Akata Warrior

by Nnedi Okorafor

  Suddenly, the entire room reeked so strongly of sulfur that it hurt to breathe. Sunny jumped up and took off toward the stairway that led out of the library basement, coughing. She hadn’t moved much in hours and her muscles were stiff, but she ran up the stairway like a champion. Her sandals slapped the concrete. She didn’t dare glance back. Thus, she couldn’t have been more shocked when she found herself stumbling right back into the Obi Library basement. Her sense of direction and gravity reeled for several moments as she came to understand what had happened.

  “What?!” she screeched.

  “Whooo oh whooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” The voice vibrated, coming from every direction and within Sunny’s head. She pressed her hands over her ears as she frantically looked for a place to hide. There! A small space between two fallen bookcases. Maybe she could hole up in that space for two days, a day and a half, whatever amount of time she had left here. About to run for it, she shivered and looked to her left. This time she did scream. Because she’d been about to run, her leg muscles were like a tightly wound spring. She tried to change directions by a few degrees and her legs tangled. As she went down, she didn’t take her eyes off the pile of bones. The skull had its jaw broken. There was a foot at the top. A hand tumbled down and landed facing upward like a dead white spider.

  Phoom! The dried old bones suddenly burst into quiet smokeless flames.

  Sunny hit the ground, and her hip was an explosion of pain. Still, she managed to roll to her side and pull her juju knife from her pocket. She did a quick flourish and caught the cool invisible pouch in her hand as she lay on her side. Then she drew a square in the air while muttering into the pouch the words Chichi had taught her. The only difference was that she spoke them in her native tongue of English instead of Chichi’s native tongue of Efik. “Bring a thick barrier. Hold strong, too. From the very air I breathe. It must hold true!”

  When the tumbled hand rolled toward her and then perched on its fingertips so that it could tap on the barrier, Sunny shivered.

  “Free agent weak frightened magic,” the voice said. “Shatters like glass.” With these words, there was the sound of glass breaking and falling to the marble floor. “What more do you have?”

  Sunny had been practicing on her own and incorporating lessons Sugar Cream had taught her over the months. She calmed, forcing herself to look at the ancient pile of human bones that were engulfed in flames but not burning at all.

  “Your entire body must relax, feel it drop. Then imagine your spirit dropping,” Sugar Cream had said. “Think of Anyanwu. You are her and she is you. Remember your initiation? When you were pulled into the ground? Feel that. But feel it as if Anyanwu is pulling from your body.” Before Sunny gave it a try, Sugar Cream had reminded her to make sure she was lying down.

  Now Sunny was already on the floor. She rested her head back, keeping an eye on the bones. Relax, relax, relax, she thought. Breathe. She flared her nostrils, inhaling deeply through her nose. It took all she had, but she calmed herself. She would be okay. She might not have had too many real moments of terror in her thirteen years, but in her past life, she had. She couldn’t remember them clearly, but she could feel those memories. Right on the tip of her mind. And she’d still gone on. Even if she died in this basement, she would go on in spirit. She relaxed more with the comfort of this remote knowledge. She relaxed. She dropped. She felt it physically, but it was much more than that.

  “Oh, now it gets interesting,” the voice said. “Welcome.”

  The marble floor was cool. It was a pure stone. An old, old stone. Maybe it had been in the earth longer than the Obi Library had existed. Maybe the basement was carved from what was already in the ground. It was so solid. Sunny got up. She flew, passing through the bookcases as if they were clouds. She was nothing but yellow mist. She knew there would be other things here, and she hoped she didn’t run into them. But she couldn’t afford to look around. She had to get away. And she couldn’t stay partially in the wilderness for long. Not yet. Before she knew what she was doing or how quickly she’d traveled across the large room, she smashed into a wall.

  They were made of the same marble. She could not pass through them, even if she dropped into the wilderness. How was this possible? What kind of stone is this? she wondered as she crumpled to the ground. Scraaaape. One by one, the bones dragged and tumbled toward her.

  “Do you think this place is only your world?” the voice said. “It is physical and wilderness. It is a full place. You can’t escape.”

