Who Fears Death

  I turned to Mwita. His eyes were narrow and intense, his jaw clenched, his lips pressed, his nostrils flared, his eyebrows furrowed. He suddenly stood up. “What will you do?” he asked it.

  Sit down, Mwita, it said. You cannot take her place. You cannot save her. You have your own role to play. Mwita sat down. Just like that, it had read his mind, leaped over his questions and arguments, and addressed the exact issue that was at the center of Mwita’s heart. Touch her if you must but do not interfere, it said.

  Mwita grasped my shoulder. Into my ear he whispered, “I will go with whatever you wish to do.” I heard the pleading in his voice. Pleading for me to refuse. To act. To flee. I thought of my Eleventh Rite when I had a similar option. If I’d fled my father wouldn’t have seen me so soon. I wouldn’t be here. But I was here. And no matter what, something was going to happen in four days when I went on that retreat. Fate is cold. It is brittle.

  Slowly, I held my hand out. I kept my eyes open. Mwita grasped my shoulder tightly and pressed closer. I don’t know what I expected but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Its layer of wet leaves all lifted at the same time exposing its many needles. It leaned away from me and then whipped forward with a soft whisp! I flinched back and blinked. When I opened my eyes I saw that I was covered with drops of water and . . . the masquerade’s needles.

  My entire face, arms, chest, belly, legs. The needles had even somehow found their way to my back! Only the parts of me covered by Mwita’s body were needle-free. Mwita shouted, wanting to touch me and not touch me. “Are you . . .” He jumped up, looking at me, then at the needles. “What is . . . Onye? What . . . ?”

  I whimpered as I stared at myself, on the verge of screaming, surprised I was still conscious and felt okay. I looked like a pincushion! Why wasn’t I bleeding? Where was the pain? And why had it told me to hold out my hand if it was going to do this? Was that some kind of cruel joke?

  The masquerade started laughing. A deep guttural guffaw that shook its wet leaves. Yes, it was the creature’s idea of a joke.

  It got up, sprinkling us with moisture and smoke. It turned and began to walk away, toward Ssaiku’s tent as it dribbled its trail of wilderness smoke. The guinea fowl followed single file. Several people followed, too. Someone brought a flute, someone else a small drum. They played for the masquerade as it walked, still laughing.

  When we could no longer see it, Mwita and I stared at each other.

  “You feel . . . okay?” he asked.

  I was starting to feel . . . odd. Unwell. But I didn’t want to scare him. “I’m fine.”

  After a few moments, we both smiled and laughed. A needle fell out. Mwita pointed at it and laughed harder, which made me laugh harder. More needles fell out. Luyu came running. She screamed when she saw me up close. Mwita and I laughed even harder. I was shedding needles now.

  “What’s wrong with you two?” Luyu asked, calming down when she saw the needles falling out. “What did that thing do to you?”

  I shook my head still chuckling. “Don’t know.”

  “Was it . . .” she knelt down to look at the remaining needles on my back. “Was that a real masquerade?”

  I nodded, feeling a wave of nausea pass over me. I sighed and sat back. When Luyu tried to touch one of the remaining needles protruding from my cheek, a spark the size of a kola nut popped from me. She jumped back holding her hand, hissing with pain.

  Now I was outcast from everyone but Mwita.

  CHAPTER 45

  BY THE NEXT DAY, I was woefully sick. The sight of food, even simple curried goat, turned my stomach. And when I did manage to get the food into my mouth, it tasted metallic and produced sparks against my teeth, a very unpleasant sensation. I could only comfortably drink water and eat bits of plain bread. Two days later I was still ill.

  The masquerade had introduced something into my body. Those needles were infected with poison. Or was it medicine? Or maybe both. Or neither. Poison or medicine implies that it has something to do with me. As opposed to me being part of a larger plan.

  Not only was I constantly nauseated, unable to eat, and nearly allergic to everyone except Mwita (it turned out that I wasn’t allergic to Ssaiku and Ting, either) but every so often I’d be washed with a terrible hyperawareness. I’d be able to hear a fly breathe or see a grain of sand tumble to the ground like a boulder. I’d suddenly have hawklike strength, vision or I could nearly smell everyone’s mortality. Mortality smelled muddy and wet and I reeked of it.

