Chapter 7 - Chapter Seven – Ashes in the Rain

Dawn crept into the Ifatedo compound on swollen feet. The rain had not stopped all night. It fell in thin gray sheets, turning the courtyard's hard‑packed earth to slick mud, washing the chalk from old markings and smearing the fresh ones into pale ghosts. Two bodies lay in the central yard, wrapped in white. The apprentice boy's form was small and straight, hands crossed over his chest. Beside him, Auntie Dupe's bundle was heavier, the cloth strained a little over the curve of her shoulder. Someone had placed a sprig of fresh leaves at her feet, a poor stand‑in for all the laughter she used to scatter through the house. Women knelt around them, wailing. It was not the formal keening of palace grief, measured and pretty. This was raw—a tearing sound that made even the rain seem quiet. Some of the witches beat their chests; others rocked back and forth, hands over their heads. Ifabola watched from the shelter of the veranda, teeth sunk into her lower lip. Her eyes burned, but no tears came. It felt as if she had already cried all she had inside, though she could not remember actually doing it. Everything since the shadow‑attack had blurred: Dupe's fall, the rush of people, Baba's hands on Kike's cold forehead, her mother's broken sobs. Now it was morning, and Dupe was dead. Ifabola could not make the two facts fit together. Auntie Dupe was the one who chased stubborn goats and scolded lazy apprentices with a joke tucked in each insult. She had hands like tree roots and a laugh that shook dust from the rafters. She had no right to be lying still under white cloth, face hidden. Ifabola's right palm throbbed. She kept it closed at her side, as if opening it would be an insult to the dead. Beside her, her mother leaned against a post, one arm wrapped tight around herself as if holding her own ribs in. Her eyes—red‑rimmed, hollow—never left the wrapped body. "How will this house stand?" she whispered. "Dupe was our second backbone." Ifabola did not know how to answer. Kike lay in the inner room, breathing but unresponsive, like someone who had gone far into the forest and forgotten the path back. The apprentice boy was past saving. Dupe was gone. And on top of it all, the hateful mark burned on Ifabola's own hand, a secret brand. *Your house will feel the first teeth,* the spirit voice had warned. They had. Baba emerged from the inner chamber, moving slowly, as if wading through water. He had changed into a dark wrapper, the color of wet earth. His eyes looked older than the baobab tree itself. The wailing softened as the women turned to him. "Baba," one of the senior witches said hoarsely, "the boy's spirit is already beyond reach. But Dupe—must we send her tonight? Can we not keep her one more day? My heart is not finished looking at her." Baba shook his head. "We bury them before the second sunset," he said. "The mark on her palm is not something to leave long among the living." He knelt beside Dupe's wrapped form and gently folded back the cloth from one hand. Gasps rustled through the circle. The letters were still there. Fainter now, like a bruise fading, but unmistakable: E J E H Someone began to mutter a prayer under their breath. "If we leave her," Baba continued softly, "the thing that wrote this may keep sniffing at her body, trying to pull more from it. Let the earth have her, quickly. It knows how to guard its own." "How do we explain this to others?" another witch whispered. "If word reaches the market that one of us died marked like the king—" "It has already reached," Baba said wearily. "By noon the whole kingdom will know. You cannot hide thunder by closing your eyes." A few of the elders exchanged worried looks. "We will say," Baba went on, "that Dupe died defending the children from a spirit that tried to break our circle. That much is true. If they ask about the mark, we tell them what we tell ourselves: that hunger does not pick only guilty bones. It bites where it finds flesh." He covered Dupe's hand again. His own hands trembled. "After we bury her," he added, "we talk. All of us. There are stories I should have told long ago." --- They buried the apprentice boy in the small grove behind the compound that held generations of Ifatedo dead—priests with carefully carved staffs, witches whose names still made children behave better. His grave was simple: a shallow pit, a handful of herbs, a whispered blessing. No one had the strength for elaborate rites. Dupe's burial was harder. They carried her beyond the grove, closer to the river, at her own request. Years ago she had joked that when she died, she wanted to be where she could still eavesdrop on gossip carried by the water. Now, as the rain slackened to a fine mist, four strong women lowered her wrapped body into the earth. Baba scattered chalk and kolanut