“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Thierry said. He was in his iguana form and he sat on the mossy shore near the Nommo resort. “You betrayed the Immaculate and you only do that once and keep your life. I suggest you burrow up into your Sacred Dirt and never come here again.”
“Do you believe that I betrayed her?” Shini asked.
“That’s a stupid question to ask anybody but her. Don’t too much matter what I think. The only opinion that matter is hers.”
“Fine, old man, you’re right. But we’ve known one another a long time. I’ve fought beside you to defend these shores and the talimbi have accepted me into your community. I care about this place because Ahdis considers it her home and you know better than anyone that I would die for all of you because she would. I love as the Immaculate does, even after all this time. I know you talk to her. Please, Thierry, I have been without the Immaculate for too long. She won’t even be in my presence. Do you know how much that hurts?”
“I do because you have said all this before, and because I’ve heard it before I know that even saying that won’t stop you from saying it again. ‘It hurts like having the Essence violently ripped from your body.’”
“…like having the Essence violently ripped from my body…” Shini was saying and he trailed off when he heard the glib tone in Thierry’s voice. “You mock my sincerity?”
“Shin, man, we buddies. I’ve always liked you and I know that Ahdis adores you, but saying the same words over and over eventually robs them of they meaning. You said you wouldn’t go back to Umuthi Omnyama, that you got no business there. Even if you can’t see her, she see you. She asked you to stay out of Umuthi Omnyama because of the evil energies there that corrupt you, but she say you there more than anywhere else.”
Both of Shini’s lips curled into his mouth and he bit them with his teeth like he was trying to swallow words that tried to battle out of him. His shoulders slumped and Thierry thought he even saw Shini shrink a bit. Shini sighed and lifted both his hands in surrender.
“I appreciate her concern, but if I just abandon Umuthi Omnyama then I am making way for something to step in like the Dark Witch Sorcerer…”
Thierry laughed loudly and it made Shini scowl at him.
“Still telling lies to cover up? You know that she knows what you do in Umuthi Omnyama, right? They tell her everything.”
Shini shook his head in frustration and paced back and forth on the mossy shore in front of Thierry
“I don’t judge,” Thierry said. “I wish that I didn’t know any of this, but when Ahdis is upset she talk to me about it and honestly, I have always been here to talk to her about anything so I shouldn’t be squeamish about this, but Essence and Death magic washing is a touchy subject in the Deep.”
“It shouldn’t be, it is a regular practice of the black muthi, other Fonlanders just think everything the black muthi do is obscene.”
“When I first learned about it, it sounded pretty strange. What you need to bathe in Essence for when it’s all around us to absorb without even thinking about it? But I tried it at the Neon Caves on Sakpata’s Disc and it was rejuvenating. The pleasure worker who shared the bath definitely helped.”
Shini shook his head. “That’s what Ahdis assumes it is everytime, bathing in Essence and rolling around intimately with something else, but Essence washing is a sacred ritual for black muthi, and not a sexual one. We do it with family, it’s gross to assume that it is just a sex thing. I have done it in the pleasure houses of Umuthi Omnyama, it certainly goes well with pleasure, but sexual pleasure is not a requirement.”
“It’s the being naked that creeps everybody out, I think,” Thierry explained. “And draining something else of its essence to wash in, that freaks people out, too, and I heard that’s the only way the black muthi do it.”
“Ahdis is wrong,” Shini said insistently. “I’ve never drained anything of its magic for washing. It only works with willing sources of Essence and nothing has to die to do it. Are some muthi into draining things dry for washing, sure, but not me and she knows that. Washing is a spiritual practice that provides euphoria through the inundation of so much magic at once and it can give visions. I have seen the face of the Mother-Father and it gave me clarity. These types of visions are important to muthi magical customs. She knows that.”
“She understands but she has seen a lot of Endladers strung out, chasing them visions that washing give, and it hurt a lot of people. You just respecting customs or you addicted to that feeling, them visions?”
Shini laughed and shook his head.
“Laugh all you want,” Thierry continued. “the mbwiri possess Fonlanders that get lost in that washing ecstasy. The Shallow Deep is full of Fonlanders with a mbwiri in their minds cause they couldn’t stop washing and it opened up their minds.”
“I am the son of the black muthi and the yumboes, I am not easily possessed. Trust me, the mbwiri have tried their best and I am still here, not a thrall. Ahdis is just jealous, she wants me to only bathe in her Essence, like she has competition from the Essence-producing moss and plants of the Deep.”
