18°41'34.2"N 12°55'10.6"E

  Bilma, Niger

  23.05.2024 – 17:30 UTC +01

  I took a book out of my bag. One of the many Fezzan books I carried through our trip, this was the one that I had studied the most. I flipped through its pages.

  Protective Wards, Invisibility Wards, Tattoo Wards…

  There was information on all kinds of warding Curses.

  “Manifold Wards,” I spotted it, finally. I read through the passage and walked back into the alley.

  According to the book, these wards were hard to find and impressive to witness, but once you knew where to look, it was easy to trespass on them. Their whole point was that they were manipulable. A Cursed stronger than the one who set those wards should easily bend them. So, I just had to hope I was powerful enough.

  I looked right into the vines that covered both buildings, left and right. I reached with my hand into the vine. I felt it there, hidden among the leaves and the asphalt of the building. Another side. I twisted and pulled. I twisted again. It felt as if reality itself unraveled, as I saw the alley bend and break, revealing a new path.

  Walls, ground, vines, and the sky. They all swirled as reality bent into a kaleidoscopic reshaping. Soundless, but colorful.

  The world rearranged the building in front of me, splitting it into two and creating an alleyway. The left side mirrored the right, while vines of ivy crawled and defined the walls inside the alleyway, spinning and spreading like a yarn rolling over reality itself, until they arched overhead and formed a dark green ceiling to the alleyway.

  Barring a resting vibration – as if the molecules of matter still felt the wave of the Manifold ward – everything became stable in the end. The vines’ shadow paved a path, which I was meant to walk.

  I quickly put the book back in my backpack and Aisa’s metal card with the Cúró Jòró’s address in my pocket.

  “The Inside Cliff. Where she lurks,” I repeated Aisa’s words, and now the entrance made me realize the choice of words was not accidental. The alleyway went so deep, and the vines were so thick, I could not see its end. The danger I felt as I was ready to step onto the path felt both like the edge of a precipice and the inside of a lair of a beast. “Here I go.”

  I stepped in. I waited for my Calling, but it did not react or try to control me. I waited for my Hearing of the Nabd, also for nothing.

  I stepped once again, and I noticed the vines on the floor vibrating and the light diminishing. I looked back: the vines behind me started weaving a wall blocking the entrance. Behind them, the mirroring walls curved and closed, rearranging behind me and sealing the exit.

  I turned forward again. I pulled out my phone and used its flickering flashlight to see ahead.

  There was a door at the end of the pathway.

  I started walking, with small and steady steps, while the phone’s shaking light revealed how truly nervous I was. I was inside the manifold ward. My skin constantly shivered, but I had to remind myself that I could exit the same way I entered anytime. I should be able to.

  “Sh,” a voice shushed me through the corridor. The shushing sound echoed again and again. My Hearing did not indicate someone else, but I was sure I could hear shushing.

  “I am looking for Yahaya,” I said. Hearing me speak, I realized just how scared I was.

  Maybe I had to consider not following through with Aisa’s mission. Run back to Qadir at the Baobab Inn.

  “Yahaya?” I asked.

  The whispers intensified, and a feeling of dread engulfed me. Something unnatural was standing behind me. I could feel its breath and its gaze upon my body, but there was no Nabd to hear. My phone’s light weakened.

  “Shush.”

  The echo commanded obedience and ripped it apart at the same time. I could not wait: I started running to the door ahead of me, not daring to look behind. There was an unmistakable feeling that if I looked behind, something terrifying would happen.

  “Shush!”

  I screamed as I reached the door. I pushed it open, and then once on the other side, I shut it immediately behind me. The whispers ended, and so did the feeling of dread.

  I heard a woman screaming, and then the sound of porcelain being smashed into pieces. Then I heard a woman scolding me, in a southern accent, in a dialect I did not recognize. But she was mad, shouting both at me and a large plate of food that had spread its contents – and itself – to the floor right in front of me.

  The woman continued shouting at me, and I was at a loss. I looked around in frustration: I was in a large room that looked like a library and a kitchen at the same time, with tables and chairs arranged in the middle, and shelves brimming with books lining the walls.

  The woman stopped cussing, as if she had just realized that the reason she was startled was me. Her eyes rolled back, revealing the grey whites of their backside.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” She asked in Arabic.

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  “I am Khalida. Aisa sent me to find Yahaya,” I responded as quickly as I could. I raised my hands in what I hoped would be recognized as a sign of a peaceful approach. Who knew what Curses that girl possessed?

  This could not be Yahaya, or at least that’s not how I pictured her. Sure, Aisa had not given me a description, but by the nature of her “witch” title, I expected someone looking old and wise. Like the witch in Waw al Kabir.

  But this was a young girl, not older than twenty years old. She was dressed in clothes that would look already too hip and risqué for me to try, her legs being covered in a long jean skirt, and wearing a colorful headscarf.

  The girl’s eyes turned back to normal, and I saw her weep tears of strain.

