Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “West, yes,” Luyu said, rolling her talembe etanou around in her mouth. “Head that way for about, what? Four, five months?”

  “Depends,” I said, rubbing my temples.

  “Well, however long it takes, we’ll get there,” Binta said.

  “Camels would have been a thousand times faster,” Luyu said yet again.

  I rolled my eyes and looked behind us. Mwita and Fanasi strolled several feet back, silent and pensive.

  “Each step I take is farther than I’ve ever been from home,” Binta said. She laughed and ran ahead holding her arms out as if trying to fly, her pack bouncing against her back.

  “At least one of us begins this journey happy,” I mumbled.

  For the rest of us, leaving was difficult. Fanasi’s father turned out to be the bread maker who’d shouted at my mother and me on our first day in Jwahir. He and Fanasi’s mother had come rushing to Aro’s hut where we’d all gathered to leave. But they couldn’t make it past Aro’s gate. Fanasi and Diti had to walk out to them.

  Fanasi’s mother started loudly lamenting, “My son is being taken by a witch!” His father tried to intimidate his son into staying, threatening him with banishment and a possible beating. When Fanasi and Diti returned, Fanasi was so upset that he’d walked off to be alone. Diti had started weeping. She’d already been through this with her own parents earlier that day.

  Luyu’s parents also threatened her with banishment. But if there was one way to make Luyu do what you didn’t want her to do, it was by threatening her. Luyu was always up for a fight. Still, after leaving, she grew quiet, too.

  When Mwita had to say good-bye to Aro, I saw a new side of him. As the rest of us started walking into the desert, he froze. No words, no expression. “Come on,” I said, taking his hand and trying to pull him along. He wouldn’t move.

  “Mwita,” I said.

  “Move on,” Aro said. “Let me speak with my boy.”

  We walked a mile without Mwita. I refused to look back to see if he was coming. Soon, I heard footsteps not far behind. They grew closer and closer until there he was, walking beside me. His eyes were red. I knew to leave him alone for a while.

  For me, leaving home was practically unbearable. Up to then, it had been inevitable. All the events of my life led me to this journey. Due west, no turns, no curves, a straight line. I wasn’t meant to live my days as a Jwahir woman. But I wasn’t prepared to leave my mother, either. We’d talked as we finished our cups of strong tea together. We hugged. I walked down the steps. Then I turned, ran back up, and threw myself into her arms. She held me, calm and silent.

  “I can’t leave you alone,” I said.

  “You will,” she said in her whispery voice. She held me back. “Don’t treat me like some weakling. You’ve come too far now. Finish it. And when you find . . .” She bared her teeth. “If you go for no other reason, go for that one. For what he did to me.” She hadn’t spoken directly about this since I was eleven. “You and I,” she said. “We’re one. No matter how far you go, it’ll always be this way.”

  I left my mother. Well, first she left me. She simply turned and went inside the house and shut the door. When she didn’t open it ten minutes later, I went to Aro’s to join the others.

  As I walked, I rubbed my throbbing temples and then the back of my head. The headaches, so soon after leaving Jwahir . . . it seemed too ominous. Two days later, the pain was at full blast. We had to stop for two days and for that first day, I wasn’t even aware that we’d stopped. All that I know of this first day was what the others told me. While I was in my tent writhing in pain and shouting at phantoms, the others were nervous. Binta, Luyu, and Diti stayed at my side trying to calm me down. Mwita spent much of his time with Fanasi.

  “She’s had these before,” he told Fanasi as they sat before a fire outside my tent. Mwita had made a rock fire—a pile of warmed rocks. It’s simple juju. He said Fanasi had been so fascinated by it that he’d accidentally burned himself trying to get a feel for how the heat radiated from the softly glowing pile of stones.

  “How can we make this kind of trip if she’s so sick?” Fanasi asked.

  “She isn’t sick,” Mwita said. He knew my headaches were linked to my death, but I hadn’t told him the details.

  “You can cure her, right?” Fanasi asked.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  By the next day, my headache receded. I hadn’t eaten anything since we’d stopped. My hunger opened my brain to a strange clarity.

  “You’re up,” Binta said, coming into my tent with a plate of smoked meat and bread. She grinned. “You look much better!”

  “Still hurts but the pain is going back where it came from.”

  “Eat,” Binta said. “I’ll tell the others.”

  I smiled as she left whooping with joy. I looked myself over. I needed to bathe. I could nearly see the unwashed scent wafting off my body. The clarity I was experiencing made the world so crisp and clear. Every sound outside seemed right against my ear. I could hear a desert fox barking nearby and a hawk screeching. I could almost hear Mwita thinking as he came in.

  “Onyesonwu,” he said. His freckled cheeks were flushed red and his hazel eyes took in and judged my every detail. “You’re better.” He kissed me.

  “We’ll continue the day after tomorrow,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I know you. Your head still throbs.”

  “By the time we’re ready to go, I’ll have chased it away.”

  “Chased what, Onyesonwu?”

  Our eyes met.

  “Mwita, we have a long way to go,” I said. “It’s not important.”

