This is a short free excerpt of the second book in the Marked series (White Sight: The Awakening). At the end I’ve put in the link to the full excerpt and a link to the full book

Tried to tag everyone who showed interest in the Marked Series from the end of the last book posted on Nairaland

Skywalker909 Amry eROCK247 BmanWheart ayshow6102 OluwabuqqyYOLO Askech lukfame Rynne Tuhndhay Fazemood doctorexcel Dathypebruv kelsmic cassbeat Smooth278 tunjilomo popeshemoo annayawchee HotB

For those curious about the order of the books in the Marked series:
1. Crimson Night (Free on okadabooks)
2. White Sight: The Awakening (this book)
3. White Sight: The In-between (written not yet published)
The Tomes of the Last Brio (posted on Nairaland) Not part of the Marked Series, but part of the Marked universe
4. White Sight: The Reckoning (next to write)

Prologue
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Outside the Community, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria

Osezele didn’t realize her hands were shaking until the taxi driver pointedly remarked on it. She laughed off his concern, steering the conversation instead to the much more important one that they’d been having. In the time they’d spent parked by the side of the road, Osezele had only managed to convince the man to return half of the change she was owed. Haggling was not her forte. In fact, confrontation in general was just not her style. She was peace-loving. If only she’d embarked on this journey with Tolani. Despite her fear, a smile crept onto her face as she thought of how Tolani, her best friend, would handle this situation. If Tolani was here, this man would have already given her her money and even added jara on top.

Sadly, she was alone. That thought brought back her fears. The tremor which had developed in her hands spread to her throat. Her voice shook as she continued to barter with the driver. She should have brought more money with her, she would have, if she had any more. She’d brought all the money she had, all the money she could get without asking her mother. Just thinking of her mother, and the last conversation they’d had, rose feelings of guilt which combatted her fear. Her mother didn’t know where she was. She’d lied to her mother. Then she remembered why, and her guilt spawned anger. Her mother had lied to her for her entire life!

A red haze colored her vision.

“Oga abeg give me my change!” She snapped. As soon as the words were out, her vision cleared. She slapped her palm over her mouth, as if to retrieve the rude words she’d spoken and shove them back down her throat. She was not this person. “I’m sorry sir,” she began to beg.

The man hissed. It was a long sound, one created by sucking air through teeth pressed against a lip. Osezele had never had a talent for hissing, but the driver appeared to have a knack for it. As if the hiss was not enough, he ‘eyed’ her, sending his gaze from the top of her head to her waist and back a few times. Then, he retrieved the change he’d refused to give her, and flung the naira notes at her.

“Take your money and go. Rude girl,” he said, somehow managing to make the words sound like an extension of his previous hiss.

Osezele rushed to pick up the money. She’d just barely opened the door, when the car began to move. She jumped out of the car, and found herself on hands and knees, staring befuddled at the fumes gushing out of the exhaust of the taxi as it sped off. At least she had her change, she thought, rising from her sprawled position.

She turned her back on the road and was greeted by a large expanse of barren land. The area in front of her was a wide patch of muddy clay soil spotted with portholes. This was the area that surrounded the Community.

Simply thinking of her destination was almost enough to send her into a catatonic state. She gulped nervously, sweat trickled down her back, and her heart lurched.

Breathe.

She jumped. Her head swiveled, her frantic eyes darting all around her in search of the voice she’d heard. Suddenly, the world was out of focus. The blaring horns of the cars driving on the road behind her were now too loud. The cursory glances from passersby appeared a little too probing.

A motorbike rolled to a stop in front of her. “Where you dey go?” The okadaman asked.

Osezele gasped. The loud sounds dulled, and the probing glances glanced away. Her hand rose to her chest. Beneath her skin, she felt the pounding of her heart. She took a step back, moving away from the okadaman on his motorbike. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. What was she thinking? All of a sudden, her life came into focus. She thought of Tolani, how remarkable it was that she’d found a friend like her, and how unwilling she was to lose that friendship. Then she thought of Nosa and her racing heart skipped a beat. No, she took another step back, it was all too much to risk.

Stay Calm.

This time, she didn’t jump, but just barely. She recognized the voice. Was her mind playing tricks on her? She recalled the conversation they’d had about her desire to come to the Community. He’d tried to dissuade her, but she’d insisted and so he’d told her to stay calm. He’d given her everything she needed to survive this trip.

Stay Calm. Breathe. Don’t worry. And most importantly, don’t look back.

The words were actually comforting now that she could place her uncle’s voice. It was a testament to the degree of fear she felt that she’d been startled by the memory. Her uncle’s warning not to look back reminded her that she’d come too close to the Community; she could already feel the eyes behind that gate peering at her. Turning back now would only arouse suspicion. She had to keep going. She trailed her finger over her bracelet, the binding she’d made to protect herself.

This time, she made sure to haggle about pricing before she climbed onto the motorbike, but as soon as it began moving, she felt her fears return. She was so nauseous her stomach churned. Her heart kept up its frantic beating and her palm was so wet she had to rub it against her knees to wipe off the sweat. How could she possibly make it into the Community as nervous as she was? She turned backwards and stared longingly at the tarred road vanishing in the distance. She almost told the okadaman to turn around. The stakes of this visit tightened around her neck like a noose, making it hard for her to breathe. So much hung on her ability to slip into the Community without getting caught. If they found out the truth about her, they’d never let her leave. She would never see her mother again, never gossip with Tolani or gaze into Nosa’s dreamy eyes.

Voices of reason told her to turn around. The risk was too great.

Her uncle’s voice rose louder in her head. Stay Calm. Breathe. Don’t worry. And most importantly, don’t look back. She couldn’t go back, she’d already allowed herself to get too close to the Community. They would already have sensed her coming. She reminded herself that turning around would only arouse suspicion. It didn’t matter how many times she repeated it to herself, knowing the facts didn’t stop her stomach from twisting into knots. She’d never done anything this daring before.

As the motorbike pulled closer to the Community, Osezele felt her fears, already astronomically high, somehow manage to increase. Her uncle had taught her ways to avoid being seen, and it took all of her focus to keep her guard up. The bike rolled over a hump in the road, prompting her to cling to the driver. As her clammy fingers wound around him, a jolt of jealousy shot through her. She was jealous of the oblivion he enjoyed. He wouldn’t feel the weight of the eyes that peered into her. He wouldn't notice the augurs who had the gift of sight, the ability to find other marked, even the ones like her whose marks were hidden. He wouldn’t pick up on the spotters, bi-marked werejackal-augurs, infamous for their ability to hunt down the marked. They were no doubt the ones she felt probing into her as they drew inexorably closer to her destination.

When the bike came to a stop, Osezele had to force her teeth to stop their chattering. She rose wide eyes to the scenery which greeted her. They had stopped a few feet away from a single tall glass building. There were no terrifying gates with heavily armed soldiers parading in front of them. No visible signs of the law-imposed demarcation between the marked and unmarked. All there was, was a tinted glass building, surrounded by tall trees and shrubs, and erected on a bed of carpet grass.

The okadaman spoke, his voice low and trembling as he uttered words Osezele was not particularly keen on hearing. “You know say dem dey turn to animal for night? I hear say dem dey grow nails wey sharp like knife and teeth wey resemble dog own dey come out from their mouth. I even hear say dem get power sotee your head go break from your neck if they slap you.” While he spoke, she felt his fear, like a living force polluting the air around them. She was helpless to stop her reaction. Osezele snapped her eyes shut, hiding the red she knew filled them as she sucked in the man’s fear like dirt into a vacuum. He finished by saying, “Tufiakwa! Nah witchcraft dey inside there oh”.

Osezele stifled the urge to respond with, “there’s witchcraft out here too.” Instead, she climbed off the bike, smiled at the driver, and paid him the money she owed. As soon as he took the money, he turned his bike around and sped off as quickly as he could, away from the Community. Her eyes watched his hasty departure and a little voice told her that if she was smart she would run away as fast as he did. With great reluctance, she turned her back on the bike and somehow managed to ignore the voice of reason whispering for her to go back home.

The Community, Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria

On the second floor of the reception tower, Osezele walked out from the ID room, where she’d had her fingerprints recorded for the first time. She walked steadily towards the small office she’d been directed to. As she walked, she folded her arms in front of her, a defensive gesture which had the practical ability of hiding her shaking extremities.

Breathe.

The memory of her uncle’s voice returned. She stopped walking and forced herself to heed his words. Images of her mother, kneeling on their threadbare carpet, her fingers steepled together in prayer and her elbows resting on their couch, invaded her mind. Memories of the tall lean Nosa flashing his mesmerizing smile at her, pervaded her senses. Whispers of Tolani’s teasing drifted through her ears. She had people she had to return to, people she had to be brave for. Osezele drew in a large gulp of air, and then released it in a slow huff. She did this over and over again, taking slow measured breaths in, and releasing them softly. Then she willed her hands to stop shaking. She took one last long inhale, held it for a second and then released it. Then she continued walking towards the office.

Her uncle’s words came back to her. From his teaching, she knew that the room she’d been directed to was where the interview would take place. She was aware that the interview would be conducted by a team of three. An augur would ask most of the questions while two spotters sniffed for any unusual emotions emanating from her. If she showed fear which they deemed too much, or appeared overly anxious, they would send her to a third stage of screening. This stage involved a blood test and they could tell from her blood if she was marked. If she got to that stage, she would be caught, and they would never let her leave.

Osezele paused briefly in front of the office. She’d barely been there a second before the door was opened by a middle-aged woman, neatly dressed in what was clearly a soldier’s uniform. The woman smiled warmly at her before gesturing her in with the bending of her fingers. It was an effort, but Osezele smiled back, curtsied a greeting to the older woman, and managed to walk in without tripping on her own feet.

‘Breathe, stay calm, don’t worry. Breathe, stay calm, don’t worry,’ she repeated in her head like a Catholic chant as she walked into the deceptively simple office for an interview which could irrevocably change her life.

She took in the other occupants of the room. A woman, much older than the one who had ushered her in, sat behind a very officious looking table. She had to be the augur who would conduct the interview. A dark, pensive man, dressed in the same uniform as the woman who’d ushered her in, paced the room as if he couldn’t wait to get the interview started. Osezele surmised that he and the woman who ushered her in were spotters. She had somewhat regained her calm by the time she made her way to the empty seat opposite the seated augur.

“Good afternoon young lady.” the augur greeted.

‘Breathe,’ Osezele reminded herself, even as she felt the woman’s eyes on her, digging into her skin in the hopes of eliciting a reaction. She recalled her training, how her uncle had taught her to deal with this sort of scenario.

What do you do when you feel someone looking at you? He’d asked.

Look back, she’d answered.

That’s how augurs want you to react. They have the gift of sight. The marked have enhanced senses. It’s like being in a world where most people are blind and only a few can see. The ones that can see are the augurs. They see everyone. The other marked are also blind, but their enhanced senses give them an aura. An aura that the augurs can see. The augurs can see this aura only when they’re looking for it or looking in the direction of the marked person. But the spotters can smell it, that’s why they're so good at hunting us down. Now, imagine that this aura is removed. How can the augurs tell the marked from the unmarked? he’d asked.

They can’t, she’d answered.

Again, he’d asked, what is so special about the augurs?

They can see, she’d promptly replied.

But what if they closed their eyes? he’d asked.

She’d smiled then, understanding. Then they’re just as blind as the unmarked, she’d responded.

