Akata Witch: A Novel

by Nnedi Okorafor

  Her mother let go of her and pushed her toward her room.

  “Go wash up,” she said in a low voice. “And change your clothes.”

  What Is It?

  THAT CLEAR GREEN SUBSTANCE

  One of the most perplexing materials you can (but probably will never) encounter as a Leopard Person is a rare substance that is more “unbreakable” than diamond. When it is found, it is most often embedded in ceremonial rings. However, once in a while, this material is found as the blade of a juju knife. Whoever is chosen by such a knife raises the question of “What have you done in your past life to require such durability?” This hard, clear, green substance is so rare that it has no name and no one knows its origins. Some speculate that it was brought from a mysterious forest only accessed in the middle of the Sahara desert and that it comes from the molted eye cuticle of a car-sized beetle that lives in this forest.

  from Fast Facts for Free Agents

  5

  Sunny Day

  In the shower, every drop of water that touched her skin tickled. And not in a playful way. Sunny’s body felt alert, like she was full of excitable bees.

  When she returned to her room, the front page of the newspaper was on her bed. The headline was circled: BLACK HAT OTOKOTO KILLS AGAIN. She locked her door and sat on her bed to read it. A five-year-old child had been found dead in the bush yesterday with no eyes or nose. A black hat had been drawn on his arm in permanent marker. She shivered. No wonder Mama was going crazy, she thought.

  She considered going to her mother and trying to explain that she wasn’t stupid, and that she knew how to stay away from trouble, but it wouldn’t do any good. That wasn’t the only thing not worth discussing with her parents.

  She could never tell them about being a Leopard Person. Her mother was a devout Catholic. She’d have screamed and accused Sunny of running about with “heathens.” She’d never let Sunny see Chichi or Orlu again. And who knew what her bull of a father would do—something bad, for sure. She didn’t even consider telling her brothers. On top of it all, she’d made a trust knot, and couldn’t even talk about it if she tried.

  She would have to deal with whatever was going to happen alone.

  When Sunny tried to sleep, her head buzzed. Her hands shook and itched. She sweated through her sheets. When she closed her eyes, she saw crumbly brown dirt. She could taste and smell it, too. She felt as if she was sinking into and through her bed, her body trying to return to the earth. So she kept her eyes open.

  By three A.M., Sunny was weeping. She didn’t know what to do or how to stop it, and there was no one to turn to for help. Around four, her body started shifting. Her face would become her spirit face and then it would go back to normal, then it would become her spirit face again.

  Once, when her spirit face came forward, she got up and looked at herself in the mirror. She nearly screamed. Then she just stared. It was her, but it felt as if it had its own separate identity, too. Her spirit face was the sun, all shiny gold and glowing with pointy rays. It was hard to the touch, but she could feel her touch. She knocked on it and it made a hollow sound.

  Her spirit face was smiling. Still, somehow she knew it could be angry if it had to be. Her eyes were carved slits, yet she could see perfectly. The nose was shaped like her nose. As she stood there, she watched herself change back, her human face sucking her spirit face in.

  She was scared, but she was excited, too. Her spirit face was beautiful. And it was utterly crazy-looking. And it was hers.

  All through the night, she battled herself. Or battled to know herself. She fell apart and then put herself back together and then she fell apart again and put herself back together, over and over.

  Finally, she opened her window. She needed fresh cool air. Her room was on the second floor of the house, so the mosquitoes weren’t so bad. At least that’s what she told herself. She’d have told herself anything—the fresh air felt that good. She eventually fell asleep right there, beside her window.

  Red. A river at sunrise. She was swimming in it, and through the water she could see the wavy red sky above. A new day. She laughed and did a somersault. Then she looked down and met the two large eyes of the river beast deep below her, just close enough to catch the glint of red sunshine from above.

  When Sunny awoke, the sun was shining directly on her face. She’d been sleeping in it for hours. She gasped and quickly moved out of the raw bright sunshine. Her face was almost certainly badly burned.

