Akata Witch: A Novel

They looked around.

  “There he is,” Chichi said, narrowing her eyes. He was surrounded by at least five girls.

  “I thought you said he was hanging with your teammates,” Chichi said.

  “He was,” Sunny said.

  Chichi stormed over to him. Orlu and Sunny laughed. Sasha and Chichi were always so dramatic.

  As Chichi was going toward Sasha, Yao met up with Ibou the soccer player. They spoke for a moment. Then they started toward Chichi. Orlu’s smile dropped away. “Oh, no. Trouble. Come on,” Orlu said, taking Sunny’s hand.

  Chichi called Sasha’s name. The girls stepped aside as she approached. Yao called Chichi. She turned around. Sasha pushed past a particularly eager girl trying to press herself against him.

  “So, what do you have?” Yao was saying to Chichi by the time Sunny and Orlu got to them all. Ibou stood quietly beside Yao.

  “What do you have?” Chichi asked.

  Yao took out his juju knife. It looked like it was made of pure, smooth gold. The tip was curved. He cut the air in a complex series of motions and caught something. He blew it at Chichi. A heavy wind pushed her back several steps. When it stopped, everyone gasped. Chichi’s bright green rapa and top were now metallic gold. Then the dress started growing much tighter around the chest, pushing up her bosom.

  Ibou’s eyebrows rose and then he laughed loudly. “Ah-ah! That was a good one,” he said, slapping Yao’s hand. “Should have made it even tighter in the backside, too.” Yao and Ibou laughed even harder.

  The girls who’d been hovering around Sasha all went, “Oooh,” and then clapped. “How pretty,” one girl said, feeling the material of Chichi’s sleeve. Chichi snatched her arm away.

  “Oh, please,” she said. “Petty juju. Notice which of us is impressed and which of us is not.”

  Several of the girls sucked their teeth, one of them grumbling, “Look at this girl. Might as well be a man if she can’t appreciate that material.”

  Chichi brought out her knife. By this time, Sasha had stepped forward. He put his arm around Chichi’s shoulder and looked with amused eyes at Yao and Ibou. “Yao, you’re an idiot,” he said dismissively. “And Ibou, first you’re bested on the soccer field by one of my classmates and now your best friend’s gonna be bested by another of my classmates. You’re inferior.”

  “You forget,” Ibou said. “Your team lost.”

  “Only because you choose the oldest players,” Godwin said from the gathering crowd. “The game is supposed to be about brains and brawn, not just brawn.”

  Yao, who had been looking at Chichi the entire time, said, “You won’t best me this year.”

  “Careful,” Orlu whispered to Chichi.

  Chichi slashed in a square and then spoke something in Efik.

  When nothing happened, Yao grinned and said, “I guess it didn’t work. You’re losing your touch.”

  “Maybe her dress is too tight,” Ibou said. Several people laughed.

  Chichi frowned, close to tears. She looked down. “I guess you’re right,” Chichi said, quietly. She looked up. And slowly held her hand up and whispered, “You win.”

  “Obviously,” Yao said, looking more triumphant than ever. He brought his hand up to shake hers. A third of the way there, it hit something. He gasped, his eyes growing wide. He banged on the invisible barrier with his fists.

  “See!” Chichi said, laughing hard. “You can’t even touch me!”

  Yao cursed and banged on the barrier. Then he turned to the side and found that there was a barrier there, too. She’d literally boxed him in.

  “Take it off!” Yao said, in a panic. “Take it off!”

  Ibou tentatively knocked at it and then reached around to make sure he wasn’t enclosed, too. This made Chichi grin wider.

  “Nice,” Sasha said.

  “I know,” she said. She lazily raised her knife and made another square. This time, she did it in the opposite direction and the words she spoke were different. Yao’s hand instantly went through the air, the barrier gone.

  “How did you—”

  “As if I’d tell you.”

  “That’s third-level juju,” Ibou said. “We’re not allowed—”

  “I obviously have full control of it,” she said. “It’s easy for me. But you wouldn’t possibly understand what that’s like.” She lifted her chin, looking at the people behind Ibou and Yao. “Anyone else?” Chichi said loudly. “I don’t care how old you are.”

