Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

  I barely glanced at that evil place where the people had brutally taken Binta’s life and would forever suffer blindness. Generation after generation. I’d cursed Papa Shee and all who were born in it. I cursed it again as we passed.

  “There is your Jwahir,” she said.

  I tried to slow down so I could see, but she pulled me along. I saw nothing more than a blur of distant buildings. Still, even as we passed it in the blink of an eye, I could feel my home calling to me, trying to draw me back. My mother. Aro. Nana the Wise. The Ada. Had her son Fanta arrived in Jwahir to surprise her yet?

  The Kponyungo and I flew over vast lands; the dryness I had always known. Sand. Hardpan. Stunted trees. Dry dead grass. We moved too fast for me to spot the occasional camel, sand fox, hawk we must have passed over. I wondered where we were going. And I wondered if I should be afraid. It was impossible to tell how much time was passing or how far we were going. I felt no hunger or thirst. No need to urinate or defecate. No need to sleep. I was no longer human, no longer a physical beast.

  I glanced at her eyes every so often. She was a giant lizard of heat and light. But she was more, too. I just had a feeling. Who was she? She’d glance back at me, as if she knew what I was wondering. But she said nothing.

  A long time and a long distance later, the land below suddenly changed. The trees we passed were taller here. We flew faster. So fast that all I could see was light brown. Then darker brown. Then . . . green.

  “Behold,” she said, finally slowing down.

  Greeeeen! As I’d never seen it. As I’d never imagined it. This made the field of green I’d seen when I’d gone “away” with Mwita that first time seem tiny. From horizon to horizon the ground was alive with dense high leafy trees. Is this even possible? I wondered. Does this place really exist?

  I met the Kponyungo’s eyes and they glowed a deeper orange-yellow. “It does,” she said.

  My chest ached, but it was a good ache. It was an ache of . . . home. This place was too far to ever get to. But maybe someday it would not be. Maybe someday. It’s vastness made the violence and hatred between the Okeke and Nuru seem small. On and on this place went. We flew low enough to touch the treetops. I caressed the leaf of a strange palm tree.

  A large eaglelike bird flew up from a nearby tree. Another tree blooming with large bright pink flowers was crowded with large blue and yellow butterflies. In other treetops sat furry beasts with long arms and curious eyes. They watched us fly by. A breeze sent ripples in the treetops like wind on a puddle of water. It made a whispering sound that I will never forget. So much green, alive and heavy with water!

  She stopped us and we hovered above a large wide tree. I smiled. An iroko tree. Just like the one I’d found myself in the first time my Eshu abilities manifested and I’d changed into a sparrow. This tree was also fruiting its bitter-smelling fruit. We landed on one of its large branches. Somehow, it bore our weight.

  A family of those furry beasts sat on the far side of the tree’s top staring at us, unmoving. It was almost comical. What must they have understood with their eyes? Had they ever seen two giant wiry lizards that glowed like the sun and smelled of smoke and steam? Doubtful.

  “I will send you back in a moment,” she said, ignoring the furry monkeylike creatures, which still had not moved. “For now, take this place in, hold it close to you. Remember it.”

  What I remember most about it was the deep sense of hope it placed in my heart. If a forest, a true vast forest, still existed someplace, even if it was very very far away, then all would not end badly. It meant there was life outside the Great Book. It was like being blessed, cleansed.

  Nevertheless, when the Kponyungo returned me to Ssolu, after I’d made my body human again, I had to work hard to remember any of this. As soon as I was back in my own skin, the sickness descended upon me like a thousand scorpions sent by my father.

  CHAPTER 46

  BUT IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MY FATHER and everything to do with the masquerade’s visit. Or so the sorcerer Ssaiku said. When I returned to myself after my visit to the green place, Ssaiku, Ting, and Mwita were waiting for me. We were in my tent. Incense was burning, Ssaiku was humming some forlorn tune and Mwita was staring at me. As soon as I lay atop my body, he smiled and nodded and said, “She’s back.”

  I smiled back at him but then immediately cringed as I realized that every muscle in my body was clenching.

