Who Fears Death

  If they touched me they experienced pain, yet they heaped praise on me like I was their chief’s long lost daughter.

  “Oh!” Eyess exclaimed, hearing the band start a tune she couldn’t resist. She ran back to the circle where she wiggled a dance that made everyone laugh. Mwita put his arm around my waist. It never felt so good.

  “That was . . . fun,” I said as we walked back to our tent.

  “Works every time,” Mwita said. He touched my bushy hair. “This hair.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m going to use a long piece of palm fiber and loop it around all the way to the bottom. That won’t be too different from braiding it.”

  “It’s not that,” he said. I waited but he didn’t say more, which was fine. He didn’t have to. I felt it, too. I’d felt it as soon as Ssaiku told me what he wanted me to do. Like I was all . . . charged up. Something was going to happen when I went on that retreat.

  When we got to our camp, we found only Fanasi. He was sitting before the dwindling rock fire, staring at the glowing stone. A bottle of palm wine sat between his legs.

  “Where is . . .”

  “I have no idea, Onye,” he said, slurring his words. “Both have deserted me.”

  Mwita patted him on the shoulder and went into our tent. I sat beside Fanasi. He reeked of palm wine. “They’ll be back, I’m sure,” I said.

  “You and Mwita,” he said after a while. “You’re the true thing. I’ll never have that. Just wanted Diti, some land, babies. Look at me now. My father would spit.”

  “They’ll come back,” I said, again.

  “I can’t have them both,” he said. “And looks like I can’t have even one. Stupid. Shouldn’t have come here. I want to go home.”

  I looked at him, irritated. “This place is full of beautiful women who will eagerly have you,” I said, getting up. “Go find and bed one and stop sulking.”

  Mwita was in our tent lying on his back when I entered. “Good advice,” he said. “All he needs is another woman to mess up his head even more.”

  I sucked my teeth. “He shouldn’t have chosen Luyu,” I snapped. “Didn’t I say this? Luyu likes men, not one man. This couldn’t have been more predictable.”

  “You blame him now? Diti refused him even after the juju was broken.”

  “What do you mean ‘even after’? Do you know what the pain from that juju is like? It’s horrible! And we’ve been raised to feel that it’s wrong to open our legs, even when we want to. We weren’t brought up to be free as . . . as you were.” I paused. “When you were with all those older women, women like Ting, who criticized you?”

  Mwita narrowed his eyes at me. “That very first time, you would have happily opened your legs to me if it weren’t for that juju. There were no Jwahir rules for women holding you back.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  Mwita laughed.

  “Did you have intercourse with Ting?”

  “What?”

  “I know you and I think I know her.”

  Mwita only shook his head, lying back down, and putting his hands behind his head. I took off my celebration clothes and wrapped myself in my old yellow rapa. I was leaving the tent when I felt a tug at my rapa, almost pulling the thing off.

  “Wait,” Mwita said. “Where are you going?”

  “To wash,” I said. We’d set up Luyu’s tent as a place to bathe. We didn’t have the heart to use Binta’s.

  “Did you do it?” I finally asked. “With those other women before me?”

  “Why does it matter?”

  “It just does. Did you?”

  “You’re not the first woman I’ve had intercourse with.”

  I sighed. I’d known. It made no difference. My worry was about Ting. “Where did you go when you left here?” I asked.

  “For a walk. People welcomed me into their homes. A group of men sat me down and wanted to know all about us and our travels. I told them some things, not all. I met Ting and she took me to Ssaiku’s tent where we all talked.” He paused. “Ting is, like everyone else here, beautiful, but the poor woman might as well have the Eleventh Rite juju on her. She’s not allowed intimacy. And . . . Onye you know the word I have spoken to you.”

  Ifunanya.

  “It applies to soul and body,” Mwita said, yanking on my rapa again, pulling it below my breasts. I pulled it up.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You should be,” Mwita said. He waved his hand. “Go and wash.”

