And just like that, in two nights with the moon shifting slowly between phases, he reached inside us, through us, and he pulled the Ada out into the light. Believe, we would have kept her inside our great shadow, but L?shi pushed himself into her terrible loneliness, called her by all of our names, then left, because some gates do close. The only time he kissed her was on the morning of his leaving, and when he was gone, we were bereft.

Ah, we have always claimed to rule the Ada, but here is the truth: she was easier to control when she thought she was weak. Here is another truth: she is not ours, we are hers. We did not know who sent the priest to remind her (most likely it was our brothersisters) and we wanted to be angry, but L?shi had been a pit of beauty and we couldn’t find enough anger to keep us afloat. Instead we let ourself sink into him, into the space his absence had created. We relived the two nights over and over; we plastered his face all over the marble and wept at the loss of his voice. When the sadness seemed like it might fade, we regurgitated it and rolled it, tragic and beautiful, around the Ada’s teeth. We did not section him, even though the mere thought of his face was heartbreak.

The mourning of him became a ritual in and of itself, a dramatic enactment of sorrow. The Ada stumbled around, blinded by memory. When you have been hiding in a great shadow, it hurts to look at the light, to be awake, to feel.

“I wish I had filmed him,” she told A?uli. We wanted to project him against a wall and play it on a loop, to watch his jaw turn toward us a thousand times, until the electricity finished, until our eyes collapsed.

“He’s not coming back,” A?uli said bluntly. She was being kind, but we already knew he would not return; we had felt the reverberation when he left. It was cruel, it was unfair! Skins are not meant to shed so quickly—it was as if he had hooked his fingers into our eyes and flayed us neatly, peeling us raw. Who we were before L?shi laid his long hands on us was not who we were afterward. No, afterward we were done. We were ready to stop the births and the namings—the Ada was ready to take her own front.

When we fell back, it tasted like a kind of death. But as the Ada moved out of our shadow and into her body, we found ourself watching her with a grim pride. She was scarred, yes, gouged in places even. But she was—she has always been—a terrifyingly beautiful thing. If you ever saw her at her fullest, you would understand—power becomes the child. She is heavy and unbearably light, still her mother’s hatchling. Think of her when the moon is rich, flatulent, bursting with pus and light, repugnant with strength.

Yes, now you are beginning to understand.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The masquerade has moved into the arena. You will be flogged if you remain. Your ears will be filled with news if you run away.

Ada

We have a saying back home: ?ch?r? chi ya aka mgba. One does not challenge their chi to a wrestling match. It feels as if that’s what I’ve been doing for years now, wrestling as if it could end in anything other than my loss. But it’s a relief to finally be thrown, to lie with my back on the sand, alive and out of breath. You can see the sky properly this way. Besides, the sand is my mother and no one can run from her. They say that she can find you as long as your feet are touching the earth, and once she does, the earth can split open like a pod and just swallow you up. There’s a story about a man called Al? who tried to escape her by jumping from tree to tree like a monkey. He lived like that for years, floating in the treetops, and when Ala couldn’t find him, she haunted the whole forest. His name became the word for taboo, and all taboos are committed against her. Gods really do take things personally.

I wish I could say that after L?shi, I became an obedient child who listened to my first mother and walked with my brothersisters, but I was too stubborn and I was still afraid. I know how mad it sounds to call yourself a god. Believe me, I fought it at first. Let me ask questions, I thought, and so I ended up in a restaurant in Lagos speaking to an Igbo man, a historian. When I told him about my others and my name and my first mother, he leaned over.

“I cannot talk to you about these things in an air-conditioned restaurant in Lagos,” he said. “You understand? But you are on the right path. This journey is the right thing to do.”

It should have been reassuring, but it only terrified me further. I wanted to stop there, but I couldn’t, because this was my life, you understand? No matter how mad it sounded, the things that were happening in my head were real and had been happening for a very long time. After all the doctors and the diagnoses and the hospitals, this thing of being an ?gbanje, a child of Ala—that was the only path that brought me any peace. So yes, I was terrified, but I went back to talk to the historian again.

“The name that was given to you has many connotations, you hear?” He wore glasses and spoke in a rush of words. “The python’s egg means a precious child. A child of the gods, or the deity themself. The experiences you’ve had suggest that there is a spiritual connection, which you need to go and learn about. Your journey will not be complete until you do that.” He leaned back and folded his arms. “There is nothing more anybody can tell you. It’s important for you to understand your place on this earth.”

Sometimes, you recognize truth because it destroys you for a bit. I fell apart that night, crying uncontrollably, throwing my phone against a wall and hyperventilating until everything around me started to fade. I was at a lover’s house, the painter, and he put his arm around me, holding me up.