Right. But they’ve seen, so they know that they’re being watched. Our natural response to being watched is to search for the person watching. It’s a protective instinct, it’s how we find the enemy. If we feel danger coming, our eyes open wide to collect as much information as possible. In the absence of eyes staring back, or an identifying aura, the augur tries to force you to look, by looking at you, by watching, by ‘stalking’. To evade detection by an augur, all you have to do is keep your inner eyes closed. Stay Calm, breathe, don’t worry, and most importantly, don’t look back.

Osezele took a deep breath. She could feel the eyes watching her, hunting her, prodding her to look. It was as if she was trapped in a nightmare, her heart racing because there was a killer running after her. Every instinct in her body told her to turn around, to open her eyes, to identify her enemy, to see. Cold fingers drew up her spine, crawling under her skin like tiny frozen spiders. Voices whispered in her head, ‘look’, ‘look’, ‘look’. All she had to do was open her eyes, and the fear would go away, because she would know where the enemy was. Osezele had never felt anything like this. She’d never been stalked before, but her uncle had trained her well. He’d given her the strength to ignore the demented voice that prodded her to ‘look’. This wasn’t a nightmare, no one was chasing her. The icy fingers walking along her back weren’t real. She breathed through it. She was terrified, but she kept her inner eyes closed.

“What is your name?” the augur asked.

Osezele cleared her throat. Her heart was racing. The woman wouldn’t be able to tell how scared she was, but the spotters would, they would smell it in the sweat coming off her and hear it in the rapid thumps of her heart. She knew spotters were werejackals. Fortunately, werejackals couldn’t tell the cause of fear. They would just chalk it up to the same fear that many previous interviewees would have exhibited in this room. The fear of the reputation of the marked. Showing fear would serve her well, make her seem like an unmarked person. So, she let her fear mask all her other emotions.

“Osezele ma,” she answered. “Osezele Omorodion.”

“Miss Omorodion. How are you doing today?” the woman asked.

‘Look!’ The voice in her head, the one she’d managed so far to ignore, jumped out and yelled at her to open her mind’s eye. To see. She distracted herself by focusing on the woman’s accent. It reminded her a lot of Tolani who'd once corrected her, insisting that her way of speaking was ‘good diction’ and not ‘talking like oyinbo’. The thoughts of her best friend shored up her defenses. She withstood the augur’s stalking; she kept her inner eyes closed. “Fine thank you ma,” Osezele responded.

“And who are you here to see?”

“My aunty, Odion Omorodion.”

“How is she related to you?”

“She’s my mother’s tw–sister.” Osezele immediately caught herself before she’d blurted out the word ‘twin’. She’d been specifically warned against that fatal mistake. It wouldn’t matter that they hadn’t seen her mark. If they found out that her mother was the twin of a marked, they’d conduct further tests, including the dreaded blood test. To her relief, the woman didn’t seem to catch her slip.

“Have you been here before?”

“No ma,” Osezele responded, shaking her head.

“How do you like it so far?” the woman asked with a warm, motherly, smile.

Osezele smiled back. “It’s very nice ma. Thank you.” ‘Look!’ the voice returned and Osezele just barely managed to keep herself from jumping out of her chair. All she had to do was open her inner eyes and the voice would go away. The feeling of dread, the fear of the unknown, all of it would stop. If she looked. The elderly woman continued speaking. She didn’t appear even the slightest bit frazzled by the way she stalked Osezele. Osezele prayed for the strength to withstand.

“You have very good manners,” the woman said. “Rare for children of your generation. Your parents must have raised you well.”

“Thank you, ma.”

“Where are your parents? Why aren’t they here with you?”

“I live with my mother, but she was too busy to come,” she replied, carefully leaving off the fact that she’d never met her father. That, as she’d been told, could also raise suspicion.

“I understand. But I’m surprised she let you come on your own, especially for the first visit.”

“She planned to come with me, but I had to come alone.” Osezele prayed for the interview to end, she didn’t know how much longer she could resist the urge to look.

“Something must have come up at the last minute.” The woman added sympathetically.

Osezele was glad to hear her reach the conclusion she wanted her to. She had been warned not to lie. The spotters would have gotten a baseline for her heart rate by now. If it sped up, they’d know she was lying. “Well, I can see why she would trust you to come alone. You seem like a very capable young lady.”

“Thank you, ma,” she responded.

The augur stood up and Osezele followed suit. The woman immediately extended her hand for a handshake. Seeing that the interview was at an end, Osezele reached out eagerly to accept the gesture. As soon as she touched the woman, the urge to open her mind’s eye and look overwhelmed her. All the fear that she’d felt, drawing closer to the Community, returned with a vengeance. The chill came, icy fingers crawled underneath her skin. Her body went through cycles of cool and heat. At one moment she felt so cold she had to ground her teeth together to keep them from chattering. The next moment heat enveloped her, sweat pooled on her lips and at her temples, and she had to fight the instinct to wipe them off. The voice yelling ‘LOOK!’ in her head, yelled it in an unending chant, barking at a volume louder than she’d ever heard anything before. She knew she was in danger, she knew that she had to look. Every part of her mind screamed at her to end the torture. Her brain became the augur’s agent, whispering for her to go into her mark, open her inner eyes and look. She couldn’t take it anymore! She was just about to give into the desire to open her mind’s eye, when the woman finally released her hand. Osezele was so relieved her eyes shimmered with tears.

“Come with me,” the augur said, making her way around the table.

Osezele’s fears returned. She knew she’d been caught. She hadn’t been strong enough, her efforts to withstand the augur’s stalking must have been noticed. Now the woman was going to send her for the blood test. What was she going to do? She walked towards the door, examining her options for flight with each step she took.

Her worries proved unfounded when, on getting to the door, the woman pointed towards the other end of the hallway and directed her towards the canal which led to the visiting logs. “Do you know what class of marked your aunty is?”

Nodding, Osezele responded, “she’s an augur”.

The woman was quick to correct her. Osezele of course already knew that ‘augur’ wasn’t a class of marked. She hadn’t wanted to come across as having too much knowledge of the marked which was why she hadn’t given the correct ‘Warlock’ answer. There were three classes of marked, Warlocks, Varmints, and Sages. Augurs were only a type of marked under the Warlock class. After making a point of correcting her perceived ignorance, the augur told Osezele what floor of the visiting logs her aunty was in.

Osezele was so relieved to have made it through the entire interview unscathed, that she found herself curtsying twice and profusely thanking the augur for her instructions. As relieved as she was though, she didn’t allow herself to relax until she made it out of the reception tower and into the tunnel which housed the canal.

It was mesmerizing.

Osezele stopped dead in her tracks and gaped at the view. She hadn’t seen anything so beautiful outside a TV screen. The arched roof of the tunnel was filled with hundreds of tiny radiant spots. She couldn’t quite tell if those spots were the smallest lights she’d ever seen, or if they were just holes covered with dyed paper which colored the rays of sunlight as they streamed through. Whatever they were, they made the tunnel appear as though it was lit by a thousand stars. The beautiful glow from the spots hit the surface of the dazzling blue water in the canal. Osezele had never seen stream water so clean. Little ripples flowed over the surface of the water, moving in a way that appeared as an orchestrated dance. Could water dance? She was forced to wonder as she continued to gape at the sight. It had to be magic, she concluded, elemental witch magic.

“Hey!” A voice called out.

Osezele jumped, startled. In her search for the voice, her eyes caught on the single vessel bobbing on the dancing waves. She must have glanced by it when she walked into the tunnel. Now that her attention was settled on it, she could not look away, it was easily as captivating as everything else in the tunnel. The vessel was a sleek, white boat, shaped like the canoes common in the Niger Delta. It had transparent glass surrounding it. The glass emerged from the gunwale and rose in a curved arc all the way to the white roof, covering all but a single slot which, the wooden steps in front of the hull showed, was the entrance to the boat.

A teenaged boy dressed in black khakis and a white shirt appeared in front of the patch of missing glass. This boy was the owner of the voice. Waving over at her he said, “come on in”.

Osezele walked the few steps over to the bank. She glanced warily at the moving boat. Before, she’d been too far away to see that the boat did not make perfect contact with the top rung of the wooden ladder. It yawed, moving from side to side, as a result of the dancing waves it sat on.

“Don’t worry, I have you.” The boy, said, as if he could sense her fears. Osezele noticed for the first time that his teeth were pearl white. She smiled back at him.

Taking a deep breath, she climbed up the steps of the ladder, and steeled herself for the fall as she stepped into the boat. Surprisingly, she did not sway until after she was standing squarely in the vessel. It almost felt as if the boat had just known to stop moving while she climbed on. Once she was on it though, it continued its yawing, and she proceeded to stumble right into the expectant arms of the boat-boy. Wordlessly, he supported her, guiding her from the side of the boat, to the leather seats within. Osezele slumped ungraciously onto the seat, which earned her a chuckle from her handsome helper. He flashed his smile one more time in her direction, then turned his back on her and walked over to the bow. She was shocked to see that a boy who looked about her age was actually able to drive a vessel like this. And he’d been smiling, that confounded her. For some reason, probably related to the horror stories she’d been told about this place, Osezele hadn’t expected to see any happy children inside the Community. But the boy looked as happy and carefree as her friends on the outside.

As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, once the boat started moving, the boy turned around and smiled at her. “What’s your name?” he yelled, trying to be heard over the noise of the engine.

“Osezele,” she yelled back.

“What does that mean? Edo princess, or something like that?” he teased.

She laughed. “No, it means because of God.”

His smile widened, and she felt her smile widen in turn. He had a twinkle in his eyes. “I bet I know what your mum was thinking when she named you,” he said.

Sucked into his teasing, Osezele replied in kind, “what was she thinking?”

“Because of God she’s so beautiful,” he stated.

Osezele laughed. It was a sound so loud and filled with mirth that it almost drowned out the roar of the engine. That was the first real moment of relaxation she’d had since stepping into the Community.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Mitaire. My friends call me Tai,” he answered, flashing his perfect smile at her. “So, who are you here to see?”

“My aunty,” Osezele responded. Then, “she’s an augur,” she added. It felt good to finally be able to say the words freely to someone without wondering how they’d react. “What are you?” she asked, free to ask that question without consequence for the first time.

“I’m a lover, a gentleman, and a legacy,” Tai answered solemnly.

Osezele burst out laughing before he could finish. Unable to maintain his solemn countenance, he joined in her laughter. When their laughter subsided, he turned on his swivel chair, giving her such a serious look that he captured her full attention.

Then he closed his eyes.

When Tai’s eyes opened, his irises and pupils were gone, leaving behind only crimson orbs which shone brightly in the wondrous lighting of the tunnel. Tai’s eyes had undergone a sclera shift, different from the iris shift of the Varmints, and the pupil shift of the Sages. The sclera shift showed that Tai was of the Warlock class, and the crimson color of his eyes, showed he was a commune.

He briefly extended his right hand, palm up, with his fist closed. When he opened his palm, a crimson flame appeared, hovering in the air above it. Then, he raised his clenched left hand slowly. As he did this, a rock flew out of the water. When he opened his left palm, the rock landed directly on it. He brought both hands close together, and the rock levitated up into the fire and hung suspended within its flames. Then, he closed his hands around the rock and the flame, raised his closed hands to his face, and blew at them. Finally, the sclera shift ended, and his eyes returned to normal.

“If you were asking about my mark,” he said with a grin, “I’m a commune. Does that scare you?”

Osezele had to force her attention away from his still closed hands where she hoped to see something interesting emerge from the casual magic he’d performed. She shook her head in response to his question, choosing not to mention the fact that she’d known what he was as soon as his eyes changed colors. No, she was not afraid, she was exhilarated. When she’d learnt about the commune mark, she’d learned that communes could only get their power from negative emotions like pain and anger.

