The Iron Stone: Cover Reveal and Sneak Peek

Once again, you get early access to the next installment in OTC 3: The Okonore Trilogy. Here's the cover reveal for Book 2: The Iron Stone! Jeffrey Kaz Aninkorah, illustrator extraordinaire, will always be famous.

The Iron Stone comes out on 2nd October. Here's a sneak peek of the first scene.

I hadn’t been to Kumasi before, but I was certain I was there now. As certain as I was of the fact that I was lucid dreaming, even though I’d never had a lucid dream before, either.

I had gone to bed in the night, but it was daytime around me and I was outdoors. The temperature was perfect—not nearly as hot as Accra. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that this was the most vegetated place I’d ever seen that wasn’t an outright forest. All around me was evidence of human presence: clusters of huts with thatched roofs, walls painted white, gold, and red. Several of those walls had designs carved into them, some of which felt almost, but not quite, like adinkra symbols.

From the design of the buildings to the free-form dirt of the ground, I felt an overarching aura of simplicity. Everything was beautiful without being ostentatious, and looked nothing like any image of Kumasi I had ever seen—including the building which commanded the most attention.

I knew it was the palace, not just because it was the grandest building around, but also because of the golden ornament fastened onto the wall on top of the porch—the symbol of the Golden Stool. The ornament itself looked like it had been forged from pure gold.

A voice I recognized better than my own broke through the silence: “Not a single thing I’m seeing makes any type of sense.”

I didn’t know if it was possible to faint in a dream, but I was on the verge of finding out before I caught myself.

A few steps to my right stood a girl in a shirt so over-sized that only an inch of the blue sports shorts she wore underneath were visible. My breath hitched, not from the shock of her presence, but because I had suddenly developed tunnel vision, and now all I could see were legs.

“I am in my pyjamas, I have no clue where I am, and the only thing I know for sure is that there’s juju involved,” Kuukua continued.

With great effort, I tore my gaze away from her bare calves and looked her in the eye instead.

“I’m having a lucid dream,” I explained. “And you’re sharing it with me.”

It didn’t even feel that crazy to say aloud. Because this wasn’t even the first time Kuukua and I had shared a dream. It was just that the previous ones hadn’t been lucid.

Kuukua did a quiet three-sixty where she stood, then scrutinized me from head to toe. And then, of all the questions she could possibly have asked, the one that came out of her mouth was, “Do you usually sleep shirtless?”

My head snapped down and I took in my own bare chest, sports shorts (knee-length, unlike Kuukua’s), and bare feet. At least now I knew why I’d been so sensitive to the temperature difference.

“I… erm…,” I fumbled. “The air-con in my room is broken, so…”

“It was a simple yes-or-no question.”

She walked off towards a nearby tree and—I swear to God, those legs went on forever—

“Yo, what the hell?” she yelled.

I jumped. That was one way to refocus my attention.

Kuukua was staring at her hand, which she had plunged right into the bark of the tree. Literally plunged it right in, and I could still see it! From her wrist to her fingertips, Kuukua’s hand had turned translucent, nearly camouflaged, as her skin and the tree bark were so close in shade.

Kuukua whirled to face me again, her eyes bright and wild. “This is the coolest thing ever!”

I broke out into laughter before I even understood what was funny. It was her unadulterated pleasure at something that would have sent any other person into a panic. Kuukua was one of a kind, ankasa.

It was in the middle of my own laugh that I noticed that I wasn’t terrified either. For the first time in at least a week, since the tarantula known as Asɔ had first shown herself in Kuukua’s bedroom, I wasn’t terrified by the absurdity of every new revelation.

In just a matter of days, I had found out that I could telepathically communicate with a tarantula named Asɔ who didn’t even speak English and who also happened to be my distant auntie; that I, like her, had inherited ancient family magic and even had some control over it. I had dealt with my two closest friends besides Kuukua finding out not only the truth about Kuukua’s Ananse legacy, but also the truth about my convoluted Ↄkↄnↄre Yaa lineage. Ah, and not to forget the discovery that the principal of our boarding school had known for years about the existence of both, to varying capacities.

As if all that wasn’t overwhelming enough, it had turned out that my tarantula auntie, who happened to be a human witch stuck in ahoboa form, had been cursed, and needed my help to get free. And that was why, just the previous day, the Ananses had helped me break into a former market woman’s house to steal a magical silver cowrie which rightfully belonged to my tarantula-witch-auntie in the first place. (It helped to remind myself of that fact, so that I didn’t feel like drowning of guilt over the stealing part.)

Now I had unconsciously pulled my girlfriend into a lucid dream.

I should have been at my wits’ end by now, especially since, after reuniting Asɔ with her cowrie yesterday, I’d immediately gotten sick and passed out from the force of her getting her memories back. And yet I felt strangely at ease. The madness was becoming familiar.

“Yaw, where are we?” asked Kuukua.

“Kumasi,” I said. “That’s the Ahenfie in front of us.”

“And how, exactly, do you know this?”