  No one stepped up.

  “I’m not finished,” Yao angrily said.

  “Yes, you are. You don’t have anything stronger than what I just did.”

  “How do you know?”

  She paused, cocking her head. “How about this,” she slowly said. “I call up a masquerade and you never challenge me again.”

  “Chichi, enough!” Orlu said. “You always go too far! What are you taking it there for?”

  “Orlu, relax,” Chichi said. “I’ve wanted to try this.” She turned to Yao. “Notice how I said ‘try’? You’re no match for me, so I might as well challenge myself, eh? Why not kill two birds with one stone? Be done with you once and for all and do something I’ve never done.”

  Yao and Ibou looked worried. In a low but shaky voice, Yao said, “You don’t even know how—”

  “We do,” Sasha said.

  “Oh, what is wrong with you two?” Orlu said, throwing his hands up. “You think I don’t know where you got the juju? That book was trouble the minute you saw it, Sasha.”

  “I’ve done it already,” Sasha said.

  A loud murmur flew through the room.

  “Do it, then,” someone said.

  “Yeah, I want to see,” someone else added.

  “I hear that you can die if you fail.”

  “Do it!”

  “What do you mean, you’ve done it?” Orlu asked. Then something seemed to dawn on him.

  Sasha smiled. “Yeah, it was that day at your house.”

  Orlu was silent.

  Yao and Ibou whispered to each other, and when they stopped, they didn’t look so terrified. “Okay, I accept,” Yao said. “Do it. But you have to do it, not him.”

  “Who do you think showed him how?” Chichi said mysteriously. “And if you didn’t know, my mother is a third leveler. I come from thick spiritual blood.”

  Yao and Ibou’s smiles faltered. Sunny glanced at Orlu, wondering if she should grab his hand and get them both out of there. Even she knew a masquerade was bad news. And there was no stopping Sasha and Chichi combined.

  “What of your father?” a girl behind her said. “I hear he’s Lamb. Your spirit blood can’t be that thick.”

  Chichi glared at the girl. “Don’t you worry about my father,” Chichi said. “I certainly don’t.”

  “Chichi, don’t do this,” Orlu said. “Masquerades are hard to control even when they’re successfully called. They can force their freedom.”

  But Chichi had already sat down. “I have it all in my head,” she softly said. She started drawing in the dirt with her knife.

  “Ugh! Goddammit,” Orlu angrily whispered to Sunny. “I want to just kick her! Do you know how bad this is?”

  Even before becoming a Leopard Person, Sunny knew about masquerades. They were supposedly spirits of the dead, or just spirits in general who for various reasons came to the physical world through termite mounds. During weddings, birth celebrations, funerals, and festivals, people dressed as them and pretended to be them. That was the key word, pretend . But in the Leopard world, they were real.

  “Chichi,” she said. “Maybe you should—”

  “Back off,” Chichi said, still drawing. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Of course you do,” Orlu said. “Until you get us all killed.”

  “Didn’t you hear? We’ve done it before,” Sasha said. “Chill.”

  The entire tent was quiet as everyone watched. For the first time that night, Sunny wished some figures of authority were allowed to keep an e
ye on things. “Are you sure you won’t get sent to the Abuja Leopard Council?” Sunny asked loudly.

  “Do you see any goddamn Lambs around?” Chichi snapped. The design she was drawing looked like a giant circle with lines radiating out and into it.

  She quickly made a cross in the center and then sat back, looking at her work. She stood up and began chanting something in Efik as she cut the air with her knife.

  “Look,” Sunny said to Orlu. People started to whisper to each other. Many either stepped back or ran out of the tent, especially when the dirt in the center of the drawing began to churn up into a small mound.

  A minute passed. The mound grew taller and taller. It looked like the beginning of a termite mound, the places through which masquerades were believed to enter the physical world. It reached about six feet before it stopped. Termites emerged from tiny holes throughout the hill. The winged ones immediately took to the air. Sunny swatted at one that landed on her arm.

  “This juju charm,” Chichi said dramatically, “is straight from Udide’s Book of Shadows.”

