Who Fears Death (29 page)

“Breathe,” Mwita whispered.

I opened my mouth and inhaled his breath. He kissed me again and quietly, carefully, softly, he spoke the words that few women ever hear from a man. “
Ifunanya
.”

They’re ancient words. They don’t exist among any other group of people. There is no direct translation in Nuru, English, Sipo, or Vah. This word only has meaning when spoken by a man to the one he loves. A woman can’t use the word unless she is barren. It is not juju. Not in the way that I know it. But the word has strength. It’s wholly binding if it is true and the emotion reciprocated. This is not like the word “
love
.” A man can tell a woman he loves her every day.
Ifunanya
is spoken only once in a man’s life.
Ifu
means to “look into,” “
n
” means “the,” and
anya
means “eyes”. The eyes
are
the window to the soul.

I could have died when he spoke this word because I’d never ever thought any man would speak it to me, not even Mwita. All the filth those men had heaped on me with their filthy actions and filthy words and filthy ideas, none of it mattered now. Mwita, Mwita, Mwita, again, Fate, I thank you.

WE TRAVELED FOR TWO WEEKS before Mwita decided we should stop for a few days. Something more had happened in Banza. It started when we left Jwahir but now it was more pronounced. The group was splitting in multiple ways. There was a split between the men and the women. Mwita and Fanasi would often walk off together, where they’d talk for hours. But a divide between the sexes seemed normal. The split with Binta and Diti on one side and Luyu and me on the other was more problematic. And then there was the most problematic split between Fanasi and Diti.

I kept thinking about what Fanasi had said to the camels, how he’d come along mainly to follow Diti. I thought the vision I showed him of what was really happening in the West was his greater motivation to come. I’d forgotten that Fanasi and Diti had loved each other since childhood. They’d wanted to marry since they knew what marriage was. Fanasi had been heartbroken when he’d touched Diti and she’d screamed. For years, he pined away for her before finally gaining the courage to demand her hand in marriage.

He wasn’t about to let her leave without him. But, by leaving Jwahir, Diti and Binta discovered life as free women. As the days passed, when Diti and Fanasi weren’t bickering, they ignored each other. Diti permanently moved into Binta’s tent and Binta didn’t mind. Mwita and I could hear the two talking and giggling in hushed voices, sometimes well into the night.

I was sure that I could resolve things. That night, I built a rock fire and cooked up a large stew using two hares. Then I called a meeting. Once everyone was seated, I ladled out stew into chipped porcelain bowls, handing them to each, starting with Fanasi and Diti and ending with Mwita. I watched everyone eat for a while. I’d used salt, herbs, cactus cabbage, and camel milk. The stew was good.

“I’ve noticed tension,” I finally said. There was only the sound of spoons hitting porcelain and slurping and chewing. “We’ve been traveling for three months. We’re a long long way from home. And we’re going to a bad place.” I paused. “But the biggest problem right here, right now is with you two.” I pointed at Fanasi and Diti. They looked at each other and then looked away. “We only survive because of each other,” I continued. “That stew you enjoy is made with Sandi’s milk.”

“What?” Diti exclaimed.

“Ew!” Binta screeched. Fanasi cursed and put his bowl down. Mwita chuckled as he continued to eat. Luyu was looking doubtfully at her bowl.

“Anyway,” I said. “You two say you’re husband and wife yet you don’t sleep in the same tent.”

“She was the one who ran off,” Fanasi suddenly said. “Behaving like an ugly
Ewu
prostitute in that tavern.”

There it was again. I pressed my lips together, focusing on what I intended to say.

“Shut up,” Diti snapped. “Men always think that when a woman enjoys herself, she
must
be a prostitute.”

“Any of them could have had you!” Fanasi said.

“Maybe, but who did they go after instead?” Diti said, smiling devilishly at me.

“Oh, Ani help us,” Binta moaned looking at me. I stood up.

“Come on then,” Diti said, standing up. “I survived your other beating just fine.”

“Eh!” Luyu exclaimed, putting herself between Diti and me. “What is wrong with you all?” Mwita merely sat and watched this time.

“What’s wrong with
me?
” I said. “You ask what’s wrong with
me?
” I laughed loudly. I didn’t sit down.

