The same as me

Under the deck, every sister in our room sits on the planked floor. This is a calm, peaceful ritual: backing each other, one sister cutting yours, you cutting the sister in front of you, all to help each other stay humble.

“Finally,” Sister Iyin says after I finish cutting her hair, swimming with her long icy blue tail swiftly up her hammock, directly above mine, being one year my junior. I remember how I started at the very top. Now I’m on the last row. It’s surreal to think that after next week’s birthday ceremony, after I turn sixteen, I will no longer sleep here. I will sleep with the older sisters, in beds.

But that is not the most exciting thing about turning sixteen.

I stare at my collection. Glass, pocket-watches, teeth, bits of jewellery, coins, spoons, boots, scissors, scarves, keys, and my personal favourite: a letter in a bottle. I’ve never dared try to remove the letter. I’ve been warned paper disintegrates rapidly in water. But it’s something to know I hold the personal writing of a holy person. When I sleep, I hold it the closest.

I still haven’t chosen an offering for the ceremony. If Deep Sister disapproves, I could be denied the right to explore above, and then have to wait another sixteen years for a chance to prove myself again.

Sixteen years.

I like to bask in my collection as I sleep, hoping the good luck will rub off. My sisters usually lecture me in their usual monotone, warning of the sin of greed. We’re not supposed to collect offerings unless it’s for a birthday ceremony, and even then, only one. But I’ve scouted as far as I’m allowed to go, and I have a few rarer relics among them, things I’ve never seen my sisters find. The letter especially. I tell myself I keep it because I haven’t chosen yet. I keep telling myself this.

“After your ceremony, will you give me one?” Sister Iyin’s eyes my collection. I feel both a mixture of relief in the distraction and also the urge to frown again. I manage to shake my head.

She loses interest and rests her head back. “Greed is a sin.”

“So is sloth,” I say, keeping my voice flat enough that the pride in it doesn’t show.

***

Prayers and ceremonies are held on the deck of the ship, beneath what remains of its white sails. Deep Sister’s low alto voice travels through us, smooth and clear.

“Long, long ago. Sinners, Jezebels, were brought to justice, their bodies tossed into the sea to drown. And drown they would have, if not for the orisa Olokun taking pity on the bodies that drifted deeper and deeper toward them. Their pity turned to mercy, which took the shape of rebirth. Those souls were reborn into Olokun’s gift — women with upper halves like a land dweller, their roots, but lower halves that reflected the sea, their new life.

“They were born as babies and grew into women whose hearts were meant to be changed anew, nothing like the sinful souls of their past lives. Unfortunately, after many centuries, it seems their wicked nature persisted in many. They took the gift Olokun had granted them, their voice, which was meant not only to protect the sea but to guide the holy ones on their journeys, and twisted it. They lured men into the sea to drown, as they themselves had once been drowned. So Olokun… abandoned them… or so they thought.

“They cannot be killed by bodily harm, only naturally, after three hundred years of life, yet for little over a decade now, prematurely dead bodies have been found around us, showing Olokun has finally unleashed their wrath on our kind. Mostly rogues, but we’ve lost sisters too. That is why we must repent. We must keep our emotions in check, lest we lose control to our demoness. As the three before us celebrate their sixteenth birthday, they are granted the right to exercise their will to explore. Stay out of sight, out of hearing. Observe. Take the opportunity to study the holy ones. Wipe away more of that darkness. Do not be like the rogues.”

I keep my face hardened, but feel my eyes settle with determination. I will be responsible. I must.

“Now present your offerings.”

Twin Folu steps forward and presents a pair of glasses. Accepted. I press my hands together to ease the trembling as I meet Deep Sister’s hard, grey eyes.

“My offering…” A whole week of deciding, with no conviction. A whole week of searching for new things I might feel less attached to, only to find myself clinging to them just as tightly as I slept. A whole week with this dangerous idea quietly building inside me. Our offerings don’t truly satisfy Olokun. We’re still cursed. More bodies keep being found. Things are only getting worse.

“…is a song.”

So, what if we try something entirely new?

Deep Sister doesn’t move. Around me, a low murmur stirs among my sisters.

“Pardon?”

I close my eyes. I clench my fists, draw in water, feel it rush through my gills, and sing.

“The sea has many faces,

So too must our devotion.

The sea has many faces,

So too must our devotion.

“Our offerings — must we not weigh, weigh them?

Olokun, Olokun,

Keeper of the depths,

Do you not hunger for more than relics?

“We are daughters of the deep, my sisters,

And the deep is never still.

Let a song be our offering,

Let our voices be our proof.

