They moved to the living room so that Bisola could prove to the giant that she really wasn't incarcerated in her bedroom.
From the dismay in his expression as they'd stepped out and he'd glanced around quickly, her late Granny's modest living room with the dying plants (her fault) and adjoining dining space that seated 4 but didn't allow for much else - was not much of an improvement on the bedroom situation.
Now he was seated in the centre of Granny's couch from the chintzy 70s, Bisola's bedsheet still serving as a strangely appropriate looking wrapper. Bisola, for reasons she couldn't quite explain to herself, had eschewed sitting and knelt on the living room rug by the arm chair closest to her bedroom door.
An uncomfortable silence stretched between them.
He broke it at length with a gusty, clearly deeply felt sigh. "I want to know," he said in low, measured tones, "how this happened."
There was actually nothing threatening in his voice. If anything he sounded tired, like despite chewing through 8 paracetamol tablets dry, his headache was starting to come back. Nevertheless, Bisola's eyes dropped and she caught herself wringing her hands.
Honestly, he wasn't the only one that wanted to know.
The thing she'd done - in the privacy of the 5th floor office toilets that no one used because rumor had it that if you were alone in there you would soon be joined by a ghost pooper (Bisola could testify that, though fascinating, this was in fact untrue) - anyway, it was something she'd done hundreds of times. Maybe even thousands.
It was something you could even call a habit.
She was a little girl the first time she'd done it. She'd cried all the way home after losing a friendship bracelet made from blue and green yarn to a bigger girl in a school fight. The girl had insisted she'd stolen it which was untrue as she'd gotten it from her bestie from a different school, Aina Gomez. At that time it was the most devastating thing that had ever happened to her; the hurt and shame of being called a thief and having her arm twisted in front of everyone till she thought it might really be ripped off and the regret because her Mother had warned her about taking the bracelet to school.
Her mother had no sympathy for her but her Granny who'd come round to drop off seasonal fruits from her market run had let Bisola cry all over her cotton *buba. Then she'd taught her what at the time she'd thought of as a poem to make her brave and what later became her mantra in times of great distress (which occured with worrying frequency in her life).
Six lines in a Yoruba dialect so deep that she herself hardly grasped their meaning for all the years she'd chanted them to comfort herself. Six lines repeated four times that had always calmed her down and made her feel stronger. It was a habit. She wasn't even a traditionalist. Her parents had brought her up in the Anglican with a huge side of Pentecostal tradition and they would've been shocked if they'd known that Granny had taught her something so sacrilegious and that she'd actually retained it and even made a personal practice out of it.
In her last years as Granny grew less lucid and became convinced that she was in a personal feud with Beyoncé, Bisola had felt some guilt over the amount of times she'd pulled up the songstress on You Tube just so she could see her Granny scream at the laptop and denounce her, pronouncing majestically, "you will NEVER be ME!"
She'd tried to give those verses back to Granny. She'd entertained a hope that they would bring her back from wherever she'd gone. That they had that kind of magic and that was the real reason Granny had given them to her. They really didn't. Granny had shown no recognition of the verses she'd taught her and had in fact seemed very bored by them and wanted Bisola to open the windows so they could hear what the downstairs neighbourhood were saying (her favourite Reality Show).
Kneeling on Granny's living room rug now in front of a man that she had recently come to understand was not human, she whispered those verses slowly, in chopped lines with frightened arrythmic breaks, filled with an unfamiliar dread that her childhood rhyme was something so serious... so... insane... so....
"How could you know that prayer?"
Bisola raised her gaze and shuddered despite herself to find his eyes on her.
They were leaking fire again and white sparks danced and left streaks across his unfairly, flawless skin. Every exceptionally, perfect muscle in his body stood out in relief like he had frozen in the split second before leaping from his seated position. Even his bearded jaw was clenched, his words forced out through his teeth.
Bisola's jaw dropped at the sight as her mind once again stuttered to a halt trying to grasp what, in its defense, shouldnt have been real.
"You - " she stammered, not even sure what she was about to say but sure it would be stupid, "You're going to burn my Granny's couch..."
There. She was always right when it didn't matter.
"So help me I will burn more than your Granny's couch if you do not answer the question I have asked you in three words or less." He was growling. There was no other way to describe the low, throaty sound that rumbled from him.
Bisola, overwhelmed by an instinct for self preservation, obeyed quickly, "Granny taught me."
"The Granny of the couch?" her lord, Sango seemed confused.
"Technically she's Granny of the whole flat..." Bisola's hands were wringing in fast motion, "but she's late and she left it to me, so I'm staying here as long as.... anyway, yes. Granny of the couch."
