The eyes of two young men flicked to Ekon as he reached the Temple of Lkossa’s landing.
Twenty-seven steps, divisible by three, a good number.
He moved into his place at the left end of their line without a word, but the boy nearest him still chuckled low. He was almost as tall as Ekon, built like a stack of boulders, but his long, narrow face had the twitchy likeness of a meerkat. After several seconds, he nodded Ekon’s way.
“Nice of you to finally join us, Okojo,” said Shomari.
Ekon didn’t answer, fixing his gaze on the front doors before them. They were carved from aged iroko wood, as unforgiving as steel. Any minute now, the city’s saa-horn would sound and they would open. Then the rites would begin. He let his fingers find a new rhythm at his side.
One-two-three. One-two-three . . .
“So . . .” This time, Shomari made a point of jabbing an elbow into Ekon’s ribs hard, messing up his count. “Where were you?”
“We’re not supposed to be talking, Mensah,” Ekon said through his teeth, hoping his use of the boy’s surname was enough of a hint.
“Let me guess.” Shomari’s black eyes grew flinty. “You were holed up somewhere reading the ancient ramblings of some crusty old master. Tuh, I’ll bet the ladies love that.”
“Your mother loves it,” Ekon muttered.
At the other end of the line, Fahim Adebayo snickered. Shomari gritted his teeth, as though he meant to fight, and for a second looked as though he might try it, but then he seemed to think better of it and stared ahead. Ekon barely resisted a smirk. As the sons of prominent Yaba families, he and Shomari had grown up together, but that didn’t mean they liked each other. In recent months, their once somewhat-cordial rivalry had changed drastically. The old rivalry was still there; it just lacked the cordiality.
A moment of silence passed among the three of them before Fahim cleared his throat. He wasn’t tall like Ekon, or burly like Shomari, and his face still held a softness that didn’t allow him to ever really look serious. “What do you think he’s going to make us do?” he whispered. “For the last rite?”
Shomari shrugged too quickly. “Dunno, don’t care.”
It was a lie, but Ekon didn’t bother to call the bluff. Deep down, he knew they all had good reason to be afraid. Mere weeks ago, they’d stood on these very steps crowded among fourteen other Yaba boys who, like them, had spent their whole lives dreaming of becoming Sons of the Six. Now they were the only ones left. The reality of it should’ve been exciting—if not slightly intimidating—but Ekon struggled to focus on it. He was standing before the city’s most revered site, but his mind was still down in its bowels, remembering what he’d heard, the strange things the old woman had said.
Does it call to you often? . . . It calls to me too sometimes. I couldn’t tell you why; magic is a peculiar thing, as are the things it touches.
He didn’t know which part of the encounter he found more unsettling in recollection. On the one hand, it was frightening that he’d heard Baba’s voice so far away from the jungle, but worse still, the old woman had known it. She’d empathized with him, and even said she sometimes heard things coming from the jungle too. How? How had she known? He’d never told anyone about what he heard when he got near the trees, the disturbing things hoarded in his memory. Even thinking about them now made his hands clammy. His fingers were twitching, eager to restart their tapping, when a low tremor interrupted his thoughts. His ears rang with the metallic bellow of the saa-horn up in one of the temple’s towers, rattling his bones from head to toe. There was a pause, and then—as if on cue—the scrape of weathered wood against stone. The temple’s front doors opened, and all three of them immediately straightened as a figure emerged from its shadows.
A corpulent man dressed in a sweeping blue robe met their gaze. Ekon tensed. There was no explicit way to know that Father Olufemi was old—his umber skin was unwrinkled, and his thin black hair was betrayed by only a few strands of gray near the temple—but something about the holy man always exuded an agelessness. As the Kuhani, he alone led the temple’s Brothers of the Order, and in more ways than one, he was the city’s leader. Ekon felt the shrewd evaluation in the man’s hawkish eyes as he looked over each of them.
“Come with me,” he murmured.
Ekon’s heart pounded like a goatskin drum as they followed him into the temple.
