Chapter 14 #2
“It’s a herb.” I begin clearing up my items. “It sort of acts like a … hm.” I furrow my eyebrows, trying to think of an apt description.
“Think of it like a ringing phone in the spiritual plane. So, we take the herb, then we go to sleep. The herb lights up our auras like a beacon to catch the closest ancestor’s attention, then it helps us receive and clearly interpret the dream our ancestor sends in response. ”
“I guess we have no choice but to go to bed, then.”
The moment I finish placing the items back into my trunk, the bed from the guest room reappears with a heavy thud. The sheets are neatly made.
The gosu is a rare herb found specifically in Maraya.
They’re petals plucked from the flowers in a particular wild bush, placed in wrappers and buried in the forest to obtain the land’s and the ancestor’s blessings, then boiled with a little bit of salt and palm oil, and dried afterward under the sun.
“What would you prefer?” I hold up a light green drawstring bag made of sheer netting. The herb, in shades of bright pink, purple, and white, sits inside. “We can have it as a tea, or just chew them as is.”
“As is,” Genevieve says.
The herb is bitter, making my eyes water, but it wouldn’t have fared better brewed, at least not without a shit-ton of sugar or honey.
Afterward, my trunk neatly shut, Genevieve watches me with dark eyes as I change out of my clothes and into my sheer, netted nightgown; teal green, with spaghetti straps leading to triangle cups that barely hide or hold up my breasts, the skirt barely covering my ass.
I wear nothing but my waist beads and lace panties underneath.
She slips out of her clothes until she’s in literally just her briefs. Fuck.
We meet in the middle of the bed and immediately start to kiss, like with no other distractions, all that’s left is this. Us.
It’s slower and sweeter this time. I think, if we’d given in back then, our first time might have gone exactly like this: on our sides, trading deep, drugging kisses, with me whimpering softly while she groans into my mouth.
My fantasies had been so innocent when my love and desire had been a little sapling, before it had grown large and robust as an Iroko tree.
Our thighs slide sensually and interlock, our hips moving in sync. She grips my ass, her thumb rubbing unerringly over my beads, encouraging the needy grind of my hips, while I have one hand squeezing her breast and pinching her nipple, the other gripping her tight around her own rolling waist.
We’re both almost gasping. She shoves my thigh up higher around her waist, spreading her own legs and tilting her hips until she has her pussy pressed right against mine. My entire body jolts forward, a soft, needy cry escaping my lips.
“Fuck,” she growls. The glide is so wet its sinful, the strokes of our swollen clits against each other sending sparks shooting up my legs, fire settling in my belly, further tightening my nipples.
“Yes, oh my God, fuck, fuck—” I’m gripping her ass tight, matching the movement of her hips with my own.
“Jesus fuck, Rosemary,” she cries when she comes, her body stiffening.
She leans down to suck on my tits through the flimsy netting of my nightie, shifting until she has her thigh rubbing firmly against my clit, and I come with a choked cry.
We melt into the bed, breathing hard, holding each other. My right hand rests between the modest curves of her soft breasts, feeling her heart race in tandem with mine.
It’s going to take some time, I think, for this to really feel real. For me to truly accept that she’s mine. Right now I’m still in awe, still trying desperately not to hold on too tight for fear of crushing her, a butterfly caught willingly in my grasp.
“You really haven’t been with anyone else?” she asks suddenly.
My eyes meet hers. Her gaze is stripped bare.
“No one else.” I’d lost interest in a lot of things after we’d split up. Giving her up had felt like giving up on everything. My mother confirming my fears—the real reason I’d left Genevieve in the first place—had only worsened it.
I’d been an automaton the last ten years until I’d seen her again—suddenly, I remembered I had a heart, a body made of flesh and blood and bone.
Her hand cups mine, holding it to her thumping heart. “No one else,” she echoes softly.
We stare at each other for a weighted moment, words unneeded.
“How do you feel?” I’d forgotten to ask, earlier. The reminder that she’d cut me open and literally eaten my heart makes me shiver, my body going simultaneously hot and cold.
“In love,” she answers dreamily.
“Genevieve.” I roll my eyes.
“What?” She laughs. I yelp as she yanks me close, giggling when she buries her face in my throat and snuffles, like a dog. “Allow me, abeg.”
I laugh helplessly. “I love you.”
“Mm. I love you.”
“But I’m serious. Are you … are you really all right?”
