Zahrah the Windseeker

by Nnedi Okorafor

  The caged parrots all stopped chattering, looking at Nsibidi. And the man selling them spoke more loudly to keep the attention of an interested customer. He'd found someone willing to buy a multicolored parrot, and he didn't want to lose his chance to be rid of the belligerent bird.

  I unconsciously stood up straighter at the sound of Nsibidi's commanding voice. Suddenly Nsibidi looked ten feet tall, tall as a tree.

  "I ... I ... oh." I glanced at Dari, who nodded for me to continue. I took a deep breath, and then my words came like water through a bursting dam. "I think I can fly or something, I can float, it happened when I got my menses, I was near the ceiling, oh I am terrified of heights. Am I a Windseeker? I think I am. Do you know the word? We read about it in the library. What do I do? What do I do?"

  I stood there, tears in my eyes, terribly embarrassed at my babbling. My hands were shaking and my heart was pounding hard. I wanted answers so badly, but I was so nervous.

  "Practice. Nothing good comes easy," Nsibidi whispered, her eyes wide with shock. Then she nodded, looked up at the tarp, and smiled. "Learn to love the place up there. The rest will come when you want it to. " She paused, her dark eyes burrowing into mine. "You understand?"

  I just stared at her. It was all too much information to process so fast.

  "You understand," Nsibidi said more loudly and sternly.

  I blinked and then nodded slowly. Nsibidi and I stared at each other for several moments. It was the strangest feeling. She knew what I was talking about. She must have lived it all, and she had answers. I felt stunned, speechless. All I could do was just stand there. I wanted to remember her face clearly for when I was home thinking about all she said.

  "Can your parents fly, too?" Nsibidi finally asked.

  "No," I said. "Just me."

  "Both my mother and father are Windseekers, as I and my brother. I've never met any others. And you have no idea just how much I have traveled. It's funny. You're afraid of heights," Nsibidi said with a laugh. "How ironic."

  She paused for a moment.

  "I first cut my hair when I was sixteen because I didn't understand what it was to be a Windseeker," Nsibidi said. "Didn't change what I was, thank goodness. It was just hair and vines. Zahrah, there are things about being a Windseeker that are tough to handle, but that's for when you're a little older. For now, just know that you shouldn't bother resisting the urges you'll have. Now that you know what you are, be ready for things to start."

  Obax tapped Nsibidi on the shoulder and handed her a piece of paper on which he'd written many symbols. Then the baboon pointed at the necklaces around her arm. Nsibidi read the paper.

  She frowned. Then she plucked one of the necklaces from her arm. It had a green leaf pendant. She looked from me to Dari and back to me. She then reread the paper.

  "Great Joukoujou," she whispered, placing her hand on her forehead.

  "What?" I asked.

  She only shook her head.

  "It's best that you don't know," she said. "You two ... hmm ... Obax wants you to have this charm, Dari. You'll need it."

  I wanted to ask why again but decided against it. I didn't think she'd answer me anyway.

  "Um, OK," Dari said with an uncertain smile. He looked at the charm as it twinkled in the dim light. It was very pretty. "Thankyou very much!"

  "You're welcome."

  I felt a shiver in that moment as I watched Dari put the necklace on. Why would Dari need a luck charm? I wondered. That piece of paper Obax had given her ... Obax must have "read" Dari. Oh the questions I had in that moment but was too shy to ask. If only I had been more assertive. And if only we'd had a little longer to talk.

  "Zahrah," Nsibidi suddenly said. She paused and looked at the idiok with frantic eyes. I could have sworn many of them were frowning as they waved their hands in the air. She turned back to me with a pained look and said, "Listen to me ... I can't not tell you this. I just can't. It would be ... irresponsible. You're going to—"

  "Dari!!!"

  Dari and I both yelped. It was the voice of Dari's mother. What a horrible moment. Dari and I quickly turned around, shocked at hearing Dari's mother's voice there. Dari jumped up. We could both see his mother's head peeking behind the milling crowd.

  "We've gotta go," Dari said quickly.

