Sarah Ogoke was going to steal a bushbaby’s mat.
In her brown goat skin leather bag fraying at the seams from years of use, she packed a thurible of incense, two vials—one containing dog eye mucus, the other, cow tears. A spirit mirror shard gifted to her by a Djinn. Her ijele masquerade mask, and a book titled Expunging Urban Legends: A Beginner’s Guide to Retelling Urban Myths.
Sarah’s two-faced stone spirit halssnoer hung on her neck, resting in the valley of her chest. The stone had two wooden faces. One face was inscribed with the word ‘life’ and the other face ‘death.’
She only had to steal the mat and keep it for seven days while a murderous bushbaby hunted her. As much as Sarah hated to steal from a potential client, she needed the money. She squeezed the halssnoer. She wouldn’t even take all the wealth from the mat, just enough to cover her rent, feeding, and then some. Maybe a new wig, she shrugged. It wasn’t her fault that business was slow; urban legends these days wanted to be expunged practically for free.
The sound of pots and spoons clattering in the kitchen drew Sarah out of her ethical dilemma. Her body went rigid. What was that? Ojuju? Had one followed her from her last trip to the spirit world? Sarah grumbled under her breath as she unsheathed the spirit daga on her waist. Ojuju were mischievous beings who liked to attach themselves to humans and wreak havoc in their homes.
Sarah slipped out of her room, closing all the windows that led to the kitchen as she went. She slid into the kitchen, raised her daga and flipped the light switch. A dark, incorporeal form slinked from the sink to the cupboard.
“Madam K!” she yelled, startling the dark form into dropping a spoon it held. “How many times will I tell you to stop coming here?”
The dark form grew solid, starting from red heels splattered with blood, to long dust-covered legs and a velvet black jeweled mini dress. Her face was bare, with brows that had been shaved off and drawn as a thin line, and her hair was plaited into rough cornrows.
“You’re wearing my dinner dress!” Sarah gasped.
Madam koi-koi only waved her away. “This thing that was wasting away in your wardrobe? Calm down. I’ll return it later.”
“Take my dress off and get out!”
Lips forming into a petulant pout, Madam koi-koi put her hands on her hips and shrugged, “then expunge me.”
“I’ve told you,” Sarah glared at Madam koi-koi, “your story is too popular. I can’t retell it without pairing your spirit artefact with something stronger. Artefacts that I’ve asked you to find!”
She paused, her mouth stretching into a sudden grin. “You’re going to help me,” Sarah said, picking up her daga and thrusting it in Madam koi-koi’s face.
The urban legend shrank back as Sarah approached her. “Help you do what?” she asked, her eyes never leaving the daga’s pointed end.
“Steal.”
“Oh,” Madam koi-koi relaxed and smiled, “eh, you should have just said so now. Kini iwulo fun ọbẹ—no need for the knife.”
***
Ụwa mmụọ—the spirit world had an underlying rot that Sarah could never get used to no matter how she tried. It was already evening, and since urban legends thrived in the dark, the streets were beginning to get crowded. Ghosts, djinns, and other supernatural beings appeared and disappeared through spirit portals. Sarah’s eyes caught ojujus latching on to a few lost humans that had probably wandered in from their dreams.
The smell of suya wafted from roadside suya grills. Sarah’s stomach rumbled—she’d forgotten to eat. One lost human stopped at a suya stall and bought some of the juicy meat sizzling on the grill. Sarah watched as Mai Suya—a man with spotted cow legs starting from his torso—collected pieces of the person’s soul as payment. The person left, and the cowman glanced around furtively before cutting off a thin slice of skin from his left thigh and adding it to the suya rack. The wound oozed black blood for a bit, then closed up, leaving only a jagged scar similar to others scattered across the cowman’s thighs and torso. Sarah’s hunger developed legs and ran away.
