“Can we help?” Sasha shouted.
Orlu didn’t answer. Sunny had never seen him move his hand and knife so fast. He was like Bruce Lee, except Orlu didn’t look so confident.
Then she felt it—a very slight shift in space, as if they were all moved forward by about a foot.
“Hey! Did you see that?” someone exclaimed from behind them.
“What?” someone else shouted.
“I’m getting out of here!”
More cars started. Several screeched away. In front of them, people still pumped gas. A gang of men came running out of the station, and there was a loud sucking sound. Orlu fell flat on the soaked concrete.
“Orlu!” Sunny shouted.
He’d rolled onto his back, breathing heavily. “Help me up,” he wheezed.
Sasha and Sunny pulled him up. He felt very warm, steam rising from his wet clothes. He leaned on them, rubbing his eyes. Otherwise, he seemed okay. He looked to the side of the gas station, pointed, and said, “You see it? There.”
Before, there had been only an empty lot full of trash and weeds. Now, in the middle of the trash and weeds, was a patch of tall wild grass and an obi. It wasn’t a normal obi. It had the usual thatch roof, but it was held up by steel pillars; there were drawings burned into the metal. Inside, they could just make out a large man and two small shapes on the floor. Lightning flashed across the sky, followed a second later by a bone-shaking crash of thunder. Sunny jumped, clutching Orlu tightly. Now he held her up.
“The storm’s right above us,” he said. “This is where it is.”
A green-yellow blur streamed out of the obi and came rushing right at them, chirping and squawking. Sunny wiped her face to make sure she was really seeing a flock of angrylooking parakeets.
“Bush souls!” Sasha shouted.
“I see them,” Chichi said quickly, holding up her knife. The flock undulated and rolled around the trees, spiraling at them. “There are five.”
“Hey! You kids!” someone shouted. “Where are you going?” It was one of the thugs from the gas station’s store.
Orlu broke into a sprint, and Chichi, Sasha, and Sunny did the same.
“We’re going in,” Orlu shouted.
“We’ll cover you,” Sasha said.
Sunny saw Sasha whirl around and slash at something, a gash appearing on his arm, just as he disappeared in the hail of green-yellow birds. Chichi threw some sort of juju at another black shadow and then was covered by flying parakeets, too. Before Sunny could figure out how to defend herself, something cold hit her in the head. Everything became redness and pain. Then Orlu was shaking her and dragging her on. She fought through the lingering pain.
They ran for the obi. She could see the shapes now. They were children. Toddlers. Lying on the floor. One in a dress, and one in shorts with no shirt. So small and innocent and, perhaps, dead.
They stepped into the obi.
Her eyes met those of the man who had murdered her grandmother.
Black Hat Otokoto had dark, smooth, shiny skin; arm muscles so thick they pushed at his clothes; and a barrel of a potbelly. His chubby-cheeked face was unsmiling and his eyes were set deep between folds of fat. He sneered at her and she nearly dropped her juju knife.
“This is the last effort?” He laughed, turning away as if they were nothing. He began drawing something with chalk around the children. Behind them, Sunny could hear Sasha and Chichi making their way over as they fought the bush souls, fled the birds, and worked jujus to hold back Black Hat’s thugs.
“You come any closer and you’ll ruin what’s already in motion. Then I’ll have to slaughter you two instead of just these children. Get outside,” Black Hat said. Then he seemed to be speaking to someone else. “You all may leave, too. These kids are harmless. Go watch for real threats,” he said. All the commotion and squawking behind Sunny instantly stopped as the bush souls obeyed. Even his thugs went back to the gas station. Sasha and Chichi came running in.
“What the hell have you done?” Chichi shouted the minute she saw the children. “You evil bastard!”
Sasha took one look at the children, pulled something out of his pocket, and blew into it. It was the conch shell he’d bought from Junk Man. Its deep guttural sound made Sunny’s head vibrate. “Come now!” Sasha shouted. “Take Otokoto’s blood!”
Every insect in the area obeyed as if they knew the world depended on it. The air grew black with them, all trying to bite, sting, or defecate on Black Hat. Taken by surprise, Black Hat screamed and staggered back. Orlu and Sunny each grabbed a child. Sunny got the boy. He was limp in her hands, his skin cold. He was dead.
