The After

  Silk that came in all colors. Dark black, when the sun’s light was filtered by clouds of grey, or when long shadows of laboring hands dimmed its light. Golden, when the hands raised it, lifted it just by the candlelight. Silver, when it hugged and pierced through, again and again.

  “Please, mother. No more silk,” I begged.

  We had been going through this for what seemed like hours, days even.

  She took a momentary pause, her hands hovering above my head, before leaving the needle next to my head.

  “With enough time, I can stitch you right up again. But we can have a break. It must be so tiring for you.”

  I shook my head. “No, you are perfect. But it hurts.” It was a subliminal pain, not the burn of a bruise or the tearing pain of a cut. It was inside.

  “Come on, stand up,” she said, “let’s bring you some bissap.”

  She patted me on the shoulder as she went. I stood up.

  I could only see from one of my eyes, but I was well familiar with the small cabin I was in. The orange light of a setting sun was pouring from the windows, especially from the westernmost one, next to where I lay.

  I clumsily found my way toward the door that led to the balcony. I loved it when I had the chance to go out to that balcony, so much so that it made the pain of the previous hours worth it. I headed to the rocking chair, knowing this was the perfect spot for any afternoon. It was covered with a blanket made of sheep fur, so soft to the touch that it immediately brought comfort. My hand ached with nostalgia as I grabbed the blanket to sit down; for what, I was not sure, but it was something of a childhood memory.

  I sat on the chair and drew the fur around me to keep me warm. Although the sun shone right on me, there was a numbing coldness, unnatural and unexpected.

  “Hey mum,” I said, and as my voice cracked, I added: “Don’t forget the mint.”

  “Of course, baby.”

  I rocked the chair a bit until she arrived.

  We were alone, which was unusual, but it worked well at the moment. I loved my siblings, but the chaos the whole family gathered was too much for me today. My mother was enough. But then again…

  “Wait. Where are…”

  “Your sister is out to the shops. Here is with extra mint,” my mother said, handing me a cold cup of the mixture of roselle flowers. Red and translucent, with leaves of mint inside, more than one would usually enjoy. I did. Mint reminded me of home. “And your brothers. Well, they probably are somewhere causing trouble.”

  I chuckled. My brothers were always like that. Or were they?

  I struggled to remember what they looked like. Neither why I could not see from my right eye.

  “Hey, mum, what…”

  She came close and caressed my head.

  “Sh, now. Don’t tire yourself, baby; the stitches won’t hold that much pain. You know what,” she said and went inside, before coming back with her needle and her silver silk. “Let’s keep it up while you are drinking that cup of sweet. Enjoy the sunset.”

  She was gone before I could object, back with the long needles and the never-ending silk. It looked like gold, as everything was doused in an orange hue from the twilight. The sun was setting behind the all-familiar hills on the edge of the horizon.

  “I have not seen such a beautiful sunset before,” I said in Baoulé. I saw the purple, the orange, the scarlet color of the sun piercing through the humidity of the jungle on the horizon. “I really haven’t.”

  The view was like a distant memory, but it was not mine.

  “I know, baby,” my mother said. She was weaving again, feeling each prickle of the needle deeper in my skull than it made sense. “I know.”

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  I sensed something in her voice. It was just how her voice cracked every time she fought with my father. A sense of sadness overwhelmed me.

  I gently pulled her hand holding the needle, and held it nestled in my palms. I turned around.

  Her eyes were brown, with a hint of green. Her dimples and kind cheeks did not betray her age; one could say she was the same age as me, her hair shorter than mine. She was holding back some tears, but she was smiling.

  “You are not my mother, aren’t you?” I said.

  I tried to hold back my disappointment. I did not want her to think I thought less of her. But as much as I knew what I was experiencing was impossible, I wished I could have felt my mother’s hand one more time.

  Her eyes shone as they grew wet. She gently nodded her head as she took a deep breath.