“Let’s hurry.” She nudged Madam koi-koi as she put on her masquerade mask. It would be a mess if the urban legends discovered she was around today. She wasn’t looking for clients. Just a bushbaby and his mat.
As if she could read her mind, Madam koi-koi dragged her into a narrow street, “Come,” she offered, “I know where one would be.”
Bushbabies were one of the first myths Sarah learned about. They imitated the cries of babies to deceive people, and her father had taught her how to discern them. People would hear a baby crying and go to help, only to find a hungry bushbaby waiting to eat them. When bushbabies weren’t luring some unsuspecting human into their cry trap, they were reclusive beings, preferring to hide in mud houses with their precious mats.
They found the bushbaby under Hosodi Bridge, guzzling two bottles of Orijin bitters at once. And he was… crying?
“That one lost his wife last year. He’s become a drunken fool since then. A good target.” Madam koi-koi declared.
“We’re robbing a grieving bushbaby?” Sarah frowned.
“Any problem?”
“No, actually,” Sarah shrugged. She had just never seen a bushbaby cry. She looked at him again.
He was bare-chested, wearing a raffia skirt that fell all the way to his ankles. Her eyes caught the layers of golden beads encircling his thick, rough neck; they glinted against charcoal skin. His mat was rolled up into a neat bundle beside him.
“Oya, let’s go.” Madam koi-koi said as she shifted into her incorporeal form.
Re-tightening the strap on her mask, Sarah unsheathed her daga and crossed the road into the bridge.
She came up to the bushbaby from behind, pressed the daga to his neck and signaled Madam koi-koi to take the mat.
The bushbaby froze for a bit as a vagrant tear rolled from his eyes to prop on the wooden hilt of the dagger. He flung the now empty gin bottles to the side. She felt his laughter before it bubbled up from his chest. His body shook like a rag doll, causing her to pull the knife away from his neck. It was instinct. She didn’t want to hurt him, but her movement gave him an opening. He grabbed Sarah’s daga with his hand—its edge eating into his palm—and at the same time reached beneath his raffia skirt and threw alligator pepper seeds at Madam koi-koi.
Madam koi-koi screeched. The alligator pepper burned through her incorporeal form, forcing her to drop the mat.
Shit! Wasn’t he supposed to be a drunken fool? Ah, she would strangle Madam K when they got back. Sarah released her daga and sprang back. She dug into her akpa for the spirit mirror shard, immediately shoving it in the bushbaby’s face.
“From dust you came, to dust you should be. Made flesh by stories, kept animate by retellings. Deceased, departed, both words for dying—”
The bushbaby’s eyes widened. “The Expurgist,” he whispered, “I’ve been looking for you. I need your help…”
Sarah put her finger to her lip. “No! No, no, no, keep quiet.”
But the bushbaby continued, his voice louder, “abeg, listen to me. There’s something wreaking havoc here. Destroying ụwa mmụọ!”
“Oh you wretched little piece of…” Sarah lurched forward, tripped the bushbaby to the ground, and covered his mouth, but it was too late. The other urban legends had heard him.
They surged in, shouting and screaming expunging requests at her.
An ojuju with a big head and short limbs tripped over a fiery djinn and went ablaze. The djinn pushed it aside, causing it to tumble into a spirit. The spirit’s face took form—gaunt with downturned eyebrows—before knocking the poor thing into something else. A brawl started. Incorporeal limbs tangled into physical ones. Spirits possessed stones and flung themselves at each other.
Backing into a corner, Sarah wielded the mirror shard to keep them away. A vein ticked in the side of her head, and anger unfurled in her. The halssnoer grew hot in response. She had to relax before she opened a spirit portal by mistake. She spotted Madam koi-koi slink away with the mat and sighed in relief. At least one good thing was going to come out of this mess.
