CHAPTER 2 : AKA & AYA

Aka

The rain fell in a fine curtain, nearly silent, and the roof above them was losing the battle drop by drop. Aka wrung out his soaked glôkô without thinking, fingers numb, eyes fixed on the opposite wall where the stone had been crumbling long enough for weeds to take root. He knew every crack in that hut. He knew every ruin of the Kah lands — by necessity, because that was all they had ever had.

To his left, Aya was listening to something.

He didn't ask what. They had been born from the same womb, at the same moment, and had grown up in the same ashes, and he knew that some of her silences were worth more than words. When Aya listened like that — head tilted, palms open on her knees, breathing slowed — it was better to wait. She heard things he didn't. She had this way of perceiving the world through what wasn't there yet.

He looked at what was.

— The roof is going to give eventually, he said. We can't stay here.

— I know. But the rain will stop. It always stops before sunrise.

She was right about these kinds of things — the things that had no visible shape, that were felt before they were known. He thought more simply: a roof that holds. A place where no one looked at them with that mixture of pity and wariness reserved for the children of a dead people.

The Kah had vanished fifty moons before their birth, exterminated by the Mandélébé while the five remaining tribes looked away. The Mel tribe, neighbors of the Kah, had suffered the same fate. And the descendants of the Kah and the Mel, those who had survived — they still carried that look upon them. As if surviving something you hadn't lived through was a fault all the same.

— All I want is for us to stop surviving, he said. That's all.

Aya placed her hand on his. Her skin was slightly cooler than his, without being cold, like two warmths finding their accord. She squeezed gently, without a word, and he understood that she had grasped it. It was always like this, even when he didn't know what to say.

— If we enter the Kwi… maybe we can change something, she said. Understand why it happened the way it did. Why no one moved when the Mandélébé came.

Aka squeezed her hand without answering. He didn't have Aya's words for questions like that. He only had the certainty that they had to go — together, as always — and that the rest would reveal itself after. Survival, he knew. It was their mother tongue. But what Aya was proposing was something else. It was choosing. It was ceasing to be what one endured and becoming what one decided.

The rain stopped.

Clean. Without transition. As if the sky had made a decision between two breaths.

— It's time, he said.

They went out.

The ruins began some time after they had left the hut — or rather, they had never truly ceased, but now they became impossible to ignore.

Blocks of black stone, smooth, colossal, rose from the ground at irregular intervals like the teeth of a forgotten jaw. Some bore carvings: interlocking spirals, stylized eyes with heavy lids, silhouettes with raised arms in postures no living person could any longer name.

Aka slowed his pace. He had seen these stones before, was accustomed to them. They peopled the Kah lands. It was said they had been there before the tribes, before languages, perhaps before men.

— You know these stories, he said to Aya. The old women who speak of this strange ancient culture.

— Hm, she murmured. She had placed her hand on one of the stones without stopping. The stone was cold, and something traveled up along her arm — not pain, not a shiver. More like a density. As if the stone remembered something it could not say.

— They give me the feeling they're waiting for something, she said.

— Waiting for what?

— I don't know. But they're still breathing.

Aka didn't answer. He looked at the carvings, the spirals, the eyes with their closed lids. He didn't feel what Aya felt — but he saw something that disturbed him. A carved silhouette, arms raised, not quite standing. As if the sculptor had wanted to freeze a terrifying moment.

— We move on, he said. I don't like these stones.

Aya took her hand away. She didn't argue — she knew her brother wasn't speaking of fear when he said things like that. He was speaking of instinct.

They resumed walking.

Anoumabo fell upon them without warning.

They had been crossing Doh territory for some time — the trees taller, the paths better kept, the villages that smelled of life from a distance: pounded yam, carved wood, forge smoke. Children ran between the huts without looking at them twice. Women worked while talking loudly. Men repaired spears with precise, economical gestures.

Aka observed all this with the attention of someone who had long lived without. Not bitter envy — just precision. He catalogued: this is what it looks like, a tribe that stands upright. This is what it feels like, to live in a place that has always belonged to you.

— They're looking at us, he said quietly.

— They see us, Aya replied. That's already something.

