“Really,” Diti said in a low annoyed voice. “It’s not all about you.”

“I’ve never seen an owl up close,” Binta said.

“I have,” Luyu said. “My mother used to feed one every night outside her window. It was…” She grew quiet. We all did, thinking about our mothers.

I quickly started singing the song of the desert on a cool night. Owls are nocturnal. This was a song they’d like. As I sang, it filled me with joy, a rare emotion for me. The remnants of my headache finally left me. I stood up and raised my voice higher, spreading my arms and closing my eyes.

I heard the flap of wings. My friends gasped, giggled, and sighed. I opened my eyes and kept singing. One of the owls perched on Binta’s tent. It was dark brown with large yellow eyes. Another owl landed on Luyu’s tent. This one was tiny enough to fit into the palm of my hand. When I finished singing both owls hooted in appreciation and flew off. The large one left a dollop of feces on Binta’s tent.

“There are consequences to everything,” I laughed. Binta groaned with disgust.

That night, I lay in our tent waiting for Mwita. He was outside bathing with capture station water. He and Fanasi had returned with several lizard eggs, one tortoise-which none of us, not even Fanasi, could bring ourselves to kill and cook-and four desert hares that they’d killed in the desert. I suspected that Mwita used simple juju to catch the hares and find the lizard eggs. Mwita wasn’t speaking to me, so I didn’t know for sure.

As I lay there, my rapa tied around me, fear occupied my thoughts. I’d hoped this feeling was only temporary, a weird side-effect of the vision. I couldn’t stop shaking. I was sure that he’d beat me this night, or even kill me. When he and Fanasi returned and showed us their catch, Mwita had looked me over. He kissed me lightly on the lips. Then he’d caught my eye. The rage I saw there was frightening. But I refused to avoid him.

I knew ways of defense using the Mystic Points. I could change into an animal ten times stronger than Mwita. I could drop into the wilderness where he could barely touch me. I could attack and tear at his very spirit as I’d done to Aro when I was only sixteen. But I wasn’t going to use any of that tonight. Mwita was all I had.

The tent flap opened. Mwita paused. I felt a flutter in my chest. He’d expected me to stay with Luyu or Binta. He wanted me to. I sat up. He wore only his pants made of the same material as my rapa. It was dark so I couldn’t see his face clearly. He closed the tent flap and zipped it shut. I assured myself that I’d done nothing wrong. If he kills me tonight, it won’t be my fault, I thought. I can live with that. But could I? If I was the one prophesied to make things right in the West, what good was I dead?

“Mwita,” I said softly.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Not tonight, Onyesonwu.”

“Why?” I asked, keeping my voice steady. “What’s happened that…”

“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I see you.” He shook his head, his shoulders curling.

I hesitated but then I moved forward and took him in my arms. He tensed up. I held him tight. “What is it?” I whispered, not wanting the others to hear. “Tell me!”

There was a long long pause and he frowned and glared at me. I didn’t dare move.

“Lie down,” he finally said. “Take this off and lie down.”

I took off my rapa and he lay down beside me and took me in his arms. Something was so wrong with him. But I let him remember me. He ran his arms over my body, took my braids in his hands and inhaled, kissed and kissed and kissed. All this time, so many tears dropped on me that I was damp with them.

“Tie it back on,” he said, sitting up and I did so.

He ran his hand over his rough hair. He’d shaved it when we left Jwahir but it was growing back, as was the hair on his face. Everything about Mwita was becoming rough.

“I heard you singing from all the way out there,” he said, looking away. “We must have been miles away and I could still hear your voice. We saw a large bird fly by. I assumed it was going to you.”

“I sang for Luyu, Binta, and Diti,” I said. “They wanted to see owls.”

“You should do it more,” he said. “Your voice heals you. You look… better now.”

“Mwita,” I said. “Tell me what…”

“I’m trying. Shut up. Don’t be so sure that you want to hear this, Onye.”

I waited.

“I don’t know what you will be,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing what you did. We were really there. Look at my face. That’s from his fist! I don’t think you saw the villages on the borders of the Seven Rivers Kingdom, but I did. We passed over some rebel Okekes fighting Nurus. The Nuru outnumbered the Okeke a hundred to one. Okeke civilians were attacked, too. Everything was burning.”

“I smelled the smoke,” I said, quietly.

“Your vision protected you, but not me. I saw!” Mwita said, his eyes widening. “I don’t know what kind of sorcery is at work here but you scare me. All of this does.”

“Scares me too,” I said carefully.

“You resemble your mother mostly, except in color and maybe the nose. You behave like her some… there’re other things, too,” he said. “But I can see it in the eyes now. You have his eyes.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s all we have in common.” And our ability to sing, I thought.

“Your father was my teacher,” he said. “He’s Daib. I’ve told you about him. He’s the reason my uncle and aunt, those who saved and raised me, were killed.”

The news hit me as if my mother had slapped me, as if Aro had punched me, as if Mwita were strangling me. I hung my mouth open to breathe. Both my own mother and the man I love have reason to hate me, I thought helplessly. All they need to do is look into my eyes. I rubbed the back of my head expecting my headache to return but it didn’t. Mwita brought his face up to mine. “How much of this did you know, Onye?”

I frowned not only at his question but at the way he asked it. “None, Mwita.”

“This Sola you told me about, did he plan…”

“There’s no plot against you, Mwita. Do you really believe I’m a false…”

“Daib is a powerful, powerful sorcerer,” Mwita said. “He can bend time, he can make things appear that should never be there, he can make people think wrong things, and he has a heart full of the most evil stuff. I know him well,” He brought his face even closer. “Even Aro couldn’t keep Daib from killing you.”

“Well, he did, somehow,” I said.

Mwita sat back, frustrated. “Okay,” he said after a while. “Okay. But… still, Onye, we’re practically siblings.”

I understood what he meant. My biological father, Daib, had been his first Master, his teacher. Though Daib hadn’t allowed Mwita to attempt initiation, Mwita had been his student for years. And to be one’s student of sorcery was a very close relationship-in many ways, closer than that of a parent. Aro, for all my conflict with him, was a second father to me-Papa being my first, not Daib. Aro had birthed me through another canal of life. I shivered and Mwita nodded.

“Daib would sing as he beat me,” Mwita said. “My discipline and ability to learn so fast are because of your father’s heavy hand. Whenever I did something wrong, or was too slow, or inaccurate, I would get to hear him sing. His voice always brought lizards and scarab beetles.”

He looked deep into my eyes and I knew he was deciding. I took the moment to decide, too. To decide if I was being manipulated. If we all were. Since I was eleven, things had been happening to me, pushing me toward a specific path. It was easy to imagine that someone of great mystical power was manipulating my life. Except for one thing: the shocked and almost scared look on Daib’s face when he saw me. Someone like Daib could never fake fear and ill preparedness. That look was real and true. No, Daib had as much control over all of this as I did.

That night Mwita would not let go of me, and I didn’t need to hold onto him.