Chapter Thirty-Five
Air whooshed through the room as Lyle opened the door, revealing my grandmother on the other side. My head jerked back when I saw her, looking not like the lady I left behind wrapped in African clothes of gold and black and a duke wrapped tightly around her head.
Nana Ama stood at the doorway taking us all in while Sheriff Lyle held it open for her, waiting.
She finally stepped through, and the three of us petrified tree branches remained unmoving at the table.
We were all still rightfully scared as hell about what Nana would say, what she’d do, now that we were back in her presence after disobeying her word and fleeing the Isle.
She assessed the room, her gaze going from left to right, landing on the each of us and staying there for a minute on Sekou.
She pursed her lips down and turned in a disapproving manner to let him know that this was not what he should’ve done, following up behind me.
Then she stared at Hailey with an inscrutable look.
Her right eye kind of narrowed, like she was really trying to figure out who Hailey was and what the heck she wanted to do with her, but then she seemed to just give up.
The last look was for me. It told a whole story of grievances, and the disappointment emanating from my grandmother, in waves that nearly buckled me, almost made me fall back in my chair.
She wanted to lay into me, but it was something she had never done.
Her quiet storm of anger would just simmer until she decided what she really wanted to say.
“Lyle was my Abotisa, whom I chose as part of my sacred three, much like you, Sekou, and Naira,” Nana explained impatiently, breaking through silence and the mental conversations.
Sekou and I shared an unconvinced look, waiting for her to claim it was all a joke, only Nana Ama rarely joked.
“One of my sacred passed on to the Asamando, the spirit realm, many years before you were born. Elder James is my second, though much has changed about him.” She sighed resignedly.
“But good Sheriff Lyle here. He remains so, even though he chose to leave the Isle for all of this.” She gestured to the unimpressive room around us, cutting her eyes at him.
He flushed, his caramel-colored ears reddening.
Still a sore spot, clearly, and I suspected something more.
Nana Ama spotted the drawing of the arm on the table and studied it closely.
Hailey asked softly, “Is there any way to reverse the effects?” She looked everywhere but at us.
“Perhaps. If the victim is not too far gone. But there isn’t much time. I can sense her now. She has been gaining strength. Where is it?”
Her?
Lyle pointed toward his backyard. “Around back in the shed.”
In the backyard, the abalsom lunged toward Nana Ama in a rush of blurred orange and disjointed arms and legs.
Though its movements were uncoordinated, it was still quick.
And no match for Nana. Her hands struck out rattlesnake quick and snatched it up between her palms like she was catching a giant mosquito.
The abalsom snarled and snapped at her, its mouth foaming, its teeth a mangled mess.
It tried clawing at her, but she held it at arm’s length, studying it intently as if it were a specimen in a petri dish.
Sekou and Hailey retreated from the action, having had their fill of killer zombies the night before. They clutched at each other, eyes wide and terrified. If we got out of this alive, I would tease them about this forever.
Ama held the writhing abalsom, in raggedy slacks, still. She raised her arms, its bulging head still firmly in her vise grip, its toes trailing the ground.
She looked deeply in its eyes. Deep, unmoving, saying nothing, until eventually its snarling, and snapping, and writhing started to slow, then stop.
Its mouth opened, slack-jawed, and a long drip of slimy drool stretched from its mouth, over its lips, down its chin, heading to the grass between them. My mouth curled in disgust.
“He has the hollowing,” Nana Ama said, giving her diagnosis.
“And what would that be?” I asked.
“Every adze has a poison inside them that, when injected into a human without a blood transference to counter the effect and complete a successful turn of a human, siphons their essence and rots their mind until they become a servant entirely under that adze’s control.
They are possessed by their master. No longer themselves.
No longer human. And the master consumes everything about them. Their blood, thoughts, emotions.”
I had no idea that the adze held such destructive power. I imagined, my horror intensifying, that this poison was somewhere inside me, coursing through my veins. That I could do this to another person. That any adze would do such a thing.
I looked up at Nana Ama, hit with a realization too big to understand. She and I were the only adze that I knew. “Who did this?” I asked, gesturing at the snarling monster in her grasp.
