“Let her show you,” Diti said softly. “Then you decide.”

“I’ll wait outside,” Luyu said before Fanasi replied. She quickly got up. Binta followed close at her heels. Diti took Fanasi’s hand and squeezed her eyes shut. Mwita simply stood next to me. I took us all to the past for the third time. Fanasi reacted with loud blubbering tears. Diti had to comfort him. Mwita touched my shoulder and left the room. As Fanasi calmed, his grief was replaced with anger. Raging anger. I smiled.

He pounded his large fist on his thigh. “How can this be! I… I didn’t… I can’t…!”

“Jwahir is much removed,” I said.

“Onye,” he said. He was the first to call me this. “I’m very sorry. Truly I am. People around here… we all have no idea!”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Will you come?”

He nodded. And then there were six.

CHAPTER 25 – And So It Was Decided

WE WOULD LEAVE IN THREE HOURS. And because people knew this, they left me alone. Only their stares when I passed by showed their anxiousness for me to go, their anxiousness to forget again. I stood with Aro before the desert. From here, we’d go southwest around Jwahir and then due west. On foot, not on camel. I don’t ride camels. When my mother and I were living in the desert I knew wild camels. They were noble creatures whose strength I’d refused exploit.

Aro and I walked up a sand dune. A strong breeze blew my braids back.

“Why does he want to see me?” I asked.

“You have to stop asking that question,” Aro replied.

Again, the sandstorm came. This time, however, it wasn’t so painful. Once in the tent, I sat down across from Sola. As before, his black hood covered his white face down to his narrow nose. Aro sat beside him and gave him a peculiar handshake that involved twining their fingers together.

“Good day, Oga Sola,” I said.

“You’ve grown,” Sola said in his papery voice.

“She belongs to Mwita,” Aro said. He looked at me and added, “If she would belong to any man at all.”

Sola nodded his approval. “So you know how this will end,” Sola said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Those that go with you,” Sola said. “Do you understand that some of them may fall along the way?”

I was quiet. It had crossed my mind.

“And that all of this is your responsibility?” Aro added.

“Can it… be helped?” I asked Aro.

“Maybe,” he said.

“What is it that I should do? How can I… find him?”

“Who?” Sola asked, cocking his head. “Your father?”

“No,” I said. I suspected he and I would find each other. “The one the prophecy speaks of. Who is he?”

They were quiet for a moment. I sensed they were exchanging words without moving their lips. “Do so then, sha,” Aro mumbled aloud. He looked drained.

“What do you know of this Nuru man?” Sola asked.

“All I know is that some Nuru Seer prophesized that a tall Nuru man who was a sorcerer would come and change things somehow, rewrite the book.”

Sola nodded. “I know the Seer,” Sola said. “You must forgive us all for our weaknesses, me, Aro, all of us old ones. We’ll learn from this. Aro refused you because you were an Ewu female. I almost did the same. This Seer, Rana, guards a precious document. This was why he was given the prophecy. He was told something and couldn’t accept it. His stupidity will give you a chance, I think.”

I sighed and held up my hands. “I don’t understand what you mean, Oga.

“Rana couldn’t believe what he was told, apparently. He wasn’t advised to look out for a Nuru man. It was an Ewu woman,” he said. He laughed. “At least he was truthful about one thing, you are tall.”

I walked home in a daze. I didn’t want Mwita to walk with me. I cried the entire way. Who cares who saw me? I had less than an hour to be in Jwahir. When I walked in, my mother was waiting for me in the main room. She handed me her cup of tea as I sat beside her on the couch. The tea was very strong, exactly what I needed.

That’s enough for today. In two days, I know what will happen here… maybe. I can hope, can’t I? What else can I have for myself and the child that grows inside me? Don’t look so surprised.

Enough. I’m glad the guards let you in and I hope your fingers were fast enough. And if they snatch that computer from you and dash it to the ground, I hope your memory is good. I don’t know if they’ll let you back in here tomorrow.

You hear everyone out there? Already gathering to watch? They wait to stone to death the one who turned their small world upside down. Primitive. So much unlike Jwahir’s people, who are so apathetic but so civilized.

Two guards right outside this cell have been listening. At least they’ve been trying to. Thankfully, they can’t speak Okeke. If you’re able to return here, if you’re able to get past these arrogant, hateful, sad, confused bastards again, I’ll tell you the rest. And when I’m finished, we’ll both see what happens to me, no?

Don’t worry about me and the cold here tonight. There are plenty of stones. so I have ways of staying warm. I have ways of staying alive, too. Protect that computer on your way out. If you don’t return, I’ll understand. You do what you can and the rest you leave in the cold arms of Fate. Take care.

PART III – Warrior

I had a bad night.

Yet another man will die because of me. Well, because of himself. He came into my cell this morning, before the sun came up. He hoped to make himself famous. I’m not like my mother in this regard. I couldn’t just lie there. He was a Nuru man named after his father. He had a wife, five children, and was a talented river fisherman. He barged in here bold as an idiot. He never touched me. I am cruel. I put the ugliest vision in his mind and he ran out, silent as a ghost and sad as a broken Okeke slave.

I unplugged all the important circuits in his brain. He’ll be fine for two days, too ashamed to speak of his attempted rape. And then he’ll suddenly die. I don’t pity his wife or his children. You make your bed, so you shall lie in it. A wife chooses her husband and even a child chooses her parents.

Anyway, I’m glad to see you, but why do you risk coming here? There’s a reason with you, isn’t there? No Nuru man would do this without a reason that goes beyond curiosity. You don’t have to tell me. You don’t have to tell me anything.

They’ll stone me tomorrow. So today I’ll give you the rest of my life. The child inside me, her name is Enuigwe; that is an old word for “the heavens,” the home of all things, even the Okeke and Nuru. I tell this story to both you and her. She has to know her mother. She has to understand. And she has to be brave. Who fears death? I don’t and neither will she. Type fast because I will speak that way.

CHAPTER 26

THE PAIN OF STONES AND RAGE FOR WHAT I had yet to do threatened to pull me underground. I felt the first throb as we passed the limits of Jwahir. We carried only the large packs on our backs and the ideas in our heads.

“Go straight west,” Aro and Sola had instructed. The land soon opened before us, dunes with the occasional cluster of palm trees and patch of dry grass.

“So we just head that way?” Binta asked, squinting as she walked. She was extremely lighthearted for a girl who had poisoned her father mere hours ago. She told only me about putting the slow acting heart root extract in her father’s morning tea. She’d watched him drink it and then snuck out of the house, not leaving even a note. By nightfall the man would be dead. “He had it coming,” she’d whispered to me, with a grin. “But don’t tell the others.” I’d looked at her, shocked at her boldness, thinking, Maybe she is up for this journey.

“West, yes,” Luyu said, rolling her talembe etanou around in her mouth. “Head that way for about, what? Four, five months?”