“Fine,” Sunny said. “We take a kabu kabu or danfo.” She sat up straighter. “I have the marbles.”
“Blue?” Sasha asked, looking pleased.
Sunny nodded. The juju required blue marbles to work.
“You’ve read it well,” Sasha said. “I’m impressed.”
“In the morning?” Orlu asked.
“People will be too tired from celebrating to notice us,” Sunny said. “We leave at seven A.M.” She paused, looking at all of them. “Sound right?”
They all agreed.
“Does anyone need to read more of this?” Sasha asked, holding up the book.
Orlu frowned. “That book is dangerous.”
Sasha laughed. “I know. It’s awesome.”
Orlu sucked his teeth and shook his head in disgust.
“And if I’d never bought it, where would we be in all this?” Sasha said.
“You should give it to Sunny,” Orlu said.
Sasha shrugged and handed it over. “I’ve read it three times, anyway. Plus, it feels like holding a million scratchy spiders.” He tapped on the side of his head. “Got it all up here.”
“Me too,” Chichi added. They slapped and shook hands, snapping each other’s fingers.
“I wouldn’t keep it too close when you go to bed,” Sasha said.
Sunny took the book and asked, “Why?” She shivered at its roughness and immediately glanced around her room, searching for spiders hiding in the corners. She’d seen a large wall spider in the room downstairs. She was reminded of one of the first lines in Udide’s Book of Shadows: “Even in palaces, there are spiders.”
“Just trust me,” Sasha said.
“Oookay,” Sunny said, putting the book on one of her cabinets. “So, what do we tell my brother?”
“I’ll handle that,” Chichi said.
Sasha groaned and got up. “On that note, I’m out of here. I’m going to explore around this edifice of excessive extravagance. If my boys from the States saw this place, their eyes would pop out. I had a friend ask me just before I came here if Africans have schools! He was a Lamb, sure, but he was a black dude, like me. Black folks be so ignorant sometimes.”
“Overconsumption is a universal human trait,” Orlu pointed out. “And so is ignorance.”
“Yeah, but you’ve got to admit, black Americans, no, blacks of the world are into self-hate more than any other group of people. I know what I had to deal with when I was in the Chi. If it weren’t for me being a Leopard, I’d have grown up as ignorant as anyone else. Leopard People read books by everybody and everything. We look outside and inside. But you have to be secure with yourself to do either . . .” He shook his head. “It’s too hard to explain. Sunny, you know some of what I mean.”
Sunny nodded. But her mind was not on the problems of the black African diaspora. She was thinking about what it was going to be like to meet with a giant sentient spider who was thousands, maybe millions, of years old while she was impaired by doubling.
Chukwu and Adebayo went out to the clubs to celebrate the New Year. The four of them opted to stay in. Sunny and Chichi cooked up an elaborate meal of fried plantain, jollof rice, egusi soup and garri, fried chicken, and pepper soup heavy with fish (there were no tainted peppers, which was a shame). There was so much food in the house that what they’d cooked up would probably not even be missed. The business of cooking took Sunny’s mind off what lay ahead, and she found herself laughing and joking with Chichi. When they finished, exhausted from cooking and wanting privacy, Chichi and Sunny sat down to eat before presenting the food to the others.
“Damn, this is good,” Chichi said, savoring a spoonful of pepper soup.
Sunny took a bite out of a long slice of fried plantain. “Best dinner ever.”
They ate for a while, Sunny’s words lingering between them. Sunny knew they were both thinking the same thing, neither daring to speak those thoughts aloud: Last supper.
“I can’t imagine this thing that’s happened to you,” Chichi suddenly said.
Sunny stopped eating. “You don’t have to.”
Chichi took a gulp from her glass of orange Fanta. “I mean, no, I don’t mean it like that.” She shook her head. “You’re just full of surprises, Sunny.”
“You’re telling me,” she muttered.
“You know you should be dead, right?”
Sunny slammed her fork down and looked at her friend. “What are . . .”