“Diti, do you have something to say to Onye?” Luyu asked.

“Nothing,” Diti said, looking away.

“
I know how to break it
,” I said loudly, barely able to breathe I was so angry. “I want to
help
you, you insipid blockhead! I realized how when I was healing Nuumu.”

Diti only stared at me.

I took a deep breath. “Luyu, Binta, there is no one out here, but maybe in one of these villages or towns we pass through . . . I don’t know. But I can break the juju.” I turned and went to my tent. They would have to come to me.

Mwita came in an hour later with a bowl of stew. “How’ll you do it?” he asked. I took it from him. I was ravenous but too proud to go out and take from the stew I’d made.

“They won’t like it,” I said, biting into a piece of meat. “But it’ll work.”

Mwita thought about it for a minute. Then he grinned.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Luyu will let you but Binta and Diti . . . that’s going to take some coaxing.”

“Or the last of the palm wine,” I said. “By now it’s so fermented that they won’t know their heads from their
yeyes
after two cups,
if
I agree to do it. Binta, maybe, but Diti . . . not without a thousand apologies.” I eyed Mwita as he turned to leave the tent. “Make sure you tell that to Fanasi in my exact words,” I said with a smirk.

“I planned to do just that.”

Fanasi came to me that night. I had just settled in Mwita’s arms after an hour of flight as a vulture. “I’m sorry to bother you,” Fanasi said, crawling in.

I sat up, pulling my rapa closer to myself. Mwita draped our cover over my shoulders. I could barely see Fanasi in the glow of the rock fire from outside.

“Diti wants you to . . .”

“Then she has to come and ask,” I said.

Fanasi frowned. “This isn’t only about her, you know.”

“It’s about her first,” I said. I paused for a moment and then sighed. “Tell her to come out and speak with me.” I looked back at Mwita before exiting. He was shirtless and I was taking the cover. He waved a hand at me and said, “Just don’t take too long.”

Outside was even cooler. I wrapped the cover more tightly around myself and made for the dwindling rock fire. I raised my hand and swirled the air around it until it grew hot again. I waved some warm air toward my tent.

Fanasi placed a hand on my shoulder. “Hold your temper,” he said. He went into Binta and Diti’s tent.

“As long as she does,” I mumbled. I stared at the glowing stones as Diti came out. Fanasi went into his tent and pulled the flap shut. As if Diti and I really had any privacy.

“Look,” she said. “I just wanted . . .”

I held my hand up and shook my head. “Apology first. Otherwise, I’m going right back into my tent to sleep a long guilt-free sleep.”

She frowned at me for too long. “I . . .”

“And wipe that look off your face,” I said, cutting her off. “If I’m so disgusting to you, then you should’ve stayed home. You deserved your beating. You’re stupid to provoke someone who can break you in half. I’m taller, bigger, and
much
angrier.”

“I’m sorry!” Diti shouted.

I saw Luyu peak out of her tent.

“I . . . this journey,” Diti said. “It’s not what I expected.
I’m
not who I expected.” She wiped her brow. It was hot now from the fire, suitable for the conversation. “I’ve never been outside of Jwahir. I’m used to good meals, fresh hot bread, and spiced chicken not stewed desert hare and
camel
milk! Camel milk is for infants and . . . infant
camels!
”

“You’re not the only one here who’s never left Jwahir, Diti,” I said. “But you’re the only one acting like an idiot.”

“You showed us!” Diti said. “You showed us the West.
Who
could just sit there after seeing that? I couldn’t just live my happy life with Fanasi. You changed all that.”

“Oh, don’t blame me!” I snapped. “None of you
dare
blame me! Blame yourselves for your ignorance and your complacency.”

“You’re right,” Diti said quietly. “I . . . I don’t know what’s been happening to me.” She shook her head. “I don’t hate you. . . .but I hate what you are. I hate that whenever I look at you . . . It’s hard for us, Onye. Eleven years of believing that
Ewu
people are dirty, lowly, violent people. Then we met you and then Mwita. Both of you are the strangest people we’ve ever met.”

“Soon, you too will be viewed as low,” I said. “Soon you’ll understand how I feel
wherever
I go.” But I was conflicted. Diti and Binta were going through something just as I was, as we all were. And I had to respect that. Despite it all. “You came out here to ask me something?”