shavings over her, voice steady only by force of will. "Dupe, child of strong mothers," he said. "You poured out your strength for this house. Go and rest. May the ancestors welcome you with laughter. May no hungry thing follow you under the ground." He hesitated, then added in a lower voice, barely audible: "And forgive me." Ifabola stood behind her mother, fingers digging into the older woman's wrapper. She wanted to step forward and touch the white cloth one last time, to whisper a goodbye into the folds. But her legs would not move. So she watched as they filled the grave. Each thud of falling earth felt like a hand closing on her throat. When it was done, the women placed three flat stones over the mound and pressed a small clay bowl upside‑down atop them—Dupe's favorite gourd, broken in half. A final sign that the one who drank and talked in this world drank and talked no more. The wailing started again as they walked back. --- Later, when the graves were covered and the mourners had gone to rest aching throats and swollen eyes, Baba gathered the senior members of the house under the mango tree. Rain dripped slowly from its leaves, pattering on the ground like restless fingers. Ifabola was not meant to be there. She sat on a low bench in the shadows beyond the circle, close enough to hear, far enough that the elders could pretend they did not see her. Her mother had been called into the meeting as one of the house's core women, and Ifabola had refused to be left alone with her thoughts and Kike's shallow breathing. Baba sat on a stool, staff across his knees. Around him, a half‑circle of witches and priests watched with a mix of exhaustion, fear and something sharper—accusation waiting for a reason to leap. "You told us the spirits said our house had touched this name before," one of the elder women began. "We have a right to know how." Baba closed his eyes for a heartbeat, then opened them. "There was a famine," he said. "You remember." They all did. Even those who had not been old enough to understand at the time remembered bellies pinched tight, nights broken by the sound of coughing and thin cries. "The yams rotted in the fields," Baba went on. "The river swelled one week, dried the next. Children died of cough and fever. We tried everything we knew. We called the river spirits, the sky ones. We made offerings until our altars looked like empty stomachs." His mouth twisted. "No one answered loudly enough. Or perhaps we were too tired to hear." "So you called something else," the elder woman said flatly. "I almost did," he corrected. "There is an old sigil, from before our grandmothers' time. It was carved into one of the oldest altars, hidden under layers of new paint and chalk. I uncovered it in my foolish desperation." He looked around at their faces, making himself meet each pair of eyes. "I spoke the first part of the name that went with it," he said. "Only the first part. Even that was too much." A murmur ran around the circle. "You felt it," another witch whispered. "Yes." He swallowed. "A weight like the sky falling. A…presence…so vast my mind could not hold its edges. It pressed against my chest as if wanting to crawl inside. I saw visions I will not describe; they would corrode your sleep." He clenched his hands. "I realized my mistake," he continued. "I shattered the altar. I cut the sigil from the stone and threw the pieces into the deepest part of the river. I spent the next seven nights countering any bond that might have formed. I told myself I had shut the door before it opened." A bitter laugh escaped him. "I was wrong. A crack is not a closed door." "Why did you never tell us?" one of the younger priests burst out. "We share your burdens, Baba. Or are we only good for grinding herbs and nodding when you speak?" Some of the older ones hissed at his disrespect, but no one really disagreed. Baba's shoulders sagged. "I was ashamed," he said simply. "I, who warn others about forbidden paths, almost walked the worst of them. I thought burying that night would keep its shadow from touching you." He looked toward the house, where a small girl with a burning palm kept vigil over her sleeping sister. "It seems I only hid the stone in our own cooking pot," he said. Silence stretched. At last, the oldest witch—Mama Ireti, whose hair was fully white and whose eyes saw more than most—spoke. "What is done is done," she said. "Shame changes nothing. The question is what we do now, with teeth already in our flesh." She pointed her chin toward the house. "The mark on Ifabola's hand," she said. "Is it the same as what you saw on that old altar?" Baba hesitated. "Not exactly," he admitted. "Similar curves. A rhyme, not the same word." "Yet the thing took interest in her," Mama Ireti said. "We all felt where that second strike was aimed." Some of the