Thierry laughed, “You are good at half truths, I will give you that. You lying to yourself you think it’s the Essence producers in Umuthi Omnyama that Ahdis is upset about. It’s the Death magic that’s causing you problems. She worried it’s easier for the mbwiri to take over minds when they washed in Death magic, and the Death Witches love to rub it in her face that they washing her man. You making her look stupid.”
“We’re not married, Thierry!” Shini said with exhaustion. “You know how I know that? Cause she always rejects me. She keeps me so far away from her to keep me safe? Or she embarrassed to love a muthi when her sisters going around the surface with elder yumboes and other realmers. She embarrassed by me.”
Thierry took a deep breath that made his scaly shoulders rise and fall. He looked exhausted.
“Mother-Father knows I hate getting all up in young folks business,” he wearily. “You ain’t got no choice but to talk to her ‘cause I’m done. I love Ahdis like a daughter and ain’t no male she ever introduced me to impressed me as much as you. Y’all made for each other and I know y’all make each other happy. Beyond saying that, ain’t nothing I can do for you.”
“But she won’t talk to me, you said that already,” Shini said with frustration. “If I approach her when she’s like this, I’ll lose my head. Tell her to talk to me, Thierry, please. I need her to understand that I’m not choosing washing, Essence or death magic, over her. I never would. She’s my Immaculate…”
“Ok, ok, pipe down. I hear you and I’ll talk to her, but you know I can’t make no promises.”
“Why is she crying?” Pultine asked with disgust on her face.
“Don’t be like that,” Tracia said. “I know you feel what I feel. She is injured.”
The two mmoatia, black and red, rested Ahdis on a large flower inside of the aziza mound.
“I don’t think it’s a stupid question,” Pultine said. “When was the last time you cried from physical pain?”
Tracia’s brow shifted up and she nodded at Pultine. It takes a lot of power to make a mmoatia feel pain and Tracia realized that she had never cried from physical pain. She and Pultine stood on either side of Ahdis who lay on top of the flower like a hospital bed.
“Sorry to talk about you in front of you, but Pultine has no manners. We will help you, Ahdis.”
Ahdis stared at the mmoatia through her vision that blurred each time pain radiated from her misshapen abdomen.
“I…I don’t think…you can” Ahdis breathed heavily as she spoke. “This is…death magic.”
Ahdis saw Pultine and Tracia exchange looks across the flower.
“Tell us what happened,” Tracia said calmly.
“Shini was hurt…”
Pultine interrupted loudly and made a dismissive sound with her lips. She glared down at Ahdis.
“Why are you still tracking that muthi?” Pultine asked. “Does he have to kill you for you to learn that he has nothing to offer you?”
“Is he ok?” Tracia asked, trying to avoid the mounting argument.
“I couldn’t find him before I came to you two for help,” Ahdis said and a tear welled in her eye.
“I wish you were crying from the pain,” Pultine said. “He doesn’t deserve your tears. You need a sturdy, dependable male who will carry your things on quests. The jeris of the other realm are best for that and they are nice to look at.”
“You don’t understand Shini like I do,” Ahdis said. “He is the best companion that I could ask for…”
“Nonsense!” Pultine said loudly.
“My companion has to know the Deep like I do and that is Shini. I just wish he had more self control.”
“You should have drained him the first time you caught him bathing in another’s magic,” Pultine said angrily. “If Rusa ever did something like that, I would rip the rhasd from his body with my bare hands.”
“What happened?” Tracia asked, trying to focus their attention on Ahdis’s wound before they got distracted with talk of companions.
“The Death Witch Coven came for Shini,” Ahdis explained and Pultine made angry background noises as she talked. “He was fighting the Decay Witch and he was hit with a necrotic spell. The Coven wants to take over Umuthi Omnyama, they filled the void left by the Dark Witch Sorcerer so long ago, and now they think that they are strong enough to take it and keep it, even from me. Shini has been their biggest impediment to achieving their goals and when he was hit, he cried out like I had never heard him. I went to Umuthi Omnyama and faced the Decay Witch and she punched me with a magic I hadn’t encountered before.”
Tracia and Pultine had let go of their aspect and the glowing light of Pultine combined with the glitter of Tracia illuminated Ahdis’s body. They inspected her carefully.
“You’ll be fine,” Pultine said. “I’m sure it’s uncomfortable but it will pass. I can sense that it has weakened since we brought you here, whatever it is.”
“She’s right,” Tracia agreed. “The three of us will go to Umuthi Omnyama to discipline the Coven. It sounds like Shini has done good to frustrate the Coven on his own. He seems like a good guy.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Pultine said. “If he has lied to you before, he will do it again. You know him to be untrustworthy. Listen when people tell you who they are.”