  CHAPTER 43

  NEITHER DITI NOR LUYU RETURNED THAT NIGHT. Fanasi sat all night staring into what was left of the rock fire. He was still there when I got up the next morning to brew some tea. “Fanasi,” I said. My voice startled him. Maybe he was sleeping with his eyes open. “Go sleep.”

  “They haven’t returned,” he said.

  “They’re fine. Go sleep.”

  He stumbled to his tent where he crawled in and stopped moving, his legs still sticking out. I was in the bath tent, halfway through rinsing soap from my body, when I heard one of them return. I paused.

  “Glad you could make it back,” I heard Mwita say.

  “Oh, stop,” I heard Diti say.

  Silence.

  “Don’t try and make me feel guilty,” Diti added.

  “When have I ever said that you shouldn’t enjoy yourself?” Mwita asked.

  Diti grunted. “Has he been here all night?”

  “He waited for both of you all night,” Mwita said. “He just went to sleep.”

  “For both of us?” she scoffed.

  “Diti . . .”

  I heard her go back to her tent. “Leave me be. I’m tired.”

  “Suit yourself,” Mwita said.

  Luyu returned three hours later. Diti was sleeping off whatever it was she was sleeping off, probably a combination of intercourse and palm wine. Luyu looked refreshed, escorted by a man about our age. “Good morning,” she said.

  “Afternoon,” I corrected her. I’d spent the morning in meditation. Mwita had gone off somewhere. I presumed it was to find either Ssaiku or Ting.

  “This is Ssun,” she said.

  “Good afternoon,” I said.

  “Welcome,” he said. “Last night, your singing, it gave me good dreams.”

  “When you finally went to sleep,” Luyu added. They grinned at each other.

  “He was waiting up for you,” I said, motioning to Fanasi.

  “Is that Diti’s husband?” Ssun asked, cocking his head, trying to see him.

  I almost laughed.

  “I hope he didn’t mind that my brother took Diti from him for a night,” he said.

  “Maybe a little,” Luyu said.

  I frowned. What kind of norms and rules do these people have? I wondered. Everyone seemed to be having intercourse with everyone. Even Eyess wasn’t of Chieftess Sessa’s husband’s blood. While Luyu and Ssun talked, I quietly walked over to Fanasi and kicked one of his legs hard. He groaned and rolled over.

  “Eh, what is it?” he said. “I was sleeping nicely.”

  Luyu gave me a very dirty look. I smiled at her.

  “Fanasi,” Ssun said, walking over to him. “I had your Luyu for the night. She tells me that you may take offense.”

  Fanasi quickly got to his feet. He swayed a little but at full height, he was taller and more imposing than Ssun. Instinctively Ssun stepped back. Diti peeked out of her tent, a smile on her face.

  “Take her as long as you want,” Fanasi said.

  “Ssun,” I said. I was about to reach out and take his hand but then thought better of it. “It was nice to have your acquaintance. Come.” I walked with him away from our camp. He maintained his distance of a few inches from me. “Have my brother and I caused trouble?” he asked.

  “Nothing that wasn’t there already,” I said.

  “In Ssolu, we follow our urges. I’m sorry, we’ve neglected to consider that you all aren’t from here.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “You
may have set things back in order with us.”

  That evening, Luyu moved back into her tent and we were forced to use Binta’s tent for bathing.

  Those days leading up to the retreat were the worst for the five of us. Diti, Luyu, and Fanasi refused to speak to one another. And both Luyu and Diti continually disappeared during afternoons and evenings.

  Fanasi befriended a few men and spent evenings with them talking, drinking, feeding the camels, and especially cooking bread. I didn’t know Fanasi was such a good baker. I should have. He was a bread maker’s son. Fanasi made several types of bread and soon women were asking for his bread and to be taught how to make it. But when in our camp, he kept to himself. I wondered what was on his mind. I wondered about all three of them. On the surface they seemed okay but it was only Luyu who I felt really was okay.

  Living with the Vah people was odd. Aside from no one touching me, I loved these people. I was welcome here. And I got to know names and personalities. There was a couple living in a tent near us, Ssaqua and Essop, who had five children, two of whom had different fathers. Ssaqua and Essop were a lively couple who argued and discussed every issue. They called Mwita and me often to settle disputes. One of the arguments they called me to settle was over whether the desert had more areas of hardpan or sand dunes.

