“You are amazing, Della!” she said. “I love it!” She laughed again.
Della buzzed proudly and hovered beside it as Sunny snapped a picture with her cell phone. The wasp had grown to be about an inch and a half in length, its skills evolving beyond anything Sunny had ever imagined. Wasp artists that were happy were known to live as long as the human being they bonded to and develop skills rivaled and even surpassed the greatest human workers of the arts. This Batman not only looked as if it would walk away at any time, but it resembled the dark, gritty Batman found in the recent films Ugonna had come to love so much.
Della buzzed happily and flew a gleeful loop the loop into the tiny mud nest it had built in the ceiling corner. Sunny sat on her bed. It was nearly dawn. She got dressed. Today was another day.
8
PEPPER BUGS
The next day was another day, too. A normal day. So was the next, and the next. For two months, things settled for Sunny. Well, it settled as much as it could for a free agent whose mentor was the Head Librarian of Leopard Knocks.
Sunny saw no more octopus-monster-propelled lakes, Mami Wata kept her distance, and reading Nsibidi was feeling more and more natural, though no less sublime. She didn’t speak a word to anyone about her hardening body, and that made things easier, too. Better to just roll with it than try to explain it to anyone.
On the midnight of every Wednesday, she went with Chichi, Sasha, and Orlu for classes with Anatov. Half of these times were spent in his hut reviewing readings, learning and practising new jujus, and being lectured on Leopard etiquette and history. Chichi and Sasha had recently passed to the Mbawkwa level, and Anatov taught them and had them practice higher-level jujus. Orlu and Sunny could only sit and listen. They weren’t even allowed to ask questions during these portions of the lessons.
The other half of their Anatov nights were spent “learning by experience.” Leopard education did not have any vacations or breaks aside from certain religious ones like Eid Al-Fitr, Eid Al-Adha, Christmas, and Easter. For Eid Al-Fitr, while Lamb school was on break, Anatov had all four of them volunteer at a local Muslim orphanage and then work later that night filling potholes along one of the smaller village roads. They’d used a dirt moving and packing juju that Anatov had taught them that very night. For days, Sunny was digging muck from beneath her nails and sweeping dirt from her bedroom.
For tonight’s “learning by experience,” Anatov was sending them into Night Runner Forest to capture four pepper bugs.
“What’s a pepper bug?” Chichi asked, frowning.
Anatov smirked and pointed a long finger at her. “See, you and Sasha consume all the juju, Leopard history, and Leopard culture books, but yet you neglect the field guides. And, Sunny, you haven’t had time to learn about the creatures of the Leopard world, except for those things you encounter personally, like ghost hoppers or the lake and river beasts. Knowledge gaps are no good.”
“I know tungwas and bush souls, too,” she added. “And wasp artists, and all those…”
Anatov waved a hand at her. “You know nothing of the millions of magical creatures of the world. And I have yet to assign you any field guides to read. For instance, you see tungwas all the time, but who can tell me what tungwas actually are?”
Sunny looked at the others, barely able to contain her delight. Even Orlu was silent, an annoyed frown on his face. Being new to the Leopard world, Sunny had been deeply disturbed by the basketball-sized skin covered balls that exploded into a shower of teeth, bones, giblets of meat, and tufts of hair. To calm her mind, she’d done a bit of research on them.
“Even in the Obi Library, there was no concrete information about them,” Sunny announced, smugly looking at Orlu, Sasha, and Chichi. “One: no one really cares to know. Two: some things in the world are just beyond logic and the tungwa is one of them.” She grinned and then added, “All this is according to Sugar Cream. I have to admit, I’m quite satisfied with both of these answers.”
Everyone stared at Sunny, and she stared back at them, her grin fading.
“Well, that was surprising,” Anatov said, after a moment. “Anyway, for now, this exercise will do.” He turned to Orlu. “I trust you know exactly what a pepper bug is.”
Orlu nodded. “And I knew you’d ask us to go and find some.”
“Why’s that?” Anatov asked.
“For a few reasons,” Orlu said. “The cost of tainted peppers just went up in the market. You like your food really hot. And the patch of peppers in your garden out back looks like something just came and ate it all.”
