WILL OF THE MISCHIEF MAKER

AN ORISHA TALE

ANTOINE BANDELE

Edited by

FIONA MCLAREN

Copyright © 2021 by Antoine Bandele

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in fair use context.

This book is a work of fiction with no intent to disrespect or offend the faith systems, religion, and mythology it draws from.

Publisher: Bandele Books

Interior Design: Vellum

Editor: Fiona McLaren, Callan Brown

Illustrator: Arthur Bowling

Cover Design: Mibl Art

ISBN: 978-1-951905-08-8

v1.2 November 11, 2020

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

Characters

E·shu - e’shü

O·ba·ta·la - ō’bä’tala

O·du·du·wa - ō’dü’dü’wä

O·lo·du·ma·re - ō’lō’dü’mä’rā

Shan·go - shȯn’gō

Terms

A·she - ä’shā

CONTENTS

What is TJ Young & The Orishas

Will of the Mischief Maker

More to Read

Also by Antoine Bandele

About the Author

Glossary

WHAT IS TJ YOUNG & THE ORISHAS

The story you’re about to read, Will of the Mischief Maker, is a prequel short story to The Gatekeeper’s Staff, a TJ Young & The Orishas book. The series is inspired by the West African mythology of the Orishas.

For suggested and chronological reading order visit: antoinebandele.com/tj-young-timeline

If you enjoy this story and are interested in the rest of its world, you can join Antoine Bandele’s e-mail alerts list. He’ll send you an exclusive preview of the full novel’s opening chapters and exclusive behind-the-page content, click or tap this link to join the TJ Young email list.

ESHU DIDN’T CARE what the other Orishas said; the mortals had it right. They had bicycles, trains, cars, and most importantly, planes. Heck, even a sluggish air-balloon would’ve done the trick, no matter how slow it was. That would’ve been much better than climbing an endless golden chain to the heavens.

Sprinkles of water dewed Eshu’s face and saturated his long, drooping hat. He thought it was the condensation of the clouds that wet him, but as he scaled farther and farther upward, the rushing of waterfalls filled his ears.

It might’ve been ages since he’d been up there, yet he knew he was close. He knew this not only because his loincloth and hat were getting soaked through, but because the strain in his arms was giving way to fatigue.

A few more grabs, pulls, and lifts later, and Eshu finally broke the plane of the tallest and thickest clouds. And it was about time—the strength in his hold was threatening to leave him, forcing him to tumble back to the Mortal Realm.

Before I get done here, Eshu thought, I’m going to make some changes to this damn sky chain.

A collection of floating mountains spread out ahead of him, dotting the deep-blue canvas between the sky and heavens. The water that had ruined Eshu’s clothes came flowing from the waterfalls that fell into the clouds to cast rain on the mortals below.

The Orisha grunted and wiped his face clean for the dozenth time. Then, with a long, resounding breath, he lifted himself over the small plot of earth, which served as an anchor for the sky chain.

Eshu took measure of his surroundings. It had been a while since he’d visited the Sky Realm. He remembered then why it had been so long. Everything up here was so ethereal, so peaceful, so perfect.

And absolutely a bore.

That’s another thing the mortals got right. They knew how to spice up a place, make it their own. His fellow Orishas, however, especially the ones who lived way up in the clouds, had as much flavor as the human’s oatmeal.

Squinting, Eshu surveyed each mountain atop their floating islands. He scanned for a specific peak… a snow-capped range that housed a certain Orisha of interest. And just there, between the sun’s ray and the moon’s glow, a perfectly angled cap of snow glimmered like a shining pyramid of silver-white.

“Wa si mi,” Eshu said, and a staff snapped into his hand from nothingness. He twisted the wooden shaft around his body, and his clothes dried in an instant.

“All right, old friend,” he murmured. “Let’s see if you’re still up there.”

With another flourish of his staff, a cluster of clouds gathered around his floating plot of earth. He smiled. Now that he had made the climb, he was free to travel as he pleased, free of the chain that suppressed the full use of his Ashe—his magical energy.

He tipped his toe on the first patch of cloud to test his purchase. When his weight found proper balance, he skipped along the clouds he manifested before him, one by one.

Eshu chuckled the entire way to Obatala’s domain.

KNOCK, knock, knock.

Eshu slammed the bulky door knocker against the giant snow-swept doors for the dozenth time.

