They say it should not have happened, could not have happened. In the first place, the autopsy was proof that she died by blunt force trauma to the cranium after sustaining multiple contusions to her ribs. There were unmistakable signs of struggle – she’d fought back, clawing at his skin with her nails and biting when she couldn’t punch but, in the end, he’d been stronger.

The republic police received a call about a domestic dispute at exactly 2200 hours, arrived on scene at 2330 and declared her dead at 2347 on Wednesday the 23^rd of March 2008. A seasoned officer checked for her pulse and many neighbours bore witness. Revai Matanga was a dead woman.

The particulars were taken as follows: she was 19 years of age, she weighed 63 kilograms and she suffered before she died, even before the fatal battery. There were half-healed bruises, there were welts and, the coroner noted, any marital coupling she may have had with her husband must have been by force.

In addition to the evidence on her body, there were statements from her neighbours, and even her husband’s sister had testified against him in the court of law, but in the end, he’d walked free on some technicality – the technicality being a bribe paid to a magistrate the day before the trial was concluded.

They say she could not have been the one who did it in Mexico City, 15 November 2011. But her DNA was found at the crime scene and, DN, they say, never lies. Not that they would have linked her to the crime at first, but CCTV footage kept finding her there. There being Mexico City, Barcelona, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, everywhere. Even the Kremlin held a redacted file, privy only to the highest cleared investigators, that spoke of Krasnaya Shapochka – the Red Hood.

Not that it was possible to see the colour of her clothing on most security feeds but a profiler from The Netherlands could confirm with 89% certainty that the build, gait, and mannerisms of the perpetrator pointed to one UnSub (unknown subject) working alone.

“Even the idiosyncrasies of the crime scene, the separation of entrails, the spilling of blood, point to one perpetrator,” said Anna Jansen in a special briefing for Interpol. She didn’t mention the word serial killer, for it tended to make people panic but any investigator worth their salt knew what it meant when there were multiple murder victims in multiple cities with staged corpses.

And so, unbeknownst to Revai’s family (and because it was against the custom) the republic police exhumed her body by cover of night and concluded that: a) she was indeed still dead and b) she had not escaped her coffin.

“How could it have happened?” her relatives asked when the police kept asking questions, but the international police were beginning to think it was the only thing that could have happened.

There was the fact that the second wife of the first victim, a Bruce Lancaster from Salt Lake City, Utah, wouldn’t meet the eyes of the investigating officer. Her body was bruised. Bruises she’d tried to cover by pulling her jersey tighter around her shoulders as she stared intently at her overly polished shoes while her fingers played at a loose thread on her old couch.

Yet the detective who worked homicide had started off at Special Victims and knew the signs. Bruce Lancaster had died because he was a wife beater, pure and simple. In the end, lack of means and opportunity meant they couldn’t pin it on the Vic’s wife, but in his own mind, the detective pinned it on her till his dying breath. He had a gut feeling about such things.

The Guatamalan detective who questioned the prematurely aged widow of Juan Calabar had reported a different story – the widow cried, he wrote in his brand-new notebook, but the stepdaughter seemed visibly relieved at the shopkeeper’s death, almost smiling her pleasure but only held back by propriety, while the widow kept sniffing into a handkerchief and asking, “¿Por que?”

She wore a brown dress, and her hair was tied back into a severe bun. Her daughter sat stoically next to her, rubbing her shoulders in a circular pattern, a mysterious gleam in her eyes. The detective could see that she was all bruised skin and broken bone, and by the way she shied from his booming masculine voice, he concluded that a man was at the root of those scars.

The detective put her down as a person of interest, but the sheer force of power needed to enact that level of violence? That ruled her out. She was a slip of a thing and by the way she shied from his gaze, he doubted that she could have created such a gruesome crime scene. But if not her, then who?

They say it was a serial killer. The manner of death, the MO as one officer rambled, was similar in all cases: blunt force trauma to the cranium, the murder weapon being an axe, bruises, and contusions consistent with grievous bodily harm before the final blow. DNA under the fingernails of the victims showed signs of struggle. Hard struggle.

These pronouncements were made by a New Orleans cop who drawled around the piece of peppermint gum he chewed. With his tall frame, wrinkled suit and newly bare ring finger, Alfred La Haye was a walking cliché. He even had the coffee breath to go with his persona. It was obvious to anyone who looked that La Haye was recently divorced and married to the job. The bodies of many victims kept him up at night, this one in particular. The body had been found by a homeless man behind a dumpster, his corpse carved like an animal – the entrails set aside. La Haye had lost his diner breakfast to the asphalt in the alley. Although he’d lived in New Orleans all his life, he felt there were some things a man must never see, that corpse being one of them. It was a good thing the uniforms had cordoned off the area.

After he’d regained his composure, La Haye surveyed the crime scene. There was skin under the man’s fingernails. Red fabric intermingled with his navy business suit. La Haye concluded that the “perp” was careless, leaving DNA and fabric behind at the crime scene.

“He’s quite the amateur,” he said later in his warbling accent as he teleconferenced the so-called profiling expert.

Anna Jansen, the analyst from Netherlands disagreed, “A lot can be gleaned from this type of UnSub. The UnSub left their DNA there on purpose. Such UnSubs feel the need to be heard and have probably felt silenced in the past. I would suspect the UnSub to be a victim of a previous crime that went unpunished, or at least they see themselves that way. I would even hazard a guess that such an UnSub may visit the crime scene or try to keep track of police investigations. Such UnSubs may even attend their victim’s funerals in disguise.”

She said “they” but deep down in her heart, she knew it was a woman, despite the M.E.’s reports about weight and force and drag. She had been there before… she remembered the hand of a superior officer wandering into her clothing while she was drunk at an office party, only to wake up naked in his bed the following morning with no recollections, but the year had been 1989 and no one would have cared so she’d kept it to herself.

