Who Fears Death (9 page)

That afternoon, as we sat before my mother’s garden, I told Mwita much about myself. I told him the story of my mother. I told him about the desert. I told him about how I’d gone somewhere else when I was circumcised. And I finally told him the details about the red eye. Mwita wasn’t shocked even by this. That should have given me pause, but I was too enamored by him to care.

It was my idea to go to the desert. It was his idea to go that very night. It was my second time sneaking out of the house. We hiked across the sand for several miles. When we stopped, we made a fire. All around us was darkness. The desert hadn’t changed since I’d left it six years ago. We were so at peace in cool quietness around us that we were speechless for the next ten minutes. Then Mwita poked at the fire and said, “I’m not like you. Not completely.”

“Eh?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“I usually just let people think what they think,” he said. “You were like that to me. Even after I got to know you. It’s been over a year since I saw you in that tree.”

“Just get to the point,” I said impatiently.

“No,” he snapped. “I’ll say this the way I want to say it, Onyesonwu.” He looked away from me, annoyed. “You need to learn to be quiet sometimes.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.”

I bit my lower lip, trying to keep quiet.

“I’m not completely like you,” he finally said. “Just listen, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Your mother . . . she was assaulted. My mother was not. Everyone believes an
Ewu
child is like you, that his or her mother was attacked by a Nuru man and he succeeded in impregnating her. Well, my mother fell in
love
with a Nuru man.”

I scoffed. “This is not something to joke about.”

“It happens,” he insisted. “And, yes, we come out looking the same as children of . . . of rape. You shouldn’t believe all that you hear and read.”

“Okay,” I softly said. “Go . . . go on.”

“My aunt said that my mother worked for a Nuru family and their son used to talk to her in secret. They fell in love and a year later my mother was pregnant. When I was born, the news that I was
Ewu
got out. There’d been no attacks in the area, so people were perplexed as to how I came about. Soon the love between my parents was discovered. My aunt said that someone saw my mother and father together just after my birth, that my father had snuck into the tent. I’ll never know if it was a Nuru or Okeke who betrayed us.

“A mob came and, again, I don’t know if it was of Nurus or Okekes. They came for my mother with stones. They came for my father with fists. They forgot about me. My aunt, my father’s sister, took me to safety. She and her husband kept me. My father’s death seemed to absolve my existence.

“If one’s father is Nuru, then the child is. So I was raised as a Nuru in my aunt and uncle’s home. When I was six, my uncle had me become the apprentice of a sorcerer named Daib. I guess I should have been grateful. Daib was known for often going off on exhibitions. My uncle said he was once a military man. He knew literature, too. Owned many books . . . all of which would eventually be destroyed.”

Mwita paused, frowning. I waited for him to continue.

“My uncle had to beg and pay Daib to teach me . . . because I was
Ewu
. I was there when my uncle begged him.” Mwita looked disgusted. “On his hands and knees. Daib spat on him saying that he only did the favor because he knew my grandmother. My hatred of Daib fueled my learning. I was young but I hated like a middle-aged man at the end of his prime.

“My uncle had begged liked that, humiliated himself, for a reason. He wanted me to be able to protect myself. He knew my life would be rough. Life moved on, years passed somewhat pleasantly. Until I was eleven. Four years ago. The massacres started again in the cities and swiftly spread to our village.

“The Okeke fought back. And again, as they had been before, they were outnumbered and outarmed. But in my village, the Okeke people burned hot. They stormed our house, killing my aunt and uncle. I learned later that it was Daib and anyone associated with him that they were after. I said Daib had been in the military—well, there was more to it. He was, apparently, known for his cruelty. My aunt and uncle were killed because of him, because of me being taught by him.

“Daib had taught me how to make myself ‘ignorable.’ This was how I escaped. I ran into the desert, where I cowered for a day. The riots were eventually stamped out, every Okeke in the village killed. When I went to Daib’s home, hoping to find his corpse, I found something else. In the middle of his half-burned house were the clothes he’d been wearing the last time I’d seen him, scattered on his floor as if he’d melted into thin air. And the window was open.