  Several of the remaining people gasped. More turned and ran out of the tent.

  “Udide’s Book of Shadows?” Yao almost shouted. Now he looked highly alarmed. Ibou must have fled, because Sunny didn’t see him anywhere. “You’re crazy! Do you know what you’ve just invited?”

  “Udide respects the intelligent, the creative, and the brave,” Chichi said, turning back to the termite mound.

  Only friendship kept Sunny from running—especially after the wailing started. It was a high-pitched wavery sort of ghostly noise, like the ululations of women from the Middle East. Then the trademark tock tock tock started, the sound of tiny drums. A playful flute wove in and out of the wailing and drumming. Then there came the tooth-vibrating DOOOM DOOOM of a deep-barreled talking drum.

  “Sunny, if you value your life, do not run,” Orlu warned.

  The mound was caving in at the center. They all stepped back as a wooden knob rose from it. It was attached to the top of a large tuft of thick raffia. Then the termite mound expanded. They backed away some more. The creature’s body was large and bulbous, covered with beautiful blue shiny cloth. Cowry shells and blue and white beads hung from pieces of blue yarn. They clicked and clacked as the masquerade grew.

  When it reached over fifteen feet high, it stopped. The drumbeat and the flute reached a crescendo. The large tuft of raffia at the top fell away, revealing a four-faced head.

  Students called for Allah, Legba, Chukwu, Jesus, Mawu, God, Chineke, Oya, Ani, Asaase Yaa, Allat, and many other deities to protect them. Sunny moaned and pressed close to Orlu, who was cursing under his breath. Chichi seemed to be in a trance, Sasha watching wordlessly behind her.

  The masquerade faces looked around at them, the expressions animated. The smiling face grinned. The angry face scowled. The surprised face looked more and more shocked. And the curious face looked very, very inquisitive. The knob at the top grazed the tent’s ceiling.

  Then the wooden mask fell away. Orlu and Sunny dodged the falling pieces. On the other side, a student beside Yao shouted in pain as one hit her on the shoulder.

  “Oh my God!” Sunny screeched. Orlu grabbed her arm.

  Underneath the mask was a huge undulating mass of red termites, wasps, bees, mosquitoes, flies, and ants! It wasn’t raffia and palm fronds that stuffed the masquerade’s blue cloth-covered body—it was stinging insects. People started screaming and the masquerade began to dance, a cloud of insects rising around it.

  “Everyone! Get down!” Orlu shouted. “Right now! Right now!”

  But people were too panicked. They were running amok. Orlu shoved Sunny to the ground. Something stung her arm. “Stay down!” he said. Then he shouted, “Chichi, Sasha, down! It’s going to happen any minute!”

  The masquerade danced, whirling and whirling faster and faster. It whipped thousands of insects to the rhythm and speed of the drums and flute, laughing its shrill womanly laugh and buzzing its insectile buzz.

  Orlu dropped down beside Sunny and said, “Hold your breath.”

  As soon as she did so, the buzzing grew a thousand times louder. Insects blasted in all directions. The blue cloth collapsed, empty. Sunny was buried in thousands of ants, and bees and wasps smacked into her and flew around her head. She screamed and cried along with everyone else.

  Death by stinging. It could happen. A boy in her town had been killed by a swarm of angry wasps when he tried to knock down a hive behind his house. We’re all going to die here, she thought, curling herself tighter. She felt two more stings on her legs and wondered what her parents and brothers would think when she was returned home all swollen and red and dead. I should have stayed home, she thought. This is what I get for lying.

  She felt Orlu start to get up. “What are you doing?” she screamed, pulling him back down. Something stung her arm.

  He pulled away and got up again. She shielded her eyes and looked at him. Orlu seemed far from himself, calm and unafraid. He was holding out his hands and bringing them in, holding out his hands and bringing them in. Each time he did this, more insects piled themselves under the masquerade’s cloth.

  “Go home,” he coaxed in Igbo. She could hear his voice through the screaming and buzzing. “You’ve seen, you have stung, you have terrified—now, go home.”

