Gerewol
It was the weirdest spectacle I’d ever seen. And I’d seen a lot. It was so weird that it made total sense that this tradition known as the Gerewol was hundreds of years old. I was glad that I arrived late. This was not my kind of thing. The crowds. The music bands. Hausa men using their useless old guns to shoot blanks. Dancers. The noise of people talking, roaring Tuareg camels and braying donkeys, the grumbling of Wodaabe long-horned cattle. Too much body heat. A thousand types of perfume, incense, and scented oils. And then you had the contestants.
They lined up in the center of the square. They were all dressed up in long leather tunics embroidered with colorful thread, beads, and copper rings. They put on necklaces, leather amulet bags, and white wrappers. Their heads were wrapped in white and black turbans with long black feathers stuck in the middle.
They clicked and clacked with colorful beads, silver crosses of Agadez, zippers, talismans, and cowry shells. Some even had watchbands, old keys, empty printer cartridges, e-legba parts, and locks sewn into their clothes! It was wild. And trust me, my descriptions aren’t doing it all any justice. Everyone’s outfit was personalized; there were a hundred variations.
Men carried spears and mirrors. They lightened their skin with yellow paint. They blackened their lips and the rims of their eyes with kohl to bring out the whites of their eyes and whiteness of their teeth. They shaved their hairlines to make their heads look longer. They drew black lines from their foreheads to their chins to show the symmetry of their faces and make their noses look lengthier. They decorated their cheeks with patterns of dots and circles and lines.
Then these overdressed guys jumped, made exaggerated faces, crossed and rolled their eyes, bared their white teeth, and danced. I said I’d be honest, so I will say this: Yes, they were attractive. Minus all the makeup, they were tall and that slim kind of muscular that women like. Perfect faces and whatnot. But goddamn, what was with all the makeup and vanity?
There were a few Changed Ones competing. One was a winged man. No doubt, the guy stood out. He’d adorned his enormous white-feathered wings with cowry shells and tiny bells. He probably wouldn’t be able to fly until after the contest. There was also a windseeker who had the nerve to levitate as he danced. These were the Changed Ones whose physical attributes were associated with beauty. Let a plantworker, who is typically very short, try to compete. The judges probably wouldn’t even let him near the line of competitors.
The Wodaabe people traditionally despise “ugly” people. To them, if you have any kind of deformity, like an asymmetric face, bad teeth, beady eyes, a round head, or a scar, you’d better invest in some magical objects to offset your hideousness. I think, for them, Changed Ones fell on both sides of attractiveness. Shadow speakers apparently were glorious to them. Obviously, it was the eyes.
A group of three young women slowly made their way up the line. Ejii said they were supposed to be the most beautiful women of the guest groups. I don’t know about the most beautiful, but they were certainly pleasing to the eye. Especially the tall one.
They wore huge, clunky brass anklets that reached their knees, many gold-hooped earrings in each ear, and wide black veils. And they wore bead bracelets and these huge clicking necklaces made of cowry shells. They also had similar indigo facial designs. Two of them held a red umbrella over an ancient-looking woman carrying a bunch of decorative white horsetails. According to Ejii, the girls were the judges and the old woman was the head judge.
“You okay?” Ejii asked me. She was obviously enjoying my discomfort with the whole thing.
“This is some weird camelshit,” I said.
She smiled. “It takes some getting used to, sure.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this.”
“Oh, relax,” she said.
We were sitting under a special tent with the Kwàmfà council: Ejii’s mother, the muscular old shadow speaker named Mazi Godwin, and a windseeker named Boniface. I sat in Gambo’s chair and Ejii sat in Jaa’s red chair. It just worked out this way. With all three of them still missing, Ejii’s mother thought it best that we occupy at least two of the seats.
“How much longer is this going to go on?” I asked.
“Wait for the head judge to give the finalists each a white horsetail,” Ejii said, grinning excitedly. The judge pointed at the first finalist, a tall slender man, and the crowd went wild.
“Yes!” Ejii said, standing up and clapping. I frowned. Ejii obviously favored this guy. Two of the women advanced toward the man, demurely laughing and smiling. Ejii sat down, now looking annoyed. I smiled. It was custom for the winner to have a gleeful night with one or more of the chosen girls. I guess Ejii just remembered this.
“Arif naawdo!” one of the girls suddenly shouted.
“Purple eyes! Purple eyes!” the crowd chanted, laughing and pointing.
I blinked, noticing his eyes. No, it can’t be, I thought. It was. Arif. I hadn’t recognized him, he was so made up.
“Just perfect,” I grumbled.