  She tentatively touched her cheek. She froze. She touched her cheek again. Then she got up and ran to her mirror. Her face looked fine! She grinned. Then she laughed out loud, and rushed to stand in the sunshine again. She closed her eyes and soaked in the warm light. She didn’t need to stand in there for an hour to know—she knew deep in her skin. The sunshine felt like a warm friend, not an angry enemy. She didn’t need her umbrella anymore.

  “Oh my goodness,” she whispered. “I can play soccer!”

  Realizing what she was was the beginning of something, all right . . . but it was also the end of something else.

  What Is a Free Agent?

  A free agent is one who isn’t privileged with even one pure Leopard spiritline from the survivors of the Great Attempt. She or he is a random of nature, a result of mixed-up and confused spiritual genetics. Free agents are the hardest to understand, predict, or explain. Learning will not come easy to you. You are a Leopard Person only by the will of the Supreme Creator, and as we all know, She isn’t very concerned with Her own creations.

  After your initiation, make sure that someone is there to help you, for you will not be able to help yourself, so new the world will be to you and so fragile your ego. You’re like an infant. You will be dumbfounded and disoriented. What’s most important is—

  6

  The Skull

  Sunny threw the book across the room. How am I supposed to read this? she thought. What a pompous, discriminating idiot of an author. If they have racism in the Leopard world, this book is so “racist” against free agents!

  She sighed. The last thing she wanted was to return to Anatov still ignorant and prove the author right. As she grudgingly got up to get the book, something began to happen to it. Tiny black legs sprouted from the spine. Sunny fought hard not to flee. The legs suctioned themselves to the floor and pulled the book up, pages facing the ceiling.

  Sunny scrambled to the other side of the room as the book walked back to her bed, climbed up the side, and plopped itself near her pillows. The legs retreated back into the book’s spine with a soft slurping sound. Sunny didn’t move, staring at the book, waiting for it to do something. When nothing did, she crept toward it.

  Once at her bed, she slowly reached forward, planning to grab the book and fling it back across the room. When she was within an inch of it, the book flew open. She leaped back. The pages leafed this way and that. They stopped and the book opened and stretched out so flat that she could hear its spine crack. She leaned just close enough to see what it had opened to. Chapter Four: Your Abilities.

  After a few minutes, she sat beside it, ready to run away if the book so much as shivered. She began to read.

  This will be new to you, since you are fresh from Lamb country and have just entered the high society of Leopards. Lambs are on a constant, unrealistic, irrational, and unnatural quest for perfection. They seek to have bodies with no blemishes or disease; that do not age; that have perfect eyes, noses, and lips all in the right places; that are thin like fashion models’ or muscular like athletes’; that are tall, lacking warts, extra fingers, pimples, scars; that always smell fresh like flowers; etc. There are no Lamb cultures where people do not strive for this inferior thing called perfection, no matter their definition of it.

  We Leopard folk are nothing like this.

  We embrace those things that make us unique or odd. For only in these things can we locate and then develop our most individual abilities. Even you, free agent, have an ability given to you by the om
nipotent, distracted Supreme Creator.

  HOW TO DISCOVER YOUR ABILITY

  It’s doubtful that you have the intelligence to figure out something so important. But here is something to think about: one’s ability lies with those things that mark him or her. They can be talents, like an affinity toward gardening or being able to play the guitar well. Often they are things that Lambs make fun of, imperfections. They can be physical, psychological, behavioral. And I do not mean things that are a result of your actions, like being fat because you eat too much and sit and play video games all day.

  Usually someone of pure spirit will have to help you figure it out. But once you discover it, you will have to find a dedicated and patient pure spirit who is willing to help someone as needy and ignorant as you.

  Once Sunny got past the book’s rude, condescending tone, she found it had plenty to teach her. She also found that the book itself was eager to be read. It made sure that it was always nearby. Sometimes it crawled onto her lap! The strange black legs were actually soft as mushroom stems, and were careful to tread lightly.

