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She looked like a been-to. Fatima wondered if this was why the woman could laugh so hard and freely, because she’d “been to” other places, seen new things and the world was that much more enjoyable because of it.
She’d been so happy in that forest, away from everyone, not having to speak, being unseen, living in the moment and turning her back on the past.
People whispered things like, “She’s the adopted child of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.” There was truth in every single one of the stories.
Her story travelled like an ancestor, always ahead of, beside and behind her.
People knew exactly who she was, which meant they knew that her presence destroyed tech. But they didn’t know enough to know that it was only destroyed when she touched it.
Alhaja told Sankofa the robot had been there for decades and that before its arrival that traffic intersection had been rife with death. Car collisions, pedestrians constantly being struck and killed, road rage incidents and even late-night robberies. She didn’t know whose idea the robot was but things changed as soon as it was installed.
Had RoboTown been too content? Sankofa didn’t know. What she knew was that when the green deadly light burst from her, it felt like cool water. It put out the flames. Everything went quiet.
pain was a tricky beast, as she knew. Sometimes it took its time to officially arrive.
The farmers were probably curious, but she never showed them her glow, except on that first night when they’d asked to see with their own old old wise eyes. Only on that day had they seemed to fear her.
The leopard was staring at her, close enough for her to see into its large eyes. In the green of her glow, those eyes opened up like windows. Sankofa gazed into them as the leopard crept closer and for a moment her world fell away and everything was green like the full moon above and the full moon inside her.
And it was in this way that a bus filled with passengers came to witness the small girl wearing a dress of near rags standing in the road with a massive dead leopard.
Death named her Sankofa because by the time the child was of age, Sankofa had the ability to send people back to their past, back to The Essence. Sankofa is The Adopted Daughter of Death. And now she goes from town to town snatching lives, sending them to her adoptive mother. You see her face and you will soon see no more.
“Fatima,” she said. “My name is Fatima Okwan.” But I’m Sankofa, too, she thought. Always. “Fatima,” she said again, and the faces of her father, mother and brother shined brightly in her mind for just a moment before fading back to the washed-out images they had been since she’d left.
And so she brought forth her light. When she did, all the seeds glowing in the soil brightened. She pushed her light to grow brighter. The seeds brightened some more. Then some more. Then even brighter. And this time, she did it on purpose.