  I knew what this hunger-induced clarity was. It was a stronger version of what had brought Mwita and me face-to-face with my father months ago. But I was going to control it this time. I had to; if I couldn’t then maybe I was dangerous. To add to my issues, the wilderness kept trying to invade my space.

  “I’m alive,” I muttered as I walked on the outskirts of Ssolu. “So leave me be.” But the wilderness would not, of course. I looked around, my heart beating fast. I wanted to laugh. My heart was pounding while I had one foot in the spirit world and the other in the physical world. Absurd. I was part blue energy and part physical body. Half alive and half something else. It was the fifth time this had happened, and as I did before, I turned to look into the angry eye of my father. I spat at him, ignoring the shiver of apprehension I felt whenever I saw him. He was always there watching, waiting . . . but for what?

  I was standing near a family’s tent. A mother, a father, and two boys and three girls. Or maybe some of the children were from other parents. Maybe the two “parents” were lovers or friends. You never knew with the Vah. But a family was a family and I envied what I saw and again missed my mother.

  They were having dinner. I could smell the okra soup and fufu as if it were right in my face. I could see the glint in the man’s eye as he looked at the woman and I knew he craved her but did not love her. I could almost feel the roughness of the children’s long dreadlocks. If any of them looked toward me what would they see? Maybe a version of me that looked molded from water. Maybe nothing. I leaned against the blue energy of a wilderness tree to shield myself from my father’s fiery gaze. The tree felt soft and cool. I sank down, waiting until I passed fully back into the physical world.

  As soon as I shut my eyes, something grabbed me. My entire body went numb as two of the wilderness tree’s branches wrapped tightly around my left arm and neck. I clawed at the one around my neck and yanked. I wheezed painfully as it held tighter. The branch was so strong.

  But I was stronger. Much stronger. As rage flew through me, my blue energy blazed. I snatched the branch from my neck and ripped it off. The tree screamed a high-pitched shriek but that didn’t stop me. I tore the other branch from my arm and snatched up and tore the one trying to get at my leg. Then I stood up nearly ready to roar, fists balled, legs slightly bent, eyes wide. I was going to tear the entire tree apart . . . and that was when the wilderness retreated from me. The moment my being and body settled fully in the physical world, all the strength left me. I sat down hard on the ground, panting quietly, afraid to touch my sore neck.

  One of the little girls eating dinner with the family turned. She saw me and waved. I weakly waved back, trying to smile. I slowly stood up, pretending that nothing had just happened. “You want to eat with us?” she asked in her innocent little-girl voice. Now they were all looking at me and beckoning.

  I smiled and shook my head. “Thank you but I’m not hungry,” I said, moving on as quickly as my stricken body could take me. Those people seemed so normal, pure, untainted. There was no way I’d sit at their table.

  When I got back to my tent, Fanasi was sitting in front of his tent sulking. I wasn’t in the mood, so I didn’t bother asking him what was wrong. But it was obvious. Diti and Luyu were nowhere to be found. Neither was Mwita, and as I lay down in my tent I was glad he wasn’t there. I didn’t want him to know I was so . . . ill. I didn’t want anyone to know. The Vah already treated me as if I were afflicted with something. And in a way I was. I couldn’t go near an
y of them without causing sparks and a shot of sharp pain. I felt like enough of an outcast without announcing that on top of all that I wasn’t feeling well either.

  I told Luyu everything. But only because she happened to be the one to come into my tent an hour later, when I was half in the wilderness and half in the physical world again. I was too exhausted to do anything but sit there. When the wilderness finally retreated, there she was at my tent’s opening staring at me.

  I expected her to crawl right back out but again Luyu surprised me. She crawled in, sat down, and just gazed at me. I lay back and waited for her questions.

  “So what is that?” she finally asked.

  “What?” I sighed.

  “You were like . . . water,” she said. “Made of solid water . . . but water if it was like stone but water.”

  I chuckled. “Was I?”

