, trying the key on for herself. It was solid and cool to the touch, as if he hadn’t just molded it a moment ago. Selah was smirking approval in her periphery.
“Don’t worry about it. We’re even. I don’t owe favors.”
“I’ll, uh, try not to go chopping heads off statues.”
“Do what you want, I’m already retired. Ain’t nobody coming after me for it.” He waved them off and headed back to his garage.
“Another thing, Javid,” Selah called after him. “I’m leaving the country in a few days. Soldiers are looking for me. You’re welcome to join.”
“Why am I running if they’re looking for you?” he called back before disappearing around the corner.
“I tried.” Selah shrugged, tapping ash from her cigar. “He’ll be fine.”
“Wait, why are you leaving? I thought you had protection,” said Yemi, twisting the column of her spear to try out the key.
“They’ll be more determined the next time they come for me. Cannon blasts, house fire, any way to get me out. If a drop of blood hits my soil in the fight, my trees will cease to grow and I’ll be overrun. They’ve come for witches before. It always ends the same,” Selah replied, smiling through a cloud of smoke. “Let’s head back before your guardian thinks I’ve abducted you.”
“Head back how?” Yemi groaned, already knowing the answer.
“Your legs work, don’t they? The car belongs to him now.”
The sun was high overhead, and the lake shimmered a blinding white as they walked alongside it. Selah donned a pair of large, blue-tinted sunglasses. Breezes swept over the marshes in long, fragrant gusts that fluttered Yemi’s shirt against her skin. It was strange that something so small and simple felt so foreign. The compulsory subarmor that had no doubt kept her alive all these years had also sheltered her from things as innocent as the wind. She was more exposedthan she’d ever been in her entire life. Only the smallest part of it felt like freedom. Curious, because the throne had been a prison mere days ago before she’d lost it. Her distance from it should have felt like the fulfillment of a dream. Maybe it would have, if she’d gotten to choose it. It wasn’t a prison she longed for now; it was just home.
“What did my mother trade for my protection?” Yemi asked for want of conversation. The pitch of Selah’s roof was barely visible over the horizon, and they had a ways to go.
“She kept a secret for me when she didn’t have to,” Selah replied, almost wistfully.
“What was it?”
