“What is this?” I screamed, working to maintain my footing.

The sun was quickly blotted out. My mother and I had lived through three big sandstorms while we were nomads. We’d dug a hole and lain in it, using the tent to protect us. We were lucky not to be blown away or buried alive. Now here I was in such a storm with nothing between it and myself but my dress.

I decided to return to Aro’s hut. But I couldn’t see anything behind me. I shielded my face with my arm as I looked around. The whipping sand was drawing blood. Soon my eyelids were encrusted with sand, granules paining my eyes. I spit sand out only for more to fill my mouth.

Suddenly, the wind changed, moving behind me. It blew me toward a small orange light. When I got closer, I saw that it was a tent made of sheer blue material. There was a small fire burning inside.

“A fire in the middle of a sandstorm!” I shouted, laughing hysterically. My face and arms stung and my legs shook as I tried not to let the wind take me away.

I threw myself inside and was slapped with silence. Not even the tent’s walls shuddered from the wind. Nothing held the tent down. The bottom of the tent was sand. I rolled to my side coughing. Through my stinging watery eyes, I saw the whitest man I’d ever seen. He wore a heavy black cloak with a hood that dropped over the top half of his face. But the bottom half I saw plainly. His wrinkly skin was white like milk.

“Onyesonwu,” the man in black said very suddenly.

I jumped. There was something repulsive about him. I half expected him to scamper around the fire toward me with the speed and agility of a spider. But he remained seated, his long legs stretched before him. His sharp nails were grooved and yellow. He leaned back on one elbow. “Is that your name?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re the one Aro sends,” he said, his wet pink flat lips bending into a smirk.

“Yes.”

“Who sent you?”

“Aro.”

“What are you then?”

“Excuse me?”

“What are you?”

“Human,” I said.

“Is that all?”

“Eshu also.”

“So are you human then?”

“Yes.”

He reached into his robes and brought out a small blue jar. He shook it and set it down. “Aro calls me here and a female sits before me,” he said. He flared his nostrils. “One who will bleed soon. Very very soon. This place is sacred, you know.” He looked at me as if waiting for an answer. I was relieved when he picked up the container. He shook it and slammed it down. I wanted to rub my eyes they hurt so badly. He looked up at me with such anger that my heart jumped.

“You’ve been cut!” he said. “You can’t climax! Who allowed this to happen?”

I stammered, “It was a… I wanted to please my…I didn’t…”

“Shut up,” he said. He paused and when he spoke his voice was cooler. “Maybe that can be helped,” he said more to himself. He mumbled something and then said, “You may die today. I hope you’re prepared. They won’t find your body.”

I thought of my mother and then pushed her image out of my mind.

The man in black threw the container’s contents-bones. Tiny, fine bones, maybe from a lizard or some other small beast. They were bleached white and dry, several crumbling at the tips, revealing ancient porous marrow. They flew from the container and landed as if they would never move again. As if they were sure. My eyes felt heavy as I looked at the scattered bones. My eyes were drawn to them. He stared for a long time. Then he looked at me, his mouth a surprised O. I wished I could see his eyes. Then he masked his face with a more controlled look.

“This is normally where the pain starts. Where I get to listen to the boys scream,” the man in black said. He paused, looking down at the bones. “But you,” he smirked and nodded. “I must have you killed.” He lifted his left hand and twisted his wrist. I felt a crack in my neck as my head turned itself all the way around. I grunted. All went dark.

I opened my eyes and instantly knew that I wasn’t myself. The feeling was more peculiar than scary. I was a passenger in someone’s head yet still able to feel sweat rolling down his face and the insect biting his skin. I tried to leave, but I had no body to leave with. My mind was stuck there. The eyes I looked through stared at a concrete wall.

He sat on a hard and cool block of concrete. There was no roof. Sunlight shined in, making the already hot room even more uncomfortable. I heard many people nearby but I couldn’t tell exactly what they were saying. The person whose body I was in mumbled something and then laughed to… herself. The voice was a woman’s.

“Let them come, then,” she said. She looked down at herself and nervously rubbed her thighs. She wore a long coarse white dress. She was not as light-skinned as me but she was not dark like my mother either. I noticed her hands. I had only read about these in story tales. Tribal markings. This woman’s hands were covered with them. The circles, swirls, and lines wove into complex designs snaking up her wrists.

She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes in the sunshine and the world became red for a moment. Then someone grabbed her-us-with such roughness that I silently screamed. Her eyes flew open. She made no sound. She didn’t fight. I desperately wanted to. Then thousands of people burst before us, all of them screaming, yelling, shouting, talking, pointing, laughing, glaring.

The people stayed back as if some invisible force kept them twenty feet from the hole we were being dragged to. Beside the hole was a pile of sand. The men dragged us to the hole and pushed us in. I felt the woman’s whole body shudder as she hit the bottom. The ground was just higher than our shoulders. She looked around and I got a good view of the giant mob that was waiting for the execution.

Men shoveled dirt into the hole and soon we were buried to our neck. It was at this point that the woman’s fear must have infected me because suddenly I was being torn in two. If I had a body, I’d have thought that a thousand men had one of my arms and a thousand had the other and both groups were pulling. From behind, I heard a man loudly say, “Who will throw the first stone at this problem?”

The first stone hit the back of our head. The pain was an explosion. Many more came after that. After a while, the pain of our head being stoned fell to the back and the sensation of being pulled apart came forward. I was screaming. I was dying. Someone threw another rock and I felt something break. I knew death the moment it touched me. As best I could, as nothing, I tried to hold myself together.

Mama. I was leaving her all alone. I have to keep going, I thought with despair. Mama willed it to be so. She willed it! I had too much left to do. I felt Papa catch and hold me. He smelled of hot iron and his grasp, as always, was strong. He held me for a long time in that spirit place where all was colorful light, sound, smell, and heat.

Papa held me close. The squeeze of a hug. Then he let go and was gone. Soon the world of the spirits, a place I would learn to call “the wilderness,” began to melt and mix with a star-salted darkness. I could see the desert. There I was lying in it, half buried in the sand. A camel stood over me with a woman on its back. She wore a green shirt and pants and sat between the camel’s two shaggy humps. I must have moved because suddenly the camel started. The woman calmed it with a pat.

Instinctively, I flew down and lay on my body. As I did so, the woman spoke.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

I tried to answer but I had no mouth, not yet.

“I’m Njeri.” She looked up and grinned widely, the sides of her eyes creasing. “I was Fadil Ogundimu’s wife.” She was addressing someone else. She turned back to me and laughed. “Your papa has much to learn about the wilderness.”

I wanted to smile.