“I packed what I could and traveled east. I knew how I’d be treated. I hoped to find the Red People, a tribe of people who are neither Okeke nor Nuru, living somewhere in the desert in the middle of a giant sandstorm. It’s said that the Red People know impossible juju. I was young and desperate. The Red People are just a myth.

“I made money along the way working idiotic bits of sorcery like making dolls dance and children levitate. People, Nuru and Okeke, are more comfortable with
Ewu
folk who play the fool, dance about, or do tricks, as long as you avoid eye contact and move on when you’re done entertaining. It’s only by chance that I ended up here.”

When Mwita stopped talking, I just sat there. I wondered how far Mwita’s village was from what was left of my mother’s. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for us all.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s like saying that you’re sorry that you exist.”

“I am.”

“
Don’t
belittle your mother’s trials and successes,” Mwita said darkly.

I sucked my teeth and looked away, my arms around my chest.

“So you wish to not be here right now?” he asked.

I said nothing to this.
At least his father wasn’t a beast
, I thought.

“Life isn’t so simple,” he said. He smiled. “Especially for Eshus.”

“You’re not Eshu.”

“Well, for any of us, then.”

A YEAR AND HALF LATER, it was by chance that I heard the two boys talking as they walked by. They were about seventeen. One had a bruised face and a bandaged arm. I was reading a book under the iroko tree.

“You look like someone stepped on your head,” the unhurt boy said.

“I know,” the hurt boy said. “I can barely walk.”

“I tell you, the man is evil, not a
true
sorcerer.”

“Oh, Aro’s a true sorcerer,” the hurt boy said. “Evil, but true.”

My ears pricked at the name briefly mentioned the night of my Eleventh Rite.

“That
Ewu
boy’s the only one good enough to learn the Great Mystic Points, apparently,” the hurt boy said, his eyes wide and wet. “Makes no sense. One’s blood is supposed to be clean to . . .”

I got up and walked away, my thoughts clouded with rage. I angrily searched the market, the book house, I even went to my house. No Mwita. I didn’t
know
where he
lived
. This angered me even more. As I left my house, I saw him coming up the road. I strode up to him and had to restrain myself from punching him in the face.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I shouted.

“Don’t come at me like that,” he grumbled when I got to him. “You know better.”

I laughed bitterly. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“I mean it, Onyesonwu,” he warned.

“I don’t care what you mean,” I shouted.

“What possesses you, woman?”

“What do you know about the Great Mystic Points? Eh?” I had no idea what these Mystic Points were but they were being held from me and I wanted to know them now. “And . . . and what of Aro? Why didn’t . . .” I was so angry that I started choking on air. I stood there panting. “You’ve. . . .you’re a liar!” I screeched. “How can I ever trust you?”

Mwita stepped back at this. I’d crossed a line. I kept shouting. “I had to overhear it from two boys! Two stupid inept common boys! I can’t trust you ever again!”

“He
won’t
teach you,” Mwita bitterly said holding his arms out wide.

“What?” I said, my voice cracking. “Why?”

“You want to know? Fine, I’ll tell you. I hope it makes you happy. He won’t teach you because you’re a girl, a
woman!
” He shouted at me. There were tears of rage in his eyes. He slapped his hand against my belly. “Because of what you carry here! You can bring life, and when you get old, that ability becomes something else even greater, more dangerous and unstable!”

“What?” I said again.

He laughed angrily and began walking away. “You push
too
hard,” he said. “Ugh, you’re not healthy for me.”

“Don’t walk away from me,” I said.

He stopped. “Or you’ll what?” He turned around. “Are you threatening me?”

“Maybe,” I said. We stood like that. I don’t remember if there were people around us. There must have been. People love a good argument. And one between two
Ewu
teenagers, one a boy and one a girl, was priceless.

“Onyesonwu,” he said. “He won’t teach you. You were born in the wrong body.”

“Yeah, well I can change that,” I said.

“No, you can’t ever change
that
.”

No matter what I changed into, I could only become the female version of it. This was a rule of my ability that always seemed trivial to me. “He teaches you,” I said.

