Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of enslavement, death, and violence.

Malik is the primary protagonist and first-person narrator of the novel. He is seven years old at the start of the novel, living in Alabama with his mother. However, after her disappearance, he grows up in foster care and various foster homes until he becomes an emancipated minor at the age of 17. Malik’s magic ability awakens when he is a child, but he fears using it for a decade because of what happened to his mother. However, through Caiman, he learns about his ancestry, the roots of his magic, and how to control and wield it, part of his character’s arc over the course of the novel.

At the beginning of the novel, Malik is hotheaded and resistant to authority. The first time he appears in the present timeline, he has already decided to steal a car to kidnap his foster brother Taye from his home and escape to California. He injures three men who try to stop him from stealing a car then knocks a gas station attendant unconscious to do so. He is dismissive of authority figures like Chancellor Taron, Empress Bonclair, and police officer Antwan Bivins, believing they are the type of people “that already hate [him]” without even knowing him (72).