“Obatala!” he called out through cupped hands. “It’s me, Eshu! Your old friend!”

There was no answer.

Eshu pouted in exaggerated annoyance. He didn’t come all this way just to be ignored. And had he been any other Orisha, Obatala’s cold-shoulder would’ve stuck, forcing him to return from where he came.

But Eshu wasn’t like the others; he was the Gatekeeper, the Master of Thresholds. No path was ever obstructed to him.

It also helped that he was the one who installed the lock on Obatala’s door to begin with.

Drawing out his staff once more, Eshu gave the grand doors a light tap. The enormous slabs of birch gave way to Eshu’s magic without protest, lumbering inward. Snow dust shook off the opulent doors like a new day of winter, and light spilled into the empty foyer.

Eshu had a hard time keeping his eyes from squinting. Every surface in the tall room blinded him with its grand white staircase, white rugs, white banners, white vases, and white doves—the latter of which glided between the large windows and their wide sills.

“Hello!” Eshu called out once more.

His only response was his own echo.

So then… time to search.

In the Mortal Realm, the palace would’ve measured the size of a small city. But the daunting task of exploring its many halls, libraries, and chambers was nothing for the Master of Mischief. Every door opened to greet him like an old friend—though none of them offered up who he was looking for. He wasn’t rude about it, of course, knocking before entering each room, sometimes with an “Eshu here,” or a “the Gatekeeper seeks your audience,” or his personal favorite, “is this where they keep the wine?”

Though none of the rooms housed Obatala, Eshu did find several curious items. In one chamber, he discovered a zoo of pale snails sloughing down marble walls; in one of the larger courtyards, he spotted a trio of albino elephants snacking on grass. But most interesting of all was a workshop filled wall-to-wall with ceramics.

The room had all the markings of an inventor’s busy hands: loose boards, clay pots completed and in progression, and, of most value to Eshu, the figures of human bodies.

The sight brought a smirk across Eshu’s lips. Good, this should go perfectly.

He continued onward.

Of course, as such things go, it was the last room Eshu searched that turned out to be the right one. It was at the highest tower in the highest study: Obatala’s dream room.

In hindsight, he probably should have checked that one first.

Eshu couldn’t tell where the room ended. When he stepped through the doorway, he had to float instead of walk, as there was technically no floor—or at least no floor he could discern far, far below.

Jutting prisms the size of a human movie theater screen studded each wall. And, like a movie screen, they depicted different images, first-person point-of-views of what Eshu assumed were human perspectives. Some of the windows showed a person flying through the sky, others: someone being chased, or people whose teeth were falling out.

“Is that the Gatekeeper I see?” a gentle, yet baritone voice said from above.

Eshu raised his eyes to the endless ceiling to find the giant of a towering Orisha descending upon him. With each passing moment, Obatala reduced in size until he was only slightly taller than Eshu himself.

He doesn’t have to do that, Eshu thought.

He didn’t mind being small, preferred it even, despite his fellows favoring more colossal builds. Then he remembered how considerate Obatala was. Even if Eshu voiced a complaint, Obatala wouldn’t hear it. The ancient Orisha always wanted to put others at ease.

Obatala looked different from what Eshu remembered. How long had it been? A few centuries? A millennium? Whereas before Obatala looked no different from Eshu—save for his typically larger size—now he was devoid of all pigmentation.

Eshu had seen this blight on mortals before. They called it vitiligo, or was it albinism? Wasn’t that Obatala’s new role now? “The Shepherd of the Imperfect,” the other Orishas called him.

“I almost didn’t recognize you, old friend,” Eshu said as Obatala continued to waft in the middle of the grand crystalline room. “Did you do something to your hair?” Eshu had only meant to quip at first, but one of the prisms shined off the distinctly bald head of Obatala’s pale skin, a head that was once curtained by long, flowing hair. Now his scalp looked like a pearly bowling ball. “Oh, apparently you did…”

Obatala gave him a kind smirk and an airy chuckle. “It’s good to see you too, Gatekeeper. A moment, please?”

He slothed a hand toward Eshu; Eshu glided out of his way.

Behind him, a section of the prism-wall reformed to show a new image: the point-of-view of someone at their desk toiling over complex mathematical equations.

“Whose head are we in right now?” Eshu asked.

Obatala pressed his hands along the fractured image. “This is Doctor Oladipo. He’s been trying to work out a cure for glioblastoma.”

