You will always be in the process of change because every time you get born into a basilisk, that basilisk consumes itself so you can be born into another basilisk.
Asụghara could not be left alone; that would be unnatural. When something stands, something else stands beside it. So on the day she was born in Virginia, there was another one born with her as she tore through that window. His name was Saint Vincent, because when he sloughed off Asụghara’s side, he fell with holiness on his hands.
The Ada named him and he remained in the marble of her mind because he couldn’t survive her body. Saint Vincent was long fingered and cool, with slow and simmering hungers. He was strange; we could never quite place him, where his parts came from. He was not expected to come through the window, but he did and so he was born in a portal, a son of flux space. What we mean is that he was not godspawn like Asụghara. He belonged nowhere, except maybe to the Ada. He was gentle, soft as a ghost. That was good—he was no threat to Asụghara, he would not compete with her for control.
No, Saint Vincent preferred to move inside the Ada’s dreams, when she was floating in our realm, untethered and malleable. He molded her into a new body there, a dreambody with reorganized flesh and a penis complete with functioning nerves and expanding blood vessels, tautening easily into an erection. Even Asụghara was impressed; she couldn’t mold or build in our realm the way that he could. Saint Vincent used the dreambody as his. He wove other bodies in our realm for him to ride, for him to place astride his hips, swallowing him up. When he came, his pleasure was a concentrated burst of light, anchored and distilled in his groin. It was different from what Asụghara experienced with the Ada’s body—those orgasms would spread in a diffuse wash that drowned her. This separation of pleasures was good: Saint Vincent stayed in our realm and in the marble of the Ada’s mind, while Asụghara met him in the marble but moved in the flesh.
He was no less holy for the things he did with the dream-body—you must understand that we see holy as removed from flesh and therefore purer. Saint Vincent was uncontaminated, quarantined, even. Perhaps in another world, where the Ada was not split and segmented, she and Saint Vincent might have been one thing together. After all, she was always being mistaken for a boy when she was a child, when her hair was short for the first time. Perhaps he had been there all along and we just never noticed, we were so young.
The Ada had liked being seen as a boy. She felt like it fit, or at least the misfit of it fit, the wrongness was right. She was perhaps eleven years old then. Her chest was flat, her hips were narrow, her hair was short, and there must have been something about her face that wasn’t delicate enough. When she went swimming at the local sports club with Lisa, adults would stop her in the women’s changing room.
“Why are you in here?” they’d ask, or, “Why are you wearing a girl’s swimsuit?”
The Ada felt like a trickster, which felt right. She could move between boy and girl, which was a freedom, for her and for us. But when she turned twelve and started bleeding, everything was ruined. The hormones redid her body, remaking it without consent from us or the Ada. We were distressed at this re-forming of our vessel, very much so, because it was nothing other than a cruel reminder that we were now flesh, that we could not control our form, that we were in a cage that obeyed other laws, human laws. We had no choice in this warping, this unnatural maturing. There was blackish blood, a swelling chest, hair sprouting like an evil forest. It pushed us into a space we hated, a marked plane that was too clear and too wrong.
Around that time, one afternoon, the Ada was walking down the road with her cousin Obiageli. The Ada said something rude, a touch insolent, and Obiageli reacted by reaching out and poking her finger into the Ada’s chest, right in her new breasts.
“Because you have these apples now, ehn? That’s why you’re talking like that?” Obiageli chuckled at the Ada’s shocked face and kept walking.
Inside the Ada, we shuddered and retched from that touch, turning her stomach over. The quick revulsion wouldn’t go away. We were loud and kicking against this meatbody we’d been shoved into; we wanted to be let out, this was an abomination. But the Ada had learned her trick of quick sacrifices just that year, so when they got back to the house, she cut into the back of her hand and bled us into a restless silence. She would continue, if you remember, for another twelve years, but back then was when she learned that the sacrifices worked, that using blood could make existence bearable, at least for a little while.
She tried to make us comfortable, as if in apology for her bleeding and bulging body; she dug into Saul’s old suitcases and found his shirts from when he lived in London, button-downs that were too big for her, which was perfect. The Ada covered her new body in flowered red polyester and crisp green cotton, hiding it away. She wore loose cargo trousers in army green with seven deep pockets, until the cuffs tore and frayed. When she overheard one of her classmates describe her as busty, she decided it was not real. It felt like he was talking about someone else.
All of this is to say that everything has existed in another form prior to its current one, so when Saint Vincent showed up, the Ada was not surprised. She welcomed his delicate masculinity arranging itself in folds inside her; she welcomed his company because she was, of course, always lonely. It brought her a small amount of grief when she realized that he was restricted to using only a dreambody because hers was simply wrong. Her body worked for Asụghara, but Saint Vincent would be neutered within it, with nothing weighing down between his legs, just canals lined in velveteen. His hungers were different, but simple. Saint Vincent wanted the soft nape of a girl’s neck against his mouth and he wanted it enough that the Ada went to get it for him.
It was a clumsy attempt. The Ada tried to explain the existence of Saint Vincent to one of her college friends who he found beautiful, but this was the Ada and she was not Asụghara, she did not have that silken charm. So the conversation was awkward, and as the Ada spoke the words exposing Saint Vincent’s existence and desires, she knew it sounded crazy; you could not put him into a mouth and expect it to sound sane. Her beautiful friend was polite but uninterested, and she turned the Ada down. It should not have been surprising, yet the Ada found herself retreating inside her mind, humiliated by this rejection, confused and hurt.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she muttered to herself as she paced around the marble. “Of course she doesn’t want you. Who would?”
“It’s enough.” Asụghara stepped in and grabbed the Ada’s arms, pinning them at her sides, leaning her forehead against the Ada’s. “You tried. It’s enough. We won’t tell anyone about him ever again, you hear? We’ll keep him in here. No one except us can understand.”
Teary-eyed, the Ada nodded, and just like that, Saint Vincent became a secret buried in the marble. Perhaps it is not how we would have done things, but as we said, the beastself was running things and she thought it was for the best. It was how she moved; she pushed them back and hid them in the marble in order to protect them—first the Ada, and now Saint Vincent. Asụghara was the blade, forever flirting with the softness of people’s throats. They were balanced now—the Ada, her little beast, and her saint—the three of them locked in marbled flesh, burning through the world.
But no matter what skins they shed in this foreign country, we remembered where they came from and we remembered the first mother. Ala is all earth, no matter the oceans; the Ada was still walking on soil that belonged to her mother. Even her flesh belonged to Ala, for, as we have said, it is on her lips that humans are born, and there they live until they die. We were still her children, distilled into tripled hatchlings. Otu nne na-amụ, mana ọ bụghị otu chi na-eke. And to be named is to gain power, let alone to be named thrice over. Our heat was building, spilling through the gates, calling the others, pulling them like a sun with weight. We should have known, we should have been warned—the children of our mother do not forget pacts and their oaths taste of anger and alligator pepper. They were gathering in rain clouds, their voices distant and dreamlike, but grating like torn metal.
You are looking for our trouble, they sang. Gin spilled on the soil, blood wiped over clay, and they spoke in a legion of voices.
What are you going to do when we come?