The Forgotten God — Movement 3
Entry
Ahhhhh …
So long
since I entered bone and sinew.
Her blood
so sweet!
Her heart
so tender!
Already
she breaks.
Quick!
I must find the wound
before she shatters.
A burning sensation in her nostrils pulled Nayela up from a predacious darkness that wrapped itself around her, seeping into her bones.
Pinpricks of cold spread across her forehead, and the sharp, familiar scent of methylated spirits mingled with the taste of rotting meat that clung to her tongue and made her stomach twist.
Someone was wiping her forehead with a cool wet cloth, muttering words that she did not understand, while someone else was applying the spirits to the soles of her feet.
She could hear whispering all around her. A child’s cry was quickly shushed.
Eyes still closed, she reached beneath her blouse for her nkisi bag: nutmeg, basil and gommier resin, bundled into a square of brown cotton and tied with a thin leather cord.
It was gone.
Nayela tried to push herself up on her elbows but her arms refused to hold her weight.
“Calm yuhself. You eh ready to get up yet.” Adama knelt over her, pressing the damp cloth to her forehead.
Behind her, Oba stood—his eyes wide and mouth drawn, a glass bottle of methylated spirits in his hands.
“The bag… Mama nkisi bag… Where—where it gone?” Her throat was a long, dark tunnel, swallowing the words before they could reach her lips.
“What you talking about, girl?” The sangoma’s voice carried the edge of someone accustomed to being obeyed. “Ent ah tell yuh calm yuhself?”
“Lissen to her, Nayela.” It was her uncle’s voice, steady, assured, an anchor in the panic that threatened to sweep her away. “We goh find de bag.”
He came into view, his eyes gentle—how had she not noticed that they crinkled at the corners? His hand swallowed hers.
“But gather yuhself. Den we goh move you from here.”
…
Abeo was calling from a nearby room.
“Yes mama? Ah coming,” Nayela shouted, pausing so that Dayo could clamber up her arm and sit on her shoulder before she got up from the table.
But the woman sitting on the bed—sunlight from the window illuminating half of her face—was not Abeo.
This skeletal figure with blotched skin, draped like cloth on its frame, could never be her mother.
The creature opened its arms and smiled as she stood at the door—its grin, a rictus of yellowed, elongated teeth.
Dayo was shrieking and chattering in her ear, pulling at her hair, trying to turn her around as if she were a horse and he, the jockey. But terror had rooted her to the ground.
The creature’s smile faltered, slowly morphed into a scowl, and then a snarl.
“Where de bag, chile? Ent ah tell you never take it off?” Its voice rasped like the wind blowing through dry grass and dead branches.
“Is he own. He give it to we. Now yuh vex him. Now he goh come fuh yuh!”
The creature started to raise itself from the bed, limbs shaking with the effort. Once erect, it stood there, hunched over, as if gathering its strength. Then bit by bit, it straightened its spine—vertebrae cracking and popping as the light from the window dimmed and slowly turned red.
When it stood to its full height—over three heads taller than her mother had ever been—the ceiling of the room seemed to stretch to accommodate it.
Nayela decided that it was time to wake up.
As she sat upright in her cot, trying to catch her breath, she became aware of two dark brown eyes staring at her from a small, bespectacled face.
“Dayo!”
The monkey jumped from the pillow upon which it was perched to her lap.
“Yuh see dat too?”
Dayo intently inspected the folds of her nightgown—his long, nimble fingers searching for parasites—and gave no sign that he understood her.
. . .
An Invitation to Ponder
Have you ever felt yourself changed by something you couldn’t fully explain—an experience, a dream, a presence that left you raw or rearranged? What stayed with you after?
Has fear ever risen in you so strongly that you couldn’t face what lay beneath it—grief, memory, something vast or unknown? What did you do? What would you do now?
What have you inherited—through family, culture, spirit—that feels both heavy and necessary to carry? What helps you bear its weight?
Thank you for staying with this part of the journey. Let the questions light the path and keep you company until we meet again next weekend.
A Note on Cultural Context
This story draws inspiration from various Afro-diasporic spiritual systems and ancestral traditions. It presents a fictional, syncretic world—not a direct representation of any single belief or community. The Forgotten God was created with deep respect for the cultural and spiritual heritages that continue to shape and inspire Black diasporic storytelling.