Anatov grunted, irritably. “Yes, there is a small grasscutter that lives around my hut that has a taste for spicy food. Damn rodents are a real nuisance.” He smiled at Orlu. “You are observant. Explain to them along the way.”
Anatov gave Orlu a large metal pot, four spatulas, and oven mitts and then quickly ushered them out the IN door. “Good luck,” he said. “And remember, the entrance to Night Runner Forest closes at dawn. Bring the bugs here before you go home.”
Only Orlu was excited about the assignment. All of them remembered what Night Runner Forest was like as it had nearly killed them last year. But they’d all learned a lot since then. They knew how not to get killed or too badly hurt. Of course, that didn’t make traipsing around in it at 1am any more tolerable.
“They shouldn’t be that hard to find,” Orlu said as Sasha drew the tree symbol on the dirt not far from the Leopard Knocks bridge. Of all of them, Sasha was most used to entering Night Runner Forest because it was where his mentor Kehinde lived. “They are red and have long legs and square-shaped flat bodies that are kind of ridged, sort of like a leaf,” Orlu said. “They look like tiny slabs of really lean beef or salmon.”
“Disgusting,” Chichi said.
Orlu ignored her. “They’re about two inches in diameter, and they glow red in the dark.”
“I’ll bet they sting,” Sunny said, as they stepped onto the path that opened up before them. “Things like that always sting.”
“No, they don’t,” Orlu said. “They burn.”
“Close enough,” Sunny said.
According to Orlu, pepper bugs loved peppers. They would find a wild pepper plant and eat exactly one of the hottest peppers and then start to glow. This glow would nourish the plant and create a bond between the bug and plant. The bug would then inject the plant with a serum that would fortify the plant’s health. So not only did the plant grow large, it grew healthier, too. Then the insect would defecate at the base of the plant and within one night another pepper plant would grow. Then another and another until there was an entire wildly growing pepper patch of at least ten plants. Then the pepper bug would do a glowing shaking dance that would attract a mate and this patch would become their home. Pepper bugs were happy to share peppers with human beings if the human watered the patch regularly and didn’t pick too many peppers.
“Anatov wants to regrow his patch,” Orlu said. “Then he’ll taint the peppers himself so they will grow super hot just the way he likes it.”
Note to self, Sunny thought. Never eat Anatov’s pepper soup.
“Why can’t he do this himself, then?” Sasha asked.
“He’s our teacher, “Chichi snapped. “Students shop for their teachers all the time. Go to the market and everything. Don’t you?”
“Not in America,” Sasha said. “That’s called ass-kissing.”
They trudged through Night Runner Forest, trying hard not to disrupt, step on, bump into, or disturb anything. Of course, this was next to impossible. “I hate this place,” Chichi hissed. She was blinking hard, her eye watering. An evil weevil, a long-snouted foul-tempered insect with the ability to hurl small objects, had thrown a small seed directly into Chichi’s eye. Orlu grunted, scratching at a round orange-red patch on his arm where a Mars fly had bitten him.
“Yeah, there are days I want to just nuke this place,” Sasha said, throwing yet another stick into the forest. He blew some powder and muttered
some words, and the stick got up and stiffly began to smack at the patch of jungle to their left. Something large ran off. “Too bad no one’s written a juju that could do that.”
“Time might take care of it,” Sunny muttered.
They were all silent for a moment. A glint in the forest caught Sunny’s eye. “Hey,” she said, pointing. It was red, like a bunch of Christmas lights in the thick grass.
“Good eye, Sunny,” Orlu said. They all ran up to the peppers. The stems reached past Sunny’s waist, and the peppers on them were plump and plentiful. Up close they looked exactly like those chilli pepper lights Sunny would see in Mexican restaurants back in the United States. The pepper bugs were easy to spot as they lumbered contently up and down the stems, batting and pressing on the peppers with their thick antennae.
“Damn, never seen these before,” Sasha said.
“That’s because you probably only take a path to Kehinde’s,” Orlu said. “Pepper bugs live off the beaten path.”
Sasha rolled his eyes. “Ugh, whatever.”
“So how do we get them?” Sunny asked. “If we were asked to do this, I assume it’s not going to be easy.”
“We have to get them in this pot,” Orlu said. “They’re hot, so they’d melt through a plastic jar.”