 “We should call him the Deadbeat Killer,” Adebayo Avery said to a group of fellow reporters. The reporters were “up to here” with the police because the police weren’t revealing important facts and what’s more, were dragging their feet in the investigation. Yet the latter was not entirely true.

The FBI and local PDs set up boards with names places, dates, vics until they ran the DNA sample found under a victim’s nails on an international database and concluded that America’s Deadbeat Killer was the Castigadora de Bestias who was wreaking havoc in Latin America and The Viking who was killing sex traffickers in Europe’s red-light district.

“He is a big blond man with muscles and a goatee beard and carries an axe, a very big axe,” the wide-eyed sex workers told the police whenever they were questioned. They shrunk deep into the reflective blankets that shielded them from shock and drank the tea the gendarmes gave them greedily.

The perp looked nothing like the sex workers described, and they knew it, but the police believed them readily enough, what with the coroner’s report about force and drag and weight differentials. Besides, there was a code on the streets – The Red Maiden saved them, and whatever it or she was, they wouldn’t repay her kindness with disloyalty. For the first time since they’d all been drugged and kidnapped, there was a chance to return home or live their remaining lives with some semblance of peace.

In Africa, they hadn’t named him, still burdened by cases of femicide and theft and gang-related violence but Aiden Randera, SAPS veteran in charge of the Cape Flats confirmed that crimes against women had gone down by 5% since the first sightings of Die Rooi Poppie. Most said she was an urban legend, but Randera considered her a miracle.

He’d been battling femicide since even before Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk got the Nobel Peace Prize and if some skirt was going to take the work off his hands, then he wasn’t complaining. The last part, he told the reporter “off the record” while patting her shoulder like they’d been friends since the Y2K explosion.

They all said it was a miracle and secretly, to their wives and girlfriends and lovers and brothers, they admitted that the Deadbeat Killer made them sleep safer at night, knowing there was one less sleaze on the streets but to the cameras and microphones and reporters and paparazzi, they condemned “any and all forms of vigilantism”, saying every man, deadbeat or not, was innocent till proven guilty and if any woman had any charge, any case of assault and battery, gender-based violence or workplace harassment, then she should report it through the “proper channels” but the senseless killings should end.

They say only the minority of abusers are ever put behind bars. The actual figures, of course, vary from country to country. They say, “Look what happened to Cyntoia Brown.” ‘They’ being the army of women on the internet who were pissed off by the statement given by the FBI’s Assistant Special Agent in Charge, ASAC Cho’s statement on the 8 o’clock news, the video having been reshared on Twitter and WhatsApp and Tik-Tok and Reddit.

For a while, ASAC Cho had hunted down their IP addresses, saying it wasn’t a case of single vigilantism but perhaps the day had come when women got so angry that they decided to find vengeance and so they all donned the red hoodie, the way all members of Anonymous donned V’s mask. That way they’d all have alibis for their abusers’ murders. That way they’d be everywhere and nowhere and invincible. ASAC Cho was wrong.

Today

I know different. I was hired to find the killer by the widow of a particularly rich deadbeat. At least, that’s what I tell them when I interview the widows, the cops, the profilers.

The evidence leads me to a sleepy old town called Redcliffe. Southern Africa. A country by the name of Zimbabwe. What Interpol and the FBI didn’t tell members of the public, but what I managed to glean using the 21st-century resource of hacking the internet, is that the DNA under the men’s fingerprints was female and belonged to a Revai Matanga. Born in the village of Hwedza, married at the age of 15 to a local businessman and then bludgeoned to death at the age of 19 for not cooking the correct relish for dinner that night. A senseless killing.

“She didn’t even want to get married,” they say. I’m talking to a gaggle of girls I meet chilling near a service station. Sleepy town, not a lot to do. After the metalworks shut down in the nearby town, everyone here is underemployed and itching to leave. Here, the teenagers can buy snacks and gossip until one of their parents comes looking for them – which is unlikely at 4 in the afternoon. Dusk has not descended yet.

  “She was just a girl, but some of these men think they can cure STDs by sleeping with virgins. Her family was poor so…” the girl shrugs nonchalantly when she says this but, in the undercurrent, there is an unspoken message: Revai could have been me, Revai could have been any of us. I’m glad she wasn’t me.

“She hasn’t been here in a year,” another girl says, to erase the last statement.

No one likes to acknowledge that the world is ugly. I’ve learned that in all my years on this trail. I don’t tell the girls that sometimes serial killers circle back to their hometowns, it gives them a sort of closure to come back as powerful avengers but these girls, sixteen going on nineteen still have their naivete and I won’t be the one to burst their bubbles.

 The girls say that the murder weapon was an axe. That the whole neighbourhood heard her screaming while her husband wielded it, but no one thought it was their business to intervene until her body was carried off in the white republic police van with blue and gold stripes. Then it was their business to spread rumours about it to this day.

“Zvakaoma!” One of the girls exclaims. It is a word they use when the conversation is heavy, and they have nothing useful to add.

There are details that don’t appear in official records, that I only know because I came here after the first Interpol hit suggested it might be her DNA, her corpse, her body. For instance, her first bed was a sad affair – a simple double bed with dirty blankets on it and no bedspread. Her neighbour remembers this detail as Revai often spoke of it. As a village girl, her family hadn’t afforded beds and simply laid down blankets on reed mats. Revai didn’t often think of herself as a wife, only when it was time to visit the marital bed – and then she would freeze, tense, and sometimes pray she was elsewhere.

***

Notes from my interview with the neighbour also referred to a lot of skinning that Revai did:

“Her husband slaughtered animals. Revai said he was too stingy to buy meat from the butchery, even though he could afford it. So, every weekend, she was in the kitchen cutting and cleaning goats, rabbits, chicken, sheep; always separating the meat from the entrails – in one bucket the liver, in another the intestines, the rest of the carcass in a green metal dish. Her hands were always a bloody mess. Their house always smelled like blood. That’s why I didn’t realise that day. I was used to the smell.”

