The Witch of Ajegunle

Bisola Adu was in the middle of a cornrow when her grandmother died.

She felt it in her hands. One moment she was parting a customer's hair with the tail of her comb, the radio playing Wizkid, a fan whirring overhead. The next, a chill ran up her wrists and into her chest, quick and cold as a handful of ice water, and the comb slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

"Madam Bisi?" said the customer. "You alright?"

"I'm fine."

"You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I'm fine," said Bisola again, and picked up the comb. Her hands were shaking. She finished the row. She finished the whole head. She took the money, counted it twice, and handed back the change. Then she sat down on the plastic stool by the mirror, and her phone rang.

It was her aunt. Her voice was a flat, cracked thing.

"Bisi. It's Mama."

"I know."

"You know?"

"I felt it."

A silence. "She said you would."

Bisola ran home. Down the narrow lanes of Ajegunle, past the open gutters and the pepper-sellers, past the roadside mechanics and the church with the tin roof, through a maze of lanes she had known since she could walk. Children shouted her name. A goat bleated. The air smelled of fried fish and kerosene and a hundred cooking fires.