Dozens of white prayer candles illuminated the stonework of its worship hall—one hundred ninety-two at a quick count—arranged on built-in shelves that reached all the way up to its vaulted ceilings. Wafts of burning cedarwood suffused the air with every step as Father Olufemi led them deeper inside, and Ekon knew the scent came from the offering fires the brothers of the temple kept stoked at all times. It was the smell of home. The Temple of Lkossa housed worship halls, a library, studies, even a dormitory where candidates and unmarried Sons of the Six slept when off duty. It was magnificent, reverent, and like no other place in all the city. He noted the multicolored banners folded in woven baskets, to be shared with the rest of the populace in two months. The temple was already preparing for the Bonding, a celebration of the gods; to be initiated into the Sons of the Six just before such a holiday would be a special honor.
“Line up.” Father Olufemi still had his back to them, but his voice cracked through the quiet like a whip. Ekon scrambled to move back to his assigned place, standing shoulder to shoulder with his co-candidates. He balled his fists to keep his fingers from moving. Father Olufemi faced them again, eyes appraising.
“Candidate Adebayo, Candidate Mensah, and Candidate Okojo.” He nodded to each of them in turn. “The three of you are the last remaining candidates eligible for warriorship this season. You stand on the cusp of joining a hallowed brotherhood, a covenant eternal and divine. There are men who would lay down their very lives for membership, and many who already have.”
Ekon swallowed. He thought about Memorial Hall, a quiet corridor in the temple that bore a permanent list of fallen Sons etched directly into the stone walls. He knew about men laying down their lives for this brotherhood. His own father’s name was on that list.
“You have completed five rites on the sacred passage to warriorship. Now the time has come for you to undergo your last,” Father Olufemi continued. “If you are successful, you will be anointed as Sons of the Six tonight. If you are not, your journey will come to an end. Per holy law, you will not be permitted another chance to take the rites, and you may never speak of them again.”
Ekon knew he should have been paying closer attention as Father Olufemi went on, but it was next to impossible now. Both excitement and anxiety warmed his skin, pumping blood hard and fast through his veins and making it harder and harder to keep still.
This is it, he thought. It’s finally happening.
When none of them raised objections, Father Olufemi gave an austere nod. “Very well, then, let us begin.”
He gestured for them once again to follow him out of the worship hall and down one of its connecting halls. Ekon kept his strides even as they ventured deeper into blackness, turning and twisting through corridors until he was sure they were lost. He’d spent the last ten years of his life here in the temple, but he doubted he’d ever know the full extent of its layout. In time, they reached a weathered door illuminated by a single sconce mounted to the wall. Father Olufemi opened the door and ushered them into a small, windowless room. Ekon stilled as he saw what was in its center.
The woven raffia basket on the floor was large and round, not unlike the ones he sometimes saw women balance atop their heads down in the market, but something about this basket was wrong.
It was moving.
Without a word, Father Olufemi ambled over to it, leaving them at the door. If he was at all concerned about its contents, he made no outward sign of it as he faced them again.
“Recite chapter three, verse thirteen, from the Book of the Six.”
Ekon’s mind went frighteningly blank for a few seconds before the memorized words tumbled from his mouth.
“A righteous man honors the Six as he honors each breath,” he said in tandem with Fahim and Shomari. “He honors them constantly with the words of his tongue, the thoughts of his mind, and the acts of his body, for as long as he should live among gods-fearing men.”
Father Olufemi nodded. “A holy warrior, a true Son of the Six, must be obedient at all times. He must answer only to the six gods and goddesses of our faith, and to those through whom they speak. Do you understand that, candidates?”
“Yes, Father,” they replied in unison.
“And you understand”—Father Olufemi glanced at Ekon—“that when ordered to act in the name of the Six, you must always obey, without question or hesitation?”
Ekon had the distinct feeling that he was teetering on the edge of something, preparing to leap into some unknown abyss. He glanced at the strange moving basket again before answering.
“Yes, Father.”