"And who taught her?" Sango wanted to know.
"I... forgot to ask...?"
All the lights that had danced around him dimmed.
She could swear she heard him mutter under his breath. Something drenched in frustration that sounded like, "this is getting me nowhere."
"I'm really sorry about all this," she ventured in a tiny voice.
He didn't respond. His eyes were closed, his brows scrunched up. He seemed lost in thought.
"I've said it so many times, I had no idea it was a spell... or an invocation or...an emergency hotline... nothing ever happened before... if I had known it could suddenly cause you to appear in my bed like that, I would never, ever have dared, I'm a very quiet person I don't even move forward in a queue when the person in front of me leaves till the cashier calls me and even then I feel wrong - " Bisola broke off abruptly as Sango held up a commanding hand.
"Let us forget about how you got me here for now," he said resting his elbows on his knees and steepling long, strong looking fingers in front of his face. "I want you to send me back."
Bisola blinked. "Um... ok," she shifted in her kneeling position, really starting to feel the discomfort of it, "but how?"
"The vow you made before the prayer - your promise to me for meeting your need - you will fulfil it now and reopen the connection between here and Ikole Orun"
Bisola squinted, "Ikoyi, what?"
"Ikole Orun - my home, you imb-!" her lord, Sango cut himself off sharply and visibly inhaled and exhaled slowly. When he spoke again, his tone was once more low and measured. Bisola was starting to suspect that this was him exercising Godly restraint. "What was your vow to me?" he asked very slowly.
"Hmmmm…" Bisola said glancing at him and away nervously because she had an answer and she already knew he wasn't going to like it.
Sango stared at her.
She stared back.
"You didn't make any vow." he said.
Bisola shook her head timidly.
"Yet you were able to drag me here."
Bisola gave a tiny shrug.
"... I am… stuck here."
Bisola was sure he was speaking rhetorically at this point which was good since she had nothing to add to his summation of events.
She stared down and picked at the knee of her trousers feeling mildly resentful for her aching knees. It wasn't like she made the rules of his "prayer" or even knew them. There was a limit to how responsible he could hold her.
"I understand." she heard him mutter before he suddenly rose from the couch making her heart jump into her mouth just a little bit. She was slowly acclimatizing. "Show me the other room" he ordered without looking at her.
Bisola hurried to do his bidding, enduring pins and needles so she could rush around him to the door that led to her late Granny's room. She opened it, remembering as she did how she'd recently started refitting it to be her study. There were piles of books everywhere, even on her Granny's bed. "Uh -" she started meaning to explain it to him for whatever reason but he barged past her, stepping into the bigger bedroom and immediately overwhelming it.
He glanced around the room and another heavy sigh escaped him.
Then he turned to face her; nearly 7 feet of intense, almost painfully good looking, incredibly well proportioned, glossy, full lipped and full bearded mahogany male weilding a giant, stained, double bladed axe in the centre of her Granny's cozy, book strewn bedroom.
Bisola couldn't shake off the feeling that she was in the middle of the most absurd fantasy her possibly romance starved brain had ever built. Except, if this was her fantasy, he wouldn't be looking at her as if he would like very much if she was dead.
"I will tolerate this cell," he told her. "From now on you are forbidden from entering here."
"Huh?" she said eloquently.
"Prepare a meal and present it outside the door." he added, turning his impressive back on her and striding towards the bed. He dropped the Axe casually on the floor then with one muscled arm he swept off all the books on the bed then turned and ensconced himself on the mattress like it was a throne.
He seemed surprised to see her still standing there when he glanced up.
"Are you…" Bisola could barely get the words out, "are you planning on staying here?"
His questioning look persisted.
Bisola spluttered, "You can't stay here! I can't live with a man!"
"I am not a man," the giant said patiently from his comfortable spot on her Granny's bed.
"You know what I mean! You cannot stay here! You don't even have clothes!"
Sango' s expression stayed inscrutable but she suddenly felt a gentle yet unyielding pressure against her chest. The next thing she knew, she was walking backwards and then standing outside the doorway of the bedroom. As she stared at his noble, unforgiving features, her Granny's door swung round and shut firmly in her face.
She stood there for several seconds, immobilized by sheer disbelief.
Her phone buzzing in her pocket brought her back to life. Instinctively she drew it out and checked the screen. Aina Gomez - one time bestie from another school and now currently her arch nemesis and cause of all her pain and suffering. For just a moment, Bisola almost forgot her absurd fantasy of an ancient deity appearing naked in her bed in full romance book cover glory and claiming she'd called him.
Then she heard his voice come through the door.
"I want Amala."