He nodded. “And I’ve been teaching you what I know.”

I cocked my head. “But . . . he doesn’t teach you these . . . these Points, does he?”

Mwita didn’t respond.

“Because you’re
Ewu
, right?” I asked.

He still said nothing.

“Mwita . . .”

“What I teach you will have to be enough,” he said.

“And if it’s not?”

Mwita looked away.

I shook my head. “To omit information is lying.”

“If I lie to you, it’s only to protect you. You’re my . . . You’re special to me, Onyesonwu,” he blurted, wiping some of his angry tears from his cheek. “Nobody,
nobody
, should be allowed to hurt you.”

“Something’s
been
trying to do just that!” I said. “That . . . that horrible red and white eye thing! It’s evil! . . . I think it watches me in my sleep sometimes . . .”

“I
have
asked him,” he said. “Okay? I asked him. I look at you and I know . . . I
know
. I told him about you. I told him after you ended up in that tree. I asked him again after you realized you were Eshu. He won’t teach you.”

“Did you tell him about the red eye?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Then I’ll ask him myself,” I said flatly.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Let him reject me to my face,” I said.

Anger flashed in Mwita’s eyes and he stepped back from me. “I shouldn’t love a girl like you,” he said quietly through gritted teeth. Then he turned and walked away.

I waited until Mwita was far enough away. Then I stepped to the side of the road and concentrated. I didn’t have the feather with me, so I had to calm myself first. The argument with Mwita left me shaking with emotion so it took several minutes to calm myself. By this time, Mwita was gone. But as I said, as a vulture, the world was open to me. I found him easily.

I followed him south from my house, through the palm tree farms at Jwahir’s southern border. The hut he came to was sturdy but simple. Four goats roamed around it. Mwita went into a smaller hut beside the main one. Behind both huts opened the desert.

The next day, I walked there on foot, leaving my bedroom window open in case I returned as a vulture. A gate of cacti grew in front of Aro’s hut. I boldly walked through the opening that was flanked by two tall cacti. I tried to avoid the thorns but one of them nicked my arm as I passed.
No matter,
I thought.

The main hut was large, made of stacked sand brick and adobe with a thatched roof. I could see Mwita nearby sitting against the only tree bold enough to grow near the hut. I smiled slyly to myself. If this was Aro’s hut, I could sneak in before Mwita saw me.

A man strolled out before I could get halfway to the hut entrance. The first thing I noticed was the blue mist surrounding him. It disappeared as he came closer. He was about two decades older than my father. His head was closely shaved. His dark skin glistened in the dry heat. Several glass and quartz amulets rested over his white caftan. He walked slowly, looking me over. I didn’t like him at all.

“What?” he said.

“Oh, um . . .” I stammered. “Are you Aro, the sorcerer?”

He glared at me.

I pushed on. “My name is Onyesonwu Ubaid-Ogundimu, daughter . . . stepdaughter of Fadil Ogundimu, daughter of Najeeba Ubaid-Ogundimu . . .”

“I know who you are,” he said coolly. He brought a chewing stick from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. “You’re the girl the Ada says can become transparent and Mwita says can change into a sparrow.”

I noticed he didn’t mention me turning into a vulture.

“Things have been happening to me, yes,” I said. “And I think I’m in danger. Something tried to kill me once, a year or so ago. This great oval red eye. It continues to watch me, I think. I need to protect myself.
Oga
Aro, I will become the best and greatest student you will ever have! I know it. I can feel it. I can . . . almost touch it.”

I stopped talking, tears in my eyes. I didn’t realize how determined I was until now. He was looking at me with such surprise that I wondered if I’d said something wrong. He didn’t seem the type easily moved. His face returned to what I assumed was his usual demeanor. Behind him I saw Mwita coming, walking fast.

“You’re full of fire,” he said. “But I won’t teach you.” He motioned with his hand up and down, in reference to my body. “Your father was Nuru, a foul dirty people. The Great Mystic Points are an Okeke art only for the pure of spirit.”