A Nose for Evil

This story appears in our print issue, ‘100 Years of Ladi Kwali: Stories from Another Nigeria’. Buy here.

Jenroye, a shrewd, university-trained woman, was tiny but moved with the force of ten women. She had always had her reservations about how Iyadunni ran the coven, and so when she died, she vowed to do things differently. As the economy teetered, she realized that they could not afford to be as reckless as they had been in the past. The lives of ordinary people were already hollowed out by vicious traffic jams, power cuts, and persistently empty bank accounts—what was the point of stealing their glory? It seemed wasteful, even.

Tensions had been building for some time. People had begun to revolt, unwilling to battle the harsh times by day and slug it out with witches at night. One of the coven members had already been stoned to death for turning a young man into firewood. When she was forced to restore him to his body, his legs were gone. Apparently, she had used part of him to cook her dinner. Although they ravaged the community for three days in retaliation, Jenroye was disgusted by the whole business, calling it a pointless display. But they could not ignore the problems, so the coven met one August night and voted. Many agreed that the old ways of using their powers as they pleased were no longer sustainable. They resolved to feed only on the truly wicked: those who flourished on the suffering of others. As it turned out, the flesh of a genuinely evil person was far more sustaining; lasting the coven weeks, even months, and their blood powered stronger spells. It was also decided that the more corrupt your offering, the higher your rank. But there was a catch: real evil is tougher to pin. Sometimes, you could find it living in face-me-I-face-you; yet at other times, it could be wearing agbada and flying private. It was incredibly hard work, but the end justified the means. Jenroye rewarded those who brought the worst among them but punished those who wasted time with the merely unfortunate. More often than not, Chinomso would fall into the latter category.