Chichi put both of her hands up, a grin on her face. “Ah-ah, biko-nu, don’t kill me, o. I’m telling you, you are so strong and amazing, Sunny. And you don’t even know it.” She laughed, clapping Sunny on the back. “Eat your plantain and keep on surprising everyone.”
Sunny bit into her plantain and as she did, she could feel Anyanwu’s presence. Not like the stirring of herself, as Chichi would have felt her spirit face, but as the shifting of someone outside herself, yet who was herself. And for a moment, she saw through two sets of eyes. This had happened once before, about a week ago when she’d woken up after a good sleep. She’d lain in her bed staring at her room. And this had gotten her thinking about her cultural halves, American and Nigerian, how she’d always felt like two people in one. Then she’d wondered how Anyanwu felt about the American part of her. And then she knew for a moment because she was Anyanwu, but with the broken bond, it felt like Anyanwu was separate from her.
Now it wasn’t so consuming because both she and Anyanwu were angry at Chichi for the same reason.
Chichi was watching her closely, and now Chichi laughed. “I see you! That’s because of the doubling. Wow. I look in your eyes and see you both.” She chuckled some more, picked a piece of fish from her soup, and ate it. “Full of surprises.”
When the countdown began, Sunny was so stuffed with food that all she wanted to do was sleep.
But Chichi had found a bottle of wine and wine glasses, and before Sunny knew it, she was carrying her first glass of wine. They all screamed “Happy New Year” and clinked glasses when the time came. Chichi and Sasha shared a prolonged, nearly obscene, kiss.
“Happy New Year,” Orlu said to Sunny, giving her a tight hug and planting a third kiss directly on her lips. It tasted like red wine.
“Happy New Year, Orlu,” Sunny said, looking into his eyes. There was a hint of fear in them, and she wondered if, like Chichi, he saw Anyanwu in her eyes. However, she ignored this as she took another sip of wine. It tasted both awful and wonderful.
“Here’s to saving the world,” Sasha said. They all clinked their glasses again and sipped.
And surviving tomorrow, Sunny thought. She sipped again.
Sasha put on some rap music that Sunny wasn’t familiar with. It was in the Ghanaian language of Twi. Both Sasha and Chichi started getting down, and even Orlu smiled and laughed, doing a few moves himself.
“Ah-ah, look at Orlu,” Chichi shouted. “That’s nice!” She imitated his steps and soon all three of them were doing Orlu’s dance. Sunny felt a little dizzy from her wine, so she sat down, enjoying the moment with her closest friends. With her peripheral vision she saw a hint of a yellow figure sitting close beside her. “Happy New Year, Anyanwu,” she whispered. The yellow intensified for a moment and then was gone. But always there, Sunny thought, taking another gulp of wine.
Later, after a brief phone call to her relieved parents and a ten-minute-long text message exchange with Ugonna, she stepped out onto her balcony. “Wow,” she whispered, grasping the doorway. The railing was peopled with over thirty green and orange lizards. They looked at her, but not one ran away. She sat on the balcony floor and flipped through the Book of Shadows for a few minutes, but she was too tired to read.
When she went to bed, she placed the book on the other side of the room near her backpack. She must not have put the book far enough away because her dreams were full of scuttling and cart
wheeling spiders. She stood, a glowing yellow figure, in a jungle that rippled and heaved with them—red ones, black ones, green ones, small ones, and an enormous one that waited for her in the deepest leafy darkness.
25
THE JUNGLE
When the rickety dented red kabu kabu stopped, the four of them piled in. Within seconds, five other guys tried to get in, too.
“Hey, no room!” Sasha said, kicking at a guy who tried to squeeze in. He shoved him out and slammed the door just in time. The car chugged off. “Damn, where are those guys going at this hour?”
“Home,” the driver said, laughing.
“Oh,” Sasha said. “Right.”
“Where na wan’ go?” the driver asked them.
“Ajegunle Market, please,” Sunny said.
“Shey you know e close now,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re just meeting someone around there.”
The drive took a half hour because of traffic. And by the time they got there, Sunny felt light-headed from the exhaust that wafted in through the car’s floor. It was so old and rusted that you could even see the road through large holes.
