Page 116 of Earthbound

Alder felt like a fool as he said, ‘Obeah, come to me.’

Nothing happened for a long moment. Then he heard them. He looked back through the city streets and watched as one, two, three, a dozen, fifty obeah ran through Caperly towards him. Their pelts were wet and dripping from the waterfall spray they had passed.

They surrounded him in a circle, their bodies a mass of corded muscle, their horns glittering pearlescent in the morning light. But their eyes were uncomfortably vacant, like glass marbles in a pool of ink. Their movements also unsettled him; they were too uniform, too rigid–without a will of their own.

It was an uncanny sight.

Mortah took a step back, her face bloodless. Lettle, however, looked relieved, almost as if she hadn’t been sure it would work.

I wish it hadn’t. I have never sought power like this. It felt inhumane to manipulate a creature so completely.

Alder walked towards one, and it didn’t even blink as he gently ran his hand through its fur.

I wonder if it’s capable of memories too.

‘You are not the same,’ Lettle said, as though reading his thoughts. ‘The obeah has no light when I look at it in magesight. No, it’s more than that, there is an absence of light, almost like a spark has been extinguished. Whereas you, Alder, you shine.’

It comforted him some.

He tightened his fists in the beast’s scruff as he pulled himself up and onto its back. Mortah followed his lead, selecting an obeah of her own, and Lettle mounted Ajax.

Years ago he had imagined what it would be like to ride an obeah. He would have never been able to guess the circumstances he now found himself in.

I made the very flesh beneath me, he thought. No, not me, Afa did.

He corrected himself for the first time. Like the obeah, he’d had no choice in his creation, he was simply brought into being.

But unlike the obeah, he had free will. And with it, he was going to undo all the wrongs that had come before.

‘Take us to Mosima,’ he said to the obeah. As one, the pack pounded forward, a black mass against the white snow of the mountain. It was time to fix it all.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Yeeran

‘Is the tincture ready?’ Yeeran had asked Jay the question repeatedly, knowing full well that it wasn’t helping. But what else could she do while Furi lay dying beside her?

It had been two days since the locust invasion, and two days since the hister flower had been steeping in owen tree sap.

The world had dimmed since that day. Fifty percent of Mosima’s crops were eaten in a matter of hours. While Yeeran had returned to the quarantined district, Rayan had taken charge of sealing the opening to Mosima, watching as obeah lugged trunks of felled trees up the steps to seal them in.

The only problem was, they were trapping the locusts in too.

‘Yeeran?’ Furi’s eyelashes fluttered open.

‘I’m here.’ She grabbed Furi’s stiffened hands. Every single one of her limbs had seized up, turning blue before they would eventually blacken.

‘Did you get it?’

‘Yes, we got the cure, Jay’s brewing it now.’

‘Is there enough?’

‘Yes, there will be.’ Amnan lay on the ground beside Furi’s bed. It didn’t take them long to discover the disease could not be caught by obeah. Yeeran had wondered whether it was something to do with them being Afa’s creation.

She still marvelled over Afa’s tale. Power had corrupted him, but so too had love. She pressed a kiss to Furi’s forehead, not knowing if she would have done anything different in Afa’s place.

‘It’s ready,’ Jay said, brandishing the bright yellow liquid.