elders' gazes hardened. "She should be sent away," one man said abruptly. "Hidden in a distant village. If the hunger smells our compound, let it search and find nothing. Let it get tired and leave." "And if it follows her instead?" another snapped. "Would you gift our neighbors with that danger just to feel safe? This is not a goat you tie in someone else's farm." "Then what?" the first retorted. "Keep her here so every shadow has a path into our house? You heard what the spirit said. His house will feel the first teeth. Next time it may not stop at one child and one auntie." Baba flinched. "Enough," Mama Ireti said sharply. "Words like this fray the rope we are all holding." She turned back to Baba. "Whatever is hunting our king's line has noticed your daughter," she said. "That is a fact. But it is also true she burned it when it tried to enter her sister. None of us, for all our beads and chalk, managed that last night. Something in her stood between death and that child." Uncomfortable murmurs. "She carries both river and thunder in her blood," Ireti went on quietly. "Your line, and her mother's people from the hill villages. Old prophecies murmur about such children, though I never thought I would live to see one. Perhaps that is why this hunger finds her such a sweet road. But it may also be why she can stand in its way." Baba seized on that like a drowning man. "Then we train her," he said. "We guard her, but we do not cast her out like a cursed dog. She is five seasons old. Sending her away will only make her meat for something else." Some elders nodded reluctantly. Others looked unconvinced. "This is bigger than your family, Adégbáyí," the sharp‑tongued younger priest muttered. "If the kingdom falls, what good is one girl's power?" Baba's eyes went cold. "If the kingdom falls," he said, "it will be because men like us chose fear over duty." The young man flushed and looked away. Mama Ireti lifted her staff. "We will not decide a child's fate in one rain‑soaked morning," she ruled. "For now, she stays. We strengthen our charms, we guard our doors, and we watch the currents around her. If the hunger comes again, perhaps she will not be the only one ready to bite it back." The council broke slowly. Some left with shoulders squared, resolve stiffening their tired backs. Others walked away shaking their heads, glancing uneasily toward the house where Ifabola waited in the shadows. One of the younger witches lingered at the edge of the group, listening with a face like carved stone. When the elders dispersed, she slipped out through the side gate, her wrapper pulled tight, anger simmering in her eyes. By the time she reached the market, her version of the story had grown teeth. --- In the palace, the queen‑mother listened to a breathless messenger. "…and they say the aunt who guarded the children died," he finished, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched the floor. "Some claim she bore the same letters as the king, not on her chest but on her palm." The queen‑mother's fingers tightened around the arm of her stool. "And the boy apprentice?" she asked. "Dead on the spot," the messenger said. "No mark. His spirit simply…went." The queen‑mother dismissed him and paced to the open archway that overlooked the inner courtyard. Rain traced thin lines down the stone. Adetunji, her eldest, sat nearby, staring at nothing with a face that tried very hard to be like a man's and failed. "More deaths," he said quietly. "And still no face for me to strike." She turned to him, heart twisting. "You heard?" "Everyone hears," he said bitterly. "When a goat bleats in Ifatedo, the sound reaches even the palace walls." He looked up at her. "Is it their fault?" he asked. "Father trusted Baba Ifa more than any chief. Now everywhere that man steps, someone dies." "It is not so simple," she began. He laughed, harsh and young. "Then make it simple. My father is dead. One of their own is dead the same way. A child nearly died. How many more—" "Adetunji," she said, steel cutting through his words. "You are still a boy, but one day you may sit where your father sat. Learn this now: a king who sees only simple answers does not live long." He looked away, jaw clenched. She exhaled. In truth, her own thoughts were not much calmer. If the mark on Dupe's palm matched the king's chest, then whatever force stalked the palace had reached into the great priest's house as well. That could mean It considered them enemies…or tools. Neither comforted her. Boot steps approached. Ogunremi of Koleoso bowed at the threshold. Rain streaked his bare shoulders; his eyes were dark as storm clouds. "You heard?" he asked. "I did," she said. "What of your own rites? Has Sango spoken clearly to you yet?" Ogunremi's mouth twitched. "He marked our tree," he said. "Burned into the bark a shape like the first