“But I don’t know how,” I said. “Before… I just did it.”

“Then just do it again,” he said, growing agitated. “What can I do with so much doubt, sha? Ah ah.” He pulled me up and shoved me toward the goat’s corpse. “Do it!”

I knelt down and rested my hand on its bloody neck. I shivered with revulsion, not from the dead goat, but the fact that it had died so recently. I froze. I could feel its mmuo-a moving around me. It was a light shifting in the air, a soft sandy sound nearby.

“It’s running,” I said softly.

“That’s good,” Aro said behind me, the frustration gone from his voice.

The poor thing was terrified and discombobulated. I looked at Aro. “Why did you kill it like that? That was cruel.”

“What is it with you women?” Aro snapped. “Must everything make you cry?”

Anger flared in me and I could feel the ground beneath me grow warm. Then it felt as if I knelt on hundreds of metal-bodied ants. They moved about underneath me, conducting something through me. I understood. I pulled it up from the ground and pushed it into my hands. More and more-there was an endless supply of it. I drew from my anger at Aro and from my own reserve of power. I drew from Aro’s strength, too. I’d have also drawn from Mwita if he’d been there.

“Now,” Aro said softly. “You see.”

I saw.

“Control it this time,” he said.

All my eyes saw was the goat’s dead body. But its mmuo-a ran circles around me. I felt it right next to me, its hoof on my leg as it watched what I was doing. Beneath my hand, the cut to its neck was… churning. The cut’s edges were knitting themselves up. The sight made me nauseated.

“Go,” I told the mmuo-a. A minute later, I removed my hand, turned my head, and was violently sick. I didn’t see the goat stand up and shake its head. I was vomiting too loudly to hear its cry of joy or feel it lay its head on my thigh in thanks. Aro helped me up. In the short walk to Mwita’s hut, I vomited again. Much of it was filled with hay and grass. My breath tasted like the odor of live goat and that made me vomit again.

“Next time, it will be better,” Aro said. “Soon, bringing back life will have little physical effect on you at all.”

Mwita returned late. Aro wasn’t a good caretaker. He made sure that I didn’t choke on my own vomit but he had no soothing words. He wasn’t that kind of man. Later that evening, Mwita shaved off the goat hairs growing on the back of my hand. He assured me that they wouldn’t grow back but what did I care? I was too sick. He didn’t ask me what had made me so ill. He knew from the day I started learning that there would be a part of me that he’d have no access to.

Mwita knew more than Jwahir’s best healer. Even the House of Osugbo thought him worthy of its books, for Mwita consumed many medical books he’d found there. Because he was such an expert on the human body, he was able to calm mine. But there were things I suffered from that came from the wilderness. He could do nothing about those. So I suffered much that night, but not as much as I could have.

This was how it was for three and half years. Knowledge, sacrifice, and headaches. Aro taught me how to converse with masquerades. This left me hearing voices and singing strange songs. The day I learned how to glide through the wilderness, I was ignorable for a week. My mother could barely see me. Several people probably thought I was dead after seeing what they thought was my ghost. Even after that, I was prone to moments of not being quite either there or here.

I learned to use my Eshu skills not only to change into other animals but to grow and change parts of my body. I realized that I could change my face a bit, altering my lips and cheekbones, and if I cut myself, I could heal the wound. Luyu, Binta, and Diti watched me as I learned. They feared for me. And sometimes they kept their distance, fearing for themselves.

Mwita grew closer to and more distant from me. He was my healer. He was my mate, for though we could not have intercourse, we could lie in each other’s arms, kiss each other’s lips, love each other dearly. Yet, he was barred from understanding what it was that was shaping me into something he both marveled at and envied.

My mother allowed what was to be. My biological father waited.

My mind evolved and thrived. But it was all for a reason. Fate was preparing for the next phase. After I tell you, you decide for yourself if I was ready for it.

CHAPTER 24 – Onyesonwu in the Market

MAYBE IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE POSITION OF THE SUN. Or maybe the way that man inspected a yam. Or the way that woman considered a tomato. Or maybe it was those women laughing at me. Or that old man glaring at me. As if they all had little else to worry about. Or maybe it was the position of the sun, high in the sky, bright, sizzling.

Whatever it was, it got me thinking about my last lesson with Aro. The lesson was particularly infuriating. The purpose was for me to learn to see distant places. It was rainy season, so collecting rain water wasn’t too hard. I took the water inside Aro’s hut and concentrated on it, focusing hard on what I sought to see. The storyteller’s news from years ago was on my mind.

I expected to see Okeke people slaving for Nurus. I expected to see Nuru people going about their business as if this were normal. I must have tuned in to the worst part of the West. The rainwater showed me ripped oozing flesh, bloody erect penises, sinew, intestines, fire, heaving chests, mewling bodies engaged in evil. Without thinking, my hand slapped the clay bowl away. It crashed against the wall, breaking in two.

“It’s still happening!” I shouted at Aro who was outside tending to his goats.

“Did you think it stopped?” he said.

I had. At least for a while. Even I’d exercised some denial in order to live my life.

“It ebbs and flows,” Aro said.

“But why?? What is…”

“No creature or beast is happy when enslaved,” Aro said. “Nuru and Okeke try to live together, then they fight, then they try to live together, then they fight. Okeke numbers dwindle now. But you remember the prophecy that storyteller spoke of.”

I nodded. The storyteller’s words had stayed with me for years. In the West, she’d said, a Nuru seer prophesied that a Nuru sorcerer would come and change what was written.

“It will come to pass,” Aro said.

I was walking through the market, rubbing my forehead, the sun beating down as if to provoke me, when the women laughed. I turned. It had come from within a group of young women. Women my age. Around twenty. From my old school. I knew them.

“Look at her,” I heard one of them say. “Too ghastly to marry.”

I felt it go snap inside me, in my mind. The last straw. I’d had enough. Enough of Jwahir, whose people were as bloated and complacent as the Golden Lady herself. “Is something wrong?” I loudly asked the women.

They looked at me as if I were disturbing them. “Lower your voice,” one of them said. “Weren’t you raised properly?”

“She was barely raised at all, remember?” one of the others said.

Several people paused in their transactions to listen. An old man glared at me.

“What is with you people?” I said, turning around to address all around me. “All this is unimportant! Can’t you see?” I paused to catch my breath, actually hoping an audience would gather. “Yes, I am talking, come and listen. Let me answer all the questions you’ve all had about me for so long!” I laughed. The crowd was already larger than the meager gathering that came to hear the storyteller speak that night.

“Only a hundred miles away, Okeke people are being wiped away by the thousands!” I shouted, feeling my blood rise. “Yet here we all are, living in comfort. Jwahir turns her fat unmoving backside to it all. Maybe you even hope our people there will finally die off so you can stop hearing about it. Where is your passion?” I was crying now and still I stood alone. It had always been this way. This was why I decided to speak the words Aro had taught me. He’d warned me not to use these words. He said I wasn’t remotely old enough to speak them. I’ll pry your cursed eyes open, I thought as the words tumbled from my lips, smooth and easy as honey.