  “What do you want?” she muttered. Not far from her on the floor were five red spiders. Two of them just stood there, seeming to watch her. The other three were running for cover.

  “I want what you have,” the voice said.

  “Why?”

  “They throw stupid Leopard People down here often. Timid, angry, weak-minded careless men and women who have nothing for me to take but a piece of their sanity, or some of a family member’s future, meager gifts. But you . . . you have a soul that could release me from this place.”

  “Sunny?” someone called. “Sunny Nwazue?”

  Sunny got to her feet, wobbly for a moment. Then steady. She’d hit the wall as something other than a physical body. She was shaken but okay.

  “Sunny?” she heard the man call again. A human man. From near the staircase. Her second meal was here. She’d made it through the second day. But was it breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

  “I’m here,” she called, peeking around one of the bookshelves. He was a tall man of about her mother’s age. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt and gym shoes. Not clothes she’d seen any of the Obi Library students wear during the day.

  “Here is your dinner,” he said, holding it out to her. If she had to guess, judging from his accent, this guy was from Lagos. He held the tray out to her. It was the same meal of jollof rice, goat meat, and water.

  “Thank you,” she said. “So, it’s night, then? Do you know what time it is?”

  The man didn’t answer. He wouldn’t even look her in the eye. He turned and started walking away.

  “Sir? . . . Oga? Did you hear me?” Sunny asked, following him as he walked toward the staircase. He moved quicker. Sunny put her tray on the ground, suddenly feeling panicky and invisible.

  “Hey!” she shouted.

  “I can’t speak or look at you,” he said stiffly, his back still to her. “The punishment is caning.”

  Sunny froze. Samya. She pressed her hand to her chest, shocked. “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh no.” She stepped away from the staircase, listening to the sound of the man’s footsteps grow fainter and fainter. Stay strong, Sunny thought, tears in her eyes. I have to survive this. Otherwise, Samya will have been caned in vain.

  She whirled around when she heard a crunch. Her plate of rice looked as if a stone as heavy as a car had fallen on it. A red spider had been crushed beside it, too. The bottled water rolled and came to rest beside a bookcase. She heard the djinn chuckle from the other side of the room.

  “That’s really funny,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Her mother had once told her that if she ever found herself facing a wild animal, never ever show fear. The djinn wasn’t an animal. Well, not one of the physical world at least, but it was certainly wild. Up to now, Sunny had worn her fear on her sleeve. She couldn’t help it; she was scared. However, her mother also liked to say that it was never too late.

  Her legs tingled and shuddered as she slowly walked toward her water bottle. She bent and picked it up, unscrewed the top, and took a deep, deep pull. The water washed into her parched body like rain on dry cracked earth. During the gliding lessons with Sugar Cream, she and Sunny never moved fully into the wilderness. Sunny was far from ready for that and to go in unready meant a quiet peaceful swift death to your physical body. However, Sugar Cream took Sunny “in and out,” where she was in both the wilderness and the physical world, and instead
of seeing one place, she saw two layered over each other. Sugar Cream described it as similar to looking at the world through an aquarium.

  Learning how to go “in and out” or between was not so hard. Sunny had gone between naturally on her own when she’d first snuck out of the house through the keyhole thinking she’d worked her first juju. It was going into the wilderness completely that was extremely difficult. Whenever Sugar Cream had her do preparatory exercises for going into the wilderness, Sunny always found herself desperate for water afterward. “That’s because water is life,” Sugar Cream had said. “The body doesn’t like for its soul to even consider entering the wilderness.”

  Sunny took another gulp and felt a little better. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human,” she called out. “You should have crushed the water bottle. Humans need water more than food.” Despite her fear, she smiled at her own words.

  “I was never human,” the djinn said.

  As she drank, she looked around. More red spiders on the books feet away. The djinn’s voice was still coming from the other side of the room but that didn’t mean anything. Her eye went to one of the books in the fallen case in front of her. She pulled it from between two dusty hardcovers. Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X. A Lamb book. “What’s that doing here?” she muttered. Beside it were several volumes on Leopard medicine and even more on Leopard world alliance law.

