He chuckled to himself. The essay had originally been in a language that was now lost, and this was probably the cause of the convoluted nature of the writing. However, if he read it slowly, it made perfect sense. He’d been fascinated by the notion stated in the essay, all the students had. Considering the fact that almost all the authors of the few books and essays and other pieces of literature they had were dead, the concept allowed for a lot of understanding.
His teacher had proudly referred to the “Author is Dead” essay whenever anyone asked, “What was the author thinking when he wrote this?” Once the author wrote the story, the author became irrelevant. The author was dead. In The Book of Phoenix, this was certainly the case. Phoenix was dead. The story was alive, having separated from Phoenix as a child separated from her or his dying mother at birth. It was up to the reader to interpret what the story really was about. And in this case, the only reader was Sunuteel.
“Wife,” Sunuteel wrote in a message. “I’m coming home.”
He sent the message and then went back to his blanket near the cave entrance. He plopped down, with a bone weary sigh. He felt as if he’d travelled a thousand miles. In a way he had. His portable buzzed viciously and he froze. His portable always buzzed and announced the arrival of a message from his wife in a soft female voice that reminded him of his third daughter. However, this was just a buzz, and it was a sharp buzz that he’d never felt before. He nearly threw the portable. He looked at it, and then he did throw it. It landed noisily in the sand.
For the first time in his entire adult life, he was afraid of being alone in the desert. His hand screamed from the sudden heat his portable let out, and he felt the weight of his age and his lack of age simultaneously. He was old, and he was too young. He was vulnerable. He was alone. He rubbed his painful hands; even their toughness was no protection from the burn.
His portable had been hot to the touch and on the screen, flames of orange, yellow, black, and red churned and broiled. It was impossible for his portable to feel that hot and still work.
“Sunuteel!”
The harsh voice shot from his portable, vicious and sharp. But it sounded like the speaker was smiling. No one but his wife’s voice had ever spoken through his portable. Not his children’s, not his friend’s. His portable was connected to only one network, his wife’s. Yet, the voice of a dead woman was speaking to him through the device.
“Impossible,” he muttered. Tears ran down his cheeks and urine ran down his inner thighs.
“I know what you think,” she said. “You can rewrite a story, but once it is written, it lives. Think before you do; your story is written too and so is the map of the consequences. Ani will remember the path, even if it is full of loops and swirls. Think, old man.”
“You’re just a memory,” he said. “You’ve been extracted. You’re nothing now. Leave my portable. It is not yours.”
“Who is writing you?” she asked. But her voice was fading, just as Sunuteel imagined Mmuo’s voice must have faded in Phoenix’s head when her heat burned away his nanomites. Sunuteel blinked, frowning and knowing that all Phoenix spoke had happened. Every last word. And that scared him even more than the thought of her or her ghost or her memory speaking through his portable.
When his portable remained quiet for several minutes, only then did he move. He got up and went to his portable and looked down at it for a very long time. He’d need to use his capture station to pull down condensation from the sky so he could soak his hands. Capture station water was always cool, thankfully.
He nudged the portable with his sandal. He knelt down and poked it with his finger. It was cool, again. He left it there and went to soak his painful hands, wash his fouled legs and change his clothes. He returned an hour later, picked it up, and placed it back into his pocket. Portables were easy enough to find, but he and his wife couldn’t afford another. Plus, he wanted this one. No matter how fearful he was about what it all was and meant, he wanted to be a part of this. To him, it was written.
• • •
Sunuteel returned to his wife a day and half later. When they could let go of each other, and his wife had stopped laughing and crying, and Sunuteel had finished the roasted goat meat and cactus candy his wife fed him, Sunuteel told her much. He spoke of the cave of computers, and her eyes grew wide as they always did when he told her something amazing. He spoke of the transmission, and she gasped and asked for every detail, even the ping sound it made on arrival. And he spoke of the grand audio file he found on his portable, and she grew very quiet, her eyes keen. But he did not tell her The Book of Phoenix.
“Give me thirty days then I will tell you the story.”
His wife looked him in the eye for several moments. Then she said, “Ok.” She had lived for decades as Sunuteel’s wife. She trusted him. And so, at the next market they encountered, Sunuteel spent much of what they had on several reams of rough paper and ten black pens. Then they found a nice place in the desert where five palm trees grew and had survived several ungwa storms, and for thirty days, they did not go anywhere. And Sunuteel listened to the English and Arabic parts of The Great Book and transcribed it to paper. He took in the words and rewrote them. At first the going was slow, but as he fell into the rhythm of the story and the depth of the subject matter, he transcribed faster.