What is more loyal

Than a song in their honour?

“The sea has many faces,

So too must our devo —”

A slap hits my face like hot iron, knocking me to the ground.

“Rejected.” I look up at Deep Sister. Her face is still blank. But her cold gaze gives her away.

“What — why?!” My eyes go wide. I feel my teeth rattle against each other.

“I hear a rise in your voice, and wipe that tear, it’s nearly as disgraceful as that song.”

I swallow, feeling naked under every pair of eyes around me. I quickly wipe the tear threatening to bring more of its siblings. “A… apologies, Deep Sister. May I hear why it’s been rejected?”

“What you proposed was not an offering. You would be mocking Olokun with the very gift our kind twisted. We offer only the things of the holy, not the things of the sinned.”

Sixteen years. Sixteen more years I will have to wait.

That night, the number follows me — sixteen, sixteen — even as my sisters comfort me, even as I eat, even as I lie in my hammock surrounded by my collection. My beloved treasures. Treasures that could have secured my right to explore above.

Greed. Sister Iyin’s voice sounds in my head. Greed. Greed. Greed.

The word is enough to make me rise. I untie the hammock, bundle my collection inside it, and leave the sleeping quarters, leave the ship itself. I swim to the cliff, hot tears rising straight up from my face until they’re just part of the sea around me. I untie the hammock and let my treasures roll out near the edge. Without anything heavy to weigh them down, they drift upward, floating above the deep darkness below rather than sinking into it.

“Take your offerings. Take them all, pull them down yourself.” My voice cracks slightly. “Just…please…let me explore. Is it not my right?”

Then I notice the letter in the bottle. The closest I would probably come to the holy people for sixteen more miserable years. In a flash, I reach for it and press it against my heart. This one I keep. It’s mine.

“You finally let most of them go.”

I flinch. Sister Iyin is beside me, her green eyes glittering in a way I’ve never seen before. Her face is looser. I almost gasp. For the first time since I’ve known her, she’s let herself falter, just slightly.

“Your reasoning was sound…and your song inspiring. I wish Deep Sister had considered it more.” She pauses. “Before I came here three years ago, I had known of a sea àjẹ́. My older sister sought her, to wish for a cure for her pet seahorse. His body was in the early stages of contorting into a sea monster. And so I asked whether she could do the same for us. Make us land dwellers, like we once were. She could give us legs. But at the cost of our voice. My sister loved her voice too much, and later… left to become a rogue. So I couldn’t request it either. But I can tell this life doesn’t fit you. Maybe it’s not meant to. If you’d like, perhaps you should look for this sea àjẹ́.”

“Of course I want to leave. I want to become holy. If Olokun won’t accept my voice, then what use is it?”

“To find her, you need to venture between the forbidden whirlpools. Keep moving forward once you’re inside.”

The forbidden whirlpools. A shiver runs down my spine. Still, I turn it over in my head. Two choices: stay, wait another sixteen years, earn my right to explore in measured glimpses. Or leave.

“Thank you,” I release her hand. “I’m sorry…”

She doesn’t ask what I’m sorry for. Maybe she knows. All she does is nod. “Good luck.”

Then she turns and swims back toward the ship.

I look down at the letter in its bottle, still pressed against my heart. Then I look up.

***

It took me a day to reach the forbidden whirlpools. Seeing those mighty swirls drag everything within reach into their chaos, my mind immediately debates turning back. But I clench my hands into fists and fix my gaze on the straight path between them. I must keep moving forward.

I bolt, only looking forward. One…Two…Three…I stop dead. Slowly, I turn to see that I did it. The whirlpools are far behind me. Ahead, something emerges in the distance.

A house materialises slowly, assembling itself piece by piece until I am standing before it: a small dwelling made of many, many bones. There is no door, and through the open frame I can already see a beautiful woman who looks no older than fifty, plump arms folded, head tilted, as if she has been expecting me. Two pairs of red eyes appear from behind her, stalking forward. Sea monsters. My throat tightens.

But the woman unfolds her arms, bending her hands to reveal her palms, holding what looks like rotten animal flesh. The sea monsters rush forward, ravaging it, then twirl around her head before settling into her long red freeform locs.

“She knows why you’re here.” Her amber eyes hold mine, unblinking. “She won’t help you. No, no, no.” A pause. Her body shivers slightly. “She would be a hypocrite to refuse you though, wouldn’t she? Well. As long as you pay the price. Your voice.”

“I know,” I nod.