The thought of communes and negative emotions cast a pall on Osezele’s mood. She thought of pain and communes and memories of her pain and her last encounter with communes threatened to push themselves to the surface. In her mind she was in a hollow tub-shaped bed, staring up at the group of communes who’d kidnapped her to use her as a human sacrifice so they could get power from the pain of her death. A bitter taste filled her mouth. She forced the memory away.

Not all communes were bad.

At least she hoped not, since she was a commune herself.

No, not all communes were bad. Oshoke hadn’t been bad. Oshoke was a commune, she was her friend, and she hadn’t been bad. But even Oshoke had needed to hurt her pets to get power. Seeing Tai use his mark without hurting anything gave her hope. For the first time since she’d learned about commune magic, she saw the beauty in it.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, uplifted by the performance she had just witnessed.

“No, you’re beautiful,” he responded with a smile. “This is just magic, dark magic, which usually scares the unmarked. I’m glad it doesn’t bother you.”

She tried to hold it in, to resist the urge to ask the question on the tip of her tongue, but she had to know. So, she asked, “How did you do that without hurting anything?” He looked startled by her question and so Osezele found herself stuttering, cursing the urge that led her to reveal so much knowledge of marked magic. “I, ehn, I j-just mean that erm…I mean I’ve been told that...”

“Commune power comes from hurting others?” he asked.

She nodded. He lifted his left hand slightly to display a leather bracelet around his wrist. “This is the Community, sweetheart. My power comes from this.” He jangled the bracelet.

She had so many more questions. She’d been taught that only witches had talismans. They were the only ones who could do magic without hurting anyone. Communes needed to use negative emotions as the source of their powers. Had the Community found a way around this? If so, she was curious to know how they had achieved such a feat.

But the boat stopped at that moment and any chance she had of asking more questions was gone. He turned off the engine and stood up to help her off the boat. As soon as they were on the ground, he opened his left hand, finally revealing the product of the magic display. A heart-shaped marble rock sat on his outstretched palm. Osezele was dazed by how he’d transformed the coarse amorphous rock which had risen from the water into this smooth, beautiful, object.

“Take it. I made it for you. A memento of our time together.” He said.

Osezele’s awe increased when, on tilting it underneath the light, she noticed that it seemed to sparkle with varying colors. She looked closer and saw “Osezele & Mitaire” inscribed in calligraphed text onto the rock.

“Thank you,” she said.

He winked at her. “Turn it over,” he suggested.

She did. She flipped the rock and saw a phone number inscribed onto the other side. Osezele burst out laughing, almost as amazed by his confidence as she was by the control he had over his mark and the ease with which he wielded it.

At the end of the tunnel, there was an open elevator. She walked into it and waved goodbye to Tai as he sailed away on his boat. Her tunnel boat-boy, she mused. She pressed the button for the third floor, wondering, while the elevator moved, what would happen if something ever came of the boat-boy’s flirtation. Not with her, of course, not when Nosa was the only boy she could ever care about. But she did wonder what would happen if another girl fell for him while visiting her family. Could an unmarked girl marry a marked boy who was locked in the Community? If it happened, would the unmarked girl be able to live in the Community? A part of her wanted to give into the romantic notion of two people breaking the marked-unmarked barrier and being together regardless. But the more practical part of her knew that could never happen. Even if they did manage to conceive a child, she had a sickening feeling that the woman would be locked away somewhere until she delivered, and then the baby would be wrenched from its mother’s arms and the mother would be cast out of the Community.

The elevator pinged, letting Osezele know that she’d reached her destination. Her fingers trailed reflexively over her bracelet, as she waited for the elevator doors to pull open. Once they were open, she walked into the third floor of the visiting logs. Two rows of rooms flanked her on both sides. She walked past the lines of closed doors and stopped when she reached the one room where the door had been left open. A woman with black braids, sat on a couch in the center of the room. Osezele found herself walking in without knocking or waiting for an invitation. She hadn’t seen the woman’s face, hadn’t received any indication that the woman was her aunty, but she was inexplicably drawn to her.

The woman’s shoulders drew up. She rose to her feet, as if she could sense Osezele’s presence in the room, and turned to face her.

Their eyes met.

They froze.

Osezele had known that she’d come to visit her mother’s twin sister, but she had not expected the resemblance to be so uncanny. It was as though she was looking at her own mother.

“Aunty,” she called out.

* * *

The hairs on the back of Odion’s neck stood up. She sensed that she was being watched, and not by the person she’d come to the visiting logs expecting.

Odion had only ever had one visitor, her sister Akhere, the only family she knew of. She pushed away the blank fog that momentarily filled her thoughts. Once, long ago, the missing years of memories had bothered her. It had vexed her that the first sixteen years of her life were gone. No images came to mind when she pictured a mother, no deep voice stirred her memories at thought of a father. After fourteen years, she was used to not knowing. She had Akhere, and her twin sister was more than enough.

Today was different. She felt it in the air around her, in the twitching of her nerves. This visitor was not Akhere. So, who was it? Odion was not one to contend with ignorance. She jumped to her feet and turned, a nervous excitement racing through her at the prospect of a new, unknown, visitor.

As soon as their eyes met, she froze.

Caramel brown eyes in a dark brown face caught and held her gaze. For a second, Odion forgot how to breathe. Her mouth hung open, her heart stopped in her chest, the very air around her seemed to freeze. There was only stillness.

Odion stared into those misty eyes and it was as if she was in a time machine being pulled back, sucked back to the first time she’d seen those caramel irises staring up at her from a pudgy, wailing, baby. She could hear the baby’s screams, Akhere’s quivering voice asking what was wrong, the pounding on the door. Her skin prickled with the memory of the moment when she and Akhere had frozen in horror staring at the door, breaths bated, and a cold sweat running down their backs as they waited to see who emerged. She went back in her mind, back to a few months before that fateful day.

They’d been sixteen then. Sixteen years old without a single memory of the life they’d had before. It was as if they’d simply started existing at that age. Except Akhere’s existence had begun pregnant. Odion could still remember those first few months in the Community, trying to adjust to life as a marked teenager with an unmarked pregnant sister on the outside. Akhere had been terrified, sixteen and pregnant with absolutely no memory of how the baby had ended up in her belly. They’d discussed an abortion, but Akhere hadn’t been able to go through with it. At the time, Odion had appealed to the council, the leaders of the Community, for a special license so that her sister could move to the Community with her. Her appeals had been denied.

Those were still the worst months of Odion’s life. It was in moments like that that she’d wished for memories of her past. Anything would have sufficed. She would have settled for just knowing who’d gotten her sister pregnant. But no memories came. They’d had no one to turn to for help. Things got better after Akhere found a job as a maid in a hotel. In the Community, Odion had been enrolled in school. She was marked, and all marked children were taken care of. It had struck her as blatantly unfair that she got the formal education, the free food and shelter, all because she could live in the Community, all because some twist of fate had placed a mark on her chest and given her powers of augury to go with it. They’d survived those first few months.

Then everything changed when Odion saw the vision of her niece’s birth. In that vision she’d seen that her niece, Akhere’s daughter, was marked, just like her.

She’d been elated. After months of loneliness she was finally going to have family living with her in the Community. She hadn’t been able to contain her excitement. The next time she saw Akhere, the words just came spewing out of her mouth. It wasn’t till after her sister broke down in tears that she realized how selfish her desires had been. She hadn’t even considered how Akhere would feel about having a marked baby. But they both knew what had to happen. It was the law. All marked children had to be turned into the Community. Which meant that Akhere would have to give her baby up. Odion tried to console her sister by assuring her that she would take care of the baby, it would be just as if the child was hers.

Akhere was inconsolable.

She was adamant.

She refused to give up her child.

Odion’s heart broke, but Akhere was her sister, her twin, and so she told Akhere the rumors she’d heard about communes who hid children’s marks, making them unknowns. It was illegal, and if they were caught, they would both be imprisoned and the child would end up in the Community, alone. Akhere considered the risks and she chose to take them. Odion knew her sister wasn’t strong enough to do it by herself and so she’d snuck out of the Community to help her.

Escaping had been a thrill. Normally, it was impossible to leave the Community without the council’s approval. However, things were different for augurs and sages. It was one of those rare moments when Odion had cause to be grateful for the intermingling of religion and politics in her country. It was because of this intermingling that Nigerian authorities allowed augurs and sages to live outside the Community and share their ‘gifts from God’ with the unmarked. They were, however, required to spend three years in the Community to master their marks. Odion had snuck into a group of augurs and sages leaving after their mandatory three years were spent. She’d lied her way amongst them, and she’d been driven right out of the Community.

Once Odion had joined her sister, she’d taken Akhere to a renegade commune, called Ebo, who’d been hiding under the guise of a native doctor. Ebo had suppressed the baby’s mark. Thanks to Ebo, the outward sign of the mark would never brand Osezele’s skin, and augurs and spotters wouldn’t be able to see or smell her mark until her powers came out. It gave Akhere at least ten years with her daughter, without fear of having her mark sensed.

There was only one problem.

Marked children gave off beacons in the moment of their birth.

Ebo’s magic suppressed that beacon, but they could not know until the moment of birth how much the beacon was suppressed. It depended on how strong the baby’s mark was. And it turned out that Osezele’s mark was strong, very strong. When she was born, she gave off a beacon so strong that as soon as her body came out, Odion had felt it and been drawn to it.

Unfortunately, Odion was not the only one who’d been drawn to it.

And that was how that moment came to be. Akhere lying on her birthing bed holding a wailing baby with tears suspended in her eyes as the door of her tiny apartment shook when someone pounded on it. The baby screamed. Akhere, tired from pushing the little baby out, turned to Odion and asked her, in a quivering voice, what was wrong. Akhere had been so afraid. The pounding on the door had only gotten louder until finally, it was opened. A spotter came in and pointed at the baby Osezele. Odion and Akhere stayed still, frozen in horror. A cold sweat ran down Odion’s back as she waited for the verdict. But she’d known, even as the augur held baby Osezele, she’d known that the beacon was gone and Ebo’s magic had already taken effect. She’d known that Osezele was safe.

She’d known that she wasn’t.

The augur noted that the baby didn’t have a mark and the spotter sniffed, sure that he’d not been mistaken in the scent that drew him to the room. He’d caught scent of Odion’s mark and Odion’s duplicity had been revealed. The augur got into her head, the augur bonded with her and she learned of Odion’s crimes. Odion had been able to hide what they’d done to Osezele’s mark, but only because the augur wasn’t looking for that secret. They’d taken her back to the Community. Since she wasn’t an adult, she wasn’t thrown in jail, but she wasn’t allowed to leave again either. The Nigerian allowances for augurs to live outside the Community after their three-year training was rescinded from her. She was taken back, and she’d never seen her niece again.

“Aunty,” Odion heard Osezele’s shaky voice calling out to her and was instantly brought back from her trip down memory lane.

“Osezele. Is that really you?” she asked, and then laughed at herself for sounding like one of those aunties, asking questions she already knew the answers to.

Osezele nodded.

Tears filled Odion’s eyes. She held her hands open and smiled when Osezele ran towards her. When she got close though, the girl began to curtsy. Odion frowned at the greeting, grasping her by the shoulder and pulling her close before she could bend. They hugged. Odion thought about loosening the vice-like hold that she’d ensnared her niece in, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Odion spoke into Osezele’s ear, “I never dreamt of meeting you. Not even for a second. I didn’t dare hope.” Odion rocked Osezele as she spoke. The tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to pour over. It took a herculean effort, but after a great deal of time had passed, Odion managed to loosen her hold and let go of Osezele.

