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The voice tore through the hall like a hurricane. Ọya stepped from the shadows, her eyes flashing with violet lightning. The winds in the hall immediately whipped into a frenzy, tearing at the gods' robes.
"Ọya, hold your tongue!" Obàtálá commanded, his white robes billowing.
"I will not!" she spat, marching toward Obu. "Sango fears him. Ajé envies him. And you, father, you bow to their cowardice!"
"Guards of the wind, restrain her!" Ògún barked, standing up, his iron staff cl
Seventeen years later. Lagos, Nigeria.
The heat in Surulere was not just a temperature; it was an entity. It pressed against the skin, smelled of roasting corn, diesel fumes, and the sweet, rotting tang of the nearby gutters.
Obafemi wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and adjusted his glasses. He sat on the cracked concrete veranda of their "Face-Me-I-Face-You" compound, a massive textbook on organic chemistry resting on his knees. The roar of a neighbor's I-pass-my-neighbor generator threatened to drown out his thoughts, but Femi possessed an unnatural stillness.
"Femi, my pikin! You never tire to read?" Femi's mother, Iya Femi, called out from the communal kitchen, her wrapper tied firmly around her waist as she stirred a massive pot of jollof rice.
"JAMB is in two weeks, Ma," Femi called back, his voice smooth, resonant. "I can't afford to be tired."
"Leave am, Iya Femi," laughed Iya Lola, stepping out from the adjacent room. "You know say your boy na professor. E no be like my own wild animal. Where Lola dey sef?"
Femi smiled softly, though a familiar tightness coiled in his chest at the mention of her name. Lola.
They were compound twins. Born on the exact same stormy night seventeen years ago, to two best friends whose rooms faced each other. Femi had come into the world at 11:58 PM, calm and silent. Lola had arrived at 12:04 AM, kicking and screaming so loudly the midwife nearly dropped her. They had shared breast milk, shared cribs, and shared a life. To the entire street, they were simply "the twins." Femi, the older, hyper-intelligent, responsible brother. Lola, the wild, magnetic younger sister.
"I am here, abeg! People cannot even breathe in this house without somebody shouting my name!"
The wooden gate at the front of the compound slammed open. Lola strolled in, and as always, the very atmosphere shifted.
She was striking, with skin the color of rich, dark mahogany and eyes that always seemed to hold a spark of mischief. She wore faded jeans and a tight yellow top, her natural hair packed into two massive afro puffs. As she walked in, a sudden, inexplicable cool breeze swept through the sweltering courtyard, rustling the drying clothes on the line. Femi felt the breeze and shivered. It always happened around her.
"Where have you been?" Femi asked, closing his book. "You promised to review the physics past questions with me."
Lola flopped onto the concrete beside him, smelling of sweet orange and the dusty Lagos wind. She bumped her shoulder against his. The moment their skin touched, a tiny, almost invisible static shock snapped between them.
Femi pulled his arm back, his heart skipping a strange, irregular beat. It was a feeling he hated and craved—this intense, unnatural pull toward the girl he was supposed to view as a sister.
"Physics can wait, Professor," Lola teased, her voice slipping into a thick, melodic Pidgin. "I went to Yaba market. You need to see the new jeans they brought. Fresh okrika."
"Lola, your exams," Femi pressed, his tone turning grave, paternal. "You can't just charm your way into university."
She rolled her eyes, but her gaze softened when she looked at him. There was a depth in Lola's eyes that Femi could never quite decipher, a chaotic, swirling storm that called to something deep, buried, and ancient within his own soul.
"I know, I know," she whispered, suddenly serious. She reached out and touched the back of his hand. Again, that warmth. That electric pulse. "But Femi... do you ever feel like... like this isn't it? Like we are waiting for something to happen?"
Before Femi could answer, the sky above them darkened with unnatural speed. The golden afternoon sun was swallowed by bruised, purple clouds. A low rumble of thunder rattled the zinc roofs of the compound.
"Ah ah! Rain for dry season?" Iya Lola shouted from the kitchen. "Lola, Femi, go bring the clothes from the line!"
Femi stood, but Lola remained seated, her face tilted up toward the sudden, violent sky. Her eyes were closed. She looked, for a fleeting moment, like a queen receiving an old friend.
"Lola?" Femi said, a strange unease washing over him. He reached down to pull her up.
As his hand closed around hers, a blinding flash of lightning struck the giant mango tree just outside their compound walls. The boom of thunder was deafening. But what terrified Femi wasn't the lightning. It was the fact that as the light illuminated Lola's face, her irises were glowing with a faint, violet light.