“She knows you know.” She laughs. Cackles and cracks tumbling freely through the water. I have never once surrendered to laughter, besides in childhood, so seeing a laughter so raw and carefree is… jarring. “How hungry are you to walk on land?”

I take a moment. “Extremely so.”

Her tone shifts, serious now. “There is no going back. Can you stand the pain? When she makes this potion, you will gain the benefits of both land and sea. You will keep your tail in the water, but on land you will walk on legs. Your price is your voice alone, but you will pay another price to the magic. Every time you transform from tail to legs, it will feel like someone seizing each fin and tearing them apart, ripping your tail in two. And once you’ve recovered from that you will stride as gracefully as if you’ve walked all your life, but wherever your bare feet meet the ground, it will feel like walking on glass. Can you still do this?”

“Yes. I will.”

She steps toward me and wraps a hot hand around my throat. Her long black nails press into my skin. For a second, I feel as though I’m choking — then she releases me quickly, as if catching something that has floated free from my mouth. She closes her fist around whatever it is and hurries to the shelves lining her walls, taking down an empty jar, slipping the thing inside. It is only when she seals it that I see it: a glowing blue light, trapped in the glass.

“She sells them, of course,” she says, as if she could read my mind, which she probably can. “To those who have lost their voice to injury, or who simply dislike their own.”

I look at the jar. I imagine someone else speaking with my voice. Singing with it, the way I never could. I shake my head and bury the thought.

She points outside. “She doesn’t have all the ingredients for the potion. You must fetch them. A shark tooth, the eye of a drowned land dweller, and a live snake.”

But I’d have to swim close to the surface for a live one.

“Do you want to become holy or not?”

I leave without another word, racing back through the forbidden whirlpools and into yet another journey. Five days. By the time I return, I am slouched and numb from snake bites, and half my hair has grown far beyond where it should; the other half is my clumsy, desperate attempt at cutting it with the shark tooth. It’s nowhere near as cropped as I hoped. But it’s something.

She barely glances at me, already stirring something in a cauldron — dark and solid, curving slightly at the mouth, three short sticks holding it steady at its base. I pour in the eye, the tooth, and the snake without looking, hearing the sickening pulping sounds as each one goes under. Everything dissolves into the liquid astonishingly fast.

Then she stops. Faces me with an unreadable expression. “One more ingredient.”

She disappears into the shadows and returns slowly, a knife coming into view. I stagger back so fast I slam my head against the ceiling and drop to the floor, where she towers over me, amber eyes burning almost red.

Then I feel it. Something sharp presses at my stomach, but doesn’t push deeper. And beneath that, my own hands wrapped around something solid, another pair of hands wrapping around mine, forcing me to hold it. The knife handle is pointed at my stomach. I feel her hands guiding mine, shifting the blade from my stomach, up toward the ceiling, then slowly toward her.

She pulls me up with our hands still locked together. We stop right at the cauldron. “For the final ingredient, I need you to pierce her heart.”

I can’t do that.

“She will not die, remember? We can’t be killed.”

I look down at the knife, unable to move.

“Her heart has been pierced before, no need to worry about it, and isn’t that the advantage of being us? All we can feel is pain, or maybe it’s more of a curse… Regardless, you should know that while on land, in that form, you can be kill…”

Her voice stops, and I expect her to pass out, but her eyes drop slowly to what I’ve done, then rise back to mine at the same pace. A smile creeps onto her face. She says nothing as she turns from me, pulls the knife from her own body, and lets the scarlet blood rush out into the cauldron.

Finally, she pours the liquid into a cup and holds it out to me. It is surprisingly clear as water. I close my eyes and swallow. It tastes like nothing, but feels like pouring hot acid down my throat. After a few seconds, the burning fades, and I feel perfectly fine.

“Once you’re on land, you’ll transform. And you can transform back anytime you find yourself at sea again.”

I nod. Thank you, sea… what’s your name?

“Areej. And don’t thank her, she just helped you sign your death wish.”

I leave after that, replaying those last words in my mind. Still, as I rise upward, I feel myself smiling, and for once, I don’t mind. It doesn’t matter what expression I wear right now. Once I reach the surface, I will be holy. Or at least, I’ll look so on land.

The higher I rise, the more my feelings tangle. I know I can never go back to my ship, my home. I have broken the rules. They cannot accept me, especially since I intend to break my code: Stay out of sight, out of hearing. Perhaps Deep Sister would take some comfort in knowing I still technically uphold the second half of it.

When I finally break the surface, my eyes are shut as I gasp, adjusting to the strange wind moving into my nose and down my throat. I forgot that our upper halves reflect our roots. This must be how the land dwellers breathe. I stay there a little longer, just breathing. Each breath is delicious, cool rushing in, warmth breathing out, tickling above my lips.