  She nodded, “Just like what happened that day during our Eleventh Rite.” She cocked her head. “Is that when you go into the . . . world of the dead?”

  “Not dead, the wilderness,” I said. “The spirit world.”

  “But you can’t be alive there,” she said. “So it’s the world of the dead.”

  “I . . .” I sighed again and recited one of Aro’s lessons. “Just because something is not alive, does not mean it is dead. You have to be alive first to be dead.” I closed my eyes and lay back. “The wilderness is someplace else. Neither of flesh nor time.”

  “So why’d it happen during our rite?” she asked.

  I laughed. “It’s a long story.”

  “Onye, what’s wrong with you?” she asked after a moment. “You haven’t looked right since . . . since that masquerade did that thing to you.” She moved closer when I didn’t answer. “Remember what we talked about way back when we first left home?”

  I only looked at her.

  “We agreed to share the load, you and I,” she said. She took my hand and a large spark popped off it. A look of pain crossed her face as she slowly put my hand down. She smiled at me but didn’t try to take my hand again. “Talk. Tell me.”

  I looked away, suppressing the urge to cry. I didn’t want to burden anyone with any of it. I turned to her, noting dark brown skin, flawless even after all we’d been through. Her thick lips pressed firmly together. Her large almond-shaped eyes looked deep into mine, never flinching. I sat up. “Okay,” I said. “Come walk with me.”

  We strolled along the outskirts of Ssolu, in the half mile between the storm and the last of the tents. Only groups of livestock congregated here. The guinea fowl and chickens kept their distance. So among camels and goats, I talked and Luyu listened.

  “You should tell Mwita,” she said when I finished. I had to stop and bend forward as a wave of hunger-induced fatigue passed over me.

  “I don’t want to . . .”

  “It’s not only about you,” she said. She stepped forward about to help me up. She quickly stepped back. “Are you all right?”

  “No.”

  “Can I . . .”

  “No.” Slowly, I straightened up. “Go ahead. Say what you were going to say.”

  “Well, something is . . .” She paused, looking me in the eye. “A few days, you have this retreat. I think, well, you probably already know.”

  I nodded. “Something is going to happen but I don’t know what.”

  “Mwita can make it better, I think,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I muttered.

  It dropped right at my feet. A yellow lizard with a large scaly head. It flipped onto its feet and began to slowly walk away. I laughed to myself, assuming it had been swept up by the storm and thrown into Ssolu like so many other creatures. All I wanted to do was sit on the sandy ground and watch it go.

  Another strange wave of hyperawareness blew over me. I glanced at Luyu. She was watching me closely. I could see every cell on her face.

  “You see that?” I asked. I feebly pointed at the lizard as it turned to face us. I wanted to shift Luyu’s attention. She was about to run off to get Mwita; I just knew it.

  Luyu frowned. “See what?”

  I shook my head, my eye following the lizard. I sank to the sand. I was so weak.

  Another wave of awareness blew over me, and I heard a soft moan. I wasn’t sure if it came from me or the wilderness springing up around me again. There was a wilderness tree right beside Luyu. Then things flickered and became only the physical world again. I wanted to vomit.

  “Stay where you are. I’m going to get Mwita,” Luyu said. “You just went all transparent again.”

  I was too weak to respond. The lizard was slowly walking up to me, and I focused on it as Luyu ran off.

  “Let her go,” a voice said. It was a female voice but low and strong like a man’s. It was coming from the approaching lizard. Something about the voice was vaguely familiar.

  “I didn’t intend to stop her,” I said with a weak laugh. “Who are you?” I wondered if I was imagining the voice. I knew I wasn’t. I was suffering from an illness passed on to me by a great spirit of the wilderness. It had come to me to do just that. Then it had gone and met with Ssaiku, Ting later told me. Nothing that happened to me after my encounter with the masquerade would be a figment of my imagination.

  “You’ve come far,” it said, ignoring my question. “I’ll take you farther.”

  “Are you really here?” I asked.

  “Very much so.”

  “Will you bring me back?”

  “Could anyone take you from Mwita?”