“Sometimes we sat under that mango tree in the afternoon,” the neighbour points at a gnarled specimen that no longer bears fruit. “She watched the girls coming home from school. Here, there were korokozas – gold panners, you see, men who drove these big cars around the neighbourhood. The girls jumped in and came back with new clothes, new weaves, pizza, money. Sometimes it didn’t end well though. When the girls got old or pregnant, the men abandoned them. Revai just frowned and said she’d stop the men one day; she’d kill them in the act. Redcliff is her town and she felt rage for it. Of course, she scared me with her ferocity, and we never spoke of it again.”

“Never?” I asked.

“Never. But you see, her family… these are things that must not be said… but I believe she’d want to say them.”

I nodded to indicate that she must continue but when I brandished my pen, she pushed my notebook away.

“They beat her grave. They weren’t supposed to. Revai once ran away from her husband. That was after she lost the baby. Her husband followed after a while. They always do. So, when she ran away her husband threatened to take back his roora and her father – he has seven other children – told her to return to the city. Can you imagine?”

I could imagine it, so I nodded.

“So, anyway, when she died, he mourned her like normal. Some say he felt guilty, and others say he was too greedy to think, but the coroner said she was killed, and the judge said she died of natural causes, so her family decided to consult the spirits. Her father wouldn’t have it.”

“Her sister told me they did it the wrong way. It was her mother and sekuru and a distant cousin of her father’s stood for the paternal lineage. They called her spirit home, but it was not their right. They asked for her to name her killer but … nothing.”

By this time, she is whispering, and I angle closer to her. There is load shedding tonight and the only source of light we have is an old paraffin lamp. The neighbour positively looks like a ghoul and the yellow light dances across her face, igniting shadows on the ceiling.

“Then what happened?”

“The next day her husband was found dead in the house – his head was kicked in, his entrails separated, liver in one bucket, intestines in another, his corpse in the green metal dish. The house reeked of blood.” She shifts closer to me. “That was the first time they exhumed her body. There was nothing in the coffin.”

“But…”

“But the second time she was right there wasn’t she?”

***

They say, there have never been survivors, but there must have been, for in her neighbourhood and in her province, there are stories of a hitchhiker.

“She wears a red hoodie,” they say, “stops men on their way home from bars.”

“No, she wears a red trench coat in winter and hitchhikes along Harare Road.”

“You’re wrong. It’s a dress that she wears, and she follows men home from the bar. Anyway, she’s not all bad,” one girl says, “I feel safe at night.”

That’s how I like to think of her, as an unsung angel, caped in red, thumb jacked into the starless night.

They say, “She looks 19, and has looked 19 since she started haunting the neighbourhoods. Ever since she died, she has never looked older!”

 “She stops the men’s cars, okay, and they take her on a drive to, like, wherever she wants them to go, then in the middle of nowhere, she tells them, ‘Stop the car, yes, right here.’ And they must think she wants to stop for a quickie (at this the neighbourhood girl looks down in shame for a second, but my eyes are not judgemental) or something because she was pretty cute before she died. That’s why it made her husband jealous. Aichengera, you know?”

Indeed, I know. I’ve interviewed her surviving relatives and they all agree on her husband’s jealousy and rage. Her image in CCTV footage is grainy at best but I can attest to her beauty too.

This particular homicide takes place near her death place. Twenty kilometres outside the town of Kwekwe, not an hour’s ride from where she died. Appledew Farm, to be exact, although given the arid conditions here, it’s more of a cattle ranch than an apple orchard. The officer commanding Midlands Province allows me to ride shotgun because someone at Interpol told him I would be joining him in the investigation. The woman who hired me as a PI has boat-loads of money and even more influence. She wanted me to find out why her husband was killed by the red one and I told her I’d investigate. I could have told her a long time ago that he was implicated in a trafficking ring but then I wouldn’t have a cover and I wouldn’t have money to travel the world. Besides, it’s her dead husband’s money I use to follow the trail, so I feel zero guilt.

The officer picks me up at the service station, as Interpol asked him to, I see him sneer at my short stature and large tote bag before pasting on a fake smile.

“I thought you’d be taller,” he says, “from your passport photo.”

“I thought you’d be handsome,” I retort, and then giggle before he can take offence.

This is a high priority case – the vic happens to be a popular businessman with relatives in high places so they won’t let any old inspector investigate. Heads will roll if the real killer isn’t caught, hence the presence of the commanding officer. He has all the confidence of a man who has never been bested before and I laugh inwardly because I personally know he won’t catch her. No one ever has, not even the coffee consuming La Haye.

“So, HQ sent you down here to consult?” He must still be hung up on my height and deceptively young looks.

I nod. He looks doubtful but shrugs. He can’t fight his superiors, and he knows this. He turns the volume up on the sungura music streaming from his radio before hitting the tarmac. He turns into a bumpy dust road before speaking to me again.

“A small girl like you shouldn’t come to crime scenes,” the policeman says, in heavily accented English, and I bristle because I’ve already told him I’m twenty-nine – a woman – but his types like to establish dominance. He thinks he knows everything about me but these smug types often overplay their hand, I know more about him.

I look out the window for a while, where the landscape is eerie as the sun dips into the horizon, casting an orange pall. The sparse trees turn to dark silhouettes. Something like a jackal or a wild dog cries out. My skin tingles.

 “As a matter of fact, crime scenes can get ugly. My first crimes scene was so ugly, I vomited my entire breakfast – eggs, bread, baked beans.”