  Late that night, I got up and went out for some fresh air. I had only eaten a bit of bread and drunk some water, wanting to maintain the strange clarity for a little longer. I found Mwita sitting on the ground behind our tent, facing the desert, his legs crossed. I walked up to him and paused. I turned to go back our tent.

  “No,” he said his back still to me. “Sit. You interrupted me just by coming close.”

  I smiled. “Sorry.” I sat down. “You’re getting good at that.”

  “Yeah. You’re feeling better?”

  “Much,” I said.

  He turned to look at me, eyeing my clothing.

  “Not here,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m still in training,” I said.

  “You’ll always be in training. And we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

  He reached over and started to untie my rapa. I held his hand. “Mwita,” I said. “We can’t.”

  He softly took my hands and moved them away. I let him untie my rapa. The cool desert air felt wonderful against my skin. I glanced back to make sure everyone was still in their tents. We were some feet away, on a slight slope, and it was dark but it was still a risk. One I was willing to take. I let myself fall into the pure complete pleasure of his lips on my neck, nipples, belly. He laughed when I tried to remove his clothes.

  “Not yet,” he said, taking my hands.

  “Oh, you just want my clothes off out here,” I said.

  “Maybe. I want to talk to you. You listen best when you’re relaxed.”

  “I’m not relaxed at all,” I said.

  He smirked. “I know. My fault.” He retied my rapa and I sat up. Without a word, we turned to the desert and allowed ourselves to fall into mediation. Once my body stopped screaming for Mwita, my blood stilled, my heart leveled, my skin cooled. I settled. I felt I could do anything, see anything, make anything happen, if only I didn’t move. Mwita’s voice was like a soft ripple on the stillest of waters.

  “When we go back to our tent, Onyesonwu, don’t worry about what will happen.”

  I digested this information and just nodded.

  “It doesn’t stop with what Aro taught you,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “Then stop being so afraid.”

  “Aro spoke of what happens when women sorcerers conceive
before they finish training.”

  Mwita laughed softly and shook his head. “You already know how it will end. You’ve told me nothing about it, but somehow I doubt your full womb will cause the annihilation of an entire town the way Sanchi’s did.”

  “Was that her name?”

  “My first teacher, Daib, told me about her, too.”

  “And you don’t fear that happening with me.”

  “Like I said, you know that’s not how it ends. Plus, you’re a far greater talent than Sanchi. You’re twenty years old and you already can bring back the dead.”

  “Not all the time and not without consequence.”

  “Nothing’s without consequence.”

  “And that’s why I think we should avoid intercourse.”

  “But we won’t.”

  I took my eyes from the blackness of the desert and set them on Mwita. In the faint light coming from the rock fire at the center of our tents, Mwita’s yellow-skinned face glowed and his wolflike eyes twinkled.

  “Have you ever wondered . . . what our baby would look like?” I asked.

  “He or she would look like us,” he said.

  “What would that make him or her?”

  “Ewu,” he said.

  We were quiet for several minutes, calmness smoothing things out again.

  “Leave the tent flap open for me,” I said.

  We grasped hands and slid them inches back, snapping each other’s fingers loudly, the handshake of friendship. I stood up and unwrapped my rapa and let it fall to the ground as I looked down at him. I’ve turned into several types of animals over the years but my favorite will always be the vulture.

  “It’s night,” Mwita said. “The air won’t be as smooth.”

  My laughs were lost as my throat shifted and narrowed and my skin sprouted feathers. I was good at changing but each and every time was an effort. It is not something you just let happen. Your body knows how to do it, but you still have to do it. Nevertheless, as it is when one is good at something, I enjoyed the effort because in many ways the effort was effortless. I spread my wings and took to the sky. No one heard from me for an hour.

  I flew into our tent and stood for a moment with my wings spread. Mwita was weaving a basket by candlelight. He always wove when he was worried.

  “Luyu was looking for you,” he said, putting his basket down. He threw me my rapa once I’d changed back.

  “Eh? Why? It’s late.”

  “I think she just wants to talk,” he said. “She’s been reading the Great Book.”

  “They all have.”

  “But she’s starting to understand more.”

  I nodded again. Good. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

  I sat down beside him on our sleeping mat.

  “Do you want me to go and wash first?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “If I conceive, we’re all . . .”

  “Onyesonwu, there are times you have to take what is offered to you,” he said. “There’ll always be risk with us. You are a risk.”

  I leaned forward and kissed him. Then I kissed him again. And after that, nothing could have stopped us. Not even the end of the world.

  CHAPTER 27

  WE SLEPT IN LATE. And when I woke up, my headache was almost completely gone. I blinked at the sharpness of the world around me. My stomach growled.

  “Onye,” we heard Fanasi say from outside. “Can we come in?”

  “Are you decent?” Luyu asked. Then she giggled and we heard her whisper, “He’s probably ravaging her again.” Then there were more giggles.

  “Come in,” I said, smiling. “But I stink. I need to wash.”

  They all piled in. It was a tight fit. After much giggling, grumbling (mainly from Mwita), and shifting, things quieted down. I took it as my cue to speak.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “The headaches are just something I have to learn to live with. I’ve . . . I’ve been having them since my initiation.”