letter on the king's chest." Adetunji's eyes widened. "You didn't tell me that yesterday," the boy said. "Because yesterday you were still my friend's grieving child," Ogunremi replied evenly. "Today you are asking questions like a man." He turned back to the queen‑mother. "This is old, Iya Oba," he said. "Older than this palace, older than our current gods. Some king long ago thought he could use hunger as a leash. Now it has followed his blood down the generations like a jackal. And our own great priest once brushed against it, whether by accident or pride. That has tied his house into the mess." "Are you saying Baba Ifa is to blame?" she asked. "I am saying," Ogunremi answered, "that if this power chooses a path fully, we must be ready to cut that path, no matter whose roof it crosses." Her gaze sharpened. "Even Ifatedo's?" He held her eyes without flinching. "Yes," he said. "If it comes to that. Thunder does not spare a shrine because it has pretty carvings." Adetunji shifted, excitement and fear warring in his face. The queen‑mother looked back toward the rain. "Not yet," she said at last. "We still need Baba Ifa to understand this thing. If we strike at him too soon, we may break the only calabash holding water." "And if he is the crack in that calabash?" Ogunremi pressed. "Then we will deal with him," she said quietly. "But not on rumor and fear. I will summon him tomorrow. Let him explain last night's deaths to my face." Ogunremi inclined his head, not fully satisfied but bound by her word. Outside, thunder rolled again, closer this time. --- Back in the Ifatedo compound, Ifabola sat beside Kike's mat, humming a market song under her breath. The little girl lay still, lashes dark against her cheeks, breath whispering in and out like a thread pulled slowly through cloth. "I know you are in there," Ifabola said softly. "You hate missing anything. Remember when Dupe fell in the well that one time and came up swearing? You told that story for three weeks. Are you going to let a shadow outdo you?" No answer. She brushed damp hair from her sister's forehead. Her own eyelids felt gritty with exhaustion. Every time she closed them, she saw Dupe's still face, the letters on her palm, the blank stare of the apprentice boy. And that door of nothing. She must have dozed, because one moment she was blinking at Kike's sleeping face, and the next the room had changed. She was still sitting beside the mat, but the walls had dissolved. Water lapped quietly around her knees—cool, dark, familiar. The ceiling above had become a low sky, streaked with indigo and silver like cloth from the northern traders. She knew this place. The river's dream‑path. She had wandered near its edges in smaller visions before, seeing fish the color of smoke and women with hair like flowing reeds. This time, something different pulsed beneath the surface. "Kike?" she called. A small shape stood a short distance away, half‑hidden in mist. Her heart leapt. "Kike!" The shape turned. It was her sister—but younger somehow, rounder in the cheeks, eyes wide with that stubborn brightness that had followed her from birth. "'Fabo," Kike said. Her voice echoed oddly, as if spoken through a hollow gourd. "You came." Ifabola splashed toward her, water rippling around her legs. "You scared me," she scolded, tears finally spilling. "Don't you ever do that again." Kike tilted her head. "I didn't mean to," she said. "Something pulled. Like when Dupe used to grab my wrapper and spin me around, but from inside. Then it was dark. Then I heard you shouting. Then it was not so dark." She frowned, small brow furrowing. "But I can't find the door back," she added. Fear squeezed Ifabola's chest. "Baba will find you," she said quickly. "He always finds his way in dreams and rivers." Kike looked down at the water. "There are other things here," she whispered. "They sound big." A shiver ran through the river beneath their feet. Ifabola remembered the hungry voice from the not‑door. Her palm burned again. *Careful,* the messenger's tone brushed her ear, dry as brittle leaves. *He is looking for cracks.* "If you're a messenger," Ifabola snapped out loud, "then do your work and show us the way out!" Kike blinked, not hearing—this conversation was not for her ears. The air shimmered. The same robed, faceless figure from before appeared on the water's surface, standing as easily as they did. "You are becoming rude," it observed. "I am tired," she shot back. "My aunt is dead. A boy I used to play ayo with is dead. My sister is lost. And you keep telling me 'not yet' and 'wait.' If you cannot help, then go away and stop staring." Silence stretched. Then, unexpectedly, the messenger laughed. It was not a cruel sound, but it carried an old sadness. "I had forgotten how sharp small tongues can be," it said. "Listen, child. What holds