She sacrificed her own sister to become rich… She came back to destroy me.

The village children would gather around her, silent and mesmerized. When she spoke, the hunger vanished. The cold didn’t matter. She made the world beautiful with nothing but her breath.

But as I watched her, a poison began to grow in me. It wasn’t that I hated her—I loved her, in a way that terrified me. But I envied her. I envied the way people looked at her. I envied the way she could be happy with nothing. I didn’t want stories. I wanted the sapphire kingdoms. I wanted the eagles. I wanted the world to look at me with that awe.

“Adjoa,” Akosiwa would say, sensing my mood. She would take my hand, her fingers small and warm. “Don’t be sad. As long as we have each other, we are richer than the kings in my stories.”

“Peace of heart doesn’t pay for shoes, Akosi,” I would snap, pulling my hand away.

I turned eighteen and fled. I went to the city, dreaming of gold. I found a job as a waitress in a greasy restaurant, earning crumbs. I shared a room with two other girls that smelled of damp walls and desperation.

Akosiwa stayed behind. She sent me letters through travelers. She was learning to sew. She was gifted, they said. She could take a scrap of cotton and turn it into a garment fit for a queen. She told me she prayed for me every night. She told me she knew I was going to be great.

Every letter was a dagger. I was ashamed. I was a failure in a city that didn’t know my name. And that shame turned into an obsession. I would succeed. I would be rich. At any cost.

The Meeting with Maman Dossou
It was a Tuesday when I heard about her. Maman Dossou.

They whispered her name in the back of the restaurant. They said she lived at the end of an alley where even the stray dogs were afraid to bark. They said she had “secrets.” Connections to the invisible world. They said she could take a beggar and make them a billionaire in a single moon cycle.

I should have stayed away. I knew the stories. But poverty is a master that brooks no argument. I had been fired that morning. The boss accused me of stealing—I hadn’t, but he needed a scapegoat for his own shrinking profits. I had three days of rent left.