“A glio—what?”

“A form of cancer.”

“Right.” Eshu nodded idly. “I always get my cancers mixed up.”

Obatala inhaled deeply, then spoke a chant into the wall. With each of his words, the man’s pen picked up speed along his notebook.

“He has the information in him,” Obatala muttered between chants. “He just needs to manifest it. It’s been so hard communing with the mortals. I usually don’t work with them when they age past adolescence—they tend to trust in their dreams less and less as they grow. I’ve not had a breakthrough with one so old since Charles R. Drew decades ago.”

“So, why not try communicating with them when they’re younger?”

“Oh, I do, as you saw when you entered my domain. But so often the mortal adults ignore those early dreams. And sometimes I’m forced to resort to these… less than perfect circumstances.” The scene within the prism changed. The doctor’s hands pounded on his desk, and he bunched up his latest piece of paper to discard it.

“Doctor Oladipo always forgets the dreams I send as assistance.” Obatala dropped his pale head. “But I can’t give up. It’s the least I can do for all my wrongs.”

“You’re not still hung up on that, are you?”

Years ago, Obatala had gotten himself drunk when he was charged with the construction of human bodies. He had never forgiven himself for the birth defects and disabilities he caused by his cavalier wine-downs.

“Always.” Obatala brushed by Eshu and floated to another portion of the chamber. “You know, Olodumare wouldn’t want you traveling between here and the Mortal Realm. I don’t even know how you manage it.”

“What kind of trickster would I be if I played by the rules? Besides, the Big Guy’s been gone for a hot minute now.”

“If a ‘hot minute’ is a few centuries, then yes.”

“If you’d visit the mortals from time to time, you’d know the lingo, old friend.”

“What are you up to, Gatekeeper?” Obatala cut to the chase with a gentle, curious tone.

“I’ll admit it. I’m bored and I’m looking for some company.”

“Hah!” Obatala’s laugh shook the entire room. “I’ve never known you to be so easily bored. Have you exhausted all forms of mischief in such brief a time in the Mortal Realm?”

He spun to another prism display. This one showed a cafeteria with the viewer surrounded by a group of children who jeered about the way the child tapped their foot on the corners of the linoleum tiles as they spoke.

“I am trying to help this one gain some social confidence. But more and more, her dreams are tarnished by these other children. Just a few months ago, before starting school, you should have seen the things she was dreaming about. Oh, look! She is transitioning.” Obatala’s wide and brilliant irises lit up all the brighter. Even in his exclamation his voice was soft and muted. “She is going over Einstein’s equations. Not just reciting, but actually forming her own thoughts around it.”

“See, friend,” Eshu patted Obatala on the shoulder, “where you see faults, I see talent that could never be achieved if this child were born like all the others. How many mortal children do you know who can reform facts as their own thoughts as fast as this one?”

Obatala hummed under his lips. Eshu couldn’t tell if the sound was meant to communicate agreement or irritation.

“Tell me,” Eshu pried as innocently as possible, “when was the last time you fashioned a human body?”

Obatala shook his head, and a shadow passed over his eyes. “Never again.”

“You fear what your hands might make? Well, old friend, I could help you there...” Eshu waved his staff at the nearest prism and reformed an image of Obatala with long hair crafting human bodies. “When’s the last time you’ve tried making a vessel for a non-mortal? One of the Orishas, for example.”

Obatala sucked at his teeth and moved around Eshu to another prism. “I knew you came here for a reason. No, Gatekeeper. I will not mold a body for you.”

“Come now,” Eshu groaned, following along like a pestering child, “it’s the only way I can interact with the mortals properly. You, of all of us, should know of the desire to assist them.”

“I can’t. I refuse.”

Okay, so direct questioning wasn’t going to do it. Eshu let a silence fall between them as he shifted to a different tack.

“I know what plagues you each day, each season, each era,” Eshu began solemnly. “You never got to properly finish your work all that time ago. Not before Oduduwa took over—”

Obatala spun rapidly on Eshu, and the entire chamber darkened like a stormy night. “Never speak that name in my domain.”

Eshu threw up his hands. “Of course, of course, excuse me. But think of what you could do! You should have a direct hand in the creation of new human bodies. They could be in the image you truly wanted, what you intended.”

Obatala’s gaze shifted between another prism and Eshu, seemingly conflicted.