She pulls back to look at me. “Yes, omemi,” she murmurs.
As usual, my heart skips at the endearment.
“I’m good, I promise.” She kisses my forehead.
Then my nose. Then my mouth. I tremble. “You died for me,” she says thickly, the emotion in her voice making my eyes sting, “and you brought me back to life.”
I’m standing at the base of a magnificent tree, in a clearing that feels strangely familiar. It’s nighttime, everything around me bathed in the soft, cool glow of the moon. Nothing here feels bad. Like it could hurt me. I’m not back in Maraya Forest, but somehow, it still feels like home.
The tree is incredible. My neck cranes as I try to catch a glimpse of the top and I nearly fall backward; it’s that tall. I look down at the huge roots, some as big as my torso, twisting around each other as they make their way into the ground.
There’s an opening where two of the thick intertwined roots part. A hole big enough for someone my size to crawl through.
I take one last glance around, then make my way to the hole, dropping to my hands and knees.
I don’t know what I expect, but what I get are more gnarled, interconnecting roots, going deep, deep down into the ground.
There’s no earth between them, just empty air, which gives me space and breathing room to grab onto each root and start to climb down.
It feels like it goes down forever. I’m sweating, breathing hard. My arms and my legs hurt. Despite how deep it is, I can still see the faint light of the moon above; even the darkness below me, thick and complete, doesn’t feel like it wants to swallow me only to never spit me back out.
The fear only comes when the light of the moon fades, drenching me in awful darkness. No matter how long I wait, my eyes refuse to adjust. Critters scuttle around in the silence, the sound of their many, tiny limbs making my hairs stand on end, my throat filling with bile.
I think of going back up, but I’ve come down too far.
Desperately, I continue my descent, my eyes wide for any sign of light or danger.
At first, I feel my mind is playing tricks on me when the ground begins to brighten. It isn’t; I can see the bottom, lit orange like there’s a lamp or a fire blazing below. Renewed energy speeds up my efforts.
The roots coalesce into a single, thick shoot in the middle of the ground.
I drop down with a grunt.
Then I look up, and let out a startled cry.
In the shape of the roots is a woman.
Genevieve.
No, not Genevieve. It just looks a lot like her.
The roots seem to be growing from the woman.
They’ve blended seamlessly with her skin, bursting from her head, her face, her throat and arms and chest and legs.
Said legs are tightly closed. From her knees down, they form one single trunk with a pointed tip hanging off about an inch from the ground.
The tree is her. All those roots are coming from her.
Her eyes open, and immediately, I know her.
I take a stumbling step backward. I know this is a dream, the supposed message from my ancestors, but for a second, I wonder if its a nightmare instead.
But, as is the strange understanding that comes with some dreams, in here, I know the truth.
She’s the oerhwu. The one from my mother’s story. The first and only other native practitioner born with my gift.
“Edémi,” she speaks, her voice an old, familiar thing, the sound vibrating in my bones.
I jolt. Edémi. My daughter.
“I-I—I’m not—” I start to deny, but stop because it’s a lie. I may not literally be her daughter, but I know her. I know this eshé.
She’s an ancestor. My ancestor. My knees tremble at the weight of that knowledge, both with awe and fear and wonder and a desperate need for kinship. She’s the only other person with my gift. Ever.
When she speaks again, she does so in Ibiiom. “You need to leave this place.” When she says “this place”, I’m given a vision of Genevieve’s grandmother’s house. My pulse jolts again. “You were lured here, my daughter, tricked by that despicable legbaju—”
“What? No,” I automatically interrupt in Ibiiom, forgetting my manners and respect, and immediately dipping my head when she eyes me with fury and reprimand. “Genevieve is—she’s not the one who brought me here. She’s not the one keeping me trapped.”
“Is she not?” My ancestor sounds disgusted. “You mean to tell me, that after I’ve suddenly become useless to her, a replacement just magically wound up in her lap?”
My head begins to throb. My tongue feels too thick for my mouth.
“What do you—what do you mean by that?” I force myself to meet her eyes. They’re the dark brown of bark, all her features crudely carved and in the same shade and material of the roots; a wooden idol lost to time.
“I’ve been trapped here so long time has grown meaningless,” she says, her voice somehow simultaneously filled with rage as it is emptiness.
“Used as livestock—an endlessly replenishing source of food for that filthy creature desperate to cling to its despicable human form, pretending it’s anything but a monster—”