“Sunny Nwazue,” he said. “Breaker of rule number fortyeight. Such a primary rule.” He called behind her. “Samya.”
“Eh?” came a voice from behind a bookcase. A woman with long braids, red plastic glasses, and reddish brown skin peeked around it.
“Sunny’s here,” he said. “Take her up.”
Samya looked Sunny over and then said, “Come. This way.”
They took the staircase beside the Wetin desk. The second floor was larger, with more bookcases and stacks of paper. The people here were older. Sunny wanted to slap herself. Her first look at the Obi Library University was basically as a criminal.
A haunted moaning came from somewhere on the other side of the floor. Thankfully, they went up another flight of stairs. The third floor had more books and classrooms, too, but she was too nervous to really pay attention. “Please. What is going to happen to me?”
“Can’t talk about it.”
It looked like they were going up another staircase. Instead, Samya led her to perhaps the first actual door Sunny had seen in Leopard Knocks. It was heavy, painted black, and decorated with a white drawing like those on the outer walls of the library. The drawing depicted a person being whipped by another person. There were squiggles, circles, and Xs around the person being whipped. She assumed they illustrated cries of pain.
Samya knocked on the door. “Stay here until you’re asked to enter,” she said. Then she left.
Five minutes passed. Man, I wish the door would open, she thought. Anything to get away from the sounds in the hallway—the moans and wheezy, hysterical laughter and whispers, like some confused ghost. A large brown bird flew by and red spiders scurried across the high ceiling. She even felt a blast of warm wet air pass. Someone was moving invisibly.
She considered sitting on the floor, but more red spiders were scurrying about there. Another ten minutes passed. Frustrated, she finally tried the door. The knob turned easily. She held her breath and pushed. She peeked in. Sitting on a solid bronze chair was a dark-skinned old woman dressed in a cream-colored buba and matching pants. She was slightly hunched to the side and looked uncomfortable.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sunny said, retreating.
“Come in. Only those who want to come in are allowed in.”
She stood before the woman. Dozens of masquerade masks covered the walls, hanging close to one another. Some looked angry, with mouths full of teeth; others were fat-cheeked and comical, sticking their tongues out.
“So I could have just turned and left?”
“Maybe,” the woman said. “But you’re in here now.” The door closed. “Sit on the floor,” the woman said. “You don’t deserve a chair.”
Sunny looked at the floor, spotting two more red spiders a few feet away. Slowly, she sat down, drawing her legs in close. “I’m sorry for what I did,” she quickly said.
“Are you?”
“Ye—” Then she caught herself. “No.”
“So you’d do it again if given a chance to redo the incident?”
Sunny thought about it for a moment. The mere thought of Jibaku angered her. She knew her answer. She kept her mouth shut.
“You’ll be flogged, then,” the woman said.
She gasped and shook her head.
“Or I’ll have you put into the library basement with no lights,” the woman said. “Things roam down there that would scare some sense into you.”
“Please,” she begged, tears coming to her eyes.
The woman nodded. “Yes, I will do that. Samya!”
“Please,” Sunny screeched. “I’m sorry! I understand now! Please!”
The woman looked down her nose at Sunny, irritably flaring her nostrils. “You’re a free agent,” she said, her voice softening.
“Yes,” Sunny said. “I just—”
“The council always knows when something like this happens, when prime rules are broken. Didn’t you read that in your free agent book?”
Sunny slowly nodded, her eyes on the ground.
“Next time, I’ll have you brought right to this office and flogged thirty times and then thrown in the dirtiest, dampest, oldest room in the library basement, where you’ll stay for a week with nothing but watered garri to eat. You hear me?”
Sunny swallowed and said, “Yes.”
“I won’t tolerate stupid behavior,” the woman said angrily.
“I understand,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Yes,” she said. She was shaking.
“Next time fight fair,” she said. “From what I’ve heard, your brothers have shown you how to do that.”
“Yeah,” she said. Her heart was slamming about in her chest.