Then I noticed something . . . He’d painted a red line from the middle of his forehead to the tip of his nose and another line across his forehead. He’d put white dots on each side of the red line. He’d imitated my tattoos! He glanced our way and winked at me. I had to grin. I got up and clapped. In that moment, I knew I could trust Arif with anything.
The crowd went wilder when Arif broke into what I can only describe as a happy dance. I think Arif had just been told that he looked good enough to eat. He flashed and rolled his strange violet shadow-speaker eyes. Even from where I was, I could glimpse the power in his weird eyes. Anyone who loved him would be crazy to look into them. I wondered what Ejii saw when she looked in them.
I looked at Ejii and saw that she now looked thoroughly pissed. She mumbled something, but I couldn’t hear her.
The chanting swelled and all the contestants began to dance more vigorously. Two more finalists were chosen. Both were attractive, tall, and crazy looking, but neither was Changed. The three finalists stood in front of the judges, waving their horsetails as they moved. People in the crowd pointed and shouted, jeered, gestured. If people hadn’t been smiling and laughing, too, I’d have been sure they were about to start rioting. It had been a while since I’d been in the midst of unleashed joy.
Even with their leaders missing, the whispers of genocide of the very people Kwàmfà folk made room for, the pact gone and war just over the horizon, the Chief of Ooni looming, these people could generate such happiness. Of course, I didn’t really feel a part of it. I was too heavy with other things, I guess. Maybe that was why I noticed the very tall, dark-skinned man in the white kaftan and pants. Maybe that’s why Ejii did, too.
He seemed to appear out of nowhere, standing right behind one of the contestants on the far end of the line. He walked slowly toward the center, slipped to the front, and stood behind the finalist who was probably Arif’s strongest competition. Still no one seemed to notice. Except Arif. He’d stopped dancing and was staring at the man.
He looked at Ejii and me. I couldn’t hear him over all the singing and laughing, but I understood his lips. “Who is . . . ?”
Ejii and I got to our feet.
“No idea!” I said.
It happened fast. The tall man in white opened his mouth to the sky. His fangs were sharp, white, wet. His eyes were wide. His long-fingered hands like claws clamped on the young man’s neck and shoulder. I gasped. All of this happened in broad daylight, before hundreds of smiling joyous people.
Gerewol was an ancient tradition. It celebrated the shallow, fleeting thing called beauty.
Ejii started running forward. I followed. Too many people.
The man with no eyebrows bit the young man’s neck. There was a splash of blood. People started screaming, running.
“Oh Allah!” Ejii gasped, as she tried to move forward. “What kind of camelshitting . . .”
“Ejii, get back!” I barely shouted.
There were fireflies appearing from both sides of the contestant line now. Even in the sunshine they glowed, orange like small suns. Then in the crowd, more figures wearing white, grabbing and biting.
I stopped. There were too many innocent people running around. No way I could use a blast of lightning. I’d have killed everyone around me. I briefly wondered if I’d killed Tumaki when I blasted lightning in her library. No, I knew. She was already dead. Then they took her. I shook my head. I had to concentrate. A lightning storm, I thought. I’d have to take the chance. I looked around. Already several contestants lay shriveled and dead.
Adze were attacking the most beautiful Gerewol contestants. Locking their fangs on necks and sucking them dry. A few started on audience members. A woman kicked at a female Adze, but her kicks didn’t seem to elicit even the slightest pain, and the Adze just kept sucking. A man was trying to smash the head of another. Another man drove a dagger into an Adze’s sides. No success. When they were feeding, they could not be moved.
But when they were done and had thrown the husk of the contestant aside, that was when they became violent. I saw a man slapped in the face by a freshly fed Adze. The force of the slap sent the man flying. A woman was crushed to the ground under an Adze’s foot.
I wanted to just stand there screaming. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to curl up and die. Give up. Wait for an Adze to come at me. I didn’t want to bother fighting back. I was so tired. Nothing could stop all this. Nothing could stop the chief from having Kwàmfà destroyed by these creatures. Destroying all Changed Ones. Enslaving Earth.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
“Nothing but darkness,” I said aloud. I saw it. A darkness in the daylight sky. It loomed and rolled just above me. Threatening to swallow us all. A terror like you would never know fell on me and I nearly dropped to my knees. This was the end of the world that was supposed to happen during the Great Change. This was it.
Then I heard clicking and clacking. Not from far away. Just above my head. When I opened my eyes, I was staring into the face of the giant fish woman. The creature I’d seen in the Aïr Mountains during my teachings. The goddess. She was all bone and sinew. She was silver scales and brown skin. Black eyes and fins. Her every movement sent a painful popping crack through my brain. Like knuckles cracking, painful yet sweet. She spoke to me in Igbo. It had been a while since I’d spoken my first language. It instantly calmed me.