Someone’s badly burned hand grabbed at her shirt and pulled, freeing the halssnoer. Cursing, Sarah slashed at the hand with her mirror. She would be stuck in ụwa mmụọ if she lost the halssnoer. Her eyes twitched. Blood boiled. Sarah opened her mouth to scream. Then, all of a sudden, everyone stopped. Static filled Sarah’s ears, blotting out her hearing. The bushbaby waved his hands in her face, yelling something at her. Sarah tried to read his lips, but nothing registered.
The ground rumbled, throwing her off balance. Heat pressed into her feet through her sandals. Sarah looked down. The ground was tearing open in tiny cracks, and inky, dark bubbles floated out of the cracks. A shrill shriek burst through the static, startling her.
“It’s coming this way! Everybody run!” A djinn announced, and the crowd descended into panic. Spirit portals opened, and the myths disappeared through them. Those incapable of njem–traveling between spirit worlds through portals—settled for running.
“Madam K!” Sarah shouted. She reached for the halssnoer and gathered air. Her heart pounded. Her only way out of ụwa mmụọ, was gone. Sarah dropped to the ground to search for it. Nothing. She ripped off her masquerade mask, swallowing the urge to scream when someone stepped on her fingers, tearing her skin.
A hand clamped on Sarah’s shoulders.
“Expurgist,” the bushbaby said over the chaos, “come with me.”
He did not give Sarah a chance to protest as he threw her over his shoulders and began running down the road that led to Baya. Sarah’s feet were almost scrapping the floor as he carried her along. Madam koi-koi appeared, following them closely behind.
The shriek came again, more audible. “Goonu banaaanaaa!”
This time Sarah saw where, or rather, what, it came from. It was an Nkankan—a dark entity: an urban legend that could not remember its myth and as such could not be expunged. Eventually, the urban legend would transfigure into a Nkankan, like this one, and begin to destroy everything in its path.
Sarah’s book did not do justice in its description of nkankan. It was a massive whorl of dark energy shaped like a wraith. Translucent spirit hands and faces jutted out of it, as though trying to escape, only to get sucked back in.
“Who in the name of everything is that?”
“That—is the reason we’ve been looking for you, Expurgist,” the bushbaby panted. “Three days ago, that urban legend appeared here. We’ve never seen anything like it before.”
They both tuned their ears to hear more, but instead of continuing, the bushbaby ducked into the Baya complex and dropped Sarah on her feet and snatched his mat from Madam koi-koi, giving her a dirty look.
“Do you know where it came from?”
“No but shhhh, I don’t want anyone to know we’re here.”
The bushbaby led them through a flight of stairs to the roof of the complex, where a single mud hut, bigger than Sarah’s apartment, stood. The atmosphere shifted when they entered the hut. A protection incantation hummed in the air. It was a strong one. Sarah searched for the artefact the bushbaby had used to create it, already calculating in her mind how much it would cost in the black market.
There was no furniture. Sarah wasn’t sure how bushbabies lived, but she did know no one’s house should seem as lonely as this one did.
He ushered them to sit on the carpeted floor while he boiled water in a claypot at the far end of the room. He dropped three Àbámọdá leaves into the water, and when steam rose from the pot, he poured the decoction into three cow horns.
Grudgingly, he gave one to Madam koi-koi, before offering the last cup to Sarah. When she hesitated, he said, “take it. There’s no binding incantation attached.”
Collecting the cow horn, Sarah tipped the decoction into her mouth. Its effect was instant. Her headache vanished, the wound on her hand started healing, and her hunger reduced. Even her vision was sharper. Sarah made a mental note to collect some Àbámọdá from the bushbaby when she was going back. If she could go back.
The bushbaby finished his own brew in one gulp, then unrolled his mat and sat on it, folding his legs under his body. “My name is Babatunde—”
“Madam koi-koi, but you can call me Madam K.” Madam koi-koi interrupted, grinning from mouth to ear.
Babatunde squeezed his face at her before turning back to Sarah. “That thing has been attacking us every day and eating at ụwa mmụọ’s barrier. If we don’t expunge it, it will scatter the balance between ụwa mmadụ and your world and send all of us into purgatory.”