The woman looked her over. “So how has it been?”
“Huh?” Sunny was trying not to hyperventilate.
“Since you’ve come into the Leopard world.”
“Be—before today or since this happened?”
“It’s not a safe world,” she said. “You can’t go around doing whatever you like. Some of us behave like that, but it’s not proper. It’s not what I expect of you.” She sat back and shifted her position, but she still looked hunched to the side. “Anatov has told me of you,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be meeting you this way.”
Sunny cocked her head and then said, “You’re Sugar Cream, aren’t you?”
“Finally, you ask.”
“Sorry,” she said. She paused. “Yes, I was stupid. It’s just that I wanted to put the fear of—of God into her.” She paused, clenching her fists. “I can’t stand her!”
“Well, that certainly is one way to do it,” Sugar Cream said. “Albeit illegal.”
A spider was walking toward Sunny’s foot. She scooted back.
She was more afraid of Sugar Cream when there was silence, so she asked the first question on her exhausted mind. “So, ah, why do they call you ‘Sugar Cream’?”
Sugar Cream smiled and Sunny relaxed a bit. “An old story,” she said. “When I was very small, I walked out of the forest. A young man found me. I was like a little monkey, wild and feral. Some people think that actual monkeys might have even looked after me for a while. Somehow I’d survived in the bush. I couldn’t have been over three years old.
“Anyway, the only way I would come to the man who found me was when he offered me his cup of tea which he’d put a lot of sugar and cream into. He took me to his home and raised me as his daughter, even though he was only seventeen years old. He grew up to be a professor at the University of Lagos and I went on to the Obi Library.”
A lot of holes in that story, Sunny thought. “What of your true parents?”
“To this day, I don’t know, Sunny,” she said. She stood up and stretched, raising her arms over her head. Sunny stared. The woman’s spine. It wasn’t right. But from the front, she couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong. She quickly lowered her eyes.
“I hate sitting for too long,” she said. “It’s uncomfortable. Even with this hard, sturdy chair. Walk with me.”
Sunny quickly followed her out. She couldn’t help staring at Sugar Cream’s back. One shoulder was higher than the other, and her spine curved in a most profound S. Had she been like this as a baby? Maybe this was why her parents had abandoned her. But if they were Leopard People, they’d have jumped for joy at this deformity.
“You should know how it is,” Sugar Cream said, turning to her. “When people stare at you from behind. You always know when they’re doing it.”
Sunny stepped back. “I—I didn’t mean to.”
“I have severe scoliosis. And no, I was not born this way. And I don’t think I was abandoned by my parents. I think they were killed.”
Despite her deformity, Sugar Cream walked briskly. She greeted the students they passed. “Good afternoon, Oga,” an old white man with a British accent shyly said.
“Good afternoon, Albert,” she said.
When they were alone again, Sunny asked what she’d wanted to ask since Sugar C
ream had stood up. “I was wondering . . . what ability do you have?”
“I’m a shape-shifter, as you are.”
“No, I’m not,” Sunny said. She froze, mortified by her rudeness.
“Can you not turn yourself into something like warm vapor? You’re a type of shape-shifter. I can become a snake,” she said, making her hand move in an S motion. “My ability is a physical manifestation. Yours is spiritual. The reason you can become vapor is because you can step into the spirit world, literally. I doubt you’ve done this yet. You’d know it if you had.”
“How do I—”
“Only when you want to,” she said. “To enter the spirit world completely, you have to die. So for you to do it, you have to die a little.” She paused and looked at Sunny. “Would you like to learn?”
“I . . . don’t know,” she said uneasily. “Not really.” Who would want to learn how to die?
They passed a group of students who cautiously greeted Sugar Cream. “The students you see here are the most advanced,” she said. “All who make it here will most likely pass Ndibu, the third level; most likely none will pass Oku Akama, the highest level. It’s been years since anyone has.”
