Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “Some creator then?” he asked.

  I nodded. “It is cold and logical.”

  “Are you willing to allow others the same right to their beliefs?”

  “If their beliefs don’t hurt others and, when I feel the need, I am allowed call them stupid in my mind, then yes.”

  “Do you believe it’s your responsibility to leave this world in better shape than when you came into it?”

  “Yes.”

  He paused, looking at me more intensely. “Is it better to give or receive?”

  “They’re the same,” I said. “One can’t exist without the other. But if you keep giving without receiving, you’re a fool.”

  He chuckled at this. Then he asked, “Can you smell it?”

  Immediately, I knew what he spoke of. “Yes,” I said. “Strongly.”

  Fire, ice, iron, flesh, wood, and flowers. The sweat of life. Most of the time I forgot about the smell but I always became aware of it when strange things happened.

  “Can you taste it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “If I try.”

  “Do you choose it?”

  “No. It chose me long ago.”

  He nodded. “Then welcome.” He walked to the door. Over his shoulder, he said, “And take that cursed stone from your mouth. It’s meant to keep you grounded. It’s useless to you.”

  PART II

  Student

  CHAPTER 18

  A Welcome Visit to Aro’s Hut

  TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS PASSED before I decided to go to his hut. I was too afraid.

  In those days, I couldn’t sleep through a night. I’d wake to the dark, sure that someone was in the room with me, and it wasn’t Papa or his first wife, Njeri the camel-racer. I’d have happily welcomed both of them. It was either the red eye about to kill me or Aro about to enact his revenge on me. Nevertheless, as Aro promised, no mob came after me. I even went back to school on the tenth day.

  In his will, Papa left his shop to my mother and ordered Ji, his apprentice now graduated to Master, to run it. They would split the profits, 80 percent to my mother and 20 percent to Ji. It was a good deal for both, especially Ji who was from a poor family and now bore the title “Blacksmith Taught by the Great Fadil Ogundimu.” In addition, my mother had her cactus candy and other vegetables. The Ada, Nana the Wise, and two of my mother’s friends also came over each day to visit with her. My mother was okay.

  Not once did Luyu, Diti, or Binta visit me and I vowed to never forgive them for this. Mwita didn’t come, either. But his actions I understood. He was waiting for me to come to him, at Aro’s hut. So for those four weeks, I was alone with my fear and loss. I returned to school because I needed the distraction.

  I was treated like someone with a highly contagious disease. In the schoolyard, people moved away from me. They said nothing to me, mean or pleasant. What did Aro do to keep people from tearing me apart? Whatever it was, it didn’t change my reputation of being the evil Ewu girl. Binta, Luyu, and Diti avoided me. They avoided eye contact as they walked away. They ignored my greetings. This made me so angry.

  After a few days of this, it was time for a showdown. I spotted them standing in their usual place near the school wall. I boldly approached. Diti looked at my feet, Luyu looked to the side, and Binta stared at me. My confidence wavered. I was so aware of the brightness of my skin, the boldness of my freckles, especially the ones on my cheeks, the sandiness of the braids that reached down my back.

  Luyu looked at Binta and hit her on the shoulder. Binta immediately looked away. I stood my ground. I at least wanted an argument. Binta started crying. Diti swatted irritably at a fly. Luyu looked me straight in the face with such intensity that I thought she was going to hit me. “Come,” she said, glancing once around the schoolyard. She grabbed my hand. “Enough of this.”

  Diti and Binta followed close behind as we quickly walked down the road. We sat on the curb, Luyu on one side of me, Binta on the other, and Diti next to Luyu. We watched people and camels pass by.

  “Why did you do it?” Diti suddenly asked.

  “Shut up, Diti,” Luyu said.

  “I can ask whatever I want!” Diti said.

  “Then ask properly,” Luyu said. “We’ve done her wrong. We’re not in the . . .”

  Diti shook her head vigorously. “My mother said . . .”

  “Did you even try to see her?” Luyu said. When she turned to me, she was crying. “Onyesonwu, what happened? I remember . . . when we were eleven, but . . . I don’t . . .”