She ignored me and instead whispered, “Welcome back, Effie,” to the beast. His hand seized, fingers curling. “You have been missed.” His body spasmed. She returned the bag to his head.
“Who is Effie?” I demanded, panic rising.
My grandmother sighed, ignoring my question once again. She motioned for us to follow her back to the house. “Do you still sense that Naira is alive?”
“I do,” I replied, hoping she could see how much I knew this to be true. “She spoke to me.” Behind me, Sekou gasped.
Nana Ama was unfazed, as if she’d expected my answer. “What did she say?”
I would never forget her words. I wouldn’t forget the terror behind them and the pain. Or the scream when something cut Naira off and our connection went dead. Miles and miles of cut lines.
… Don’t, Ada. Don’t give her the cu—
I relayed it all to Nana, becoming uneasy when my grandmother’s face darkened, growing so severe I thought I was in trouble.
“Are you sure?” Nana got in close.
Instinctively, I leaned back. The look on her face was intense and fierce. It was as if my grandmother had been swallowed up and in her place was this warrior woman about to take my head clean off if I didn’t give the right answer.
“Nana?”
“What you think you heard, Addae,” she asked impatiently, “are you sure it was that she needed my cuffs?”
I nodded, my mouth going dry. Nana’s eyes flashed gold so dark they were nearly bronze.
“Who is she?” I asked more firmly now because I needed some kind of answer. It was getting real old the way Nana kept things quiet, only feeding me tiny bits of information until she felt good and ready to let me know what was up. Nana’s silence had kept me unprepared for whatever was coming.
It was the first time I saw Nana falter, as if the question destabilized her. “My sister.”
Her answer slammed into me, fast and hard. It took the wind right out of me. Nana wasn’t the only one destabilized. My whole entire being was rocked, and if not for me already being in a chair, I think I would have fallen flat to the floor.
Nana Ama had a sister. It wasn’t just her and me in the world? We had blood family, not just people we called Kin because we grew to be. We had a person who just was. And if there was one, maybe there were more, like me, like us, who just … were. Family.
But from Nana’s look, there was more behind the knowledge of a long-lost sister out there in the world.
“If she’s your sister, can you figure out where she is? Do you still have a telepathic connection with her?”
“I only feel her now because her power has grown. I severed the connection we had as sisters who shared a womb. I couldn’t sense her when she first woke.
The Isle served as a buffer for the both of us, I guess.
And she was likely very weak. But she has been feeding, much more than me. She’s stronger and has made her move.”
Lyle spoke up. “We’re running short on time.”
Shared womb stuck in my mind like big billboard letters.
Nana and this Effie were not only related—sisters—but twins.
Bound together before they were even born.
And she never said a word. I spent my whole life thinking I knew so much.
My truth had been cut up like fruit and baby-fed to me.
I thought I was the one making my own decisions, when they were being made for me—what I knew, didn’t know about who I was.
Like I was some kid who wasn’t tough enough to know the truth of my bloodline.
There was a whole aunt hidden from me, and Nana would never have told me if Effie hadn’t returned.
The realization that I knew nothing, not even who I was, left me as hollow as the hollowing that the abalsom had.
Betrayed and resentful, that’s all I could feel.
They thought they knew what was best for me, but turned out they didn’t.
Knowing was what was best. Now how could I trust anyone else, even my grandmother, at their word, when they obviously didn’t trust me?
Sekou, who’d come up beside me, bumped into my side, arm-checking me, the vibe coming off of him telling me to be cool.
He whispered, “I got you.” It was all I could do to not break down, because Sekou was the only one who’d been completely honest this whole time.
And I had done nothing but lie to him. The guilt turned my stomach.
“There’s no need for us to link in any way.” Nana Ama moved around. She was heading out front to where Lyle’s cars were parked. “Because I know exactly where she is.”
For now, I had to suck up all of my feelings. I asked, following her, “Where’s that?”
She tossed over her shoulder without breaking stride, “The place where our paths diverged. Millner Manor Plantation.”