They passed some tall shelves and piles of books. “How does the library keep track of all the books?” Sunny asked. “A lot of them seem . . .” she trailed off. She wanted to say, “thrown about.”
Sugar Cream laughed. “Don’t be fooled. All books here are accounted for. They’re marked. When they need to be found, they will be.”
“How?”
“Depends on who wants to find it,” she said. They went back to her office, where she sat on the arm of her bronze chair. Sunny remained standing. “Anatov was going to send you here in two weeks. I was going to decide whether or not I would mentor you. Now that you’ve behaved so stupidly, my decision is harder. I need to think about it.”
Sunny’s heart sank. It didn’t matter that she had avoided being whipped or thrown in the library basement; Chichi, Orlu, and even Sasha—who never missed a chance to make trouble—had mentors. For them it had been so simple and obvious. Her path to anything seemed to always be difficult. And she hated how everyone was acting as if she should know the rules so well. It was ridiculous. Couldn’t Sugar Cream cut her some slack?
“You chose to do what you did,” Sugar Cream said. “So don’t stand there angry at me. For me to mentor you would be a great honor, an honor reserved for a mature girl or boy. You’d be the one and only student I mentor. Your case is complicated.” She sighed. “But you most certainly should be involved in this. I have no doubt about that.”
“How are you so sure?” she asked. Inside she was crying. “I mean, you see how I am, what I did, and you’re rethinking wanting to mentor me. How are you so sure I should even be part of this Oha coven group thing?”
Sugar Cream shook her head, a sad look on her face. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”
Sunny waited for her to go on. “Listen. It was your grandmother, Ozoemena, who taught Otokoto all he knows. She was his mentor. And it was Otokoto who killed your grandmother in a ritual to steal her abilities as he stole her life. You want to know why he is so powerful? All you need to look at is who your grandmother was and who Otokoto was before he became the infamous Black Hat.”
Sunny had no words.
“Yes,” she said. “So you see why this is complicated.”
Soon after that, Sugar Cream sent Sunny home. Sunny remembered saying good-bye and feeling even more like a criminal. She’d walked down the stairs and felt like a criminal. And she got into the council car, feeling like a criminal. She felt unworthy, childish, stupid, and worthless. On top of all this, she was the granddaughter of the scholar who taught a murderous psychopath. Her guilt tired her out so much that she slept the entire drive home.
She spent much of that evening in her room, staring off into space, thinking and thinking about all Sugar Cream told her. She still had homework to do. By eleven P.M., she’d fallen asleep on her books.
Sunny heard knocking. She thought she was dreaming. When it didn’t stop, she swam up to wakefulness and groggily opened her eyes. Aside from her reading lamp, her room was dark. Then she saw a tiny light at the window. She froze, her brain for some reason going all the way back to when she was two and burning up from malaria. The light watched over me.
She blinked, fully waking up. It was the light of a firefly. She slowly opened the window. Sasha, Orlu, and Chichi stood below. “Come down,” Orlu whispered loudly. “Meet us outside the gate.”
She quickly dressed, then made herself invisible and swooped out of the window. When she emerged from the gate, Chichi threw her arms around her. “You’re all right!” she said happily. “I heard you beat the hell out of Jibaku.”
“You okay?” Sasha asked.
“Yeah,” Sunny said.
“We were worried,” Orlu said.
“You didn’t sound like it when they took me away,” Sunny said, annoyed.
“Why’d you have to do it?” Orlu said. “You should—”
“Who cares?” she said. “And you know why, anyway. You of all people.”
“I was about to fight Jibaku’s boyfriend,” Orlu said. “He’s three years older than me and bigger. But I still wouldn’t have done what you did!”
She sighed loudly, rolling her eyes.
“I had to see the council once, too,” Sasha said, putting his arm around Sunny. “Back when I set that masquerade on those guys harassing my sister.” He paused. “I was caned twenty times and then ordered to be sent here.”
“You were actually caned?” Chichi asked, looking shocked.
