Who Fears Death (24 page)

“Tie it back on,” he said, sitting up and I did so.

He ran his hand over his rough hair. He’d shaved it when we left Jwahir but it was growing back, as was the hair on his face. Everything about Mwita was becoming rough.

“I heard you singing from all the way out there,” he said, looking away. “We must have been miles away and I could still hear your voice. We saw a large bird fly by. I assumed it was going to you.”

“I sang for Luyu, Binta, and Diti,” I said. “They wanted to see owls.”

“You should do it more,” he said. “Your voice heals you. You look . . . better now.”

“Mwita,” I said. “Tell me what . . .”

“I’m
trying
. Shut up. Don’t be so sure that you want to hear this, Onye.”

I waited.

“I don’t know what you will be,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing what you did. We were really
there
. Look at my face. That’s from his
fist!
I don’t think you saw the villages on the borders of the Seven Rivers Kingdom, but I did. We passed over some rebel Okekes fighting Nurus. The Nuru outnumbered the Okeke a hundred to one. Okeke civilians were attacked, too. Everything was burning.”

“I smelled the smoke,” I said, quietly.

“Your vision protected you, but not me. I saw!” Mwita said, his eyes widening. “I don’t know what kind of sorcery is at work here but you scare me.
All
of this does.”

“Scares me too,” I said carefully.

“You resemble your mother mostly, except in color and maybe the nose. You behave like her some . . . there’re other things, too,” he said. “But I can see it in the eyes now. You have his eyes.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s all we have in common.”
And our ability to sing
, I thought.

“Your father was my teacher,” he said. “He’s Daib. I’ve told you about him. He’s the reason my uncle and aunt, those who saved and raised me, were killed.”

The news hit me as if my mother had slapped me, as if Aro had punched me, as if Mwita were strangling me. I hung my mouth open to breathe.
Both my own mother and the man I love have reason to hate me,
I thought helplessly.
All they need to do is look into my eyes
. I rubbed the back of my head expecting my headache to return but it didn’t. Mwita brought his face up to mine. “How much of this did you know, Onye?”

I frowned not only at his question but at the way he asked it. “None, Mwita.”

“This Sola you told me about, did he plan . . .”

“There’s no plot against you, Mwita. Do you really believe I’m a false . . .”

“Daib is a powerful,
powerful
sorcerer,” Mwita said. “He can bend time, he can make things appear that should never be there, he can make people think wrong things, and he has a heart full of the most evil stuff. I know him well,” He brought his face even closer. “Even Aro couldn’t keep Daib from killing you.”

“Well, he did, somehow,” I said.

Mwita sat back, frustrated. “Okay,” he said after a while. “Okay. But . . . still, Onye, we’re practically siblings.”

I understood what he meant. My biological father, Daib, had been his first Master, his teacher. Though Daib hadn’t allowed Mwita to attempt initiation, Mwita had been his student for years. And to be one’s student of sorcery was a very close relationship—in many ways, closer than that of a parent. Aro, for all my conflict with him, was a second father to me—Papa being my first,
not
Daib. Aro had birthed me through another canal of life. I shivered and Mwita nodded.

“Daib would sing as he beat me,” Mwita said. “My discipline and ability to learn so fast are because of your father’s heavy hand. Whenever I did something wrong, or was too slow, or inaccurate, I would get to hear him sing. His voice always brought lizards and scarab beetles.”

He looked deep into my eyes and I knew he was deciding. I took the moment to decide, too. To decide if
I
was being manipulated. If we all were. Since I was eleven, things had been happening to me, pushing me toward a specific path. It was easy to imagine that someone of great mystical power was manipulating my life. Except for one thing: the shocked and almost scared look on Daib’s face when he saw me. Someone like Daib could never fake fear and ill preparedness. That look was real and true. No, Daib had as much control over all of this as I did.

That night Mwita would not let go of me, and I didn’t need to hold onto him.

