CHAPTER 26
A Strong Like
The air grew cooler as Koffi, Ekon, and Adiah made their way south.
With each step, Ekon sensed the world changing around him. The sky was still blue, but it was darkening; the air clear, but tinged just slightly with the scent of ozone. He recognized the signs of the Zamani Region’s monsoon season fast approaching. In a matter of weeks—maybe less—most of the populace would be up to its ankles in puddles. Local merchants would change out their wares, offering inflated prices for more seasonally appropriate clothes that fared better in the constant torrents of rain; farmers would take short workdays and say more prayers for the welfare of their crops. As a boy, Ekon had liked this part of the year, when the world’s problems seemed to wash away in a deluge so that things could start anew a few months later. This year would be different, though.
“Okay, so here’s what I’m thinking . . .” He and Koffi had stopped again to consult with the map. It had been a few hours since Koffi had convinced Adiah to join them, and now they were less than a day away from the borderlands where they’d started. Carefully, he spread out the map between them in the dirt, tracing two connecting lines with his fingers.
“We’re here,” he said, pointing to their location. “As you can see, there are plenty of places for us to leave the Greater Jungle undetected; the border is massive, and there’s no way the Sons of the Six can cover that much ground. It’ll really just be about timing.”
“When did you have in mind?” Koffi asked.
“First thing tomorrow morning,” said Ekon. “Patrols are always heaviest at night, since that’s when they think the Shetani is most likely to attack. In the morning, the night shift trades with the morning shift. It’s a pretty well-executed hand-off, but if we go far enough south . . .”
“We could avoid them?”
“Right,” said Ekon. “The other challenge we’ll have is how to actually hide Adiah once we’re out in the open. It’s obviously easier here, but . . . the stretch between the Zamani Region and the Kusonga Plains is fairly flat, open land. We’ll be at our most exposed there.”
“We can hide in the lemongrass,” said Koffi. “And move at night. Incoming traffic to Lkossa always lulls at the start of monsoon season—Baaz complains about it every year at the Night Zoo. As long as we keep a good pace, we could get to the Kusonga Plains in a few weeks on foot. Then all we have to do is lie low and wait for the day of the Bonding.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Ekon rolled up the map. “We leave tomorrow.”
Their pace slowed as late afternoon turned to dusk; already, Ekon could tell it would be a cooler evening. Adiah trekked a few steps ahead of them, but Koffi walked in step with him. Abruptly, she cast an eye at the setting sun.
“We should stop here.”
“What?” Ekon glanced at the sun too, wondering if he’d missed something. It was a deep golden-orange and would be setting soon but not yet. “We should keep going while we have light. The closer we get to Lkossa tonight, the less time we’ll have to make up in the morning—”
“There’s a pond.” Koffi nodded a few yards to the right, to a small body of water glinting between the trees. Ekon looked from it to her, still confused.
“So?”
“So, we’re about to completely change terrain,” said Koffi. “For the next few weeks, we’re going to be in open grassland with no guaranteed access to any substantial amount of water.”
“So . . . ?”
“So, I’m taking a bath.”
Ekon froze. It took him a moment to find his words. “You’re taking . . . a what?”
“A bath,” Koffi repeated slowly. “You know, the thing you do when you’re dirty and would like to be clean? I won’t be long, ten minutes at . . .”
Ekon didn’t hear the rest of her words; he was trying to focus his mind. Bath. Koffi was going to be taking a bath. Near him. Without clothes. Thus far, they’d been good about giving each other privacy when they needed it, but this . . .
“Is there a problem?” Koffi’s voice flooded back to him, all too sweet.
“Uh, no.” Think of something else, he pleaded with himself. Think of something that’s . . . not that. Think of the temple, the brothers of the temple. Gross Brother Apunda . . . anything . . .
“Good.” He jumped when Koffi patted him on the shoulder. He didn’t like the glint in her eyes one bit. “You can get started on dinner, then. It’ll just be us eating, I think. Adiah, are you okay to fend for yourself?”
In response, Adiah, who’d stopped a few feet ahead of them, blinked. Then she bowed her head in what looked like a nod, and stalked into the darkness. In different circumstances, Ekon would have been unnerved by how quietly she moved.
“What’s she having for dinner?”
“It’s probably best we don’t know.” Koffi grimaced.