Her voice was wet and guttural. “If you do not remember where the rain started to beat you, you will not remember who gave you the towel with which to dry your body.” What the hell does that mean? I thought, confused. Not the best time for confusing godly proverbs.
Then a strength was flowing through my body that nearly lifted me off the ground. I blinked and she was gone. “Okay,” I whispered, the image of her still strong in my mind. The smell of the ocean, the lake, the spontaneous pond, the rain in my nostrils. My clothes were soaking wet. I had to pull in the moisture from far away. As I did this, I saw Ejii. Still running toward the tall man in white, the one who’d started it all. He stood in the middle of the chaos.
She snatched something from under her shirt. A seed shooter! She was shoving people out of her way. Trying to get a clear shot. He stood where he was with the contest finalist still in his arms, his mouth clamped to the young man’s neck. People ran away from and around him, like he existed in a different space and time. No one touched him. No one tried to stop him.
Ejii aimed. Moved closer. Someone roughly grabbed her arm. Ejii stared at her.
I located the moisture I needed and my mind clouded. I imagine that my eyes became the color of mud, but how can I know this? As I faded, I let my eyes focus on the woman holding Ejii’s arm.
She wore a purple dress. Not a wrapper and top. A full dress, made of thick material, but it did not fall heavily. It moved with the woman’s body. A strange cloth. But it was not clean. The dirt looked like dust, from traveling. Far and long.
Rain, come, I said. Everything went fuzzy. Silent. Then screaming and chaos around me blasted back in, loud, clear. My eyes refocused. The woman was still grasping Ejii’s arm. Her nostrils flared, a sheen of sweat glistening on her dark skin. Purple eyeshadow.
“You won’t kill him that way!” the woman shouted. “You cannot kill him! Not any of them!”
Ejii shook her off. The young man was dead and limp in the hairless man’s arms. Ejii fired at the hairless man. Her aim was perfect. The eyes of a shadow speaker can see for miles. A seed shooter’s aim is most accurate in the hand of a woman. A seed shooter in the hands of a female shadow speaker is the recipe of death.
The seed embedded itself in his cheek, blowing out the flesh there. Flaps of skin hung. No blood. And the man didn’t seem to feel a thing. He threw down the dead finalist like a sack of millet. Then I was pulling and pulling and drawing. My clothes grew wet with sweat and moisture. My skin was cool. The sky began to darken. A rumble of thunder from nearby. Then the storm was upon us. Crash! The lightning was huge and robust. It struck a building nearby, setting it on fire. The Adze screeched in the light. Many fled. Thank God.
I looked for Ejii. Same place she was before. She shot at the head Adze again, gnashing her teeth with rage. She ran at him, letting more shots fly. She hit his arms, belly, chest. Holes appeared in his clothes. Still no blood. And he did not fall. Finally, right before her, his eyes boring into hers, he disappeared. She found him easily and shot at the tiny firefly he’d become. The seed knocked him sideways, but he soon caught himself and zipped away.
“Fucker!” she snarled, looking around for the first time. She met my eyes. I focused on her nose.
“Well done,” I said with a quick nod.
“Your storm is working,” she said.
“Not completely,” I said.
Several weren’t so afraid of lightning.
“Don’t follow me, Ejii!” I said as I ran into the crowd. Forget the danger. I could hear the static popping off my hair, my clothes, the sand around me. I charged up. I was breathing heavily. If I was to control the electricity I was producing, I had to control my breathing. I was dizzy as I struggled with my lungs and diaphragm, which only wanted to take more oxygen to my brain. I aimed for the first one I saw. She’d just grabbed a little boy of about thirteen. She shook him about like a rag doll, laughing madly. She held him to her, grabbed his head and shoulders, and bared her teeth.
I let loose a wave of electricity and both of them went flying. The Adze woman caught herself in midair. She disappeared. I ran to the boy. He looked up at me, stunned but unharmed except for the cuffs of his pants, which were smoldering. I patted out the small flames with my tough feet.
It started to rain, lightning crashing every two seconds. I’d brought the storm right above us. The screams of people mixed with screeches of fleeing Adze. I looked ahead and my eyes grew wide. Arif—and there were about five Adze on him. How is that possible? I wondered. I could just barely see him as he grappled with the Adze. The air around him was heavy with smoke. But smoke didn’t hover in the same place. Smoke didn’t become sharp edges and pierce the undead like hundreds of daggers. Smoke wasn’t alive.
