18°41'34.2"N 12°55'10.6"E - Bilma, Niger

  24.05.2024 – 21:30 UTC +01.00

  “So, you teleported?” Qadir asked. His voice was not as excited as you would expect, but it was full of concern.

  He walked slowly, or rather made awkward steps with his crutches, as I walked next to him. The Baobab Inn was relatively empty that evening as most guests had been gone already by Wednesday morning, so we walked into the long corridors on our floor. Back and forth, to give him strength. More guests would come the day after; the hotel manager had warned us, but until then, the floor was ours.

  “I mean, we stepped into this gate and… yes. I guess teleportation is accurate. But she was only able to do it because I commanded her to, so it was our combined Curses,” I explained the best I could. I had left the details of Tiwalade’s demise out of the discussion not to upset him, but I needed to hear his thoughts on the unusual hex I had witnessed.

  “What do mother’s books say?”

  “Nothing really. No mention of manypaths,” I admitted.

  “I don’t know, sis, I have a bad feeling about this. A hex so strong, outside of any domains…” Qadir echoed my thoughts.

  “You don’t need to worry about her anymore.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we should get you back to your room,” I deflected.

  Qadir stopped walking. He leaned onto the wall, next to one of the windows, looking out to the Baobabs.

  “Shouldn’t we leave this town, Khalida? Chase your Calling to the South, forget about the Lions and all those people you have met?”

  “Well, we are waiting for your leg to heal…”

  “No. Don’t pin this on me. Today, the doctor said that if we go to a major hospital in the south, they could help me get better faster. I could be in the backseat of a car just as I am on a bed all day.”

  I sighed. Qadir was making sense. Bilma was supposed to be a detour to avoid dangerous areas, and it had proven to be a major delay.

  “What does your Calling say?” He insisted.

  “I don’t know. It has been persistently silent.”

  “Let’s try this: round up Walid and the rest, pay the Inn, find enough gas, and from Monday, we are leaving this city. It is a day’s drive to Nigeria,” he paused and looked at me, waiting for a reaction.

  “No Calling for or against,” I raised my shoulders.

  “Then it is settled. I am fucking bored here.”

  Friday morning began with a lot of planning and discussions, but quickly the day turned into a disappointment. I discussed with the hotel’s manager and the doctor about the final bill, stretching our budget and maxing out at least one of our credit cards.

  “This is all I am going to give you now, Walid,” I said, leaving four packs of fifty-dinar bills on the table. “Twenty thousand. There is more once we get to N’Djamena.”

  I was lying. There was nothing left, besides the budget left for us to reach Diffa at the border with Nigeria. This was the last peaceful negotiation I would have with Walid, I suspected.

  He approached, picked up the packs, and weighed them in his hands.

  “This is not just about the money, Miss,” he said, “the Khamsat Banadiq start to talk. Is it wise to associate with the Lions?”

  I felt a tinge of a bitter taste; this man could not possibly understand the hold I could have over him if I decided to. But his question was valuable. It made me think of an idea.

  “These are to make them stop talking, Walid,” I said, “let me be the judge of Aisa’s intentions. In fact, here is a task for you, and you only, lest you make your men talk. Go to the Dáwù Fált??. Say that I am ready to talk business.”

  Walid did not move, as if he wanted me to reconsider.

  “Go. This stays between us,” I said.

  He promptly left.

  I sighed. It was anyone’s guess what kind of expenses we would need to face before fulfilling my Calling. This was the right call. Aisa had promised me that if I reached out to her, she would pay handsomely.

  ? ? ?

  “Thank you, Walid,” I said to him as he handed me a card with a phone number. He had come back within a couple of hours. A number, scribbled on a handkerchief.

  Walid nodded, not saying a single word, and then he left me inside my room.

  I dialed the number on my phone. I did not have to wait long for an answer.

  “Yes?” A woman’s voice, Aisa herself.

  “Hi, lioness,” I said. A pause, before her tone changed.