“You know,” said Ekon after a pause, “I almost feel bad for her.”
Koffi looked his way again, visibly surprised. “Why? She isn’t going to be like that much longer. Once we get her to the Kusonga Plains, she’ll be human again, free from the splendor and the pain it causes her. She’ll go back to the way she was.”
“But her world won’t,” said Ekon. Koffi opened her mouth, but he went on. “She’s more than a century old, nothing of the Lkossa she knew from before the Rupture would be there anymore, and none of the people she used to know would still be alive. Her friends, her family . . .”
“They’d be dead,” said Koffi, her voice hollow.
“I don’t know what that would feel like,” said Ekon. “Returning to a home and a life you know is yours, but you don’t recognize.”
Koffi’s expression was inscrutable a moment before she shrugged. The gesture was casual, but something about it felt slightly forced. “We can worry about helping Adiah acclimate after we’ve gotten her back to normal again.” She nodded affirmatively before looking toward the pond again. “In the meantime, worry about our meal, I’ll be back.”
“Don’t forget to check the water for snakes!” said Ekon to her retreating back. “And nkalas!”
Koffi didn’t turn around, but he thought he heard her laugh. Fine. If she wanted to have her shadow eaten by a giant mythical crab-monster, that was her business, though in fairness his readings suggested those usually lived in larger bodies of water.
He turned to the matter at hand—dinner. The ingredients he had to work with were about as scant as his skill. Growing up in the Temple of Lkossa for the last ten years, the food hadn’t been special, but it’d been all right, prepared by a cook. He stared for a moment at the piles of fruit, bread, and dried meats the yumboes had packed for him. And then the idea came to him.
“Okay, I’m done.” Koffi announced.
By the time Ekon was putting the finishing touches on the meal and a small fire, Koffi had returned. Her clothes were slightly wet, but her face was scrubbed clean of the mud that had caked it before. Ekon glanced over his shoulder.
“Your hair looks different,” he noted, careful not to look at her too long. He still didn’t trust his mind. “Did you wash it?”
Koffi arched an eyebrow. “That’s funny.” She settled beside him on the ground, and a sweet smell filled the space between them.
“Did you find more ponya seed?”
“Nope.” She unfolded her dirty tunic to reveal several light brown nuts tucked within its layers. They looked similar to ponya seeds, but bigger. She picked one up and held it to his nose. “These are shea nuts. You use them to make shea butter for your hair and skin.”
“Shea . . .” Ekon leaned in instinctively. Without warning, something constricted in his chest. It took him a moment to figure out why.
“That . . . smells like my mom.”
“Oh.”
All this time, he’d known the scent, but he hadn’t known where it came from. His eyes stung. His mother was gone, but this . . . this was like finding a whole new part of her, a part of her he’d thought was lost forever.
“You’ve never talked about your mother before,” Koffi said quietly.
“Yeah . . .” Ekon scratched the back of his neck. “Well, that’s because she left our family when I was little. I don’t know where she went, haven’t seen her in years.”
“Oh.” Koffi dropped her gaze, studying her fingernails. “I’m really sorry to hear that.”
A long silence followed, too loud to be comfortable. Ekon was familiar with it. He didn’t talk about his mother often, but when he did, the same things happened. Silence, and then the pity. Silence, and then the apologies, the platitudes. Everything happens for a reason. Sorry for your loss, as though her leaving their family was his fault, the consequence of his irresponsibility. He changed the subject.
“She used to make this dish,” he said. “I think it was made up, but we had it for breakfast a lot. It was this fruit salad thing. This is my version of it.”
Koffi looked at the pile of cut-up fruit, carefully arranged in a small ring. “You minced?”
“Twenty-seven delectable pieces.”
“I’m impressed.”
Ekon laid out two giant leaves with a flourish. “A feast fit for gods.”
Koffi grabbed one of the makeshift leaf-plates and sectioned off part of the fruit pile for herself. Ekon didn’t want to watch her eat necessarily—that would be strange—but he did want to know whether she liked the food. It was a silly thing, to care about what someone thought of a bunch of roughly chopped fruit, but for some reason, he did. He hoped Koffi liked it. He made himself look down at his own leaf-plate and count to eighteen before looking up again.
“So, how was it?”
Something in his chest plummeted when Koffi answered with a weak smile.
“That bad?”