“Oh Osezele,” she said, sniffing a little. Odion realized she was acting like a cry-baby, but she could not help herself. She knew that she would laugh whenever she recalled this first meeting. She stepped back. “What can I get you to drink?” She asked, making her way over to the open door. The mini fridge was in a cubby built into the wall above the stove in the kitchenette. She closed the door and opened the fridge. She then proceeded to list every single beverage in the fridge, and more she knew off the top of her head, she would get whatever Osezele wanted. Only the best for her niece. She felt her eyes wetting again and shook her head at herself. When had she become such an old woman? Where was the cool aunt she’d always dreamt of being?

“Aunty, just Fanta is fine, thank you,” Osezele responded.

Odion retrieved a can of Fanta from the fridge and carried it back to the couch where Osezele was sitting. The couch was one out of five which formed a circular arch around the center table, in front of the TV. There was a queen-sized bed in one side of the room and a toilet behind it. These rooms were InCoSeM – (the International Coalition for the Security of the Marked) – mandated for all Community visiting logs. InCoSeM was the world-wide ruling body in charge of all Marked Communities. For some reason Odion couldn’t guess at, InCoSeM’s rule in Nigeria was not yet as secure as it was everywhere else in the world. The room was InCoSeM’s idea of fostering good relations between the marked and unmarked. It was as if InCoSeM thought that if they could make the visiting rooms nice enough, it would be easier for the unmarked parents of marked children to obey the law which required them to hand those children over to the Community. As someone who’d helped her unmarked twin sister to break that law, Odion could point out the flaws of their logic.

The subject of her thoughts sat on the couch, staring up lovingly at her. She handed Osezele the bottle of Fanta she’d gotten from the fridge and proceeded to sit beside her.

Her gaze lifted and she saw Osezele staring at her chest, at the outward brand of her mark that she wore proudly on it. The mark was a long thin oval with a line of bumps on both sides. Every marked person was born with one, and all marked people had supernatural abilities.

Odion smiled at Osezele. “I can’t believe you’re here. What are you doing here?” There was something about the combination of words that had the effect of shaking sense back into Odion’s head. In the excitement of seeing her, Odion had completely forgotten about the consequences of Osezele’s mark on this visit.

All the joy she’d felt at the sight of her niece was quickly evaporating. Anger grew to take its place.

“What are you doing here?” This time the question was an accusation, and Odion could tell, by the way Osezele looked away guiltily, that the young lady knew she was in trouble.

Osezele was marked. Of all the stupid, idiotic, things that she’d ever seen in her life, this one had to take the cake. For an unknown – as those with hidden marks were called – to deliberately walk into the Community, was unheard of. Didn’t Osezele understand the risks? Didn’t she know how much Odion and her mother had sacrificed to keep her out of this place? Odion’s anger began to give way to confusion. There were checks at the reception tower, augurs and spotters were placed there. If Osezele was marked, by the age of fourteen her powers would have come out, and she would not have been able to come in without her mark being discovered. Odion started to doubt the vision she’d seen of Osezele’s mark. She thought of asking Osezele and thought better of it. Instead, she grabbed onto Osezele hands and did what the Community and natural talent had made her so good at. She looked.

Odion closed her eyes and went into her mark. The thought of linking with her niece reminded her of her first Auspice in Augurism class where she’d learnt that the function of an augur was to see visions. All the other gifts augurs had, were in service to that main function. Augurs could see visions either on their own, or in a bonded chain. But the bonded chain’s visions were preferred, as they were much clearer and more farseeing than that which a single augur could have. She’d learnt during that lecture that an augur’s gift of identifying other marked was a consequence of attempting to form a bonded chain. To form this chain augurs had to link. Linking was the first connection that augurs formed between themselves, when they saw each other in their augur mark, or their mind’s eyes, as some augurs liked to refer to it. Bonding was the next stage. It was only after the augurs bonded that they could form a chain.

Odion used her augury to begin the process of creating a bonded chain with her niece. When her inner eyes opened, she was alone in a dark room, ready to link with Osezele. As soon as Odion saw the empty room, the first thing she felt was relieved, Osezele was not marked. If Osezele was marked, then Odion would see her, she’d see Osezele and know her mark, it was as simple as that.

Odion was just about to come out of her mark when she felt something. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, just a feeling, and so she stalked. She pictured Osezele in her mind and put every bit of her power into forcing Osezele to open her inner eyes and look. She hunted her niece. She became the predator in her augur mind, and Osezele the prey.

Osezele didn’t open her inner eyes, but that didn’t stop Odion from stalking her. If she was another augur, one who hadn’t had a vision of Osezele’s mark, she would have stopped at this point. But she’d seen that vision, she’d sensed Osezele’s beacon as a child and so she stalked with even more force, using her mark with the skill and viciousness that had put her at the top of her Auspice in Augurism class. Odion knew from her experience against well-trained augurs that she could not be denied. Her stalking gaze had the ability to make an augur feel extreme fear, as if their life was in imminent danger and the only way to save themselves was to open their inner eyes and see. Odion could sense the strength of Osezele’s mark by how long she was able to resist. But eventually, like every other augur Odion had come up against, Osezele gave in. She opened her inner eyes and looked.

As soon as Osezele revealed herself, all that she was became clear to Odion. Odion released Osezele’s hand and recoiled, stunned by the revelation she’d just made.

Her niece was not just an augur, but a witch and a commune too. She was a tri-marked warlock. Before that moment, Odion had not even known that such a thing was possible. Bi-marked warlocks were rare, but a tri-marked warlock was unheard of. How was her niece the one to break the mold?

“Do you know what you are?” Odion’s voice was barely above a whisper.

Osezele nodded, the corners of her lips tipped downward in a forlorn frown. “I’m a tri-marked warlock,” she said, her tone stating that she somehow understood the dangers associated with her marks.

But she didn’t though, not really. How could she? A pang of pain filled Odion’s chest as she stared at her niece. Did Osezele even know the future in store for her? Odion didn’t need her sight to know that Osezele was destined to share the same fate she had, she would be taken from her mother, Akhere, the same way that Odion had been the day of Osezele’s birth. It was inevitable. All powerful marked people were found and brought here, and Odion didn’t know of any mark as powerful as a tri-marked warlock. Osezele was the first of her kind. She would eventually be discovered, hunted down, and brought here to live out her days. Odion knew it, but she could not quite bring herself to say it.

“How did you get in here without anyone seeing your mark?” Odion asked instead.

She noted the downcast look on Osezele’s face and knew that she’d put a pall on their visit. At that moment though, she didn’t care. She fully intended to scold Osezele for her recklessness and impress on her the need for a visit like this to never be repeated.

Osezele fingered the bracelet on her hand without responding.

Odion’s eyes followed Osezele’s movements. She found herself stunned for the second time. “Is that a quintise binding?” she asked. Surely, Osezele could not have gotten a quintise to make her a binding which could hide her mark. For all but the augurs, a quintise binding was all that was needed to make it impossible for anyone to see their mark. The binding hid the scent of their mark from spotters, and the sight of their mark from augurs. The augurs were the exception to this, because they had inner eyes which could look, which meant their mark could be seen if they allowed themselves to link with another augur by looking at them with their inner eyes. It meant that even with a quintise binding, augurs had to do more to hide their mark. Which made it all the more impressive that Osezele had managed to evade the notice of highly trained augurs. Odion found herself smiling a little. “Please answer me.” Odion prompted.

Osezele’s eyes darted nervously to Odion’s face. “I don’t know what a quintise is,” she replied, “I made the binding myself. My uncle taught me how to make it.”

There were so many things in that statement that puzzled Odion. Uncle? What uncle? Osezele didn’t have any uncles, she only had a mother and an aunty, that was as far as their family tree extended. And she’d made a quintise binding herself? A quintise was a group formed from a combination of Warlock marks. Now that she thought of it, it made perfect sense that Osezele could make it, she was after all a tri-marked Warlock, which meant that she had all the marks in the Warlock class. Odion was just about to ask about this mysterious uncle when Osezele’s hands clenched tightly around hers and rushed words gushed out of Osezele’s mouth.

“Aunty I’m so sorry, please don’t be angry with me. I just wanted to visit you. You’re the only family I have other than mummy, and mummy lied to me for my entire life. Aunty she hid my mark without telling me, and she didn’t even tell me when I was old enough to handle it. Please, don’t be angry, I just wanted to meet family that wouldn’t lie to me.”

Odion felt as if her heart was breaking. She pulled Osezele in for another hug, cooing softly at her when she began to cry. She’d told Akhere to tell Osezele of her mark. She’d told Akhere to do it a year ago, before Osezele’s mark was revealed by the powers she developed. Akhere hadn’t listened, she’d wanted to protect her daughter.

“It’s okay, I’m not angry.” Odion said, cajolingly, “I’m just worried about you. I’m very happy to see you, but visiting me is not worth the risk of being caught and locked here.” Odion stroked Osezele’s back as she spoke.

“It’s worth it to me, aunty.” Osezele argued.

“Don’t argue with me, if not we’ll really start to quarrel.” Odion warned only a little jokingly.

Osezele laughed. Thankfully, she’d stopped crying. She pulled back. Odion gave Osezele time to compose herself before she attacked again. “So, you risked your freedom because you’re angry at your mother and you needed to vent to someone? Does that sound smart to you? Don’t you have friends you want to see? Or you don’t know that if you get locked in the Community, you’ll never see them again? Maybe you don’t have friends, that’s why you’re acting so careless.”

Osezele’s shoulders slumped. She stared down at her hands as she mumbled barely audible words. “Aunty no, I have friends. I have a best friend Tolani and Nosa, my boy…my friend.”

“Eh!” Odion exclaimed teasingly. “So, you have a boyfriend?”

Osezele smiled, shaking her head. “Nooo.”

“But you want him to be your boyfriend?” Odion prodded.

Osezele ducked her head shyly.

“Mmhmm. If you like don’t be careful with your mark, until they lock you inside here. Then when you don’t see Nosa again, you’ll know.”

“Okay, okay, aunty, I won’t come back. Shey you don’t want to see me again. I won’t come back.” Osezele said playfully.

Odion got serious quickly. There was something about having to deal with abandonment issues that removed the teasing from statements like that, especially when they were made by a child. She never wanted Osezele to feel a fraction of what she did. It was bad enough that Odion didn’t know who her parents were and what had happened during those missing sixteen years of her life. She didn’t want Osezele to ever doubt the love of her family, as the gaps in her memory forced her to.

“Osezele, even before you were born, I loved you so much more than you could ever imagine. If I could find a way to bring you and your mother here so that we could all live together, I would do that. But I can’t. I want you to be happy, and that’s why I’m making sure you understand how dangerous this visit is.”

Osezele nodded. “Aunty, I understand, I was just joking before.” Osezele’s gaze traveled around the room before returning to Odion. “Ehn-ehn, I almost forgot. I actually had a very good reason for coming here.”

“You had a very good reason for coming here and you forget?” Odion made sure that her lack of belief was evident in her tone of voice.

Osezele laughed. “Aunty, have you heard anything about the Community capturing a marked couple from Port-harcourt? The boy, Emeka, is a very strong werejackal, and the girl, Oshoke, is a pain commune. Oshoke was actually my first senior friend in St. Luke’s. She’s the one that taught me how to control my commune mark.”