“Are they fast?” Chichi asked, looking at them with disgust.
“No.” He handed them each a metal spatula with a rubber handle. “Get them to walk onto it, put them in the pot, and put the lid on.”
Sunny crept up to one and almost immediately started sneezing. Not from juju powder, but from the strong peppery fumes that suddenly emitted from the insect. “Ugh,” she said, sneezing again.
“Jesus!” she heard Sasha exclaim a few feet away.
“Oh, sorry,” Orlu said. “I forgot to add that when they feel threatened, they ‘pepper up.’”
“Then how are we supposed to get them?” Chichi asked.
“Like this,” Orlu said, creeping up to one. “Slowly. Move smoothly.” He gently coaxed the glowing insect onto his spatula. It put a leg onto the flat metal and then took it off. Orlu nudged it a bit more and eventually the insect stepped on. Slowly, Orlu placed it in the pot, where it stepped off. He put the lid on. “There.” The pot began to grow red with heat. “That’s why Anatov gave me the oven mitts. When they realise they’ve been captured, they get really angry and heat up.”
Once she stopped sneezing, Sunny was able to catch her bug pretty easily. With much cursing and sneezing, Sasha managed to get his, too. Chichi, however, kept getting hit with fumes. By this time, the entire colony of pepper bugs was on to them. When she was blasted with fumes a fourth time after taking five minutes to creep up on one bug, she shouted, “I HATE ALL OF YOU STUPID BEASTS! GO AND DIE!”
Orlu took her hand. “Sorry, o,” he said, as she blew her nose into the tissue Sunny had given her. “Let me try something.”
He held up his hands and did that thing he naturally did that undid any negative juju. His hands bent, contorted, and twisted as he undid whatever juju the bugs had apparently worked. Then he said, “We mean no harm. We are just taking some of you to another place nearby to start a fresh pepper patch. I know you can fly. You can visit and cross-pollinate. If one of you wishes to be adventurous, come.”
“Come on, dude, no insect is ever so reasonable.” Sasha laughed.
But one of them was, for a pepper bug slowly walked up to Chichi. She looked at Orlu, who nodded. She bent down and let it walk voluntarily onto her spatula. When she put it in the pot, after about ten seconds, the pot’s hot redness faded.
“It’s cool,” Orlu said when he touched the side of his pot tentatively. “That last bug must have told the others what I said.” He picked up the pot using the oven mitts, regardless. “Most insects have a tricky side.”
When they brought the bugs back to Anatov, they watched as he let them loose in his dying pepper patch. The four insects congregated in a square in the centre of the dead and dying peppers and brought their legs and hands together, closing the square.
“You all did well,” Anatov said, as they watched the insects perform their healing ceremony. “They’ll be at this all night. By morning there will be fresh new shoots. You can go home now.”
Sunny’s lessons with Sugar Cream were even more challenging. Unlike Anatov, Sugar Cream didn’t have Sunny go out and buy books. She was the Head Librarian; they had all the books they needed right there in the building. They always met in her office on the third floor of the Obi Library. Usually, they met on Saturday afternoons. But this weekend, they met on a Sunday evening because Sugar Cream had had an important meeting Saturday afternoon. Sunny couldn’t help but suspect that Sugar Cream also wanted Sunny to journey to Leopard Knocks at night, forcing her to deal with the river beast and her fear of the lake beast. Thankfully, Sunny’s journey to Leopard Knocks that evening had been uneventful and she’d arrived at Sugar Cream’s office promptly at nine o’clock.
Sugar Cream was leaning against the doorway when Sunny reached the top of the stairs. “There you are,” Sugar Cream said, smirking. “Come in. Let’s get started.”
Sugar Cream’s focus for the first two weeks had been on the rules and regulations of being a Leopard Person. She had Sunny not only read the thin and annoyingly prejudiced book Fast Facts for Free Agents two more times, but she also had Sunny write a research paper pointing out and deconstructing the book’s bias. Sunny had never had to write such a difficult paper in her life. It forced her to not only look at the way she was given information but also at the background of the author Isong Abong Effiong Isong. It turned out that Isong was not only educated in the West but had fled from Nigeria after a terrible experience with armed robbers. For this reason, Isong had developed a fear and hatred of all things Nigerian. Though the research paper was tough to write, Sunny was glad she’d been forced to write it. Now she understood not only the rules the book taught but how to read those rules. Several small silver chittim had fallen during the writing of that paper.
