AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I gasp as Okot suddenly reappears in front of me. So close now, our noses are almost touching. I can see the white of his eyes out of the corner of mine.
“You’re here for your kelai. But, as I told you, I’ve erased every true memory of your mother, wiped it all from existence, so you cannot use it to your advantage.”
As despair roils through me, Okot continues with a sly, almost calculating tone, “I could, however, just tell you where your kelai is, so you don’t have to go sniffing across the continents. In fact, I could take you there, show you for yourself. That is what you want, is it not?”
I look up at him. “And if it is?”
“Then all you have to do is say the word and I’ll take you there.”
“But why?” The question rises again.
Why is Okot offering to take me to my kelai? Why hasn’t he just killed me and taken it himself? I’m here, he has me, and yet…
My eyes widen. “You can’t just take it, can you?” When Okot stills, blinking for just one second, I know I’m correct. The Gilded Ones were willing to kill me so they would force my kelai to emerge, but Okot, for some reason, is not, which means: “This is a proximity thing, isn’t it?” I gasp. “If you kill me, my kelai will attempt to rush back to me. But you don’t want that to happen, which means it must be in an undesirable location, perhaps one closer to the Gilded Ones. And you don’t want them snatching it before you do.”
Okot turns away, and I know I have him. I laugh. “Wait, am I correct? The place you last stored my kelai truly was near the Gilded Ones?” Mother told me the Idugu moved it periodically, but never in a million years did I think they’d be stupid enough to leave it in a place where their counterparts could access it.
And yet, that very much seems to be the case.
If Okot were human, muscles would be grinding in his jaw. Instead, thunderclouds smash across his brow as he dourly inclines his head. “I will admit, your kelai is in an undesirable place. But I can help you get to it. For a price.”
“And what price is that?” I’d almost forgotten we were haggling.
“Amnesty.”
When I frown at him, he continues: “My brothers and Anok’s sisters will soon turn on us both. Have already turned on us, as you’ve seen with Anok. Now that we are weaker, we are prey to our siblings. But if you assume your divinity and become a deity once more, you can spare us when you end the others. Allow us to live. And in return, we will bring your mother back. We will give you back everything you have lost.”
As Okot speaks, the cottage suddenly changes around us, the back wall repairing, the furnishings returning to their original places. Color seeps into the leached wood as Mother walks out of the kitchen, a plate in hand and a smile on her face. She’s talking to someone, and when I focus on the image, shocked, it’s me, only it’s not me as I am now. This me wears the flowing robes of an adult woman, a half mask to hide the top portion of her face. She is smiling as she rushes to embrace Mother.
“Mother,” Other Me says, “how happy I am to see you.”
“And you,” Mother replies, her voice so loving, my heart pangs just hearing it.
“Mother,” I whisper, everything in me yearning for her, stretching toward her. If I move just a step closer, I can breathe in her scent, fall into her arms the way I used to when I was a child.
Blue lights flash in the distance, a yawning darkness around them, but I don’t pay any attention, just as I don’t truly feel the accompanying wrongness. All I see is Mother.
“It’s not real, Deka!” Keita’s voice suddenly sounds far away, and when I turn, he’s no longer there. None of my friends are. The only thing around me now is the house as it once was, with Other Me and Mother.
And yet I hear Keita’s voice. “He’s trying to trick you, Deka. Don’t fall for it.”
Fall for what? It seems so real…. Except for those blue lights, that wrongness, everything feels real, the house, Mother, Other Me…
I turn once more to the scene unfolding before my eyes. Once upon a time, it would have been my fondest wish, this cozy domesticity. To be the woman embracing Mother, all the while cloaked in the robes and mask of a proper Oteran woman, a husband at home, no doubt, waiting for her.
Except that’s not my dream any longer. It hasn’t been in a long, long time.
This house, this version of me, they’re nightmares. Specters of a world I never wish to return to.
A cold rage fills me as I glance back at Okot. He’s there just in front of me, his body becoming more and more solid the more I look at it. “It’s a strange thing, seeing what others think you want,” I say quietly. “Most times, it says much more about them than it does about you.
“You, for instance, think I want to be that girl, the one in the mask and robes of a wife. Except I tired of ornamental masks long ago. And I prefer armor to robes now.”
“And what of your mother?” Okot sounds almost desperate as I stare up at him.
He’s realized now that his cheap little illusion isn’t working, that I’m not going to fall for the web he’s spun.
“Reanimation is against the natural order,” I say simply. And even if it weren’t, I doubt Mother would want to return to the life Okot has prescribed for her.