Odion smiled at that. She’d had a vision of Osezele in St. Luke’s and had told Akhere to send her there. It was nice to hear that the vision had paid off, and that Osezele had other unknowns there to help her with her mark. But a marked couple? She shook her head. A young marked couple getting captured together was the kind of thing that the children in the Community tended to make a lot of fuss about. She would have heard of it. “No, why, are they missing?”

Osezele shrugged. “Emeka used to be the alpha of the werejackal pack in St. Luke’s, and the last time I talked to Nosa, he mentioned that he hadn’t heard from Emeka in a while and that he didn’t know if he should worry, so I just decided to check with you.”

Odion almost laughed at her niece’s attempt to cover up the fact that she’d come here out of anger at her mum. Had she ever been this young and this bad at making plausible excuses? “So, you expect me to believe that you risked your freedom because of a phone call you had with your boyfriend about a werejackal who is not even missing?” Odion gave Osezele a level look. “Tell me the truth, did you really come here to ask about Emeka and Oshoke?”

Osezele looked guilty. “Maybe I was a little angry at my mother,” she confessed. “But aunty she should have told me that I was marked, shouldn’t she?”

Odion decided to stay as far away from that conversation as she could. She wouldn’t pick sides. “Next time, find a different way to rebel, this is too dangerous.”

“I really wanted to meet you aunty, I’m sorry.”

Odion could tell that she was. She exhaled, deciding that she’d played the role of serious aunty for long enough. It was time for the cool aunt to come out. “Alright, so tell me about this Nosa.” Osezele looked ready to disagree, so Odion sweetened the pot. “If you tell me about Nosa, maybe I’ll tell you about the cute spotter who just moved into my apartment building.” Just thinking of the spotter, Oare, made Odion’s mouth water. Talk about hot.

The deal must have been too good to pass up, because Osezele started talking.

obehiD:
Tried to tag everyone who showed interest in the Marked Series from the end of the last book posted on Nairaland

Skywalker909 Amry eROCK247 BmanWheart ayshow6102 OluwabuqqyYOLO Askech lukfame Rynne Tuhndhay Fazemood doctorexcel Dathypebruv kelsmic cassbeat Smooth278 tunjilomo popeshemoo annayawchee HotB

For those curious about the order of the books in the Marked series:
1. Crimson Night (Free on okadabooks)
2. White Sight: The Awakening (this book)
3. White Sight: The In-between (written not yet published)
The Tomes of the Last Brio (posted on Nairaland) Not part of the Marked Series, but part of the Marked universe
4. White Sight: The Reckoning (next to write)

May chusescip bless you obehiD...
I came online just in time,lemme give this a good read thanks for the mention...

Chapter One
--------------------

St. Luke’s Mixed Boarding School, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

Osezele walked along the patch of grass beside the Slab, idly gazing at rows of parked cars, and the students that came out of them. The area was packed with people. Students walked around the cars, bidding farewell to their parents and hello to the friends they’d missed over the break. They walked in groups along the Slab, edging to the side to give way for moving cars. It was the usual commotion associated with Resumption day, with throngs of people milling about. Osezele found her gaze fixing on a woman wearing a large gele, who was just stepping out of an old Honda Accord. The woman’s hands casually dropped to rearrange the knot of her wrapper, before she proceeded to open the rear door of the car she’d just come out of. Two young children, a boy and a girl, climbed out. Something about the way the woman wrapped those children in a bear hug made Osezele smile. Half an hour ago, she’d been in those children’s place, receiving a huge hug from her mum. The woman maneuvered the children to the back of the car, and then fiddled with the latch until the trunk popped open. She wrestled their large bags out of the trunk all by herself.

Again, Osezele thought of how her mother had insisted on bringing her bags down. The taxi-driver, who’d driven them from the bus stop to the school, had offered to help, but her mum refused. If it wasn’t against the school rules, her mother would have carried the bags all the way to her hostel. Osezele giggled to herself, thinking of how much her mother would love to live in St. Luke’s with her, if she could. It had always been just the two of them. That was why the betrayal of her mother not telling her about her mark had hit her so hard. They’d reconciled though, Osezele had that to be happy about.

The woman pulled out a handkerchief from her handbag and seized the young girl by the chin. She rubbed forcefully at the girl’s cheek. Then, she turned her attention to the boy, and fussed over him until he began to fidget. Osezele could tell from the uniform he wore, a purple shirt and knickers combo, that he was in JSS3, older than the girl, whose red pleated dress showed her to be in JSS2. She turned her attention from the set just arriving, to another about to leave. An old man in a white agbada waived goodbye to an SS2 girl, climbed into a black Jeep, and drove out of the parking spot he’d taken by the Chapel. He navigated around the other cars parked on the grass between the Auditorium and the Chapel, until he was in a position to drive onto the Slab and then out of the school. The girl he’d waived to stood rooted to the spot, simply watching the Jeep as it drove away. There was a sense of finality in the car’s exit, and an odd, almost ritualistic, farewell in the girl’s watchful gaze. Whoever he was to her, she would not see him till the next time parents were allowed back in the school, which was during Visiting day, weeks away.

“Osezele!” A familiar voice called from behind her. She barely had time to turn around before Tolani came flying into her arms. Osezele wrapped her arms around her best friend, holding tightly onto her as they jumped around, laughing. They were so happy to see each other that they were mindless of the scene they created. It had been a long vacation and Osezele had spent every minute of it looking forward to seeing Tolani.

Osezele extricated herself from the hug. “How are you?” She asked. “How was your holiday?” As she asked the questions, her eyes darted around, and she noted that there were many people watching them. A part of her felt horrified at the scene she’d created, but there was a tiny part that felt pride. Once, not too long ago, she’d been so much of a loner that she’d been nicknamed ‘Class mute’. Now she had a friend she could be rowdy with.

“It was terrible!” Tolani responded, her arms falling dejectedly to her side.

Osezele’s full attention returned to Tolani. “Why?” she began to ask, and then stopped when she was interrupted by a group of her seniors in SS3. The girls walked a few feet away, along the edge of the Slab.

“Osezele!” One of them called out, waving as she continued to walk by. “How far na?”

Osezele, now used to such things, was unperturbed by the fact that the girl talking to her walked along with her friends without particularly waiting for a response. “I’m fine,” Osezele responded, giving her a reply on the off chance that the student was expecting one. Being in SS1, Osezele couldn't risk insulting any senior students, even the ones she didn't know. It still came as a shock to her that there were SS3 students she didn’t know, who knew her. It was one of the benefits of being a school prefect. She was popular now.

“Who was that?” Tolani asked.

Osezele turned back to her friend and shrugged her ignorance.

Mirth bubbled in Tolani’s eyes. Osezele stared at those eyes and just knew that Tolani was about to say or do something quirky. “As in, you’re now ‘miss popularity’!” Tolani said, right on cue. “Even SS3 girls are just shouting your name left and right. Osezele, please wave at me. Oh Osezele, validate my existence,” she teased, theatrically waving her hands and making faces as she spoke.

Osezele couldn’t help the laughter that burst out of her. She poked Tolani in the side, desperate to get her friend to stop mimicking the senior girls who’d waved at her. Tolani was fearless. It was one of the many things Osezele admired about her, but right at that moment, Osezele worried that Tolani’s expressions would get them in trouble. The easiest way to get punished by senior students was to tease them. Thankfully, Tolani stopped.

“It’s not like that joh, Ngozi forced me to go to a party with her over the holiday. I met a lot of SS3 girls there.” Osezele explained.

Tolani sighed wistfully. “And while you were partying, I was grounded.”

“Grounded? As punishment?” Osezele asked, bemused.

Tolani nodded with a pout. “Yes.” She sucked air in through her teeth. “My dad caught me sneaking through his journals while I was looking for the grimoire Lami asked me to bring. Just like that, he grounded me for the rest of the holiday.”

Osezele’s ears perked up at the sound of a witch’s grimoire, a book of spells and incantations for the different types of witches. She hadn’t really had much practice with her witch mark. She was just starting to get excited when she remembered that Tolani mentioned she brought it for Lami. Since Osezele had almost accidentally killed Lami the first time she’d used her commune powers, she didn’t think the SS3 head girl was going to want to share the grimoire with her. Osezele didn’t let her disappointment get in the way of a prime opportunity to tease Tolani though. She barely managed to keep a straight face as she said, “Tolani, are you sure that in your family you people aren’t oyinbo? Maybe you just paint your faces black to deceive the rest of us. I’ve never heard of Naija parents grounding their kids. Is that one even punishment sef?”

Tolani rolled her eyes and hissed. “Trust me, grounding is a punishment, and we have the lives my father spent in the Community to thank for his expert use of it.”

Tolani’s casual mention of her father’s lives in the Community reminded Osezele that she was not just talking to any ordinary unmarked person, but to the daughter of the most renowned African Sage. Tolani’s father was a type of Sage known as a recall, a remembered memory recall to be specific, though Osezele much preferred the colloquial ‘reincarnate’ or the shortened ‘remem’, all three of which referred to the same mark. Tolani’s father was infamous as the longest reincarnate chain in Africa. He’d come back more times than any other African remem, totaling a whopping twenty-seven lives.

A casual glance around them froze Osezele’s words in her throat, before she could reply to Tolani’s comment. She’d been about to disclose the trip she’d made to the Community to visit her aunty, when her eyes darted to a group of boys strolling casually along the Slab. Her heart skipped a beat.

She froze. It was as if every cell in her body forgot how to function.

Nosa was walking along the Slab with two of his friends. He had his elbow casually propped on the shoulder of the boy walking to his left as he leaned slightly towards the boy walking to his right. Osezele just barely recognized the boys he walked with as Victor and Elliot, two of his closest friends. Elliot must have said something funny, because Nosa laughed.

It was such a beautiful sound. His head tipped backwards, giving Osezele the perfect opportunity to admire his new haircut. He’d gotten a buzz cut with the edges of his hair carved to frame his face. Osezele’s eyes travelled along that face. He had a long face with a slightly big forehead which would have looked ugly on anyone else. Somehow, Nosa managed to make it work. His irises were a dark brown, so dark they were barely distinguishable from his pupils. His nose and lips were big, but they fit in just right with the rest of his features. Osezele’s eyes travelled downwards, across his tall, lean, body, to the brown sandals on his feet. He wore red trousers and a red uniform shirt with a sleeve that stopped midway down his upper arms. The first time she’d seen him, was after he’d just transferred into St. Luke’s as a JSS 2 boy. She’d had a crush on him since then.

“Nosa.” Osezele just barely said the words. Her voice was so low that she doubted Tolani, who was standing next to her could hear. But Nosa heard. Of course he did. Why was it so easy to forget he was a spotter? His werejackal hearing picked up her barely uttered words.

He turned to face her, and their eyes locked.

Nosa stopped moving.

He smiled at her, and her heart raced. She could tell from the way his smile deepened that he could hear her pounding heart. She was suddenly filled with an irrational urge to flee. Nosa turned away for a moment and Osezele ran and hid behind the tallest tree she could find.

* * *

They’d been arguing about the Slab when he saw her. Elliot believed that the Slab, like all the other concrete walkways in the school, should have a more unique name. The Appian Way, for example, was just another concrete walkway which connected the Refectory to the School Block, and the Bell Lane was yet another ‘slab’ which separated the boys’ hostels from the girls. So why did the slab they walked on get the unimaginative name ‘the Slab’. It was Victor’s opinion that the name came from the Main Slab, as the Slab was the main driveway into the school. It connected the school gate to the Administrative building, with offshoots leading to the Chapel and Auditorium, along the way. Nosa agreed with Elliot, but before he could say this, he’d heard her call his name.