Purgatory was the thin line between both worlds, a neither here nor there place. Nothing survived there for long. Not even the strongest of djinns.
“What is its myth?”
Babatunde blinked. “I said we’ve never seen anything like this before. How would I know the story, eh?”
Sarah raised her hands and said, “Calm down.”
“Sorry,” Babatunde bowed his head, “it’s just that I don’t want to die in purgatory. My wife is waiting for me in Hemel. I promised… I promised her I would come as soon as I could. You have to help us, Expurgist.”
“I—the thing is, I’ve never dealt with an unknown before.” Sarah admitted. Since her father’s disappearance, she played it safe, avoiding expunging any urban legend she wasn’t sure about. Sarah suspected her father had incorrectly expunged a legend and got dragged into Hemel with it. It was a delicate process, to learn a myth’s story and retell it in a way that laid the myth to rest. And Sarah did not possess the art of softness.
She remembered the book and straightened up; “but I have something with me that can help.” Her father’s book had a spell for trapping spirits in bottles. Sarah hadn’t tried it before, but she knew the spell seemed easy to use.
Babatunde rose to his feet. “I’ll join you. What do you want me to do?”
“First,” Sarah nodded her head at his mat, “I get to take that with me if we’re successful.” And if they weren’t, well, at least she wouldn’t need money in purgatory.
“Mo gba—agreed.” Babatunde stuck his hands under his armpits and offered them to her.
Sarah grimaced. She copied his gesture, then took his hands, accepting the deal. Her lips pressed into a thin line. “Now we hunt for the nkankan.”
***
The halssnoer was still on Sarah’s mind. The Àbámọdá’s effect was wearing off. Babatunde and Madam koi-koi were arguing. They had bickered all the way from Baya. Her daga was back on her waist where it belonged, and if she didn’t need those two…
Sarah sighed.
“I’ve found it.” Babatunde announced. He sniffed the air in the left and right directions, nodding.
They were at Kokoma—spirit water settlement. A deserted half water, and half land area built on stilts. Wooden frog-infested rafts floated on brackish water, and occasionally, spirit fish jumped out of the water.
Madam koi-koi caught one midair and sank her teeth into it.
“What?” she hissed at Sarah’s look of disgust. “At least I stopped eating children.”
“Inside there,” Babatunde pointed at a dilapidated shed.
He unsheathed his claws, Sarah her daga, and Madam koi-koi removed one of her heels, holding it above her head.
They burst into the shed, ready to fight, and found only a little girl. She was hunched into herself, shivering. She wore a tattered brown dress; her feet fought for space in a fish-mouthed shoe; her hair was in patches locked together by dirt; and her arms were lined with bulging black veins filled with malignant spirit energy.
“Goonu banaaanaa,” the girl whimpered.
The tension in Sarah’s shoulders dissipated. She took careful steps towards the girl, stopping Babatunde and Madam koi-koi from following. She took out the incense thurible and lit it, swinging it around the girl’s head. The girl inhaled, and Sarah waited for the incense to do its work. The spirit veins receded, and the girl calmed.
“What is your name?”
“Goonu banaaanaa.”
Sarah turned back to Babatunde but he shrugged. She tried again, “how did you get here?”
“Goonu banaaanaa.” The girl cried, her voice becoming distressed.
“Where are you from?”
“Go—” The girl stopped and lifted her head. She unfolded her left hand, revealing native mamiwata words inscribed in her palm.
A knot formed in Sarah’s stomach. It was an address from her world, one that she had once visited with her father before he vanished. What worried Sarah was that they had been chasing down a child trafficking syndicate he had traced to that address. This girl might have been one of their victims.
“So, this is where you’re from. Do you remember the face of the mamiwata that wrote that in your hand?”
“Go—”
“Goonu banaaanaa,” Sarah groaned, then turned to the others. “She’s from ụwa mmadụ. I know the place. We’ll start from there.”
