Who Fears Death

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “That’s one of the Seven Rivers,” Mwita said. “Maybe the third or fourth.”

  We slowed as we moved over it. I could see white fish swimming near the surface. I reached down and ran my hand in the water. It was cool. I held my hand to my lips. It tasted almost sweet, like rainwater. This wasn’t capture station water forcibly pulled from the sky nor was it water from underground. This vision was truly something new. Mwita and I were both here. We could see each other. We could taste and feel. As we approached the other side of the river, Mwita looked worried.

  “Onye,” he said. “I’ve never . . . can people see us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We passed some people in floating vehicles. Boats. No one seemed to see us though one woman looked around as if she felt something. Once over land, we picked up speed and flew up high over small villages until we reached a large town. It sat at the end of the river and the beginning of a huge body of water. Just beyond the buildings, I glimpsed . . . a field of green plants?

  “You see that?” I asked.

  “The body of water over there? That’s the lake with no name.”

  “No, not that,” I said.

  We were taken between sandstone buildings where Nuru hawkers sold goods along the road. We passed over a small open restaurant. I smelled peppers, dried fish, rice, incense. An infant wailed from somewhere. A man and a woman argued. People bartered. I saw a few dark faces here—all were burdened with items and all of them walked quickly with purpose. Slaves.

  The Nurus here weren’t the wealthiest, but they weren’t the poorest either. We came to a road blocked by a crowd standing before a wooden stage with orange flags hanging over the front. The vision took us to the front of the stage and set us down. It felt odd. First it was as if we sat on the ground, amid people’s legs and feet. They absentmindedly moved aside for us, their attention focused on the people onstage. Then something raised us to a standing position. We looked around, terrified of being seen. Mwita pulled me close, slipping his arm firmly around my waist.

  I looked right into the face of the Nuru man beside me. He looked into mine. We stared at each other. Standing inches shorter than Mwita and me, he looked about twenty, maybe a little older. He narrowed his eyes. Thankfully, the man onstage grabbed his attention.

  “Who are you going to believe?” the man onstage shouted. Then he smiled and laughed, lowering his voice. “We’re doing what must be done. We’re following the Book. We have always been a pious loyal people. But what next?”

  “Tell us! You know the answer!” someone shouted.

  “When we’ve wiped them out, what next? We make the Great Book proud! We make Ani proud. We build an empire that is the most good of good!”

  I felt sick. I knew who this was, just as you knew from the moment this vision took me. Slowly, I brought my eyes to his eyes, first taking in his tall broad-shouldered stature, the black beard that hung down his chest. I didn’t want to look. But I did. He saw me. His eyes grew wide. They flashed red for a second. He strode toward me.

  “You!” Mwita shouted as he leaped onstage.

  My biological father was still looking at me in shock when Mwita plowed into him. They went falling back and people in the crowd shouted and surged forward.

  “Mwita!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

  Two guards were about to grab Mwita. They blocked my way. I scrambled onto the stage. I could have sworn I heard laughter. But before I could see, we were being pulled back. Mwita flew back to me right through the two men. My biological father pushed them aside. “When you’re ready, Mwita, come find me. We’ll finish this,” he said. His nose bled but he was grinning. His eyes met mine. He pointed at me with a long narrow finger. “And you, girl, your days are numbered.”

  The crowd below us was in chaos, several fights breaking out. People pushed and shoved, rocking the stage on its foundation. Several men in yellow jumped onto the stage from the sides. They brutally kicked people off the stage. No one other than my biological father seemed to see us. He stood there a moment longer and then looked to his crowd and held up his hands smiling. Everyone immediately calmed. It was eerie.

  We were moving backward fast. So fast that I couldn’t speak or turn my head toward Mwita. We flew over the town, the river, another town. Everything was a blur until we were near camp. It was like a giant hand set us down right there in the sand. We sat there for several minutes breathing heavily. I glanced at Mwita. He had a large bruise rising on the side of his face.

  “Mwita,” I said, reaching to touch it.

  He slapped my hand away and stood up, rage in his eyes. I moved away, suddenly very afraid of him.

  “Be afraid,” he said. There were tears in his eyes but his face was hard. He went back to camp. I watched him go into our tent and then I just sat there. There was a mild burst of pain in my forehead. My headache still lingered.

  How did he know my biological father? I wondered. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t look much like him. And why was he about to beat me? The thought hurt more than the question. Of all the people in the world, my mother and Mwita were the two that I could fully trust to never ever hurt me. Now I had left my mother and Mwita . . . something in his brain had gone mad.

  And then there was the question of what had literally happened. We’d been there. Mwita had delivered a blow and been delivered one in return. The people could see us, but what did they see? I scooped up a handful of sand and threw it.

  CHAPTER 28

  MWITA AND I KEPT OUR PROBLEMS QUIET. It was easy to do, for the next day Mwita took Fanasi with him to look for lizard eggs.

  “The bread is getting stale. Ugh,” Binta complained as she bit into a piece of the yellow flatbread. “I need some real food.”

  “Don’t be such a princess,” I said.

  “I can’t wait to reach a village,” Binta said.

  I shrugged. I wasn’t looking forward to other villages or towns on the way. I had a scar on my forehead to show that people could be hostile. “We have to learn to live on the desert,” I said. “We have a long long way to go.”