Diti looked toward Fanasi’s tent. “Take it off me. If you can. Will you?”

“You won’t like what I have to do,” I said. “I won’t either.”

Diti frowned. Her frown turned to a look of disgust. “No.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Ugh!”

“I know.”

“Will it hurt in the same way?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But when it comes to sorcery, you never get without giving.”

Luyu came out of her tent. “Me, too,” she said. “I don’t care about you putting your hands on me. Anything to enjoy intercourse again. I don’t have time for marriage.”

Binta came scrambling out. “Me, too!” she said.

All I felt was doubt. “Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow night.”

“So you know exactly what to do?” Luyu asked.

“I think so,” I said. “I mean, I’ve never done this before, obviously.”

“What do you think you’ll . . . do?” Luyu pressed.

I thought about it. “Well, something can’t come from nothing. Even a bit of flesh. Once Aro pulled an insect’s leg off, threw the leg aside, and said, ‘make it walk again.’ I was able to do it but I can’t tell you how. There’s a point where it goes from me doing something to something working through me and doing what’s to be done.”

I frowned considering this. When I healed it wasn’t all me. If it wasn’t all me, then who else was it? It was like that moment I told to Luyu, when you wake up and don’t know who you are.

“Once I asked Aro what he thought happened when he healed and he said it had something to do with time,” I said. “That you manipulate it to bring back the flesh.” The three of them just stared at me. I shrugged and gave up explaining.

“Onye,” Binta suddenly said. “I’m so so sorry. We shouldn’t have gone there.” She threw herself on me, knocking me over. “You shouldn’t have been there!”

“It’s okay,” I said, trying to sit up. She still clung to me and now she was crying hard. I wrapped my arms around her, whispering, “It’s okay. Binta. I’m okay.” Her hair smelled like soap and scented oil. She’d braided her Afro into many small braids the day before we left Jwahir. Since then, the braids had grown out and still she hadn’t undone them. I wondered if she’d decided to go dada. Two of the camels humphed from behind Luyu’s tent where they were trying to rest.

“For goodness’ sake,” Fanasi said coming out of his tent, “Women.”

Mwita came out of his tent, too. I noticed Luyu looking at his bare chest and I wasn’t sure if it was out of the usual curiosity people had about the bodies of the
Ewu
or something more carnal.

“So it’s decided then,” Mwita said. “That’s good.”

“Indeed it is,” Fanasi said cheerily.

Diti gave him a dirty look.

I SPENT MOST OF THE NEXT DAY AS A VULTURE, soaring, relaxing. Then I returned to camp, dressed, and walked for about a mile to a place I had scoped out while flying. I sat under the palm tree, put my veil on my head, and pulled my hands into my garments for protection from the sun. I cleared my head of thought. I didn’t move for three hours. I returned to the camp just before sunset. The camels greeted me first. They were drinking from a bag of water Mwita held for them. They nudged me with their soft wet muzzles. Sandi even licked my cheek, smelling and tasting the wind and sky on my skin.

Mwita kissed me. “Diti and Binta have made you a feast,” he said.

I especially enjoyed the roasted desert hare. They were right to want me to eat. I needed my strength. Afterward, I took a bucket of water, went behind our tent, and washed thoroughly. As I poured water over my head, I heard Diti shout, “Don’t!” I paused, listening. I couldn’t quite hear over the sound of dripping water. I shivered and finished my bath. I dressed in a loose shirt and my old yellow rapa. By this time the sun had set completely. I could hear them all gathering. It was time.

“I’ve chosen a place,” I said. “It’s about a mile away. There’s a tree. Mwita, Fanasi, you stay here. You’ll see our fire.” I met Mwita’s eyes, hoping he understood my unspoken words:
Keep your ears open
.

I took a satchel full of stones and the four of us left. When we got to the tree, I dumped out the rocks and warmed them up until my joints loosened. The night was very cold. We’d come far enough for the weather to change. Though the days remained hot, the nights had become utterly frigid. It rarely got this cold at night in Jwahir.

“Who wants to go first?” I asked.

They looked at each other.

“Why not do it in the order of our rite?” Luyu said.

“Binta, you, then Diti?” I said.