Who Fears Death (49 page)

“How far?” Luyu asked, frantic.

“Look up there,” he said.

I could see it, an island with a thatch-roofed sandstone hut on it. But the boat’s motor was laboring, spewing out even more greasy black smoke. It started to make a chugging sound that couldn’t have been good. Shukwu cursed. “My fuel is almost done,” he said. He grabbed a small gourd. “I can refill . . .”

“No time! Go,” Luyu said, grabbing my shoulder. “Change and fly to it. Leave me. I’ll fight them.”

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you. We’ll make it.”

“We won’t make it,” Luyu said.

“We will!” I shouted. I got on my knees and leaned over the side. “Help it!” And I started paddling with my arm. Luyu leaned to the other side and did the same.

“Use these,” Shukwu said, handing us large paddles. He gunned the motor to full power, which wasn’t much power at all. Slowly we approached the island. Nothing was going through my head except,
Get there, GET THERE!
My blue rapa and white shirt were soaked with sweat and the cold water of the unnamed lake. Above, the sun shined. Overhead a flock of small birds flew by. I paddled for dear life.

“Go!” I shouted, when we got close enough. Luyu and I jumped out, splashed through the water and ran onto the tiny island that barely had room for a hut and two squat trees. Only a few yards to the hut. I paused to see Shukwu frantically paddling his boat away.

“Thank you!” I shouted.

“If . . . Ani . . . wills it,” I heard him breathlessly shout. The boats of Nuru were closing in. I turned and ran to the hut.

I stopped beside Luyu at the threshold. There was no door. Inside slumped Rana’s lifeless body. In the corner was a large dusty book. I don’t know what happened to Rana. He could have been one of my victims, but did the death I accidently inflicted reach out this far? I’ll never know. Luyu turned and ran back the way we’d come. “Do it!” she shouted over her shoulder. “I’ll hold them off.”

Outside as I was in that hut, those men who’d followed us saw her come out. Luyu was beautiful and strong. She wasn’t afraid as she watched them step from their boats, taking their time now that they knew we were trapped. I think I heard her laugh and say, “Come on, then!”

Those Nuru men saw a beautiful Okeke woman protected only by her sense of duty and her two bare hands which had grown rough with use in the last few months. And they pounced on her. They ripped off her green rapa, her now dirty yellow top, the beaded bracelets she’d taken from the gift baskets only yesterday, a lifetime ago. Then they tore her apart. I don’t recall hearing her scream. I was busy.

I was drawn right to that book. I knelt beside it. The cover was thin but tough, made of a durable material I couldn’t name. It reminded me of the black cover of the electronic book I found in that cave. There was no title or design on it. I reached out but then hesitated.
What is . . .
No, I’d come too far to ask that.

When I touched the book, it was warm. Feverish. I rested my hand on the hard cover. It was rough, like sandpaper. I wanted to consider this but I knew I had no time. I dragged it into my lap and opened it. Immediately, I felt as if someone had hit me hard about the head causing my vision to go wrong. I could barely look at the writing on the pages, it bothered my eyes and head so much. I was focused, by now. I was there for only one purpose, a purpose that had been prophesied in that very hut.

I flipped the book’s pages and stopped on a page that felt hotter than the rest. I lay my left hand on it. It didn’t make any sense to me but I was inclined to do it, so sick the book felt. I paused.
No
, I thought. I switched hands, remembering Ting’s words about my hand, “We don’t know what the consequence will be.” This book was full of hate and that was what caused its sickness. My right hand was full of Daib’s hate.

“I don’t hate you,” I whispered. “I’d rather die.” Then I began to sing. I sang the song that I had made up when I was four years old and living with my mother in the desert. During the happiest time of my life. I had sung this song to the desert when it was content, at peace, settled. I sang it now to the mysterious book in my lap.

My hand grew hot and I saw the symbols on my right hand split. The duplicates dribbled down into the book where they settled between the other symbols into a script I still couldn’t read. I could feel the book sucking from me, as a child does from its mother’s breast. Taking and taking. I felt something click within my womb. I stopped singing. As I watched, the book grew dimmer and dimmer. But not so dim that I could not see it. It hid there in the corner as the men burst in and found me.

CHANGE TAKES TIME AND I’D RUN OUT OF IT.

The moment I finished with that book, something began to happen. As it happened, I got up to run and realized I was caught. What I can tell you is that the book and all that it touched and then all that touched what it touched and so on, everything in that small sandstone hut began to shift. Not to the wilderness, that wouldn’t have scared me. Someplace else. I dare say a pocket in time, a slit in time and space. To a place where all was gray, white, and black. I would have loved to stand and watch. But by then they were dragging me by my hair past what remained of Luyu’s body, onto one of the boats. They were too blind to see what had begun to happen.

 

I sit here. They will come and take me. I have no reason to resist. No purpose in living. Mwita, Luyu, and Binta are dead. My mother is too far away. No, she won’t come to see me. She knows better. She knows fate must play out. The child in me, the child of Mwita and me is doomed. But to live even for three days is to live. She’ll understand. I shouldn’t have made her. I was selfish. But she will understand. Her time will come again as mine will when the time is right. But this place that you know, this kingdom, it will change after today. Read it in your Great Book. You won’t notice that it has been rewritten. Not yet. But it has. Everything has. The curse of the Okeke is lifted. It never existed,
sha
.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I SAT WITH HER ALL THOSE HOURS, typing and listening, mostly listening. Onyesonwu. She looked at her symboled hands and then brought them to her face. Finally, she wept. “It’s done,” she sobbed. “Leave me now.”