The distinction was real. He took it.

Then the mountain appeared.

He had no word for what he felt upon seeing it — not quite wonder, more a form of recalibration, like when you realize the scale of something is different from what you had imagined. An immense rocky dome whose flanks bore natural terraces, dark cavities, constructions built directly against the rock like outgrowths. The city was not at the foot of the mountain. The city was the mountain.

Two guards at the entrance. An assessing gaze, not hostile.

— What are you here for?

— The Guébia, said Aka.

They let them through.

The corridor carved into the rock swallowed them the moment they crossed the great arch. The outside light disappeared behind them by degrees, and Aka saw his sister relax instantly — she was always more at ease where light hesitated. The torches burning along the walls cast thick, living shadows, and she shivered the way you feel a hand extended in the dark.

Then the sound arrived.

Not an ordinary drum. Something deeper, that struck not only the ears but the inside of the sternum, the cavities behind the eyes. A vibration that seemed to come from the rock itself.

— The Gbégbé Drum, she murmured.

They had heard that name only once, from the mouth of an old woman who had fed them one dry-season evening in exchange for odd jobs. The old woman had said: when the Gbégbé speaks, the mountain listens. She had not elaborated.

Aka had placed his hand on his chest without realizing it. He felt the vibration in his bones — differently, more raw, without the translation Aya instinctively gave him. He found it unsettling. She could see it in the line of his jaw, in the way his shoulders contracted slightly.

— It comes from everywhere, he said. Not from a single place.

— It's the mountain answering, she said. Or calling.

They emerged into the courtyard.

Aya

There was a crowd. Many people. Hundreds of adolescents from the five tribes — she recognized the clothing, the scarifications, the hairstyles, the ways of carrying oneself, and their abilities.

But the first thing she felt when she looked at them was — the Myoga. She didn't know how to explain the sensation to someone who had never experienced it. It wasn't a smell. Not quite a sound. More like a different pressure depending on where she rested her gaze, as if the air around certain bodies had a particular consistency, a temperature, an intention.

Near the north wall, a Doh boy had his eyes closed and his bare feet in the earth. The weeds between the paving stones leaned toward his ankle without any wind. The Doh Myoga had that flavor: rooted, patient, ancient.

Two Téhé girls stood apart. One of them turned her head toward Aya — not toward her face, toward something just behind her. The Téhé Myoga was thin, borderless, like water that seeps everywhere without making a sound.

A Dji boy jumped from a low terrace without warning. He landed knee to the ground, without shock, without sound, and rose laughing. He hadn't jumped to show anything. The Dji Myoga was raw, powerful.

The Zou girl was motionless at the center of the courtyard. Her skin was moving. Not like pain — like something seeking its form and not yet finding it. The Zou Myoga refused to be contained.

The Koua girl's arms were covered in crystals. They lit up one after another, and between her fingers something that wasn't there became there — a weight, an object born from nothing. She closed her hand. The thing vanished. The Koua Myoga created from nothingness.

Aya realized she had been holding her breath.

— Do you see that? she murmured.

— I see, said Aka. Flat voice.

She felt her own Myoga then, black and whole — too dark. Tenebrous, perhaps. She felt Aka's too, just beside hers. Luminous.

Two Kah Myoga in a courtyard full of people.

She didn't have time to know whether it was pride or grief.

They looked at her and her brother.

Not because they recognized them — no one recognized Kah people, there were almost none left. They looked because their raphia glôkô were worn to the weave, because their sandals had been repaired too many times, because poverty has a way of occupying space that people notice before they are even conscious of it.

Aka held every gaze without seeking any.

She knew him well enough to know what was happening behind that silence. He was accustomed to it — not to this courtyard precisely, but to that look. The look one casts on something that shouldn't be there. He had recognized it since childhood, in every village where they had sought shelter, a day's work, a meal. That look didn't change from one tribe to the next. Only the faces changed.

Four adolescents approached them.

The first — a boy in a clean glôkô, with strong arms, certainly a Doh — fixed them without turning away.

— Where are you from?

— From the East, said Aka.

