CHAPTER 44

WHEN I AM NOT MOVING TOWARD MY FATE, it comes to me. Those days leading up to the retreat were really the beginning of the process Ssaiku hinted at. We’d only been with the Red People for three short days. Four days until the retreat. Not nearly enough time to unwind.

Still, I woke up relaxed, content, rested. Mwita’s arm was around my waist. Outside I could hear the drone of Ssaiku’s storm. Over the noise I could hear people chatting as they started the day, the maa of goats, and the sound of a baby crying. I sighed. Ssolu was like home in so many ways.

I closed my eyes thinking of my mother. She’d be outside the house tending to her garden. Maybe she’d visit the Ada later on or stop by my father’s shop to see how Ji was getting along. I missed her so much. I missed not having to… travel. I sat up and pushed my long hair back. The palm fiber I’d used to tie it had come undone. My hands automatically started braiding it as I usually did when it felt in the way. Then I remembered Ssaiku’s words about how I was to keep my hair unbraided. “Ridiculous,” I muttered looking for the fiber.

“What?” Mwita mumbled, his face to the mat.

“I just lost my…”

A tiny white head with a small red wattle hanging from its beak was peeking into our tent. It whistled softly. I laughed. A guinea fowl. In Ssolu, the plump docile birds roamed about as freely as the children and they knew never to go near the storm. I wrapped my rapa around myself and sat up. I froze. I smelled that strange smell, the one that always came when something magical was happening. The bird pulled its head out of my tent.

“Mwita,” I whispered.

He quickly got up, wrapped his rapa around his waist and grasped my hand. He seemed to smell it, too. Or at least, he sensed something was odd.

“Onye!” Diti shouted from outside. “You better come out here!”

“Do it slowly,” Luyu said. They both sounded several yards from our tent.

I sniffed the air, the strange otherworldly aroma filling my nose. I didn’t want to leave the tent but Mwita pushed me, pressing close behind. “Go on,” he whispered. “Face whatever it is. It’s all you can do.”

I frowned, shoving back. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“Don’t be a coward,” Mwita snapped.

“Or what?”

“It’s not what we left home for,” he said. “Remember?”

I sucked my teeth, fear pressing my lungs. “I don’t know what I left home for anymore. And I don’t know what’s out there…waiting for me.”

Mwita scoffed. “You know what you have to do.”

I wasn’t sure which of my thoughts he was responding to.

“Go on,” he said, pushing me again.

I kept thinking about the retreat, how something would happen there. Our tent was security-in it was Mwita and our few belongings, it was a shield from the world. Oh Ani, I want to stay in here, I thought. But then the image of Binta popped into my mind. My heart pounded harder. I moved forward. When I pushed the flap aside and crawled out, I almost bumped right into it. I looked up, up, and up.

It stood directly before our tent, tall as a middle-aged tree. Wide as three tents. A masquerade, a spirit from the wilderness. Unlike the violent needle-clawed one that had guarded Aro’s hut the day I attacked him, this one stood still as a stone. It was made of tightly packed dead wet leaves and thousands of protruding metal spikes. It had a wooden head with a frowning face carved into it. Thick white smoke dribbled from the top. This smoke was what was producing the smell. Around it strutted about ten guinea fowl. They looked up at it every so often, heads tilted, softly whistling questioningly. Two sat on its right and one on its left. A monster that attracts cute harmless birds, I thought. What next?

The masquerade stared down at me as I slowly stood up, Mwita right behind me. Yards away were Diti and Fanasi and a growing crowd of onlookers. Fanasi had an arm around Diti’s waist as Diti clasped him for dear life. A terrified Luyu was hiding behind her tent directly to my right. I wanted to laugh. Luyu stayed, Diti and Fanasi cowered.

“What do you think it wants?” Luyu loudly whispered as if the creature weren’t right there. She crept closer. “Maybe if we give it what it wants it’ll go away.”

Depends on what it wants, I thought.

Suddenly the creature began descending to the ground, its raffia body packing upon itself. The guinea fowl sitting beside it moved a foot to the side before sitting back down. The masquerade stopped descending. It was sitting. I sat down before it. Mwita sat behind me. Luyu stayed close, too. She didn’t have a magical bone in her body and this made her bravery in the face of the mysterious that much more amazing.

With its head closer to the ground, the strange-smelling smoke around us grew thick. My lungs hitched and I worked hard not to cough. That would have been rude, I knew. Several of the guinea fowl actually did cough. The masquerade didn’t seem to care. I glanced at Luyu and nodded. She nodded back. “Tell them all to step away,” I told her.

Without a hint of questioning, she went to the people. “She says to get back,” Luyu said.

“That is a masquerade,” a woman blankly replied.

“I don’t know what it is,” Luyu said. “But…”

“It’s come to speak with her,” a man said. “We just want to watch.”

Luyu turned to me. At least now I knew what it wanted. The Red People continued to amaze me with their instinctive knowledge of the mystical. “Move back, anyway,” I said flatly. “It’s a private talk.”

They moved to a seemingly safe distance. I saw Fanasi and Diti push into the crowd and disappear. Then it was speaking to me.

Onyesonwu, it said. Mwita. The voice came from every part of it, creeping from its body like its smoke. Traveling in all directions. The guinea fowl stopped their soft whistling and the ones who were standing all sat down. I greet you, it said. I greet your ancestors, spirits and chis. As it spoke, the wilderness sprung up around us. I wondered if Mwita could see it. Brilliant colors, undulating tubules extending from the physical ground. They looked like trees if there were trees in the wilderness. Wilderness trees.

I glanced around for the eye of my father. I could see its glow but it was blocked by the bulk of the masquerade. This was the only hint that I could trust this powerful masquerade creature. “We greet you, Oga,” Mwita and I said.

“Hold out your hand, Onyesonwu.”

I turned to Mwita. His eyes were narrow and intense, his jaw clenched, his lips pressed, his nostrils flared, his eyebrows furrowed. He suddenly stood up. “What will you do?” he asked it.

Sit down, Mwita, it said. You cannot take her place. You cannot save her. You have your own role to play. Mwita sat down. Just like that, it had read his mind, leaped over his questions and arguments, and addressed the exact issue that was at the center of Mwita’s heart. Touch her if you must but do not interfere, it said.

Mwita grasped my shoulder. Into my ear he whispered, “I will go with whatever you wish to do.” I heard the pleading in his voice. Pleading for me to refuse. To act. To flee. I thought of my Eleventh Rite when I had a similar option. If I’d fled my father wouldn’t have seen me so soon. I wouldn’t be here. But I was here. And no matter what, something was going to happen in four days when I went on that retreat. Fate is cold. It is brittle.

Slowly, I held my hand out. I kept my eyes open. Mwita grasped my shoulder tightly and pressed closer. I don’t know what I expected but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Its layer of wet leaves all lifted at the same time exposing its many needles. It leaned away from me and then whipped forward with a soft whisp! I flinched back and blinked. When I opened my eyes I saw that I was covered with drops of water and… the masquerade’s needles.