  “She just needs to adjust to leaving home,” Mwita added.

  “We’ll continue tomorrow,” I said, taking Mwita’s hand.

  When everyone had piled out of my tent, I slowly sat up and yawned.

  “You need to eat,” Mwita said.

  “Not yet,” I said. “I want to do something first.”

  Still only wrapped in my rapa, with Mwita’s help I stood. The world swam around me and then it settled. I felt a stone from far away hit the side of my head.

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Mwita asked.

  “Did you eat yesterday?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not going to eat until you eat.”

  “So you think it’s better if we’re both weak.”

  “Are you weak?”

  I smiled. “No.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  The first time that I was able to glide into the wilderness on purpose was after going three days without food and drinking only water. I’d spent those days at Aro’s hut and he made sure I wasn’t idle. I cleaned his goats’ hovel, washed his dishes, swept out his house, and cooked his meals. Each day I didn’t eat, I worried more about encountering my father in the wilderness.

  “He won’t come after you now,” Aro assured me. “I’m here, and you’ve been initiated. It’s no longer so easy to reach you. Relax. When you’re ready, you’ll know.”

  I was taking a break next to his goats’ hovel when clarity suddenly descended on me. It was hard to be around Aro’s goats. They smelled more pungent than usual and their brown eyes seemed to see too deep into me. The one I had saved kept stepping up to me and staring. A moment later, I realized that they were waiting. The sensation started between my legs—a warm buzzing feeling. Then a numbness. When I looked at my abdomen, I almost screamed. It looked as if I’d begun to turn into clear jelly. Once I saw it, it quickly spread up and down the rest of me.

  Fighting to stay calm, I stood up. Above me, all I saw were colors. Millions and millions of colors, but mainly green. They pooled, stacked, stretched, contracted, clustered, billowed. All this was juxtaposed against the world I knew. This was the wilderness. When I looked at the goats, I saw that they were prancing and baaing with joy. Their happy motions gave off puffs of rich blue that wafted toward me. I inhaled and it smelled . . . lovely. Then I realized this whole place smelled of many things, but of one thing in particular. That indescribable smell.

  I stayed in the wilderness for a few more minutes. Then the goat that I had saved walked up and bit me. I felt like I dropped several feet and I hit the ground. Dazed, I walked back to Aro’s hut where I found him waiting for me with a grand meal.

  “Eat,” was all he said.

  Mwita and I left camp. The others watched us go without asking where we were going. About a third of a mile out, we sat down. It had only been a day and a half of fasting, yet the world around me had already shifted to that strange level of clarity.

  “It’s the traveling, I think,” Mwita said.

  “Have you done this before?” I asked.

  “A long time ago,” he said. “When . . . I was a boy. Just after I escaped from those Okeke soldiers.”

  “Oh. You starved?”

  “For days.”

  I wanted to ask him what he saw but it wasn’t the time. I looked out at the dry desert. Not a patch of grass. Aro told me that long ago, the land hadn’t been like this. “Don’t completely discount the Great Book,” he said. “Something did happen to bring it all down. To change green to sand. These lands used to look a lot more like the wilderness.”

  Still, the Great Book, in my opinion, was mainly crafty lies and riddles. I shivered and the world shivered around me.

  “You see that?” Mwita asked.

  I nodded. “Any minute,” I said, not really knowing what I was talking about but sure of it anyway. “Let me guide it.”

  “What else can I do?” Mwita said with a smile. “I have no idea how to guide a vision, lady sorceress in training.”

  “Jus
t call me sorcerer,” I said. “There’s only one kind, man or woman. And we are always training.” Then the world shivered again and I grabbed on. “Hurry, take it Mwita.”

  He looked at me confused and then did what it sounded like I wanted him to do. He took hold. “What . . . what is . . .”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  It was as if the air beneath us solidified. Swift and strong, it took us at an impossible speed to a destination that only it knew. We moved far but we were also still. We were in two places at once or maybe in neither. As Aro always told me, you can’t have all your questions answered. Who knows what Luyu, Binta, Fanasi, or Diti would have seen had they looked our way. According to the location of the sun, the vision moved mainly west, sometimes meandering northwest and then southwest in a manner that I can only describe as playful. Below, the desert flew by. Suddenly, I felt a terrible sense of foreboding. I’d once had a dream like this. It had shown me my biological father.

  “We’re in the towns now,” Mwita said after a while. He sounded calm but he probably wasn’t.

  We moved too quickly over the bordering towns and villages for me to see much. But there was a smell of roasting meat and fire still in my nostrils.

  “It’s still happening,” I said. Mwita nodded.

  We rounded southwest where sandstone buildings were built close together, two sometimes three stories high. I didn’t see one Okeke person. This was Nuru territory. If there were Okekes here, they were trusted slaves. The useful ones.

  The roads were flat and paved. Palm trees, bushes, and other vegetation thrived here. It was not like Jwahir, where you had vegetation and trees that, though they lived, were dry and grew upward instead of outward. There was sand here but there were also patches of a strange darker-colored ground. Then I saw why. I’d never seen so much water. It was shaped like a giant dark blue snake. Hundreds of people could swim in it and it wouldn’t matter.