“Yeah, well, it’s too late, don’t you think?” Diti snapped.

I pressed my lips together but I didn’t look away.

“Diti…” Mwita said. He swallowed his words and looked away.

“What?” Diti snapped. “Go on, say what you wish to say for once.”

“Shut up!” Mwita shouted above the moan of the wind. Diti gasped utterly shocked. “What is wrong with you?” Mwita said. “This man followed you… all the way out here! I have no idea why. You’re a child. You’re spoiled and coddled. His actions are nothing special to you! You have the nerve to expect them. Fine. But then you decide to reject him. You somehow even managed to throw other men in his face. And when he decided that he didn’t want to be treated this way and accepted another strong beautiful woman, you start tearing at people’s hair like some evil angry spirit…”

“I am the one who’s been betrayed!” She glared at me as she said this.

“Yes, yes, we’ve been listening to you cry about betrayal for hours now. Look at what you’ve done to Fanasi’s face. If his wounds get infected, you’ll blame Onyesonwu or Luyu. So much stupid, stupid childish bickering. We’re on a journey to the ugliest place on earth.

“We’ve tasted the ugliness. We lost Binta! You saw what they did to her. Maintain your perspective! Diti, if you want Fanasi and Fanasi wants you, go and have happy intercourse. Do it often and with passion and joy. Luyu, the same. If you want to enjoy Fanasi, do so for Ani’s sake! Figure something out, while you still can!

“Onyesonwu was trying to help by breaking that juju. She suffered to help you. Be grateful! And fine, we are ugly to you; you were raised to think so. Your minds are split between seeing us as your friends and seeing us as unnatural. That’s the way it is. But learn to curb your tongues. And remember, remember, remember why we’re out here.” He turned and walked away, breathing hard. None of us had anything to add.

That night, Diti slept alone, though I doubt she slept at all. And Luyu and Fanasi spent the first full but quiet night together in Fanasi’s tent. And Mwita and I found comfort in each other’s bodies well into the night. Come morning, the sun was blotted out by an approaching wall of sand.

CHAPTER 41

I WAS THE FIRST TO WAKE UP. When I crawled out of my tent, Sandi was standing there waiting for me. She groaned deep in her throat as I leaned close to her, inhaling the freshness of her fur. “You left your people to stay with us, didn’t you?” I asked. I yawned and looked to the west. My stomach dropped. “Mwita! Come out here right now!”

He scrambled out and looked at the sky. “I should have known,” he said. “I knew but I was distracted.”

“We all were,” I said.

We packed and secured our things, using our tents and rapas to protect our flesh. We tied our faces with cloth and tied our veils over our eyes. Then we dug down into the sand and huddled together with our backs to the wind, linking arms and hanging on to Sandi’s fur. The sandstorm hit so hard that I couldn’t tell which way the wind was moving. It was as if the storm settled on us from the sky.

The sand slapped and bit at our clothes. I’d wrapped Sandi’s muzzle and eyes with thick rapa cloth but I worried about her hide. Beside me, Diti was weeping and Fanasi was trying to comfort her. Mwita and I leaned close to each other.

“Have you heard of the Red People?” Mwita said into my ear.

I shook my head.

“People of the sand. Only stories… they travel in a giant dust storm.” He shook his head. It was too noisy to speak.

An hour passed. The storm remained. My muscles began to cramp from the strain of holding on. Noise, stinging wind, and no end in sight. Storms didn’t last nearly this long when I was with my mother. They came fast and hard and left just as quickly. Yet another half hour passed.

Then, finally, the wind and the sand died. Just like that. We coughed and cursed in the sudden silence. I rolled to the side, the exposed parts of my skin raw and my muscles exhausted. Sandi groaned, slowly standing up. She shook the sand from her hide, spraying sand about. We all weakly complained. The sun shone down into the giant brown funnel of sand and wind. The eye of the storm. It had to be miles wide.

They came from all around us, draped from head to toe in deep red garments, as were their camels. All I could see were their eyes. One of them came up to us on a camel. This person rode with a small child in front, a toddler. The child giggled.

“Onyesonwu,” the person said in rich voice. A woman.

I held my chin up. “I am.” I slowly stood.

“Which of you is her husband, Mwita?” she asked in Sipo.

He didn’t bother arguing with the title. “I am,” Mwita said.

The child said something that could have been another language or toddler-speak.

“Do you know who we are?” the woman asked.

“You’re the Red People, the Vah. In the West, I heard many stories about you all,” Mwita said.

“You speak more like an easterner.”

“I grew up in the West, then the East. We currently are heading back West.”

“Yes, so I’ve been told,” the woman said, turning to me.

A man behind her spoke in a language I couldn’t understand. The woman responded and everyone else went into motion, moving away, getting off their camels, and bringing down their burdens. They took off their veils. I saw why they were called the Red People. Their skin was red as palm oil. Their reddish brown hair was shaved close, except for the young children who wore their hair in large bushy dreadlocks.

The woman took off her veil. Unlike the others, she had a gold ring in her nose, two more in her ears, and one in her eyebrow. The toddler leaped off the camel with unexpected agility. The child threw off her veil, exposing her dreadlocks. I noticed that the little girl also had a gold ring in her eyebrow.

“Who are you?” the woman asked the others as she dismounted her camel.

“Fanasi.”

“Diti.”

“Luyu.”

She nodded and looked at Sandi. She grinned. “I know you.”

Sandi made a sound that I’d never heard before. A sort of purring guttural noise. She rubbed her muzzle against the woman’s cheek and the woman chuckled. “You look well, too,” she said.

“Who are you all?” Luyu asked. “Mwita knows of you, but I don’t.”

The woman looked Luyu up and down and Luyu looked back at her. I was reminded of the way she stood up to the Ada during our Eleventh Rite. Luyu had never respected authority.

“Luyu,” the woman said. “I am Chieftess Sessa. That over there is the other one, Chief Usson.” She motioned to a man equally adorned with rings standing beside his camel.

“Other what?” Luyu asked.

“You ask the wrong questions,” Chieftess Sessa said. “You’ve met us at a good time. This is where we’ll stay till the moon is pregnant.” She looked at the wall of dust and grinned. “You’re welcome to stay… if you like.” She walked away, leaving us to decide. Around us, the Vah set up tents homier than ours. They were made from shiny stretched goatskin and were much bigger and higher. I saw capture stations, but not one computer.

“The next ‘pregnant moon’ is three weeks from now!” Luyu said.

“What is with these people?” Fanasi asked. “Why do they look like that? Like they eat, drink, and bathe in palm oil and cactus candy. It’s bizarre.”

Mwita sucked his teeth, annoyed.

“Who knows?” Luyu said. “What about their ‘friend’ the dust storm?”

“It travels with them,” Mwita said.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Why are they red?”

Luyu screeched and jumped as a white-brown sparrow hit her in the back of the head. The bird fell to the ground, righted itself and stood there confused.

“Leave it alone,” Mwita said. “It’ll be okay.”

“I didn’t plan to do anything else,” Luyu said, staring at the bird.

“We can’t stay here,” Diti said.