“I know,” I tell him, pissed that he’d given me a whole shopping list of his morning appetites. I did not need to know that. He was a small-town detective when Revai Matanga was killed, and he turned a blind eye when her relatives begged for justice. He even went farther, burying evidence and making sure the statements in the case file disappeared the night before an enquiry declared that there was no evidence of foul play. Revai’s husband paid him well. Two hundred US dollars was a big bonus for a civil servant back in 2008.

“She only targets violent men, so I have nothing to fear,” I add, feeling a surge of adrenaline.

He turns surly. I’m not kowtowing to his leadership enough. This could get ugly.

“I’ll say it again, crime scenes are ugly, and women like you have no stomach for crime scenes. Women have no stomach for anything.”

There is a lull in which his police radio and the car radio both turn silent, and it is just the two of us in the wilderness. The sky has darkened to a deep blue now and we should have arrived at the crime scene a while ago, instead, the road seems to extend itself onward like a Sisyphean loop. I refrain from responding to his words. The interior of his Ford Ranger is filled with the overpowering aura of smugness – this is a man who has never known fear. It will make everything easier.

“Neither do men. You lost your breakfast when you were called out to investigate the husband’s murder,” I tell him.

“What? You’re a social behavioural consultant from the States. What do you know about my case history or how many murders I have investigated in my time?”

I am undeterred by his insignificant question, and I throw two bloodied hundred-dollar bills into his lap, “You lost your breakfast when the grave was empty and then when it wasn’t.”

 His hands tighten on the steering wheel and the car swerves dramatically. The commanding officer sweats even though it isn’t hot. He seems to notice for the first time that the sky has turned to pitch. He checks his phone, but the battery is dead. He glances briefly in my direction and for a fraction of a second, I see the fear of God in his eyes. And now at once I look both foreign and familiar. He makes to grab his service weapon from its holster, but it isn’t there.

The grey coat I wore when I entered his vehicle has transformed into a luminous cherry red. I smile and my teeth are sharp talons. Superintendent Karimanzira’s pupils dilate then constrict in rapid succession. He has finally caught on – there is a monster in his car and for the first time in his life, the monster isn’t him. He has solved the case of Revai’s corporeal disappearance and of her husband’s murder and if only he could call someone at Interpol then he’d be promoted big time but –

Reading his thoughts, I smile when he acknowledges that there won’t be a call to Interpol or any promotion in the near future and, for a while, he just keeps driving, his hands and feet moving of their own accord as if he has become a puppet, enslaved to someone else’s intentions. At the first juncture in the road where there are no signs of life except snakes and hyenas, I command him to pull over before zipping up my cherry-coloured jacket and heaving the axe out of my unassuming tote bag and he has no choice but to comply.

I could tell him he’s been weighed on the scales and found wanting, but that would just be too much of a cliché. I could also tell him about how I was reborn in a body that wasn’t mine when my family called my spirit home, a body that is always shifting – unassuming by day yet terrible in the nighttime, but I do not have time to illuminate these things for him. I simply follow the impulse.

“Get out of the car,” I say, and he complies though his eyes flash with hate and fury. I follow him to a secluded tree where he kneels before me, awaiting judgement. I swing my axe.

The night Chimebuka and her mother sat for the first time on the veranda of their new air cabin and she saw a cat—black and sleek—saunter past through the passage like it knew exactly where it was going, she knew something bad laid ahead. To see a lone black cat not moving along stealthily was ominous, but to see it very clearly on a night when no moon or stars graced the sky, was more than a bad omen.

So, when four market days later, two officers from the Ministry of Magic Affairs arrived at their doorstep, she knew even before they spoke that something had happened to her father. After their first visitors, she and Mama hastily threw a few things into a bag. Then, just as she started drawing the circle that would transport them to the headquarters of MMA in Awka, the ding rang out for the second time.

She opened the door to see Lotanna, her father’s aide. Because ever since they became adults, she had seen him only a few times and always in the company of Papa, she asked, “Where is my Father?”

She tried not to wrap her arms around him and hold on or let Mama see the fear in her eyes as she took in his battered face, his crocked posture and his ruffled blue hospital nightwear. She instead gripped tighter the nzu she had been using to draw the circle.

“That’s why I’ve come. Inside, please.” He leaned in and hugged Mama with the hand currently not in a sling. He didn’t hug Chimebuka but kept his eyes on her face as he limped into the house, fell into one of the sofas and took the precious time Chimebuka didn’t have to catch his breath. He glanced at the nzu in her hand and asked simply, “Did they tell you to go to Awka?” When she raised her eyebrows in question, he added, “I saw them leave. What did they want?”

Chimebuka turned to her mother and saw that she was already leaving the room, perhaps, to get something, to keep busy. They were already revved up for the tumble into Awka and couldn’t keep still. She turned back to Lotanna, “No. They wanted to know if Papa—or any of our ancestors—have any links with Ndi Mmiri. One dared to ask if our family ever sold any maid from the Water people. They wouldn’t tell us what’s wrong or why they were asking all those questions.”

“If they’re asking questions, then they’ve not found him.”

“He’s missing? He’s not dead then?” Until she asked, Chimebuka hadn’t realized how much she dreaded the possibility of getting to Awka only to be told that her father was dead. But the fear which had been curled low in her stomach like a viper ready to attack didn’t unfurl; it remained twisted, tight and ready.

Lotanna seemed to notice and said quickly, “His body hasn’t been discovered. When anybody drowns in Isimmiri, the maids bring the body to shore in no more than three days. It’s been five.”

“You were with him, what happened?”

“We were on Isimmiri, on our way home, when our bubble ran into something very hard. The bubble’s sensor didn’t warn us of any impending obstacle. Before it burst, your father sent out a distress call. After that, I don’t remember anything else. I woke up in the hospital and was told General Okolo is unaccounted for.”

