“Let’s make this fast,” I said, pulling my veil over my head. Mwita did the same.

There were all styles of dress and I heard several dialects of Sipo and Okeke and, yes, even Nuru. There weren’t many Nuru but there were enough. I couldn’t help staring at them with their straight black hair and yellow-brown skin and narrow noses. No freckled cheeks or thick lips or strange colored eyes, like Mwita’s and mine. I was a little confused. I’d never imagined Nurus walking among free Okekes in peace.

“Are those Nurus?” Binta said a bit too loudly. The woman with what was probably her teenage son glanced at Binta, frowned, and moved away. Luyu elbowed Binta to shut up.

“What do you think?” Mwita asked me, leaning toward my ear.

“Let’s just get what we need and get out of here,” I said. “Those men over there are looking at me.”

“I know. Stay close.” Mwita and I were both attracting an audience.

A sack of pumpkin seeds, bread, salt, a bottle of palm wine, a new metal bucket, we managed to buy almost all we needed before the trouble started. There were plenty of nomads, so it wasn’t our style of dress or our way of speaking. It was what it always was. We were looking at dried meat when we heard the wild yell from behind. Mwita instinctively grabbed me and Luyu who stood on his other side.

“Eeeeewuuuuuu,” an Okeke man shouted in a deep deep voice. “Eeeewuuuuuu!”

His voice vibrated in my head in an unnatural way. He wore black pants and a long black caftan. Several brown and white eagle feathers were stuck in his long thick dada hair. His dark skin glistened with sweat or oil. The people around him moved aside.

“Make way for him,” a man said.

“Make way,” a woman shouted.

You know what happens next. You know it because you’ve heard me speak of a similar incident. I still had the scar on my forehead from it. Was this the same town? No, but it might as well have been. Not much had changed since my mother had had to run with me, an infant, from a crowd of people throwing stones.

I don’t know when they started hurling stones at Mwita and me. I was too in the moment, staring at the wild man who could put his voice in my head. A stone hit me in the chest. I focused my responding anger on that man, that witch doctor who had the nerve to not recognize a true sorcerer. I attacked him in the same way I’d attacked Aro years ago. Ripping and tearing. I heard the crowd gasp and someone screamed. I stayed focused on the man who’d started it. He had no idea what was happening to him because he didn’t know the Mystic Points. All he knew were children’s jujus, baby tricks. Mwita could have done away with him without blinking.

“What are you doing?!” I heard Binta scream. This brought me back to myself. I fell to my knees. “Do you all know who this is!” Binta shouted at the crowd. Across from us, the witch doctor collapsed. The woman beside him shrieked.

“They’ve killed our priest!” a man shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.

I saw it sailing through the air. I was stunned. Who would have the audacity throw a brick at a girl so beautiful that her father couldn’t resist her? With such perfect aim? The brick smashed into Binta’s forehead. I could see the white. Her skull was caved in, brain tissue exposed. She fell. I screamed and ran for her. I wasn’t close enough. The crowd burst into motion. People running, throwing more bricks, stones. A man came at me and I kicked him and grabbed his neck and began to squeeze. Then Mwita was pulling and dragging me.

“Binta!” I screamed. Even from where I was, I could see people kicking her fallen body and then I saw a man take another brick and… oh, it’s too horrible to describe. I screamed the words I’d spoken back in Jwahir’s market. But I didn’t want to show these people the worst of the West. I wanted to show them darkness. They were all blind and that’s what I made them. The entire town. Men, women, children. I took the very ability that they chose not to use. Mostly everyone went silent. Some clawed at their eyes. Some still reached around trying to inflict violence on whoever they could touch. Children whimpered. Some people shouted things like, “What is this evil?” or “Ani save me!”

Bastards. Let them stumble around in the darkness.

We scrambled through the confused blind people to Binta. She was dead. They’d smashed her skull, punctured her chest, crushed her neck and her legs. I knelt down and put my hands on her. I searched, I listened. “Binta!” I shouted. Several of those stupid blind people answered me as they stumbled toward my voice. I ignored them. “Where are you? Binta?” I listened some more for her confused terrified spirit. But she was gone.

“Where is she?” I shrieked, sweat pouring down my face. I kept searching.

She’d left. Why did she leave when she knew I could bring her back? I wonder if she understood that bringing her back and healing her would probably have killed me.

Eventually, Fanasi nudged me aside and picked her up, Mwita helping to take her weight. We left the town blind as they’d always been. You must have heard rumors of the famous Town of the Sightless. It’s no legend. Go to Papa Shee. See for yourself.

When the camels saw us carrying Binta’s body, they roared and stamped their feet. We set her down and they sat around her in a protective circle. The next few days were a muddled blur. I know we somehow managed to pull ourselves together enough to move away from Papa Shee. Sandi agreed to carry Binta’s body. I know that at some point, we spent a day digging a six-foot hole in the sand. We used our pots and pans. We buried our beloved friend there in the desert. Luyu read a prayer from the electronic file of the Great Book in her portable. Then we each took turns to say something about Binta.

“You know,” I said when it was my turn. “Before she left, she poisoned her father. Put heart root in his tea and watched him drink it. She set herself free before leaving home. Ah, Binta. When you return to these lands, you’ll rule the world.”

Everyone just looked at me, still in shock that she was dead.

My headaches returned after we buried her but what did I care? Binta had had the same fate, death by stoning. What made me so special? As we walked, I made it a habit of flying above and returning to everyone whenever we decided to stop. Sandi carried my things. All I could think about was the fact that Binta had never known the loving touch of a man. The closest she’d come was that night in the tavern in Banza, when she’d been so brazen. And then because of me, defending me, she died.

CHAPTER 39

THERE’S A STORY IN THE GREAT BOOK about a boy destined to be Suntown’s greatest chief. You know the story well. It’s a Nuru favorite, no? You all tell it to your children when they’re too young to see how ugly the story is. You hope the girls will want to be like Tia the good young woman and the boys like Zoubeir the Great. In the Great Book, their story was one of triumph and sacrifice. It’s meant to make you feel safe. It’s supposed to remind you that great things will always be protected and people meant for greatness are meant for greatness. This is all a lie. Here’s how the story really happened:

Tia and Zoubeir were born on the same day in the same town. Tia’s birth was no secret and when she came out a girl, her birth was nothing special. The child of two peasants, she was given a warm bath, many kisses, a naming ceremony. She was the second child in her family, but the first child had been a healthy boy, so she was welcome.

Zoubeir, on the other hand, was born in secret. Eleven months earlier, the Suntown chief noticed a woman dancing at a party. That night he had her to himself. Even this chief, who had four wives, could not get enough of a woman like this, so he sought her out and had her over and over until she became pregnant. Then he told his soldiers to kill her. There was a rule that decreed that the first son born out of wedlock to the chief must succeed him. The chief’s father had avoided this rule by marrying every woman he bedded. When he died, he had over three hundred wives.