Phoenix had said that the goddess Ani had pulled a star to the earth after she saw what the Okeke were doing. All he had to think about was how the Okeke, his own people, had been so destructive centuries ago. This was not just false history, it was real. He knew this. He didn’t care what Phoenix said. The Okeke were a cursed people.
And this was how the Great Book was rewritten as the story of The Okeke and Why They are Cursed. Sunuteel was old. Of all people, he knew that Phoenix’s story was no longer relevant to the descendants of the survivors of her rage. The past was the past. Not once did he speak aloud the fact that Phoenix, dead or alive or neither, scared him to his very soul. He could not admit that he understood her to be like a god; that to evoke her image in story, over and over, to him, was to tempt fate. Now it was a time for stories that were truer than the truth, stories that spoke to the soul.
Sunuteel did not specifically set out to solidify the Okeke as slave and the Nuru as superior through powerful literature, but what is in one’s heart comes out in one’s stories. Even when he or she’s retelling someone else’s story. Sunuteel was old. He’d lived for a long time understanding his ancestors as slaves.
At the end of the thirty days, Sunuteel told his wife the story of The Book of Phoenix and then she read the version her husband had written. And his wife was pleased. “We should convert it to an audio file that we can copy onto people’s portables. That way those who cannot read can listen and understand it well.”
And this was how The Great Book that went on to be the most read book in the last hundred years was born. Sunuteel’s wife’s deep rich voice lived far beyond the old woman’s physical self. In this way, both Sunuteel and his wife became immortal. The Big Eye would have been mildly impressed.
EPILOGUE
Sola Speaks
Sunuteel abbreviated ideas, chopped stories in half, summarized pain and suffering and joy, and reinterpreted and omitted. He declared the authors dead and did with the information what he would. That silly little essay from so many decades ago didn’t take into consideration that the story could be and very often was shaman, and that the teller was more often than not medium. There are ghosts in the machine and spirits in the books, oral or written. Don’t be naïve enough to believe that the author of The Book of Phoenix is dead. What is death, sha?
I will interject here. I am Sola.
I give you this story from the future. Or maybe I am in the past, today. Presently, I am in your presence. I am a white man; I have and use the privilege of unhindered mobility. I laugh because most of my words are lies. Regardless, I hope this story is a
comfort to you. I pray that it makes you better able to sleep at night.
I don’t really care if you know who I am. Just know that I know more than you. So listen. Sunuteel is as much a victim of his environment as he is a talented man of his own profession. He is old and that opened him to the voice of Phoenix Okore’s story. But he is too young to see beyond his own nose. He cannot contain Phoenix’s tale. He cannot even consider her story, for whenever his mind goes back to it, he sees her ghost which was not a ghost standing in the sand just outside that cave, burning like lightning and staring at him.
Sunuteel is a good man but he is limited. A part of him is also a coward. Why do you think he will never seek The Seed for real answers? Instead, he chose to write fiction.
It was as if he were possessed, for not only did he rewrite and rewrite, he became infected with stories. He wrote stories so tantalizing and addictive that those who heard it were sure that they heard truth. His Great Book, which he claimed was not his, was powerful and delightful. It was full of rules, history and shapes. It reshaped what the people of the deserted lands knew and felt deep in their hearts. They were a wounded people, so these ideas were wounded, too.
The old African man took the bones, blood, and quivering flesh of Phoenix’s book, digested its marrow and defecated a tale of his own. Then he and his oracle of a wife spread this shit far and wide. And their Great Book deformed the lives of many until the one named Onyesonwu came and changed it again. But that is another story.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my mother for her constant unwavering support for the strange career I’ve chosen. I’d like to thank Clarkesworld Magazine for publishing the novelette version of this story. The feedback I received for that story boosted my confidence. Thanks to Subterranean Press for publishing the novella version of this novel, “African Sunrise.” It was that process which brought the talented illustrator Eric Battle into the mix. Thank you to Eric Battle for his stunning illustrations of Phoenix Okore and her world. Stories are best told on many levels and his illustrations are a wonderful voice added to the cacophony that is The Book of Phoenix. I’d like to thank my DAW editor Betsy Wollheim; when she reads my wild flawed complex women characters, she sees superheroines. Many thanks to NASA geologist (and 2001 Clarion Writers Workshop classmate) Thomas Wagner for his knowledge about global warming, especially about what it would take to make New York tropical. Thanks to my agent Don Maass; always there to guide me. Lastly, I’d like to thank my most dedicated beta reader Angel Maynard who read this in its most raw form; her unbiased eyes and honest feedback helped to make this novel burn. Shout out to my daughter Anyaugo, family, and dearest friends.
Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!
Nnedi Okorafor, The Book of Phoenix
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends