1.

IT DIDN’T SEEM TO MATTER THAT THE FIRST GIRL WENT MISSING WHILE HE WAS STILL AT SEA.

It was going to take two weeks for the ocean liner to reach the United Kingdom but Lawal hoped that the journey – the time between worlds – would help bridge the divide between homeland and sanctuary, shame and prosperity. He was young, but there was already much to put behind him and so, by day, as the ship sailed aside the coast of west Africa, he let his optimism ride along, surfing the slate-grey waves his ancestors once worshipped. But even the ancestors can grow impatient and, once the liner crossed into European waters, the waves began to blacken at night and throw their strength at the ship’s hull. When this did no good (or bad), the ancestors grew enraged, and they began to tell of the way in which this young man and his family name had insulted the rivers and forgotten that it was the mother of the ocean who had given them their blessings. They sent the waves a little something to help them along, unwrapping a curse as thick as the fog that would descend on the maritime mornings. Lawal was none the wiser though, wrapped up in things unseen  — his travels and his ambition, a sense of spirit that stirred within and flooded his arteries with the promise of something; a tingle that felt like fortune, an air that trapped his lungs with the swallow of success. CONTINUED