The woman stopped at a vendor and bought Luyu a ring made of melted sand. “You’re a pretty girl. It will look nice on you,” the woman said, then she went back to blabbing on her device. Luyu took the ring, muttering a “thank you” in Nuru and slipped it on. Luyu held it up and turned it in the sunshine.
Twenty minutes later we finally arrived at the woman’s large booth in a busy market. “Set them there,” the woman said. When Luyu did so, the woman waved a hand at her, “Go on then.” And just like that, Luyu was free. Within moments, she was asked to carry a bundle of palm fiber, then sweep out someone’s booth, model a dress, shovel camel feces. Mwita and I took rests where we could, hiding under tables or between booths and letting ourselves reappear for a few minutes before going ignorable again.
When she was asked to pour okada fuel into containers, the fumes and her fatigue caused her to faint. Mwita had to slap her awake. The good thing about this job was that she got to do it alone in a tent and Mwita and I were able to help and take a break.
By this time, the sun was in the middle of the sky. We’d been in Durfa for three hours. Luyu got her chance when she finished pouring the okada fuel. As fast as she could, she ran into an alley between two large buildings. Clothes hung across it and I could hear a baby crying from one of the windows. These were residential buildings.
“Praise Ani,” Luyu whispered.
Mwita and I let ourselves reappear. “Whoo, I’m exhausted,” Mwita said, putting his hands on his knees.
I rubbed my temples and then the side of my head. My headache was flaring up. We were all sweating. “Luyu, much respect,” I said, giving her a hug.
“I hate this place,” she said into my shoulder, starting to cry.
“Yeah,” I said. I hated it too. Just seeing the Okeke shuffling around. Seeing Luyu have to do the same. Something was wrong. . . .with everyone here. The Okeke didn’t look too bothered as they worked. And the Nuru weren’t openly cruel to them. I didn’t see anyone beaten up. That woman had said Luyu was pretty and bought her a ring. It was confusing and strange.
“Onyesonwu, fly up and see if you can find the Conversation Space,” Mwita said.
“How will I find you?” I said.
“You can bring people from the dead,” Luyu said. “Think of something.”
“Go,” Mwita said. “Hurry.”
“We might not be here when you get back,” Luyu said.
I shrugged out of my clothes. Luyu rolled them up and put them against the alley wall. Mwita pulled me into a tight hug and I kissed his nose. Then I changed into a vulture and took off.
The midday’s warm air current beckoned me to fly higher, but I kept low, near the buildings and palm-tree tops. As a vulture, I could actually feel my father. He was indeed in Durfa. I soared for a moment, my eyes closed. I opened them and looked in the direction that I felt he was in. There was the open Conversation Space. My eyes were pulled to a building just north of it. I knew it would have a blue door.
I circled, memorizing the way. A bird knows its location at all times. I laughed, the sound coming out as a squawk. How could I think I wouldn’t be able to find Mwita and Luyu? I thought. As I flew back to the alley a glint of gold caught my eye. I turned and flew east to a wide street where a parade seemed to be going on. I landed on top of a building and assumed my vulture hunch.
I looked down and saw not just one glint of gold, but hundreds of round golden plates sewn into yellow-brown military uniforms. Each carried a large similarly colored backpack. They were ready for anything. People cheered as the soldiers marched. They were congregating somewhere I couldn’t see. We’re too late, I thought, remembering Sola’s warning. Those armies couldn’t leave before I did what I had to do, whatever that was.
I flew over the soldiers, low enough for them to notice me. I needed to follow their lines. I glimpsed their faces, young determined-looking men with golden skin so different from my mother’s dark brown. They were marching into a huge building made of metal and brick. I didn’t catch the name on the building’s sign. I’d seen enough. They weren’t marching out yet. Soon. Maybe within hours but not yet.
I flew back to the alley. Mwita and Luyu were gone. I cursed. I changed back. As I dressed, I sweated profusely and my hands shook. Right after I pulled my shirt over my head, I met the eyes of a Nuru man standing at the alley entrance. His eyes were wide as he had just gotten a view of my breasts and now was seeing my face. I put on my veil, made myself ignorable and ran around him. When I looked back, he was still standing there looking into the alley. Let him think he saw a ghost, I thought. Let it drive him mad.