  “Was it your father who made you to stay away from me?” I hissed at Luyu. “Does he not want his beautiful daughter being seen with her ugly evil friend anymore?”

  Luyu shrank back from me. I’d hit it right on the nail.

  “Sorry,” I quickly said with a sigh.

  “Is it evil?” Diti asked. “Can’t you go to an Ani priestess and . . . ?”

  “I’m not evil!” I shouted, waving my fists in the air. “Understand that about me, if not anything else.” I gritted my teeth and pounded my fist against my chest, as Mwita often did when he was angry. “I am what I am but I am not EVIL!”

  It felt like I was shouting to all of Jwahir. Papa never felt I was evil, I thought. I started sobbing, feeling the loss of him hit me again. Binta put her arm over my shoulder and hugged me close to her. “Okay,” Binta whispered into my ear.

  “Okay,” Luyu said.

  “All right,” Diti said.

  And that was how the tension broke between my friends and me. Just like hat. Even at the moment, I felt it. Less weight. All four of us must have felt it.

  But I still had to deal with my fear. And the only way to do that was to face it. I went a week later, during a Rest Day. I got up early, showered, made breakfast, dressed in my favorite blue dress, and wrapped a thick yellow veil over my head.

  “Mama,” I said, peeking into my parents’ room. She was sprawled on the bed, for once, soundly asleep. I was sorry to wake her.

  “Eh?” she said. Her eyes were clear. She hadn’t been crying during the night.

  “I made you some fried yam and egg stew and tea for breakfast.”

  She sat up and stretched. “Where are you going?”

  “To Aro’s hut, Mama.”

  She lay back down. “Good,” she said. “Your father would approve.”

  “Do you think?” I asked, moving closer to the bed to hear my mother better.

  “Aro fascinated your papa. All mysterious things did. Including you and me . . . though he didn’t like the House of Osugbo much.” We laughed. “Onyesonwu, your father loved you. And though he didn’t know it as strongly as I do, he knew you were special.”

  “I-I should have told you and Papa about my feud with Aro,” I said.

  “Maybe. But we still wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

  I took my time. It was a cool morning. People were just coming out to do their morning chores. As I passed, no one greeted me. I thought about Papa and my heart ached. In the last few days, my grief was so strong that I felt the world around me ripple as it did at his funeral. Whatever had happened at the funeral could happen again. This was part of my reason for finally going to Aro. I didn’t want to hurt anyone else.

  Mwita met me at the cactus gate. Before I could speak, he gathered me into his arms. “Welcome,” he said. He hugged me until I relaxed and hugged him back.

  “See,” a voice said from behind us. We jumped away from each other. Aro stood behind the cactus gate, his arms crossed over his chest. He wore a long black caftan made of a light material. It fluttered around his bare feet in the cool morning breeze. “This is why you can’t live here.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mwita said.

  “Sorry for what? You’re a man and this woman is yours.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, looking at my feet, knowing that this was what he expected.

  “You should be,” he said. “Once we start, you’re to keep him off of you. If you became pregnant while still lear
ning, you could get us all killed.”

  “Yes, Oga,” I said.

  “You endure pain well, I gather,” Aro said.

  I nodded.

  “That at least is good,” he said. “Come through the gate.”

  As I passed through, one of the cactuses scratched my leg. I hissed with annoyance, jumping away. Aro chuckled. Mwita passed through behind me untouched. He headed for his hut. I followed Aro to his. Inside were a chair and a raffia sleeping mat. Other than a small scratched up calculator wordpad and a lizard on the wall, that was all there was. We walked through the back door to where the desert opened before us.

  “Sit,” he said, motioning to the raffia mats on the ground. He did the same.

  We sat there looking at each other for a moment.

  “You have tiger eyes,” he said. “And those have been extinct for decades.”

  “You have old man’s eyes,” I said. “And old men don’t have very long to live.”

  “I am old,” he said, getting up. He went into his hut and returned with a cactus thorn between his teeth. He sat back down. Then he utterly shocked me.

