CHAPTER 54
THERE IS A PORTION OF THE GREAT BOOK that most versions exclude. The Lost Papers. Aro had a copy of them. The Lost Papers go into detail about how the Okeke, during their centuries festering in the darkness, were mad scientists. The Lost Papers discuss how they invented the old technologies like computers, capture stations, and portables. They invented ways to duplicate themselves and keep themselves young until they died. They made food grow on dead land, they cured all diseases. In the darkness, the amazing Okeke brimmed with wild creativity.
Okeke familiar with the Lost Papers are embarrassed by them. Nurus like to cite them whenever they want to point out how fundamentally flawed Okeke are. During the dark times, the Okeke may have been problematic, but now they were worse off.
A sad miserable unthinking lot, I thought, as we approached the first of many villages just before the border of the Seven Rivers Kingdom. I could understand how they felt. Only a few days ago I had felt the same way. Hopeless beyond hopeless. If we had not found that cave of corpses, spiders, and moldering computers, I probably would have wanted to join them.
These villages consisted of Okeke who were too afraid to fight or flee. They were shifty-eyed people who’d be easily exterminated when my father came east with his army. They walked with their heads down, afraid of their own shadows. They grew sad limp onions and tomatoes in soil brought from the riverside. In the front and back of their clay brick huts, they cultivated a waxy maroon plant which they dried and smoked to make themselves forget. It made their eyes red, their teeth brown, their skin smell like feces, and had no nutritional value. Of course, of all things, this weed grew easily in the ground here.
The children had large bellies and stunned faces. Mangy dogs trotted about looking as pathetic as the people; we saw one making a meal of its feces. And once in a while, when the wind shifted, I could hear screaming in the distance. These villages had no names. It was sickening.
Everyone, even the children, wore a dangling earring with black and blue beads in the upper part of their left ear. It was the only hint of culture and beauty that these people possessed.
We got past the first cluster of huts unnoticed. Around us, Okeke people dully trudged about, argued, slept in the roads, or wept. We saw men with missing limbs, some of them lay against huts, the wounds festering. Near death, or dead. I saw a pregnant woman laughing hysterically to herself as she sat in front of her hut pushing dirt into a mound. My hands itched and I felt jittery.
“How do you feel, Onyesonwu?” Mwita asked, as soon as we were past the last hut. A half mile away was another village.
“The urge isn’t so strong here,” I said. “I don’t think these people want healing.”
“Can’t we go around these places?” Luyu asked.
I just shook my head, offering no explanation. I didn’t have one. The next group of huts was in the same condition. Sad, sad people. But this place was at the bottom of a hill and we were in full view as we walked down it. As we passed the first hut an old woman with many unhealed cuts on her face stopped and stared at me. She looked at Mwita and her face pulled into a wide toothless grin. Then the woman’s grin decreased. “But where are the rest of you?” she asked.
We looked at each other.
“You,” the woman said pointing at me. I backed away. “You cover your face but I know. Oh, I know.” The she turned and shouted. “Ooooonyesonwuuuuuuu!”
I stepped back and crouched, ready to fight. Mwita grabbed and pulled me to him. Luyu ran in front of me, pulling out a knife. They came running from everywhere. Dark faces. Wounded souls. Wearing raggedy rapas and torn pants. As they gathered so did the smell of blood, urine, pus, and sweat.
“She is here, o! ”
“The girl who will end the slaughter?”
“The woman whispered the truth,” the old woman continued. “Come and see, come and see! Oooooooonyesonwuuuuuuu!!! Ewu, Ewu, Ewu!”
We were surrounded.
“Take it off,” the old woman said, standing before me. “Let us see your face.”
I glanced at Mwita. His face told me nothing. My hands itched. I removed my veil and a gasp flew through the crowd. “Ewu, Ewu, Ewu!” they chanted. A group of men to my right lurched forward.
“Ah ah!” the old woman shouted, holding them back. “We aren’t finished yet! The General should be afraid now! Ha! His match is here!”