“I’ll pay,” Orlu said when they arrived at the market. Judging from the grin and number of thank-yous the driver gave, Orlu had tipped him well.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Sasha said. “I’ve got plenty of cash.”
“It’s New Year’s Day,” Orlu said. “Plus, today is important. Don’t worry about it.”
The large market was a series of wooden dividers, shacks, benches, and stalls. All were vacant. It was like a ghost town. “Let’s walk in a bit,” Orlu said.
“Na wao,” Chichi said, running a hand over a bench as they passed it. “I have never seen this place empty.”
“I’ll bet this is when the ghosts come to do business,” Sasha said.
“I think the ghosts do business all the time,” Chichi said. “They’re not afraid of the living. Our world is nothing but a lesser version of this Osisi place we are trying to get to.”
“True that,” Sasha said. “Back in the States, I’ve got an uncle in Atlanta who says there’s a place near a local farmers’ market where once a year at midnight a spirit market opens and the only people who can go are old folks. If you’re not old and you go, you come back all mentally messed up or mute or something.”
“They have those here, too,” Orlu said. “There’s one in Ikare that my great-grandfather has been to twice.”
“What does he buy there?” Sasha asked.
Sunny tuned out their chatter. She felt ill. The marbles were cool in her sweaty hand, but this didn’t help. She didn’t like spiders, for one thing. But that wasn’t the worst of it. What if they succeeded in convincing Udide to weave them this flying grasscutter creature? What if the grasscutter took them to Osisi? What was waiting for her there?
Everyone agreed that it was a wilderling that had shown her the vision in the candle. But everyone also agreed that there was no way to tell if that wilderling was friend or foe. The wilderling’s intentions in showing her the future were unclear. Was this the same with the dreams? What if this was all a trap?!
Her slick hands fumbled with the marbles. “What am I doing here?” she whispered. “Why am I doing this? I could just go home.”
But she continued to lead the way, looking side to side as they walked through the empty market. She felt Anyanwu close and intimate, and this was comforting. They came to a large group of stalls covered by sheets of corrugated tin to make one big roof. It was cool in the shade. They stopped, quiet. The breeze blew and a small bird flew by cheeping. It flew through a ray of light, leaving a wake of dust. Sunny sneezed hard.
“There’s . . .” Orlu stepped forward and held up his hands.
“Is there something to undo?” Chichi asked him.
“No,” he said. “But . . . this part of the market . . . Leopard People sell here.”
Sunny nodded, rubbing her nose. “Juju powder, I’ll bet.”
They walked on for another few minutes beneath the tin roof. “This place just goes on and on,” Sunny said, her voice nasally from her stuffed nose. “It didn’t look this big from the outside.”
Sasha chuckled and shook his head. “Of course it didn’t. This is a dark market. They can’t be seen from the outside.”
“Dark market?”
“Leopard market,” he said. “They’re common. The ones in the U.S. are actual buildings that move to a different place every month. They’re nothing like the ones here. The prices are set and things are just . . . sterile.”
“Dark markets are like the market in Leopard Knocks but nestled on Lamb grounds,” Chichi added. “This one doesn’t move around, but some other ones in Nigeria do. This one blends with the normal market, but you can only walk into it if you are Leopard.”
“Well, once in a while a Lamb will walk in,” Orlu said. “Usually sensitive Lambs. Those people are never the same afterward.” He just shook his head. “Nothing is perfect or absolute.”
“Yeah, except Library Council rules,” Sunny said.
As they walked, she could feel the hairs on her arm stand up. Only the rays of light that crept between the roof’s tin sheets lit their way. Nothing looked any different, not to her eyes. However, Sunny was sure there were . . . things around them. Small shadows in the corners kept moving right outside of her peripheral vision.
“Can we at least get somewhere?” Chichi impatiently said after another five minutes of walking.
Sunny looked back and indeed she could see the way they’d come in, just barely.
“Did you see the size of that ghost hopper?” Sasha asked.
“The one standing in that sun beam?” Orlu asked.