  “No, Kouadio.”

  I had nothing further to ask. The woman, who was not my mother, caressed my cheek. Her touch was tender, but cold, just like the sun that always set.

  “You have to understand. This is all I can do,” she said, “to protect her. This is what I know. To comfort, and to weave.”

  “And to add min in my bissap,” I said and chuckled. I took a sip from it, desperate for another sting of sweetness.

  “Is this what her Curse looks like from the inside?” I wondered out loud, but inside what, I would not know. This was no mortal realm, despite appearances. And I was a mortal.

  “Perhaps. This is all I have known,” the mother said. Not my mother, but a lonely mother.

  I drank some more bissap. She continued stitching my head while we both sat on the porch, waiting for the moments to pass. The breeze was cold and sweet, like the mint I loved.

  “Perhaps, this place is not so bad. I could get used to…”

  “Here it is. All done.”

  “I love you,” she whispered. Or I did.

  ? ? ?

  I tasted iron and wondered if it was my blood or one of the many that had crossed my path. I tasted sand, putrid and rough. Nothing like the bissap.

  I sprang my eyes open. I was in a back alley, somewhere between a house and a tall building, covered in a leather blanket and a wet jacket. Had I picked those from the trash when I ended up here, I could not remember. I had no idea what day or time it was, but the sky looked like the start of a spring evening.

  “Did you see her?”

  I was not alone in the alley. I looked up, surprised. A hooded woman stood right across the alley street and had just asked me something. My hands tried to reach for a gun or a machete, but there was nothing.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  Was she the voice that trapped me last time? The Haunt?

  The woman came closer and pulled back her hoodie.

  “No more killing, Kouadio,” the woman said.

  She was I, Demi. Or rather, I was Kouadio, and she was Demi. Alive, standing right in front of my own self, I…

  “Close your eyes. It makes it easier,” Demi said, and I obeyed. It indeed made it better. My brain could not accept her image as separate from, well, us.

  “I saw you dead,” I said.

  “I saw you dead as well. But part of my Spark resides in you. I keep coming back, Kouadio, but that is my Curse to bear, not yours,” Demi said.

  I heard her taking some steps closer, as I felt my body relaxing.

  “I did see her. The mother, at the cabin near the hills,” I said. “She is waiting.”

  “I know, I am waiting for her as well,” Demi responded. I kept my eyes closed as she drew near. I felt an itch around my body. “But I have responsibilities to the living. And a responsibility to you as well. I am so sorry for all this pain and the killing. This was not meant to happen.”

  I nodded. I did not like her when I was alive, I really did not. But, at that moment, I knew she was honest and meant purely well. I opened my eyes.

  ? ? ?

  I took another step toward Kouadio’s standing body, as he eerily looked right at me. I raised my hands, palms up, in front of him.

  “Release,” I commanded in Dida, and minuscule dark spiders dug out of all the pores and crevices, jumped off his body, running towards holes in the ground. One, the largest, landed on my palms as Kouadio’s remains collapsed, hastily decomposing.

  Micaria Chrysis. It really did its best. It had grown larger, almost the size of a palm, and developed silver linings across its body. It calmly waited as I lifted my arms and let it crawl into my mouth. I felt it find its way into my insides, trying all different directions. In a moment, I was complete. All the things I had done trapped in Kouadio’s body echoed in my head like a dream. The blood, the murder. And the Haunt.

  “So, it was indeed all a set-up,” I said, glad that it was Kouadio’s body that had to face all that, and not me.

  I searched Kouadio’s corpse for the enchanted pouches, the initial mission’s purpose. He had them all still on him.

  I grabbed them and put them all in my backpack.

  I looked at his de-sparked, rotting body, and I felt guilt for what he had to go through before I managed to find him.

  A loose Sparked on the run, stuck in a murderous command. I found solace in the idea that he had seen my mother before I released him. At the same time, I could not hate it more.