“That one there,” a woman said, moving forward, pointing at Mwita. The side of her face was swollen and she was very pregnant. “He’s her husband. Isn’t that what the woman said? That Onyesonwu would come and we would see the truest love? What can be truer than two Ewu who can love each other? Who are able to love?”
“Shut up, Nuru concubine, whore ready to burst with human rot,” a man suddenly spat. “We should hang you and cut out the evil growing in you!”
People quieted. Then several shouted agreement and the crowd lurched this way and that.
I pushed Mwita and Luyu aside and stepped toward the voice. Everyone in front of me jumped back, including the old woman. “Who just spoke!” I shouted. “Come up here. Show yourself!”
Silence. But he was pushed forward. A man of about thirty, maybe older, maybe younger. I couldn’t tell because half his face was destroyed. He looked me up and down. “You’re an Okeke woman’s curse. May Ani help your mother by taking your life.”
My entire body tightened. Mwita grabbed my hand. “Control yourself,” he said into my ear.
I swallowed my instinct to tear off what remained of the man’s head. My voice shook as I spoke. “What’s your story?”
“I come from over there,” he said, pointing west. “They’re at it again and this time they’ll finish us. Five of them raped my wife. Then they slit me up like this. Instead of finishing me off, they let me and my wife go. Laughing, they said they’ll catch up with me soon enough. Later I learned my wife was carrying one of them. One of you. I killed her and the evil thing growing inside her. The thing in her looked wrong even in death.”
He stepped closer. “We are nothing in the face of the General. Listen to me everyone,” he said raising his hands high and turning to the crowd. “We are at the end of our days. Look at us now, looking to this spawn of evil to save us! We should . . .”
I snatched my arm from Mwita, grabbed the man’s hand with my left hand and held tight. He fought, gnashed his teeth, cursed. Not once did he try to hurt me, though. I concentrated on what I was feeling. This was not the same as when I brought things back to life. I was taking and taking and taking, as a worm eats away rotten flesh from a rotting but alive leg. It felt itchy, painful, and . . . amazing.
“Move . . . everyone . . . back,” I muttered through gritted teeth.
“Back, back! Move!” Mwita shouted, pushing people.
Luyu did the same. “If you value your lives!” she shouted. “Move back!”
I relaxed my body, kneeling down as the man crumbled to the ground. Then I let go and held my breath. When nothing happened, I let it out. “Mwita,” I said weakly, holding out my arm. He helped me stand. The people crowded back in to look at the man. A woman knelt beside him and touched his healed face. He sat up.
Silence.
“See how Oduwu can smile now?” a woman said. “I’ve never seen him smile.”
More whispers as Oduwu slowly stood up. He looked at me and whispered, “Thank you.” A man let Oduwu lean on him and they began to walk away.
“She’s come,” someone else said. “And the General will run.” Everyone started cheering.
They crowded around me and I gave what I could. If I had tried to heal so many people, men, women, children, of disease, anguish, fear, wounds . . . if I had tried even a fraction of what I did now before what happened with the Red People, I’d have died. Every single one who came to me in those hours, I made better. Yes, I was a different woman from the one who struck the people of Papa Shee blind. But I will never regret what I did to those people because of what they did to Bi
nta.
Mwita concocted herbal medicines for people and checked pregnant women’s bellies to make sure all was well. Even Luyu helped, sitting with the healed and telling stories of our journey. These people were quite prepared to spread the word of the Sorceress Onyesonwu, the Healer Mwita and the Lovely Luyu of the Eastern Exiles.
A man ran up to me as we left. He was whole but limped severely as he walked. He didn’t ask me to heal him. I didn’t offer. “That way,” he said, pointing west. “If you are that woman, they have started again in the corn villages. Gadi is next, the way it looks.”
We camped in a patch of dry naked land not far from Gadi.
“They said an Okeke woman who never ate but looked well fed has been going around ‘whispering the news,’” Luyu said, as we sat in the dark. “She predicts an Ewu sorceress will end their suffering.” It was cold but we didn’t want to attract attention by building a rock fire. “They said she spoke softly and had a strange dialect.”
