Zahrah the Windseeker

by Nnedi Okorafor

  I did anything but get over it. By the time we stepped onto the fifth floor, I was sweating rivers, my legs were shaking, and my heart felt as if it were ready to jump out of my chest. The walls, the floors, the stairs, were all transparent. Only in the bathrooms were the walls and floors opaque.

  Once I started moving, I was determined to make it. The sooner I made it up there, the sooner I could pretend I was on the ground by not looking down. And I was curious about what information we could find. All Papa Grip really told me about being dada was that I would grow up wise. Because of all the mystery around my hair, I, too, was sure that my strange ability was connected to my being dada. If there was more to it, I wanted to know.

  When we were between the rows of books, I wiped the sweat from my brow and relaxed a tiny bit, making sure not to look at the transparent floor. There were a couple of hours of sunlight left, and it lit up the entire library. The dusty books stacked on the bookcases, however, were not transparent, and Dari and I stood in their shadow. The cluster of computers was in the center of the floor, surrounded by several desks where people did homework, read books, or whispered softly. It was very quiet. So quiet that I could hear people's footsteps perfectly.

  "You OK?" Dari asked, looking at me with a smirk.

  "Why'd you make me do this?" I grumbled, wiping a tear away and sniffing.

  "It's good for you. You won't die, Zahrah," said Dari.

  I only "humphed."

  "OK, the call number is HR2763, page fourteen," he said, turning to the bookshelves.

  We walked for a while, looking at book spines.

  "Here it is," he said, pulling out the slim book.

  We stood close together, flipping through it. It was a book on fashion. We turned to the right page. There was a small picture of a woman with dadalocks, wearing a lot of face powder and coloring, grinning with all her teeth. I frowned. The woman's locks looked too shiny and perfect, each one the same length, not one hair out of place.

  "Hers are fake, aren't they?" Dari asked. "At least they look nothing like yours."

  "Yeah, hers look like they're made of pliable plant byproduct. And look at the vines! They're pink!"

  "How can she have byproduct hair?" Dari asked.

  I laughed. A lot of women had byproduct hair.

  Dari and I read the few paragraphs next to the picture.

  TUNDE OLATUNDE'S JANUARY FASHION PREDICTION:

  Do you want to know what's hot? What's chic? What's most civilized? What'll make people who see you stand on their feet? Well, you don't have to go to the north to find out. I, Tunde Olatunde, am the man to ask.

  For the New Year, comes an old style! Few of us have ever seen a real person born with dadalocks. Oh, they're born here and there, northeast, northwest, southwest, southeast, and north of the great city goodness knows exactly where. Most of them choose to lop off their strange locks in order to live a normal life. The ones who keep their hair are quiet people who somehow grow into wise men and women, excelling in whatever career they choose. Or so legend says. But then again, another legend says that those born with dadalocks are rebels whose only cause is to make things go wrong.

  This year, anyone can take part in the myth and get the chic look of a wise (or strange) woman or man. Dada extensions! The chunks of hand-rolled oil-plant byproduct, fresh from a mature pliable plant, are melted onto the hair to give anyone this wonderful look that only a few are born with. Dada extensions are this year's hottest look! Vines braided into the locks come in all colors, not just green! Many celebrities are even sporting the fab style in digi-movies and on netevision.

  My old old grandmother once told me that a few of these dada-born folks were born with the ability to fly Windseekers, she used to call them. But she also told me that there were little blue men three apples high who lived in the mushrooms that grew in our backyard. I know a friend of a friend who knows two dada-born folks. He said neither of these individuals has ever left the ground without any help. So maybe my grandmother is not so reliable, but you can trust me when I say that this year's most stylish will be wearing dada extensions.

  The next article was titled "New Line of Palm-Fiber Dresses Now Available from Palm Tree Bandit Women's Wear!"

  Dari and I finished reading and then looked at each other with wide eyes. Then we read it again. It wasn't the kind of thing we were looking for, but in a way it was. I would never have guessed that I'd learn such a key thing about myself in a fashion book!

