Page 99 of Earthbound

‘Let’s go release our prisoner,’ he said.

Chapter Nineteen

Lettle

Afa’s voice had grown hoarse from the story. He closed the book, his face wet with tears.

‘Now you are acquainted with the whole of me. I am the villain, I am the hero.’

He is definitely one of those.

‘Genocide,’ she said. ‘Occupation. Erasure. You are the world’s greatest monster, and yet you are also the world itself.’

She knew she should loathe him, and she did. But his sadness was great enough to elicit sympathy, even if it was unwitting.

‘Hady’s surname is Jani?’

‘Yes.’

Lettle nodded. The puzzle was slotting together.

‘What I don’t understand is how my sister was able to be bound to an obeah–she is not fae.’

Afa jumped down from the throne and picked a plum from a nearby tree. ‘Because the spell is not cast on the fae, it is cast on Mosima. Any who reside there have the potential to be faebound, as you call it.’

This news shocked her. She wondered whether, if she had stayed in Mosima, she would have become faebound by now.

He looked into the distance and sneered. ‘Hady even sent a missive to the elves inviting them to Mosima as a refuge from me. As though I were dangerous.’

The gaze he turned back to her was triumphant. ‘But the Wasted Marshes I had made were too treacherous to cross; they separated the elves from the rest of the world. So, they sequestered themselves.’

‘And forgot their history,’ Lettle added, her mouth dry.

‘Indeed,’ he said, skipping back to his throne.

One of the soulless obeah came running over with a flask. ‘Wine?’ Afa offered Lettle.

She shook her head; this was no dinner party.

Afa shrugged then swigged from the bottle before grimacing and handing it back to the obeah. ‘You were right to refuse it–it has soured in my time away.’

Lettle hadn’t taken her eyes off the obeah, her mind whirring with all she had learned. ‘What of the soulless obeah here? How have they come to be?’

‘A few hundred years ago, I experimented with different spells. Finally, I found a way to exorcise the soul from unbound obeah, allowing my people to move on to the afterlife.’

‘Couldn’t you have just killed them?’ Lettle said humourlessly. After all, mass murder was an easy thing for him.

Afa didn’t comprehend her tone and looked at her in confusion. ‘Alas, that would not have helped my endeavours, would it?’

‘So instead you made the obeah your specimens?’ she said with malice.

‘Exactly,’ he replied, clapping his hands together as though she had solved a riddle.

Lettle felt bile burn the back of her throat. She swallowed hastily. ‘Is this how you intend to fix the problem you created? Release the souls from the obeah?’

She looked at Ajax. The obeah was watching her, his eyes narrowed as he listened in an apple tree above them.

‘No, it is not very efficient. I am only able to free the souls of obeah who stumble upon the sanctuary. Hence the small gathering you see here.’