At first I refused but then I saw her face change. I saw it become like a tiger’s face, stripes and fur and sharp teeth. I ran out of there clutching my laptop. I didn’t sleep that night. She haunted me. She could’ve escaped, flown away, made herself invisible, moved herself into the astral world and run off, or “glided” off as she liked to say. But she wouldn’t do any of that. Because of what she’d seen during her initiation. She was like a character locked in a story. It was truly awful.

The next time I saw her was as they dragged her to that hole in the ground and buried her to her neck. They’d chopped off her long bushy hair and what was left stood on end, as defiant as she was. I stood in the crowd of men and few women. Everyone was shouting for blood and revenge. “Kill the
Ewu!
” “Tear her apart,
o!
” “
Ewu
demon!” People laughed and jeered. “The Okeke Savior is uglier than the Okeke!” “Sorceress indeed, she is capable of nothing but hurting our eyes,” “
Ewu
murderer!”

I noticed a tall bearded man with a partially burned face, what looked like a severely mangled leg, and only one arm. He was near the front leaning on a staff. Like everyone else, he was Nuru. Unlike everyone else he was calm, observant. I’d never seen Daib but Onyesonwu had described him clearly. I’m sure this was him.

What happened when those rocks hit her head? I’m still asking that. There was light that flowed from her, a mixture of blue and green. The sand surrounding her buried body began to melt. More happened, but I dare not mention it all. Those things are only for those of us who were there, the witnesses.

Then the ground shook and people started running. I think in that moment, everyone, all of us Nuru understood where we’d gone wrong. Maybe her rewriting had finally kicked in. We were all sure that Ani had come to grind us back to dust. So much had already happened. Onyesonwu told the truth. The entire town of Durfa, all the fertile men were wiped out and all the fertile women were vomiting and pregnant.

The young children didn’t know what to do. There was chaos in the streets all over the Seven Kingdoms. Many of the remaining Okeke refused to work and that caused more chaos and violence. The Seer Rana, who had predicted something would happen, was dead. Daib’s building had burned to the ground. We were all sure it was the end.

So, we left her there. In that hole. Dead.

But my sister and I didn’t run far. We went back after fifteen minutes. My sister . . . yes, I am a twin. My sister, my twin, she uses my computer. And she has been reading Onyesonwu’s story. She came with me to the execution. And when it was all over, we were the only ones who returned.

And because my sister knew Onyesonwu’s story, and because she is my twin, she was unafraid. As twins, we’ve always felt a responsibility to do good in the world. My status as one of Chassa’s twins was why they allowed me to see her in jail. It’s what drove me to take down her story. And it is what will help me fight to publish it and keep my sister and myself safe through the backlash. My parents were two of the few Nuru who thought it was
all
wrong, the way we lived, behaved, the Great Book. They didn’t believe in Ani. So my sister and I grew up nonbelievers, too.

As we were walking back to Onyesonwu’s body, my sister yelped. When I looked at her, she was floating an inch off the ground. My sister can fly. We would later find out that she was not the only one. All the women, Okeke and Nuru, found that something had changed about them. Some could turn wine to fresh sweet drinking water, others glowed in the dark at night, some could hear the dead. Others remembered the past, before the Great Book. Others could peruse the spirit world and still live in the physical. Thousands of abilities. All bestowed upon women. There it was. Onye’s gift. In the death of herself and her child, Onye gave birth to us all. This place will never be the same. Slavery here is over.

We removed her body from that hole. It was not easy because all around her was melted sand, glass. We had to shatter it to get her out. My sister cried the entire time, her feet barely touching the ground. I cried, too. But we took her. My sister removed her veil and covered Onye’s broken head with it. We used a camel to help take her body out to the desert, east of here. We brought another camel with us to carry the wood. We burned Onyesonwu’s corpse on the funeral pyre she deserved and we buried her ashes near two palm trees. As we filled in the hole, a vulture landed in the tree and watched. When we finished, it flew away. We said a few words for Onyesonwu and then went home.

It was the most we could do for the woman who saved the people of the Seven Rivers Kingdom, this place that used to be part of the Kingdom of Sudan.

AH, BUT THE GREAT BOOK HAD BEEN REWRITTEN. In Nsibidi at that.

Over those first few days in Durfa, there
was
change. Some women began encountering the ghosts of those men wiped out by Onyewsonwu’s . . . impetuous actions. Some ghosts became living men again. No one dared ask how this was possible. Smart. Other ghosts eventually vanished. Onyesonwu might have been remotely interested in all this. But then again, she had other concerns.

Recall that the daughter of my student-gone-wrong was Eshu, a fundamental shape shifter. Onyesonwu’s very
essence
was change and defiance. Daib had to have known this even as he flew from his burning headquarters where the body of Onyesonwu’s dead love, Mwita, became ash. Daib, who was now crippled and could no longer see color or work the Mystic Points without suffering unheard of pain. Certainly there are things worse than death.

Indeed, Onyesonwu did die, for something must be written before it can be
rewritten
. But now, see the sign of the peacock. Onyesonwu left it in the dirt of her holding cell. This symbol is scribbled by a sorcerer who believes he has been wronged. Once in a while, it is scribbled by a sorcer
ess
, too. It means, “one is going to take action.” Is it not understandable that she’d want to
live
in the very world she helped remake? That indeed is a more logical destiny.

“LET THEM COME, THEN,” Onyesonwu said, looking down at the symbol she’d scratched in the sand. The proud peacock. The symbol was complaint. Argument. Insistence. She looked down at herself and nervously rubbed her thighs. They’d put her in a long coarse white dress. It felt like another prison. They’d chopped off her hair. They’d had the
nerve
to chop off her hair. She stared at her hands—the circles, swirls and lines were woven into complex designs snaking up her wrists.