“I can’t sense him, that’s why I thought he’s dead,” she finally admitted one of the fears nagging just behind her right ear. Both Lotanna and Mama turned to her sharply. Her gift was not something they talked about. Only four people alive—Lotanna included—knew about her gift of being able to sense people she had met in whatever sphere she was in. She hadn’t known whether to tell her mother that when she had tried to reach out to her father—several times—she had encountered only blank space. “It’s as if he has disappeared,” her eyes widened. “Disappeared.” She whispered. “Oh, Mama. He’s not in this realm.”

Mama gave a strangled cry and leaped up from beside Lotanna where she had sat and had a tray of juice balanced on both her laps. The tray upended and fell to the cloud carpet-protected floor, scattering glassware. The juice—the bright colour of Lotanna’s hospital nightwear—pooled at Mama’s feet as she stood shaking. Neither Lotanna nor Chimebuka dared to touch her.

“Mmiri has taken him,” Mama’s voice—usually soft and sure—was edgy and unrecognizable now. Chimebuka started to come forward to take her hand, but Mama waved her back and began pacing, her momentary fear put aside. “Before we got married, we checked our stars to see if we were compatible. The ogba-aha told us we were compatible, but it is written in your father’s akaraka that the water would take him. You know your father,” she turned to Chimebuka. “He didn’t take the ogba-aha seriously; he laughed it off and told me not to worry. I loved him, so I married him but I couldn’t stop him from his scavenging; it’s family business that had become tradition over generations. And he loved the water. Every time he left, I kept vigil until he returned. It was all I could do.”

“Mama, did he sell a nwa-okpu of Ndi Mmiri?” Chimebuka was horrified at this thought. Selling a maiden of any sphere was a great alu against Ana and a lot of other deities. “It’s an unforgivable alu that stretches out to future generations. Did he do it, Mama?” Desperation made her say what normally, she wouldn’t even contemplate.

“No, no. Your father would never do that; besides, he knows there are consequences. His great grandmother was from the water. Her husband, his great grandfather lured her away from her people and married her without the biamaru uno ritual. They never forgave him and now, they’ve taken your father away from us. Despite your father’s status, the ministry won’t be eager to help when they find out the problem is ancestral.”

“He’s partly of the water. They won’t hurt him,” Chimebuka said, more to reassure herself than her mother. “We’ll bring him back, Mama.” She promised. She didn’t know how they could manage that but she didn’t like the look that had yet again come into her mother’s eyes. “We’ll bring him home.”

“How?” The question was a hopeless cry.

Lotanna wobbled to his feet. “I know of a great dibia.”

Convincing her mother to remain home while she and Lotanna went to Anaku to consult the dibia hadn’t been easy. But by the time they set out, Mama agreed to stay back in case Papa returned or called home. She looked so small and fragile as she stood at the door and watched them descend, Chimebuka almost told her to come along.

They chose to take the ground route to Anaku rather than the air route because, though it was bumpier, it had less traffic. The vehicle—round and streamlined—which Lotanna had insisted on driving himself, moved steadily at a speed of a little over 140km/hr but Chimebuka felt it moved slower than giant home-grown snails.

“Could you go faster?” She growled for the umpteenth time.

Lotanna merely glanced at her and thought how he had missed her. He couldn’t believe how distant they had become. Once, in what seemed like a very long time ago, they had been as close as two nuts in a groundnut husk. Their mothers had been best of friends and they had grown up like brother and sister until that year she had been fifteen and he sixteen, and something had come between them.

A kiss.

Now, as he stole glances at her from the corner of his eye, he wished they could go back to the way they were back then. He couldn’t give up that one kiss they had shared and the fondle that had followed, for anything. In a blink he would go back a second time and attend that New Yam Festival where they had shared that one dance in the lovers’ circle and he had laid his lips on hers, and tasted her mouth for the first time. But he wished they hadn’t avoided each other afterwards, he wished they had sat down and talked about it.

Then, he wouldn’t have been so far away to see her dark skin grow shinier, her face leaner, her brown eyes sharper, her lips and body fuller—all this as her womanhood bloomed. He wouldn’t have had to just nod politely at her on the few occasions they saw each other.

“What happened to us, Ofunwa?” He called her by the name they hadn’t called each other in a very very long time. The name drew out a gasp from Chimebuka, more than the question would have.

She couldn’t pretend to misunderstand him, so, she remained quiet.

He put the vehicle on auto-pilot and shifted to face her. He pushed, “Ofunwa.”

The name had come from a very long time ago after they had realized that their parents wouldn’t give them siblings. It had started, at first as a joke, then it had stuck till their teenage years.

And now.

“We are here.” She couldn’t quite disguise the relief she felt at the interruption.

The vehicle had stopped in front of a palm-frond wall with no gate. The GPS on the dashboard blinked an arrow a furious red and the arrow pointed up. Lotanna changed gears and swung up and into the compound.

The dibia’s apprentice greeted them by name. They looked at each other, incredulously.

“Please, come. Onu is expecting you.” The apprentice took them further into the compound and then disappeared when he brought them to the mouth of the shrine adorned chiefly in red and black.

“Remove your footwear and come inside.” A voice said. They had to bow their heads slightly to pass the cave-like entrance. Inside, a face was put to the voice, and the young, innocent-looking face was a contrast to the gruff voice that welcomed them.

“I’m Onu Ujuagu, the mouthpiece of Ujuagu. I knew before you knew yourselves that you would come.” He picked a twin metal gong and its stick from beside him and beat a harmonic tune. “Ujuagu, my agbala told me.”

Lotanna whose idea it had been to visit the dibia, watched him now, his eyes shinning skepticism. Chimebuka knew there were dibias who really had the sight and knew what they were doing and there were ones who pretended they did and played simple parlour tricks. “Did your agbala tell you why we’ve come too.”