“Are we taking her with us?” Madam koi-koi asked.
“Yes. So that I can stop her transfiguration if it starts again.”
“Oya, let’s go.” Babatunde said and threw something at Sarah.
“My halssnoer! How…” Sarah’s eyes narrowed.
Scratching his head sheepishly, Babatunde explained, “eh, I stole it while you were distracted. Just in case you didn’t want to, erm…”
“What a horrible man.” Madam koi-koi hissed.
“Oho, says the person who wanted to steal from me!”
“Let’s just go.” Sarah cut in, grateful that she did not have to use a spirit portal opened by either urban legend. It was the second rule in the book; never let an urban legend do njem for you. She didn’t know why and she did not want to find out.
Opening the portal, Sarah lifted the girl into her arms, flinching at the iciness of her skin. The girl wrapped herself around Sarah, and Sarah rubbed her back in slow, circular motions. I’m comforting an unknown. Wonders shall never end.
***
The portal transported them inside the compound of a derelict apartment building. Its paint had completely chipped off, and age was eating into the cement. A layer of darkness hung over the building like a veil. Sarah shuddered—houses like this with so much spirit energy meant something terrible must have happened.
They climbed up the old stairs, searching the building as they went, until they reached the last room.
“There’s nothing here.” Sarah sucked on her teeth in frustration. “Let’s go.” She gently nudged the girl, but she wouldn’t budge.
The girl lifted her right hand and pointed at the empty space. “Goonu banaaanaa.”
Sarah crouched to her eye level and said, “There’s nothing there. Let’s check somewhere else.”
“Goonu banaaanaa!” The girl insisted.
“There’s not—”
“Wait,” Madam koi-koi said. She went around the room, running her hands along the walls, pushing at spaces before stopping at a spot. “Babatunde,” she waved the bushbaby over, “there’s something familiar here; can you feel it?”
Babatunde sniffed the area. Lifting his hands, he punched at the area Madam koi-koi specified, and instead of punching through air, it just… stopped.
“Spirit pockets!” Three of them exclaimed at the same time.
In ụwa mmadụ, there were pockets where the spirit world existed, places where both worlds intersected. It was how humans unknowingly found themselves in the spirit world. They were difficult to find, and even more difficult to see.
Sarah opened the dog eye mucus vial and smeared it on her eyelids. She blinked. The spirit pocket was right there, a shimmery barrier that rippled and spread across the horizontal expanse of the room. Spirit pockets only responded to beings from ụwa mmụọ. Without an urban legend, she would never have known.
“We can break it.” Sarah blew out a breath. “We just need a strong enough artefact.”
“I’ll do it.” Madam koi-koi said. With her red heel, she hammered the space until the entire thing melted away like gossamer eaten by fire.
The horror of what was inside the spirit pocket rooted her feet to the ground.
Thirteen glass bowls gurgling with greenish liquid were jammed side by side in the room. Inside them were children: male and female. Mermaid parts—gills, fins, scales, and tails—protruded from their bodies. It was wrong, all wrong. One girl had a tail growing out from her back, another had fins in his palms, another with rough gills in his stomach.
Bile rose in Sarah’s throat. Urban legends were unhinged, but in all her years as an Expurgist she had never seen anything as grotesque as this, experimenting on children in this way. What were the mamiwata doing, and how had they kept it hidden all this time?
“Kada mu ga mugunta—may we not see evil greater than ours.” Babatunde cursed.
“Goonu banaaanaa,” the girl hissed, a guttural edge to her voice.
Madam koi-koi went behind the tubes. “There’s another spirit pocket here.” She called out. She hit the pocket with her heel. It undulated, going clear for a bit so that she saw what the pocket hid; another room, with a group of men and mamiwata lounging in bowls, unaware of what was happening beyond the pocket.
At the sight of them, the girl’s spirit veins pulsed, and dark essence escaped in waves from her. She transformed back into nkankan. Sarah started to light the incense. She looked at the children in the glass bowls and stopped.
