“Better?”

I nodded. “Now tell me a story.”

“Before I say anything, note that we’ve both been keeping secrets,” Mwita said.

“I know,” I said.

“Okay.” He paused, pulling at his short beard. “You can travel the way you do because you have the ability to alu. You’re…”

“Alu?” I said. The word had a familiar sound to it. “You mean like Alusi?”

“Just listen, Onyesonwu.”

“How long have you known?” I asked, frantic.

“Known what? You don’t even know what you’re asking.”

I frowned but held my mouth shut, looking at my hands. So going “away” was called alu, I thought.

“Your mother is close to the Ada,” Mwita said.

I frowned. “So?”

Mwita took my shoulders. “Onyesonwu, be quiet. Let me talk. You listen.”

“Just…”

“Shh,” he said.

I sighed, putting my hands over my face.

“Your mother is close to the Ada,” he calmly said. “They talk. The Ada is Aro’s wife. They talk. And you know what Aro is to me. We talk. This is how I know about your mother. It’s good that it happened this way because now I can tell you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked. “Why didn’t my mother tell me?”

“Onyesonwu?”

“Talk faster, then,” I said.

“I’ve thought about it,” he said, ignoring me. “Your mother knew exactly what she was doing when she asked that you be a sorceress once you were born and a girl. It was her revenge.” He looked down at me. “Your mother can travel within, she can alu. The word for the mythical creature we know of as the Alusi comes from the actual sorcerer’s term ‘to alu,’ to ‘travel within.’ She…”

I held up a hand. “Wait,” I said. My heart pounded hard. It all fell into place. I thought about the Kponyungo that had taken me alu. Its voice had sounded familiar but I didn’t know why. This was because it was my mother’s, a voice I’d never really heard. She loved Kponyungos, I thought. How did I not know? “The Kponyungo was my mother?” I whispered to myself.

Mwita nodded. Another thought occurred to me: Maybe that’s why I couldn’t make myself the same size as her when she took me alu. Maybe, when alu one can’t outgrow her own parent.

“So I get the ability from her?”

“Right,” he said. “And… this may have caused…” He shook his head. “No, that’s not the right way to put it.”

“Don’t make it easy,” I insisted. “Just tell me. Tell me everything.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said quietly.

I scoffed. “If you haven’t noticed, I can take pain fairly well.”

“Okay,” he said. “Well, the fact is your mother would have passed initiation. This is what Aro believes after talking to both your mother and the Ada. It has something to do with your grandmother. Do you know anything about your grandparents?”

“Not much,” I said, rubbing my face. What he was telling me felt so unreal, yet it made sense. “Nothing like that.”

“Well, that’s what Aro believes,” he said. “You know how you felt when you met Ting and Ssaiku, that repellence and attraction? There is always energy between your kind.” He paused. “It’s why your mother chose to live when she realized she was carrying you. It’s part of why you and your mother are so close. And it’s probably why Daib chose your mother to impregnate. Your mother can become two beings, herself and an Alusi-she can split herself.

“Aro didn’t tell you because he didn’t think you needed more surprises. Plus you hadn’t shown any hint of going alu back then. I don’t think he’d have ever imagined you’d have the ability so strong.”

I sat back, my mouth hanging open.

“While I’m telling you all this,” Mwita said. “I might as well tell you the rest of what I know about your mother.”

I wish it was my mother who told me what Mwita went on to tell me. I’d have loved to hear it from her. But my mother has always been full of secrets. It was that Alusi side, I guess. Even when she showed me the green place, she preferred to do it without me knowing it was her. My mother never told me much about her childhood, either.

All I really knew was that she was close to her brothers and her father, Xabief. Not so much her mother, Sa’eeda. My mother’s people were Salt People. Their main business was selling salt extracted from a giant pit that used to be a salt water lake. My mother’s people were the only ones who knew how to get to it. Her father used to take her and her older brothers along on the two-week journey to collect and bring back salt. She loved the road and she couldn’t bear to be away from her father for so long.

According to Mwita, my mother’s mother, Sa’eeda, was also a free spirit. And though she loved her children, motherhood was not easy for her. To have all her children out of the house for those months suited her well. And it suited her husband well, too, for fatherhood came easily to him and he loved and understood his wife.

On the Salt Road, my mother learned to love the desert, the roads, the open air. She used to drink milky tea and have loud raucous conversations with her brothers and father. But there was more to these trips. Wherever she was out there in the desert, her father would encourage her to fast.

“Why?” she’d asked the first time.

“You’ll see,” her father had replied.

I wondered if maybe she even met a Kponyungo here, too, as it rose out of the salt beds.

I closed my eyes as Mwita told me these things that my mother had told the Ada and never told me.

“So she had perfect control of this even back then?” I asked.

“Even Aro looked envious when he told me about how many places your mother has traveled to,” Mwita said. “Especially the forests.”

“Oh, Mwita, it was so beautiful.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Mwita said. “So much life. Your mother… how all that must have touched her.”

“Mama is… I never knew,” I whispered. “But who asked for it to be so with her? If she would have passed initiation, someone had to ask for it to be so.”

Mwita shrugged. “My guess is that it was her father.”

“Something terrible must have happened for him to have asked.”

“Maybe.” He took my hand. “One last thing. When we left Jwahir, Aro was considering taking on your mother as his student.”

“What?” I sat up. The healing cuts on my chest and the bruises on my legs throbbed.

“And you know she’ll say yes.” Mwita said.

CHAPTER 50

ALL MORNING I FELT STRANGE IN MY SKIN. My body ached horribly from Daib’s evil thrashing. I was full of doubt about my own abilities and purpose. My monthly made my womb hot as a rock fire stone. My hands were covered in juju drawings. My right hand was dangerous. My mother was more than I’d imagined and what she was was in me. And the same with my biological father. But life never stops.

“I’ll be back soon,” Mwita said. “Can you manage?”

“I can,” I said. I felt awful but I wanted some time alone, too.

Minutes later, as I was slowly stretching my legs, Luyu came running in.

“They’ve gone!” she screeched.

“Eh?” I said.

“They left when the sandstorm stopped,” Luyu babbled. “They took Sandi.”

“Stop, wait, who?!”

“Diti, Fanasi,” Luyu cried. “All their things are gone. I found this.”

The letter was written in Diti’s squiggly handwriting on a piece of torn white cloth.

My friend Onyesonwu,

I love you very much but I do not want to be a part of this. Since Binta was killed, I’ve felt this way. Neither does Fanasi. The storm has stopped and we take it as a sign to flee. We don’t wish to die as Binta did. Fanasi and I have realized our love. And Luyu, yes, we have consummated our marriage. We’ll return to Jwahir, Ani willing, and have the life we are meant to have. Onye, thank you. This journey has changed us forever, for the better. We simply wish to live, not die like Binta. We’ll take news of you back to Jwahir. And we hope to hear great stories about you. Mwita, take care of Onye.