The Doh boy narrowed his eyes as if this answer confirmed something rather than informing him.

— The East? It's been a long time since we've seen people from there — aren't you all dead? The Kah and the Mel. Look at you, your glôkô… they look like they've been through a whole rainy season. And you're very thin.

Laughter escaped from the group.

— Unfortunately for you, we're alive and far from dying. As for our appearance, you're right — we've walked a long way to get here, Aka replied.

Another, behind him, a little shorter but with something sharper in his tone:

— Too bad the Mandélébé missed the job. But the Guébia will take care of it, you'll see, he sneered.

— We came for that, said Aya, in an even voice. Do you think we're afraid? We've seen far worse than you believe.

A girl with copper bracelets and hair braided like antennae examined Aya from head to toe with the precise attention of someone making an assessment.

— You seem to overflow with confidence — know that I'll be watching you, to see if you're as capable as you claim.

Aya stared at her, looked at her proud bearing, and smiled. She sensed in this girl a provocative spirit.

— I hope the same for you, she said.

Aka remained silent. She felt him stiffen beside her — not with anger, with focus.

— We're not looking for trouble, he said at last. But if you come looking for us, we won't back down.

The first boy looked at him another second, then turned his eyes to his group with a vague gesture that said to retreat without bothering to put it into words.

They moved away without waiting for a reply, still casting glances back.

Aka watched them go. She felt him relax — not with relief, but with vigilance shifting its target.

— They're afraid, she said quietly.

— I know.

— Of what they don't understand.

He nodded.

The drums fell silent.

A man stepped forward from the shadow of the arcades.

Tall, lean, upright with the tranquil rigidity of something that does not bend. A mask covered the upper third of his face — dark wood, geometric lines, two slits for eyes. He wore a simple glôkô, in toga. And yet he filled the entire courtyard, as if the air around him were of a slightly different density.

Aya felt him before she truly saw him — not with her eyes, but with something else. The light, at the spot where this man stood, seemed to weigh differently. Not dark. Just… heavy. As if it had been drawn toward something denser than itself, and was pressing gently against it.

— I am Bolo, the man said. A Kwi-Ligbio. You are here for one reason only: to pass the Guébia.

His voice had no need to carry far. It carried all the same.

He raised one finger.

— First trial: the Renouncement. Abandon your tribe. Your name. Your lineage. A Kwi no longer belongs to their blood. They belong to the mountain.

A second finger.

— Second trial: the Race. Reach the edge of the forest before sunrise. Run until your legs burn. Run while avoiding the obstacles. Run until the mountain judges you worthy.

A third finger.

— Third trial: Survival. Three days in the forest. Without aid. Without weapons. Without lies. The mountain sees all.

He lowered his hand.

— Those who cross these three thresholds will become Pétégnipo. The others will return home. Or will not return.

His gaze swept the courtyard. Methodical. It stopped on each group, each face, each pair of eyes. Then it settled on them — on her and Aka — and it stayed there a fraction of a second too long. Not the gaze you cast on two strangers among others. The gaze you cast on something you were waiting for without knowing what it would look like.

Bolo approached. Slowly. He stopped two paces from them and murmured, so low that only they could hear:

— At last… Vakaba.

Then he withdrew. As if nothing had been said.

Aka didn't move. She saw him turn his head toward her, eyes searching hers in the penumbra of the courtyard. He hadn't understood the word. Nor had she. Vakaba. It was not a name or a word they knew. But it seemed to come from their tribe. For it contained only the vowel a. The distinctive mark of the Kah tribe.

— Aya, he murmured. What is that?

She didn't answer right away. She was watching the back of the man who was moving away, the dark wooden mask, the rigidity of his shoulders.

— I don't know, she murmured.

In the courtyard, the other adolescents stirred, spoke, laughed with nerves. No one had heard. No one knew that something had just happened — something minute, silent, terrible — and that they were alone in knowing it.

— We should leave, Aka murmured.

— We can't. Not now. Not after that.

— Why?

— Because if we leave, she said, we'll never know why he said it. And I don't want to spend my life wondering what we fled.

Aka nodded slowly.

They had no choice left.

Perhaps they never had