CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Shadow in the Mirror
"Kí a má bà á nínú, kì í ṣe kó jẹ́ pé a kì í mọ̀nà."
Not being lost doesn't mean one knows the way.
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Zainab sat at the kitchen table, stirring the pot of noodles absently. The water was already boiling, steam ghosting over the lid like forgotten breath. A drama played quietly on her laptop screen — one of those Korean shows she'd always loved, where emotions stretched like silk between pauses. But now, even the romantic tension on screen felt distant, like someone else's life playing out behind a veil.
She hadn't left the compound in three days. Her grandmother's house, once full of dried herbs and wooden rosaries, was turning in on itself — pulling her inward.
She wasn't afraid. Not exactly.
Just… still.
Sometimes, in the quiet, she would remember flashes of her father's village — the scent of groundnut soup thick with yaji, the way her aunties called her Lami, the Hausa name they had given her as a child. She barely understood the language now, save for a few lullabies that clung like spiderwebs in the corners of her memory. But somehow, in this house filled with Yoruba spirits and ancient notebooks, those faint northern echoes made her feel like she belonged to more than one haunting.
Her noodles boiled over.
She turned off the stove and left them there, untouched.
In her room, the air shimmered faintly. Not heat. Something else. Like anticipation. She picked up her grandmother's journal again, hands trembling slightly. The name Ayéròyá appeared in the margins, this time written three times and underlined in red ink.
Three times. In Ifá, that meant emphasis. Urgency.
She flipped through the pages. One sentence caught her breath:
"Orí will not forget its purpose just because you forgot your name."
Her reflection in the window glass flickered. Not changed — just… misaligned. Like a memory trying to wear her face. Her heart thudded.
She turned from the glass. The whispers were returning, but clearer now — as though the house had grown tired of subtlety. They weren't menacing. But they weren't kind either.
She needed air.
Outside, the moon was almost full. The wind stirred the tree branches with a strange rhythm, almost like drumming. She followed it — past the backyard well, past the washing line.
To the shed.
She hadn't opened the shed since she arrived. It was where her grandmother kept ritual items — kolanuts, feathers, black soap, and the thick white chalk used for markings. Tonight, it was open. The lock had been cleanly snapped.
Inside, she found only one thing: a cracked mirror, framed in cowrie shells.
It was hers.
She didn't remember bringing it.
When she looked inside, her face didn't look strange.
But it didn't look alone either.
Behind her, barely visible — a shape. Slender. Shadowed. Wearing the same spiral-eyed mask from her dreams.
She turned swiftly. Nothing.
Yet she felt watched.
Back in her room, the journal had flipped open again, as if by wind. This time, the handwriting was not her grandmother's.
It was hers.
"Not all spirits wear chains. Some wear mirrors."
Zainab stepped back, heart racing.
She didn't scream.
She folded the page closed, laid it gently on the table, and whispered into the silence:
"I am not afraid of who I'm becoming."
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If you meet yourself in the mirror and she does not blink — which one of you has become memory?