“Listen.” Eshu floated in close to Obatala, then murmured, “I’m not asking you to go back to an assembly line. Just one. And for me, not for a human soul.”

“Well...” he started to relent, but his pursed lips told of a brewing stubbornness.

Eshu drew in even closer, merely an inch from Obatala’s face. “If anything goes wrong, nothing bad will happen. I’ll hop out of the body, and you can always try again another time.”

“I have wanted to try it out once more...” Obatala said almost to himself. “That much I’ll admit.”

Eshu careened around Obatala, just at the edge of the Orisha’s ear. “Come now. I know what the other Orishas say. I know why you seclude yourself at the highest peaks within the highest clouds. If you made another human body, one of note, none of them could speak against you.”

“The Great Monarch hasn’t been with us for many ages. I would need his approval to begin with.”

Perfect. He was no longer denying his want, no longer denying his capacity to do the task. Now, he was just looking for permission.

And Eshu could give it to him.

“Well, old friend, you are speaking to the Gatekeeper. I’m the next best thing. I saw your workshop coming in—your ceramic work. You’ve been trying again, haven’t you?”

Eshu snapped his fingers, and the room’s prisms transformed into the image of Obatala’s workshop. “What’s that just there?” He nodded to a clay piece in the shape of a bird. “Were you trying with animals first?”

Obatala nodded. “That is the dodo. The humans did away with them decades ago, and I was trying to—No. No, I cannot. I just don’t have it in me anymore.” He gave Eshu a condoling touch on the shoulder. “Thank you. I appreciate your kind words. But you’ll have to go now, old friend.”

“You know something, maybe you’re right. After all, your best works always came off the back of… liquid inspiration.”

“Do not goad me, Gatekeeper. I have been sober for more ages than I can count.” Obatala narrowed his bright, pulsating eyes. “If I were to slip back now… who knows what I would do, what I might manifest.”

Eshu turned with a shrug. “Ah, I didn’t realize you had sworn off the drink like that. I might as well do away with this gift I got for you.”

Obatala’s eyes glinted. “Gift?”

Eshu continued bouncing away from the chamber in a floating skip. “I don’t see how my gift could interest someone who claims to be free from liquor.”

Obatala sniffed the air. “Is… is that palm wine I smell?”

Eshu beamed as he said, “Wa si mi,” and a bottle of milk-white palm wine popped into his hand from thin air. “It even comes in your favorite color. Straight from Osun State.”

Obatala stretched out his hand, then drew it back in. Stretched it out once more, then drew it in again. “That’s where the Oyo Empire used to be, yes?”

“One and the same. And I’ll tell you what, the mortals have gotten even better at fermenting it.”

“Oh, I’ve not had some of that in many, many, ages… not since the Great Monarch’s Decree of Separation.” He drifted toward Eshu as he licked his lips. Eshu smiled. This was going to be too easy.

But then the pale Orisha stopped, lips slightly parted. “Wait. You took this from the Mortal Realm? You have shown yourself to one of them?”

“Nah…” Eshu replied. “I couldn’t even if I attempted to. I’m just a whisper to mortal ears. Trust me, I’ve tried to communicate with them for centuries, just as you have.”

“Oh… good, good.” He turned away from Eshu—and the bottle—composing himself once more. “Shango has told me the same about the mortals’ elevated skills in fermentation. He tried getting me to drink some as well.” Despite his retreat, he kept giving the bottle sidelong glances over his shoulder. “What’s the catch?”

Eshu drew back with an exaggerated hand to his chest. “No catch at all. I just want to see you do what you do best—what you were made to do, old friend.”

Obatala stroked his chin, seeming to pull at the long beard that used to be there. He glanced at the changed image of his room, which still depicted his ceramic workshop.

Eshu was so close. His celestial comrade just needed some encouragement. A reminder of better times.

“I’m sure you recall when we used to drink near the Osun River. We used to play ayoayo as we watched the sun set in the Mortal Realm. Do you remember?”

Obatala chuckled inwardly. “Oh yes, I remember. Those were simpler times. Before the Great Monarch set me to molding human bodies. And before Odu—” The Orisha was about to break his own rule by speaking the name. “Before I made a mess of everything.”

“Let’s have a bottle together. For old time’s sake, at least.”

The grimace on Obatala’s face and his body drifting toward Eshu were at odds, each seemingly pulling against the other. “No, I cannot. I have too many responsibilities now. I can’t be drinking.”

