Akata Warrior

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “We told it not to eat anything, sir,” Sasha said.

  “Oh, those things never listen,” the old man said. “You all have to go. Now, now, now, biko!” He gently but firmly ushered them all out. When his wife found out about the grasscutter, she, too, went into a panic and brought Sunny’s clothes all folded and fresh. “Take the caftan, it’s yours. Just get your beast and go, please!”

  “Grashcoatah!” Orlu called. Grashcoatah flew down, landing in the same place he’d landed before, beside the pond that became a lake.

  They all climbed on. “Sorry,” Sunny said. “But if it helps, you see that he did not destroy your garden.”

  The farmer nodded. “For the moment. Grasscutters are known liars and equally known for their trickiness. Trust me when I say that you can trust a flying grasscutter as far as you can throw it. Be careful!”

  Grashcoatah humphed, offended.

  “And please consider our advice about living a simple life,” his wife added.

  “We will,” Sunny said. “Will you be okay with that?” she asked, pointing a thumb at the lake.

  “Oh, sure,” the farmer said. “It’ll move on now that it’s done what it came to do.”

  “And since you punched it in the face,” his wife added. They all laughed.

  They flew off, leaving the farmlands. As they climbed into the sky, Sunny looked back at the farm just in time to notice the sleek black BMW pulling up to the hut on the narrow dirt road. Even out in the middle of nowhere, the council had found them. They’d escaped completely by chance.

  “We just have to make it to Osisi,” Orlu said. “If that farmer was right, we won’t have to make more stops.”

  The grasscutter grunted with relief, and Orlu patted him on his side. “Don’t worry. We won’t let them harm you.”

  “We forgot to ask them where we were,” Sunny said, minutes later.

  “Does it really matter?” Sasha asked. “As far as I’m concerned, that was very much the middle of nowhere.”

  For hours, they all were quiet as Grashcoatah flew on. Sunny didn’t know what the others thought about as they stared into the clouds ahead, behind, or to the side, but she was glad for the silence. A chill had fallen over her flesh, a headache at her temples, and in her ears she heard a high-pitched screaming. And in the back of her mind, like the powerful afterimage left if one happened to see lightning strike, she saw the image of Death. She hadn’t looked right at him, but she’d seen him with her peripheral vision as she pushed back.

  And she was still seeing it—a blaring whiteness that could swallow anything if you faced it. She’d been so close. She shut her eyes, stifling a sob that came from deep within. Ekwensu had been there, Death had been there . . . and she was falling apart. And if I had looked at Death, what makes me Sunny would have died. And I’d just be Anyanwu. Which means I wouldn’t really be . . . She felt Anyanwu hiss protest at her thought, and Sunny sat up straighter.

  But it took hours for the image of Death to fade and even when it did, it didn’t fade completely. Sunny didn’t think it ever would.

  29

  FULL PLACE

  Sunny didn’t know exactly when they crossed the border into lands that were full. There was no obvious line. But within four hours things had shifted . . . drastically. Below them were miles and miles of the lushest green rain forest Sunny had ever seen. A massive, thick blanket of treetops. From above, it looked like the top of bunches of broccoli. She was sure they had to be somewhere near the Cross River Forest. What other part of the country could look like this? But that wouldn’t have made sense with the northeast direction they were going. She’d tracked this by the location and movement of the sun.

  Then, at first she thought Grashcoatah had decided to fly lower. However, upon several minutes of closer inspection, she saw that it wasn’t that they were lower; it was that the trees were higher, much higher, and bigger. Monstrously gargantuan trees of a type she’d never laid eyes on. They were over a thousand feet in the air, and Grashcoatah now had to weave around several of them.

  Grashcoatah stopped making himself invisible. “What are you doing?” Orlu asked. “Someone will . . .”

  “See him?” Sunny asked. They both laughed uncomfortably. There were far stranger things in the air and on the ground and in the trees. She’d seen some sort of insectile creature as big as Grashcoatah flying in the distance.

