Voodoo Queens of New Orleans - Vol. I | ✓

Chapter 49: Auntie Dearest

I stared at them, these girls. Rudely, it seemed, since Mikael had to snap me out of it. But I wanted to understand them. They looked normal; they were not ecstatic like the triplets. They just sat there, plain-faced with no emotion. But suddenly, as Sajida became aware that I was curious about their presence, they began to smile widely in a cordial fashion.

Well, two of them smiled this way. The third girl - a woman with short hair in twists and deep brown skin - only stared at me. She didn't bother to smile. I memorized her face because somehow I knew that it would be important to; she had these deep-set eyes that were hung and tired. Her face was oblong, her lips full and her nose was long but wide at the nostrils. She looked to be close to my age, as well as close to my height. Her eyes were white like the other girls', and like her peers, she wore tattered dark clothing.

Sajida didn't want us to waste more time looking at them. "Come on." She guided us to the staircase. "Hurry up, now."

Sasi One and Sasi Two waved at us as we followed Sajida to the stairs. The girls kept smiling; the last one just kept looking at me.

Who are you? I thought to myself, but in an attempt to keep Sajida from becoming curious, I brought my eyes forward and continued on.

Sajida's study was as alive as I remembered it - dream catchers and trinkets swaying with minds of their own, and dead flowers and plants slowly shifting their leaves and petals. Mikael was in complete shock at her study; it was beautiful in an almost morbid, macabre way.

We both took a seat next to each other on the couch while Sajida sat on the other side of her desk in her throne. She flipped a lock of hair over her shoulder and just grinned at us; she enjoyed being right. She knew I would come here. All she had to do was wait. Before Mikael and I could say anything, we both saw small shadows under a console table by the wall underneath a window. Mikael jumped slightly, but I knew what they were - the small dolls that I met the last time we were here. There were three of them - one with a pentagon on its belly, another with a triple moon, and the last one with a triquetra. Their stitching was sloppy and uneven, and they had no mouths. But they had eyes - small, black pebbles for eyes.

"What the fuck is that?" Mikael exclaimed when they began to inch towards us. Sajida laughed at him.

"Damiyas," Sajida answered once she finished laughing. "They're Damiyas."

The Damiyas appeared unsure of whether they should continue walking towards us, but Sajida, unlike last time, didn't scold them for appearing. They came closer, huddled together. I was amazed by them, even though they were unpleasant. However, they weren't harmful or had evil intentions. The unpleasantness about them was stemmed from not knowing exactly what they were.

When they were finally close enough to see the detail in their stitching and the Theban letters that were tiny and faint all over their bodies, they gravitated towards me. Pentagram, like last time, walked to my shoe and sat near it. Triquetra looked up at me, whereas triple moon hid behind triquetra. I smiled down at them; there was a charming element to these dolls. Mikael was still afraid of them, even though they were essentially harmless. But it didn't matter, because once they were by my side, they didn't leave.

Sajida stared at the dolls and watched how they acted around me. Her expression wasn't decent anymore when she looked down at the Damiyas; I immediately stopped smiling.

"Who were those girls downstairs?" Mikael suddenly asked Sajida. I was surprised that he was willing to speak directly to her.

"The three ugly little vermins are my daughters." Sajida puckered her lips in disgust. "Done fell into a ritual pool on accident when they were barely two. Water started bubbling and shit. Fished 'em out and they were those nasty girls you see out there. Still not sure what potions I poured in that water; don't even remember what I was trying to do with that ritual, honestly." She admired her nails non chalantly. "Oh, well. They nice enough. Kind of stupid, but they do what I tell 'em."