I searched for several minutes. No luck. I stood there, in the middle of a large crowd of Nurus and the occasional Okeke. How I despised this place. I cursed to myself and a Nuru man passing by me frowned and looked around. How do I find them? I thought, desperately. My panic was making it hard to concentrate. I closed my eyes and I did something I’d never really done. I prayed to Ani, the Creator, to Papa, Binta, whoever would listen. Please. I can’t do this alone. I can’t be alone. Watch over Luyu. I need Mwita. Binta should be alive. Aro do you hear me? Mama, I wish I was five years old again.
I wasn’t making sense to myself, I was just praying, if this was praying. Whatever it was, it calmed me. My mind showed me Aro’s first lesson in the Mystic Points. “Bricoleur,” I said out loud, as I stood there. “One who uses all that he has in order to do what he has to do.”
I went over three of the four points. The Mmuo Point moves and shapes the wilderness. The Alusi Point speaks with spirits. The Uwa Point moves and shapes the physical world, the body. I needed to find Mwita and Luyu’s bodies. I can find Mwita, I realized. I had a part of him in me. His sperm. Connection. I stood very still and turned inward. Through my skin, fat, muscle, into my womb. There they were wriggling away. “Where is he?” I asked them. They told me.
“Ewu!” someone yelled. “Look at it!”
Several people gasped. Everyone in the market suddenly stared at and moved away from me. I’d been so focused on the inside of myself that I’d become visible. Someone grabbed my arm. I snatched it away, became ignorable and pushed my way through the pressing crowd. Again, I wondered about these people who seemed so content and peaceful but changed into monsters when their sterile Nuru environment was even slightly compromised. There was chaos as they searched frantically for me. The news would spread, especially in a place like this where so many had those communication devices.
We were running out of time.
I ran, looking not so much with my eyes as with something else inside me. I spotted Luyu outside the large Conversation Space. She was standing with another Okeke woman. They were watching over a group of Nuru children while their parents went to the prayer space to pray. Luyu looked miserable.
“I’m here,” I said, stepping beside her.
She jumped and looked around. “Onye?” she asked.
The Okeke woman standing near Luyu looked at her.
“Shh,” I said.
Luyu smiled.
“Mwita?” I called.
“I’m here,” he said.
“I saw soldiers preparing to leave. We don’t have much time,” I whispered.
A Nuru child of about two yanked on Luyu’s sleeve.
“Bread?” the girl asked. “Bread?”
Luyu reached into the satchel beside her and tore off a piece of bread and gave it to the child. The child smiled at her, “Thank you.”
Luyu smiled back.
“We have to go. Right now,” I said, trying to keep my voice down.
“Shh!” Luyu whispered. “That woman will raise an alarm if I just leave. I don’t know what it is with these Okeke.”
“They’re slaves,” I said.
“Try to talk to her anyway,” I heard Mwita quietly say. “Hurry!”
Luyu turned to the woman, “Do you know of Onyesonwu the Sorceress?”
She looked blankly at Luyu. Then she surprised me by looking around a
nd coming over to Luyu. “I do.”
Luyu was also surprised. “Well, what . . . what do you think?”
“I can wish, but that doesn’t make it true,” the woman whispered.
“Then wish again,” I said to her.
The woman yelped, staring at Luyu. She stepped away, her eyes wide, her hands clutching her chest. She didn’t scream or raise an alarm as Luyu walked away. She didn’t say anything at all. She just stood there, hands to chest.
I made myself visible, pulling my veil over my face. Luyu and Mwita had to be able to see me. Only I could get us to the building with the blue door. For fifteen minutes, we ran. Because of the light skin of my hands, at first glance people assumed I was Nuru and that Luyu was my slave. And because we were running, I was gone before anyone had time to stop and consider me. We avoided speeding okadas and grumpy camels and passed Nuru children in school uniforms, miserable working Okeke, and busy Nuru. And then there we were, at the blue door.