Osezele.

His Princess.

His lips twitched as he thought of that special nickname. He’d given it to her the first time they’d met. He could still remember that meeting as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. She’d been under punishment, made to wash the entire school’s plates because she’d been daydreaming during her JSS3 Computer Class. That had happened only a term ago. Now she was in SS1 and he in SS2, but he was still as crazy about her as he’d been that day.

He remembered the scent that drew him to her. He was a spotter, so sniffing out other marked was his curse, which turned out to be a blessing in her case. Her scent was the most fragrant thing he’d ever smelled. He could not describe it any better now than he’d been able to at the time. She’d smelled like sea water, bottled up, and set on fire in spicy-scented flames. The smell had led him to her, where she stood, bent over, elbow deep in washing water. He’d had to fight off the urge to sniff her like a curious dog. But when she’d turned around and he’d seen her, he’d forgotten how to breathe.

The first thing he noticed about her was her skin. Her skin was a very dark shade of brown, it was one of the darkest he’d ever seen. It was so dark that it made every other feature on her face stand out. From her curly black hair, to the extreme white of her sclera and the light caramel brown of her irises. A boy could get lost staring into those eyes, he surely had.

When he’d asked her why she was washing plates and she’d answered saying that she’d chosen the punishment over a flogging, because she’d never been flogged before, he’d declared that she’d been “receiving royal treatment.” The ‘princess’ nickname had been the logical extension of his statement. Since the first time he’d called her that, he’d decided that he never wanted to call her anything else.

“Ah ah, Nosa, where’s your mind na?” Elliot prompted, jabbing Nosa in the side as he spoke.

Nosa reluctantly turned away from his Princess. “What?” he asked.

“Silver was just asking you if you’ve heard from Emeka. No one in the pack has heard from him since he graduated.” Elliot stated, referring to Victor by the ‘Silver’ nickname he was most known for.

Nosa shook his head absentmindedly. He turned back to stare at the spot Osezele had stood in and frowned when he saw that she was gone. “Go on without me,” he said distractedly, breaking off from his friends, to run towards the location he’d last seen her in. Hopefully Tolani would be able to point him in her direction. He had a number of questions for his Princess, the foremost of which was why she’d suddenly stopped picking his calls over the break.

As Nosa made his way towards Tolani, another question popped into his mind. Why couldn’t he smell her? He frowned at that. Osezele’s smell was too spellbinding to miss. Since the first time he’d caught her scent that day in the Refectory, he’d been able to smell her whenever she was close. So why hadn’t he smelled her when he’d been walking only a few feet away? If she hadn’t whispered his name, he would have walked right by her. That wasn’t possible. He could identify every marked he’d ever smelled. His sense of smell was so acute that he could differentiate the other jackals in his pack, even though they mostly all smelled like wet dog. That made two questions for his Princess then.

“Tolani.” Nosa called out, once he reached her. She was standing on the grass by the Slab, only a few feet away from the rounded corner of the fence around the boys’ hostels. “Wasn’t Osezele here just now?”

Nosa’s gaze settled on Tolani’s face in time to see the stun fade from it. The corners of her lips tipped up in a slight knowing smile. Nosa got the feeling that Tolani had just solved some puzzle, but what it was, he could not say. In all honesty, Nosa wasn’t a huge fan of Tolani’s. He thought she was a little too rude for an SS1 girl. He acknowledged that she was smart, inarguably the smartest in her class, but he didn’t understand what it was about her that made so many seniors like her so much. She was decent looking. She had an average brown skin, not too dark, not too light, with regular features, but nothing that really stood out. Nothing to make her get away with half the stuff she did.

“Yes, she was here, then she pulled a disappearing act on me. I wonder why that is?” Tolani mused. She grinned, turning a conspiratorial look on Nosa, which he wasn’t sure he liked.

Nosa turned his focus from her, to examining his own thoughts. Disappearing? Could she do that? Nosa knew that Osezele was a bi-marked Warlock, a witch and a commune. He didn’t know much about Warlock marks, but he did know that communes could teleport. No, he shook his head, Osezele was not yet that good of a commune to use magic like that. And even if she was, she wouldn’t dare do magic where anyone could see. That was the fastest way to get caught and thrown into the Community.

Nosa suppressed a shiver. He couldn’t think of a worst fate than that. Getting caught as marked outside the Community was every unknown’s worst nightmare. He knew that it wouldn’t be too bad for him, as the Community didn’t throw anyone under 18 in prison, they’d just separate him from his friends and family and force him to live in the Community. The real horror would be his parents’, who’d be imprisoned for hiding his mark. It would be a life sentence. The Community wouldn’t stop there either, they’d come to St. Luke’s and interrogate everyone. If they found out about their secret marked society, they’d burn the school to the ground and imprison every parent of every unknown in the school, and any family or friends who had the slightest suspicion about the hidden mark.

“Oh my god!” Tolani screamed.

Her cry pulled Nosa out of his gruesome thoughts. He frowned at her, wondering what was responsible for the sudden outburst. When he noticed her gaping at something, he turned in the direction of her stare and found himself looking longer than he should have.

There were three girls walking along the grass. They appeared to have come from the direction of the Bell Lane. Nosa somewhat recognized the girls standing on the outside. They all wore pink skirts and shirts, the SS1 girls’ uniform. He found himself staring after the one in the middle. There was something very familiar about her. Nosa could objectively state that she was gorgeous. She looked like a model or something. And he wasn’t the only guy who noticed, or the only one staring. He realized he was staring and shook himself. She was beautiful, but nowhere near as mesmerizing as his Princess. He was about to look away, when the girl turned to face him. She smiled, rose her hand in the air, and wiggled her fingers in a cute wave. He nodded in greeting, but only because it would have been rude to just ignore her. Then he looked away.

When he turned back to face Tolani, the SS1 girl was staring daggers at him. “Have you finished looking?” she asked.

Nosa almost lashed out at her. For an SS1 girl to talk to him like that…but he stopped himself, repeating the fact that she was Osezele’s best friend in his head. That was the only thing saving her. “She looked familiar.” He spat the words out through clenched teeth.

“I hear you.” She muttered underneath her breath.

Maybe she hadn’t meant for him to hear that. If he wasn’t a werejackal he probably wouldn’t have. But he was a werejackal, and she was very aware of the fact. No, Nosa shook his head, he’d had enough. “What did you just say?”

Nosa glared at her, watching as the defiance slowly faded from her face. He had to remind himself how much he liked Osezele. That was the only way he could keep his temper in check.

“Nothing,” she replied, looking away, “nothing. I was just saying that it’s Binta Gambari you were staring at.”

Binta Gambari, no wonder the girl looked so familiar. He remembered watching one of her movies. He smiled thinking about how he’d watched it with Osezele over the phone. He’d commented about how the actress was pretty and Osezele had gotten jealous. That was the moment he’d known she liked him too. So why had she stopped answering his calls?

Nosa sighed, he glared at Tolani, choosing to ignore her rudeness this one time. The things he did for love, he thought, a smile teasing the corners of his lips. Nosa walked away, shaking his head at his own silliness.

* * *

Osezele stayed hidden behind the mango tree until she was sure that Nosa was gone. She waited, watching as he made his way all the way down to the junction where the Slab met the Bell Lane, and then he turned onto the Bell Lane, and was concealed by the fence around the boys’ hostels. That was when she came out from behind the mango tree and walked towards Tolani.

As she walked, Osezele’s gaze locked on two of the last people she ever expected to see together, Fatima and Oluchi. They were walking on either side of a girl that looked somewhat familiar. Osezele wasn’t sure where’d she’d seen the girl in the middle, but she could clearly remember the last time she’d seen the girls she walked with.

Before Osezele and Tolani met and became best friends, Tolani had been best friends with Oluchi and Osezele with Fatima. Although, to Osezele, Fatima had been a best friend in name only. Fatima was most known for her sharp tongue. She delivered caustic insults with the accuracy of a ninja, and, sometimes, had almost as painful results. For that reason, Osezele had never felt comfortable around her, and she’d never trusted her enough to tell her secrets. But they’d been best friends because Fatima had been her only friend. That was during the period when Osezele’s ‘Class mute’ designation was in its prime. Everything changed when Nosa caught her scent and identified her as marked. He’d brought her into the secret St. Luke’s Marked society. Fatima had sensed something going on between Osezele and Nosa and had gotten angry when Osezele refused to tell her what it was. She’d yelled at Osezele. That yell had ended their friendship and drawn Tolani to Osezele. As soon as Tolani heard Fatima’s yell, she’d walked over to Osezele and demanded to be her friend.

Osezele still could not believe it really happened. While she’d been the class mute at the time, Tolani had been the class prefect, easily one of the most popular girls in her class. It had taken some convincing to make Osezele believe that Tolani was not playing a cruel joke on her. She could still remember the words Tolani had said to convince her.

‘Everyone deserves a friend. A real friend. One that you can talk to, and I mean really talk to. One that’s always there for you no matter what. Everyone has the right to at least one person like that. Just one. You can wait for that person to come find you, or you can take a chance with me. I’m just as lonely as you are.’

Osezele had been baffled that anyone as popular as Tolani was could understand the loneliness she felt. But she’d taken a chance with Tolani and their friendship had blossomed. Sealed with the exchange of “a secret for a secret”, Tolani had told Osezele about her marked father, and Osezele in turn shared her hidden mark. They’d been inseparable ever since. After that, Osezele had stopped speaking to Fatima and Tolani to Oluchi. Though Tolani told Osezele that her friendship with Oluchi had ended years before.

“Osezele!” Tolani screamed. “You just left me here looking like a fool.”

Tolani’s words pulled Osezele back to the present. She smiled an apology at her friend. How could she explain the urge she’d felt to run away? How could she describe the way that Nosa made her feel? She couldn’t come up with any words to express herself clearly, so she said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t talk to him. You know how much I like him now.”

Osezele received an open-mouthed stare from Tolani.

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Tolani replied, sounding exasperated. “When you like someone, you’re supposed to talk to them. That’s how like develops into something more.”

Osezele shook her head, but she didn’t say anything.

Tolani sighed. “Did you see that?” She asked, tipping her chin in the direction of the mango tree Osezele had been hiding behind. There was a stone bench built around the stem of the mango tree. Fatima, Oluchi, and the familiar girl sat on it.

Osezele nodded. “Looks like our ex-best friends are now best friends.”

Tolani let out a long loud hiss. “Who’s talking about them? It’s Binta Gambari, I’m pointing at.”

Binta Gambari, why did the name sound so familiar? It took some time, but Osezele finally linked the name with the familiar face of the girl sitting with Fatima and Oluchi. Binta Gambari was the marked actress Tolani loved so much. What was she doing in St. Luke’s, wearing a St. Luke’s uniform?

“Let’s go and say hi.” Tolani said.

Osezele didn’t move. There was just something about this Binta girl that she didn’t like. What was an actress doing in their school? And of all the people for Binta to befriend, she chose the two people who didn’t like them.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Osezele replied.

Tolani was already walking towards them before Osezele could finish putting her two cents in. The last time she’d spoken to Fatima things had not gone well. Fatima had turned her famous caustic tongue on Osezele. As much as she wanted to avoid them, Osezele couldn’t let Tolani face them alone. So, she took a deep breath, and steeled herself for the worst, before following in Tolani’s wake.