“Fine, then. No drinking. But what about a game of ayoayo?”

Obatala took in another deep breath, then pierced Eshu with a stare of irritation. His first true glare of irritation. Eshu simply floated there with mirth, unfazed by the intense gaze.

“A game…” Obatala trailed, his expression softening. “A game I could do. You have been practicing since last time, I hope.”

Eshu smiled. “You know it.”

AND SO THE Orishas played their game. The rules were simple: two rows of six holes filled with four cowries each. The objective was to “sow” more “seeds” than the opponent. First to twenty-one won.

The game was a simple one, but one of Eshu’s favorites. On the surface, it was an elementary game for children, but in reality, it was a trickster’s haven.

And Eshu loved setting his opponents up to make poor moves.

At that moment, however, he made sure to let Obatala win a few rounds. This was key. Of course, Eshu didn’t let him win so many rounds—or so easily—that his ruse would be uncovered. Just enough to make Obatala think he had the edge. And for added distraction, Eshu peppered in some light chit-chat.

“You really gotta come down to the Mortal Realm with me sometime,” he said after a particularly daring play. “They’ve got this thing called social media. Complete waste of time, but oh so fun.”

“Oh yes.” Obatala made his next move and smiled. “There’s this one, erm, application the mortals keep dreaming about… it’s called Insta-Spam? No. Insta-Lamb? No, that’s not right. Insta-Yam? Something along those lines.”

“Close enough.” Eshu clutched his stomach. “Oh, some yams sound great right about now...”

Orisha couldn’t eat food in the same way mortals could. Sure, they could pass meals across their mouths, but it was like tasting the ghost of something, not the full thing. One couldn’t fully enjoy the flavor of mortal food unless one had a mortal body. That was something Eshu was looking forward to. He just needed to keep his wits about him, and a mortal body would be his.

As they got deeper and deeper into the game, floating in the middle of the chamber cross-legged, Eshu caught Obatala’s gaze slipping to the palm wine, which hovered at their side. The trickster had deliberately taken swigs from it after each of his losses, smacking his lips so that the sweet tang could waft between them—and hopefully ensnare Obatala.

“How about we make this next game a bit more interesting?” Eshu finally asked. “If I win the following round, we will take a drink together. A little taste.”

“And when I win,” Obatala said, “What do I get then?”

Eshu stroked his chin. “If you win the next round… I’ll lighten your load a little. I’ll promise to come visit at least once every decade to help with your dreams. A thousand mortals for each of your victories. Directly, that is.”

Obatala ran his hand over his bald head as though flipping back long strands of hair. “I would benefit from the help,” he intoned. “Okay, Gatekeeper. You have a deal. But you’ve lost most of your games. Your victory seems… unlikely.”

Not as unlikely as you think, Eshu thought, but what he said out loud was, “That’s because I wasn’t properly motivated before, old friend. On this next round, you had best come correct.”

Obatala tilted his head. “Come correct?”

“Some more mortal-talk. Don’t trip—I mean, don’t worry yourself.”

And so they continued their game, and Eshu handily won round after round. He had seen how Obatala played, recognized each of his moves and his preferred paths to victory. Eshu cut him off at every pass, winning every round by definitive leads. And with each of his victories, Obatala took a sip of the palm wine.

His first few were meager attempts at drinking, but with each loss, he took deeper and deeper swallows. Even on their seventh game, which he had surprisingly won, Obatala still took a drink—out of habit or because he was feeling himself, Eshu couldn’t tell.

“All right, that’s one-thousand of your mortals I’ll overwatch,” Eshu reminded him.

Obatala gave him an expression of mild confusion, then said, “Oh, right! Yes, yes.”

By the twelfth round, and the twelfth chug of palm wine, Obatala had begun slurring his words.

That’s when Eshu enacted his next gambit. “Okay, good games, good games. Now that you’ve loosened up, let’s see if you’ve still got the touch.” Eshu snapped his fingers, and a ceramic torso manifested between them. “I took the liberty of bringing this torso mold here from your workshop. Let’s see what you can do with it. Complete it, if you can.”

To Eshu’s surprise, he was met without protest. Obatala, with the limp hands of one under the influence, started work on his mold. His hands stroked along the lumpy surface, turning it from something amorphous to the distinct figure of a human chest, human ribs, and human abs.