“Shadows,” I whispered. But not like the darkness that I had seen in the field. This darkness was full. This was the darkness that made things grow. This was darkness that defended life with unmatched violence. This was the bad thing I sensed Arif was hiding. I understood why he’d hide it. Who would go near him if they knew he was capable of this?
Right before my eyes, I saw what I had yet to see Adze do. As they tried to flee, blood oozed from where the shadows touched them, bright red and glowing a hot orange. As they struggled, they became wet with it, spattering it and flinging it everywhere. They grew wetter and wetter, but they did not die. Vile.
Arif crouched there, an angry look on his face. A look I knew, too. He was torturing these terrible creatures as I had tortured Big Blokkus. But Arif didn’t have time for this; he was needed elsewhere. Most of the Adze had fled, but a few people were still under attack.
“Arif,” I shouted.
His blank eyes shot toward me and I stepped back from their intensity. Not far from him, an Adze took down a young woman.
“Let them flee!” I said. I pointed at the young woman under attack. “Look!”
Slowly, too slowly, he turned his head and saw the screaming woman moments away from being bitten.
I ran around him and let loose a blast of lightning. Both the Adze and the woman went flying. Then the Adze changed into a firefly and zipped away. The woman got up on shaky legs and then fell back down, sobbing. All the hair on her head was gone. At least she was alive.
I turned to Arif. The Adze he’d been torturing were gone, leaving pools of blood in the sand. Arif straightened up. He was covered in Adze blood and glowing bright orange. His embroidered tunic shined with it, his amulets and necklaces and cowry shells dripped with it. The feather in his turban drooped with it. He looked like a demon or a god. Unworldly. And unhinged.
“Don’t come near me!” Arif bellowed. His voice was not his own. His violet eyes glowed.
A deep voice spoke from behind me in a language I didn’t understand. I whirled around. The tall Adze who’d started the attack smiled, his face and body unscathed. He turned and spoke to the few Adze left. Ejii came running, her seed shooter up. He changed into a firefly as she shot. The seed just barely missed him. All the others changed and flew off with him.
As quickly as it had begun, it was over. The Adze flew into the air, a small galaxy of orange stars ascending into the dark rainy sky. They zoomed off as a bolt of lightning crashed above.
Arif stood there, his shoulders curled in, his hands clenched in fists as if trying to hold something in. I asked the rain to stop. It did. Ejii stowed her seed shooter back under her garments. We were damaged people, us “advanced Changed Ones.” That’s what I call those of us who took our powers to that next level, regardless of the consequences. Ejii with her seed shooter. Arif with his murderous shadows. Me with my storms. It’s not hard to understand why the chief believes we are a disease, I thought. People lay all over the place, in the wet sand. Some moved, too many did not. Somehow I’d found myself in yet another war zone.
All the Gerewol contestants lay dead, except Arif. The contestant with the white wings lay nearby, dried up, his face frozen in a pained death mask. I guess he hadn’t been able to take off with all those cowry shells and tiny bells hanging on his wings. His wings were each broken in three places. As the wind blew, more of his feathers sloughed off with it. The skin underneath was that dry, even after the rain.
Ejii and I slowly walked to Arif.
“Don’t touch me,” Arif hissed, turning away. He knelt down.
“Arif,” Ejii whispered.
“Were those . . . those were what you spoke of?” he asked. His voice shook as he spoke.
“Yes,” I said.
“You could smell their age,” Arif said. “Thousands and thousands of years.” He shuddered and spat to the side. He still glowed the strange orange color.
“You’ve seen those before?” Ejii asked.
I nodded. “They’re called Adze,” I said, looking around. I noticed someone’s veil lying on the ground. I picked it up and brought it to Arif. When he made no move to take it from me, I knelt beside him and on instinct began to wipe his face. It was a weird thing to do but I did it. He didn’t stop me. “They were sent by Chief Ette,” I said.
Both of them flashed a look at me. Trust me, it isn’t pleasant to be under the gaze of two advanced shadow speakers. I swore I was about to turn to stone or melt or burst into flames or something.
“Maybe,” Arif grumbled, frowning.
“Definitely,” I said.
Ejii cursed as she looked around. But no tears. That was so strange. The Ejii I knew would have shed tears as she tried to make things better. None of us cried, but how angry we must have looked. I wiped Arif’s forehead, cheeks, and then neck.
“Thank you,” he said, not looking at me.
I grunted, wringing out the veil. A mix of Adze blood and rainwater.
“Arif,” Ejii said quietly. “What was all that?”
“It’s what I can do,” he said. “My shadows are . . . more lethal than most. I’m not a man of peace anymore.” He looked at me. “Can you bring more rain? This blood stings.”