The wind moaned as if in pain that early morning. The skies above were pitch black, a boiling canvas that twisted and churned like a fiend from the underworld. The heavens groaned, each contraction of thunder a cry of labor, until—finally—it split open with a deafening clap, unleashing a deluge that buried the world beneath.
Amanse sat in bed, thinking. He always thought better in the rain.
He could hear it now—soft tapping, then dripping—telling him that the roof had surrendered once more to the water's persistence. His room was silent otherwise, save for his mind, which echoed with the recent voices of his kinsmen. Their words clashed like cymbals in his head.
> "Amanse, sit down! Nodu ala! Before you finish a sentence, Anyanwu would have gone to meet Onwa, his wife!"
Fools, he thought bitterly. If only they knew what he knew.
Amanse wasn't one to stand out. Small, very dark, with features people forgot as quickly as they noticed them. His only striking trait was his set of even, white teeth and the strange multi-colored eyes that changed with his mood. Today, they glimmered a stormy grey.
He recalled the astral projection—one he hadn't meant to fall into, yet one that revealed too much. He had projected part of his soul into a vulture, one of the many scavengers that circled the village outskirts, and soared into the skies.
The feeling was always intoxicating: the warm thermals carrying him higher, the wind combing through feathers that were not his.
> "Caaaaaaawwwww!"
Was that him through the vulture? Or the vulture through him? It was always difficult to say.
Amanse had a secret: he was an Ehihi—a skin-wearer. One of the rare few able to slip into the bodies of animals and control them for a time. It was a gift as ancient as the earth, but one wrapped in suspicion and danger. The village didn't celebrate his kind; they feared them. And fear could kill. A dead goat was enough reason to hang an Ehihi if the wrong man whispered it in the ears of a mob.
So, he hid it.
But what he had seen that night through the vulture's eyes… That wasn't something to keep quiet about.
He had flown over the forest clearing and perched, unknowingly, above a meeting not meant for mortal eyes. Five figures stood around a blood-streaked altar, the remains of a black goat steaming on the rock beneath them. Four elemental spirits—earth, air, fire, and water—bowed before a crone whose eyes could burn through bone.
> "Ozoba, Obulu, Ojuku, Ekpe—my children, welcome to the gathering."
Amanse remembered the chill. The way their heads turned slowly, unnaturally, toward him. Not him, the vulture.
> "There is a presence here," the crone whispered.
And then Obulu had stepped forward, her hand dipping into a leather pouch to retrieve white powder.
Juju.
Panic surged. Amanse pulled his soul from the vulture just before the powder was cast. The poor bird combusted into white-hot flame, screaming until it was gone. Amanse had never felt guilt like that.
But he didn't escape fully. His soul had drifted, lost, until it found a lizard climbing a nearby Iroko tree. He slipped inside, climbed higher—but Obulu's power was relentless. Her juju was a hot wind combing the space like a scent hound.
When it found him, it gripped his astral form like a vice. Back in his real body, Amanse thrashed in bed. Blood oozed from his nose, his ears. His brain screamed. He barely made it back in time. Gasping. Mucus and blood clotted on his face. Alive.
> That was too close.
As he paced the room to steady his nerves, a sharp smell reached him—familiar yet out of place. Not the damp rot of his home. Not the stale scent of leftover soup. No. This was sharp. Electric.
> Ozone.
He dove out of the way just in time.
A bolt of lightning cracked through his room. The wood burned. Smoke curled. A blackened scar etched itself into the earth where he had stood seconds before.
They were coming for him.
The rain hadn't stopped. He wrapped himself in a thick wrapper and stumbled outside toward his Obi—his spiritual chamber. It stood in the center of his compound, walls of red clay etched with hundreds of ancient drawings. Warriors. Spirits. Beasts. Gods. His father's grave lay directly beneath the center bench—the Oboro, the seat of ancestral communion and power.
He poured libation, palm wine and gin soaking the earth.
> "Ndi nwe m, ekene m—I greet you, my ancestors."
How could he tell his kinsmen what he had seen? How could he warn them of what crept in the forests, what danced with blood and elemental fire—without revealing his forbidden truth?
How long he sat there, he did not know. The rain fell still.
Then it came.
> Thump. Thump. Thump.
It wasn't footsteps. It was the earth itself, breathing, pounding, birthing. Before his wide eyes, an anthill rose from the ground like a living spine, pushing soil aside, climbing higher until it reached the height of a man.
Then it split open.
A masquerade emerged, dancing in perfect rhythm to the drumbeat only it could hear. It was unlike anything Amanse had seen. Not like the mockeries children danced with. This was real.
It was Nwangele—the spirit of balance, of opposites, the hermaphrodite deity that represented all and none. It had two faces, one male, one female, split perfectly down the center. Muscles rippled on one side. Full breasts swayed on the other. One hand clenched a staff; the other, a raffia fan.
It danced. Then it stopped.
And it stared at him.
Amanse's bones turned to ice.
This was no vision.
This was a summons.