  Over the next few days, when she wasn’t in school or doing homework, she was reading Fast Facts. No time for television. She focused most on Chapter Eight: Very Basic Beginner Juju. It was the juju called “Etuk Nwan” that most interested her. If she could get it to work, she would be able to leave the house for Saturday night’s meeting with Anatov. There were only four ingredients, and most of them were easy enough to collect: chamomile leaves, palm oil, some rainwater. It was the fourth that she was worried about.

  The day before the big night, she stood in the sunny market with her black umbrella. She no longer needed it, but she didn’t want to draw the wrong kind of attention. “Excuse me, Miss,” Sunny said to the meat seller. “I’d like—I’d like to buy a sheep’s head.”

  Her father was very fond of nkowbi, which was stew made with goat’s brain. Lots of people were, so she wasn’t doing anything unusual. And she had enough money saved up. The woman put the black sheep’s head on a piece of newspaper and wrapped it up with more newspaper.

  Sunny couldn’t think of any other way to ask, so she just asked. “Is that . . . my, uh, father told me to make sure it was an ebett, a—a ‘sleeping antelope sheep.’” She knew her face was red with embarrassment.

  “Eh?” the woman said, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

  Suddenly, Sunny was very aware of her albinism. What must she have looked like, all bleached-looking and asking for something that sounded straight out of a black magic cookbook? “Oh, nothing. This—this is fine,” she said. She hoped it would be.

  She got home before her parents. She had to move fast. They’d be home within the hour. Her brothers were out playing soccer. Thank goodness, she thought. Perfect. She ran to the kitchen with her package and placed it on the kitchen counter.

  “Just do it,” she said to herself, rubbing her hands nervously against her shorts. “The faster, the less time to think about it.” Easier said than done. The mere thought of the sheep’s head nauseated her. She didn’t know how her father could eat goat brains or how her mother could prepare them. She took a deep breath, then, as fast as she could, unwrapped the package.

  The head was black, the wool on its face a deeper black. It looked like one of her mother’s wigs. She felt another wave of nausea. Even worse, its eyes were glassy and dry. Its mouth was open, its pink-purple tongue lolling out to the side. Its yellow teeth would never chew grass again; its mouth would never be warmed by its breath.

  This couldn’t be a “sleeping antelope sheep.” In the book, it said the face of a “sleeping antelope sheep” would look peacefully asleep in death. This one looked as if it had died in horror.

  “Well,” she breathed. “Work with what you have.”

  She had no idea how she would get out of the house if the juju didn’t work. Her brothers tended to play video games or watch movies well past midnight, even on school nights. The slightest noise brought her mother peeking into her room. If she were caught, her father would happily flog her; he’d certainly been looking for a reason lto ately. She needed this juju to work.

  She grabbed a paring knife, paused, then gritted her teeth. She started scraping and cutting and gouging. The book said to use the skull, nothing else. She had to remove all the meat on and inside the skull.

  Biology, she thought as she worked, breathing through her mouth. She didn’t want to smell the raw flesh. Think of biology class. She enjoyed biology, eagerly taking in the readings about microorganisms, animal systems, vertebrates, and invertebrates. Still, at the moment, she found that the less she thought about the fact that this had been a living, breathing, pooing, baaing, eating thing, the better.

  It took her a half hour to remove all the hair, skin, brains, and muscle. All she needed now was to rinse it well and let it dry until nighttime. She heard her brothers outside. She cursed. The counter was a mess.

  She quickly rewrapped the skull. Any moment, her brothers would burst in looking for something to eat. It was always the first thing they did when they came in. She grabbed a bunch of greens, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and spices from the fridge and threw them on the counter in front of the pile of flesh. She was taking out some dried fish when they entered.

