CHAPTER 47

THE MORNING OF THE TENTH DAY, Mwita had to wake me. I hadn’t been able to fall asleep until the last hour. I was still unable to eat and too hungry to sleep. Mwita did his best to exhaust me. Even in my state, his touch was more soothing than food or water. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how many people would die if I conceived. Nor could I get it out of my head that something bad was going to happen when I went on the retreat.

“I hear them singing,” Mwita said. “They’ve already gathered.”

“Mmm,” I said, my eyes still closed. I had been listening to them for over an hour now. Their song reminded me of my mother. She sang this song often, though she refused to go with the Jwahir women to Hold Conversation. “She hasn’t gone since I was conceived,” I mumbled, opening my eyes. “Why should I ever go?”

“Get up,” Mwita said softly, kissing my bare shoulder. He got up, wrapped his green rapa around his waist and went outside. He returned with a cup of water. He reached into my pile of clothes and grabbed my blue top.

“Wear this,” he said. “And…” He found a blue rapa. “And this.”

I pushed myself up, the cover falling off me. As the cool air touched my body, awareness flooded over me. I wanted to sob. I wrapped the blue rapa around myself. He handed me the water. “Be strong,” he said. “Get up.”

When I stepped out, I was shocked to see Diti, Luyu, and Fanasi sitting there, fully dressed, and eating fresh bread. The smell of the bread made my stomach growl. “We were beginning to think you two were too… exhausted to go,” Luyu said with a wink.

“You mean you were in camp to hear it?” I asked.

Fanasi bitterly laughed. Diti looked away.

“I got in late but yes,” Luyu said with a smirk.

By the time I’d washed and dressed, the group of women was walking out. They moved slowly. It was easy to catch up with them. No one seemed to mind Mwita and Fanasi, who were the only men in the group. Ting was there, too. “To represent Ssaiku,” she said. I noticed a quick look pass between her and Mwita.

It wasn’t a long walk to the edge of the dust storm on the west side, about a mile and a half. But we walked at such a slow pace that it took nearly an hour. We sang songs to Ani, some that I knew, many that I didn’t. By the time we stopped, I was dizzy from hunger and glad to sit down. It was windy, noisy, and a little scary. You could see where the wind turned to storm, only a few yards away.

“Let her hair go,” Ting told Mwita. He took the twine of palm fiber off my hair and it blew about. Everyone was quiet now. Praying. Many knelt, their heads to the sand. Diti, Luyu, and Fanasi remained standing, staring at the dust storm. Luyu and Diti came from families that only occasionally prayed to Ani. Their mothers had never gone on retreats and neither had they. I couldn’t keep my mind off my own mother and how it all happened to her, how she’d been praying like these women when the scooters came. Ting was behind me. I felt her do something to my neck. I was too weak to stop her. “What are you doing?” I asked.

She leaned close to my ear. “It’s a mixture of palm oil, the tears of a dying old woman, the tears of an infant, menstrual blood, the milk of a man, the skin from the foot of a tortoise, and sand.”

I shivered, repulsed.

“You don’t know Nsibidi,” she said. “It is a written juju. To mark anything with it is to enact change; it speaks directly with the spirit. I’ve marked you with a symbol of the crossroads where all your selves will meet. Kneel forward. Ask it of Ani. She’ll give it.”

“I don’t believe in Ani,” I said.

“Kneel and pray anyway,” she said, pushing me forward.

I pressed my forehead to the sand, the sound of the wind in my ears. Minutes passed. I’m so hungry, I thought. I began to feel something holding me down. I turned my head and stared into the sky. I saw the sun set, come back up and then set again. A long time passed, that’s what matters.

Suddenly, I dropped into the sand. It swallowed me like the mouth of a beast. The last thing I remember before the world exploded was a girl saying, “It’s okay, Mwita. She’s releasing. We’ve been waiting for this since she got here.”

Every part of me that was me. My tall Ewu body. My short temper. My impulsive mind. My memories. My past. My future. My death. My life. My spirit. My fate. My failure. All of me was destroyed. I was dead, broken, scattered, and absorbed. It was a thousand times worse than when I first changed into a bird. I remember nothing because I was nothing.

Then I was something.

I could feel it. I was being put back together, bit by bit. What was doing this? No, it was not Ani. It was not a goddess. It was cold, if it could be cold. And brittle, if it could be brittle. Logical. Controlled. Dare I say that it was the Creator? It Who Cannot Be Touched? Who doesn’t care to be touched? The fourth point that no sorcerer could ever consider? No, I can’t say that because that is the deepest blasphemy. Or at least that’s what Aro would say.

But my spirit and body were utterly completely obliterated… was this not what Aro said would happen to any creature who encountered the Creator? As It reassembled me, It arranged me in a new order. An order that made more sense. I remember the moment the last piece of me was returned.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I breathed. Relief, my first emotion. Again, I am reminded of that time in the iroko tree. When my head was like a house. Back then it was as if some of that house’s doors were cracking open-doors of steel, wood, stone. This time all of those doors and windows were blown out.

I was dropping again. I hit the ground hard. Wind on my skin. I was freezing. I was wet. Who am I? I wondered. I didn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t remember how to. Something hit my head. And something else. Instinctively, I opened my eyes. I was in a tent.

“How can she be dead?” Diti was screaming. “What happened?”

Then it all slammed into me. Who I was, why I was, how I was, when I was. I shut my eyes.

“Don’t touch her,” Ssaiku said. “Mwita, speak to her. She’s coming back. Help her complete her journey.”

A pause. “Onyesonwu.” His voice sounded strange. “Come back. You were gone for seven days. Then you fell from the sky, like one of Ani’s missing children in the Great Book. If you live again, open your eyes, woman.”

I opened my eyes. I was lying on my back. My body hurt. He took my hand. I grasped his. More came in that moment. More of who I now was. I smiled, and then I laughed.

This was a moment of madness and arrogance that I cannot say was only my fault. The power and ability that I realized was a part of me now was overwhelming. I was stronger and more in control than I ever imagined I could be. And so as soon as I returned, I was off again. I hadn’t eaten in seven days. My mind was clear. I was so so strong. I thought of where I wanted to go. I went there. One minute I was on that mat in the tent, the next I was flying, as myself, as my blue spirit.

I was going after my father.

I flew right through the sandstorm. I felt its stinging touch. I burst through its wall into the hot sun. Morning. I flew over miles of sand, villages, dunes, a town, dry trees, and more dunes. I flew over a small field of green, but I was too focused to care. Into Durfa. Straight to a large house with a blue door. Through the door and up to a room that smelled of flowers, incense, and dusty books.

He was at a desk, his back to me. I dropped deeper into the wilderness. I had done it to Aro when he’d refused me one too many times. And I’d done it to the witch doctor in Papa Shee. This time I was even stronger. I knew where to tear and bite and destroy, where to attack. Layered over his turned back, I could see his spirit. It was a deep blue, like mine. This startled me for a moment, but it didn’t stop me.