CHAPTER 52

WE LEFT SSOLU IN THE DEEPEST PART OF NIGHT. Chieftess Sessa, Chief Usson, Ssaiku, and Ting accompanied us.

“You’ll have an hour, so move quickly,” Ssaiku said, as we passed all the tents for the last time. “If you’re caught when I resume the storm, bear down and keep moving.”

I heard the sound of small feet. “Eyess!” Chieftess Sessa hissed. “Go back to bed!”

“But Mommy, she’s leaving!” Eyess shouted in tears. Her loud voice woke several people in nearby tents. Ting cursed to herself.

“Go back to bed, everyone, please,” Chief Usson said.

People came out anyway. “Can’t we say good-bye, chief?” a man asked. Chief Usson sighed and reluctantly assented. More whispering and gathering. Within a minute, there was a large crowd.

“We know where they’re going,” a woman said. “Let us at least see them off.”

“We’ve enjoyed having Onyesonwu here,” another woman said. “Strange as she is.”

Everyone laughed. More people gathered, their bare feet whispering over the sand.

“We’ve enjoyed her beautiful friend Luyu, too,” a man said. Several men agreed and everyone laughed again. Someone lit sticks of incense. After several moments, as if someone had given a cue, they all began to sing in Vah. The song sounded like a chorus of snakes and it carried easily over the noise of the storm. They didn’t smile as they sang. I shivered.

Eyess held my leg tightly. She sobbed and eventually buried her face in my hip. If I weren’t carrying a burden on my back, I’d have picked her up. I put my hand on her back and pressed her to me. When the song ended, Chieftess Sessa had to tear Eyess from my leg. She allowed her to give me a hug and a slobbery kiss on the neck before sending her along, then Chieftess Sessa gave each of us a kiss on the cheek. Chief Usson shook Mwita’s hand and kissed Luyu and me on the forehead. Ssaiku and Ting walked us to the edge of the storm.

“Watch closely,” Ssaiku told Ting as we stood before it. “It’s different when you’re close to it. Everyone, kneel down.”

He raised his hands and turned his palms to the storm. He spoke something in Vah and turned his hands downward. The ground shuddered as he pressed the storm’s strength to the ground. Ssaiku’s hands strained and I could see the muscles in his neck flexing underneath his wrinkles. All the sand in the air dropped. The sound reminded me of the sounds the Vah people make so often when they speak their language. Sssssssss. We covered our faces from all the dust. Ssaiku pushed forward. A wind blew it all away, clearing the air. The night sky was full of stars. I’d gotten so used to the constant background noise of the storm that the silence was profound.

Ssaiku turned to Ting, “Instead of using words as I did, you’ll write into the air.”

“I know,” she said.

“Learn it again,” he said. “And again.” He looked at Mwita and took his hand. “Take care of Onyesonwu.”

“Always,” Mwita said.

He turned to Luyu. “Ting tells me about you. In many ways, you’re like a man in your bravery and your… other appetites. Again, I wonder if Ani is testing me by showing me a woman like you. Do you understand what you move into?”

“Very much so,” Luyu said.

“Then watch over these two. They need you,” he said.

“I know,” Luyu said. “And thank you.” She looked at Ting. “Thank you both and I also thank your village. For everything.” She shook hands with Ssaiku and gave Ting a tight hug. Then Ting went to Mwita and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Neither Ting nor Ssaiku hugged or even touched me.

“Beware of your hands,” Ting told me. “And be aware of them.” She paused, her eyes filling with tears. She shook her head and stepped back.

“You know the way,” Ssaiku said. “Don’t stop going until you get there.”

We were over a mile away when the sandstorm whipped up behind us. It churned and rolled like a living cloud clawing at the clear sky. We sorcerers are certainly a powerful sort. The ferocity and power of that storm only proved this more. Mwita, Luyu, and I turned west and started walking.

“We’re near water,” Mwita said.

Once the sun was up, I pulled my veil lower over my face. Mwita and Luyu did the same. The heat was stifling, but it was a different kind of heat. Heavier, more humid. Mwita was right. There was water close by.

Over the next few days, we started wearing our veils all the time to stay cool. But the nights were comfortable. None of us spoke much. Our minds were too heavy. This gave me the time and silence to really mull over all that had happened in Ssolu.

I’d died, been remade, and then brought back. My hands continued to look strange to me, covered in dark black symbols and always bearing the faint scent of burned flowers. When Mwita and Luyu were asleep, I’d sneak out, change into a vulture, and ride the air. It was the only way I kept the darkness of doubt at bay.

As a vulture, the vulture that was Aro, my mind was singular, sharp, and confident. I knew that if I focused and was audacious I could defeat Daib. I understood that I was extremely powerful now, that I could do more than the impossible. But as Onyesonwu the Ewu Sorceress shaped by Ani herself, all I could think about was the thrashing Daib had given me. I’d been no match for him even in my remade state. I should have been dead. And the more the days passed, the more I just wanted to crawl into a cave and give up. Little did I know that I’d soon get my chance to do just that.

CHAPTER 53

FOUR DAYS AFTER LEAVING SSOLU, the land was still cracked, dry and bleached. The only animals we saw were the occasional beetle on the ground and passing hawk in the sky. Thankfully, for the time being, we had enough food so that we didn’t have to eat beetle or hawk. The oddly humid heat made everything hazy and dreamlike.

“Look at that,” Luyu said. She was leading the way, her portable in hand to keep us on track.

I’d been walking with my head down, deep in my gloomy thoughts about Daib and the death I was voluntarily heading toward. I looked up and squinted. From afar, they looked like tall skinny giants having a meeting.

“What is that?” I asked.

“We’ll soon see,” Mwita said.

It was a cluster of dead trees. They were a half mile off from the straight line we were making to the Seven Rivers Kingdom. It was the middle of the day and we needed the shade so we went to the trees. Up close they were even stranger. Not only were they each as wide as a house, they felt like stone not wood. Luyu knocked on a brown-gray trunk as I spread my mat in the shade of another tree’s base.

“So solid,” Luyu said.

“I know this place,” Mwita said with a sigh.

“Really?” Luyu asked. “How?”

But Mwita just shook his head and ambled off.

“He’s moody today,” Luyu said, sitting beside me on my mat.

I shrugged. “He probably came through here when he fled the West,” I said.

“Oh,” Luyu said, looking in his direction. I hadn’t told her much about Mwita’s past. Somehow I didn’t think Mwita wanted me telling anyone about the murder of his parents, his humiliating apprenticeship under Daib, or his child soldier days.

“I can’t imagine how he must feel coming back here,” I said.

After a peaceful two hours of rest, we continued on. It came about five hours later. And it came with a vengeance. Dark gray clouds curdled and surged in the sky.

“This can’t be happening,” Mwita muttered as we stared west. It was heading east, right at us. Not a sandstorm. An ungwa storm, a dangerous storm of terrible lightning and thunder and intermittent deluges of rain. We’d been lucky so far as it was the dry season when we left Jwahir and these storms only happened during the brief rainy season. We’d been traveling for a little less than five months. In Jwahir, this was right on time. I guess it was the same here, too. To be caught out in an ungwa storm was to risk death by lightning strike.