“No!” She shook her head. “It’s not that, it’s just . . .” She looked down at several slices of fruit. “There are papayas in this.”
“Yeah?”
“I sort of hate papayas.”
Ekon blinked. “You . . . hate them?”
“Rather passionately.”
“Of course.” A real laugh rose from Ekon’s stomach. He massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to keep it in. “Let me guess, you like some weird, suspicious fruit like . . . honeydew?”
Koffi frowned. “Honeydew isn’t suspicious.”
“I knew it.”
She gave him a withering look before selectively pinching a piece of banana from the fruit pile and popping it into her mouth. “I have a question for you.”
Ekon tensed. “What sort of question?”
She set her leaf-plate down for a moment and grinned. “It’s about Nkrumah’s journal. You said he captured notes about all the creatures and plants that live in this jungle.” She looked up. “But what does he say about stars?”
“Stars?” Ekon followed her finger. The sky above them was dappled with more stars than he could count, a thousand diamonds dropped into an inkpot. They were beautiful.
“Actually, there’s not much about stars in the journal,” he finally said. “Maybe because stars don’t just belong to the Greater Jungle or the Zamani Region. We see them the same no matter where we are on this continent.”
“That makes sense.” Koffi was still staring up at them, but there was a touch of disappointment in her voice.
“But.” Ekon scrambled, trying to think of something else to say. “I do know some stories about them, ones my brother taught me.” He pointed. “See those two really bright ones, to your right?”
“No.”
“They’re just over—” He nearly jumped from his skin when Koffi scooted over to sit beside him, so close their shoulders brushed.
“Go on.”
“Um, right, so the stars.” Ekon’s tongue felt clumsy in his mouth. “Those two are called Adongo and Wasswa; they’re named after two brother giraffes,” he explained. “The story goes that each brother wanted to be taller than the other, so they just kept stretching their necks to make them longer and longer until both their horns got tangled in the night sky and they turned into stars. Now they argue about which one of them shines brighter.”
Koffi nodded. “Interesting.”
“Sorry,” said Ekon. “That . . . wasn’t a good story.”
“Yes it was.” Koffi turned to him, and Ekon swallowed hard. He’d thought they were close before, but their faces were inches apart now. He could count the eyelashes framing her eyes.
“There’s just one thing.” As abruptly as she’d faced him, she looked at the sky again with a frown. “How did the giraffes actually become stars?”
Ekon started. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you said their horns got stuck in the sky, and they just turned into stars—but how?”
“I’m not sure.” Ekon scratched his head. “But I don’t think that’s actually the point of the story. I think it’s really just meant to be a lesson about jealousy—”
She turned to face him again, eyebrows knitted. “How can it be a lesson if it doesn’t make sense?”
In answer, Ekon shook his head and chuckled. “You really do argue about everything.”
Her frown deepened. “I do not.”
“You do.”
“I do n—”
He wasn’t sure what made him do it, what made him obey the strange sudden impulse, but he closed the gap between them and kissed her.
He hadn’t planned it, and he certainly hadn’t prepared for it, but his lips found hers, and she didn’t pull away. They were soft to the touch, warm. Her hand, feather-light, grazed his neck, and a pleasant shiver ran down his body. All at once he couldn’t breathe, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. They came apart, chests heaving.
“Sorry.” Ekon didn’t recognize his own voice; it was lower, raspier. He couldn’t stop looking at her mouth. “I meant to ask before I . . .”
Koffi pulled his mouth back down to hers, and something erupted in Ekon’s brain. A roaring filled his ears, and every one of his senses went haywire. Suddenly Koffi was all he could see, smell, taste, and feel. It was consuming. After a moment, he pulled back again.
“Wait, is this okay with—?”
“You—are—hopeless.” Koffi’s voice was low too, barely a murmur. “Why do you think I moved to sit next to you?”
Ekon pulled back farther. “You—you wanted me to do that?”
“Of course I did.” She dropped her gaze. “I like you.”
And those simple words were enough—Ekon didn’t need any more. The world around him tilted as they both sank to the ground, adjusted so that they were lying there side by side. He let his fingers trace along her outline, falling and rising again as they moved down her hips. A new heat pooled somewhere, low in his stomach. They pulled closer still, and suddenly he was keenly aware of all the places their bodies were touching, the places he wished were touching. All of these feelings, all of this want, was strange, like a thousand hummingbirds trapped between his ribs, but he liked it. He heard her words again in his head.