I shrugged. “Auntie Asɔ probably has something to do with it.” A sense of intent suddenly dropped into my mind like a stone into a pool. I knew it came from Asɔ. So this was what it felt like to communicate with an intelligent spider without words. I was starting to understand the bond Kuukua had with her orb weaver spider, Charlotte. “We have to go inside.”

“I’m not going anywhere unless we’re walking through walls to get there,” Kuukua declared.

How could I argue with such an ingenious idea? I intertwined my fingers with Kuukua’s and led the way into the building, sidestepping the front door and passing through solid wall instead.

The ghost method was such an efficient mode of travel that I could barely take in the interior of one palace room before we were suddenly in the next one. I was being guided by something that felt suspiciously like muscle memory, and when we arrived at our destination, I felt Asɔ tell me to stop.

Kuukua and I stood in the corner of a sparsely furnished, plainly decorated room. Its walls were white and peppered throughout with black symbols, each about the size of a child’s fist. Around the room were several wooden stools and one elevated chair, also wooden, but embellished with gold at the arms, feet and head. On this throne sat a dark woman wearing kente and a headdress wreathed with golden ornaments. Similar jewelry was draped around her neck, wrists and ankles. Despite all the royal woman’s glitz, though, my attention snagged on the one other person in the room.

She was a light-skinned, slender woman with brown, wavy hair, so long that it reached the middle of her back. Her features were kind of West African, but seemed to be mixed with something vaguely Arabic. She was dressed in simple white cloth from her chest to her knees, and black slippers that were conspicuously plain next to the royal woman’s gold-ornamented ones.

Kuukua breathed, “I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful in my life.”

“One day, I’ll introduce you to my girlfriend,” I whispered back.

Kuukua cut me a glance full of surprised admiration. “You try!”

I forgot myself and guffawed again—too loudly. In a panic, my palm flew to my mouth and I swiveled towards two women in the room. But there was no cause for concern. Apparently, Kuukua and I were the kinds of ghosts that could neither be seen nor heard.

The light-skinned woman whispered earnestly to the royal woman. It was obvious they were arguing. And even though my outburst hadn’t interrupted them in the least, the sound of footsteps from outside certainly did.

A squad of men barged into the room with almost obnoxious authority. Six bare-chested guys appeared, covered in belts loaded with weaponry. They flanked a large man dressed in kente more ostentatious than the enthroned woman’s.

“Ↄhemaa,” he nodded at her. “Ↄkↄmfo,” he acknowledged the light-skinned woman, who had made herself all but invisible behind her superior’s throne. “Me ma mo akye.”

Kuukua tugged on my arm. “Um, sweetie, are they going to be speaking their heavy Asante Twi throughout? Because then greetings be all I go barb for here, o.”

I had been caught off guard by the new knowledge that female Ↄkↄmfo were a thing, and hadn’t even registered that they’d been speaking Twi. The telepathic translation ability I had with Asↄ must have kicked in automatically. The translation process had always been somewhat imprecise, though; Asↄ’s voice always sounded somewhat robotic in my head, and there were often words that could not be translated at all.

I wasn’t sure if this type of Ↄkↄnↄre magic could be shared, but hey—I’d unconsciously figured out a way to share a lucid dream, so this was at least worth a shot.

I shut my eyes, placed my hands on Kuukua’s temples, and imagined myself installing an extension into a browser that just happened to be Kuukua’s brain.

“Oh my God, I hear English now!” she exclaimed. “You really are a witch!”

After that, she listened to the conversation for about two more seconds before she started rambling about how this felt like being stuck inside a telenovela with terrible voice-overs. Attempts to shush her didn’t work, and when she started asking me if I remembered Storm Over Paradise, I wrestled her until she was pressed against me with my hand covering her mouth.

In some ways, it became even harder to hear the conversation because now I had to try not to dwell on the sensation of holding Kuukua against my bare chest.

“Today,” the Ↄhene was saying, “I begin my journey to Gyaman, to face that disrespectful traitor. I leave you, Asantehemaa, in charge of all civil affairs in my absence, as I attend to the military ones.”

“Ↄsei Kwame,” replied the Asantehemaa, addressing the Ↄhene by his proper name. “Me nua, me wↄfa ba. Rest assured that no harm will come to this city or to your stool in your absence. I wish you a safe journey and a glorious victory. I shall be looking forward to your triumphant return.”

Ↄsei Kwame received her well-wishes and shifted his gaze to the woman who was apparently the ↄkↄmfo. To her, he gave the brief instructions, “Protect my stool, and allow my cousin, Adoma Akosua, to fall into no harm.”

The ↄkↄmfo curtsied and pledged her loyalty to his authority and family in complicated and flowery Asante figures of speech.

This woman was having an odd effect on me. I felt like I’d heard her voice before, but at the same time, confident that I’d never in my life set eyes on her.

The palace room began to dissolve into mist.

With a heavy exhale, I slouched until my chin was resting on Kuukua’s shoulder. I thought the dream was over, but then it rematerialized around us as dusk.

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See you on Yawoada,

Akotz (the Spider Kid)