  “Who could answer that?” I said. “No one’s been everywhere. Even our maps are limited and out of date. And who’s to say everything is desert.”

  “Ha!” said Essop, poking his wife in the belly. “See, I was right! I win!”

  Children in the village of Ssolu ran amok, in a good way. They were always somewhere helping or learning from someone. Everyone welcomed them. Even the very young ones. As long as a baby could walk, he or she was everyone’s responsibility. I once saw a child of about two get fed by her mother and then run off to explore. Hours later, I saw her sitting to lunch with another family on the other side of the village. Then that evening, I found her with Ssaqua and Essop and two of their children, eating dinner!

  Of course, Eyess visited me often. We shared many meals together. She liked my cooking, saying that I used “so much spice.” It was nice having a little shadow, but she always grew annoyed when Mwita came and took some of my attention from her.

  What made Ssolu most comfortable for me was what made them different from any society I knew. Everyone here could build a rock fire. They just knew how to do it. And when I’d sung, people had been pleased and amused when the bird landed on my shoulder. The idea of my singing having such a calming effect on them didn’t bother them.

  The Vah weren’t sorcerers. Only Ssaiku and Ting knew the Mystic Points. But juju was part of their way of life. It was so normal that they felt no need to ever fully understand it. I never asked them if they knew these minor jujus instinctively or had been taught. It seemed a rude question, like asking how one learned to control his urine.

  My mother had been like the Vah in how she accepted the unanswerable and the mystical. But when we got to Jwahir, to civilization, it had become something to hide. In Jwahir, it was only acceptable for elders like Aro, the Ada, or Nana the Wise to know juju. For anyone else juju was an abomination.

  What would I have been like if I grew up here? I wondered. They had no issue with Ewu people. They embraced Mwita like one of their own. They gave him hugs and handshakes, patted him on the back, let their children hang around him. He was wholly welcome.

  Yet, they could not touch me. Even in Jwahir people would brush against me in the market. When I was young, people were always tugging at or feeling my hair and I’d had my share of fights with other children. This was the only issue I had with the people of the nomadic town of Ssolu.

  CHAPTER 44

  WHEN I AM NOT MOVING TOWARD MY FATE, it comes to me. Those days leading up to the retreat were really the beginning of the process Ssaiku hinted at. We’d only been with the Red People for three short days. Four days until the retreat. Not nearly enough time to unwind.

  Still, I woke up relaxed, content, rested. Mwita’s arm was around my waist. Outside I could hear the drone of Ssaiku’s storm. Over the noise I could hear people chatting as they started the day, the maa of goats, and the sound of a baby crying. I sighed. Ssolu was like home in so many ways.

  I closed my eyes thinking of my mother. She’d be outside the house tending to her garden. Maybe she’d visit the Ada later on or stop by my father’s shop to see how Ji was getting along. I missed her so much. I missed not having to . . . travel. I sat up and pushed my long hair back. The palm fiber I’d used to tie it had come undone. My hands automatically started braiding it as I usually did when it felt in the way. Then I remembered Ssaiku’s words about how I was to keep my hair unbraided. “Ridiculous,” I muttered looking for the fiber.

  “What?” Mwita mumbled, his face to the mat.

  “I just lost my . . .”

  A tiny white head with a small red wattle hanging from its beak was peeking into our tent. It whistled softly. I laughed. A guinea fowl. In Ssolu, the plump docile birds roamed about as freely as the children and they knew never to go near the storm. I wrapped my rapa around myself and sat up. I froze. I smelled that strange smell, the one that always came when something magical was happening. The bird pulled its head out of my tent.

  “Mwita,” I whispered.

  He quickly got up, wrapped his rapa around his waist and grasped my hand. He seemed to smell it, too. Or at least, he sensed something was odd.

  “Onye!” Diti shouted from outside. “You better come out here!”

  “Do it slowly,” Luyu said. They both sounded several yards from our tent.