Black Hat shouted something in a language she didn’t understand and all the insects fell to the ground, dead. He raised a hand and Sasha’s shell dissolved into dust. He glared at Chichi and Sasha. “You’re as pathetic as suicide bombers,” Black Hat said. “You die for nothing.”
Sasha brought his juju knife up and Black Hat laughed, doing the same. Orlu and Sunny took off with the children. When they reached some bushes a few yards away, they put them down. “They’re not alive!” Sunny said, frantically wiping rainwater from her face. “They’re dead! We’re too late! They’re dead! We—Sasha—”
“Shut up!” Orlu hissed. “Just go. Go help the others.”
She moaned when she looked toward the obi where Sasha and Black Hat were having some sort of juju battle. Sasha was slowly sinking to the ground as a white cloud hovered around him. But he still held his knife. She couldn’t see Chichi.
“They’re dead!” she shouted. “We’re all going to die! Why’d we come here?”
Orlu knelt in the mud beside the children. He put his knife down and clapped his wet hands loudly. He pushed his sleeves back, shook out his hands, and wiped his face. Lightning flashed, immediately followed by the bellow of thunder and heavier rain.
“Orlu, what are we going to—Orlu?”
He had a faraway look on his face, the same one he’d had at the Zuma Festival when he handled the masquerade. He began rocking back and forth, drawing symbols in the mud with his finger; they melted back into the mud seconds later. “Go,” Orlu said calmly, not looking at her. “These children are dead. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I have to do it alone.”
She turned, about to flee.
“Wait,” he said. “Pull out one of your braids.”
She yanked one out. She was in such emotional shock, she didn’t feel the pain. “The hair of one who walks between,” he said, taking it. “Now go.”
She had no plan. The rain was now a deluge. The children were dead. Black Hat was killing Sasha. Where was Chichi? Sunny stepped into the obi just in time to see a bolt of red lightning shoot from Black Hat’s juju knife and slam into Sasha’s chest. He went flying out of the obi into the rain, skidding backward in the mud. Then he was still.
Sasha! she screamed in her head. She grasped her juju knife. She had no intention of using it to work juju. She was going to bury it in Black Hat’s back.
“I am a princess of Nimm!” Chichi screamed, standing at the front entrance. She slashed her knife from left to right and shouted some words in Efik. She stabbed her knife hard on the concrete floor of the obi. Sparks flew, but it did not break. “This charm is from Sunny’s grandmother Ozoemena, to my mother, to you, Black Hat Otokoto.”
Black Hat stared at Chichi as if seeing her for the first time. Chichi nodded, a wild look on her face. Then the colors came. Red, yellow, green, blue, purple. They blasted Sunny with heat as they flew past and went right for Black Hat. As they whirled around him, he shrieked.
“Past sins will always come back to haunt you,” Chichi said.
Black Hat shrieked and shrieked, smoke rising from his skin, his clothes catching fire as the colors harassed him. One of his ears fell to the ground. Chichi scrambled to the side as he ran out of the obi into the rain. The drops of water hissed and vaporized as they made contact with his skin. But then his screams changed to laughter. It was
an awful, awful sound. “You can kill me,” he said, his voice gurgling. He coughed wetly and laughed again. “I am but a vessel! You’re too late!” He threw his head back and shouted, “EkwensUUUU!” He grinned at Chichi, his mouth all teeth now.
“No!” Sunny shouted as Black Hat brought his knife to his neck and slit his own throat.
“Just needed one more death,” he said in his gurgling voice. He fell over, gouts of blood and life pouring out of him.
Silence. Sunny met Chichi’s eyes and even in the rain she could tell Chichi was crying.
Suddenly, the ground shivered with the most terrifying beat she had ever heard. THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!
“Sunny!” Chichi shouted. “Help me!” She’d run to Sasha and was trying to drag him back into the obi.
“It’s too late!” Sunny shouted over the deep beat. It came from within everything around them. She grabbed under Sasha’s armpits. Chichi took his legs. They hauled him in. Then Chichi knelt beside him and checked his pulse. “He’s alive,” she said, her eyes wide and twitching.