CHAPTER 58
THIS BUILDING REALLY REMINDED ME OF THE House of Osugbo. It was made of stone, its thick outer walls were carved with designs, and it exuded a mysterious authority. The blue door was actually a painting of the white-tipped blue waves of a body of water. The unnamed lake? There was a stone sign in front of the building with an orange flag waving from a pole at the top. The following was carved deep into the stone:
General’s Headquarters
Daib Yagoub
The Council of the Seven Rivers Kingdom
“I’ll go in first,” Luyu said. “They’ll just think I’m an ignorant slave.”
Before either of us could answer, she ran up the steps and opened the blue door. The door slammed behind her. Mwita took my hand. His hand was cold, mine probably was, too. I wanted to look at him but we were still holding ourselves ignorable. Several minutes went by. Behind us, people passed on camel, foot, and scooter. No one came or left the building. I venture to say that no one even looked in the building’s direction. Yes, it was very much like the House of Osugbo.
“If she doesn’t come out in another minute, she’s probably dead,” Mwita said.
“She’ll come,” I muttered.
Another minute passed.
“You think it was Daib who hung those two people in the cave?” he said.
I hadn’t given it a thought. And I didn’t want to think about it now. But it was just like Daib to kill a person and then make sure that the body couldn’t rot.
“So who were the spiders, then?” I asked.
He chuckled. “I don’t know.”
I chuckled, too. Squeezing his hand. The blue door swung open with a loud slap. Luyu emerged, breathless. “It’s empty,” she said. “If he’s here, he’s on the second floor.”
Without a glance behind us, Mwita and I became visible. “He’s expecting us,” Mwita said. We went in.
It was cool inside, as if a capture station was on nearby. From somewhere, a machine hummed. There were desks with dark blue tops and dark blue chairs. Office spaces. Each desk had a dusty old computer. I’d never seen so much paper. In stacks on the floor, in trash bins and many books, too. It was a wasteful place. A staircase wound up the far side of the room.
“I didn’t go up there,” Luyu said.
“Smart,” I said.
“Stay here,” Mwita told her. “Shout if anyone comes.”
She nodded, putting a hand on one of the desks to steady herself. Her eyes were wide, tears glistening in them. “Be careful,” she croaked.
Mwita and I made ourselves ignorable and went up. We stopped at the entrance. The large room was very different from the one below. It was as I remembered it. The walls were blue. The floor was blue. The room smelled of incense and dusty books. And it was eerily quiet.
He sat at his desk glaring at us. There was a large window behind him allowing sunshine in. It both threw a shadow over his face and bounced reflections off of the tiny disks sitting in a basket on his desk. He was both light and dark . . . but mostly dark. His large hands angrily grasped his chair’s armrests. He wore a brilliantly white caftan with an embroidered neck and a thin gold necklace. His granite-black beard hung to his chest and the wooly black hair on his head was covered with a white cap. When he just continued staring right at us, Mwita and I took the hint and made ourselves visible.
“Mwita, my ugly apprentice,” he said. He looked at me and I instantly went cold with fear, remembering the pain he inflicted me with just before he slapped the slow and cruel poison symbol on my hand. My confidence began draining from me. I was pathetic. He chuckled to himself as if he knew I’d just lost all my nerve. “And you should have stayed missing or dead, or whatever you were,” he said.
Mwita strode into the room.
“Mwita, wh . . . what are you doing?” I hissed.
He ignored me, walked right up to Daib and grabbed the basket of strange disks. “Your brain is diseased,” he said, shaking the basket in Daib’s face. “Everything was destroyed in your house! Yet somehow, you saved these? You think I didn’t know about your sick collection! I was cleaning your desk when I found these. I put one into your portable before the riots; I got to watch you beat a man to death. You were laughing and . . . aroused as you did it!”
Daib sat back and chuckled again. “I’m getting old. Sometimes a man needs a little help. My memory often fails me, too. Losing these would have been like losing a part of my mind.” He cocked his head. “So is this what you came all this way to say? Is this why you pester me with your childish antics?” He snatched the basket from Mwita and reached in. All the disks looked the same but he was able to find the one he sought in a matter of seconds. He held it up. “For this? Your woman’s honor?” He threw it at Mwita. It missed him, landing and rolling near my feet. I picked it up. It was barely bigger than my nail. Mwita looked at me. He turned back to Daib.
