The first time I saw a spirit I watched it be pulled out by my mother.
        Her skin, thick with sweat, caught the light that made her body glow as she worked under the moon's eyes.
        I watched her pull the spirit out: hand over hand, piece by piece, first head, then chest, then feet, until it finally emerged from the woman who used to be Ayan. Her wrinkled body lay deflated on the cot as my mother pulled and pulled and pulled until something slipped out and Ayan was no more.
        I watched Mama Iya become the death doula. 


        Through her, Mama Iya’s throat became an instrument coaxing Ayan’s soul out as her wife wept next to us. Her cries added to the solemn eulogy until she too, unknowingly, became part of the orchestra.
        The process was long but I couldn’t turn away.
        I had to focus.
        Mama Iya’s song was strong and Lama, Ayan’s wife, was being taken over by the spirit of grief. I grabbed her hand, keeping her still, as her own soul desperately tried to part with her body and join Ayan in her new journey. It was not yet her time, Mama Iya had whispered to me when we had entered the room and found her wailing over her wife's body.
        No.
        This song was for Ayan and Ayan only.
        The spirit slowly materialized beside the corpse as Mama Iya’s pulls softened and slowed down. A small flick of darkness at first. Wispy and fluttering, it swirled around the room dancing with the shadows until, as Mama Iya sang the last rites, it began to fade.
        “To the land of possibilities and dreams you go and there you will meet her.” She instructed Ayan’s soul as it left. Head bowed and hands clasped tight over her head, Mama Iya stayed that way until the light was completely gone and the room was quiet again.
        The woman who had been Ayan’s wife knelt by her bedside and began cleaning the body as custom required. The air stank with herbal mixes of rosemary and hibiscus as she pressed the mix Mama Iya had given her days ago into the body. Once the body glistened with the oil and herbal mix, she wrapped it in giant banana leaves while Mama Iya hummed a song that matched the slow, methodical work of the woman’s flitting hands.
        The two worked, calling and responding as the moon and I watched.


        It was because Death was a constant part of my life that I did not waver when the land started its own bout of dying. My time with Mama Iya made me see Death as something that happened to others. Our goal was to stand firm in both rivers of death and life, a guide post, to ensure each soul's safe passage.
        Sometimes the people we helped fought us. Some days the body clung to its spirit, holding it still, as we fought hard to free it. Like a bitter lover, the mind would sometimes try to restrict Death’s movements and I would watch Mama Iya wrestle with the body and mind until, a heated exchange of whispers later, a spirit was set free.
        That is how she earned the name Ameguswa.


        The villagers could not decide if it meant touched by god or  the devil.
        And then, there was me: Shadow. Echo.Iyami the fatherless. She who from nothing came, following Ameguswa with white ribbons in thick black plaits and wet wide Black eyes.
        Before we had come to this home, Mama Iya had exchanged a few words with the old trees, her brows scrunched together as they told her of a spot of rot and the smell of betrayal on the wind's lips. I could only catch parts of the exchange, filling in the gaps as the tree and her huddled together in conversation, the tree slightly bending to meet her hunched figure.
        As always, she did not tell me a thing, opening her mouth only to sing a song about a foolish king who had spilled his people’s blood and soaked the land with it. She sang to me as we travelled slowly down the mountain about beasts that ate people and belched them out across tar sands and about giant eyes that flew through the skies.
        Even now as the sun began peeking from the horizon and Ayan’s cries slowed to whimpers of grief, she refused to say anything more, grabbing my hand and leading me out of the fenced yard.
        Years before, we would stay at each patient's home, soothing their grief and caring for them as it continued working through their bodies. I would spill the questions that had been swelling on my tongue and Mama Iya would answer, bemused by my curiosity, teaching me about the cycle of birth and death.
        But these days, we did not linger long.
        These days, our help was met with glints of anger in dark eyes and the reaching for curses instead of gratitude as foreign gods were invoked rushing to expel us from homes.
        I did not blame them for the fear and hatred.
        We were, after all, touched humans who dealt with Death. Like marketwomen we bargained, haggled and sometimes traded Death for more time.
        A power not afforded to them.
        A power that invited jealousy and, when our pleas and discussion with Death ended with empty hands to hopeful families, anger.
        So when I came home one day from a visit to the river to find Mama Iya missing and our home ransacked, I knew where to go.
        The other mountain.


        Our mountain was fair. Kind sometimes.
        When you got lost in its forests it would tease and poke at you but eventually lead you towards your destination. But its twin was far more cruel. The scar on my back was proof of its disinterest in anything human that smelled like life’s twin.
        Of course they would take someone so powerful up where their god could see her more clearly.
        By the time I reached the bottom of the cursed mountain, breath haggard and heartbeat quick, I made it just in time to see her.
        Body: bound. Her face: solemn. Her figure flew falling down the mountainside.
        While watching her, I never knew that Death would come so close to us and take her away. My years roaming the earth were often spent with our fingers intertwined. Seeing her fly like this made my stomach drop.
        I saw my mothers lifeless body be thrown by the people she spent a decade serving.
        The ribbons in my hair snapped, spooked at the sight. I let them fall too shocked to do anything but watch, stuck in my own bout of fear..
        The grass near my feet reached out, flowers leaned in and bushes near us sighed in their own grief. We lamented as we watched our god be killed knowing what would come next.
        We. Lost. Our. God. The people plotted, conspired and ultimately orchestrated their own folly.
        Even in our grief, we, the witnesses of Mama Iya’s last time on the Earth knew what would come next. Naturally, in its own time, the land would go with her.