“You are so dramatic, sister,” Tracia said. “True, dishonesty between companions only causes more problems, but companionship is a give and take. It can’t always be perfect. With time you learn to coexist so that you are both happy. Do you think that he has an unhealthy attachment to bathing in magic?”
“Honestly no,” Ahdis admitted, “but we all know the horror stories. Fonlanders become zombies, thralls, lost in feelings of ecstacy because they indulge too much, and they are never the same. I bathe him, and he can trust that I’m not corrupting him, so I don’t understand why I’m not enough.”
“I understand,” Tracia said. “But you should trust that the companion you’ve chosen can handle it or he would know better than to do it.”
“You can’t trust an addict,” Pultine said. “I believe that you love him, but he is beneath you, sister. Like Tracia said, you should trust your companion, and if you don’t, then he is not right for you. Your companion should make your life easier, not add problems.”
“Even if he isn’t my companion, I will always care for him,” Ahdis admitted. “I don’t think he’s addicted to washing, I get jealous that he is still interested in others’ Essence or magic after mine. I guess I wanted to believe that my companion wouldn’t want any other but me. Does Metatron wash in Essence?”
Tracia nodded. “Similar to the muthi, the angels of Endla have Essence shower rituals that are given by willing angels who expel their Essence. I’ve done it with him. It’s too ritualistic and in praise of Lêgba to be sexy.”
“In Umuthi Omnyama the pleasure workers use it so much that if you’re doing it there it’s definitely for sexual gratification. And I don’t mind it, but I hate to know that Shini likes it as much as he does that he would have to lie to me about doing it. It’s been so long and he just won’t stop. It’s hard not to be insecure. Maybe he has a relationship with a pleasure worker whose magic he just can’t resist, not even for me.”
“He says that he doesn’t?” Tracia asked.
“He says that he is not a fool and nothing means more to him than me.”
“And you don’t believe him?” Pultine asked.
Ahdis sighed loudly. The pain from her injury had mostly subsided but her abdomen healed slowly.
“The Dark Witch Sorcerer was fond of a love eating spell,” Ahdis said as she moved to sit up. Her sisters sat next to her. “He was power-mad and by the time I incorporated his essence, he only cared about amassing more power. He drew considerable strength from the fear of the muthi in Umuthi Omnyama under his control, but he had a source of love that he consumed regularly leading up to our confrontation. If I had waited any longer to challenge him, he may have been too much for me. The Blight Witch of the Death Witch Coven loved the Dark Witch Sorcerer and she created a cult of love for him that allowed him to secure control of Umuthi Omnyama and to challenge us on the surface.”
“Why are you recalling this?” Tracia asked and gave a look of concern to Pultine who returned it.
“Because when I allow myself to feel what the Dark Witch Sorcerer felt, I know when there is real, genuine love for me present that I can consume with the spells he used. I could eat both of you alive, even you Pultine. It’s strange, I have a love detector inside of me, so I know that Shini believes with all of himself that he loves me. I just don’t think he knows how to love me the way I’m used to, or if he ever could learn so that I’m not feeling insecure. But if I let him go because I can’t appreciate his love, then I could lose the best thing to ever happen to me because he didn’t love me like I’m used to.”
“You have an important question to ask yourself, sister,” Pultine said. “Is genuine love even important for Fonlanders like us when we can make things love us? You can find a male and use your immaculate skill to control his mind in the way us mmoatia can.”
“But that is how you end up with a Lolof when everything in your body screams for a Metatron,” Tracia said. “Even you don’t fully control Rusa,” she said to Pultine. “If you did, you’d be bored to death. The curse of the mmoatia skill is that if someone is weak enough to be fully controlled by us then we can never be our true selves with them and we’ve never known true intimacy with them. I’ve always struggled in my relationship with my mother, Golden Trumpet, for this reason. And it is true in romance. Lolof was never on my level and we were doomed from the start. Luckily that interaction did what it was meant to do before it soured.”
“Shini is too powerful to be controlled,” Ahdis said with a wistful smile. “He should be the one.”
“Time will make things clearer,” Tracia said. “We can’t all be lucky like Pultine.”
They all laughed together. When Ahdis was completely healed, they left the aziza mound to save Shini and to confront the Coven in the Deep.