  "Windseeker," I said. "So I'm a ... Windseeker?"

  Just saying the word made me feel like leaving the ground. I could feel the air around me begin to shift.

  "I guess so," Dari said. "I like the name."

  I wanted to go home and read the article again and sit and think about it. Now that I had a name for what I was, it felt all the more real. It meant that there were others like me. The man who wrote the article hadn't spoken of Windseekers as something bad, even if he didn't believe we were real.

  "You know, the Ooni Kingdom is a great place, but it's not every place," Dari said. "It's just a small patch of land on Ginen that we've grown a civilization on. We don't know everything."

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  Dari was always talking philosophy. He would read books and even search the network for philosophy nodes where he'd discuss his ideas with people three times his age. I was rarely able to follow his train of thought when he started talking philosophy.

  "I mean that all we know about is a few hundred miles of city, towns, and villages. The Ooni Kingdom. But what do we really know about the rest of Ginen? You're a Windseeker and that may be strange here, but what about everywhere else?"

  "There are no humans living anywhere else in Ginen," I said.

  Once in a while an explorer or two would venture out of the Ooni Kingdom into the wilderness, but there were no human cities or towns. If there were cities or towns, they were populated by other beasts and creatures.

  "How do we know?"

  I shrugged.

  "And what about places like Earth?"

  "Oh, Earth is a myth, Dari. Come on."

  "So are Windseekers," he said, smiling and looking me in the eye.

  We made a copy of the page, and then Dari wanted to look up one more book. It turned out to be an electronic one. When we found it, Dari was very pleased. The black digi-book looked well used and old, with scratches on the oil-leaf cover. Oil leaves were cheap and ugly, but they lasted forever. The digi-book was small, about the size of his hand, and very light.

  "Oh, I hate digi-books," I said. "They always have more information than they need."

  The last digi-book I'd read was by my favorite author, Periwinkle Okeke, the author of the Cosmic Chukwu Crusader comic series. The book was called The Bravest Girt in the North. It was about a loud-mouthed girl who went to a spooky place called Bush Town to save her little sister. I'd read it four times. But not once did I read the rambling thoughts of the author—on how to cook the perfect holiday fowl—that came stored in the digi-book along with the story. Of course, as I read the book, every ten pages a little window would pop up on the bottom, saying, "Hey, why don't you read a bit about my thoughts on glazed bush fowl? As you can see, I write brilliantly. I cook even better!"

  "This book would be thousands of pages long if it were in regular book form," Dari said. He laughed to himself as he looked at it with big, glassy eyes.

  He pressed the digi-book's "on" button and the screen lit up, showing a lush green jungle. The title at the top read "The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide by the Great Explorers of Knowledge and Adventure Organization." Then it started listing over a hundred names of men and women.

  "That book is about the forbidden jungle?!" I exclaimed. "Are you going to borrow that?!"

  "Yep."

  "If your parents see it, they'll go mad!"

  Dari shrugged. "Who says they'll see it? And how mad could they get?" He grinned. "It's just a book from the library."

 
I frowned, not knowing what else to say. How could the library carry such a book? I didn't even know such a book existed. How did they get all the information for the book? It was probably more fiction than fact.

  "Why do you want that anyway?" I asked. Dari's pace was brisk as we walked to the checkout desk.

  "Because this book is revolutionary," he said. "It's great that they carry it here! I love the library! It's the most unbiased place on Ginen!"

  At that time I wasn't aware of this, but The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide was a very significant book. It was the only book of its kind that addressed northern Ooni's most taboo topic: the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. But though the book was controversial, it wasn't hard to find. The information was out there. There were copies, both electronic and paper, in several libraries and bookstores. However, these copies always tended to be covered with dust because people preferred to avoid the subject.

  Dari gave the librarian his library card. She chuckled, wiping the dust off the digi-book with a tissue.

  "You're the first person to borrow this digi-book in twenty-six years," she said with a smile.