your sister here is not my chain. The hunger reached for her. You burned it. That tug of war left her spirit standing between house and river. If I drag her fully to one side, the other side will tug harder." "What does that mean?" Ifabola demanded. "It means," the messenger replied, "that if she returns too quickly, the hunger may claim someone else in her place, to balance what it thinks was stolen." "Someone else like who?" Her voice shook. The messenger's faceless head tilted toward her. "You," it said simply. The river seemed to still around them. Ifabola's breath hitched. "That's not fair," she whispered. "Fairness is a human story," the messenger said. "The old laws only know balance. A life for a life. A mark for a mark." Kike had begun to hum to herself, staring down at her feet in the water, oblivious. Ifabola swallowed hard. "So what do I do?" she asked, very quietly. "Let her stay here forever? Sleep and sleep until…until what?" "Until your father finds a way to close some paths," the messenger said. "Until the hunger's teeth are duller. Or until time itself pulls her one way or the other." It paused. "She is not dying. Not yet. She is…paused. That is the kindness your hand bought when it burned the shadow." Ifabola's head spun. "And if I pull her back now?" she pressed. "If I grab her and run?" "Then you run with a torch through dry grass," the messenger said. "Perhaps you reach your door before the flames. Perhaps they reach your house first." She closed her eyes, fighting the urge to scream. "You are supposed to be helping me," she said through her teeth. "I am," it replied softly. "Once, I bore messages only for kings who thought themselves clever. I saw how their bargains scorched the world around them. This time I am allowed to speak to a child before she grows into their mistakes. That is already more mercy than most received." "Then tell me one good thing," she begged. "Anything." "Very well," it said. "When you touched that shadow, you did not only burn it. You took a piece of its name into yourself. That is why your palm carries its curve." Her stomach lurched. "That is not a good thing," she said. "It is dangerous," the messenger agreed. "But also powerful. Names bind. You now hold a thread that belongs to him." It did not say the full name. "If you learn to weave it with your own, you may snare more than you burn." Terror and a strange, fierce hope warred inside her. "I am only small," she whispered. "The first door they opened to this hunger belonged to a child your age," the messenger said quietly. "He asked to live forever. He did not. But his wish crawled on without him. Small does not mean powerless." The river darkened at the edges of her vision. "Time runs differently here," the messenger added. "You cannot stay long. Your father is calling you without knowing it; his worry tugs at your spirit. Leave your sister now. Come back another night. Talk to her. Keep her near the house with your voice. That, for now, is all you can do without breaking the thin balance that still holds." Ifabola looked at Kike, at her round face and stubborn chin. It hurt to breathe. "I'll come back," she said thickly. "Don't wander, okay? Dupe will be angry if you get lost again." Kike blinked up. For a second, her eyes cleared, as if seeing truly. "Tell Dupe to keep a place for me by the fire," she said sleepily. "I still have stories." A sob tore free from Ifabola's chest. Before she could answer, the river beneath her feet dissolved. --- She woke beside the mat, cheek pressed against rough raffia, tears dried stiff on her face. Kike still lay there, unmoving, chest rising and falling in that thin, stubborn rhythm. Ifabola wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Baba's shadow fell across the doorway. "Ifa‑mi," he said gently. "Come. Eat something. Your body cannot fight shadows on an empty stomach." She rose stiffly and followed him out. As she stepped into the courtyard, voices from the street beyond the compound wall drifted in—angry, frightened, rising and falling like the wails that had followed Dupe's burial. "…they said the mark was on her palm…" "…first the king, now the priest's house…" "…how long before it reaches us?…" A stone clattered against the outer wall. Then another. Ifabola flinched. Baba's jaw clenched. "Stay inside," he told her, voice like carved wood. "No matter what you hear." He walked toward the gate, staff in hand, as a third stone struck, harder this time, leaving a fresh scar on the old mud. Outside, a crowd was gathering—neighbors with tight mouths, strangers with wide eyes, fear twisting all their features into something close to hatred. Word had spread. The hunger had taken its first price. And now, in the frightened hearts of Ayetoro, another kind of hunger stirred—the ancient, easy hunger for someone to blame.