“Impeccable work, old friend.” Eshu ran his hand over the outer layer of skin. It felt like the real thing, even down to the little hairs. “The belly is a little flabby, however.”

Obatala shrugged. “I think it gives it a nice look… a unique shape.”

Eshu wasn’t about to get fussy about a little pudge, so he let it go. He couldn’t talk anyway. He had a bit of a muffin top himself... Maybe that was Obatala’s motivation. Plus, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and this was more than he was hoping to achieve with Obatala in a single day. Skies, Eshu was expecting this whole ordeal to take at least a few years, maybe even a few decades.

His old friend must’ve been really lonely.

With Eshu’s next win, Obatala gave the torso arms, and the win after that came the legs. All that remained after the third win was the most important piece, and the most difficult part.

Eshu snapped his fingers once more, and this time, the ayoayo board winked out of existence, replaced by a lumpy mold of an unfinished head.

“All right,” Eshu said, “the last piece. You’re almost there. If you can complete your work, I’ll test drive it for you, take it down to the mortal realm and make sure it’s well put together. What do you say? Make me a face that you think will suit me.”

Obatala, now properly filled with the wine, wheezed and took up the challenge. Though the torso and limbs had only taken a few minutes, the head, and particularly the face, took several hours. Eshu, in patient silence, watched his old friend at work, and he couldn’t have been prouder.

Lines cut through Obatala’s forehead with the valleys of concentration, his lips pursed, his hands steady. Anytime he stopped to examine his work, he took another drink of the palm wine—Eshu assumed he did it to relax. Yet the measured way he moved his hands, the utter concentration in his slitted eyes, filled Eshu with joy.

And he hadn’t even revealed the best part of the whole charade yet.

To pass the time, Eshu adjusted the dream room’s prisms to show different landscapes with a flick of his finger like changing a human’s television channel: an underwater cove with sharks that had glowing streaks along their heads, a swampy marsh with dark trees backdropped by vivid indigo, a volcanic vent smoldering molten rocks. Then he called forth several masks he had been working on. The other Orishas would’ve called his projects forgeries. Eshu preferred to call them homages.

He was in the middle of working out how to replicate the mask of Orunmila, the Orisha of Divination—and one of Obatala’s neighbors—when the head was finally completed.

“You know something?” Obatala lifted the head aloft, turning it to see it in different angles of light. “It’s not my best work… but I think it’ll hold up.”

Eshu floated across the room to examine the face. Not his best work, he said? It was perfect. Exactly what he needed: friendly, approachable, and most of all, unassuming.

“Do you mind?” Eshu nudged his chin to the completed body.

Obatala held out a steady hand. “By all means, Gatekeeper.”

Eshu, taking in a deep breath, closed his eyes and concentrated.

He visualized himself as the body, forced his will through its bone, sinew, muscles, and skin alike. The longer he fixated on the human sensations of proper touch, proper scent, and proper sound, the weight of it all settled.

Being a human was both marvelous and exceedingly limiting.

He felt things he couldn’t fully touch as an immortal. He expected human skin to feel clammy or moist with how much they sweated, but it was instead smooth and delicate. And the simple act of staying afloat amid the room took twice the effort than it had before, not only because the body was on the heavier side but because humans were filled with far less Ashe than the Orishas, which made them so light. Plus, Eshu had to keep reminding himself that he needed to actively breathe.

Then he opened his eyes.

My goodness, how blind the humans are, he thought.

It took several minutes for him to make out where he even was. The room’s prisms, which had now returned to their default crystalline visage, blurred before him. The perfect clarity and field of view he was used to was cut in half. It was like being thrown into a dark tunnel with only the smallest morsel of light at the end.

His damned human eyes took their time, but eventually they cleared enough to make sense of the pale figure ahead. Where he expected to find the warm smile of Obatala, instead he was met with the countenance of sorrow.

“You know,” Obatala said darkly, “This was the last body I started before I went into my drunken episode. The very last. I never thought I could do it again, could finish it…”

“But you have, old friend.” Eshu placed his new hand on Obatala’s shoulder. The effort felt slow and sluggish, and the Orisha’s skin radiated with a heat Eshu wasn’t expecting.

Despite Eshu’s gesture of goodwill, Obatala still frowned. “My followers… what will they think of me? They know I don’t drink. They know I abhor it. When the other Orishas find out, I’ll never hear the end of it. I should never have taken a sip.”