  “Drink this,” Mwita said, holding a cup to my lips. Whatever it was caused my muscles to relax within a minute. Only when Mwita and I were alone did I tell him all that I had seen. I never got to hear what he thought of it all because as soon as I finished telling the story, I slipped into the wilderness, which to him meant I nearly disappeared. When I slipped back into the physical world, I returned again to painfully cramped muscles.

  It wasn’t the type of illness that made you vomit, burn with fever, or suffer bouts of diarrhea. It was spiritual. Food repulsed me. The wilderness and the physical world battled for prominence around me. My awareness fluctuated between heightened and dulled. I mostly stayed in my tent the rest of those days before the retreat.

  Fanasi and Diti peeked into my tent every so often. Fanasi brought me bread that I didn’t eat. Diti tried to start conversations with me that I couldn’t finish. They looked like mice waiting for the right moment to flee. The sight of the masquerade must have really made it clear that I was not just a sorceress but also connected to mysterious and dangerous forces.

  Luyu stayed with me whenever Mwita could not. She sat with me when I disappeared and when I reappeared in the same place, she’d still be there. She’d look terrified but she’d still be there. She didn’t ask me any questions and when we talked, she’d tell me about the men she bedded or other mundane things. She was the only one who could make me laugh.

  CHAPTER 47

  THE MORNING OF THE TENTH DAY, Mwita had to wake me. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep until the last hour. I was still unable to eat and too hungry to sleep. Mwita did his best to exhaust me. Even in my state, his touch was more soothing than food or water. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many people would die if I conceived. Nor could I get it out of my head that something bad was going to happen when I went on the retreat.

  “I hear them singing,” Mwita said. “They’ve already gathered.”

  “Mmm,” I said, my eyes still closed. I had been listening to them for over an hour now. Their song reminded me of my mother. She sang this song often, though she refused to go with the Jwahir women to Hold Conversation. “She hasn’t gone since I was conceived,” I mumbled, opening my eyes. “Why should I ever go?”

  “Get up,” Mwita said softly, kissing my bare shoulder. He got up, wrapped his green rapa around his waist and went outside. He returned with a cup of water. He reached into my pile of clothes and grabbed my blue top.

  “Wear this,” he said. “And . . .” He found a blue rapa. “And this.”

  I pushed myself up, the cover falling off me. As the cool air touched my body, awareness flooded over me. I wanted to sob. I wrapped the blue rapa around myself. He handed me the water. “Be strong,” he said. “Get up.”

  When I stepped out, I was shocked to see Diti, Luyu, and Fanasi sitting there, fully dressed, and eating fresh bread. The smell of the bread made my stomach growl. “We were beginning to think you two were too . . . exhausted to go,” Luyu said with a wink.

  “You mean you were in camp to hear it?” I asked.

  Fanasi bitterly laughed. Diti looked away.

  “I got in late but yes,” Luyu said with a smirk.

  By the time I’d washed and dressed, the group of women was walking out. They moved slowly. It was easy to catch up with them. No one seemed to mind Mwita and Fanasi, who were the only men in the group. Ting was there, too. “To represent Ssaiku,” she said. I noticed a quick look pass between her and Mwita.

  It wasn’t a long walk to the edge of the dust storm on the west side, about a mile and a half. Bu
t we walked at such a slow pace that it took nearly an hour. We sang songs to Ani, some that I knew, many that I didn’t. By the time we stopped, I was dizzy from hunger and glad to sit down. It was windy, noisy, and a little scary. You could see where the wind turned to storm, only a few yards away.

  “Let her hair go,” Ting told Mwita. He took the twine of palm fiber off my hair and it blew about. Everyone was quiet now. Praying. Many knelt, their heads to the sand. Diti, Luyu, and Fanasi remained standing, staring at the dust storm. Luyu and Diti came from families that only occasionally prayed to Ani. Their mothers had never gone on retreats and neither had they. I couldn’t keep my mind off my own mother and how it all happened to her, how she’d been praying like these women when the scooters came. Ting was behind me. I felt her do something to my neck. I was too weak to stop her. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She leaned close to my ear. “It’s a mixture of palm oil, the tears of a dying old woman, the tears of an infant, menstrual blood, the milk of a man, the skin from the foot of a tortoise, and sand.”