“Don’t break it completely. We have to keep these ones here safe. Make a tear big enough for you to pass through,” she said to Madam koi-koi, jostling the girl towards her, “take her with you. Gbuo ha niile—kill all of them.”
Sarah tore her eyes away from the children; she had to focus on getting them out of there. “Babatunde, can you make a portal leading to your house? That’s the only place I can think of where we can keep the children for now. Sorry—”
“No need,” Babatunde said. He clapped his hands twice, then spread them open, creating a spirit portal. He pushed one bowl through and disappeared into the portal.
Madam koi-koi switched to her incorporeal form and took the girl with her through the spirit pocket. Moments later, the shriek of ‘Goonu banaaanaa’ mixed with shouts, gunshots, and mamiwata chanting. Blood seeped into the room from under the spirit pocket.
Breathing deeply, Sarah examined the rest of the room. In a corner of the room were files, each containing the faces of the children in the glass bowls. All children, none older than 13, stolen.
A tiny piece of forgotten memory wiggled its way out of Sarah mind. She remembered her father holding a file just like this one the day before he disappeared. Did the mamiwata have something to do with it?
One of the files caught her eye. It was stamped with one word—Failed. Sarah opened it, and a picture of the girl stared back at her. The picture was taken right in front of the apartment building. The girl was smiling, her hands on her hip, and on her head was a tray of bananas.
It suddenly clicked. “Goonu banaaanaa,” Sarah whispered, “buy banana.” It was Igbo. How had she not figured that out?
Babatunde came back and carried another bowl. “How far?” He asked.
“These people are horrible.” Sarah answered. “Are the children okay?”
Babatunde nodded.
She glanced around the room. Only two glass bowls remained. She had not expected the bushbaby to be so dependable, or Madam koi-koi koi either if she was being honest—the urban legend seemed intent on being the worst version of herself.
Sarah clenched her daga and steeled herself. As an Expurgist, it was strange to prepare herself to kill urban legends in a physical manner and even stranger to kill humans, but these people deserved to die. She pushed herself through the hole Madam koi-koi had made in the spirit pocket. She entered just when Madam koi-koi and the girl tore into a mamiwata.
Everyone else in the room was dead.
Madam koi-koi straightened, picking out fleshy scales from her teeth. Darkness similar to that of nkankan leaked from her, spirit veins had crisscrossed her body, and they beat in sync with the girl’s own. They were both drenched in blood, like an artist had made them his canvas and splashed them with thick red paint.
“Goonu banaaanaa,” the girl grunted. Madam koi-koi patted her head, grinning.
Sarah lit the incense.
***
To expunge an urban legend, one needed three things:
- An artefact
- A prayer, and;
- A willing-to-die urban legend
Sarah wasn’t quite sure of the last one, but it would be cruel of her not to try. The girl had eaten enough pain at such a young age. It was time to send her to Hemel.
The artefact could be anything, it just had to be connected to the urban legend’s life and human death. For Madam koi-koi, it was her blood-red heels. And Babatunde, his mat. Sarah got a bunch of bananas to use for the girl, it was easy to figure out.
In her room, she cleansed the bananas with holy water and put them inside a steel tray that resembled the one she had seen in the picture. Sarah was being very careful with the girl’s Expunging. She wanted her to reach Hemel smoothly. It dawned on her that she was learning the art of softness, and it surprised her—the amount of kindness with which she was going to retell the girl’s story.
She lit incense, not the spirit kind, the kind from church, and inhaled it then exhaled. It was important for her mind to be clear. Her head ached terribly, and her wrist hurt from gripping her daga all day.
Clear mind, clear heart, clean ritual.
Opening the drawer that contained all her Expunging tools, she took out a claypot and filled it halfway with holy water. She carried everything and went to the kitchen where Madam koi-koi, Babatunde, and the girl were waiting for her.