Onu focused bi-coloured eyes on her and smiled widely, as if he knew a secret about her, she didn’t know. “Ujuagu will forgive you because—though you have gifts—you see not with the same eyes that Ujuagu does.” He turned serious, shared a look between them. “You have come because somebody you both love immensely is missing, presumed dead.”

He didn’t give them time to break out of their surprised trance and comment before he broke into rapid incantation. “Anya mmuo abughi anya mmadu. He’s being held so that he cannot return. He’s hidden, it’s only his will to return that is making him seen at all.”

“Will you help us?” Lotanna was leaning forward in his stool, both his hands braced on his laps, his eyes earnest.

“Ask, Ujuagu,” he said to Chimebuka and pointed at a figure, a carved image of a willowy woman who had her hands stretched forward as if in receipt of something. “And call your father by name.”

“Please, Ujuagu, help us bring General Obinna Okolo home.”

Onu stood abruptly from his stool and turned in circles as though he was possessed by a wild evil spirit. With his back first, he went through a door draped with raffia mat. When he came back, he held a charm wrapped in fabric similar to the ones adorning the shrine and tied in thin threads.

“Take this,” he gave it to Lotanna. “The woman shouldn’t touch it because a woman who still bleeds shouldn’t. Keep it close, always, until your return. It’ll permit you to enter into the Water realm undetected.

“You’ll come back and thank Ujuagu after, only then will I tell you my fee. If you don’t come, Ujuagu will hunt you down. “He turned his back on them, “Go, now.” then he added, “Do not look back.”

They both stood to leave. Lotanna had to use both hands to tuck the charm carefully into his bag and he winced doing it.

Onu hurried to him and touched the hand in a sling. “You can’t journey there injured. Ujuagu said to inform you that you’ll spend half the night in her healing pond. You’ll drop the fee for healing in that bowl now.”

When Lotanna had first been deployed to search and dig in River Awka beside General Okolo for olanyanwu, the magical gem that aided the growth of plants in the dying world, the second person he had wanted to tell was Mama but he hadn’t because he had bruised her heart. He had bruised a heart that had loved and nurtured him after his parents’ death when he chose the water—which she feared—over taking charge of his parents’ conglomerate. When she heard of his promotion, she had traveled all the way to Awka to bring him a cake and they were back to how they had been in the past, and no reconciliatory words were said between them.

After that, he had told her everything exactly as it was, until now, and even though he felt really guilty, he didn’t say this to Chimebuka. Instead, he said, “We should have told her the whole truth.” But she cut her eyes away from him. She agreed with him, but they couldn’t have told Mama that her daughter was going into the water too.

“Soon, all these would be mere stories.” She whispered.

Lotanna remained quiet. He was standing at the wheels urging the bubble as fast as it could move to the centre of Isimmiri, from where they could see no land or even a mirage of one. From there, they could shift and the shift wouldn’t be noticed or recorded in the Hall of Magic in Awka. And because of the charm, it wouldn’t be noticed either in the sphere of Ndi Mmiri.

Feeling a yearning to be close to Chimebuka, to at least smell her long, dreadlocked hair, as he had done while they sat together at Ujuagu’s, he automated the vehicle and wandered to the glass refrigerator, took out two cans of Fanta and had the vending machine attached to it dispense a bowl of biscuits. He went to the crystal table where Chimebuka sat, studying the map of Isimmiri.  He clicked the program off and sat the bowl and tubes before her.

“Take a break,” he said, “there’s nothing else to do until we get there.” He sat beside her and bit into a biscuit. They had barely gone through a quarter of the bowl—in silence—when he asked again, “What happened to us, Ofunwa?”

This time, there would be no interruption that would prevent her from answering. She finished chewing and considered stuffing another biscuit into her mouth. She shrugged, “I guess we drifted apart.” She met his gaze, her eyes daring him to say otherwise.

But he agreed with her. “Because we let ourselves drift apart. We could drift back again.”

“We’ll never be what we once were.” They could never have that innocuous friendship that only children could manage. Not after the lover’s circle on that New Yam Festival. She looked at him and saw in his eyes that he remembered. “We can’t.”

“I know, but I don’t want us to. You don’t want us to,” he settled his can on the table and leaned forward and took her hands. When she didn’t withdraw them, he took it as a sign, good or bad, he wasn’t sure. But he marveled at the familiarity of her hands, after such a long time. He slanted his palm—broad and rough—over her narrow one with long tapered fingers and linked them, lifted them to his lips and kissed softly.

She watched him from under her lashes. Dark and tall with a face that was a crooked nose away from being too beautiful, he could never remain the object of her sisterly affection. She had come to terms with that after she had stopped denying her attraction. She couldn’t deny it now so, she met his eyes with hers and assessed him as he did her.

Lotanna raised his hand to her face, pushed two long brown dreadlocks behind her ear, smiled into her eyes. And as always, was knocked back by them.

Onu had informed him while he had lounged in the pond that he didn’t need any charms to make him immune to the sirens’ charms because his heart had already been taken. He hadn’t needed Onu to tell him so, he knew already and was reminded every time he saw her. He was reminded every time her father mentioned her name. He was reminded at every glance at the small things that reminded him of her.

But he had surely needed the slight push from Onu urging him to tell her. Not yet though, he thought. He would wait until all this fiasco was over. Now, he would have to settle for tasting her lips again. He dropped his eyes to them, then brought them back to her eyes, searching.

Chimebuka smiled slowly and let him see the shine in her eyes before she said in a breathless, low voice , “Kiss me.” Then, she took his mouth, gingerly at first, then not.

Their lips battled for dominance. She moaned and dug her fingers into his thick dark hair and pressed his face closer. His tongue caressed her bottom lip, then slipped inside to tango with hers. Groaning into her mouth, he lifted her from the cushion and brought her to saddle his laps.