  “Sunny!” She jumped. The voice was right behind her.

  “Eep!”

  She was yanked back. There was a bright flash in her mind and a metallic sting so intense that she couldn’t tell where she felt it. Then she was plunging into cool water. There was a splash. It was like her initiation when she burst into the river and was pulled along, except this felt like she was being pulled down, down, down instead of horizontally. She felt her body struggling for breath. She couldn’t breathe! The cool water pressed in on her as she descended into the deep blue. She could see the dull basement light above her, slowly pulling itself away as she sank.

  She thrashed and clutched her neck. Her lungs burned. Water rushed into her mouth, down her throat, into her chest. Even then she fought, but she was growing weak. She was dying. The djinn was drowning her.

  The water was cool. She was cooling.

  She let go of her neck. She let go.

  Then the sensation of falling without falling. She hit something hard. Colors zoomed around her. Mostly green. But she was vaguely aware of the library; she was in the library. Her chest felt heavy, full. She coughed sharply and grabbed for the bookcase. There was a red spider right beside her hand, but she didn’t care. “No,” the djinn said in her ear. “There is no escape. Come. Come completely.” She could feel the bookcase melting in her hands, dissolving, as something yanked at her shoulders, pulling her back. She felt it in her chest, a warm sharp tearing sensation. Then she felt her spirit face rush forward.

  “Oh,” she heard the djinn say. Then it chuckled and drawled, “Who are you, Sunny Nwazue?”

  She still felt the pain, but all over now, and she felt . . . dim, somehow muted. She’d held on to the case, trying to will herself out of the wilderness. But then she was holding on to nothing. Then the bookcase became a mass of bushes. But the spider on it didn’t disappear; it sat there on the bush. She gasped. It was one of those creatures that existed in both worlds. It was still red but now the size of a basketball with fluorescent blue rings on its legs. The creature waved a leg at her and scurried away.

  Sunny held on to the bush, realizing she wasn’t breathing. She wore her spirit face. She was Anyanwu.

  Her body. She was no body. She was yellow. The color of the sun. Light. In a sea of mostly green.

  Green blobs undulated past. Pink and green insects with green lines for wings. The wilderness looked like a jungle. There was sound, and it was thick and moist and fertile. Alive. She was afraid to speak.

  “I see you,” the djinn said. Its dusty voice was strong here. It was strong here.

  All she could think of was death. How many seconds had passed? Would they find her body? Then the djinn was on her like a vampire. They went tumbling into some bushes as she fought to keep it from tearing off her mask. Was it a mask in the wilderness? Could it come off? She vaguely remembered what her father had said about masquerades: “Never unmask a masquerade. That is an abomination!” What happened if one’s spirit face was torn off? Could the djinn then eat her soul like the meat of a cracked clam?

  The djinn pinned her down in those bushes. It was stronger. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t dying. It knew this place. She was done for.

  There was a large spider on its shoulder. It was red. With blue rings on it. Blue rings. Blue rings. Blue rings. The glimmer of sudden recognition was like a burning focal point of light in her brain, it was brilliant and it seared. She knew blue rings. She . . . remembered.

  “I know you,” she blurted, straining to hold the djinn off her.

  “Yes, we’ve spent some time together,” the djinn said, flashing a deeper red. “But don’t worry. Soon, you won’t know much else.”

  She wasn’t talking to the djinn. As she desperately stared at the spider, she gasped, “I know you all.”

  The djinn’s strength decreased as it tried to figure out what its prey was talking about and whom she was talking to. Then it noticed the spider on its shoulder. It released Anyanwu and scrambled back.

  The spider leaped off the djinn and ran up to her and before she could say more, it turned its glowing backside to her and thrust its stinger into her yellow mist.

  She was flying again. Backward, this time, across the marble floor. The sand beneath her bottom. Her skin was cool because she was soaking wet. She came to a stop just in front of the bronze toad. She opened her mouth and inhaled for what felt like forever. Chink, chink, chink, chink! Several tiny copper chittim fell beside her.