THE NEXT DAY, we started off before dawn. West. Due west. We had a compass and we had the not too harsh sun. Luyu, Fanasi, Diti, and Binta started playing a guessing game. I wasn’t in the mood, so I hung back. Mwita walked ahead of all of us. He hadn’t spoken more than a “good morning” to me since we got up. Luyu left the guessing game to walk with me. “Stupid game,” she said, hoisting her pack up.

“I agree,” I said.

After a moment, she put her hand on my shoulder and stopped me. “So what’s been going on with you two?”

I glanced at the others as they kept moving and shook my head.

She frowned, annoyed. “Don’t keep me in the dark. I’m not moving another step until you tell me
something
.”

“Suit yourself.” I started walking.

She followed me. “Onye, I’m your friend. Let
me
in on some of this. You and Mwita will tear each other apart if you don’t share some of the load. I’m sure Mwita confides some in Fanasi.”

I looked at her.

“They talk,” she said. “You see how they go off sometimes. You can talk to me.”

It was probably true. The two were different, Fanasi traditional by upbringing and Mwita nontraditional by birth, but sometimes difference leads to sameness.

“I don’t want Diti and Binta to know these things,” I said after a moment.

“Of course,” Luyu said.

“I . . .” Suddenly, I felt like crying. I swallowed. “I’m Aro’s student.”

“I know,” she said frowning deeply “You were initiated and . . .”

“And . . . there are consequences to it,” I said.

“The headaches,” she said.

I nodded.

“We all know that,” Luyu said.

“But it’s not so simple. The headaches are because of something. They’re . . . ghosts of the future.” We’d stopped walking.

“Of what in the future?”

“How I die,” I said. “Part of initiation is to face your own death.”

“And how do you die?”

“I’m taken before a mob of Nurus, buried to my neck, and stoned to death.”

Luyu flared her nostrils. “How . . . how old are you when it happens?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see my face.”

“Your headaches, they feel like the stones thrown at your head?” she said.

I nodded.

“Oh, Ani,” she said. She put her arm around me.

“There’s one other thing,” I said, after a moment. “The prophecy was wrong . . .”

“It will be an
Ewu
woman,” Luyu said.

“How did . . .”

“I guessed. It makes more sense now.” She chuckled. “I walk with a legend.”

I smiled sadly. “Not yet.”

OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Mwita and I found it hard to talk to each other. But when we retired, we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. I was still afraid of getting pregnant but our physical needs were greater. There was such love between us, yet we couldn’t speak. It was the only way. We tried to be quiet, but everyone heard us. Mwita and I were so wrapped up in ourselves during the night and then during the day in our dark thoughts, that this wasn’t our concern. It was only when Diti accosted me one cold evening that I realized something was festering among us.

She’d kept her voice low but she looked ready to jump me. “What is
wrong
with you?” she said kneeling beside me.

I looked up from the stew of hare and cactus I was stirring, irritated by her tone. “You’re invading my space, Diti.”

She moved closer. “We all hear you two every night! You’re like desert hares. If you don’t watch yourself, there will be more than six of us arriving in the West. No one will take well to an
Ewu
baby of
Ewu
parents.”

It took everything in my power not to smack her across the face with my wooden spoon. “Step away from me,” I warned.

“No,” she said but she looked afraid. “I’m-I’m sorry.” She touched my shoulder and I looked at her hand. She took it away. “You don’t have to flaunt it, Onye.”

“What are you . . .”

“If you’ve mastered all this sorcery, why don’t you cure us?” she said. “Or are you the only woman here allowed to enjoy intercourse?”

Before I could speak, Luyu came running. “Hey!” she said, pointing behind us. “Hey! What
is
that?”

We turned. Were my eyes deceiving me? A pack of sand-colored wild dogs were running so fast toward us that they kicked up a wake of dust. Flanking the dogs were two shaggy, single-humped camels and five gazelles with long spiraling horns. Above them flew seven hawks. “Leave everything!” I shouted. “Run!”

Diti, Fanasi, and Luyu took off, dragging a stunned Binta along.

“Mwita, come on!” I shouted, when he still hadn’t come out of our tent where I knew he was napping. I unzipped the flap. He was still deep in sleep. “Mwita!” I screamed, the pounding of hooves drowning everything out.