“My mother!” I said. I paused. “They’d have killed us, otherwise.” My mother was going alu, sending herself here and telling the Okeke about me, to expect me and be glad. Aro truly was teaching her, then.
We were silent for a moment, thinking about this. From nearby an owl hooted.
“They’re so wounded,” Luyu said. “But can you blame them?”
“Yes,” Mwita said.
I agreed with Mwita.
“They kept talking about the General,” Luyu said. “They said he’s the one behind all this, at least in the last ten years. They call him the Council’s Broom because he is in charge of cleaning out the Okeke.”
“How successful he’s been since I was his student,” Mwita said bitterly. “I don’t even understand why he took me on if he would do something like this.”
“People change,” Luyu said.
Mwita shook his head. “He’s always hated anything Okeke.”
“Maybe his hate wasn’t so big back then,” Luyu said.
“It was big enough, years before, to rape my mother,” I said. “The way they . . . never got tired. Daib must have worked some sort of juju on them all.”
“Look at the Vah people,” Luyu said. “They’re a people who openly embrace juju. Eyess was born into a community that thought this way, so though she won’t ever be a sorcerer, she doesn’t fear sorcery. Now see Daib, born and raised in Durfa where all he sees and learns are that the Okeke are slaves and should be treated worse than camels.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “What of his mother, Bisi? She was born and raised in Durfa, too. Yet, she helped Okeke people escape.”
“That’s true,” Luyu said frowning. “And he was taught by Sola.”
“Some people are just born evil,” Mwita said.
“But he wasn’t always that way,” Luyu said. “Remember what Sola said?”
“I don’t care about any of this,” Mwita said, his hands becoming tight fists. “All that matters is what he is now and the fact that he needs to be stopped.”
Luyu and I had to agree with that.
That night I again had the dream of being on that island and watching Mwita fly away. I woke up and looked at him sleeping beside me. I patted his face until he woke up. I didn’t have to ask him for what I wanted. He gave it with pleasure.
In the morning, when I came out of our tent, I almost fell over all the baskets. Baskets of deformed tomatoes, grainy salt, a bottle of perfume, oils, boiled lizard eggs, and other things. “They gave what they could,” Luyu said. Someone must have given an eye pencil, for she’d lined her eyes with bright blue and penciled in a blue mole on her cheek. She’d also put on two green beaded bracelets, one for each wrist. I picked up the bottle of oil and sniffed it. It smelled strongly of cactus flowers. I rubbed some on my neck and went to our capture station. I flipped it on.
“I hope this doesn’t attract anyone,” I said.
“It probably will,” Luyu said. “But everyone around here, maybe even in the Seven Rivers towns, knows about what you did yesterday. One version or another.”
I nodded, watching the bag fill with cool water. “Is that a bad thing?”
Luyu shrugged. “It’s the least of our worries. Plus your mother already got the ball rolling.”
CHAPTER 55
THE KINGDOM OF THE SEVEN RIVERS and its seven large towns, Chassa, Durfa, Suntown, Sahara, Ronsi, Wa-wa, and Zin, very poetic names for such a corrupted place. Each hugs a river and all the rivers meet in the center to make a large lake, like a spider with a missing limb. The lake had no name because no one knew what lived at its bottom. Back in Jwahir, no one would believe such a body of water was possible. Durfa, my father’s town, sits closest to this mysterious lake. According to Luyu’s map, it was the first Seven Rivers town we’d intersect.
The borders of the kingdom were not blocked off by walls or juju, nor were they definite. You knew you were in it when you were in it. You became immediately aware of the scrutiny, the eyes. Not by soldiers or any of that sort, but by the Nuru people. Officials patrolled the area, but the people policed themselves.
There once were small Okeke villages between the towns and along the rivers. When we got there, these villages were nearly empty. The few remaining Okeke were being driven out. On the west side of the Seven Rivers, all these villages had been taken over. The slow exodus was on the eastern side, just east of Chassa and Durfa, the two wealthiest, most prestigious towns. These towns ironically had the greatest need for Okeke labor. With the Okeke gone, Nuru laborers from the poorer towns like Zin and Ronsi would do the work.