  “Onyesonwu, I’m sorry.”

  I blinked.

  “I have been arrogant. I have been insecure. I have been a fool.”

  I said nothing. I wholly agreed.

  “I was shocked that I was given a girl, a woman,” he said. “But you’ll be tall, so there is that. What do you know of the Great Mystic Points?”

  “Nothing, Oga,” I said. “Mwita couldn’t tell me much because . . . you wouldn’t teach him.” I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice. If he was admitting mistakes, I wanted him to admit all of them. Men like Aro will only admit wrongs once.

  “I wouldn’t teach Mwita because he didn’t pass initiation,” Aro said firmly. “Yes, he’s Ewu and I was put off by that. You Ewu come to this world with soiled souls.”

  “No!” I said, pointing my finger in his face. “You can say that about me, but you can’t say it about him. Didn’t you bother to ask him about his life? His story?”

  “Lower your finger, child,” Aro said, his body going straight and stiff. “You’re undisciplined, that’s apparent. Do you want to learn discipline today? I can teach it well.”

  With effort, I calmed myself.

  “I know his story,” Aro said.

  “Then you know he was made from love.”

  Aro’s nostrils flared. “Regardless, I saw past his . . . mixed blood. I let him attempt initiation. You ask him what happened. All I will say is that, like all the others, he failed.”

  “Mwita said you wouldn’t allow him to go through the initiation,” I said.

  “He lied,” Aro said. “Ask him.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “There are few true sorcerers in these lands,” he said. “And it’s not by their choice that they become so. That’s why we are plagued by death, pain, and rage. First, there is great grief, then someone who loves us demands that we become who we must become. Your mother most likely was the one who set you on this path. There is much to her, sha.” He paused, seeming to consider this. “She must have demanded it the day you were conceived. Her demands obviously trumped your birth father’s. If you had been a boy, he’d have had an ally instead of an enemy.

  “The Great Mystic Points are a means to an end. Each sorcerer has his own end. But I can’t teach you unless you pass initiation. Tomorrow. No child who’s come to me has passed. They return home beaten, broken, ailing, sick.”

  “What happens during . . . initiation?” I asked.

  “Your very being is tested. To learn the Points, you have to be the right person, that’s all I can tell you. Have you thrown that diamond away?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been cut,” he said. “That may be a problem. But it can’t be helped now.” He got up. “After the sun sets, no eating or drinking anything but water. Your monthly cycle is in two days. That may be a problem.”

  “How do you know when my . . . when it is?”

  He only laughed. “It can’t be helped. Tonight, before you sleep, meditate for an hour. Don’t talk to your mother after sunset. But you may talk to Fadil, your father. Come here at five a.m. Make sure you bathe well and wear dark clothing.”

  I stared at him. How was I going to remember all those instructions?

  “Go talk to Mwita. He’ll repeat my directions if you need to hear them again.”

  I smelled burning sage as I approached Mwita’s hut. He was sitting quietly on a wide mat meditating, his back to me. I stood in the doorway and looked around. So this was where he lived. Woven items hung on the walls and were piled around his hut. Baskets, mats, platters, and even a half-done wicker chair.

  “Sit down,” he said, without turning around.

  I sat on the mat next to him, facing the hut’s entrance.

  “You never told me that you could weave,” I said.

  “Not important,” he said.

  “I would have liked to learn,” I said.

  He pulled his knees to his chest but said nothing.

  “You haven’t told me everything,” I said.

  “Do you expect me to?”

  “When it’s important.”

  “Important to whom?”

  Mwita got up, stretched and leaned himself on the wall. “Have you eaten?”

  “No.”

  “It’s best if you eat heavily before the sun sets.”

  “What do you know about this initiation?”

  “Why would I tell you about the greatest failure of my life?”

  “That’s not fair,” I said, standing up. “I’m not asking you to humiliate yourself. Telling me what you went through was crucial.”

  “Why?” he said. “What good would it have done you?”