Unconsciously, she shifted to settle properly and dragged a deep moan from Lotanna. He snatched his mouth from her neck and groaned, “Damn, Ofunwa.” He kissed her again, swallowing her moans. “Don’t do that again.”

She smiled, a triumphant smile that told him she understood perfectly. “What?” She moved again and took her time climbing off him.

And they began to laugh. And laugh. And they laughed and laughed until they couldn’t anymore.

“How I’ve missed you.” He said it so simply that she turned, went to where he stood near the controls looking through the glass at the passing waves and hugged him from behind.

“Me too,” she said. “We’ll talk.”

“Yes, we will. First, we bring General Okolo home.”

The bubble stood in place and waved in tune with the gentle lapping of the water against it. They had changed from their simple attire of jeans and T-shirts to nylon lined swim suits that were resistant to both heat and cold. Watching Chimebuka strip—as if he wasn’t there—and shimmy into her swim suit had been refreshing and quite satisfying.

Now, as he watched her drawing the circle, he tried to put it out of his mind and focus on the task ahead. Again, he checked his back pack, checked hers too and ticked off his mental list. Hydrotorch, check. Cans of food, oxygen strips, double edge retractable swords, swim suits, check. And most importantly, nzu and the charm. When he finished, Chimebuka was done drawing and was standing in one of the two small spaces she had made in the circle.

He joined her inside the circle and stood opposite her. She stared into his eyes and murmured words that to him, were gibberish and soon, they were flying and flying. The world passed—white and very fast—before their eyes, the air stopped and if they listened hard, beyond the buzzing in their head, they could actually hear silence. And they were falling and falling. Then, they were both standing outside the closed door of a mansion which was white and regal in its entirety.

Lotanna quickly turned to Chimebuka and asked, “Are you okay?” and found out even before he thought it that he could speak and breathe easily.

Chimebuka replied, “I’m fine,” and created a flurry of smaller bubbles from her mouth. She reached out and started to take his hand but two very shiny people, a maid and a man holding hands came at them propelled by their scissoring legs at a surprising speed. The maid and the man swam through them, pushed the door open and went inside. The door closed after them.

“Woo, they can’t see us.”

“That shows the charm is genuine. I had my doubts.” Lotanna took her hand. “We too should scissor our legs behind us,” he demonstrated and figured he just floated quite fluidly.

A pair of glowfish circled around them before moving on and Chimebuka would have smiled had her heart not been beating so fast. They pushed open the door and went through and were greatly taken aback. The inside was magnificent and the people decked out in all manner of sparkly shells and strange ornaments stood and walked on both legs. Perhaps because, Chimebuka imagined, there was no water inside for them to swim in and for a moment, she wondered why the water stopped just at the mouth of the mansion and didn’t come through the open windows.

“Look,” Lotanna’s voice was heavy with terror. His grip on Chimebuka’s hand tightened.

She glanced up to where he had pointed and saw Papa—dark and beefy—draped in shiny ornaments. He was smiling into the eyes of a woman who was wearing a crown, kneeling before him and holding a wooden cup. The woman raised the cup to her lips, took a sip and with a half smile on her lips, handed the cup to Papa. He took the cup very gently from her, drained its content and stuffed a handful of pearls into it, sealing their marriage vows.

I’m afraid of getting lost. I would never intentionally put myself in harm’s way. That’s how I know I’m telling the truth.

See, the trick to not getting lost is simple: You should always have a beacon. A lighthouse of sorts. The lights were mine. Deep in that mountain, the village lights were tiny stationary orbs, like resting fireflies. Their soft distant glow was inviting, reassuring me that this was the right direction. The sight of them overwhelmed me with both exhaustion and rejuvenation. A frustrated delight. I took out the pen-like map and pressed the only button there.

“You have passed the Takaz Mausoleum” the robotic voice repeated.

A holographic map leapt out from the tip of the pen. Of course, I had passed the mausoleum about twenty minutes ago. It was hard to miss. They had started building it when I was a child; in honour of the planet’s founders, the first human settlers on Takaz. That was before I left the planet. It truly is a marvel to see, especially in the tint of the setting red sun. Like a glowing castle sculpted into the mountain. But you already know that, don’t you, doctor? The red dot blinked on the still map. I was about ten minutes away from the village. I switched off the map and trudged my way down the mountain to the lights.

My grandmother used to take me up there when I was a child. When they were still digging the foundation. So, I know the mountain pretty well.

“It’s a good thing” she would say, leaning on her staff. “Honouring us like this. Having people’s hands – real hands – dig your grave is an honour. There is no sentiment or dignity in having drones do it. A spirit can’t rest in a grave void of the respect and toiling of the living. You’ll see when you’re older”

I wonder who dug hers. Yes, that is the reason I came back here. I received the news five days ago because of the transmission delay. The old woman in the hologram said she was one of her friends. She also said I was listed on her will as her only next of kin. There was a tinge of anger in her voice. Perhaps, Grandma had told her why we left her on this planet.      

I had to stop after a while. My legs felt heavy. That was when I realized how dark it had gotten. Maybe I was truly lost. There were a lot more trees now than when I last came here. Maybe this was another mausoleum on another mountain. You never know. I took out the pen and switched it on again. The map illuminated the forest around me. The blinking red dot conjured pulsating shadows around me. I stared at it for a moment, waiting for something to change. The thing flashed at the same spot on the map. The exact same spot.

Silhouettes of familiar trees and rocks met my frantic glances. I looked down the mountain. The village lights remained tiny glowing orbs. How long had I been walking? Had I walked at all? I had asked beforehand, you see? At the station shop, I had asked them if their maps had been updated. I’m afraid of getting lost, you see. The staff there, that little boy, had said they were updated. He even gloated that the map’s A.I voice had been sampled from his. I didn’t trust him.