“I have the scars to show for it,” Sasha said coldly. He met Orlu’s eyes and then turned to Sunny. “I never expected you to get in my kind of trouble.”
“I just lost it, I guess.”
“So what happened?” Chichi asked.
After she told them everything, including the part about her grandmother, they were all quiet. Then Chichi said, “Your grandmother would have been the one to bring you in, if she’d have lived.”
“He must have eaten some of her flesh,” Sasha said. “That’s the only—”
Chichi angrily shushed him. “She doesn’t need to know that.”
Sunny felt ill. Chichi pushed Sasha away and put her arm around Sunny’s shoulder.
“Sunny, try to find out more about your grandmother,” Orlu said. “If they know about your grandmother’s abilities, then we’ll know that much more about Black Hat.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly.
“Sugar Cream is tough,” Orlu said.
“I know,” she said.
“If she doesn’t come around, I’m sure Anatov will find someone else to mentor you,” Chichi said.
This was not a consolation. She wanted Sugar Cream.
But she did feel better. Her grandmother was no criminal. She’d only been the teacher of a student gone bad. Still, by the time she was back in her room, she wanted to cry again. She couldn’t get Black Hat out of her head. As she went to turn off the light, she saw the red ghost hopper standing on the post of her bed.
“You just have to sit yourself there, don’t you?” she said. It just looked at her with its huge compound orange eyes. She turned off the light. As she closed her eyes, she heard a soft, wavery singing, like a tiny dove who was using its voice to more than coo. It was lovely.
“You could do a lot worse than a ghost hopper. Some people would love to have those,” Orlu had said. Now Sunny understood why. She settled down and let it sing her to sleep.
11
Lessons
“You’re lucky your back isn’t stinging,” Anatov said. “Sugar Cream has the flogging done by a very muscular lad.” He stood up and strolled around them with his hands behind his back. “This changes things some. If it weren’t for Sunny’s recklessness, I’d have sent y’all to meet Sugar Cream and get a tour of the Obi Library—not including the fourth floor, of course.”
Sunny was relieved when no one seemed angry.
“Today will be short,” he said. “I’ll lecture on some important jujus. Then you can try a few of the advanced ones.” He sat down and flicked his long beard over his shoulder. “Healing juju is tricky. Do it wrong and you worsen the ailment. First you find the cause. Let’s say that a man has a boil on his nyash.”
Orlu, Chichi, and Sunny snickered. Sasha only frowned.
“You don’t know what nyash means, do you?” Anatov asked Sasha. “Come now. Of all words.”
“It’s ‘ass,’ in Pidgin English,” Chichi said, still laughing.
Sasha humphed and looked away.
“Work harder on your Pidgin English and your Igbo,” Anatov told Sasha. “You don’t even know any general curse words yet? Pathetic.”
“I’m working as hard as I can,” Sasha replied in perfect Igbo. He even managed to hide his American accent. Sunny had to admit, she was impressed.
“Work harder,” Anatov replied in English. “So, back to the nyash. I am a man with a boil on my nyash. I want it gone before my wife sees it. What do I do?”
“Squeeze it,” Sasha said. They all burst out laughing.
“That would leave a sore that could get infected,” Anatov said, remaining serious. “Such a simple problem and not one of you can tell me how to quickly cure it?”
“You’ll have to make a strong medicine,” Chichi said.
“Yes, but a strong medicine can take all night,” Anatov said. After a moment, he said, “Open your books to page one hundred eighteen.”
The chapter was titled “Reknitting: Fast Healing by Hand.” Anatov read the second paragraph aloud: “There is only one way to swiftly heal the body. You must undo and then reknit the cells. Those who excel at this must have fast hands and superb spatial skills. Males possess this skill in greater quantities than females. With young people, simply look to their ability to play video games for your answer.”
Anatov looked up from his book. “I want you all to look at yourselves and locate an ailment. Could be a cut, a scratch, bruise, or pimple.”
Sunny still had plenty of bruises and scratches from her fight with Jibaku.