Masquerade

by O.O. Sangoyomi

Memory is Master of Death, the chink in his armour of conceit. —Wọlé Ṣóyínká, Death and the King’s Horseman

And the Aláàfin was said to be the most skilled fighter of them all. He had taken so many lives in battle that he was often referred to as the Commander of Death.

“She makes that silly flower again and again, yet she still does not understand that it would not have died had it not been beautiful enough to be picked in the first place.”

“You see how naturally we fit? As though the human body was created for the sole purpose of completing another. If a person requires another to be whole, then it is you who I want to complete me, Alál Òdòdó.”

“What is love but a choice? I do not need to fall in love with you. I have chosen to step into it—and I pray that you choose me as well.”

For all the lands the Aláràá had conquered, they could never secure y. It was protected by the Ahosi of Dahomey, a legendary regiment of woman warriors who roamed the rainforests of the south.

It was this, even more than our seemingly mystical abilities, that made us so despised; our largest crime was being, not just women, but women without a man to belong to.

As a blacksmith, my value had lain in my ability to produce for the state. And now, according to Gassire, my value as a noblewoman would lay in … my ability to produce for the state.

“What is the key to deception?” Gassire asked. “The key is to condition the enemy to see only what you want them to see.

Sometimes stories make him a hero, and sometimes they make him a villain, but all of them say he is great. And that is admirable, isn’t it?”

They knew how to visit the past without getting trapped in its clutches, a skill as impressive as it was tragic to have already learned at their young age.

The kiss tasted like reassurance, security. The kiss tasted like power.

“Don’t worry, I’m not frightened, my dear. I always say my people are too superstitious. Witches should be honored, not feared—

But I had grown weary of these superstitions. It did not matter whether they manifested as fear or as fixation; they all stemmed from the same thing. Men called us witches, they thought us demons, and yet, it was they who wished to possess us.

I knew who he was: the same as me. He waged wars, ravaged entire villages, and killed countless people. And I committed an act equally as violent: I loved him.

“Being a witch is not the curse you think it is,” she said. “Living untethered to a man is the kindest fate a woman can meet.

“At this point, I have as much freedom in living for anything other than you as I did in having you.”

For as long as I could remember, Okóbí had hated me as well. In fact, she hated me so much that, ultimately, she had given her life to save me.

It seemed he had never considered there could be something worse than that death: both he and his second being perfectly alive, but unlikely to ever see each other again. Was this what a man looked like when his greatest fear paled to the brutality of fate?

I know I should be upset my mission failed, but I have been alone in this wretched land for nearly three years now. My only grievance is that I never got to go home.”

Like a mosquito buzzing in my ear, it would whisper: if things were going so well while Àrmọ was gone, perhaps it would be best if he never came back.

Loving him had become a reflex. Yet I was still so angry.

“When the elephant heads for the jungle, its tail is too small a handhold for the hunter who would pull it back,”

Death would not come for me—and on the off chance that he did, well, maybe then I would finally be free of this anger.

Any other man would have been honored for such efforts—but I was not a man. I was a wife.

I had loved him, but so long as I belonged to a man, I would never have any power of my own.