Who Fears Death (37 page)

“Mwita can make it better, I think,” she said.

“Maybe,” I muttered.

It dropped right at my feet. A yellow lizard with a large scaly head. It flipped onto its feet and began to slowly walk away. I laughed to myself, assuming it had been swept up by the storm and thrown into Ssolu like so many other creatures. All I wanted to do was sit on the sandy ground and watch it go.

Another strange wave of hyperawareness blew over me. I glanced at Luyu. She was watching me closely. I could see every cell on her face.

“You see that?” I asked. I feebly pointed at the lizard as it turned to face us. I wanted to shift Luyu’s attention. She was about to run off to get Mwita; I just knew it.

Luyu frowned. “See what?”

I shook my head, my eye following the lizard. I sank to the sand. I was so weak.

Another wave of awareness blew over me, and I heard a soft moan. I wasn’t sure if it came from me or the wilderness springing up around me again. There was a wilderness tree right beside Luyu. Then things flickered and became only the physical world again. I wanted to vomit.

“Stay where you are. I’m going to get Mwita,” Luyu said. “You just went all transparent again.”

I was too weak to respond. The lizard was slowly walking up to me, and I focused on it as Luyu ran off.

“Let her go,” a voice said. It was a female voice but low and strong like a man’s. It was coming from the approaching lizard. Something about the voice was vaguely familiar.

“I didn’t intend to stop her,” I said with a weak laugh. “Who are you?” I wondered if I was imagining the voice. I knew I wasn’t. I was suffering from an illness passed on to me by a great spirit of the wilderness. It had come to me to do just that. Then it had gone and met with Ssaiku, Ting later told me. Nothing that happened to me after my encounter with the masquerade would be a figment of my imagination.

“You’ve come far,” it said, ignoring my question. “I’ll take you farther.”

“Are you really here?” I asked.

“Very much so.”

“Will you bring me back?”

“Could anyone take you from Mwita?”

“No,” I said. “Where will you take me?” I was just talking now. Not really interested in the answers. I needed something to keep me calm as the lizard began to grow and change colors.

“I will take you where you need to go,” she said, her voice becoming more sonorous and full as she grew. It began to sound like three of the same voice in one. “I’ll show you what you need to see, Onyesonwu.”

So she knew me. I narrowed my eyes. “What do you know of my fate?” I asked.

“I know what you know.”

“What of my biological father?”

“That he is an evil, evil man.”

I forgot the rest of my questions. I forgot everything. Before me stood what I could only call a
Kponyungo
, a firespitter. The size of four camels, it was the brilliant color of every shade of fire. Its body was wiry and strong like a snake’s, its large round head carried long coiling horns and a magnificent jaw full of sharp teeth. Its eyes were like small suns. It sweat a thin smoke and smelled like roasting sand and steam.

When my mother and I were nomads, during the hottest parts of the day we’d sit in our tent and she’d tell me stories about these creatures. “
Kponyungo
like to befriend travelers,” she said. “They come to life during the hottest part of the day just like now. They rise from the salt of long dead oceans. If one befriends you, you will never be alone.”

My mother was one of the only people I knew who spoke of oceans as if they’d truly existed. She always told me stories about them when something scared me, like the sight of a rotting camel or when the sky grew too cloudy. To her,
Kponyungo
were kind, majestic beings. But oftentimes, encountering something in real life is not the same as encountering it in stories. Like now.

I had no words. I knew it was here. Standing before me, as everyone in Ssolu went about their business a half mile away. Passersby may have noticed me standing there staring but they wouldn’t have stopped. I was untouchable to them, I was strange, a sorceress, even if they did like me. Could they see the
Kponyungo
standing before me? Maybe. Maybe not. If they could, maybe it was custom to leave me to my fate.

I felt a now familiar sensation, a sort of detachment and then deep mobility. I was going “away” again. This time it was happening close to a town of people, without Mwita at my side. I was all alone and this creature was taking me. As I floated upward, the
Kponyungo
flew beside me. I could feel its heat.

“A creature like myself is not so different from a bird,” she said in her strange voice. “Change yourself.”

Could I change myself when I was “traveling” like this? I’d never considered it. But she was correct. I’d changed myself into a lizard once and it was not so different from changing into a sparrow or even a vulture. I reached out to touch the
Kponyungo
’s rough skin. I quickly pulled my hand back, suddenly afraid.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Are you . . . are you hot?”

“Find out,” she said. Her face didn’t express it but I knew she was amused. I slowly reached out and touched a scale. I actually heard and smelled my skin sizzle.

“Ah!” I yelped, shaking my hand. Still, she took me higher and higher. We were fifty feet above Ssolu now. “Am I . . . ?” I looked at my hand. It didn’t look burned, nor did it hurt as much as it should have.

“You are you even when in wilderness,” she said. “But your own abilities and mine protect us.”

“Can I die like this?”

“Yes, in a way,” she said. “But you won’t,” she said at the same time that I said, “But I won’t.”

“Okay,” I mumbled. I reached out again. This time I endured the pain, the sound and smell of my skin burning. I cracked off one of her scales. Smoke rose from my hand and I wanted to scream but even through the smoke I could see that I was unharmed.

Because we were ascending higher and higher, it was hard to concentrate. Still, with the scale in hand, changing into a
Kponyungo
was only mildly difficult. I stretched my new sleek body, enjoying the heat of myself. I resisted the strong urge to swiftly fly downward, burrow deep into the sand, and heat my body so intensely that the sand melted into glass. I laughed to myself. Even if I’d wanted to, I could not. I wasn’t the one controlling this journey, the
Kponyungo
was. I wondered if this was also why I couldn’t grow my body as big as hers. I could only stretch to about three-fourths her size.

“Well done,” she said when I finished. “Now let me take you to a place you have never seen before.”

We zoomed toward the storm wall and plunged into it. We came out the other side in less than a second. The position of the sun told me that we were flying west. We flew in a half circle and headed east. “There is Papa Shee,” she said, a minute later.

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.

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.

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.