  “It doesn’t matter! You lied to me. There should be no secrets between us.”

  As he looked at me, I knew that Mwita was running through our relationship. He was searching for a truth or secret he could demand of me. He must have realized that I held nothing from him for he next said, “It’ll only scare you.”

  I shook my head. “I’m more afraid of what I don’t know.”

  “Fine. I almost died. I did . . . no, almost. The closer you come to completing the initiation, the closer you come to death. To be initiated is to die. I came . . . very close.”

  “What ha. . . .”

  “It’s different for everyone,” he said. “There’s pain, horror—absolute. I don’t know why Aro even allows any of these local boys to try. That’s his malicious side.”

  “When did you . . .”

  “Not long after I came here,” he said. He took a deep breath, looked hard at me and then shook his head. “No.”

  “Why? I’m to do this tomorrow, I want to know!”

  “No,” was all he said and that was the end of it. Mwita could walk through the palm tree farms in the dead of night. He’d done this several times after spending hours with me. Once when we were sitting in my mother’s garden, a tarantula crept near my leg. He crushed it with his bare hand. But now, at the mention of his failed initiation, he looked utterly terrified.

  Before I went home, Mwita reviewed my initiation requirements with me. I grew annoyed and asked him to write them down instead.

  I knelt down beside my mother. She was in the garden, churning the soil around the plants with her hands. “How was it?” she asked.

  “As much as I can expect from that crazy man,” I said.

  “You and Aro are too much alike.” my mother said. She paused for a moment. “I talked to Nana the Wise today. She spoke of an initiation . . .” she trailed off as she searched my face. She saw what she needed to see. “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning.” I brought out the list. “There are all these things I have to do to prepare.”

  She read it and then said, “I’ll make you a large early dinner. Chicken curry and cactus candy?”

  I smiled broadly.

  I took a long hot
bath and for a while I was calm. But as the night wore on, my fear of the unknown returned. By midnight, the delicious meal I’d eaten was gurgling uneasily in my belly. If I die during the initiation, Mama will be alone, I thought. Poor Mama.

  I didn’t sleep. But for the first time since I was eleven years old, I wasn’t afraid of seeing the red eye. The cocks started crowing around three a.m. I bathed again and dressed in a long maroon dress. I wasn’t hungry and I felt a dull throb in my abdomen, both sure signs that my monthly was near. I didn’t wake my mother before I left. She was probably already awake.

  CHAPTER 19

  The Man in Black

  “PAPA, PLEASE GUIDE ME,” I said as I walked. “Because I need guidance.”

  To be honest, I didn’t think he was there. I had always believed that when people died, their spirits stayed close or sometimes came to visit. I still believed this, for it was this way with Papa’s first wife, Njeri. I felt her often in the house. But I didn’t feel Papa around me now. Only the cool breeze and the sounds of the crickets were with me.

  Mwita and Aro were waiting for me in the back of Aro’s hut. Aro handed me a cup of tea to drink. It was lukewarm and tasted like flowers. After drinking it, the mild crampiness that I’d been feeling disappeared.

  “What happens now?” I asked.

  “Walk into the desert,” Aro said, wrapping his brown garments around him.

  I turned to Mwita. “All that matters to you is what is ahead,” Aro said.

  “Go, Onyesonwu,” Mwita mumbled.

  Aro pushed me toward the desert. For the first time in my life, I was reluctant to go into it. The sun was just coming up. I started walking. Minutes passed. I began to hear my heart beat in my ears. Something in the tea, I thought. A shaman’s brew, maybe. Whenever the breeze blew, I could distinctly hear sand grains clacking over each other. I clapped my hands over my ears. I kept walking. The breeze picked up, becoming a sand and dust filled wind.

  “What is this?” I screamed, working to maintain my footing.

  The sun was quickly blotted out. My mother and I had lived through three big sandstorms while we were nomads. We’d dug a hole and lain in it, using the tent to protect us. We were lucky not to be blown away or buried alive. Now here I was in such a storm with nothing between it and myself but my dress.