  I shivered, repulsed.

  “You don’t know Nsibidi,” she said. “It is a written juju. To mark anything with it is to enact change; it speaks directly with the spirit. I’ve marked you with a symbol of the crossroads where all your selves will meet. Kneel forward. Ask it of Ani. She’ll give it.”

  “I don’t believe in Ani,” I said.

  “Kneel and pray anyway,” she said, pushing me forward.

  I pressed my forehead to the sand, the sound of the wind in my ears. Minutes passed. I’m so hungry, I thought. I began to feel something holding me down. I turned my head and stared into the sky. I saw the sun set, come back up and then set again. A long time passed, that’s what matters.

  Suddenly, I dropped into the sand. It swallowed me like the mouth of a beast. The last thing I remember before the world exploded was a girl saying, “It’s okay, Mwita. She’s releasing. We’ve been waiting for this since she got here.”

  Every part of me that was me. My tall Ewu body. My short temper. My impulsive mind. My memories. My past. My future. My death. My life. My spirit. My fate. My failure. All of me was destroyed. I was dead, broken, scattered, and absorbed. It was a thousand times worse than when I first changed into a bird. I remember nothing because I was nothing.

  Then I was something.

  I could feel it. I was being put back together, bit by bit. What was doing this? No, it was not Ani. It was not a goddess. It was cold, if it could be cold. And brittle, if it could be brittle. Logical. Controlled. Dare I say that it was the Creator? It Who Cannot Be Touched? Who doesn’t care to be touched? The fourth point that no sorcerer could ever consider? No, I can’t say that because that is the deepest blasphemy. Or at least that’s what Aro would say.

  But my spirit and body were utterly completely obliterated . . . was this not what Aro said would happen to any creature who encountered the Creator? As It reassembled me, It arranged me in a new order. An order that made more sense. I remember the moment the last piece of me was returned.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I breathed. Relief, my first emotion. Again, I am reminded of that time in the iroko tree. When my head was like a house. Back then it was as if some of that house’s doors were cracking open—doors of steel, wood, stone. This time all of those doors and windows were blown out.

  I was dropping again. I hit the ground hard. Wind on my skin. I was freezing. I was wet. Who am I? I wondered. I didn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t remember how to. Something hit my head. And something else. Instinctively, I opened my eyes. I was in a tent.

  “How can she be dead?” Diti was screaming. “What happened?”

  Then it all slammed into me. Who I was, why I was, how I was, when I was. I shut my eyes.

  “Don’t touch her,” Ssaiku said. “Mwita, speak to her. She’s coming back. Help her complete her journey.”

  A pause. “Onyesonwu.” His voice sounded strange. “Come back. You were gone for seven days. Then you fell from the sky, like one of Ani’s missing children in the Great Book. If you live again, open your eyes, woman.”

  I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back. My body hurt. He took my hand. I grasped his. More came in that moment. More of who I now was. I smiled, and then I laughed.

  This was a moment of madness and arrogance that I cannot say was only my fault. The power and ability that I realized was a part of me now was overwhelming. I was stronger and more in control than I ever imagined I could be. And so as soon as I returned, I was off again. I hadn’t eaten in seven days. My mind was clear. I was so so strong. I thought of where I wanted to go. I went there. One minute I was on that mat in the tent, the next I was flying, as myself, as my blue spirit.

  I was going after my father.

  I flew right through the sandstorm. I felt its stinging touch. I burst through its wall into the hot sun. Morning. I flew over miles of sand, villages, dunes, a town, dry trees, and more dunes. I flew over a small field of green, but I was too focused to care. Into Durfa. Straight to a large house with a blue door. Through the door and up to a room that smelled of flowers, incense, and dusty books.

  He was at a desk, his back to me. I dropped deeper into the wilderness. I had done it to Aro when he’d refused me one too many times. And I’d done it to the witch doctor in Papa Shee. This time I was even stronger. I knew where to tear and bite and destroy, where to attack. Layered over his turned back, I could see his spirit. It was a deep blue, like mine. This startled me for a moment, but it didn’t stop me.

