“We’re in the towns now,” Mwita said after a while. He sounded calm but he probably wasn’t.

We moved too quickly over the bordering towns and villages for me to see much. But there was a smell of roasting meat and fire still in my nostrils.

“It’s still happening,” I said. Mwita nodded.

We rounded southwest where sandstone buildings were built close together, two sometimes three stories high. I didn’t see one Okeke person. This was Nuru territory. If there were Okekes here, they were trusted slaves. The useful ones.

The roads were flat and paved. Palm trees, bushes, and other vegetation thrived here. It was not like Jwahir, where you had vegetation and trees that, though they lived, were dry and grew upward instead of outward. There was sand here but there were also patches of a strange darker-colored ground. Then I saw why. I’d never seen so much water. It was shaped like a giant dark blue snake. Hundreds of people could swim in it and it wouldn’t matter.

“That’s one of the Seven Rivers,” Mwita said. “Maybe the third or fourth.”

We slowed as we moved over it. I could see white fish swimming near the surface. I reached down and ran my hand in the water. It was cool. I held my hand to my lips. It tasted almost sweet, like rainwater. This wasn’t capture station water forcibly pulled from the sky nor was it water from underground. This vision was truly something new. Mwita and I were both here. We could see each other. We could taste and feel. As we approached the other side of the river, Mwita looked worried.

“Onye,” he said. “I’ve never… can people see us?”

“I don’t know.”

We passed some people in floating vehicles. Boats. No one seemed to see us though one woman looked around as if she felt something. Once over land, we picked up speed and flew up high over small villages until we reached a large town. It sat at the end of the river and the beginning of a huge body of water. Just beyond the buildings, I glimpsed… a field of green plants?

“You see that?” I asked.

“The body of water over there? That’s the lake with no name.”

“No, not that,” I said.

We were taken between sandstone buildings where Nuru hawkers sold goods along the road. We passed over a small open restaurant. I smelled peppers, dried fish, rice, incense. An infant wailed from somewhere. A man and a woman argued. People bartered. I saw a few dark faces here-all were burdened with items and all of them walked quickly with purpose. Slaves.

The Nurus here weren’t the wealthiest, but they weren’t the poorest either. We came to a road blocked by a crowd standing before a wooden stage with orange flags hanging over the front. The vision took us to the front of the stage and set us down. It felt odd. First it was as if we sat on the ground, amid people’s legs and feet. They absentmindedly moved aside for us, their attention focused on the people onstage. Then something raised us to a standing position. We looked around, terrified of being seen. Mwita pulled me close, slipping his arm firmly around my waist.

I looked right into the face of the Nuru man beside me. He looked into mine. We stared at each other. Standing inches shorter than Mwita and me, he looked about twenty, maybe a little older. He narrowed his eyes. Thankfully, the man onstage grabbed his attention.

“Who are you going to believe?” the man onstage shouted. Then he smiled and laughed, lowering his voice. “We’re doing what must be done. We’re following the Book. We have always been a pious loyal people. But what next?”

“Tell us! You know the answer!” someone shouted.

“When we’ve wiped them out, what next? We make the Great Book proud! We make Ani proud. We build an empire that is the most good of good!”

I felt sick. I knew who this was, just as you knew from the moment this vision took me. Slowly, I brought my eyes to his eyes, first taking in his tall broad-shouldered stature, the black beard that hung down his chest. I didn’t want to look. But I did. He saw me. His eyes grew wide. They flashed red for a second. He strode toward me.

“You!” Mwita shouted as he leaped onstage.

My biological father was still looking at me in shock when Mwita plowed into him. They went falling back and people in the crowd shouted and surged forward.

“Mwita!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

Two guards were about to grab Mwita. They blocked my way. I scrambled onto the stage. I could have sworn I heard laughter. But before I could see, we were being pulled back. Mwita flew back to me right through the two men. My biological father pushed them aside. “When you’re ready, Mwita, come find me. We’ll finish this,” he said. His nose bled but he was grinning. His eyes met mine. He pointed at me with a long narrow finger. “And you, girl, your days are numbered.”

The crowd below us was in chaos, several fights breaking out. People pushed and shoved, rocking the stage on its foundation. Several men in yellow jumped onto the stage from the sides. They brutally kicked people off the stage. No one other than my biological father seemed to see us. He stood there a moment longer and then looked to his crowd and held up his hands smiling. Everyone immediately calmed. It was eerie.

We were moving backward fast. So fast that I couldn’t speak or turn my head toward Mwita. We flew over the town, the river, another town. Everything was a blur until we were near camp. It was like a giant hand set us down right there in the sand. We sat there for several minutes breathing heavily. I glanced at Mwita. He had a large bruise rising on the side of his face.

“Mwita,” I said, reaching to touch it.

He slapped my hand away and stood up, rage in his eyes. I moved away, suddenly very afraid of him.

“Be afraid,” he said. There were tears in his eyes but his face was hard. He went back to camp. I watched him go into our tent and then I just sat there. There was a mild burst of pain in my forehead. My headache still lingered.

How did he know my biological father? I wondered. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t look much like him. And why was he about to beat me? The thought hurt more than the question. Of all the people in the world, my mother and Mwita were the two that I could fully trust to never ever hurt me. Now I had left my mother and Mwita… something in his brain had gone mad.

And then there was the question of what had literally happened. We’d been there. Mwita had delivered a blow and been delivered one in return. The people could see us, but what did they see? I scooped up a handful of sand and threw it.

CHAPTER 28

MWITA AND I KEPT OUR PROBLEMS QUIET. It was easy to do, for the next day Mwita took Fanasi with him to look for lizard eggs.

“The bread is getting stale. Ugh,” Binta complained as she bit into a piece of the yellow flatbread. “I need some real food.”

“Don’t be such a princess,” I said.

“I can’t wait to reach a village,” Binta said.

I shrugged. I wasn’t looking forward to other villages or towns on the way. I had a scar on my forehead to show that people could be hostile. “We have to learn to live on the desert,” I said. “We have a long long way to go.”

“Yeah,” Luyu said. “But we’ll only find fresh men in the towns and villages. You and Diti may not mind staying away from them, but Binta and I have needs, too.”

Diti grumbled something. I looked at her. “What’s your problem?” I asked.

She only looked away.

“Onye,” Binta said. “You said when you were little, you used to sing and owls would come. Can you still do that?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I haven’t tried it in a long time.”

“Try it,” Luyu said, perking up.

“If you want to hear singing, turn on Binta’s musicplayer,” I said.

“The batteries are low,” Luyu said.

I chuckled. “It’s solar, isn’t it?”

“Come on. Stop being stingy,” Luyu said.