I like you.
He liked her too, a lot, and suddenly that seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. He liked the twists in Koffi’s hair, the midnight color of her eyes. He liked the sound of her laugh, and the way she always argued with him. He liked everything about her. It wasn’t love—he wasn’t even sure he knew how to do that properly yet—but it was something good, something he wanted more of, a strong like.
Ekon kissed her again, and she made a small sound against his mouth. His eyes closed, and a thousand new questions came to mind. Was he supposed to do something else? Was she? What happened next? He opened his eyes slightly, curious to find out, and then he went rigid.
Koffi’s eyes were still closed, a small smile on her lips, but his had caught something over her shoulder a few feet away from them—movement. It had been quick, almost imperceptible. He sat up abruptly.
“What’s wrong?” Koffi sat up too, alarmed.
“Um, nothing.” Ekon tried to keep the fear from his voice. “It’s just . . .” He tried to find words. “I think we should . . .”
“Right.” There was no mistaking the hurt in Koffi’s voice. “Yeah, we . . . should probably stop that there.”
No. It was the absolute last thing Ekon wanted, but at the same time his heart was beginning to pound in a new, unpleasant way. Again he glanced toward the trees, where he’d seen that brief flash of something. He didn’t want to tell Koffi that he was almost certain someone else was there, watching them—especially when that someone was wearing a very specific shade of blue. He hoped he sounded calmer than he felt.
“It’s just, we’ve got an early morning tomorrow,” he said. “We could probably use the sleep.”
Koffi didn’t look at him. “Of course. Good night, then.” She didn’t say another word as she stood and brushed herself off before notably moving to the other side of the fire. She lay on her side, back turned away from him, and did not move again. Ekon waited until she was still before rising, quietly moving toward the two trees where he’d seen the movement. He’d only just stepped between them when a hand closed over his mouth.
“Don’t. Move.”
Both relief and anger doused the fear in Ekon’s chest. He knew that voice. The hand clapped over his mouth withdrew. In the darkness, his older brother winked.
“Kam.” Ekon tried to keep his voice low.
“In the flesh.”
“How did you—?”
“Shh.” Ekon ducked out of his brother’s reach as they both watched a large silhouette emerge from the darkness directly across the campsite from them. Adiah. The great beast sniffed at the air a moment before circling a spot in the dirt and settling there. In seconds, she was curled into a ball, asleep.
“Incredible,” Kamau said. His eyes were locked on Adiah as though she were a mountain of gold. “After all this time, I never thought I’d see it myself.”
Ekon scowled. “Why didn’t you announce yourself?”
“Didn’t want to interrupt you.” Kamau looked at him, waggling his brows suggestively. “You looked like you were having quite a good time with your friend.” He turned back to Adiah. “That was clever of you, using the smell of your own food to lure that thing to your camp.”
Ekon’s head was beginning to hurt. This was too much; there were too many emotions warring within him at once. He was angry and embarrassed, but above all things, he was uneasy.
“How did you find me?”
Kamau rolled his eyes. “You didn’t exactly make it hard.” Behind his charming façade, Ekon saw a trace of real concern. “I told you to cover your tracks, Ekon, gods. You couldn’t have left a clearer trail for someone to follow.”
Ekon tempered a wave of humiliation. He’d assured his brother that he knew what he doing, that he would conduct a competent hunt. Now he’d made a fool of himself. For the first time in days, his fingers itched to start up their old tapping. Deliberately, he changed the subject. “How long has the hunting party been here?” he asked.
“A few days,” said Kamau.
“And you’ve . . . faired okay?”
In answer, a shadow passed over Kamau’s expression, visible even in the faint light. “Not exactly,” he said with foreboding. “We got caught up in a fog.”
“Near the border.” Ekon nodded. “We ended up in the same one.”
“It took us a full day to get through it,” Kamau went on. “By the time we did, two warriors were gone—Zahur and Daudi, I don’t know if you’d remember them.”
Ekon felt as though a stone had dropped in his stomach. He didn’t tell Kamau that he remembered both of them, that he’d spoken to each of them just before he and Koffi had entered the jungle. It occurred to him now how lucky he and Koffi had been. When he looked up, his brother was still watching him in earnest. Apprehension filled him along with a strange kind of pity. He didn’t know how he was going to explain everything he’d learned in the last few days in a matter of minutes, but in that moment he decided. He had to try.