  I pounced the way a starved tiger must have long ago when it found its prey. I was too eager to realize that though his back was turned, his spirit wasn’t. He had been waiting. Aro had never told me how it felt when I’d attacked him. The witch doctor in Papa Shee had simply died, no physical markings on him when he fell over. Now, in this moment with my father, I learned what it was like.

  It was the kind of pain that death wouldn’t stop. My father put it to me in full force. He sang as he tore, gorged, stabbed, and twisted at parts of me that I didn’t know were there. He sat at his desk, his back turned. He sang in Nuru but I couldn’t hear the words. I am like my mother, but not completely. I cannot hear and remember as I suffer.

  Something in me kicked in. A survival instinct, a responsibility and a memory. This isn’t how I end, I thought. Immediately, I pulled what remained of me away. As I retreated, my father stood and turned around. He looked into what were my eyes and grabbed what was my arm. I tried to pull away. He was too strong. He turned the palm of my right hand over and dug his thumbnail into it, etching some sort of symbol there. He let go and said, “Go back and die in the sands you arose from.”

  I traveled backward for what felt like forever, sobbing, pained, fading. As I approached the wall of dust, the world grew bright with spirits and the desert sprouted those strange colorful wilderness trees. I faded completely and remember nothing.

  Mwita later told me that I died a second time. That I turned transparent and then completely disappeared. When I reappeared in the same place, I was flesh again, my body bleeding all over, my garments soaked with blood. He couldn’t wake me. For three minutes, I had no pulse. He blew air into my chest and used kind juju. When none of this worked, he sat there, waiting.

  During the third minute, I started breathing. Mwita shooed everyone out of the tent and asked two girls walking by to bring him a bucket of warmed water. He bathed me from head to toe, rinsing away the blood, bandaging wounds, rubbing circulation into my flesh and sending me good thoughts. “We have to talk,” he’d said over and over. “Wake up.”

  I awoke two days later to see Mwita sitting beside me humming to himself as he wove a basket. I slowly sat up. I looked at Mwita and couldn’t recall who he was. I like him, I thought. What is he? My body ached. I groaned. My stomach rumbled.

  “You wouldn’t eat,” Mwita said, putting his basket down. “But you would drink. Otherwise, you’d be dead . . . again.”

  I know him
, I thought. Then as if whispered by the winds outside I heard the word he’d spoken to me, Ifunanya. “Mwita?” I said.

  “The one and only,” he said coming over to me. Despite my body’s pains and the restriction of bandages on my legs and torso, I threw my arms around him.

  “Binta,” I said into Mwita’s shoulder. “Ah! Daib!” I clung to Mwita more tightly, clenching my eyes shut. “The man is no man! He . . .” Memories began to flood my senses. My journey to the West, seeing his face, his spirit. The pain! Defeat. My heart sank. I had failed.

  “Shh,” he said.

  “He should have killed me,” I whispered. Even after being recreated by Ani, I still couldn’t take him down.

  “No,” Mwita said, taking my face in his hands. I tried to pull my shameful face away but he held me there. Then he kissed me long and full. The voice in my head that was screaming failure and defeat quieted, though it did not stop its mantra. Mwita pulled away and we stared into each other’s eyes.

  “My hand,” I whispered. I held it up. The symbol was of a worm coiled around itself. It was black and crusty and hurt when I tried to close my hand into a fist. Failure, the voice in my head whispered. Defeat. Death.

  “Didn’t notice that,” Mwita said, frowning as he held it closer to his face. When he touched it with his index finger, he pulled his hand back, hissing.

  “What?” I said weakly.

  “It’s like it’s charged. Like sticking my finger into an electrical socket,” he said rubbing his hand. “My hand’s numb.”

  “He put it there,” I said.

  “Daib?”

  I nodded. Mwita’s face darkened. “You feel all right otherwise?”

  “Look at me,” I said, not wanting him to look at me at all. “How could I feel . . .”