  Dari looked embarrassed.

  "I guess not many people want to read about the Forbidden Greeny Jungle," he said. Then he grumbled low enough for only me to hear, "Or any other place outside the Ooni Kingdom."

  "I don't even want to think about that place," the librarian said with a shiver as she scanned the book.

  "But it's where we grow much of our cocoa beans and fruits," Dari said. "You like chocolate and lychee fruit, don't you?"

  "Those farms are on the outskirts," the librarian said. "This book, I believe, talks about the places far into the jungle, hundreds of miles in."

  Dari took the book from her.

  "OK, The Forbidden Greeny Jungle Field Guide is due in eight weeks," the librarian said with a pleasant smile. "Happy reading."

  "Thank you," Dari said, taking the book.

  As we walked out, my mind went back to the info on the folded sheet in my hand. I was a Windseeker! I giggled. Then it dawned on me, and once it did, I couldn't have felt surer. I had to go back to the Dark Market and talk to Nsibidi. And I had no doubt that Dari would gladly accompany me.

  Chapter 8

  Two Heads Are Better Than One

  I followed Dari because he knew the way better than I did.

  It was four o'clock on Monday, the busiest day and hour of the week at the market. This would work to our advantage. The fact that it was also the day that both of our mothers left their stands to do the week's food shopping wouldn't. We walked swiftly, zipping around milling customers.

  Yes, it was my idea.

  I immediately began to sweat when we stepped underneath and through the veil. Slowly, we walked down the dirt path between the stands. All around us were shady activities. To my left I noticed two men standing close, exchanging a large handful of bright yellow petri flowers. I looked away and my eyes fell on three women standing on a red platform. Another woman stood next to them talking loudly to the surrounding crowd of men. The women on the platform weren't wearing a lot of clothing. I quickly moved my eyes to the back of Dari's head.

  "You OK?" Dari said, glancing back at me.

  I nodded. I could still see those women in my mind, however, and it didn't make me feel good. My father always said, "You can buy anything at the market if you know where to look." I guess that included human beings.

  Nsibidi wasn't hard to find. I could see her shiny, almost bald head hovering higher than those around her, and her bright marigold dress was eye-catching. Nsibidi smiled when she saw me emerge from the crowd. This made me want to talk to her more.

  "I'm surprised to see you here," she said. The necklaces she was selling were draped on her arms. Each had glass luck charms of various shapes and colors hanging from them.

  The soft-furred golden-eyed baboons that Nsibidi had called the idiok were seated in a circle in their booth space behind Nsibidi. They sat on olive green pillows with pads of paper and pens, scribbling on the pads and then showing them to each other. Once in a while they'd laugh at what they saw.

  "I'm surprised to be here myself," I said.

  Nsibidi turned her eyes to Dari with a soft chuckle.

  "And look at this one. I've seen you before," Nsibidi said to Dari. "You're the boy who's always asking questions."

  Dari shrugged shyly.

  "This is my closest and dearest friend, Dari," I said, elbowing him. "He comes here all the time. Though he knows he shouldn't."

  "A curious mind must be properly fed," Dari said.

  "True," Nsibidi said with a nod.

  "Wow," I said, looking past Nsibidi. "I thought people were lying when they said those existed."

  Two-headed parrots, about twenty of them, were either squawking to themselves or to someone nearby. "Two heads are better than one," the man selling them shouted to passing potential customers. Some were bright green, others were blue. One of them was speckled with every color of the rainbow. This one's heads were fighting with each other. The seller poked at the parrot with a stick to make them stop.

  "He's only here once in a while, thank goodness," Nsibidi said. "We won't get much business today. No one likes to have the idiok read them when there's so much noise."

  "Read? What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Yeah, " Dari said, staring at the large baboons with fascination. He stepped closer. "And where are they from? Are they your friends? Do they work for you or do you work for them? They're obviously superintelligent."