  "Come back when you can," Nsibidi quickly said, taking my hand. "In the meantime, practice. Please be careful. Both of you."

  It was a strange thing to say. Be careful of what? And what had she been about to tell me? But we had more urgent things to deal with. We held our breaths as we moved toward Dan's mother. It would have been wrong to try to run away. Dari's mother obviously knew we were somewhere in the Dark Market.

  When we got close enough, she smacked Dari upside the head.

  "For over a year Mrs. Ogbu's been telling me she's seen you coming here," she shouted at Dari. I cringed. Mrs. Ogbu sold Ginen fowl sometimes, so at some point she must have been stationed near the Dark Market.

  "I didn't believe her! I called her a liar!" his mother continued. "But for some reason, when she told me today she'd seen you, I decided to see for myself. And here you are! I should have taken her more seriously! And you've brought Zahrah, this time?! What in Joukoujou's name are you two doing here!?"

  "We were just ... looking around," Dari said, rubbing the side of his head.

  His mother was so angry that she didn't say another word. Instead she turned around and began walking. Dari and I quietly followed. She drove me home, and the short trip was silent and very tense. To make things worse, both my parents were home. I knew Dari's mother would go inside with me and tell them. As I got out of the car, I didn't dare speak to or even look at Dari.

  "Chey! Zahrah, how could you be so stupid?!" my mother shouted the minute Dari's mother was gone. She sucked her teeth with annoyance and put her arms around her chest and just stared at me with amazement. "You and Dari are so bright, I wouldn't expect this of you two."

  "I'm sor—"

  "What do you have to say for yourself?" my father said.

  "I just—"

  "Forget it," he interrupted. "You don't have the privilege of defense tonight. Just sit there and be ashamed. Be glad you came out of there without some sort of strange disease. It's not a place for people who don't know what they're doing."

  "Remember what happened to the Ekois' son?" my mother said, looking at my father.

  "Of course," my father replied. He turned to me and looked me right in the eye. "He wasn't seen for fifteen days! They found him chained to seven other children at the Ile-Ife Underground Market! That's a two-hour drive away! Some sick evil man was selling them as child slaves. This man had met the Ekois' son in the Dark Market and promised him free personal pepper seeds if he drank a special drink, a drink that put him to sleep. He woke up in chains. You can guess the rest."

  I frowned. Did such bad people lurk in the Dark Market? I knew the answer. Who could forget those miserable-looktng women standing on the platforms or the many types of poisons for sale or those men exchanging all that money? But even with this knowledge, I hadn't really thought that I was in any danger. I would never accept anything from a stranger. Did my parents think I was that stupid?

  "I'm sorry," I said, my chin to my chest. And I was. I hated worrying, disappointing, or angering my parents.

  "You should be," my mother said, lowering her voice. "Now go take a bath and sit in your room and do some thinking."

  That night, Dari and I weren't allowed to talk to each other on our computers; nor was I allowed to use my computer for anything but schoolwork. Nonetheless, when I closed my bedroom door, my mind immediately went back to Nsibidi. She was a Windseeker, too. She could fly and she'd traveled far.

  I flopped onto my bed and breathed a giggle. I'd never felt so energized in my life.

  "Practice," she'd said. I could do that. But where?

  Chapter 9

  Welcome to the Jungle

  "I must be crazy to let you talk me in
to this, " I said as we walked down the road. I nervously glanced behind us. "Crazy!"

  "Oh relax," Dari said. "I know what I'm doing."

  But I knew Dari. I could hear a little fear in his voice.

  "No you don't," I whined. "Someone will see us ... or something! What am I doing! Oh this is so crazy!"

  Only a few days ago, we'd gotten caught in the Dark Market, and what we were doing now was far more forbidden.

  "Some risks are worth taking," Dari said.

  We'd had to lie this time, telling our parents that we were going to the library. As punishment, we couldn't go anywhere except the library. But we were really going into the Forbidden Greeny Jungle, and we had only a half mile to go as we passed the last building. There was no wall between the outskirts of Kirki and the jungle. For decades, the people of Kirki had tried to build one. The forbidden jungle simply wouldn't allow it.