Outside, with each beat, the mud rose into a higher and higher mound.
“Oh God, she’s coming,” Sunny moaned.
“Buck up,” Chichi said, looking angry. “Where’s Orlu?”
“Out there,” she said. “With the children. On the other side, near the bushes.”
She couldn’t tear her eyes from what was happening. The heavy downpour was causing the ground to flood. The thunder and the lightning had become one. But nothing drowned out the steady drumbeat of the masquerade. The mound was now three feet high, pushing aside Black Hat’s body as it rose.
Chichi cursed, patting Sasha’s wet cheek. “Sasha, wake up!” She pushed his eyes open. Only the whites showed.
The termite mound was six feet high now. Termites buzzed from it, but the rain beat them into the mud. Something enormous was coming through. It looked like the leaves of a dead, dry crackling palm tree tightly packed together. They crackled more when the rain hit them. Chichi held Sasha’s hand and then took Sunny. “He’s done it,” she said. “We’ve failed.”
Sunny was speechless, frozen with terror. A monstrosity was growing before her eyes. The Aku masquerade was nothing compared to Ekwensu. She was of such deep evil that her name was rarely spoken, even in the Lamb world. As her monstrous form grew, she gave off a smell—an oily, greasy smell, like car exhaust.
Ekwensu was over one hundred feet high and fifty feet wide. She was all tightly packed dried palm fronds.
“Pull him back,” Chichi suddenly said. “Get back.”
“What are we gonna do?” Sunny asked as they dragged Sasha to the middle of the obi.
“Pray,” Chichi said. “No use running.”
For over a minute, the horrifying thing that was Ekwensu just stood there. Then there was a heavy gust of wind and Ekwensu slowly began to fall. When she hit the ground, water and mud spurted in all directions.
The two girls huddled over Sasha. Chichi wiped the mud from his face so that he wouldn’t suffocate.
The drumbeats stopped. So did the thunder. Sunny wiped mud from her arms, legs, and face and slowly stood up. “Is it dead?” she whispered. She hoped. Maybe Black Hat hadn’t performed the juju properly or maybe he’d done things prematurely.
But then the flute began to play.
It was a haunting tune that made her want to tear off in the other direction screaming. It was the tune of nightmares. It was fast and melodious and full of warning, like the song of a sweet-throated bird happily leading the devil into the room.
Slowly at first, Ekwensu started rotating. Pulling up mud and soggy plants, Ekwensu groaned, a deep thick sound that seemed to come from another place. She rotated faster. And faster, and faster.
Soon the air was red with flying mud. Ekwensu’s wind rushed through the obi. She was spinning so fast that she was lifting back up. There she stood, whirling like a giant carwash brush. The flute music urged her into dance and the drumbeats started up again. Around the open area in front of the obi, yards from the gas station, she danced, spraying mud and water and uprooted plants and hunks of grass.
Ekwensu let out a high-pitched scream, as if to tell the Earth she was back. And then everything shook so heavily with the deepness of the drumbeats that the obi, even with its steel foundation, began to crumble. Sunny felt it deep inside her, just below her heart—a vibration, then a tug. She clutched her chest.
She stood up.
Her body felt light. She felt strong. She realized that, above all things, she didn’t want to die huddling away, afraid, helpless. She was going to go out there and face Ekwensu, damn the consequences.
She’d often wondered how she’d react if she were in mortal danger. If held at gunpoint on the dark road during a carjacking, would she be able to look the thief in the eye and negotiate for her life? Or if she saw a child drowning in a raging river, would she jump in to save it? Now she had her answer. She gathered together everything she had learned over the past few months and walked out of the obi.
One step at a time, she approached Ekwensu, who was so happy to be back in the physical world that she didn’t notice Sunny until she was standing before her.
On instinct, Sunny let her spirit face move forward. In that moment, her fear of everything left her—her fear of Ekwensu’s evil, of being flayed alive by the monster’s fronds, of her family learning of her death, of the world’s end. It all evaporated. Sunny smiled. She knew how the world would end. She knew that someday she would die. She knew her family would live on if she died right now. And she realized that she knew Ekwensu.