“Kamau,” he started. “I need to tell you something. A lot of it’s going to sound unbelievable at first, but the Shetani is a—”
“That girl, by the fire. The one you were just kissing.” Kamau’s eyes flitted to Koffi, discerning. “Who is she?”
This time, Ekon winced. “Her name’s Koffi,” he said. “I met her in Lkossa, and—”
“Looks a little rough around the edges,” said Kamau, craning his neck. He looked back just in time to see Ekon’s deepening frown and raised his hands defensively. “Hey, no judgment. I just didn’t think common Yaba girls were your type—”
“She’s not common, whatever that means,” said Ekon through his teeth. “And she’s not Yaba. She’s Gede.”
Kamau’s expression changed instantly. “What?”
“You heard me.” He’d never spoken to his older brother this way. Kamau had always been bigger, so Ekon had never wanted to pick a fight with him. But the idea of him—or anyone—speaking ill of Koffi while she lay asleep just a few feet away was something he couldn’t abide. He watched confusion spread across Kamau’s face, then faint disgust.
“Ekkie, if you want something easy, there are other ways to get—”
Ekon’s hand went to the hilt of his hanjari, a subtle movement that Kamau didn’t miss. His brother shook his head.
“All that time teaching you about weapons, when I really should have been teaching you about women.” He patted Ekon’s cheek indulgently. “But don’t worry. We can talk properly after we deliver that abomination to Father Olufemi.”
“What?” Every muscle in Ekon’s body grew taut. “What are you talking about?”
Like that, Kamau’s smirk returned. “Come on, Ekon, I know you wanted to hunt it down yourself, but trust me, the fact that you went into the Greater Jungle and found the Shetani will be more than enough to qualify you for Yaba warriorship. Once we get it delivered to Father Olufemi, you’ll be initiated in no time, maybe even made a kapteni.”
Ekon spoke again before he could lose his nerve. “Kam, I really need you to listen to me. The Shetani isn’t the monster we’ve thought it was, it’s a human girl named—”
“Ekon.” Kamau frowned. “You can’t honestly be that foolish.”
“I’m not foolish.”
“No?” Kamau raised an eyebrow. There was a hard edge in his gaze as his eyes flitted from Ekon back to the campsite’s fire. “Who told you the Shetani was a human, huh? The Gede girl? Let me guess, she told you that the monster was good and deserves to be free?”
“Kamau.” A nerve in Ekon’s temple was beginning to throb. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen in this jungle. And you don’t know Koffi—”
“She’s the same girl from the Night Zoo, isn’t she?” A dangerous glint flashed in Kamau’s eyes. “The one you let go?”
Ekon started. Why would Kamau bring up what had happened at the Night Zoo now? “Yes,” he said quietly. “That’s her.”
Kamau leveled his gaze. “Strange, isn’t it?” he asked. “How a girl who worked at the Night Zoo as a beastkeeper suddenly has an interest in helping you find the most dangerous beast in the entire region?”
The words stung more than Ekon cared to admit. “We had a deal,” he said. “She agreed to help me track the Shetani down, and in exchange I agreed to—”
“To pay her?” Kamau’s voice was full of derision. “You honestly think that would be enough to keep her loyalty if someone else offered so much as a shaba more?”
Ekon shook his head. “Koffi wouldn’t do that. I mean, it started out like that, but she—”
“You don’t know what she would or wouldn’t do,” said Kamau. “You don’t know her. You’ve been in this jungle for a little over a week by my count, and that was all it took for you to believe her over your own people, over me?”
There was real hurt in his voice, a hurt Ekon had never heard before. “Kamau.” When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“I don’t need your apology.” Kamau’s voice was dangerously low. “But what I want is your word.”
“My word?”
“The rest of the Kuhani’s hunting party is on the way, they’ll be here by morning. I want your word that you’ll help us take it down tomorrow.”
Betray Koffi. That was what his brother was really asking him to do. Betray Adiah. Betray all your plans.
“Kamau.” He shook his head. “What you’re asking, it’s not that simple. I don’t know if I can do that. I—”
“No, it’s very simple, Ekon.” His brother’s eyes were hard. “Tomorrow, you choose. Stand with your people, or stand against us.”