Chapter Two
---------------------

St. Luke’s, Port Harcourt

The closer they drew towards the trio, the less Osezele liked the prospect of approaching them. What did she know about Binta Gambari? She racked her brain trying to remember tidbits of information that Tolani had dropped. She remembered that Binta was marked, an augur to be specific. Binta was the most famous marked teenager in the country. Tolani had mentioned something about Binta being marked despite the fact that both of her parents were unmarked. Binta’s parents had obeyed the law, handing her over to the Community for the required 3-year training. During that time, Binta started a blog through which she narrated her experiences in the Community. Osezele only knew of the blog from Tolani’s previous mentions of it. Tolani had read every post Binta made, many times over. Binta was something of an icon to her best friend. As they stopped by the bench, Osezele uttered a short prayer that Binta lived up to the pedestal Tolani placed her on.

“Hello Binta,” Tolani said, stretching out her hand for a handshake. “My name is Tolani, I’m a huge fan! I dream of being as successful as you when I’m older.”

Osezele was stunned by the star-struck look on Tolani’s face. Tolani’s outstretched hand quivered while she waited for Binta to respond. Osezele could say that she had never seen Tolani this flustered at the prospect of meeting someone new.

Her gaze went from Tolani’s hand to Binta’s face. Binta Gambari. Yes, staring at the girl, Osezele could easily see how this was someone who’d starred in several blockbusters, earning a number of International awards for the parts she’d played. Osezele had never wondered what a celebrity would look like in person, but Binta seemed to fit the stereotype of being unrealistically beautiful and degradingly arrogant.

As if to confirm Osezele’s thoughts, Binta chuckled. She stared haughtily at Tolani’s hand. “I’m as old as you are, and you want to be me when you grow up? Doesn’t that make you ashamed?”

Fatima and Oluchi burst out laughing. Osezele turned to Tolani in time to see her friend lower her hand. Tolani’s jaw clenched, and her hands balled into fists by her side. She stood taller, tipping her chin up, as if unaffected by Binta’s words, but Osezele knew better. She felt Tolani’s pain and anger. The emotions wafted out of Tolani like heat from a flame. With each guffaw from Fatima and Oluchi, Tolani’s emotions heightened.

Osezele fought against them. She tried to resist the urge to absorb Tolani’s negative emotions, but as she heard the laughter, she felt her own anger grow. Once she got angry, and had that emotion in common with Tolani, she found the compulsion to absorb Tolani’s emotions too strong to withstand. She had no control of it. Osezele sucked in Tolani’s emotions, adding them to the ones she already felt.

A red haze filled Osezele’s vision. She just barely had time to close her eyes before she felt the sclera shift begin. Her eyes were turning the crimson of a commune in her mark. They stood on the open field, exposed to so many unmarked eyes. Osezele knew that she couldn’t lose control, she couldn’t let the sclera shift complete.

As a commune, she had the ability to hurt others. Her powers came from absorbing negative emotions and using that as a fuel to do many dangerous things, one of which was invoking negative emotions in others. Communes could kill, it was a fact that Osezele was very well aware of. The last time she’d lost control of her mark, she’d almost killed Lami. Now she hated her commune mark because of the damage it could do, and she fought against ever having to go into it.

She knew from her uncle’s teachings that one way to push the emotions back was to focus on something else. If she dwelled on the anger she felt, and the pain she’d absorbed, the sclera shift would complete, and she would lose control of herself. So, she tried to dwell on something different. There was a mantra she recited at moments like this, one that she liked, one that kept her focus on forcing herself to remember it.

‘I am the sea,’ she began to chant in her head, ‘I am the storm, I am the fire, the flame that burns.’ As she focused on completing this task, she felt the emotions begin to subside. ‘The fire is free and so…’ Before she could complete her mantra, Osezele felt a sharp pain on the back of her head, as if she’d been slapped. That physical pain somehow managed to snap her back from the edge of her mark, faster than the mantra she’d been reciting.

Osezele opened her eyes.

Her vision was normal, there was no red haze from her commune mark. Osezele breathed easy. She turned around, curious to see who’d slapped her, and maybe thank the person for intervening. Although, she wasn’t sure if she should be thanking someone for slapping her. She smiled, a half smile filled with indecision, as she turned to face the person.

The smile fell away from her face. Osezele gulped nervously. Lami stood in front of her, subjecting her to such a direct gaze that Osezele found herself looking away.

“Come,” Lami ordered. She didn’t even wait to see if Osezele would obey before she started walking away. Osezele’s corner mate, Ngozi, walked with Lami. Osezele took solace from the sympathetic look on Ngozi’s face. Her gaze locked on two JSS1 girls who glanced uncertainly at her. Those girls walked behind Lami and Ngozi.

Osezele turned back. Fatima and Oluchi were no longer laughing, all hints of gaiety had faded from their faces. Binta managed to look both condescending and bored. Oluchi and Fatima bore looks of such profound jealousy that Osezele almost wished she could trade places with one of them. She knew that they’d seen Lami slapping her on the back of her head, as some sort of ‘friendship’ gesture, and that they thought Lami had summoned her to gist. Lami was the quintessential fair beauty. It was a fact which made her very popular. That combined with her head girl status, made her the most influential girl in the school. Back in the days when Osezele was still the class mute, she’d only ever been able to dream of someone like Lami knowing her name. Now Lami knew her name, and much more than that.

“Senior,” one of the JSS1 girls who’d been trailing behind Lami was now standing by her side. Osezele turned to the girl. “Lami said that you should not make her wait.”

Osezele nodded. She watched the girl jog back in the direction Lami walked in. Osezele faced Tolani. “Will you come with me?” she asked, her voice low and unsteady.

“You don’t even have to ask.” Tolani replied.

Osezele smiled in gratitude. She took a deep breath and turned to follow Lami, wondering as she walked, just how much trouble she was in. To the unmarked, Lami was just the head girl, one of the two most senior prefects in the school. To the warlocks in the hidden society of St. Luke’s marked, Lami was much more than that, she was their grand warlock, in charge of all witches, communes and augurs. If Lami had sensed that Osezele had been close to losing control of her mark, Osezele wasn’t sure what Lami would do to her.

Tolani held Osezele’s hand and squeezed lightly, offering a silent support which Osezele greatly appreciated. They walked quickly, trying to catch up with Lami, who’d already gotten as far as the goal post in the middle of the Sports Field. The Sports Field was a large area of green surrounded by the Slab on the left, the Appian Way on the right, the boys’ hostel behind and the School Block in front. The direction of Lami’s walk made it clear she was headed for one of the classes in the School Block. Osezele knew that it was in her best interest to catch up with Lami before the senior girl reached her destination, so she quickened her pace.

As she walked, Osezele found her thoughts going back to the first time she’d spoken to Lami. It was the day that her powers had been revealed. In celebration of the ‘secret for a secret’ which she’d shared with Tolani, they’d both decided to go and check out the secret room for the marked students, which was located in the senior lab building. Nosa had showed her the room and given her a key to it. After telling Tolani about her mark, she’d shared the secret of the key and the room. They’d both been curious, and had walked into the room at the absolute worst time.

That had been the first time that she’d seen Nosa as a jackal. She could still remember the way his golden irises had turned to stare at her. Emeka, the pack alpha at the time, had been furious with her for bringing an unmarked to the room. The marked seniors had decided that, to keep their secret, Lami had to take away Tolani’s memory. Lami was a memoir witch, a type of witch with the power to manipulate memories. As soon as Lami had touched Tolani though, Tolani had began screaming. Her pain got to Osezele and Osezele found herself going into her commune mark for the first time. When she got out of the mark, Lami was lying on the floor, bleeding and unconscious.

Osezele pulled her focus out from her thoughts.

They’d caught up with Lami, just in time to climb with her from the level grass of the Field to the stone grounds of the School Block. They walked in silence, past the Junior classrooms, along the footpath beside the Library, until they reached the half of the School Block reserved for the senior classrooms. When Osezele had been a junior student, she’d felt an almost unnatural level of fear at the prospect of walking by senior classrooms. It was as if she’d thought that the senior students would punish her simply for daring to walk by them. Lami stopped when she reached her classroom, SS3A, as the wooden block above the door declared it to be. Osezele’s classroom, SS1B, was on the second floor.

Lami stepped aside, and then gestured with a curt incline of her head, for the JSS1 girls to precede her. They both looked very nervous. It wasn’t till that moment that Osezele thought about how strange it was that there were JSS1 girls walking with the head girl. Who were these girls? This was the first semester of the new class year, so they were new to the school. This would be their first day. One of them seemed to swim in her pink pleated dress. Her hair was scraped, cut so low that her bare scalp showed. Osezele felt sorry for her. The girl had large, pointy, ears, which just looked funny against her small face. The other JSS1 girl was chubby. Her pink uniform had been sewn to fit her perfectly, and she’d cut her hair, as they were all required to, but not too low. Osezele surmised by how smartly she appeared, that the chubby girl knew an older student in the school.

“Please excuse me!” the chubby girl screamed at the top of her voice before walking into the classroom. All younger students were required to excuse themselves before entering a senior class. Osezele knew this, but she found it silly that they had to perform this ritual when the class was empty. Of course, with Lami standing behind her, she was sure to yell out the required ‘please excuse me’, when it was her turn to walk in.

Lami brought up the rear. “Osezele,” she called, standing in the back of the classroom. Osezele who’d walked towards the front with Tolani, released Tolani’s hand, and retraced her steps.

She stood in front of her grand warlock, head bent low as she waited for her sentencing.

“Are you okay?”

Osezele’s head snapped up. She repeated the words in her head, trying to determine if Lami had asked the question with the inflection which would mean she was concerned, or the inflection which would mean ‘are you mad?’. She couldn’t decide which it was, so she simply replied with, “I’m fine.”

Lami appeared skeptical. “So, you weren’t struggling to control your mark when I saw you under the mango tree?”

Osezele thought about lying. She wouldn’t be a survivalist if she didn’t at least contemplate it. As a junior student she’d learnt to give seniors the answers they wanted. Now she was technically a senior student, but Lami was two years more senior. “I had it under control.” Osezele replied, adding an ‘eventually’ in her head. She’d been doing fine with the mantra.

“Are you sure?” Lami probed.

Osezele found it impossible to read Lami’s face. She couldn’t tell if Lami was looking for an excuse to punish her, or if she wanted to help her. After a while, she gave up on trying to figure it out. “Yes ma.” She said.

Lami nodded. She walked away from Osezele then, moving towards the front of the class where the four girls they’d walked in with stood, staring at them. There was an awkward silence as Osezele stood in the same spot, not sure if she was expected to leave the class now that Lami was done with her, or if she should walk forward and join the rest of them. At moments like this, the class mute returned. She was not exactly friends with Lami. Lami and Tolani shared a corner – a living space –, the same way that she shared a corner with Ngozi. But Lami’s friendship with Tolani did not extend to her.

“So, Lami, who are these two little rats?” Tolani asked, breaking the silence. Everyone’s attention went to Tolani, and then moved to Lami. The ‘two little rats’ in question giggled. Tolani stealthily waved Osezele over, as if she’d sensed Osezele’s struggle with where to go. Osezele turned her back on the door and walked towards the group. She smiled when she reached them. With Tolani there, she felt as if she belonged.

Lami introduced the JSS1 girls. Osezele learnt that the skinny one with the huge ears was going to be her new bunkmate, the girl who slept on the top bunk of her bunkbed. Her name was Seyi. The chubby one’s name was Moji. In addition to being Tolani’s new bunkmate, Moji was also Lami’s baby sister. Osezele couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to come into St. Luke’s as the sister of the most popular student. Moji was going to have a great first year in St. Luke’s.

