She turned my palm up and began to draw near the symbol. I looked down and was horrified. It quivered, coiled, and moved slowly away from her drawings. It was disgusting. But there was nowhere for it to escape. As the drawings closed in around it, it began to fade. Every surface of my hand was covered. Daib’s symbol disappeared. She drew the final symbol over the spot where it had been, a circle with a dot in its center. Ting’s eyes cleared and she sat back.

“Ssaiku?” Ting asked, wiping her face with the back of her hand.

He didn’t respond. He had his eyes shut tightly. His face was strained and he was sweating profusely, dark patches in the armpits of his caftan.

The itching started on my left hand. Ting cursed under her breath when she saw the panic on my face. The priest and priestess paused in their prayers.

“Has it worked?” the priestess asked.

Ting turned up my left hand. The symbol was there now. “It’s jumped, like a spider,” she said. “Give me three minutes. Mwita, get me palm wine.”

He quickly got up and brought the bottle and a glass to Ting. She grabbed the bottle and drank deeply from it. Her hands were shaking. “Evil man,” she whispered, taking another swig. “This thing he put on you… eh, you can’t understand.” She took my hand. “Mwita, hold her tightly. Don’t let her run. I have to chase it away now.”

She started drawing again. I gritted my teeth. When she’d chased and trapped the symbol in the center of my palm, it did something that made me want to jump up and tear out of that tent like my life depended on it. It sunk deep into my hand and then emitted such an electrical shock that for a moment, I couldn’t control my muscles. All of the nerves on my body flared. I screamed.

“Hold her,” Ting said, grasping my hand with all her strength, her eyes wide as she drew. Mwita held me down as I bucked and shrieked. Somehow, Ting managed to complete that last circle. The symbol, repelled, jumped from my hand and landed with a clack on the floor. It sprouted many black legs and ran.

“Priest!” Ssaiku shouted, as he sat down hard on the floor and sighed with extreme fatigue. The tent flap fell open on its own. The noise from outside came tumbling in.

The priest leaped forward and ran after the symbol. Skipping this way and that. Finally, Smack! He stamped his sandal on it hard. When he removed his foot, only a smudge of charcoal was left. “Ha!” Ssaiku triumphantly exclaimed, still breathing heavily. Ting sat back, exhausted. I lay there panting on the floor, the mat underneath me still feeling like metal spiders. I rolled off it and stared at the ceiling.

“Try to change your hand,” Ting said.

I was able to change it into a vulture’s wing. However, instead of just black feathers, it was speckled with black and red ones. I laughed and lay back on the floor.

CHAPTER 49

MWITA AND ISPENT THE NIGHT IN SSAIKU’S TENT. Ssaiku had an important meeting and wouldn’t be back until the morning.

“What about the sandstorm?” Mwita asked Ting. “Is it still…”

“Listen for yourself,” she said. I could hear the distant roar of the wind. “He can control it when he travels. That’s nothing for him. I think people had a good time while the storm was down, though. I’m always telling him that he should do that once in a while.” She moved to leave. “Someone will bring you both a large meal.”

“Oh, I couldn’t eat anything,” I moaned.

“You must eat too, Mwita.” She looked at me. “The last time he ate was the last time you ate, Onye.”

I looked at Mwita shocked. He only shrugged. “I was busy,” he said. We fell asleep minutes after Ting left. It was past midnight when Luyu woke us. “Ting said you have to eat,” she said, lightly smacking my cheek again. She’d spread out a gigantic meal of roast rabbit, a large bowl of stewed rabbit livers, cactus candy, curried stew, a bottle of palm wine, hot tea, and something I hadn’t eaten since I was in the desert with my mother.

“Where did they find aku?” Mwita asked, taking one of the fried insects and popping it in his mouth. I grinned, doing the same.

Luyu shrugged. “A bunch of women handed me all these plates but that one bothers me. It looks like…”

“It is,” I said. “Aku are termites. You fry them in palm oil.”

“Ugh,” Luyu said.

Mwita and I ate ravenously. He made sure I ate all the rabbit liver stew.

“It was stupid to eat that much,” I moaned, when we finally stopped eating.

“Maybe, but it’s a good risk to take,” he said.

Luyu sat with her legs stretched out as she watched us and sipped a glass of palm wine. I lay out on the floor. “Where are Diti and Fanasi?” I asked.

Luyu shrugged. “Around, I guess.” She crawled to me. “Let me see your hands.”

I held them out. They were like one of the Ada ’s works of art. The drawings were perfect. Perfect circles, straight lines, graceful ebbs and flows. My hands were like the pages of some ancient book. The symbols on my right hand were smaller and closer together than the ones on my left. More urgent. I flexed my right hand. It didn’t hurt. No pain meant no infection. I smiled, very very glad.

“I could look at them all day,” Mwita said.

“But this hand is useless,” I said, making a fist with my right hand. “Or should I say dangerous.”

“So when do you think we’ll be, well, moving on?” Luyu asked.

“Luyu, I can barely walk,” I said.

“But you’ll be able to soon enough. I know you,” she said. “I’m in no hurry really. It’s nice here. But in a way I am. I… I was talking to some men. They told me things, about how it is in the West.” She paused. “I know something has happened to you.” She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “I pray, I pray to Ani, I swear to Ani, that you better be the real thing. You have to be the one prophesied.” She paused, looking with wide eyes at Mwita, then me. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve told him.”

Mwita cocked his head, eyeing me. “You told her before telling me?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Luyu said. “What matters is that it has to be true because what’s happening over there, what waits for you to put an end to it, is of the oldest evil. I used to think it was the Nurus. They were born ugly and superior… but, it’s deeper than humans.” She wiped her eyes. “We can’t stay here too long. We have things to do!”

Mwita took Luyu’s hand and squeezed it. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Ssaiku’s tent was warm and comfortable. There were empty plates around us. We were alive. We were where we needed to be in that moment. I pushed aside my growing doubts and reached forward and took Mwita’s and Luyu’s hands and, with our heads down, we instinctively shared a prayer.

Then Luyu let go of our hands. “I’m going to go… socialize. If you need me come to the tent of Ssun and Yaoss.” She smirked. “Call out before entering.”

I soon fell into a warm black recharging sleep. I woke up with sun in my eyes as it shined through the tent’s flap. My body ached a hello. Mwita’s arm was clamped around me. He was softly snoring. When I tried to move it, he held me tighter. I yawned and brought up my right hand. I held it in the sunshine and willed it to sprout feathers. With great great ease, it did. I turned to Mwita and met his open eyes.

“Has it been twenty-five hours yet?” I asked.

“Can you wait another hour?” he asked, reaching between my legs. He was disappointed when his fingers came away bloody. My monthly had arrived. As if from the realization, the womb pain descended on me, and I suddenly felt nauseated.

“Lie down,” Mwita said, jumping up and wrapping his waist with his rapa. He left and came back with a bundle of clothes and a fresh rapa.

“Here,” he said and placed a tiny dried leaf in my mouth. “One of the women gave me a small sack of it.”

It was bitter but I managed to chew and swallow it. I got up, took care of myself, and then lay back down. My nausea was already decreasing. Mwita poured me a glass of the remaining palm wine. It was sour but my body welcomed it.