When I finally open my eyes, I look up. A white circle hangs in the sky. The moon. It glows down, it and its small siblings, the stars, their light reflected on the ocean’s surface, casting back the darkness beneath. It must be night.

I move toward the sand I can see not far off. When I reach it, I scoop some up and bring it to my nose. The grains near the water are damp and smell of the sea: salt, oil, seaweed, rocks, decay. I shift a little further from the water’s edge and try the drier ones. They smell of almost nothing. Just warmth.

I pull my whole body up from the sea and onto the sand, onto the land. I can hear voices not too far off, shouts, and solid things clashing together. But I can’t listen long, can’t take in more of my new surroundings, because pain tears through my tail. It is so sudden and so complete that it barely takes a second before I lose consciousness.

***

When I wake, I want to scream. Nothing comes out of my open mouth.

I am crammed into a dark space with about twenty others, young men and women together, packed into a space with some food but no windows. Thin lines of dust drift through the wooden cracks, the only thing seeping in from outside. The only light is a single lamp, cradled by one of the oldest-looking men in the space. We sway and tilt, our bodies pressing close, and I find myself pushed toward men with loose, measuring smiles and eyes that make me feel small, helpless, and horrified.

I question my own body’s shiver. There’s something strangely familiar about this feeling. But I know I can’t feel this way toward holy people. It must be my weapon, as Deep Sister always called it, the thing that makes them stare as they do. I press myself further back.

A woman who looks three or so years older than me draws me toward her and drapes part of her long wrapper over my bare legs, and that’s when it hits me. I look down.

My legs. Long, glorious, beautiful, holy legs.

My joy must have shown, because the woman and a few others look at me with raised brows. I compose myself. A normal land dweller would not be celebrating the sight of normal legs. Especially when her priorities should be on where she is being taken, why, and by whom.

A few days pass. The space reeks of urine as people used jars previously holding drinks. Some people sleep, some sob. People rarely talk, and when they do, they ask things like, What will they do to us? How far are we from Ilé ayọ̀? Will I see my family again? Can we escape? No one seems to ask who took us, as if they already know.

We lurch to a stop, sending us stumbling into each other. The motion had felt almost comforting while it lasted, but now that it’s gone, the grim reality presses back in. One of the walls surrounding us drops open, flooding the space with light and heat. When my eyes adjust, I see men in uniform, pulling us out, shouting in a language I don’t know.

We are sorted into two lines. Women, men. Rope is looped and secured around our waists, our hands tied behind our backs. Guards tug the lines forward.

I look back at what carried us, a large wooden structure mounted on circular things, wheels they must be, attached at the front to two great beasts, their long heads each the length of a whole fish’s body. The rope pulls, and I face forward again. It doesn’t matter. There is enough ahead to fill my eyes.

Under a hot, generous sun, buildings rise as if they have grown straight from the earth. Some are the soft golden-brown of clay, nearly blending into the ground so that the edges between land and wall feel uncertain. Others refuse to disappear. They hold colour. Faded reds, deep browns, washed yellows.

Some buildings are round, rising like mounds with smooth sides and thatched tops that droop slightly at the edges. Others are square but softened, their corners pressed down, their roofs edged with small upward points that jut into the sky.

The smell thickens as we move further in. Dust rises with each step, fine and dry. It mixes with the smell of animals, and smoke curls from somewhere unseen, carrying cooked food, spices sharp enough to sting slightly at the back of my throat.

The sights almost distract me from my feet. Almost. Areej was right, each step feels like walking on glass. But I have slept with glass before. It’s nothing I can’t bear. The pricks are almost familiar, almost soothing, reminding me of my collection pressed against my skin as I slept. My precious collection, which is somewhere far away now, deep in the sea.

No. Take your mind off it.

I watch the people moving around us instead. Their clothing catches my eye the way the buildings did. Long garments falling from shoulder to ankle, wide and loose, shifting with each step. Cloth wound around heads, some tightly, some in rising folds.

Some people don’t look at us at all. Others glance quickly, eyes sliding past and away. A few stare longer, faces still.

Then I begin to notice the walls. Not the walls of the buildings. Something larger. At first, they blend into everything, just another rise of clay. But as we walk, they continue. And continue. Too long to belong to any single house, too tall to ignore. They are thick, rising well above the rooftops, their surfaces marked with careful patterns.

We pass through an opening in one of them, wide enough for many people at once, and then I see it. Rising beyond everything, almost continuous with the sky itself.