  For several moments, her vision was distorted. She rubbed her eyes and tried to see. She was seeing too much! The green of the wilderness, the basement, through two sets of eyes, two minds, Sunny and Anyanwu. It was as if she was broken and her selves were sitting beside each other as opposed to being unified within. The sensation was horrifying. She heard her selves screaming. And just when she was sure she’d go mad, she came back together and her world snapped into focus.

  She shivered and shuddered and then jumped up to find it. She ran to the bookshelf, looking at the ground. Where was it, where was it? There. She grabbed it and downed the rest of her water. She was soaking wet, yet she felt horribly dehydrated. She grabbed her shirt and began to suck the water from it, too.

  “Gah!” she groaned, stumbling back. She’d been able to suck up quite a lot of water. She was that soaked. Her body began to calm, but her mind was popping and crackling, memories exploding like popcorn. “I . . . What is this? I . . . I remember them,” she muttered, confused as her mind crowded. She whirled around. “I remember you all!” There, by the toad. Hundreds of them. She was lucky she hadn’t crushed them. But then again, they could probably move much faster than she thought. They were not just spiders. Where was the big one?

  The back of her neck prickled. She looked up. The thick-legged spider the size of a dinner plate was perched on the wall right above her head. Sunny addressed it in Igbo because she knew this was its preferred language. She knew so much. “Ogwu,” she said. “Descendant of Udide the Great Spider of all Great Spiders, I remember you. I remember you and all of your children.”

  The spider’s entire body scrunched up with surprise. Good, Sunny thought. Then it began to descend on a thick thread of webbing. Sunny knew she didn’t have much time, so she spoke fast. “Do you remember me? My name is Anyanwu but here, my name is Sunny Nwazue. I am the granddaughter of Ozoemena Nimm. So . . .” She fought to remember what her grandmother had written in the letter she’d left for Sunny. She’d read it so many times, but she’d just died and come back to
life. “So that makes me of the warrior folk of the Nimm clan, descendant . . . of Mgbafo of the warrior Efuru Nimm and Odili of the ghost people. I am thirteen years old, of Igbo ancestry and American birth, New York City. I am a free agent who only learned this fact a year and a half ago. So you have to know that I can’t fight this djinn.”

  Its voice made her feel like a tuning fork was being held close to her flesh. The vibration made her want to stick her pinky in her ear. It was vaguely female. “I know you, Anyanwu,” she said. She hung before Sunny’s eyes. Even with her life being in danger, her fear of spiders made her tense up.

  “I know what you all tried and failed at so long ago,” Sunny said.

  The spider clenched her legs to her body. Sunny suppressed a disgusted shudder.

  “You were on the plane,” Sunny said. “The Enola Gay. I know. You were on the bomb, and you tried to weave the storytelling juju your people are most known for. You wove a thick thread that was supposed to cause the bomb not to work when they dropped it on Hiroshima. But when you attached it, you misspoke one of the binding words, and it snapped when the bomb was released. You failed and no one has seen you since. So, this basement is where you came with all your descendants to hide from the world.”

  “No, this basement is where Udide cursed us to stay until I have completed my task,” she said. “Which is impossible because I have already failed.”

  The lights flickered. And Sunny heard a scraping sound from across the room. The djinn had located its nerve. Such things never give up so quickly, she knew.

  “Wait, please,” Sunny said. “Help me.”

  “We will not,” Ogwu said. “We can’t help anyone. I am useless and my children are useless. The djinn takes from those sent down here for punishment, but we have only seen it kill one person punished down here. And that was forty years ago. A young man whose bones were so strong they could not break. Let it take from you, some blood, some years from your life, some of your life’s good luck. Then leave this place and never do anything stupid enough to cause your return. Or . . . maybe yes, it will kill you, Anyanwu. I will see you in the wilderness.” Ogwu started to ascend on her web, and Sunny began to panic. The djinn feared the spider. As soon as she was far enough from Sunny, it would have nothing to fear.