  “Ah, f??lé. I expected a call. I admit I was surprised when Yahaya herself told me what happened. It sounded like it was quite the ordeal.”

  This was a veiled statement: she did not like that I did not reach out sooner.

  “It was. An enjoyable one at that. Would you happen to have more? Paired with a handsome payment, as mentioned.”

  all I needed was to let my Hearing and Calling be useful for once, I would do it for this weekend.

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  “Many ordeals at hand, f??lé. There is a list, in fact.”

  “All I need are pictures. And where possible, a drop of red,” I said.

  She was silent for a moment, or perhaps talking to someone out of the phone’s reach.

  “That can be arranged. Two million per list item?” Two million francs. That was about twenty thousand Libyan dinars.

  “Ten million, half upfront,” I responded. I was not going to lowball mine going into working for a local mafia.

  Again, silence.

  “Exciting, f??lé. I will send you the coordinates for your man to come grab a list. And another phone number. Delete this one, please,” she said and hung up.

  Again, this feeling of excitement filled the emptiness. That money could change everything. Quick money this weekend, and then we would disappear.

  I looked outside my room. In the twilight of the sunset, the Baobab did not look as Upside-Down anymore. They were simply trees.

  ? ? ?

  Three names, with pictures. For one of the three, she even had a bloodied bullet; this one would be the easiest to find.

  That Friday night, I let my brother sleep, and I snuck away. He did not need to know I would hunt for the Ngam Kúrà, but the money was too good to be ignored.

  My Calling did not intervene; I was wholly by myself the whole evening, tracking three people.

  Aseel el-Bangura, local merchant, owing hundreds of thousands of francs to Aisa and her lions. He was easy to track with a little bit of wandering about the main market. Once I found him, I led him to Aisa’s night club, Dáwù Fált??, and her bodyguards led him inside, and soon after, his Nabd was out of my Hearing.

  Yakouba, no known last name, Zarma in heritage. I was led to him by the bloodied bullet. Found him in a vet’s shop, bandaged in a back room. I just texted the address to Aisa and let the Lions deal with him.

  Kana Ult Aflan, an old Tuareg woman, lived at the outskirts of the town. Took me the longest to track down, almost until dawn. The picture had led me to the right location, but it was so old that the sound of her Nabd had changed. I had to stalk through houses, check doorbells, to no avail. I spotted her, almost by luck, tending to her garden. I was curious about why Aisa sought her, but when I approached her, I could see she did not care to hide, but neither wanted to follow me. Aisa had offered her a home and riches after her son died in a Ngam Kúrà job a few years ago. Kana had declined and gone off the grid. She wanted nothing to do with the Lions. When I called Aisa to ask directions on the last one, she simply said, “Good job, but let her be then. I will send the money to you. Rest for a day.”

  The easiest money of my life. That was almost three hundred thousand Libyan dinars, and could get us a long way. And all, in one night.

  ? ? ?

  On Saturday, I debated a lot on whether I needed to do this again. Last night’s list had proven easier than I thought, my Curses being appropriately built for such tasks. But the more I risked with Aisa, the more I had a feeling that the tasks would prove difficult. I thought about it all day, until I concluded while sitting on my suite’s balcony.

  “That would be too dangerous. No more,” I said to myself out loud while examining one of the white baobab flowers.

  It had landed on my balcony from the trees outside, and during the afternoon’s last light, I had decided to sketch it in my notebook. I was entertained by the thought that my notes would become a continuation of my mother’s books.

  I used a pencil and strived to design its curves, letting the setting sun’s natural light guide my shading on the paper.

  My eyes traced the flower’s curves as my hand tried to capture the last petal. Each pencil swipe centered my thoughts and calmed me.

  The petals were flexible enough to bend and reveal the inside of the flower without breaking apart. The sun projected a yellow hue as it passed through the semi-transparent petals, and it seemed like the flower itself collected light.