  "This stuff isn't in our school history books. It's really interesting," Dari said as we walked, always a wealth of historical information. "Our government, a long time ago, announced this grand project to build a nine-foot-tall cement wall to shield Kirki from the jungle. But the roots of nearby trees grew under it, and eventually the whole thing just fell apart!"

  I shivered as Dan told me about the failed project he'd read about on the net.

  He said that when they rebuilt the wall, this time using wood, voracious termites gnawed at it until it fell down. When they rebuilt the wall using metal, insects that had no scientific name dissolved it with acid produced in their thoraxes! These insects glowed a bright orange during the night, and for days, the wall kept nearby residents awake with its light. Eventually the metal wall melted. The wall looked as if it were on fire. It was Papa Grip who put a stop to all the wall-building efforts.

  "It's not the Ooni way to do battle with nature," he said that year during his annual address to the town. "If the jungle doesn't want us to put up a wall, then we must listen to it, for it's our neighbor and one must respect his or her neighbor."

  And so there was no protective wall. The buildings just ended, the grass began to grow higher, then the trees started. A road led to the cocoa bean, palm kernel, and lychee fruit farms located in the jungle's outskirts. The cocoa bean was used mostly for making chocolate. The palm kernels, red clusters of fat seeds chopped from the tops of palm trees, were pressed for oil and then used for cooking and in body lotions and moisturizers. The road went a mile or so into the jungle, and then it quickly tapered off into a very narrow path.

  "And who made that path?" Dari asked. "I mean, if no one goes into the jungle, who made it! And why haven't the plants and trees grown over it by now?"

  I only shrugged. Who could explain the ways of the forbidden jungle?

  "It's as if the jungle wants people to go into it," Dari said.

  There were no guards stationed on the road. For what purpose? No one in his or her right mind would go in. This was the road Dari and I would walk down.

  Going into the jungle was Dari's idea.

  "I've been reading a lot in the field guide. The jungle's 'forbidden' only because we don't understand it. It's all politics really," Dari had said the night before as we talked on our computers. It was the first time we'd talked through the net since getting caught in the Dark Market. Our parents said we had only fifteen minutes a night for a week. "Nsibidi said you should practice. What better place to practice?"

  Though Kirki was a pleasant town, it also, like any other town, had a bush radio. "Bush radio" is Ooni slang for "gossip." News travels fast in Kirki because it's such a small town. The bush radio would have been hard at work if I had gone with Dari to my backyard to practice.

  Mama Ogbuji, my neighbor, would have peeked over the fence while she was gardening and seen me floating in the air. She'd exclaim, "Great Joukoujou!" in that annoying way she does when she sees something that would make good gossip. Then she'd immediately run to her net-phone and call her best friend, Ama, and say, "You won't believe what I saw the Tsamis' daughter doing! She was zooming about the yard like a witch!"

  Ama would call his friends—let's say they were named Ngozi and Bola—and tell them, "You know that dada girl, Zahrah? A friend of mine just told me she saw her turn into a bat and fly around her backyard! And that boy she likes to hang around with, well he was growing hair like a bush beast!"

  Bola would then call her sister and say, "I hear there is a witch in town! Keep your eyes open when you go to the market! She probably does her business in the Dark Market." And so the bush radio would continue growing and dropping seeds of nonsense from person to person. Dari was right to seek out such a quiet, unused place.

  Nevertheless, I also suspected that Dari just wanted to go into the jungle to see it for himself. He'd been reading that field guide a lot, absorbing its every detail. All our lives we'd been told not to set foot in the forbidden jungle. Few children ever asked why, and the ones who did were told, "It's just not the right thing to do. It's a place of madness." And we accepted this.

  "Zahrah, this book is amazing," Dari had said the night before. We went offline after agreeing to meet after school. Then Dari sneaked a quick call back a half-hour later, utterly energized by the field guide.

  "Did you know that there's a tree that changes the color and shape of its leaves every year? The Forbidden Greeny Jungle is the rest of the world! We live in isolation with our eyes closed!"