  “Look!” Orlu said as they slowly passed the highest mahogany tree Sunny had ever seen. Its rough trunk was wide as a house, and within its top leaves were red furry creatures that looked like something right out of the Muppets. They had long swinging arms, and the fur on their bodies was so thick that they looked like giant red puff balls. They were picking and gathering the softball-shaped light green mahogany fruits and putting them into cloth sacks.

  Sunny blinked and looked again. The sight was all types of abnormal. As they passed, mere yards away, Sunny saw that their eyes glowed orange yellow like setting suns. One of them raised its hand and let out an ear-splitting howl as the grasscutter flew by, and all the others waved with their big humanoid hands. They had no fur on their palms. Sunny, Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha waved back. From that point on, it was strange creature after strange creature.

  There was the flock of hummingbirds and praying mantises, all matching bright green, that flew with them for ten minutes. Some hitched a ride on Grashcoatah’s tail, much to Grashcoatah’s annoyance. They made cheeping sounds and seemed overly curious about Orlu’s hands, flying around them and landing on them when he held them up. Then they let a draft of wind carry them off.

  There was the shadowy thing that peeked up from a dead part of the jungle below, merely a set of staring huge eyes. This thing reminded Sunny of the river beast. She was willing to bet that it was another cousin of the river and lake beasts and that the farmer had probably studied this beast when he was a student. She was glad when the thing did not leap up and try to snatch them.

  They saw what could only have been a small masquerade sitting at the center of a palm tree top. Then a patch of jungle that was all slowly undulating giant blades of grass. A pine tree with white ants the size of small children running up and down its trunk. And a hill-sized pile of what looked like dumped garbage and smelled like it, too. They passed over the first town that looked like smoke and, even without Grashcoatah’s indifference, she knew this was not the place they were looking for.

  “You’re sure?” Orlu asked as they passed over the cluster of modern-looking houses that wavered in the breeze. Smoky, wraithlike people walked on the very definite paved roads. There were no cars.

  “Yeah,” she said. “What I saw in my dream was much, much bigger. It was like New York.”

  Soon the trees gathered again, and they were back over dense jungle. Sasha and Chichi were near Grashcoatah’s head quietly having an argument. Judging from the way they were snapping at each other, Sunny knew exactly what the argument was about. The state of their relationship was the last thing she was going to think about when they were so close to Osisi, so she ignored them.

  Orlu sighed. “How come there are no people?”

  Sunny hadn’t thought of that. She shivered. What if Osisi was just full of spirits, even though it was technically a place where one was in both the physical world and the wilderness? “We’re in the air,” she said, hoping she sounded convincing. “People would mostly be on the ground, right?”

  They saw Osisi an hour later. From afar, it seemed to be a burning city enveloped in smoke. Sunny had lost track of time but judging from the setting sun, evening was approaching. The effect of the orange sky and the orange city wreathed in black-gray smoke was overwhelming. It was just as it had looked in her dream, and she experienced a moment of vertigo as dream and real world, physical world and wilderness, meshed together.

  She shut her eyes and when she opened them, they were right at the moment of h
er dream where she woke up. She gasped. Osisi did look like the apocalyptic place in her dreams. Her belly dropped. They were flying right to it.

  “Grashcoatah,” she screamed. “What are you doing?”

  Sasha was cursing and shouting at Grashcoatah, and Chichi was looking everywhere for a way to get off the flying beast.

  “Everyone, just get down,” Orlu said. “Cover your heads!”

  “But, but, but . . .” Sunny babbled. She was sitting straight up, unable to tear her eyes from the burning city. Orlu grabbed her and pulled her close to Grashcoatah’s fur.

  “He’s not suicidal,” Orlu said.

  Grashcoatah grunted annoyed agreement.

