“Eh, he has already been bewitched,” another boatman said.

A crowd of women were running down the hill. A stone hit the boat and then another hit me in the backside as I turned away.

“Where to?” the boatman named Shukwu asked.

“Rana’s island,” I said. “Do you know where it is?”

“I do,” he said, turning the boat south, into the water’s belly.

Behind us, the women quickly talked to the men. They started their motors and quickly gave chase.

“Stop the boat!” a man shouted. They were about a quarter of a mile from us.

“Shukwu, we won’t hurt you!” another shouted. “We only want the girl.”

Shukwu turned to me.

I looked him in the eye. “Don’t stop the boat,” I said.

We kept on.

“So are the rumors true?” he asked. “Have all the men… what happened in Durfa?” He had come from across the lake, possibly from Suntown or Chassa. News traveled fast. He’d taken a great chance coming across the water. What could I tell him?

“Why are you helping us?” Luyu asked, suspiciously.

“I… don’t believe in Daib,” he said. “A lot of us don’t. Those of us who pray five times a day, love the Great Book, and are pious people know this isn’t Ani’s wish.” He looked at me, inspecting my face. He shuddered and looked away. “And I saw her,” he said. “The Okeke woman that no one could touch. Who could hate her? Her daughter could never do anything evil.”

He was speaking of my mother going alu and trying to help me by telling people about me. So she was also appearing to Nurus. She was telling everyone what a good person I was. I almost laughed at the thought. Almost.

Despite their heavy loads, we couldn’t outrun the other boats. Behind them, I saw five more boats full of men. “They will kill you,” Shukwu said. He pointed to the right. “We just came from Chassa and all was fine. Please. Tell me what has happened in Durfa?”

I only shook my head.

“Just get us there,” Luyu said.

“Hope I’m doing the right thing,” he muttered.

They shouted curses and threats as they approached.

“How far?” Luyu asked, frantic.

“Look up there,” he said.

I could see it, an island with a thatch-roofed sandstone hut on it. But the boat’s motor was laboring, spewing out even more greasy black smoke. It started to make a chugging sound that couldn’t have been good. Shukwu cursed. “My fuel is almost done,” he said. He grabbed a small gourd. “I can refill…”

“No time! Go,” Luyu said, grabbing my shoulder. “Change and fly to it. Leave me. I’ll fight them.”

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving you. We’ll make it.”

“We won’t make it,” Luyu said.

“We will!” I shouted. I got on my knees and leaned over the side. “Help it!” And I started paddling with my arm. Luyu leaned to the other side and did the same.

“Use these,” Shukwu said, handing us large paddles. He gunned the motor to full power, which wasn’t much power at all. Slowly we approached the island. Nothing was going through my head except, Get there, GET THERE! My blue rapa and white shirt were soaked with sweat and the cold water of the unnamed lake. Above, the sun shined. Overhead a flock of small birds flew by. I paddled for dear life.

“Go!” I shouted, when we got close enough. Luyu and I jumped out, splashed through the water and ran onto the tiny island that barely had room for a hut and two squat trees. Only a few yards to the hut. I paused to see Shukwu frantically paddling his boat away.

“Thank you!” I shouted.

“If… Ani… wills it,” I heard him breathlessly shout. The boats of Nuru were closing in. I turned and ran to the hut.

I stopped beside Luyu at the threshold. There was no door. Inside slumped Rana’s lifeless body. In the corner was a large dusty book. I don’t know what happened to Rana. He could have been one of my victims, but did the death I accidently inflicted reach out this far? I’ll never know. Luyu turned and ran back the way we’d come. “Do it!” she shouted over her shoulder. “I’ll hold them off.”

Outside as I was in that hut, those men who’d followed us saw her come out. Luyu was beautiful and strong. She wasn’t afraid as she watched them step from their boats, taking their time now that they knew we were trapped. I think I heard her laugh and say, “Come on, then!”

Those Nuru men saw a beautiful Okeke woman protected only by her sense of duty and her two bare hands which had grown rough with use in the last few months. And they pounced on her. They ripped off her green rapa, her now dirty yellow top, the beaded bracelets she’d taken from the gift baskets only yesterday, a lifetime ago. Then they tore her apart. I don’t recall hearing her scream. I was busy.

I was drawn right to that book. I knelt beside it. The cover was thin but tough, made of a durable material I couldn’t name. It reminded me of the black cover of the electronic book I found in that cave. There was no title or design on it. I reached out but then hesitated. What is… No, I’d come too far to ask that.

When I touched the book, it was warm. Feverish. I rested my hand on the hard cover. It was rough, like sandpaper. I wanted to consider this but I knew I had no time. I dragged it into my lap and opened it. Immediately, I felt as if someone had hit me hard about the head causing my vision to go wrong. I could barely look at the writing on the pages, it bothered my eyes and head so much. I was focused, by now. I was there for only one purpose, a purpose that had been prophesied in that very hut.

I flipped the book’s pages and stopped on a page that felt hotter than the rest. I lay my left hand on it. It didn’t make any sense to me but I was inclined to do it, so sick the book felt. I paused. No, I thought. I switched hands, remembering Ting’s words about my hand, “We don’t know what the consequence will be.” This book was full of hate and that was what caused its sickness. My right hand was full of Daib’s hate.

“I don’t hate you,” I whispered. “I’d rather die.” Then I began to sing. I sang the song that I had made up when I was four years old and living with my mother in the desert. During the happiest time of my life. I had sung this song to the desert when it was content, at peace, settled. I sang it now to the mysterious book in my lap.

My hand grew hot and I saw the symbols on my right hand split. The duplicates dribbled down into the book where they settled between the other symbols into a script I still couldn’t read. I could feel the book sucking from me, as a child does from its mother’s breast. Taking and taking. I felt something click within my womb. I stopped singing. As I watched, the book grew dimmer and dimmer. But not so dim that I could not see it. It hid there in the corner as the men burst in and found me.

CHAPTER 60 – Who Fears Death?

CHANGE TAKES TIME AND I’D RUN OUT OF IT.

The moment I finished with that book, something began to happen. As it happened, I got up to run and realized I was caught. What I can tell you is that the book and all that it touched and then all that touched what it touched and so on, everything in that small sandstone hut began to shift. Not to the wilderness, that wouldn’t have scared me. Someplace else. I dare say a pocket in time, a slit in time and space. To a place where all was gray, white, and black. I would have loved to stand and watch. But by then they were dragging me by my hair past what remained of Luyu’s body, onto one of the boats. They were too blind to see what had begun to happen.

I sit here. They will come and take me. I have no reason to resist. No purpose in living. Mwita, Luyu, and Binta are dead. My mother is too far away. No, she won’t come to see me. She knows better. She knows fate must play out. The child in me, the child of Mwita and me is doomed. But to live even for three days is to live. She’ll understand. I shouldn’t have made her. I was selfish. But she will understand. Her time will come again as mine will when the time is right. But this place that you know, this kingdom, it will change after today. Read it in your Great Book. You won’t notice that it has been rewritten. Not yet. But it has. Everything has. The curse of the Okeke is lifted. It never existed, sha.