His eyes cracked opened. They grew wide. He grabbed me to him as they came. We curled into each other as tightly as we could as the large beasts pounded throughout camp. The dogs went for my stew, dragging the pot away from the fire, despite the heat. The gazelles and camels rooted around in the tents. Mwita and I were silent as they stuck their heads into our tent and took what they wanted. One of the camels found my store of cactus candy. It stared at us as it munched the fruit with what only could have been pleasure. I cursed.

Another camel stuck its muzzle into a bucket and lapped up all the water. The hawks swooped down, snatching up the hare meat Diti and Binta were drying. When they finished, the united animals trotted off.

“Rule one of the rules of the desert,” I said crawling out of the tent. “Never turn down a travel companion if it doesn’t plan to eat you. I wonder how long those animals have been working together like that.”

“Fanasi and I will have to go hunting tonight,” Mwita said.

Luyu, Diti, Binta, and Fanasi came walking back looking angry.

“We should kill and eat all of them,” Binta said.

“You attack one and they’ll
all
attack you,” I said.

We salvaged whatever food we could, which wasn’t much. That evening, Fanasi, Mwita, and Luyu, who’d insisted on accompanying them, set out to hunt and gather. Diti avoided me by playing a game of Warri with Binta. I warmed some water for a much needed bath. As I stood behind my tent in the dark and poured the warm water on myself, a fly bit me on the arm. Part of the rock fire’s juju was to keep biting insects away but once in a while an insect snuck in. I smashed it on my ankle. It exploded into a smear of blood.

“Ugh,” I said, washing it off. The bite was already turning bright red. The slightest slap or insect bite always turns my skin redder than normal. It was the same with Mwita.
Ewu
skin is sensitive in that way. I quickly finished washing.

That night, I noticed that Diti slept in Binta’s tent. She and Fanasi could no longer sleep in each other’s arms. It was that bad.

I KNEW ABOUT THE TOWN HOURS before we got to it. While everyone slept, I had gone flying as a vulture. I flew for miles, riding the cool wind. I needed to think about Diti’s request. I should have known how to break the Eleventh Rite juju. That was the most frustrating part of it. I couldn’t think of a chant, combination of herbs, or use of objects that would work. Aro would have laughed at and insulted my slowness. But I didn’t want to hurt my friends with a mistake.

The winds carried me west and that was how I happened across the town. I saw well-built sandstone buildings glowing with electric lights and cooking fires. A paved road ran through the town from south to north, disappearing in both directions into the darkness. The north was puckered with small hills and one large hill topped with a house lit brightly from within. When I got back to the camp, I woke Mwita and told him about the town.

“There shouldn’t be a town here at all,” he said, looking at the map.

I shrugged. “Maybe the map’s too old.”

“That town sounds established. The map can’t be
that
old.” He cursed. “I think we’re off course. We need to find out the name. How far is it?”

“We’ll get there by the end of the day.”

Mwita nodded.

“We’re not ready, Mwita.”

“We just got robbed of all our food by a pack of animals,” he said.

“You know how dangerous it can be.” I touch the scar on my forehead. “We should go around it and never mention it. We can find food along the way.”

“I hear you,” he said. “I just don’t agree with you.”

I sucked my teeth and looked away.

“It’s not right to keep them in the dark,” he said.

“How much in the dark have you kept Fanasi?” I asked.

He cocked his head and smiled.

“Luyu suspects you,” I said.

He nodded. “That girl has a sharp eye and ear.” He leaned back on his elbows. “He asks questions. I answer them when I want to.”

“What questions?”

“Have trust,” he said. “And let go some. We’re all involved.”

 

We came within a mile of the town by the end of the day. Mwita collected stones for a rock fire. We washed and ate, and then sat before the fire and eventually grew quiet. Fanasi and Diti sat close to one another, but Diti kept pushing his arm from her waist. Luyu spoke first. “We don’t have to go there. That’s what’s on all our minds, right?”

Mwita glanced at me.