  Then they flew through the first of the flames. It felt like being slapped with a bucket of water, except it didn’t leave them or Grashcoatah wet at all. “Oh,” Sunny whispered as she peeked through Grashcoatah’s warm fur. The flames dissolved the closer they got to the city, revealing a skyline more spectacular than New York’s. Osisi was surrounded by a large ring of green. Sunny frowned. There were boats moving in it; was it bright green water?

  “‘When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame scorch you.’” Sasha recited. “The book of Isaiah, chapter forty-three, verse two.”

  Grashcoatah flew low, playfully touching the surface with his forepaws. No, not green water, water covered with bright green algae. Once they’d passed the first wall of flames and smoke, the sky grew clear and blue. Osisi was a giant megacity of glittering glassy skyscrapers, large colorful stone buildings, and bulky wide leafy trees that looked older than time. It was simultaneously ancient and modern West African. And even from a third of a mile away, Sunny could see that it was full of spirits.

  The first building they flew over was a large stone hut flanked by two skinny, impossibly tall palm trees. The hut sat so close to the water that it looked as if it would fall into it. At the very edge, Sunny could see the bottom of the building where the land was crumbling away to reveal roots . . . roots from the building, not the tree. There was also a large greasy shadow looming over the building’s shingled roof that actually shrank away as Grashcoatah flew by.

  Above the buildings, Sunny could see several large winged, floating, gliding, swooping creatures. Some were landing on buildings, others just passing through. A large batlike creature clambered its way up the side of a tall skyscraper, tearing at the building’s façade with its claw-tipped wings as it climbed. They even passed another flying grasscutter, and this delighted Grashcoatah so much that he nearly flew into a building.

  “Where should we land?” Orlu asked.

  “Where the tallest buildings cluster,” Chichi said. “That should be the downtown area where the action is.”

  “But we’re not looking for action,” Orlu said. “Not really.” He turned and looked to Sunny. “Do you have any feeling about anything?”

  She shook her head. “I know this is Osisi. It’s the place where I was going in my dream. We were in the exact spot from my dream, somewhere back there. I don’t know what to do next.”

  “Let’s get on the ground,” Sasha said. “This place is awesome. I’m dying to see more. Did you see that tree covered with spiders?”

  Sunny hugged herself. “This place seems like a good place to get killed.”

  Chichi laughed. “Something tells me that dying here is not the same as dying back home.”

  “I mean, do people, like, work here? Do they pay rent and have mortgages?” Sasha asked. “What the hell? Did you see that building that disappeared and reappeared a block to the left? It created a new space!”

  Sunny rubbed her forehead. “Let’s just get on the ground.”

  Orlu leaned close to Grashcoatah’s ear. “You all right?”

  Grashcoatah grunted.

  “Do you like this place?”

  Grashcoatah grunted again and happily rippled his fur. Orlu smiled. “But it’s not all great, right?”

  An image flowered open in Sunny’s mind. Judging by the looks on the faces of her friends, Grashcoatah was showing them all the same thing. There was a man standing beneath a tree. A coconut fell on his head and before he hit the ground, the tree had bent down, caught the man, opened a mouth full of sharp leaves, and chomped the man’s head off. Blood spurted from the opening in his neck as the body fell and twitched.

  Sunny shut her eyes, but the vision was in her mind. She felt her body seize up, ready to vomit what she’d eaten three hours ago. “Argh!” she shrieked. “Why’d you have to show us that?” Her eyes watered as she tried to hold back tears.

  Sasha was shaking his head, as if trying to dislodge and discard the nasty image.

  Orlu was frowning very, very deeply.

  “I get it,” Chichi solemnly said. “That’s a warning.”

  Grashcoatah grunted.

  “Best to know how dangerous the place is,” Chichi continued. “It doesn’t look so scary from up here.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Sunny whispered.

  “Take us down,” Orlu said to Grashcoatah. “And . . . thanks for the warning.”

  An image of Udide flashed into their heads. Grashcoatah knew what he knew because of his mother.