“I know that I am not nearly enough,” Shini said, tears welling big and shiny in his eyes and occasionally wetting the dark skin of his cheeks. “You are the Immaculate Supreme, and I am just a lowly black muthi. But I love you Ahdis, I do…”
Ahdis couldn’t look at Shini. They stood on the mossy shores of the Deep Ocean and the nommo resort was a pile of smoldering ruins as a backdrop. The sounds of injured nommo and talimbi, cries of pain and panic, filled the area.
“I will always love you,” he said and began to levitate, his lanky body flailing as he rose from the mossy shore.
Ahdis’s worst fears had come true shortly after her sisters helped to liberate Shini from the Death Witch Coven. He had been continuously bathed in the death magic of the Pestilence Witch and even though he maintained his mental faculties and could speak his mind, his body had been seized by the Pestilence Witch who joined the Coven as a powerful mbwiri. Ahdis, with the help of her sisters, had managed to scatter the Coven to prevent it from turning Umuthi Omnyama into their power base, but she hadn’t been quick enough to save Shini from becoming a puppet.
As a thrall of the Pestilence Witch, Shini had terrorized death magic users of the Deep at the behest of the Coven who sought to assimilate all death magic before waging war on the Essence users of the Deep. Ahdis and her sisters worked together to protect the death magic of the Deep, and then Ahdis was forced to face Shini in the Deep Ocean.
Ahdis flapped her wings to meet Shini in the air. He had an evil grin on his face, and if not for her ability to feel his true love for her, Ahdis would have believed that Shini had become a heartless monster. But she felt him beneath layers of evil.
Shini moved his arms and fingers in precise patterns and his Essence-infused death magic coalesced into an intricate design.
“Why didn’t you listen to me?” Ahdis screamed with anger as the atmosphere over the Deep Ocean began to churn intensely, moved by the intensity of the magic that Shini wielded. It was purple magic, suffused with veins of light blue, and collected on the design that Shini worked at.
“I was already corrupted,” Shini said like a whisper in her ear despite the commotion. “I had tricked myself, but the Pestilence Witch has long tendrils and she did her work perfectly. She lay waste to me without me even noticing, hollowed me out and puppeted me until I was just the mask the she wore. I hate that I did not meet you before I was tainted. I wish that I had only known the ecstasy of your magic. Instead, I am a weapon of despicable things. Hear me, Immaculate Supreme, I will find my way back to you. This is not the end. The Pestilence Witch will not win this war and I will come back to you as your equal. I subsist on my love for you, Ahdis. Do not remember me as I am now.”
Ahdis was so overcome with despair that she hesitated long enough for Shini to reduce the remainder of the nommo resort and the first family that she had ever known to ashes. She yelled as her Essence formed into a shield and hardened into a glowing ivory shell on the surface of her skin, and she cried tears that instantly evaporated as she flew into the fury of Shini’s death magic. Maybe it was her punch to the back of his head, or maybe it was overload from the collected magic, but Shini exploded, sending Ahdis flying back and falling unconscious into the ocean.
To avoid war with the nommo following Shini’s attack, the Nommo Warriors were barred from accessing the Deep by decree of the Vodun Agbe. Agê promised to deliver the Witch who had destroyed the nommo resort and killed hundreds to the leader of the fearsome Nommo Warriors of Absence Trench known as Issa. Ahdis personally delivered the Pestilence Witch to Issa and even though the two had tension in the past, they were united in their hatred of the Pestilence Witch.
Ahdis met Issa at the headquarters of the nommo warriors, the Pestilence Witch contained in a ghostly white bubble of her essence.
“Thank you for being civil.” Issa signed. “I appreciate your cooperation. You may leave.”
“What will you do with her?” Ahdis asked.
“That is none of your business,” Issa signed forcefully. “My diplomacy has expired, get out of here, dirt dweller.”
“She killed Theirry and she killed…” Ahdis’s hands wouldn’t sign Shini, as if they believed him that she would see him again. “Allow me get my revenge, Fierceness Issa. We both want the same thing, for Pestilence to pay for taking innocent lives.”
“She will pay,” Issa signed. “She belongs to me now. I will bind her as my slave, the only life that she deserves. Her life belongs to me.”
“You are low…”
“And you are violating the wishes of your Vodun. I was told that you would deliver the Pestilence Witch to me. You have. Now leave these waters, you dirty the oceans.”
Ahdis left in a hurry to avoid a battle with Issa that would undoubtedly anger the Vodun. She was disappointed. Issa had spoiled her plan to absorb the Pestilence Witch and her knowledge of the spell that Shini had performed at the nommo resort. Issa had taken away the only hope Ahdis had to bring Shini back.
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