Sugar Cream had also brought Sunny to several Library Council meetings where Sunny had to dress up and sit quietly behind Sugar Cream. Her mentor met with elders from all over the country and once with elders from all over the world. In this way, Sunny learned that the Leopard People were an organised group who kept many of the world’s ills from being worse than they were. Who’d have thought that so much of Nigeria’s corruption was stopped by the organised jujus of Leopard elders from a variety of Nigeria’s states? Certainly not Sunny. The idea that things in Nigeria could have been a lot worse scared her deeply.
Sunny had also met some of Sugar Cream’s important colleagues outside of meetings. Only two weeks ago, Sunny had entered Sugar Cream’s office and nearly run into the chest of a tall Arab man. He’d worn white flowing garments and a white turban and smelled of sweet incense. Sunny had remembered him from a year ago during the meeting she and the others had with a group of Africa’s greatest elders not long before they were sent to deal with Black Hat. From what she recalled, at least part of this man’s name was Ali and he could shape-shift into a colourful toucan.
Sunny had stepped back. “I’m sorry, Oga Ali,” she’d said nervously.
He had surprised her with a smile. “Sunny Nwazue,” he’d said. “You look well. Being mentored by Sugar Cream is good for you.”
Sunny wasn’t sure if this was a compliment or an insult. She’d smiled and said, “Thank you.”
He had turned to her mentor, who had a frown on her face. “We will talk later, my dear.”
Sugar Cream had nodded. “Go well.”
“Inshallah,” he’d said, closing the door behind him.
Sugar Cream fed Sunny books on African Leopard history and Leopard politics from around the world; she even gave Sunny a few novels by local Leopard authors. Sunny didn’t think any of these were very good; Sugar Cream had laughed and agreed with her.
Nevertheless, it was the lessons in gliding that rocked Sunny’s world
the most, and tonight, this was the focus. “Sit, Sunny. Sit,” Sugar Cream told her. She set down her bunch of books on the floor, looked around for red spiders, and, when she saw none nearby, sat down. Sugar Cream settled at her desk, an agitated look on her face. She suddenly looked at Sunny. “I was going to test you on your Leopard history readings, but I have changed my mind. Watch closely.”
As Sunny observed, she felt like screaming. Never had Sugar Cream changed before her. She’d only spoken of her natural talent. Sugar Cream could change into a snake, and then she could slip through time. Sunny had never been fond of snakes, so she wasn’t eager to see her mentor do it. And now Sunny knew she’d been right to not ask.
Sugar Cream was a frail old woman of medium height. She had rich brown skin and a face that reminded Sunny of her grandmother on her father’s side. She had no idea if her mentor was Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, Efik, Ijaw, Fulani, or any other ethnicity. Sugar Cream didn’t know either, really, since she’d been abandoned in the jungle when she was very young. If Sunny had to guess, she’d have said Yoruba. But all this began to melt. Her clothes billowed as they were emptied. The wrinkly skin on Sugar Cream’s face began to shrink. Her entire body shrivelled in on itself. Sunny felt nauseated and couldn’t hide the look of complete disgust on her face. Her stomach lurched, and she hunched forwards just as Sugar Cream’s now lumpy flesh of a body collapsed forwards on her desk with a soft thump. The same brown as her skin, it writhed and rolled.
Sunny gasped, shutting her eyes tightly. Count to ten, a papery and dry voice whispered within Sunny’s head. Then see me.
Sunny slowly counted to ten. When she opened her eyes, she was looking into the green-yellow gaze of a large bright green snake. To speak while in alternate form, Sugar Cream said in her head, must be learned. But to change, once you have mastered it, is not difficult.
She did not move, her body still mostly in her clothes. When Sugar Cream changed back, Sunny understood why she’d stayed in place. She filled her clothes with the ease of an expert. “To see me change back does not have the nauseating effect,” Sugar Cream said. “It’s only the first time that throws one off. You will not experience that again when you see me change. Also, your gift is different from mine. When you change into mist and glide, you can bring your clothes.”