“Then you are ready.” Without warning, Father Olufemi stooped to lift the basket’s lid. There was a faint sound, a stirring. He gestured for the three of them to approach. With every step closer, Ekon sensed it, a wrongness that implored him to turn back, but he forced his feet to move until he was within a foot of Father Olufemi. When he saw what was inside the basket, however, his blood ran cold.
A tangle of golden-brown snakes writhed among one another, twisting and coiling in an indistinguishable mass. They didn’t hiss, nor did they seem to notice that they had new spectators, but a chill erupted across Ekon’s arms anyway. It was impossible to tell where one serpent’s body began and another ended. His fingers tapped, trying to find a cadence.
Too many. Can’t count. Can’t count. Can’t count . . .
Fresh anxiety rose in his throat, and he found he couldn’t swallow it. He didn’t know much about snake species, but he was almost certain he knew what these were. Atop their interlaced bodies, three small scraps of parchment rose and fell with their movements. There was something written on each one, but he was too far away to read them.
Three scraps, a good number at least.
Shomari moved first, reaching for the slingshot hooked to his belt loop, but with surprising speed, Father Olufemi blocked his hand.
“No.”
Shomari’s eyes widened with surprise, but Father Olufemi spoke before he could.
“These are eastern black mambas,” he explained. “There are six of them, one to represent each of our gods and goddesses. They have been anointed by this temple, and shall not be harmed.”
Ekon tensed. He didn’t like where this was going at all. Father Olufemi had said there were six snakes, but he couldn’t separate them in his mind, which meant he couldn’t count them. That frightened him to his core. Every instinct in his body told him to run or, at the very least, to distance himself from them, but he found he couldn’t move.
“A Son of the Six is a man of faith and fortitude,” Father Olufemi went on. “Tonight, we will put both to the test. Each of your family names has been written on a piece of parchment and placed inside this basket.” He pointed. “Your final rite of passage requires you to retrieve your name without being bitten by one of the snakes. We will proceed alphabetically, by surname.”
New beads of sweat slicked Ekon’s neck, and it wasn’t from the small room’s stifling heat. Frantically, he racked his mind, thinking of what he knew about black mambas. They were said to be the most venomous snakes on the continent; a single bite could kill in a matter of minutes. From his brief readings, he knew they weren’t particularly aggressive by nature, but provoked . . . He looked to his co-candidates. Fahim’s nostrils flared as he took hard breaths in and out through his nose; Shomari’s pupils were dilated. Both were visibly shaking. As if on cue, one of the serpents lifted its head slightly from the basket to eye them with curiosity. It opened its blue-black mouth, and in the low light, venom glistened wet on its fangs. Ekon froze.
“Candidate Adebayo,” said Father Olufemi. “Proceed.”
Ekon watched Fahim shuffle toward the basket, trembling from head to toe. He started to bend at the middle, then, as though thinking better of it, lowered to his knees. The serpents turned toward him, six pairs of glittering black eyes watching and waiting. Fahim started to reach out but withdrew his hand when one of the snakes hissed. Father Olufemi shook his head.
“They are anointed, which means they will only bite those who are unworthy,” he murmured. “You must act without fear, and you must act with faith.”
Fahim nodded, chest rising and falling as he steadied himself. He shifted his weight, flexed his fingers, then—so fast Ekon barely saw it—snatched a scrap of parchment from the center of the basket. He stumbled backward, landing on his bottom, then held the paper up to his eyes to read the name scrawled on it. Every muscle in his body instantly relaxed, and he handed the paper to Father Olufemi, who nodded.
“Very good. Candidate Mensah, it is your turn.”
Shomari was more confident than Fahim, but not by much. He circled the basket like it was prey, wary eyes fixed on the two remaining slips of paper as he tried to determine which bore his family’s name. But when it came time to kneel before the basket, he shook just as badly. Unlike Fahim, he reached into it with painstaking care, sweat gathering on his upper lip as his fingers hovered over the snakes’ knotted bodies. He pinched one of the scraps, then carefully withdrew his hand. Nervous laughter echoed around the room as he rose, and Father Olufemi took his slip from him. After reading it, he nodded again, indicating for him to move back and stand beside Fahim. Ekon winced when the holy man’s eyes shot to him.