        As her body landed I did what any sane person would do after seeing a witch hunt: I ran.
        My feet hit the dirt as I coaxed them to go faster and faster (go faster!)  away from the madness.
        Mama Iya was strong and feared. That they could so casually murder her meant that I was next. Me. Fat still on my cheeks, wearing youth so precariously on my skin and a juvenile fire burning bright in me.
        Me, who sprung from the ground, already formed and who served the witch.
        Of course, I would be next.
        The people did not yet understand what happened when they messed with the cycle of this world. Balance did not happen peacefully when the untouchable were touched.


        Their god, curse Him, was still young. Even I could see his twisted teachings were spurred forward by the need to be all-encompassing, all-loved, all-knowing, and all-consuming, even if that hunger destroyed us all.
        The land had begun mourning and rotting as soon as it got a whiff of the plans they had concocted while we served them every night.
        Mama Iya was a mad woman, true, but one thing was certain: Death and her were very, very close.
        And I did not want to be around when it found out its charge was dead.
        I ran up our mountain having no time to greet the trees that grumbled at my rudeness but allowed me passage through. The grass helped me along, pushing me up and up and up until I reached the mud house. Stumbling into the dark space my breath caught up to me. After a moment of respite remembering I still had a body that needed rest,  my back fell against the cool brown walls.
        And then I saw her.
        Mama Iya sat near the embers of the morning fire staring at the smoke that rose and fluttered around her. She had on the same white robes they had dressed her in. Her head shaved with dried bloody scabs peppered between wisps of curly white hair.
        I cried out: my hands reaching, my heart aching. Knowing this would be the last time I would see her. In this image: whole and fearsome. I wished I could replace what I had witnessed at the bottom of the mountain and pretend that this apparition could contain her fierce living form.
        But Death was taking her home.
        She turned to me and smiled beckoning me over with a thrust of her chin. I could see Death take more and more of her as seconds passed by us.
        Grief haunted my footsteps.
        It washed over me as I took slow, steady steps towards her ghost. The trees' loud fervent whispers were drowned out by the heaving in my throat.
        When I reached her she stood up and I swear I could smell the scent of burnt firewood on her body. A warm finger gently grazed my face, a smile haunting her lips. When she walked through me, the memory of her flying through the air welled up.
        My whole life, she had always seemed so great and terrible. But now, she felt as tender as a seedling poking through the earth.
        So fragile. I had forgotten that she too was only human.
        I turned around to find myself alone again, the cracking of the fire the only thing left to warm me.
        I could not control the gasp that fought itself out of my body. It pulled itself out of my throat echoing through the small space as I doubled over now suddenly covered in cold sweat.
        The room tilted itself, knocking me off balance.
        My breath now stolen, I let the room settle back in place, my back rooted to the walls. The coolness of it helped keep my morning feast from spilling out while the shakes hijacked every inch of my body.
        Finally, after an agonizing moment, the pain left just as quickly as it found me. The quiet rang through the room then it too dissipated bringing me back to the here and now.
        I could finally hear the secrets of the trees as they chatted around our home.
        My hands began moving, my feet following quickly after them as they searched and began filling a satchel they had found near the fire.
        I let my hands work, as they took everything they could wrap fingers around and tuck carefully into the bag. The never ending array of pockets Mama Iya had stitched into the bag swallowed each item whole.
        The sounds of thundering feet grew closer. My hands paused, hearing the faint sound of Death crawling through the ley lines of the forest. A growing ball of decay was being belched onto the land. The stench was strong, carrying the growing anger of the villagers who hunted for me in the chaos.
        The cries of the foolish people did not scare me. I was used to their ire from the years of our nightly consults. Death was not kind to them over the years and we, by extension, were just as cruel.
        But those whispers among the trees…
        I came back into my body and closed the bag shut, swinging it over my shoulder.
        Grabbing my walking stick, I began practising the movements of creaking old bones and a body weighed down by decades.
        I shut my eyes conjuring Mama Iya’s figure while I pulled at my face with my left hand, willing more wrinkles and sagging skin into my face with each tug and pull.
        Iyami was young. 15 summers old with nothing that could incite wariness or fear.
        But Iya.
        Iya was old. Carrying generations along her marred face and long silver locs.
        Her walk carried souls. Sinking her deeper and deeper into the earth with each step. I let her image possess me pulling her memories from every nook and cranny of our home. From the stool she had sat in all those years to the walls that she had shaped by hand hundreds of years ago.
        With our memories encouragement, Mama Iya and I became one.
        The trees shrieked at me from outside: the crowd was almost here.
        Death too was getting close. It was time to leave the trees shouted at me through the small opening in the hut.
        Wrapping the cloth around my shoulders I carefully  made my way into the back garden, saying my goodbyes to the plants and animals I had only just begun forming a kinship with. They dropped trinkets and seeds into my hair, their branches braiding them into the locs I had conjured.
        I would need them, they whispered in their goodbyes. There was no time to thank them for their foresight; I would greet their children and tell them of their wise and just parents once I was safe.
        The land's grief joined mine and together we wept as I made my way deeper into the green foliage. The grass caressed my feet with apologies, trees reached out with bare branches saying their final goodbyes.
        This land was lost. But, Death had whispered to me, there was a new one being born far, far away.
        So, off my feet went.
        Slowly. Steadily. Towards the sound of ground rumbling and the shuffling of flora and fauna as a forest was being born.
        Across the waters, the blood of my kin was feeding its roots.
        The pungent smell of steel and oil guided each of my steps forward as I said my final goodbyes to the land that had grown me.
        The call for a new god echoed through the forest and across waters.
        And I, Mama Iya, answered.




 

Published May 1, 2026
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.