And Sunny hated her.
Ekwensu stopped dancing. She had no visible eyes, but she was looking down at Sunny. Relaxing her shoulders and mind, Sunny let Anyanwu, her spirit, her chi, the name of her other self, guide her.
She grasped her juju knife. Her motions were smooth. The world shifted. Suddenly, all things were—more. They were in the tall grass in the rain, but they were in another place, too, where colors zoomed about, where there was green, so much green.
Ekwensu howled and began to spin again, faster than before. Sunny knew she had only one word to speak. She spoke it in a language she didn’t even know existed.
“Return,” she said.
Ekwensu shrieked and lashed out several fronds and smacked her to the side. She flew back, hitting a tree. Ekwensu whirled faster. But no matter how fast Ekwensu spun, she was sinking. Sunny struggled to her feet. As she watched Ekwensu sink, she was reminded of the Wicked Witch of the West’s death in The Wizard of Oz. Ekwensu wasn’t melting, but she looked like she was, as she sank into the wet, red mud.
Gone.
“Good,” Sunny whispered.
20
I See You
Everything settled. Mud and plants and small trees dropped from the sky. The noise stopped—except for the chittim falling at her feet. The heavy pressure of fear lifted. In its place came a pain in her lower back and a general ache all over her body.
“Chichi!”
“In here,” Chichi called.
Sunny slipped and fell in the mud twice before she got to the obi.
“I think he’s waking up,” Chichi said. “Go find Orlu!”
Sunny stumbled out the back of the obi. Orlu was still there with the two children, but everything had changed.
They were alive.
They looked at her with terrified suspicion as they clutched Orlu’s chest and leg.
“Orlu!” His dark brown skin was covered with mud, his body was so still.
“Don’t hurt him!” one of the toddlers screeched, clinging more tightly to Orlu as Sunny approached. The child kissed him on the cheek, muddying her lips, and looked fearfully at Sunny. “Don’t hurt our angel. Please!”
“I won’t,” she softly said. “He’s my friend. His name is Orlu.”
“Oh-loo,” the other child said, also kissing Orlu. He spit the mud from his lips, wiped Orlu’s face, and kissed him again.
/> Slowly, Sunny knelt beside the children and felt Orlu’s face. It was still warm. She touched his chest and felt a strong heartbeat. “Thank God, thank God,” she sobbed. She whispered his name into his ear and softly shook him. When nothing happened, she kissed his ear and whispered his name again and again. When he still didn’t respond, she shook him hard, starting to panic.
“What?” he finally said. His eyes opened and he looked at her. He turned to the toddlers. “What happ—it worked?”
Sunny nodded, tears in her eyes.
He raised his hand and wiped some of the mud from her cheek. She leaned forward and hugged him for a very long time.
“Can you stand up?” she finally asked.
“Yeah,” he said. She nearly had to drag him to his feet. “They were dead,” he said, as he straightened up. “I reversed . . . Now they live.” He laughed and pointed to a huge pile of chittim. “I passed out as it was falling,” he said.
They walked to the obi, the toddlers following close behind.
“Black Hat brought Ekwensu through,” Sunny said. “He took his own life to do it.” She felt a little sick. “I . . . something happened where I . . . I don’t know, but I sent her back.”
Orlu stared at her for a moment. “The old ones sent us for a reason.”
Sasha was sitting up and rubbing his chest when they entered. Next to him was a pool of vomit. When he and Chichi saw Orlu and the toddlers, they smiled.
“Sasha, you okay?” Sunny asked.
He nodded, looked at his vomit, and shrugged. “She used Healing Hands powder on my head. I guess she finally learned how to make it work . . . too well.”
Chichi laughed. “Well, at least you’re alive.”
“Let’s gather our chittim. A council vehicle will probably be here soon,” Orlu said.
“How are we going to carry all of that?” Sunny asked, noticing another pile on the wide path to the gas station, earned by Chichi and Sasha, and another in the obi, earned by Chichi when she used whatever juju she’d used on Black Hat.
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