“Looks alright to me” the old man outside said when I showed him the hologram from the pen-map.

I should have just asked for a ride with him. He had been waiting for his shipment of cow embryos.

“Some kind of problem in orbit?” he had asked

“Sort of”

“I see” he tapped a hand on his leg. “Because my cargo was supposed to arrive a couple hours ago”

Well, the thing is— I know…Yes…yes. My point is the map was accurate. Didn’t you find me in that mountain? See? I wasn’t lost. The map was accurate.

The mountain was still. Eerily quiet. No animals. It almost felt like the trees had no leaves. Just looming towers of wooden labyrinths. I sat down, took out a bottle from my backpack and winced as the sour energy drink locked my jaws. I gave the map another look. Nothing had changed. The pen trembled in my hand. I rotated it, looking for a battery slot. Maybe, that was the issue. There didn’t seem to be anything you could pry open with your hands. I stood up and stared down the mountain. There it was. The village hadn’t moved an inch. I could see dots go in and out of the orbs of light. People. Or bots. It was hard to tell at this distance. Frustrated, I walked down the mountain.

I came up with a plan. I’d mark the trees whilst following the trail down the mountain. Just to confirm I was going the right way. I stuffed the pen-map somewhere deep inside my backpack. It might as well be broken. A weight fell off my chest when I saw the distant milky orbs grow with every few steps I made. The increasing brightness surrounding me assured me that I’d be out of the mountain after a few more minutes. In the distance, I could see two kids controlling a four winged cybernetic bird with their remote pads. There was a faint smell in the air too. Something fetid. Like rotting potatoes.

See, this is the part I struggle to comprehend. I was deep in the mountain again. It was as though I never left. I stared at my hands and heard my own trembling laughter. The leaves I had plucked from each tree as I descended were squished in my terrified grip. I had walked down the mountain! I had! My legs gave in and I tumbled to the ground. Sitting on this bed, I understand how it might sound to you. I do. The village was right there. It was right there. I’m terribly afraid of getting lost, you see. So, I did the only thing I could think of. I wept.

My grandmother had this belief, you see. Like most of the first settlers on Takaz, they had their superstitions. Imaginations they had carried from Earth.

“I’m looking forward to be amongst the first generation of ancestors” she laughed. “A place where the revered are buried is sacred.”

Back then, I had laughed too. But at that moment, I believed it. It was as if the mountain had been locked from the outside. With me inside it. I thought of many things and did many more. Most I choose not to say and some I remember very little of. At some point, I took out my bottle and poured some of my energy drink on the ground. I watched the liquid fizz into the ground and waited. It is not logical, I know. I know not what I was waiting for. Perhaps, I expected to somehow see a path I hadn’t seen before. An acceptance of my offering by the ancestors. When nothing happened, I staggered up enraged. I began screaming at the mountain, at my grandmother. You have to understand that I was frightened. I was lost and I didn’t know how. Or why.

“Is this why you won’t lead me home?” I rasped. “Is this why you called me here? I was a child. What did you want me to do? It was Mom’s choice!”

 I was still ranting when I heard it. A hissing nearby. I glanced around. The night, previously animated by my screams, had fallen quiet. I strained my ear and squinted at the darkness hoping either would help. These sounds echoed again from within the darkness, only they weren’t hisses. They were whispers. Voices. I hadn’t realized that I had started jogging into the forest. As I got closer, the voices became clearer. That rotten odour had returned. Stronger this time.

“—always been proud—”

“—my son left the Milky Way to join the—”

“—when do you think she will—”

“—I thought I had more time—”

Perhaps, it was a group of people also lost in the mountain. Or at the very least, someone was playing a recording from the mausoleum. A copy of the first settlers’ last words. I was about to shout at these strangers when I stopped. A thought made me scurry behind a tree. There hadn’t been any footsteps. I waited, letting the night speak, but I heard nothing besides the voices.

“—I see a grander vision for our people—”

“—please…my child…”

The voices were a stone throw behind me. My head lightened at the sudden wave of an overpowering scent. Other sounds within the voices caused me to turn. Distorted noise. Low growls and laboured breaths. Almost human. Almost not. I watched and, as my eyes made sense of the moving silhouette, my reasoned fear morphed into visceral dread.

I saw it slither. Branches snapped as the thing squeezed itself through the trees. The dim night light caught fragments of the creature, revealing an endless wall of scales. I couldn’t see where, or if, it began or ended. My thoughts were lost in the noise. There was chattering everywhere. An abominable blend of hissing, creaking and voices. It spoke with the voices of the dead as it moved.

“—this not Earth—” it coughed. “—no dogs here—”

“—happy—” it sang. “—why am I happy—”

I heard a rustling, a sweeping of leaves nearby, and forced my eyes to the ground. Something like a chaffed rope drifted side to side beside my feet. I backed my feet to the tree till I was standing on my big toes. The rope glided lazily on the ground, brushing away twigs and dirt. The chattering seemed to be moving away from me. I felt my body relax as the creaking grew faint with each second. As the last of the lazy rope slid away, it tapped my feet and froze. The chattering stopped. Spasms shook my body as the thing’s antenna slowly snaked up my leg. The snapping of twigs became louder. More violent. My eyes blurred as the hissing and clicking raced towards me.

“—Leave me here—” a voice growled

I lost my legs and hit the ground. My vision skewed as I was hauled up. Before the clamour drowned out my shrieks, I heard laughter within the many voices.

“—my children—” Grandma cackled. “—generation of ancestors—”   

I cannot tell you more than I already have because that is all I know. I don’t care whether or not you believe me but there is something on that mountain. I don’t know if it was something spiritual like my grandmother’s anger or something worse… Wait. Why don’t you seem surprised at all? Why are you looking at each other like that? D-Do you know what that thing was? Please…You need to tell me. Please tell me!