We heard what was happening before we saw it because we had to walk up a hill. Gadi, the village of Aro’s birth, was being destroyed. We peaked above the dry grass and saw terrible things. To our right, a woman was fighting two Nuru men who kicked her and tore at her garments. The same thing was happening to the left. There was a loud crack and an Okeke man running by fell. A Nuru and Okeke man rolled on the ground fighting. It was the Nurus in control of things here. That was clear.
We looked at each other, eyes wide, nostrils flared, mouths open.
We dropped all that we carried and ran into the chaos. Yes, even Luyu. There are gaps in my memory of what happened next. I remember Mwita running and a Nuru man pointing a gun at his back. I threw myself on the man. He dropped his gun. He tried to get ahold of me. I kicked back, pushing myself into the wilderness like it was the water. I could see him swiping at where my own body had been. Mwita ran off. I leaped after him, still in the wilderness. So that man, who would have killed Mwita, I did not kill.
Mwita and I had discussed how we would never flat out succumb to the violence people, Nuru and Okeke alike, believed Ewu were prone to by nature. Here, we went against all of that. We became exactly what people believed we were. But our reasons for using violence were not rooted in being Ewu. And Luyu shared that same purpose. She was a pure Okeke woman of the most docile blood according to the Great Book.
I remember giving my clothes to Mwita and then changing and shifting into things, growing claws and tiger’s teeth. I remember weaving between the physical world and the wilderness as if they were land and water. I knocked men off women, their penises still erect and slick with blood and wetness. I fought men with knives and guns. There were many Nuru soldiers and few Okeke ones, I fought both, helping whoever was unarmed. I took bullets into myself, expelled them, and moved on. I closed up my own stab and bite wounds. I smelled blood, sweat, semen, saliva, tears, urine, feces, sand, and smoke with the nostrils of various beasts. That is the little I remember.
We didn’t stop what was happening there but we allowed several Okeke to escape. And I pushed to the ground and healed as many Nuru people as I could subdue. Those men then cowered in corners, appalled at what they’d done only moments ago. In a few minutes, they would begin to help the wounded, Nuru and Okeke. They would put out the fires. Then they would try to stop those other Nurus who were happily killing Okekes. And then these healed Nurus would be killed
by their own blood-crazed people.
When I came back to myself I was pulling Luyu into a hut. Its thatch roof was burning. Moments later, Mwita threw himself in with us. He gave me my clothes and I quickly dressed. Both he and Luyu carried guns. Not far ahead, it continued—the screaming, fighting, killing. Breathing heavily, we looked at each other.
“We can’t stop this,” Mwita finally said.
“We have to stop this,” Luyu said at the same time.
I closed my eyes and sighed.
From nearby a man shouted and another man screamed. The fire on the roof above us was spreading. “Once we find Daib, I think we’ll know what to do,” I said.
From then on, we snuck about. It was hard to do. The Nurus had suppressed the weak rebellion and now they were simply torturing people. The screeching mixed with the laughter and grunts of the torturers made my stomach turn. But somehow we got past it all and found ourselves faced with a spectacular sight.
Just behind the last group of huts were tall green stalks of corn. Hundreds and hundreds of them, a whole field of them. It was nothing nearly as breathtaking as the place my mother had shown me but it was still amazing to my desert-born eyes. My mother grew corn when we were in the desert and there were gardens of it in Jwahir but never this much. A breeze sent a whisper through the plants. It was a lovely sound. It sounded like peace, growth, bounty, and that hint of hope. Each plant was heavy with perfect ears of corn, ready to harvest. What an opportune time for the Nurus swoop in. The planning of General Daib, no doubt.
We’d left all of our travel things behind. Luckily, Luyu kept her portable in her pocket. We used its map to make our way through the cornfield. Durfa was on the other side. We moved quickly and stopped only once to yank and eat some corn. After walking for a half hour, we heard voices. We dropped down.
“I’ll go see,” I said, shrugging my clothes off.
Mwita took my arm. “Be careful,” he said. “It’ll be hard to locate us in this field.”