Eshu would have felt guilt at these words, but instead, he smiled. “Never fear. Your sobriety is still very much intact.”

Obatala lifted his head; his eyebrow quirked. “What do you mean?”

“While true this was indeed palm wine,” Eshu grabbed the bottle and poured it out, “it is not fermented, and thus, non-alcoholic.”

Obatala’s eyes descended with the liquid, which fell to the bottom of the room where, eventually, it splashed on the floor far, far below.

“You mean to say,” he said, realization dawning on him, “I did all that myself.”

“You did it all on your own, old friend.”

Obatala stared at his hands, transfixed. For centuries, he must’ve thought he could never put them to work as they had been at the beginning of humankind. Now, he knew he could.

Eshu nodded his approval. He might’ve been a trickster, but that didn’t make him heartless. With a small salute, he turned away from Obatala and drifted out of the room. He’d better get back to the Mortal Realm now. He could already feel his Orisha powers waning, and, with his new mortal body, he felt the need for a very long nap—a foreign concept to an Orisha.

“Where are you going?” Obatala called after him.

At the threshold of the dream room, Eshu waddled through a half turn and gave his old friend an awkward salute—it was going to take a while to get used to the human body. “I wasn’t being dishonest when I said I’d test drive this body for you. There’s someone I want to visit who needs a lesson of their own.”

Thank you for reading.

This was a prologue short story to the full novel: The Gatekeeper’s Staff (TJ Young & The Orishas Book 1). If you wish to read an exclusive preview of the full novel’s opening chapters and receive exclusive behind-the-page content, click or tap this link to join the TJ Young email list.

THE STORY CONTINUES

TJ Young has been surrounded by magic his entire life, yet he has never tapped into it… until now.

Fourteen-year-old TJ grew up normal in a secret community of gifted diviners in the heart of modern-day Los Angeles. His powerful sister was ordained to lead his people into a new age of prosperity, but her mysterious death in Nigeria threatens to destroy the very foundations of TJ’s world.

Desperate to pick up where his sister left off and uncover the secrets behind her questionable death, TJ commits himself to unlocking the magical heritage that has always eluded him. So he enrolls in Camp Olosa—a remedial magic school for the divinely less-than-gifted in the humid swamps of New Orleans.

But little does he know, TJ is destined to cross paths with powerful spirits of old thought lost to time: the orishas.

Delve into this young adult fantasy based on the mythology of the West African Orishas, where TJ will encounter unlikely allies, tough-as-gatorhide instructors, and the ancient secrets of the orishas.

If you wish to read an exclusive preview of the opening chapters and receive exclusive behind-the-page content, click or tap this link to join the TJ Young email list.

ALSO BY ANTOINE BANDELE

TJ & THE ORISHAS

The Gatekeeper’s Staff

ORISHAS AMONG MORTALS

Will of the Mischief Maker

TALES FROM ESOWON

The Kishi

THE SKY PIRATE CHRONICLES

By Sea & Sky

Of Ruin & Silk

LOST TALES FROM ESOWON

Demons, Monks, & Lovers

Last of My Kind

Stoneskin

CHRONICLES OF UNDERREALM

The Legend of Cabrus

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Antoine lives in Los Angeles, CA with his girlfriend.

He is a YouTuber, producing work for his own channel and others, such as Tiff & Case, Fanalysis, and more.

antoinebandele.com

GLOSSARY

- Ashe: the inherent force of all creation and magic, including primal power and creative potential.

- Ayoayo: a traditional mancala game played by the Yoruba people.

- Eshu: the Messenger Orisha, the Gatekeeper, or the Trickster, characterized by his jovial natured paired with deep wisdom.

- Obatala: the Architect Orisha, the Healer, or the Shepard of the Imperfect, characterized by his gentle personality and eternal patience.

- Oduduwa: the Doted Orisha, the Divine King, characterized by their clear and focused mind.

- Olodumare: the Almighty Orisha, the Father, or the omnipotent, characterized by his great power and all-knowing pools of knowledge. He is all things.

- Shango: the Thunder Orisha, the Lionhearted, or The Overseer of Masculinity and Masculine Beauty, characterized by his loud personality and substantial presence.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Pronunciation Guide

Contents

What is TJ Young & The Orishas

Will of the Mischief Maker

More to Read

Also by Antoine Bandele

About the Author

Glossary