  I sniffed the air, the strange otherworldly aroma filling my nose. I didn’t want to leave the tent but Mwita pushed me, pressing close behind. “Go on,” he whispered. “Face whatever it is. It’s all you can do.”

  I frowned, shoving back. “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “Don’t be a coward,” Mwita snapped.

  “Or what?”

  “It’s not what we left home for,” he said. “Remember?”

  I sucked my teeth, fear pressing my lungs. “I don’t know what I left home for anymore. And I don’t know what’s out there. . . .waiting for me.”

  Mwita scoffed. “You know what you have to do.”

  I wasn’t sure which of my thoughts he was responding to.

  “Go on,” he said, pushing me again.

  I kept thinking about the retreat, how something would happen there. Our tent was security—in it was Mwita and our few belongings, it was a shield from the world. Oh Ani, I want to stay in here, I thought. But then the image of Binta popped into my mind. My heart pounded harder. I moved forward. When I pushed the flap aside and crawled out, I almost bumped right into it. I looked up, up, and up.

  It stood directly before our tent, tall as a middle-aged tree. Wide as three tents. A masquerade, a spirit from the wilderness. Unlike the violent needle-clawed one that had guarded Aro’s hut the day I attacked him, this one stood still as a stone. It was made of tightly packed dead wet leaves and thousands of protruding metal spikes. It had a wooden head with a frowning face carved into it. Thick white smoke dribbled from the top. This smoke was what was producing the smell. Around it strutted about ten guinea fowl. They looked up at it every so often, heads tilted, softly whistling questioningly. Two sat on its right and one on its left. A monster that attracts cute harmless birds, I thought. What next?

  The masquerade stared down at me as I slowly stood up, Mwita right behind me. Yards away were Diti and Fanasi and a growing crowd of onlookers. Fanasi had an arm around Diti’s waist as Diti clasped him for dear life. A terrified Luyu was hiding behind her tent directly to my right. I wanted to laugh. Luyu stayed, Diti and Fanasi cowered.

  “What do you think it wants?” Luyu loudly whispered as if the creature weren’t right there. She crept closer. “Maybe if we give it what it wants it’ll go away.”

  Depends on what it wants, I thought.

  Sudd
enly the creature began descending to the ground, its raffia body packing upon itself. The guinea fowl sitting beside it moved a foot to the side before sitting back down. The masquerade stopped descending. It was sitting. I sat down before it. Mwita sat behind me. Luyu stayed close, too. She didn’t have a magical bone in her body and this made her bravery in the face of the mysterious that much more amazing.

  With its head closer to the ground, the strange-smelling smoke around us grew thick. My lungs hitched and I worked hard not to cough. That would have been rude, I knew. Several of the guinea fowl actually did cough. The masquerade didn’t seem to care. I glanced at Luyu and nodded. She nodded back. “Tell them all to step away,” I told her.

  Without a hint of questioning, she went to the people. “She says to get back,” Luyu said.

  “That is a masquerade,” a woman blankly replied.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Luyu said. “But . . .”

  “It’s come to speak with her,” a man said. “We just want to watch.”

  Luyu turned to me. At least now I knew what it wanted. The Red People continued to amaze me with their instinctive knowledge of the mystical. “Move back, anyway,” I said flatly. “It’s a private talk.”

  They moved to a seemingly safe distance. I saw Fanasi and Diti push into the crowd and disappear. Then it was speaking to me.

  Onyesonwu, it said. Mwita. The voice came from every part of it, creeping from its body like its smoke. Traveling in all directions. The guinea fowl stopped their soft whistling and the ones who were standing all sat down. I greet you, it said. I greet your ancestors, spirits and chis. As it spoke, the wilderness sprung up around us. I wondered if Mwita could see it. Brilliant colors, undulating tubules extending from the physical ground. They looked like trees if there were trees in the wilderness. Wilderness trees.

  I glanced around for the eye of my father. I could see its glow but it was blocked by the bulk of the masquerade. This was the only hint that I could trust this powerful masquerade creature. “We greet you, Oga,” Mwita and I said.

  “Hold out your hand, Onyesonwu.”