“Get out of here,” Daib spat. “I have a plan to complete. Rana’s prophecy to fulfill—‘a tall bearded Nuru sorcerer will come and force the Great Book’s rewriting.’ What a different book it will be once I exterminate the rest of the Okeke.” He stood up, a tall bearded Nuru man. A sorcerer with healing abilities. Just as Rana’s prophecy had predicted. I frowned, questioning all that I had traveled for. Could Rana the Seer have actually been telling the truth? Was the prophesied one male, not female? Maybe “peace” meant the death of all Okekes.
“Oh, Ani save us,” I whispered.
“But you, girl, I must also exterminate,” Daib continued. “I remember your mother.” He frowned. “I should have killed her. I let my men have their way and leave most of those Okeke women alive. Turning them loose is like sending a virus to all those eastern communities. The disgraced women run there to give birth to their Ewu babies. I brought that part of the plan to the Seven Rivers council head myself. I am her greatest general and my plan was brilliant. Of course she listened. She’s a weak puppet.”
He smiled, enjoying his words. “It’s easy juju to work on soldiers. They become like cows, producing and producing milk. Me? I prefer to bash an Okeke woman’s head in after I’ve had her. Except your mother.” His smile faltered. His eyes went far away. “I enjoyed her. I didn’t want to kill her. She should have given me a great, great son. Why are you a girl?”
“I . . .” I sighed.
“Because it’s been written,” Mwita said.
Slowly Daib turned to Mwita, really seeing him for the first time. Daib’s motions were instant. One second he was standing behind his desk and the next he was on Mwita, his strong hands around Mwita’s throat. A thousand things tried to happen in my body all at once but none of them allowed me to move. Something was holding me. Then it was squeezing. I wheezed and would have fallen forward if it weren’t for the thing holding me.
I blinked. I could see it. A blue tubule had wrapped itself around me like a snake. A wilderness tree. It was cool, rough, and terribly strong, though I could see right through it. The more I struggled, the tighter it constricted. It was sque
ezing the air out of me.
“Always, so disrespectful,” Daib said, baring his teeth as he throttled Mwita. “It’s your dirty blood. You were born wrong.” He squeezed harder. “Why would Ani give a child like you such gifts? I should have slit your throat, had you burned back to ashes so Ani could get it right the second time.” He threw Mwita to the ground and spit on him. Mwita coughed and sputtered, trying to get to his feet. He fell back.
Daib turned to me. My face was wet with tears and sweat as the spirit plant released me. The world around me faded and then brightened. I opened my mouth wide as I inhaled and shakily got to my feet.
“My only child and this is what Ani gives me,” he said, looking me up and down.
The wilderness rose around us. More wilderness trees surrounded us like gaping onlookers. Behind him I could see Mwita, his yellow spirit blazing fiercely.
“I’ve been watching you,” Daib growled. “Mwita will die today. You will die today. And I won’t stop there. I’ll hunt down your spirit. You try to hide. I’ll find you. I’ll destroy you again. After I bring the Nuru armies and fulfill the prophecy, I’ll find your mother. She’ll bear my son.”
I lost parts of myself with each of his words. Once my belief in the prophecy began to crumble, my courage went right with it. I was struggling to breathe. I wanted to beg him. Plead. Cry. I would crawl at his feet to keep him from hurting my mother and Mwita. My journey had been a waste. I was nothing.
“Nothing to say?” he said.
I sank to my knees.
Triumphant, he kept talking, “I don’t expect . . .”
Mwita screamed as he launched himself at Daib. Then Mwita screamed something that sounded like Vah. He slapped his hand on Daib’s neck. Daib shrieked and whirled around. Already whatever Mwita had done to him was working. Mwita stumbled back.
“What have you done?” Daib shouted, trying to reach behind him, scraping at his neck. “You can’t do . . . !” I felt all the air in the room shift and the pressure drop.
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