  Grashcoatah descended slowly between two large houses onto a wide quiet road. They climbed down and looked around. The building they’d landed in front of that looked so much like a house appeared to be a small library, a sign with a large open black book sitting in front of it, flanked by green bushes heavy with black berries. There was not a soul walking up or down the roads, nor was there anyone coming out of any of the buildings, at least as far as Sunny could see.

  “So quiet,” Chichi whispered.

  “Shhh,” Sasha said. “Looks can be deceiving. Can’t you feel it? Someone’s around.”

  Orlu’s hands came up and he held them before his face. Sunny felt her heart flip. Orlu’s natural gift was instinctively undoing harmful juju. His hands were like a radar, raising and preparing to dismantle before the bad juju attacked. Something was at work here.

  Sunny looked at the road. It was packed red dirt. A strange contrast to the modern buildings that loomed all around her. She frowned as a memory tried to burrow its way up in her mind. She absentmindedly followed the others as they walked up the road. A warm breeze blasted as they passed a building made entirely of glass. Inside the building, what looked like human beings in traditional Hausa attire bustled about carrying papers and sitting in cubicles that housed computers and desks. The breeze materialized into one of these Hausa-looking people at the front door, but the man didn’t open the door; he simply slipped into the wall.

  The wackiness of Osisi made Leopard Knocks look mundanely normal. Osisi was the Lagos of Leopardom in Nigeria. Sunny wanted to climb back on Grashcoatah and close her eyes, but she couldn’t. She was on the verge of something. It was the road. “There are no paved roads here,” she said to herself.

  “Yes, I noticed that from above,” Orlu said.

  She pointed at an enormous stocky tree with a bouquet of leaves at the top, biting her lip as whatever she tried to remember moved right to the tip of her tongue. “And that’s a baobab tree.”

  Orlu nodded, saying nothing. Grashcoatah was beside her, looking closely at her face. Chichi and Sasha were in front of them giggling about something. Sunny didn’t want to speak. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to breathe. It was right there. Something. Something . . .

  The wind suddenly blew, warm and damp. When it stopped, they were in the same place but a different place. At least to Sunny. She was seeing as both Sunny and Anyanwu again. They were standing in the empty dirt road where office buildings, houses, and a giant fat tree jostled for space, and people within the buildings looked and acted like . . . people. At the exact same time, Sunny was surrounded by a busy market that went for about a block.

&nbs
p; Yards away, there was a woman who was not a woman selling fruits that were not fruits. When a man stepped up to her and picked up one of the applelike non-fruits, it disappeared. There were old women perched atop two of the booths, hungrily looking down at customers. One of them pointed at a young man, and they all grinned and nodded. A man walking by chatting on a cell phone stopped and then quietly slipped into a tear in reality. Sunny’s mouth hung open. She inhaled loudly. “Can . . . can you all see this?” she asked. Again, she felt ill. This place felt heavy, packed, it felt . . . full.

  “See what?” Orlu asked. A spirit of blue light passed right through him to step up to a booth run by a woman who looked barely there. She was selling small bags of popcorn.

  “It feels a little cooler,” Chichi said. “That’s all.”

  Grashcoatah was looking around frantically, trying not to step on things from two different places. So he saw the wilderness, too.

  “I see . . . There’s . . .” Then she remembered. A red dirt road. Down one of these roads flanked by tall buildings and trees and bushes. Modern and old. A sunflower-yellow stone house. Her grandmother had shown her the place in the message she’d left Sunny. The sheet of Nsibidi. Her grandmother knew Osisi. And the house, Sunny knew what it looked like. And now that she was here, she knew where it was. When she looked up, it all snapped into place. She’d been here before. When she read her grandmother’s Nsibidi note. The house! she thought.

  “I know where to go,” she said. She stared at Orlu as it all flooded her brain. “I . . . I know where to go!” She stumbled to Grashcoatah and grasped his fur. He bent his head toward her. “You see it, too?” she asked. Grashcoatah nodded, moving closer to her.

  “Where?” Orlu asked.

  “See what?” Sasha asked.

  Chichi wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.