  “What’s with the phone?” She asked, pointing at one of my hands. I was still holding my phone with the flashlight on.

  “Oh, it’s a… never mind. It was dark outside,” I said, and hastily turned it off. “So, are you Yahaya?” I asked.

  “Yahaya is gone. I am her pupil and the master of the Cúró Jòró,” she answered. “State your business. Did you bring food?”

  I felt ambushed by her formality. It did not match her image. She looked like a late high-school dropout. And why did she think I had food?

  “Aisa told me that if I came to find Yahaya, I would be able to help with a problem she is facing. So here I am. No food, I am afraid.”

  “I do not know who Aisa is,” the girl answered.

  “The Lioness?”

  She raised her eyebrows and clicked her tongue, “No clue.”

  “From the Ngam Kúrà?”

  “I have no idea what these cats are. You will have to wait for Miss Yahaya until she comes back. And help me out with the mess you caused,” she said, pointing at the pieces of a dish scattered across the floor.

  It could be worse. This girl might not have been what I expected to face, and as far as I could tell, she was my only lead to Yahaya.

  “Okay then,” I said.

  It was clear this was not the moment to ask more questions. I helped quickly with collecting the pieces from across the floor and threw them in the trash, while the girl scooped up the remains of food diligently.

  Once we were done, she pointed me to a chair and a table.

  “Here. You can read a book while you are waiting,” the girl said, gesturing at the shelves around the big room. I wondered if there were more floors to this place.

  “Sure, I can wait.”

  I glanced around the room.

  It was made of wood, or at least finished with it, and then varnished light brown. There were only two doors: the one the girl had just gone through, and the one I had just stepped through from the outside. There was something off-putting with the geometry of the place, with the room being somehow circular and the furniture being thrown around to create rooms out of disorder.

  The part of the room I was in had a lot of shelves and small tables, giving off the purpose of a library. Another part of the room had chairs and couches in a smaller circle, somehow creating the impression that multiple people would be living there and sharing that as a living room. The walls of the room were adorned mostly by house plants and elaborate oil paintings of nature. Jungle landscapes, I assumed from the south. Nigeria or Benin.

  No more than ten minutes had passed when the girl joined the table with two cups of tea. She sipped from one of them and then offered me the other.

  I nodded thankfully. I took the cup and left it in front of me before I decided to sip a little bit of its contents.

  “So, you look like you are from the North,” the girl said.

  “Libya. That’s a nice tea.”

  “I am from Nigeria originally. My name is Tiwalade. But I have spent most of my life here in Bilma,” she said, “I am studying under Miss Yahaya.”

  “What are you studying?”

  “My Curses. I am the one protecting the Cúró Jòró, but Miss taught me how to,” Tiwalade said. She looked around and then at me, as if she was hoping that her duties would somehow impress me. I had to bite.

  “Was it your trick? The one with the illusion outside?”

  “I call it Mindmist. I scare people to break them. This was just a hex I had placed, for protection. But it cannot do much more than scare someone,” Tiwalade explained. She started talking about the mindmist hex and how her Curse lets her instill fear in others.

  I admired her excitement and openness about her Curse. I always feared explaining mine.

  After she had walked me through all she had learned to do with the mindmist and the manifold wards, she offered more tea. I realized she was enjoying my visit more than she let on. It was almost as if she had nothing else to do. I could have been patient if I needed to, but as time passed, I felt uneasy with Tiwalade’s stories.

  “So, how long is Yahaya going to take to come back?”

  “Uhm. I do not know. Anytime now, she should be back.”

  I awkwardly turned to follow her as she stood to make some more tea.

  “Well, how long has she been gone?”

  The girl did not respond.

  “Tiwalade, where is your Miss?” I asked.

  “She has been gone for almost a week now. She said she would be back in a day, so she is now very late. But she won’t take long, I am sure,” Tiwalade explained. In her optimism, I could sense some desperation.

  I stood up, worried.

  “Have you told anyone? Or,” I paused, “have you even left this building at all?”

  “I cannot, okay? I just cannot. If I leave, the manifold will not unravel for her. She will not be able to return.”

  “So, for the past week…”

  “I had plenty of food, don’t worry. And there is a game console in my room. It got lonely, but I can handle it. I miss her. Luckily, you are here,” she said as she quickly hurried through the kitchen and searched in a box. I heard coins shuffling around. She grabbed some of them, along with some bills, and handed them to me. “If you bring some nice cereal, I would be very grateful. And soy milk. We always love some good popcorn as well.”

  I grabbed the money, speechless. Tiwalade’s previous serious and strict fa?ade had dissolved into what really should have been: a desperate girl, trapped in a house. However – she said we.

  I put my focus on the Hearing of the Nabd, trying to feel if another pulse existed somewhere behind the walls in this secret house. Nothing.

  It was only her Nabd, an erratic one at that. She was anxious. I left the money on the table. Whether she was trying to evade the topic or simply lying to me, something did not add up.

  “Would you show me around, Tiwalade? Such an impressive place this is.”