“I know,” she said, taking her rapa off. Luyu and Binta both looked away.

I felt nauseated. Not out of fear but more from a deep sense of discomfort. She would have to spread her legs. But even worse, I had to also place my hands on the scar that was left from that swift cut nine years ago.

“You don’t have to look like that,” Diti said.

“How do you expect me to look?” I asked, annoyed.

“We’ll just, ah, walk this way,” Luyu suddenly said, taking Binta’s hand and stepping away. “Call us when you’re ready.”

“Is the fire warm enough?” I asked Diti.

“Can you make it warmer?”

I did. “You’re going to have to… do what you did… before,” I said, kneeling down beside the rocks. I looked at the sky as she lay down beside me and spread her legs. I took in a deep breath and lay my hands on her. I focused my mind immediately, ignoring the moist feel of my friend’s yeye. I focused on pulling up handful after handful of what there was plenty of. I took strength from the fear and excitement of Luyu and Binta nearby. I pulled from the restlessness of the camels, the mild worry of Mwita back at the camp, and the confused anxiety and excitement of Fanasi.

I could feel her scar but soon I could feel heat and a breeze pushing from behind me. Diti was whimpering. Then crying. Then screaming. I held on, my eyes closed, though I could feel the same burning, tearing, knitting between my legs. Her screams had to reach Mwita and Fanasi. I held on. The moment came. I took my hands away. Instinctively, I plunged my hands into the sand. I scrubbed them as if the sand were water. I used Diti’s rapa to clean off my hands.

“It’s done,” I said in a husky voice. My hands were itchy. “How do you feel?”

She wiped the tears from her face and gave me a dirty look. “What did you do to me?” she said, her voice hoarse.

“Shut up,” I snapped. “I told you it would hurt.”

“You want me to see if it works?” she asked sarcastically.

“I don’t care what you do,” I said. “Go and get Luyu.”

Once she was standing up, Diti seemed better. She looked down at me for a moment and then slowly walked away. I rubbed more sand on my itchy hands. “Everything has a consequence,” I mumbled to myself.

All three of them screamed.

“Leave me here,” I said when I finished with Binta. I was out of breath and sweating, still scrubbing my hands with the sand. I could smell all three of them on me and I was twitchy all over. I scrubbed harder. “Go back to the camp.”

Neither they nor I needed to check if what I did worked. It had. I understood now that there was no reason to doubt myself with something so simple. “I can do much more,” I said to myself. “But what would I suffer?” I laughed. My hands itched so badly that I wanted to place them on the hot rocks. I held them up in the fire light.

“Oh Ani, what did you make when you made me?” I whispered. My skin was chaffing. I picked at a small piece of skin. A swath of it the size of the entire back of my hand sloughed off. I dropped it on the sand. Right before my eyes, I saw the new skin begin to dry and chafe. It too would peel off. I grated it with sand. Layer after layer came off. The itching continued. There was a pile of skin on the ground and I was still peeling when Mwita spoke from behind me.

“Congratulations,” he said, leaning against the palm tree, putting his arms around his chest. “You’ve made your friends happy.”

“I… I can’t make it stop,” I said frantically.

Mwita frowned and looked more closely in the dim light. “Is that skin?” he asked. I nodded. He knelt beside me. “Let me see.”

I shook my head, holding my hands behind my back. “No. It’s awful.”

“How do they feel?” he asked.

“Terrible. Hot, itchy.”

“You need to eat,” he said. He brought out a hunk of red cactus candy wrapped in a cloth. It was just the way I liked it, sticky and ripe.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter. All that skin requires energy and production from you, juju or not. You need to eat to replace it.”

“I don’t want to touch it. I don’t want to touch anything with them.”

He put the cactus candy aside. “Let me see, Onyesonwu.”

I cursed and gave him my hands. It was always so humiliating. I would do something and I’d always need Mwita to put me back in order. As if I had no control of my abilities, my faculties, my body.

He looked at my hands for a long time. He touched the skin. Peeled some of it off, watched the new skin become old and peel again. He grasped my hands in his.

“They’re hot,” he said.

I envied him. I was the sorceress but he understood so much more than I. He wasn’t allowed to learn the Mystic Points, yet he had sorcerer’s ways.

“Okay,” he said to himself after a while.

When he said nothing else, I asked, “Okay, what?”

“Shh,” he said, reminding me of Aro. Sola, too. All three had a habit of listening to a voice or voices I couldn’t hear. “Okay,” he said again. This time he was speaking to me. “I can’t heal this.”

“What?”

“But you can.”

“How?”

Mwita looked irritated. “You should know.”

“Well, obviously I don’t!” I snapped.

“You should,” he said, laughing bitterly. “Ah, you should know how to do this. You have to practice more, Onye. Start teaching yourself.”

“I know,” I said, looking annoyed. “That’s why I was saying we should be careful when we have intercourse. I’m not…”

“That chance is better taken,” Mwita said. He paused, looking at the sky. “Only Ani knows why she made you a sorcerer instead of me.”

“Mwita, just tell me what I should do,” I said, rubbing my hands with sand.

“All you need to do is to wash your hands in the wilderness,” he said. “You used your hands to manipulate time and flesh and now they’re full of flesh and time. Take them to the wilderness where there is no time or flesh and it will stop.” He got up. “Do it now so we can go back.”

He was right, I hadn’t been learning or practicing. Since we’d left, I’d only used my abilities when we needed them or when I needed them. I tried to drop into the wilderness. Nothing happened. I was unpracticed, and I had not fasted. I tried harder and still nothing happened. I calmed myself and focused inward. Letting my thoughts peel away, like the flesh on my hands. Gradually the world around me shifted and undulated. I watched the colors for a while as several pink hazes of color circled my head.

Then in the distance, I saw it, the red eye. I hadn’t seen it since I was sixteen, since initiation. I quickly stood up. I was Eshu which meant I could shift into the bodies of other creatures and spirits. Here I was blue. Except my hands, which were a dull brown. I stared defiantly back at the eye.

“When you’re ready,” I said to him. Daib didn’t reply. I pretended to ignore him. I held up my hands. Immediately they attracted several free happy spirits. Two pink ones and a green one passed through my hands. When I brought them down, my hands were a rich blue like the rest of me. I sat down and with relief came back to the physical world. I looked at my hands. They were still covered with peeling skin. But when I stripped the skin off, only stable rich skin was underneath. I looked at Mwita. He was sitting at the base of the tree, looking at the sky.

“Daib was watching me there,” I said.

He turned around. “Oh, you’re back.” He paused. “Did he try anything?”

“No,” I said. “He was just that red staring eye.” I sighed. “My hands are better, though. But they’re still a little warm, like they have a fever, and the skin is tender.”

He held and looked them over. “I can help this,” he said. “Let’s go back.”

When we got within range of the camp, we heard shouting. We walked faster.

“Is that all you think about, Fanasi?” Diti was yelling.

“What kind of wife are you? I didn’t even say anything about…”