  "Hmm, always so many questions," Nsibidi said. "They can hear people's personal spirits, Dari. Everyone has spirits that have taken an interest in him or her. These spirits know the past, present, and future. Some people have more spirits than others. The idiok can hear and speak to them. They write down what they say. I'm the only one who knows how to read the idiok's written language, and I translate it for customers. The idiok taught me when I was young. When I mastered it, they tattooed this on me." She raised her chin so we could see it more clearly, just below her neck. It was a circle with what looked like a shouting woman in the center. There were tiny ***x's all around the woman.

  "It means storyteller," she said. "It's what they call masters of the language. Anyway, people pay a lot of money to be told what their personal spirits have to tell them. It's not always good news, though."

  Dari and I looked at the furry brown baboons, who were paying no attention to us. They were too absorbed in scribbling on their pads and looking at each other's pads.

  "What are they doing now?" Dari asked.

  "Why don't you ask them? This one here is their spokesperson, Obax," Nsibidi said, pointing to the one closest to Dari. "He's named after one of the great gorilla chiefs."

  Obax looked at Dari, got up, and moved over, sharing a cushion with one of the other baboons. Then he held out his hand and made a clicking sound.

  "Go on," Nsibidi said. "Sit down."

  Dari sat down on the green cushion, closing the circle again. Obax started scribbling something on his pad, and the baboon on his other side stood up and laid a cool hand on Dari's cheek. Dari smiled as the baboon brought its face close to his, sniffing his skin.

  "So Zahrah, what brings you back here?" Nsibidi asked. "By the look on your face last time, I didn't think you'd ever come back."

  "Well," I said. "I sort of ... had a question."

  I glanced at the charm necklaces wrapped around her arms.

  "I have a weird question," I said. "About a weird subject."

  Nsibidi put her arms around her chest. "You came right from school to ask this?"

  "Yes. It's important. I think you're the only person who might know the answer."

  I noticed Nsibidi's clothes for the first time. Her long yellow dress had shells sewn into the hem. The dress of a northern woman, except for the shells and the lack of mirrors. "Oh," I said quietly to myself.

  It hadn't crossed my mind till then. I was so flustered by the Dark
Market that I hadn't realized it. Nsibidi was not from the north. Aside from the lack of mirrors, she shaved her head close, probably to keep the dadalocks and vines from re-forming, and wore three large gold hoops in each ear. She wore no assortment of beads like southwesterners. She wasn't fat like the northwesterners. She wore no bracelets made from vines like a northeastern women. And she didn't smell of molten metal as the southwestern women did. Where is he from then? I wondered.

  I looked at the ground and then stepped back. Maybe I shouldn't talk to her after all, I thought. My instincts were telling me that I should, but, as I said before, I wasn't one to really trust my instincts. I wrung my hands and nervously grabbed one of my locks, my eyes trying to look anywhere but at Nsibidi's shaved head.

  "Zahrah, just ask," Dari said, turning from the idiok for a moment. "We're in the Dark Market. Nothing you say here is shocking."

  Good point, I thought.

  "OK," I said. "You ... you're dada ... well, have you ever had anything ... strange happen to you?"

  She frowned.

  "Like what?" Nsibidi asked.

  I shrugged, looking at the ground. I glanced at Dari. He was looking back and forth between something one of the idiok had written for him and the idiok next to him, who was wildly gesturing what it meant. Obax was still scribbling something else on his pad of paper.

  "Why did you cut your dada hair?" I asked.

  "Why don't you cut yours?" Nsibidi replied.

  "No!" I said. "I would never ... you didn't answer my question."

  "You haven't asked your real question," she said. "I can tell."

  "But I—"

  "I cut it because it grew too heavy to bear," Nsibidi finally said, her voice lowering. "The funny thing was that, for me, it wasn't really about being dada. The hair was just a symptom."

  "S-s-symptom of what?" I asked.

  Nsibidi looked away.

  "What is your question, Zahrah? What is it you came back here to find out?" Nsibidi suddenly snapped, looking me right in the eye. Normally, I'd have clammed up in that moment.