Moon Witch, Spider King

The Aesi’s power—and his great crime against the people of Fasisi—is to erase their memory. Olu is the prime example. Once a highly esteemed warrior and member of the royal court, when Sogolon meets him, he appears to be just a doddering old man, kept in secluded chambers by the charity of the throne. As Sogolon gets to know him better, however, she realizes that what seems to be random scrawling on his walls and floor are in fact memories. The shrewd Olu understands what is happening to him, and he keeps a frantic record of his life before the memories are lost. On an individual basis, memories are analogous to time capsules, allowing individuals to relive, through the power of cognition, past glories, lost loves, and old regrets. Those memories are crucial to the formation of personal identity; individuals are the total sum of their past deeds and all they have learned from them. Without his memories, Olu is—in his own mind—no longer a great war hero but simply an old man relying on the charity of the king and servants. Likewise, without her memories of Keme and her dead son, Sogolon is robbed of the anger that fuels her quest for justice.