Lami stopped short in the process of teasing her sister about her bright pink watch. “It is six forty-five!” she exclaimed. “What are the both of you still doing standing here.” Her gaze was fixed on Osezele and Tolani in a way that made it clear who she referred to by ‘the both of you’. Osezele stared at Tolani, glad to see the lack of comprehension she felt mirrored on her friend’s face. They both turned confused looks on Lami.

“Why are they staring at me like mumus?” Lami snapped. “It is six forty-five, time for food. Timekeeper,” she turned to Tolani, “I never hear bell. Food prefect,” her gaze darted to Osezele, “food don ready? Abi una won start this fine new term with punishment?”

Understanding dawning, Osezele and Tolani walked hurriedly out of the classroom. They both rushed to the duties that being school prefects obligated them to perform.

The Community, Benin City

Odion was starving. Her stomach grumbled. She rolled over on the mattress, frowning as the bedsheet clung to her sweat-slicked body. She opened her eyes. Akhere shared her mattress with her. She could barely make out the outline of her sister’s face from the flickering light provided by the kerosene lantern. Her stomach continued to grumble. She sat up from her bed and turned in the direction of her parent’s mattress. It was empty. Her brothers shared the mattress to her right. Eroms lay facing her, while Idemudia was turned away.

Odion heard voices. She pushed herself off the mattress and walked quietly across the single room of the one-bedroom apartment. The front door was padlocked, but the back door stood slightly ajar. Odion pushed the door open and walked out. It was the dead of night. Odion made to walk out of the house, then stopped when she saw her parents sitting opposite each other on short three-legged wooden stools. There was an empty firewood stove between them.

“What do you mean no?” Odion heard her mother ask. She was whispering, but her voice was loud enough to be heard in the quiet night. “Ejemhen we can’t go on like this, our children haven’t eaten in days.”

Her father dropped his head into his hands. “I’m trying Itohan, it’s harder than I thought. Every good job requires a blood test, and I can’t let them take my blood.”

Odion knew that she shouldn’t be listening, but she stayed rooted to the spot. “Let us go back to the Community.” Her mother said, “please Ejemhen, let’s go back. They won’t kill us, they don’t want to waste our powers. We can do whatever they want. Please, our children don’t have to die for this.”

“We can do whatever they want? After they killed our families, after they hunted and slayed them like animals? Does my mother’s death mean nothing to you?”

“Not when my children are starving!” she snapped. “As far as I’m concerned, your mother killed herself.”

Odion felt anger grow in her. She’d never been more betrayed in her entire life. She ran out of the house, oblivious to the pain of the rocks digging into her bare feet. She didn’t stop running until she was standing in front of her mother.

“How can you say that about mamin?” she yelled. “You should be ashamed!”

Her parents turned to stare at her.

“Oni…” her mother began.

“Ashamed!” Odion yelled
.
Her father got up from his stool. He was frowning as he bore down on her. When he reached her, he knelt. With him kneeling, his face was only a little bit higher than hers.

“You don’t talk to your mother like that.” He scolded.

Tears of rage spilled down Odion’s face. She wanted to hit something, to fight, to make someone bleed. “She said that mamin killed herself!”

“I don’t care, you never speak to your mother like that. Oni you know…”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off when a high-pitched scream came from within the house. Her father stood, and picked her up, carrying her back into the house. Odion was still furious as she glared at her traitorous mother walking in their wake.

Odion heard her father gasp, right before he placed her on her feet in the house. She turned around to find Idemudia, hurdled in a corner of the room, with Akhere standing in the other. There was a golden jackal in the middle of the room, its snout pointed at Akhere. As soon as Odion saw Akhere shivering, tears running down her cheeks, she pulled her arm free of her father’s hold and ran towards her sister. The jackal ran after her.

It pounced on her.

Despite the fact that she knew she had nothing to fear from him, she found herself shaking. “Please Eroms,” she whispered, “remember I’m your sister. Remember me!” she yelled.


“Remember me!” Odion yelled to an empty room.

Her eyes drew open. She woke from the strangest dream she’d ever had, drenched in sweat. Her heart raced, pounding belligerently against her ribcage. Had that been a vision? No, she shook her head. She was too well trained in augury to not recognize a vision when she had one. A dream then? But to what end? She focused on her memory, trying to remember what she’d seen. Augurs never forgot their dreams, it was part of their mark. Odion dwelled on that dream now. She remembered lying next to Akhere. But Akhere had been young. She’d looked about eight or nine, which meant that Odion had to have been that age too.

A memory from when she was eight? Odion had never been more excited to dig through a dream. If the dream was indeed a memory, then it was the first glimpse of her family that she’d ever had. It was the first thing she knew about her origins. She remembered a small room, and two boys. Odion frowned, digging deeper. Brothers! Their names? Again, she had to dig. The memory of visions came clearer, more precisely. Was one a werejackal? She remembered a jackal pouncing on her, and she’d called him Eroms. Idemudia, the second name came easier. And her parents? Ejemhen and Itohan.

Tears filled Odion’s eyes. She had parents. She had brothers. She had a family. Had she been loved? Odion dug deep into her subconscious trying to associate feelings from the dream. The first feeling that came was anger, she’d been angry at her mother, so angry she’d wanted to attack her.

Odion frowned.

A creaking sound pulled her out of her own head. Odion sat silently, listening. She heard footsteps. Was there someone in her apartment?

She jumped out of her bed and ran to the light switch. She flipped the switch, bathing her room with white light. Then she looked frantically around her. There was no one there. She was alone. Odion stepped out of her room and walked into the living room. She turned on the light to this room too and scoured it with her frightened gaze. She saw nothing, no one. Odion walked over to the door. She frowned when she saw that the chain lock was undone. Had she left it this way? She reached for the doorknob, twisted, and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t give. It was locked.

Determined to cover her bases, Odion unlocked the door and stepped out of her apartment. She stared down an empty hallway.

“Odion? Is everything okay?”

Odion’s head swiveled. It was the spotter, Oare, the one who’d just moved into her apartment building, the one she’d told her niece about. Her lips parted preparing to frame a response, when her eyes noticed the direction of his gaze. He was not staring at her face.

Odion looked down on herself. She gasped, mortified by her appearance. Odion always slept in a large shirt, and nothing else. The shirt was just long enough to cover her butt, and maybe half an inch of skin below that. Her dream had left her so drenched in sweat that her shirt was soaked, it clung to her body like a plastic wrap. He could see every contour of her body if he wanted to, and it appeared that he wanted to, because he was not looking away.

A dimple appeared on his cheek as he smiled. Of course, he was fully dressed in black trousers and a light blue shirt. Did he have to look like a model out of a catalogue, when she looked like…this?

“Goodnight.” Odion said. She ducked back into her room, shrinking at the sound of his throaty laughter.

Link to the full excerpt (free)

https://okadabooks.com/book/about/white_sight_the_awakening_free_excerpt/35519



Link to the full book (N 400)

https://okadabooks.com/book/about/white_sight_the_awakening/35520

I'm going ahead to get the full book...

You're so awesome,I've so much missed osezele Amma read the whole deal the whole night...

Cheers obehiD

Finally!My Osezele is back. Thanks ObehiD for beautifying my night with this excerpt but I think I've read these parts before.

Dathypebruv:



May chusescip bless you obehiD...o
I came online just in time,lemme give this a good read thanks for the mention...

Thanks for the call up

obehiD:
Tried to tag everyone who showed interest in the Marked Series from the end of the last book posted on Nairaland

Skywalker909 Amry eROCK247 BmanWheart ayshow6102 OluwabuqqyYOLO Askech lukfame Rynne Tuhndhay Fazemood doctorexcel Dathypebruv kelsmic cassbeat Smooth278 tunjilomo popeshemoo annayawchee HotB

For those curious about the order of the books in the Marked series:
1. Crimson Night (Free on okadabooks)
2. White Sight: The Awakening (this book)
3. White Sight: The In-between (written not yet published)
The Tomes of the Last Brio (posted on Nairaland) Not part of the Marked Series, but part of the Marked universe
4. White Sight: The Reckoning (next to write)

Thanks for the call up Obehid

Pheeew! Finally it's out. I was one of the few that read the in-between but missed out on the awakening. I'll certainly be loading my okadabooks wallet (something I've not done this year) and download it.

I read Servia on okadabooks and it has a lot of potentials, you should look into making it a complete book or even a series like The Marked.

I downloaded the excerpts and saw the part where you acknowledged Nairaland and Nairalanders. That part made me go awww. Thanks so much for the acknowledgement, we love and appreciate you too

Litlanders, let's support our 5 star fantasy writer by downloading the book. Even if you've read it before, you can keep it in your library to read later. Just N400 and it's worth every kobo and more

@Dathypebruv thank you!

@MhisTahrah Yes, this is an edited version of the first story I posted on NL

@cassbeat thanks for answering it lol

@dominique Thank you! I hope you enjoy it, please let me know what you think when you're done. I honestly don't think that I'm going to finish the servia book (at least not any time soon) but I'm posting something else on NL that has some similar themes. Here's a link to it: https://www.nairaland.com/5989377/masquerades-nulin-nations-18

obehiD:


@cassbeat thanks for answering it lol

You are highly welcome revered...

Thanks a lot ObehiD. I have come to enjoy a wonderfully written master piece!

obehiD:
Tried to tag everyone who showed interest in the Marked Series from the end of the last book posted on Nairaland

Skywalker909 Amry eROCK247 BmanWheart ayshow6102 OluwabuqqyYOLO Askech lukfame Rynne Tuhndhay Fazemood doctorexcel Dathypebruv kelsmic cassbeat Smooth278 tunjilomo popeshemoo annayawchee HotB

For those curious about the order of the books in the Marked series:
1. Crimson Night (Free on okadabooks)
2. White Sight: The Awakening (this book)
3. White Sight: The In-between (written not yet published)
The Tomes of the Last Brio (posted on Nairaland) Not part of the Marked Series, but part of the Marked universe
4. White Sight: The Reckoning (next to write)

obehiD:
Tried to tag everyone who showed interest in the Marked Series from the end of the last book posted on Nairaland

Skywalker909 Amry eROCK247 BmanWheart ayshow6102 OluwabuqqyYOLO Askech lukfame Rynne Tuhndhay Fazemood doctorexcel Dathypebruv kelsmic cassbeat Smooth278 tunjilomo popeshemoo annayawchee HotB

For those curious about the order of the books in the Marked series:
1. Crimson Night (Free on okadabooks)
2. White Sight: The Awakening (this book)
3. White Sight: The In-between (written not yet published)
The Tomes of the Last Brio (posted on Nairaland) Not part of the Marked Series, but part of the Marked universe
4. White Sight: The Reckoning (next to write)

Thanks for the call...... We are set for another banger

Nickydayne email Obehid to get this anecdote!
I assure your being addicted to it.
Disclaimer Though:
It's not romance o!

I just bought this book now on Okadabooks sha obehid, can't wait to finish reading it 77 tyms until the pages starts to get faded rough and torn lol

Done with the book it is simply amazing I would put review wen I read it the third time

ayshow6102:
Don't with the book it is simply amazing I would put review wen I read it the third time

Thank you! I'm really really happy you enjoyed it

obehiD:

Thank you! I'm really really happy you enjoyed it

When would the next one be out am. Really hungry for more

The next one is White Sight: The Inbetween, I'm done with writing the draft for that, but I need to edit it, and I haven't started the editing process yet. I honestly don't know when I'm going to be able to get that edited, but I'm thinking it should be sometime this year...fingers crossed