“Ready?” Sarah asked the girl.
“Goonu banaaanaa.” She nodded; lips firmly set in determination.
“Great.” With an exasperated sigh, she turned to the two urban legends staring at her. “Don’t both of you have something else to do?”
“Not really,” Madam koi-koi shrugged.
Babatunde shook his head.
Sarah gave the banana tray to the girl and sat on the ground, folding her legs beneath her. She motioned for the girl to do the same. She placed the claypot between both of them, dipped her fingers in it and sprinkled holy water on the girl. Then began the Expunging incantation.
“From dust you came, to dust you should be. Made flesh by stories, kept animate by retellings. Deceased, departed, both words for dying. Hunger for, yearn for, death is generous to those who desire it.”
“I’m going to retell your story now. Look into the pot. Don’t take your eyes off it, okay?” She instructed the girl. “Don’t worry, you won’t feel anything,” she added when she caught fear flickering in the girl’s eyes.
“Goonu banaaanaa,” the girl said, her voice shaky. But she stared into the pot.
Sarah opened her palms, cupped them as if in prayer. This part of Expunging came easily to her. It was as the book said: some of us are born storytellers; to spin, to stitch, to weave tales like yarn.
And Sarah weaved.
“I name you Precious and I name you light. Once upon a time, there was a girl named Precious Light, and she had a heart full of dreams. On the bustling streets of Onitsha, she hawked bananas after school—”
An image of the girl hawking bananas appeared in the water.
“—when she turned eighteen, Precious Light got a scholarship to study at a prestigious university.”
The image formed into an older version of the girl getting on a flight. It reflected in the girl’s eyes, and Sarah saw the moment when the girl believed that was her story. The water in the pot began to swirl, emanating a luminescent blue light. Tiny droplets of it floated out of the pot and rested on the girl, illuminating her too.
Sarah continued, “she became a brain surgeon for children and saved hundreds of children. At the end of her life, Precious Light was a fabled surgeon. She died on a warm evening, with the dry season’s heat wrapping her in a cocoon. Her dreams, all of them, came out to dance with her. It was the most beautiful thing.”
Small water spirits with aqueous limbs danced around the girl. Her mouth dropped open, and for the first time, something other than ‘goonu banana’ escaped her lips. A giggle.
The pot shook, spinning round gently at first. Then it became more animated and started spinning violently, until all the water went out of it and enveloped the girl. The water flowed on her skin, the spirits danced, and the girl laughed.
“The end.” Sarah said, a soft, tired sigh escaping her.
The water returned, drawing the girl into the pot with it. The banana tray clattered to the ground, empty.
Sarah tried to stand but stumbled, almost banging her head on the counter.
Babatunde rushed in and held her up. “Eh, e dupe—thank you. Let me go now to check on those children. When next you come, I’ll give you the mat.” His voice cracked, and he bent his head.
Sarah peered at him. Was he crying? She swallowed her laughter. There was a lump in her throat too, but Sarah attributed it to her being overwhelmed by everything. It felt like she had lived a hundred lives in one day.
But Madam koi-koi was not so kind. She made an amused sound at the back of her throat. Babatunde simply hissed at her before opening a portal and jumping into it.
The kitchen went silent after his portal closed.
“What are you waiting for?” Sarah asked Madam koi-koi, her brows raised, “bye bye now.”
“Ah,” Madam koi-koi pouted, “after everything I did today? Let me stay.”
Sarah massaged her aching temple; she was too tired to argue. “Just until tomorrow. And don’t bother leaving, I’ll expunge you.” She had had enough of the urban legend stalking her; she should never have accepted that job to help her find her second pair of heels.
Madam koi-koi grinned slowly, in a way that was obvious that she didn’t plan to leave Sarah anytime soon. “But we don’t even have another artefact.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ve found one,” Sarah said, thinking of the protective artefact Babatunde used on his home. It was strong enough. She just needed to steal it.
