Marked by the Shadow King

Chapter Four: Ikọ-Ojii

Nothing Obinna had said prepared her for the beauty of it.

Adaeze had expected darkness. From the name, Shadow Realm, the silver-dim threshold space, the smoky quality of Obinna's eyes all of it had pointed toward something cold and threatening. She had braced herself for it the way she braced for everything, in advance, so that when it came she would already be standing.

What she stepped into instead was a city.

The light here was the colour of indigo and amber, the kind of sky you got just before the sun fully surrendered, stretched permanently overhead as though the realm had decided on that particular moment and held it. The buildings were enormous, dark stone and dark wood, carved with symbols she half-recognised the way you half-recognise a word in a language you heard as a child. Trees grew through walls and over rooftops, their leaves silver-black, catching the perpetual dusk light and throwing it back in fragments.

And there were people.

Not many, and not exactly like people they moved with a stillness beneath their movement, like water that runs deep and fast but shows only a smooth surface. Some turned to look as Obinna walked through the wide avenue that served as an entrance, their gaze sliding from him to Adaeze and catching there, sharp with recognition.

"They can see the mark," Obinna said quietly, without turning.

"Is that a problem?"

"It depends on who is watching."

Adaeze kept her eyes forward and her face neutral. She had grown up in a Lagos where showing fear was an invitation. She suspected the principle applied here.

He took her to his compound.

It was large not the cold extravagance of the buildings she had seen on the avenue, but something older and more welcoming. Wide walls of dark stone. Courtyards open to the indigo sky. A tree in the centre of the main yard that was so old it had grown into the walls on both sides, its roots lifting the flagstones like sleeping giants turning over.

"You live here?" she asked.

"When I am not elsewhere." He pushed open a door and stood aside for her to enter. "You will stay in the east room. It is warded, nothing can enter without my permission."

"I am not staying," she said. "I am finding my mother and going home. Tonight if possible."

He turned to look at her then. Patient in the way of something that has all the time in the world and knows it.

"Your mother is in my brother's territory," he said. "Across the Ọdụ river, in the deep realm. I cannot take you there directly the border is watched. I need to find a safe path first. This will take time."

"How much time?"

"A few days. Perhaps less, if conditions are right."

Adaeze thought of Chidi waking up to find her gone. Mama Ngozi checking her room. The market stall sitting untended. All the small machinery of her life that depended on her being present and functioning.

"I need to send a message home. Let them know I am somewhere."

He nodded toward her hand. "Your phone still works here. The signal is unconventional. But it works."

She looked down. Four bars of signal, which was two more than she usually had at home. She would have laughed if the situation had been even slightly less impossible.

She sat in the east room which was larger than her entire flat, with a bed that looked carved from a single piece of dark wood and a window that opened onto the ancient tree in the courtyard then typed a message to Chidi.

I'm safe. Something came up and I'm taking care of it. Tell Mama Ngozi not to worry. I'll explain everything when I'm back.

She stared at the last line for a moment. Then deleted it. She had been saying she would explain things to Chidi for six years. She was not making promises she did not know she could keep.

She sent: I'm safe. Something came up. Tell Mama Ngozi not to worry.

The delivered tick appeared. Then Chidi's response, three seconds later:

Ada which kind something up is this one? It is 2am.

She almost smiled. Good. He was annoyed, not afraid. She could work with annoyed.

She put the phone face down on the bed and looked around the room. At the carvings on the walls, animals she recognised and some she did not. At the window and the ancient tree beyond it, its silver-black leaves catching the permanent dusk. At her own hands, the mark on her wrist alive and calm and present like a second pulse.

Her mother had been here. Had walked through this world, breathed this indigo air, seen these impossible buildings and she had chosen to stay.

Adaeze was going to need to sit with that for a while.

A knock at the door. She tensed before she could stop herself.

"It is only me," Obinna said from the other side.

"You can come in," she said. Then, because it felt important: "This is your house."

"The ward makes it yours while you are in it." He opened the door and stood at the threshold again at the threshold, she noticed. Always waiting at the edge. "I came to tell you that I have sent word ahead. There is a contact near the Ọdụ border who can help us cross unseen. We leave at first dark."

"When is first dark? It looks like it's always dark here."

"When the amber leaves the sky and only the indigo remains. You will know it." He paused. "Try to rest. Tomorrow will require steadiness."

He was already turning to leave when she spoke.

"Obinna."

He stopped.

"Your brother," she said. "What did he want with my mother?"

There was a long silence.

"The Eze-Uwa" "the world bridges" they do not just anchor the boundary between realms," he said at last. "They can also open it fully and permanently." His voice was very controlled. "My brother believes that if the boundary opens completely, Ikọ-Ojii will absorb your world and finally consume it."

Adaeze stared at him.

"He wants to use my mother to end the world."

"Your world," he said carefully. "He does not consider it ending. He considers it completing."

"And the mark on me?" She looked at her wrist. The symbol pulsed, steady, slowly. "He will want to use me too."

"Which is why you are here and not there." He finally turned to face her fully, and she saw it again, that thing in his expression that was not quite admiration but was something similar to it. "The mark chose you, Adaeze. It didn't choose me or him. It chose You and that means what happens next is ultimately your decision."

"What are my options?"

"I will tell you everything once we reach the border. Tonight, rest." He stepped back from the doorway. "There is food on the table in the hall. You should eat."

"You keep feeding me," she said.

"You keep needing to be fed."

He was gone before she could respond. She sat with that for a moment the strange domesticity of it, food on the table, rest, tomorrow, in the middle of the most impossible situation of her life.

Then she got up and went to find the food, because whatever happened next, she was going to face it on a full stomach.

She found him in the hall, sitting across from an empty chair with two plates on the table between them. He was not eating. He was waiting.

She sat down without comment. The food was familiar in a way she had not expected, it was jollof rice, dark and smoky, with fried plantain on the side. She stared at it.

"How," she said.

"Your mother taught the kitchen staff." He said it simply, picking up his own fork. "Six years ago. She said if she was going to be here, the food was going to be right."

Adaeze looked at the plate for a long time.

Her mother's jollof. In another world. Made by people who had learned it from her hands.

She picked up her fork and ate, and did not say anything, and the mark on her wrist was warm the whole time like a hand held under a table. Like something trying, in the only language it had, to say: you are close now. Keep going.

— End of Chapter Four —