“Was that her name?”

“My first teacher, Daib, told me about her, too.”

“And you don’t fear that happening with me.”

“Like I said, you know that’s not how it ends. Plus, you’re a far greater talent than Sanchi. You’re twenty years old and you already can bring back the dead.”

“Not all the time and not without consequence.”

“Nothing’s without consequence.”

“And that’s why I think we should avoid intercourse.”

“But we won’t.”

I took my eyes from the blackness of the desert and set them on Mwita. In the faint light coming from the rock fire at the center of our tents, Mwita’s yellow-skinned face glowed and his wolflike eyes twinkled.

“Have you ever wondered… what our baby would look like?” I asked.

“He or she would look like us,” he said.

“What would that make him or her?”

“Ewu,” he said.

We were quiet for several minutes, calmness smoothing things out again.

“Leave the tent flap open for me,” I said.

We grasped hands and slid them inches back, snapping each other’s fingers loudly, the handshake of friendship. I stood up and unwrapped my rapa and let it fall to the ground as I looked down at him. I’ve turned into several types of animals over the years but my favorite will always be the vulture.

“It’s night,” Mwita said. “The air won’t be as smooth.”

My laughs were lost as my throat shifted and narrowed and my skin sprouted feathers. I was good at changing but each and every time was an effort. It is not something you just let happen. Your body knows how to do it, but you still have to do it. Nevertheless, as it is when one is good at something, I enjoyed the effort because in many ways the effort was effortless. I spread my wings and took to the sky. No one heard from me for an hour.

I flew into our tent and stood for a moment with my wings spread. Mwita was weaving a basket by candlelight. He always wove when he was worried.

“Luyu was looking for you,” he said, putting his basket down. He threw me my rapa once I’d changed back.

“Eh? Why? It’s late.”

“I think she just wants to talk,” he said. “She’s been reading the Great Book.”

“They all have.”

“But she’s starting to understand more.”

I nodded again. Good. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

I sat down beside him on our sleeping mat.

“Do you want me to go and wash first?” I asked.

“No.”

“If I conceive, we’re all…”

“Onyesonwu, there are times you have to take what is offered to you,” he said. “There’ll always be risk with us. You are a risk.”

I leaned forward and kissed him. Then I kissed him again. And after that, nothing could have stopped us. Not even the end of the world.

CHAPTER 27

WE SLEPT IN LATE. And when I woke up, my headache was almost completely gone. I blinked at the sharpness of the world around me. My stomach growled.

“Onye,” we heard Fanasi say from outside. “Can we come in?”

“Are you decent?” Luyu asked. Then she giggled and we heard her whisper, “He’s probably ravaging her again.” Then there were more giggles.

“Come in,” I said, smiling. “But I stink. I need to wash.”

They all piled in. It was a tight fit. After much giggling, grumbling (mainly from Mwita), and shifting, things quieted down. I took it as my cue to speak.

“I’m okay,” I said. “The headaches are just something I have to learn to live with. I’ve… I’ve been having them since my initiation.”

“She just needs to adjust to leaving home,” Mwita added.

“We’ll continue tomorrow,” I said, taking Mwita’s hand.

When everyone had piled out of my tent, I slowly sat up and yawned.

“You need to eat,” Mwita said.

“Not yet,” I said. “I want to do something first.”

Still only wrapped in my rapa, with Mwita’s help I stood. The world swam around me and then it settled. I felt a stone from far away hit the side of my head.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Mwita asked.

“Did you eat yesterday?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not going to eat until you eat.”

“So you think it’s better if we’re both weak.”

“Are you weak?”

I smiled. “No.”

“Then let’s go.”

The first time that I was able to glide into the wilderness on purpose was after going three days without food and drinking only water. I’d spent those days at Aro’s hut and he made sure I wasn’t idle. I cleaned his goats’ hovel, washed his dishes, swept out his house, and cooked his meals. Each day I didn’t eat, I worried more about encountering my father in the wilderness.

“He won’t come after you now,” Aro assured me. “I’m here, and you’ve been initiated. It’s no longer so easy to reach you. Relax. When you’re ready, you’ll know.”

I was taking a break next to his goats’ hovel when clarity suddenly descended on me. It was hard to be around Aro’s goats. They smelled more pungent than usual and their brown eyes seemed to see too deep into me. The one I had saved kept stepping up to me and staring. A moment later, I realized that they were waiting. The sensation started between my legs-a warm buzzing feeling. Then a numbness. When I looked at my abdomen, I almost screamed. It looked as if I’d begun to turn into clear jelly. Once I saw it, it quickly spread up and down the rest of me.

Fighting to stay calm, I stood up. Above me, all I saw were colors. Millions and millions of colors, but mainly green. They pooled, stacked, stretched, contracted, clustered, billowed. All this was juxtaposed against the world I knew. This was the wilderness. When I looked at the goats, I saw that they were prancing and baaing with joy. Their happy motions gave off puffs of rich blue that wafted toward me. I inhaled and it smelled… lovely. Then I realized this whole place smelled of many things, but of one thing in particular. That indescribable smell.

I stayed in the wilderness for a few more minutes. Then the goat that I had saved walked up and bit me. I felt like I dropped several feet and I hit the ground. Dazed, I walked back to Aro’s hut where I found him waiting for me with a grand meal.

“Eat,” was all he said.

Mwita and I left camp. The others watched us go without asking where we were going. About a third of a mile out, we sat down. It had only been a day and a half of fasting, yet the world around me had already shifted to that strange level of clarity.

“It’s the traveling, I think,” Mwita said.

“Have you done this before?” I asked.

“A long time ago,” he said. “When… I was a boy. Just after I escaped from those Okeke soldiers.”

“Oh. You starved?”

“For days.”

I wanted to ask him what he saw but it wasn’t the time. I looked out at the dry desert. Not a patch of grass. Aro told me that long ago, the land hadn’t been like this. “Don’t completely discount the Great Book,” he said. “Something did happen to bring it all down. To change green to sand. These lands used to look a lot more like the wilderness.”

Still, the Great Book, in my opinion, was mainly crafty lies and riddles. I shivered and the world shivered around me.

“You see that?” Mwita asked.

I nodded. “Any minute,” I said, not really knowing what I was talking about but sure of it anyway. “Let me guide it.”

“What else can I do?” Mwita said with a smile. “I have no idea how to guide a vision, lady sorceress in training.”

“Just call me sorcerer,” I said. “There’s only one kind, man or woman. And we are always training.” Then the world shivered again and I grabbed on. “Hurry, take it Mwita.”

He looked at me confused and then did what it sounded like I wanted him to do. He took hold. “What… what is…”

“I don’t know,” I said.

It was as if the air beneath us solidified. Swift and strong, it took us at an impossible speed to a destination that only it knew. We moved far but we were also still. We were in two places at once or maybe in neither. As Aro always told me, you can’t have all your questions answered. Who knows what Luyu, Binta, Fanasi, or Diti would have seen had they looked our way. According to the location of the sun, the vision moved mainly west, sometimes meandering northwest and then southwest in a manner that I can only describe as playful. Below, the desert flew by. Suddenly, I felt a terrible sense of foreboding. I’d once had a dream like this. It had shown me my biological father.