  I rolled my eyes and said, "Sure, Dari," and quickly got offline. The Forbidden Greeny Jungle was insanity. Its outskirts, as the librarian had said, were the only useful place. Once one went a few miles in, everything grew ragingly wild. And anyone who ventured in was not likely to come out.

  But the book had charmed Dari since the day he'd borrowed it from the library. He'd even started wearing green, as the writers of the book had, and pumping his fist in the air and chanting the Great Explorer's slogan "Down with ignorance!" He also lectured his friends at school about how they lived in an isolated world because they were afraid to explore the places just outside their home. People listened as always because it was Dari talking and he could make anything sound wonderful. Still, no one was so moved that they started to believe him.

  "This book tells you everything," Dari said as we passed a path to the palm tree farm.

  "Hey?" someone shouted behind us. "Where are you kids goin'?"

  We both whirled around and then froze. We'd been caught!

  "Dari," I hissed with panic. "I thought you said we wouldn't meet any—"

  "I thought we'd have heard someone coming," he said, looking frantic.

  Oh, we were in trouble. There was no point in running. If we ran, they would catch us. And even if they didn't, they'd certainly report us. Oh my goodness, I thought, our parents are going to go crazy.

  "Stay fresh," Dari whispered.

  But I didn't feel fresh at all. I felt trapped and terrified. We were caught, and all we had in the future was punishment. A minute ago we'd been OK; then things had suddenly changed. We didn't move as the three men approached us.

  They were obviously workers from the farms. They wore the light but tough tan jump suits made of palm fibers that protected them from tree branches and the heat. We'd learned about the farmers in school. Though they wore plain and often dirty clothing, we saw them as courageous heroes. They worked right next to the jungle, risking their lives daily. And so, as Dari and I stood there and they approached us, we were also struck by a sense of awe.

  Their faces were dark like the midnight sky. My mother is very dark and so am I. But these men spent all their time in the very top of the oil-palm trees being baked by the sun as they watered and preened delicate oil sprouts. They were black like shadows. And not surprisingly, their skin glistened and their jump suits were damp with tree oil. They each carried around their shoulders a sling made from hundreds of enriched palm fibers that they used for climbing trees. And a machete hung from their waists. They also had tags with their names and work numbers sewn on their jum
p suits.

  "We're ... just walking, " Dari said.

  The men laughed, looking both of us up and down. How silly we must have seemed to them. Silly and childish and disobedient.

  "You know where you are? You lost your mind? Eh?!" the tallest one, named Tabansi, said with narrowed eyes.

  "Methinks they have, yes," said the one named Kwenu. He carried a large lunch pod. He addressed us directly. "Tabansi, let's just report 'em and be on our ways, o." He rubbed his oily meaty arms with his hands and swatted at a fly. "We don't have much time for our break!"

  Tabansi reached into his jump-suit pocket and pulled out a net phone. The one named Iwene looked at us both as he brought a chewing stick out of his pocket.

  "Never seen such stupid children," he grumbled, putting the stick between his teeth.

  "Now wait a second," Dari said quickly. "OK, we know where we are."

  I stared at him, but he didn't look at me. He just kept talking. Really fast.

  "We're just curious. We've heard so much about the Greeny Jungle and we wanted to see for ourselves. Is that so wrong? I mean, really? We don't plan to go that far. We just want to see it. How many people do you see here? None, right? Other than you farmers who know this place like the back of your hands. So why report two kids who are curious? We won't be long. We just want to see for ourselves. Surely you must understand. I mean, you get to see the jungle every day. At least from close up in the farms. Please don't report us. If you like, we'll turn around and leave right now."

  The three men just stared at Dari. In confusion, with humor, or impatience—I don't know. But something sparked their attention.

  "Tell me your name," Iwene asked, his chewing stick hanging from the side of his mouth. He brought it out, looked at its chewed frayed end, and then rubbed his teeth with it as if it were a toothbrush.

  Dari hesitated. I could feel his indecisiveness.

  Iwene snapped his fingers. "Ah, ah, come on. We don't have all day. Speak up."

  "D-Dari," he said finally.

  Iwene looked at Dari for a moment longer, then he smiled and nodded.