  “No,” I said. “Where will you take me?” I was just talking now. Not really interested in the answers. I needed something to keep me calm as the lizard began to grow and change colors.

  “I will take you where you need to go,” she said, her voice becoming more sonorous and full as she grew. It began to sound like three of the same voice in one. “I’ll show you what you need to see, Onyesonwu.”

  So she knew me. I narrowed my eyes. “What do you know of my fate?” I asked.

  “I know what you know.”

  “What of my biological father?”

  “That he is an evil, evil man.”

  I forgot the rest of my questions. I forgot everything. Before me stood what I could only call a Kponyungo, a firespitter. The size of four camels, it was the brilliant color of every shade of fire. Its body was wiry and strong like a snake’s, its large round head carried long coiling horns and a magnificent jaw full of sharp teeth. Its eyes were like small suns. It sweat a thin smoke and smelled like roasting sand and steam.

  When my mother and I were nomads, during the hottest parts of the day we’d sit in our tent and she’d tell me stories about these creatures. “Kponyungo like to befriend travelers,” she said. “They come to life during the hottest part of the day just like now. They rise from the salt of long dead oceans. If one befriends you, you will never be alone.”

  My mother was one of the only people I knew who spoke of oceans as if they’d truly existed. She always told me stories about them when something scared me, like the sight of a rotting camel or when the sky grew too cloudy. To her, Kponyungo were kind, majestic beings. But oftentimes, encountering something in real life is not the same as encountering it in stories. Like now.

  I had no words. I knew it was here. Standing before me, as everyone in Ssolu went about their business a half mile away. Passersby may have noticed me standing there staring but they wouldn’t have stopped. I was untouchable to them, I was strange, a sorceress, even if they did like me. Could they see the Kponyungo standing before me? Maybe. Maybe not. If they could, maybe it was custom to leave me to my fate.

  I felt a now familiar sensation, a sort of detachment and then deep mobility. I was going “away” again. This time it was happening close to a town of people, without Mwita at my side. I was all alone and this creature was taking me. As I floated upward, the Kponyungo flew beside me. I could feel its heat.

  “A creature like myself is not so different from a bird,” she said in her stran
ge voice. “Change yourself.”

  Could I change myself when I was “traveling” like this? I’d never considered it. But she was correct. I’d changed myself into a lizard once and it was not so different from changing into a sparrow or even a vulture. I reached out to touch the Kponyungo’s rough skin. I quickly pulled my hand back, suddenly afraid.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “Are you . . . are you hot?”

  “Find out,” she said. Her face didn’t express it but I knew she was amused. I slowly reached out and touched a scale. I actually heard and smelled my skin sizzle.

  “Ah!” I yelped, shaking my hand. Still, she took me higher and higher. We were fifty feet above Ssolu now. “Am I . . . ?” I looked at my hand. It didn’t look burned, nor did it hurt as much as it should have.

  “You are you even when in wilderness,” she said. “But your own abilities and mine protect us.”

  “Can I die like this?”

  “Yes, in a way,” she said. “But you won’t,” she said at the same time that I said, “But I won’t.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled. I reached out again. This time I endured the pain, the sound and smell of my skin burning. I cracked off one of her scales. Smoke rose from my hand and I wanted to scream but even through the smoke I could see that I was unharmed.

  Because we were ascending higher and higher, it was hard to concentrate. Still, with the scale in hand, changing into a Kponyungo was only mildly difficult. I stretched my new sleek body, enjoying the heat of myself. I resisted the strong urge to swiftly fly downward, burrow deep into the sand, and heat my body so intensely that the sand melted into glass. I laughed to myself. Even if I’d wanted to, I could not. I wasn’t the one controlling this journey, the Kponyungo was. I wondered if this was also why I couldn’t grow my body as big as hers. I could only stretch to about three-fourths her size.

  “Well done,” she said when I finished. “Now let me take you to a place you have never seen before.”

  We zoomed toward the storm wall and plunged into it. We came out the other side in less than a second. The position of the sun told me that we were flying west. We flew in a half circle and headed east. “There is Papa Shee,” she said, a minute later.