“Had to be over a foot long,” Sasha said.
“Wonder what it sounds like when it sings,” Orlu said.
“It probably sounds like a factory,” Sasha said. “The bigger they are, the worse . . .”
“Oh, screw it.” Sunny dropped to her knees. “I can’t take it anymore. Let’s just try it here.” She rolled the marbles like small bowling balls, and they tumbled smoothly over the dirt ground. “Come on,” Sunny said, jogging after them. They followed the marbles, which had begun to dimly—then strongly—glow light blue.
They ran and ran. Passing wooden booths, tables, medians, and stands. All empty. The marbles rolled straight ahead, maintaining their speed. Soon the corrugated roof ended, and they were in bright sunshine. They passed more empty tables, but there weren’t as many. There was a lot more space with even trees growing between the tables. Then there were no tables and only a dirt path that ran through a back alley. Sunny could hear the hustle and bustle of the Lagos streets not far away.
When the dirt path began to slope downward, the marbles rolled slower. They decelerated to a fast walk. Then a slow walk. Then the marbles stopped completely. Sunny bent down and picked them up, and they continued to glow brightly in her hand.
They were about eight and a half feet below ground level, red dirt overrun with green creeping plants on each side. Above and to the left was the side of a tall office building and to the right was a busy expressway with people walking along the sides. Sunny could make out people in the office building. A man looked out the window but he didn’t look down at them. And on the expressway, people walked on the narrow sidewalk without so much as a glance below.
This was yet another Leopard space hidden in plain sight. Sunny blew her nose and then inhaled through a somewhat unclogged nose. If direct juju was involved, it wasn’t with the use of powder, at least not according to her nose.
“Oh God,” she whispered.
The path descended at a steadier, sharper decline a few feet ahead. And this led right down into what could only be Udide’s lair. The cave looked like the yawning cavernous mouth of a great beast of blac
k jagged rock. And it fit so perfectly into the ground that Sunny could only accept the fact that the cave had probably been there before Udide made it one of her many homes. Maybe it had always been there. Yet only a small part of the city’s population can even see it, Sunny thought. According to Sugar Cream, only .05 percent of humanity was Leopard People.
“Might as well keep going now,” Chichi said. “She certainly knows we’re coming.”
She’s known for a long time, Sunny heard Anyanwu say in her head. Sunny felt a shiver go up her spine as she remembered her dream. Of all things, why a spider? Why, why, why? She imagined Udide scrambling out of the cave lightning fast, right at them, her movements like thunder. Udide wasn’t just a spider; she was one of the Great Ones. She was an ultimate storyteller. She was a weaver. And she was a really excellent writer. Sunny had read more of Udide’s Book of Shadows than its numerous spells that Sasha and Chichi were obsessed with. Udide wrote short stories, too. Sunny had been most fond of those. There was one in particular about an alien invasion in Lagos that she especially enjoyed. It was set in the past, a few years back, and it was funny like a Nollywood comedy . . . with aliens.
Yes, Udide was not just some irrational arachnid that ate flies and looked horrifying. The thought that she was a creature that could be spoken to and possibly negotiated with set Sunny at ease a bit. At least she could beg for her life, if it came to that. She felt Anyanwu nearby bristle at the thought.
The closer they got to the cave the more strongly Sunny could smell it. Smoky, acrid, chemical. Sunny frowned. “Like burning houses,” she whispered. She’d seen a house go up in flames once in New York not far from their townhouse. Sunny had only been five years old when she’d stood in the crowd a block away holding her mother’s hand. However, she would never forget the smell. She shivered at the memory. “Why does it smell like burning houses?”
“What else is a giant spider going to smell like?” Sasha asked. He tried to smile, but it was clear that even he was afraid.
When they got to the opening of the cave, the smell was almost like inhaling smoke itself. The marbles in Sunny’s hands lit everything up. The edges of the cave were covered with thick webbing and when Sunny looked closely she could see that the webbing was peopled with tiny black spiders and dead insects wrapped in more white webbing. This was going to be much worse than sitting on the floor of Sugar Cream’s office.