“Candidate Okojo, come forth.”
Ekon tried to swallow again but found his throat had gone dry. He counted his steps—four, a bad number. His legs seemed to move of their own accord as Father Olufemi gestured toward the basket a final time, then stepped back to give him space. At last, Ekon made himself look down at it. There, right in the basket’s center, he could see the last scrap of parchment. The name written on it was penned in bold black ink.
OKOJO
That was it; that piece of paper was the final thing standing between him and everything he’d worked for. He lowered slowly, ignoring the stone pressing hard against his knees. At once, as though somehow aware that he was their last intruder, the mambas hissed loudly in unison, their cold eyes meeting his own like onyx plucked from a starless night sky. He remembered Father Olufemi’s words, spoken only moments before.
They will only bite those who are unworthy.
He swallowed. What if he was unworthy? He thought of the jungle, the things he’d done—the things he hadn’t done. He thought of the strange old woman, the secrets he held on to, and a monster—it always seemed to lead back to the monster. He thought of the voice that plagued his nightmares.
Please. In his mind, Baba’s voice was still slurred, pained. Please, my son.
No. Ekon screwed his eyes shut. He made himself think of Kamau, of the temple, and of the life the two of them had made here after Baba’s death. He replaced visions of the Greater Jungle with memories of scorching-hot training sessions on the temple’s front lawns, the smell of rice bread baking in the kitchens, a library full of books that he could count forever and ever.
Be strong. He heard Kamau’s voice in his mind, reassuring and confident as always. You can do this. And remember: Kutoka mzizi.
Kutoka mzizi. The words made six syllables. Six, a good number. Slowly, he opened his eyes again. With his free hand, Ekon drummed his fingers against his side, finding an old rhythm as he chanted his ancestors’ words in time with it.
One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three.
Kutoka mzizi. Kutoka mzizi.
After tonight, everything would change. After this, he would finally belong to something, a brotherhood.
Kutoka mzizi. Kutoka mzizi. Kutoka mzizi.
In his people’s eyes, in this city’s eyes, he’d be respected as a warrior and a man. Children would look up to him; girls would notice him. He would, at last, make Baba proud, even if his father wasn’t here to see it. He might make his mother proud, even if she hadn’t stayed to see it either.
Kutoka mzizi.
He steadied himself as he reached for the slip, fingers extending toward the snakes. He would do it Shomari’s way, slow and careful. He counted the distance as it grew smaller.
Nine inches, six inches, three—
The door flung open with a bang, so sudden Ekon was on his feet with his hanjari drawn before he’d even discerned who’d opened it. When he saw who it was, however, he lowered the blade, confused.
The young man staring back at them held a torch and wore a sky-blue kaftan dampened with sweat around its neckline. He was tall, broad, and brown-skinned, chest heaving as he fought for breath. He was a Son of the Six.
“Kuhani.” The warrior pounded his fist against his chest in salute and bowed at his middle.
“Warrior Selassie, what is the meaning of this?” Ekon had never seen Father Olufemi so angry. The holy man’s mouth was set in a tight line, and a large vein near his temple throbbed dangerously. “How dare you interrupt a sacred rite of—”
“Forgive me, Father.” Fahim and Shomari exchanged a look as the warrior bowed again, lower for good measure. For the first time, Ekon noticed that he was trembling and that, when he spoke, there was a catch in his voice. “Kapteni Okojo commanded me to find you at once.”
Ekon’s heart skipped a beat. Kamau had sent this warrior? The realization put him on edge. Something wasn’t right.
Father Olufemi’s expression sharpened. “What’s happened? Speak.”
Warrior Selassie straightened from his second bow and met Father Olufemi’s gaze.
“It’s Baaz Mtombé’s Night Zoo,” he whispered. “It’s burning.”