A palace. It must be. Everything else feels smaller in its presence.

I feel smaller in its presence.

***

The hut I share with four others is small and round, packed earth and thatch, cool inside… a relief. Five thin woven mats spread across the floor. A clay water jar, a wooden bowl, a bundle of folded clothes along the wall.

Inside, in the dim light, I am given back my letter in its bottle by the woman who had kept it safe for me in the caravan, her name is Nifa, I learn, she says it herself with a short, dry laugh. Monifa. “Ironic, I know. I don’t feel very lucky right now.” She had hidden the bottle in the folds of her wrapper during the journey. “You were still holding it while you were out,” she says. “So I kept it.” I hold it close the way I always have, and look up at her, hoping my eyes say what my mouth can’t. Thank you. She nods as if she understands, then drops herself onto the mat beside me.

Another woman, Ndidi, crouches to look at my feet almost immediately, reaching for a small bowl of dark green paste and beginning to apply it without being asked. I wince slightly. Then the coolness spreads, and it’s a relief. “What happened to your feet? These are Crushed scent leaves,” she says, already wrapping each foot in a small strip of cloth. “They should stop the bleeding and help with pain. Don’t move yet.”

Later, once she’s satisfied, I won’t bleed through the night, she settles back onto her own mat and sleeps.

Few days and with so much work in the day I find sleep is something the night holds against me.

One day, I wake extremely early, far before the light has fully settled. Everyone else is asleep. I hear the sound of quiet footsteps. I move toward the sound slowly, carefully. It grows slightly louder the closer I get. Then it stops. I lower my gaze to the small gap where the draped material that serves as our door doesn’t quite reach the ground. A pair of feet, just standing there. Then a rough-looking hand sweeps aside the material.

He ogles me with a wide smile, muttering something I don’t understand. He sets the light down on the ground. Then his hands find my shoulders, and he shoves me down roughly, taking himself down with me.

I feel frozen. I can push him off easily… no, that’s wrong, he’s holy. This must be a misunderstanding.

A sharp pain tears through me, and every thought I have dissolves, like something getting tossed into Areej’s cauldron, poured in and reduced to nothing but hot, formless liquid. Disgusting. All of this is disgusting. Bubbles. Foam. I feel my mouth open. I think there’s supposed to be a sound. There isn’t one. There is nothing but grunting, and then I can’t even hear that anymore. Only the sound of things dropping, pulping, falling into that cauldron one by one.

I turn my head away. Everywhere I look, disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. Until all I see is darkness.

When I snap my eyes open again, I’m panting, and I feel my body drenched in sweat. I see Yewande, Ndidi, and Tahira holding my arms; they are drilling holes into my face as if there’s something on it.

I hear something pounding, like flesh hitting flesh, like… Disgusting. Disgusting.  I grimace, turning frantically to find Nifa, nostrils flared, eyes and nose running, brows knotted tight, her fists coming down on something. Someone.

The man beneath her is still, almost as if in shock.

“You…!” Her scream is hoarse.

“It’s okay… stop… he’ll get you in tr…!” I hear Ndidi’s voice; she sounds panicky.

“It’s NOT okay!”

In that moment, the man rises, overpowering her, and now he’s the one hitting. Nifa groans, trying to shield herself with her arms. He yells as he does it, keeps going until something in him is satisfied. Then he stands, dresses himself. His narrowed eyes move over all of us slowly, and when they reach mine, I feel frozen all over again.

Then he’s gone. Just like that. And I can breathe sweet air again.

***

Hours later, the older women come to wake us. But we’re all already awake. None of us slept. We couldn’t.

The routine is the same as yesterday. My feet still bleed, but I can’t feel them. When I bathe, I can’t feel the water trailing down my skin. I can’t feel anything at all.

I only feel again when I see the whips. The stones getting thrown. The kicks, the stomping. When I hear the cheering, the yelling, the winces, the groans of someone being made to feel everything, until she goes numb and stops moving. Until she’s dragged away for possibly more of it.

Nifa. The kind and thoughtful woman to me. Nifa. who had raised her voice at our overseer that first day and been struck down for it, who had been the only one to fight back for me.

Nifa.

I want to call after her. I want her to wake up, to keep fighting, to get up and say something cutting in that snarky voice of hers. But I can’t. I find the others in the crowd, among the snarls and cheers and raised fists. I can’t hear any of them call after her. They could. But they don’t. They only watch it unfold, the same as me.

They can’t speak. The same as me.

The chanting fades into the sound of pulping, soft and wet.

Disgusting.

The same as me.