  “Afternoon,” Chukwu muttered, pushing her aside. Ugonna punched her shoulder. Neither even glanced at the counter. She smiled. Her dumb brothers never cooked. She didn’t think they even knew how! A human being who needs food to live but cannot prepare that food to eat? Pathetic. In this case, it was an advantage. They weren’t interested in any food until it had been cooked for them.

  “Were you playing soccer?” she asked. They took out bottles of Fanta and a bag of chin chin.

  “Yeah,” Chukwu said, wiping sweat from his face.

  “We won,” Ugonna said.

  “That’s good,” she said, leaning against the counter, shielding the wrapped skull and mess.

  “You heard the latest news?” Ugonna asked.

  She frowned and shook her head. “Black Hat got some kid in Aba.”

  “What?” Aba was only a few minutes’ walk away.

  “Yeah,” Chukwu said. “So don’t go out alone. If you want to go to the market, let us know.”

  After they left, as soon as she heard the sound of the television, she collected herself and rinsed off the skull. She was uneasy, but determined. What better time than now to learn the Leopard ways? Some self-defense would do her good.

  As she ran up the stairs to her room, she saw something red out of the corner of her eye, something weird sitting on the banister. She didn’t stop to check it out—she had to get the skull to her room. Once inside, she shut and locked the door, leaned against it, and let out a relieved breath.

  The skull was still wet. It was five o’clock. Six hours and fifteen minutes before she had to meet Orlu, Sasha, and Chichi. She put the skull under her bed and picked up her purse full of chittim.

  She dumped them out and counted. There were a hundred and twenty-five, including the bronze, gold, and silver ones. She put two copper and six bronze ones back into the purse and threw in her lip gloss, some tissues, a package of biscuits, pen and paper, and a few naira notes. She piled the rest of the chittim in an old rapa, tied it up, and pushed it far under her bed.

  She grabbed the purse, opened the door, and peeked into the hallway. The coast was clear. She dashed outside and hid the purse behind a bush near the house gate. Then she returned to the kitchen, cleaned up the mess, and spent the next hour cooking up a spicy red stew with chicken and bits of sheep brain for her parents and brothers. Full bellies meant heavy sleep.

  After dinner—which everyone, even her father, said was delicious—she took a quick shower and dressed in a pair of shorts, T-shirt, and sneakers. At ten thirty P.M., PHC took the lights and her father turned on the generator. Twenty minutes later, her brothers were playing video games and her parents had gone to bed.

  It had to be done at exactly e
leven o’clock. Her book said this was the most powerful hour of the night. She went over the juju charm one last time:

  Etuk Nwan is very simple juju. If you can’t make this work, I feel sorry for you. Etuk Nwan will allow you to pass through standard locked doors. Make sure the door is locked.

  Sunny checked her lock and brought out the sheep’s skull. It was still a little damp. She sipped her cup of rainwater, rubbed her hands with the palm oil, opened a tea bag, and sprinkled her hands with the chamomile. She sat on the floor, crossed her legs, and held the skull in her oily hands. Okay, she thought. Now to empty my mind of all thought and focus on the skull. She’d done this so often with candles that it was easy. Her watch beeped eleven o’clock. The skull was warm and heavy. Suddenly, it dropped right through her hands and clunked on the floor.

  It had to be the palm oil. She tried to pick it up. The charm wouldn’t work if she wasn’t holding the skull. Her hands passed right through the skull again. She jumped up. “It worked!” she whispered, her voice echoing strangely about the room.

  There was no weightless or insubstantial feeling. She felt quite normal. But when she looked in the mirror, she could see ever so slightly through her flesh. If Mama and Dad come in right now, will they see me? It didn’t matter. She needed to get out in the next few minutes. She looked at the skull sitting on the floor.

  “God, I hope they don’t come in here.” She went over to the locked door. Before she could wonder what to do next, she was yanked through the keyhole. The sensation was itchy and a little painful. She came out on the other side of the door. About twenty copper chittim loudly clinked at her feet. She froze. Everyone had to have heard the noise. No one came. She tried to pick up one of the chittim. Her hand passed through it.