  Soon Orlu had made the masquerade gather itself completely, and there it stood. It pointed at Chichi, who was looking up from her crouched position. It spoke something in what Sunny assumed to be Efik. Then it slowly descended back into its termite mound and the mound descended back into the earth.

  “Is everyone all right?” Orlu asked.

  They walked briskly to the festival entrance. It was a quarter past eleven. They were late. “Don’t,” Orlu said, walking fast. “I hate false apologies.”

  “I’m not apologizing,” Chichi said, almost running to keep up with him. “I’m just thanking you!”

  “Shut up,” Orlu snapped.

  “Don’t be such a tight-ass,” Sasha said, rubbing one of his many stings.

  Orlu stopped so abruptly that Sunny ran into his back. She didn’t want to talk about any of it. She just wanted to find Anatov, go back to the hotel, check her skin for stingers she’d missed, rub her entire body with calamine lotion, and go to sleep.

  “Do you have any idea what could have happened?” Orlu shouted. “Everyone knows how brilliant you are! I guess you needed to show how stupid you are, too!”

  “No one was really hurt, though,” Chichi pointed out. “Everyone will just use some Healing Hands powder to get rid of the stings.”

  “Not because of you!”

  “Hey, I knew you were there,” she said. “You think I didn’t consider that?”

  “You always make a mess assuming I’ll clean it up,” Orlu said. “Why don’t you try to learn some undoing jujus yourself?”

  “Because you were born with it,” Chichi snapped. “You can always save the day.”

  Orlu looked disgusted. “Don’t make this about me. People could have died because of you. You called up Mmuo Aku! If it had decided to start really stinging—ugh! Don’t you read up on things before calling on them?” He took a deep breath. “And what did it say to you?”

  Chichi opened her mouth but then just stubbornly looked away. “It’s my business,” she mumbled.

  “Let me guess,” Orlu said sarcastically. “The damn thing said ‘thank you’ before it went back.”

  “Sorry,” Chichi said quietly.

  “I said, I don’t want your apologies,” Orlu shouted, walking off.

  Anatov looked angry but very tired when they got to the entrance. About fifty other people were also waiting for the funky train.

  “You’re lucky it’s late,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d have left it to y’all to find your way to the hotel.” They apologized. He yawned and waved a hand at them. “So I hear you four have made a name for yourselves this year.”

  They all looked at th
eir feet.

  “How many chittim fell when it was over?”

  “Seven coppers,” Orlu mumbled. “We could have gotten people killed and we got paid for it.”

  “As a group you made a mistake and you learned you could also right it,” Anatov said. “Get on the bus. Sasha, you’re an idiot.”

  Sasha looked surprised and then looked at his hands.

  Disgusted, Anatov continued, “Orlu’s mother told me right away about all the noise that night and how the house felt as if it were underwater. Obviously, you called Mmuo Miri, and she is not like that small one you called back in the States. Mmuo Miri is a water masquerade that only an experienced third leveler has any business calling. You could have all drowned in that house. Do you have some sort of death wish?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. “Orlu’s mother and I agreed that you’d survived an episode of stupidity and probably wouldn’t make the mistake again. You proved us both wrong tonight, Sasha.” Anatov leaned toward Sasha. “I will have you caned by the strongest man in Nigeria if you pull something like this again. Understood?”

  Sasha nodded.

  “I will let you keep that book, but I expect you to act like you have some brains.” He turned to Chichi. “And you are to report to the council with me first thing when we get home.”

  The trip home was nothing like the trip there. Chichi barely spoke a word, nor did Orlu. Sasha and Sunny chatted briefly with Godwin before he took his seat. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” Godwin said.

  “Me neither,” Sunny said.

  “I slept well,” Sasha said, smiling brightly. Sunny could tell he was lying. There were bags under Sasha’s eyes.

  “You four—everyone’s talking about you,” Godwin said. “No one’s seen juju like that performed and then stopped by students so young. And of course people are still talking about your fast feet, Sunny, and your fast mouth, Sasha.”

  “Do people hate us?” she asked.

  Godwin laughed and shook his head. “This festival will be talked about for years, man.”

  16

  Trouble at Home