  I smiled as I looked at my creation – it was crude, but it was mine, and it would be a nice memento from Bilma. Soon, I would be laughing at how my Calling had led me into Aisa’s club and a witch’s vault, all in an attempt to hunt a stranger who hurt my brother.

  My right hand moved into my pocket, looking for the bloodied handkerchief, the one covered now with the days-old crust of my brother’s blood and traces from his assailant’s blood. I laid it on my sketch.

  “I guess I won’t find you. And soon, your Nabd will dissipate, and there won’t be any blood to follow.”

  My voice had accepted the finality of my failure – but not my Calling. I was ready to throw the small handkerchief away, but the Calling was not.

  I picked the flower from where it lay on the table, and gently pushed it and brushed it against the handkerchief. My motion was certain and careful, but my inner voice was already panicking: why am I doing this?

  I brushed it again and again, and as pollen stuck on the handkerchief, the red of blood stained the flower itself. Petal by petal, the flower became smirched by the organic filth, as my hands hastened its movements.

  “No, please,” I vocally begged, as I had never done with my Calling before. “I am ready to let go; it is fine.”

  I stopped rubbing the flower, and I raised it right in front of my eyes. The stained petals were now malformed, tainted by the blood and the intention of my Calling.

  I brought the flower closer to my face. I opened my mouth and I pushed the tarnished flower into it, and then used my own hands to keep my mouth closed. Tears dropped from my eyes as my Calling violated my will and forced me to swallow the bloodied flower. As I finally did, my Calling let go, and finally, my hands released my mouth.

  I inhaled deeply as I cried, desperate for oxygen. A bitter iron taste was left over in my mouth, making me gag.

  “Please, why, please,” I begged once I was able to speak again. I fell on my knees. All I wanted was to throw up, remove what was forced inside me.

  I strained, but instead of my body helping me, I sensed the flower and how the foreign Nabd had now invaded me. I stood up.

  It was stronger than before: no longer a presence somewhere far away, but a thread painted red, a thread I could follow if I wanted. It had no physical manifestation, but I could almost feel it between my fingers. I could tug it, and it would lead me where I was meant to be led.

  “Why now?” I asked myself.

  “Miss, are you okay?” It was Walid, just outside my room.

  “Yes, Walid, thank you, you may go,” I responded, hoping he would leave me alone with my thoughts.

  But he insisted:

  “Okay, Miss… huh, you have a written message. It is from the Lions. Someone left it at the front of the door.”

  My skin crawled. I had thought maybe Aisa would not have let me just disappear, but I did not assume she would seek me the next day already. I hoped we would have left by the time she cared to check again.

  “Slip it underneath the door,” I said with the calmest voice I could muster. I could not let my worries show in front of Walid, else the bill would only get larger.

  A black folder, stamped with a white seal with a simplistic design of a lion’s head, appeared below my door. I approached it and picked it up. An alcoholic aroma enveloped it.

  I cracked the seal open and revealed its contents: a check for the insane amount of seventy million francs, a note, and a photograph.

  The photo showed a man who looked of Arab descent, probably from northeast Africa, exiting a car. He was holding a phone and speaking to it, oblivious to being watched. The location did not seem to be Bilma, at least as far as I had explored the town. There were no other clues on who the man was. I flipped the photograph to check the backside.

  Someone had hastily written a mobile phone number on the back of it and had added the letter “Y” at the end.

  Whether I could assume that was a number I could trust to use and find Yahaya was a question that I would have to find the answer to soon, because the rest of the back of the picture was stained red. I doubted that it was wine. If Aisa guessed how my Curse worked, she then made sure to give me the means to utilize it. She was seeking someone.

  I left the photo on the table and read the note that was in the folder, out loud, trying to control my breath, not just from fear, but also guilty excitement.

  CASH THE CHECK ONLY IF YOU BRING THIS MAN TO YAHAYA.

  TRUST ME, F?Lé.

  I WILL KNOW.