Chapter Thirty-Nine The stars are fire
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The stars are fire
BEFORE MY FIRST OFFICIAL TRAINING to become one of the ?nhye, I was ambushed by Angelica and Vivian while leaving Poppy House for breakfast. With an egg sandwich and cup of tea they handed me, I followed them on campus to Angelica’s office.
In her small garden in the back, we sat on wooden ottomans that had been hand-carved.
Once again, the insignia of the ?nhye was repeated on the bottom of each seat.
“You spoke to your aunt, I presume,” Angelica said.
“Why didn’t you tell me my mother was part of the sisterhood? And the fire here, on the day of my audition—is that connected to the curse? If the curse caused the fire, then this entire time, my life has been affected too.”
“We are all but threads in each other’s tapestries,” Angelica said. “One knot can cause a tear through the fabric that binds us. We will answer any questions you have about the sisterhood or your mother. Now that you’ve taken the first vow of the ?nhye, your path to the sisterhood begins.”
I thought of my mother, who had been ?nhye before, and Vivian, who, even in death, belonged to the sisterhood.
“I’m ready,” I said. “I pledge myself to the ?nhye.”
I drank the concoction they’d brought me, this one a black tea mixed with peppermint and something willowy and bitter that I couldn’t quite place.
Angelica and Vivan nodded.
“This incantation, once spoken aloud, cannot be undone,” Vivian said. She held out her hand. Angelica took it, and they both extended hands to me.
Static sparked in the air, and the manifestations of their affinities filled the small enclosure. I repeated the pledge once again, my powers brimming in the back of my mind as if a magnet had pulled them to the surface. “I pledge myself to the ?nhye.”
When Angelica and Vivian let go, the air was lighter, like the sky was clearer than it had been earlier.
“You have made your pledge, and now we shall begin your bid. But first, you must understand us and where we come from.” Angelica calmly stood while Vivian explained the tenets of ?nhye.
For centuries, ever since Yara and her kin founded their society, the ?nhye had been developing their powers as guardians of the realm between the living and the dead.
Their cowrie shell bracelets and jewelry were imbued with protection.
And Westfield, at one point, had been their bastion as they carved out a place for themselves while under the protection of Kent Saint James.
But on the heels of Kent’s death, the safeguards they’d once been promised disintegrated—the evil they’d believed to have defeated at the end of the Civil War took new forms during the dawn of Reconstruction.
As the decades passed, ?nhye became an ember of resistance, passing down their teachings, adapting their powers, and guiding one another as the tear between realms deepened.
They adapted and stayed rooted in their ancestral connection, even as the times changed.
As a ghost, Vivian was one of their oldest members who hadn’t passed on peacefully to the realm after life. However, Vivian suspected there were others who predated her who were tethered to this world, hiding their presence completely.
“Our motto is hye wo nhye,” Vivian said.
“That which does not burn cannot be burned. Though Angelica and I remain the only members of our sisterhood here at Westfield, at least on this side of the realms, the others are here with us, not visible to the eye, unless they choose to take the form of a moth to remind us of the connection they once had to the realm of the living.”
In an empty patch of dirt in her garden, she drew a symbol that looked like a peach pit. It had an oval center and two mirroring inverted forms, almost akin to the number three but drawn backward, or the wings of a moth.
Adinkra, just like the patterns in my mother’s dress and Angelica’s necklace.
“Adinkra is iconography, an alphabet of characters or symbols. Of course, my knowledge of it is limited. My great-great-grandparents may have known it when they were kidnapped, enslaved, and brought to this country. But your mother’s side of the family, those whose roots remained in the motherland, may know it still.
The sisterhood and brotherhood of ?nhye is the fabric that binds us through the roots of history and time.
Ours is a tribe that spans beyond Westfield’s gates and beyond history.
Across the country, across the Black diaspora. ”
It was strange to hear Vivian talk like this, like she was some ancient soul, when I’d known her as a bubbly, youthful woman whose biggest concern was keeping her head in a book and passing classes.
But the warmth with which she spoke, the richness of the history woven in the imagery, carried a familiarity that reminded me of my family’s own origins, from the African proverbs my mother had shared with my father to the imagery and symbols of the Akan language I’d grown up with.
That history had been sewn into the fabric of my family’s roots, through my mother’s side who immigrated all those years ago and my father’s ancestors who had been stolen from Africa’s shores long ago.
My mother’s side of the family had kept that fire kindling through long phone calls with family back home, while my father’s side cultivated remnants of that culture in their own Black heritage.
And then there were the rare trips to the continent, to my mother’s West African home, that I’d been too small to remember.
Vivian, Angelica, and I—and those within ?nhye and across the Black diaspora—all had a shared connection to Africa and our ancestors, and that fabric was stronger than steel or iron, and richer than gold. This was transcendent, a passing of one’s story to another.
“Language has power,” Vivian continued. “And losing one’s language can rob a soul of their voice.
I’ve been dead for decades, and though I study and practice, I cannot teach myself what I don’t know.
So while we do not speak the tongue of our ancestors, we carry this phrase close to our hearts and commit to the study of it—to the making of our own stories and dialect. ”
Behind me, Angelica spoke in her own Jamaican patois, different from the way Vivian spoke, or the Akan I’d known from my mother, yet somehow, each was woven together by a shared bond.
“My abilities are drawn from my connection to space,” Angelica said, joining us now. “I feel the air around me, the weight of every object and person and thing that takes up that space. I also feel the weight of the negative energy, what was lost, uprooted.”
She raised her hand, and the planted thyme rose from the earth as if carried by a gentle, concentrated force.
“I also have migraines, but that is from using that invisible muscle. The teas and medicines I make calm the nerves and rejuvenate them so I can draw on them without wounding my mortal body.”
“My powers were never linked to telekinesis, which is why I’m so awful at it,” Vivian said. “But as a ghost, I now have access to that connection with space, because I exist between the realms of the living and the dead.”
“Usually, skin to skin is the easiest conduit.” She gestured to my hand, to the lace gloves I wore, the ones Kasem had given me.
“But you know that. For years now, your abilities were in their earliest manifestation. And what you’re experiencing now, the headaches, the nosebleeds?
They are signs that your abilities are growing.
So, today, and every day until Kasem’s fated death day, on the seventh of December, we will practice honing them so you will be prepared to break the bond between your powers and his lifeline. ”
Angelica brought two flowers to me, one wilted, one bloomed. I cupped one in each of my palms, the lace from my gloves helping me focus on the present even as the past churned within me.
“Now, try doing what Vivi did last time you were here.”
I closed my eyes.
“You don’t have to close them—” Vivian said.
“I know. It’s a habit. Just let me focus.”
Again, I closed my eyes, focusing on my affinity and its currents that were linked to my mind.
Ripples of energy coursed through my head.
But I couldn’t shift my concentration to the flower in front of me, and nausea began to roil my stomach.
When I opened my eyes, I’d only faintly browned the once-blooming rose and only a light glint of color was visible in the one that had wilted.
“If you don’t train your powers, it won’t matter whether or not the curse is broken,” Angelica said.
“You will be broken. Vivian and I went to school with your mother. She was never dedicated to the craft. And you saw how she became with the visions, how she lost touch with reality, with her present. How she became trapped in her own mind. You must learn to control your affinity or your powers will consume you. For even if you break the bond between you and Kasem, you’ll still be lost.”