  “Yeah,” Luyu said. “But we’ll only find fresh men in the towns and villages. You and Diti may not mind staying away from them, but Binta and I have needs, too.”

  Diti grumbled something. I looked at her. “What’s your problem?” I asked.

  She only looked away.

  “Onye,” Binta said. “You said when you were little, you used to sing and owls would come. Can you still do that?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I haven’t tried it in a long time.”

  “Try it,” Luyu said, perking up.

  “If you want to hear singing, turn on Binta’s musicplayer,” I said.

  “The batteries are low,” Luyu said.

  I chuckled. “It’s solar, isn’t it?”

  “Come on. Stop being stingy,” Luyu said.

  “Really,” Diti said in a low annoyed voice. “It’s not all about you.”

  “I’ve never seen an owl up close,” Binta said.

  “I have,” Luyu said. “My mother used to feed one every night outside her window. It was . . .” She grew quiet. We all did, thinking about our mothers.

  I quickly started singing the song of the desert on a cool night. Owls are nocturnal. This was a song they’d like. As I sang, it filled me with joy, a rare emotion for me. The remnants of my headache finally left me. I stood up and raised my voice higher, spreading my arms and closing my eyes.

  I heard the flap of wings. My friends gasped, giggled, and sighed. I opened my eyes and kept singing. One of the owls perched on Binta’s tent. It was dark brown with large yellow eyes. Another owl landed on Luyu’s tent. This one was tiny enough to fit into the palm of my hand. When I finished singing both owls hooted in appreciation and flew off. The large one left a dollop of feces on Binta’s tent.

  “There are consequences to everything,” I laughed. Binta groaned with disgust.

  That night, I lay in our tent w
aiting for Mwita. He was outside bathing with capture station water. He and Fanasi had returned with several lizard eggs, one tortoise—which none of us, not even Fanasi, could bring ourselves to kill and cook—and four desert hares that they’d killed in the desert. I suspected that Mwita used simple juju to catch the hares and find the lizard eggs. Mwita wasn’t speaking to me, so I didn’t know for sure.

  As I lay there, my rapa tied around me, fear occupied my thoughts. I’d hoped this feeling was only temporary, a weird side-effect of the vision. I couldn’t stop shaking. I was sure that he’d beat me this night, or even kill me. When he and Fanasi returned and showed us their catch, Mwita had looked me over. He kissed me lightly on the lips. Then he’d caught my eye. The rage I saw there was frightening. But I refused to avoid him.

  I knew ways of defense using the Mystic Points. I could change into an animal ten times stronger than Mwita. I could drop into the wilderness where he could barely touch me. I could attack and tear at his very spirit as I’d done to Aro when I was only sixteen. But I wasn’t going to use any of that tonight. Mwita was all I had.

  The tent flap opened. Mwita paused. I felt a flutter in my chest. He’d expected me to stay with Luyu or Binta. He wanted me to. I sat up. He wore only his pants made of the same material as my rapa. It was dark so I couldn’t see his face clearly. He closed the tent flap and zipped it shut. I assured myself that I’d done nothing wrong. If he kills me tonight, it won’t be my fault, I thought. I can live with that. But could I? If I was the one prophesied to make things right in the West, what good was I dead?

  “Mwita,” I said softly.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Not tonight, Onyesonwu.”

  “Why?” I asked, keeping my voice steady. “What’s happened that . . .”

  “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I see you.” He shook his head, his shoulders curling.

  I hesitated but then I moved forward and took him in my arms. He tensed up. I held him tight. “What is it?” I whispered, not wanting the others to hear. “Tell me!”

  There was a long long pause and he frowned and glared at me. I didn’t dare move.

  “Lie down,” he finally said. “Take this off and lie down.”

  I took off my rapa and he lay down beside me and took me in his arms. Something was so wrong with him. But I let him remember me. He ran his arms over my body, took my braids in his hands and inhaled, kissed and kissed and kissed. All this time, so many tears dropped on me that I was damp with them.

  “Tie it back on,” he said, sitting up and I did so.

  He ran his hand over his rough hair. He’d shaved it when we left Jwahir but it was growing back, as was the hair on his face. Everything about Mwita was becoming rough.

  “I heard you singing from all the way out there,” he said, looking away. “We must have been miles away and I could still hear your voice. We saw a large bird fly by. I assumed it was going to you.”

  “I sang for Luyu, Binta, and Diti,” I said. “They wanted to see owls.”

  “You should do it more,” he said. “Your voice heals you. You look . . . better now.”

  “Mwita,” I said. “Tell me what . . .”

  “I’m trying. Shut up. Don’t be so sure that you want to hear this, Onye.”

  I waited.

  “I don’t know what you will be,” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing what you did. We were really there. Look at my face. That’s from his fist! I don’t think you saw the villages on the borders of the Seven Rivers Kingdom, but I did. We passed over some rebel Okekes fighting Nurus. The Nuru outnumbered the Okeke a hundred to one. Okeke civilians were attacked, too. Everything was burning.”

  “I smelled the smoke,” I said, quietly.

  “Your vision protected you, but not me. I saw!” Mwita said, his eyes widening. “I don’t know what kind of sorcery is at work here but you scare me. All of this does.”

  “Scares me too,” I said carefully.

  “You resemble your mother mostly, except in color and maybe the nose. You behave like her some . . . there’re other things, too,” he said. “But I can see it in the eyes now. You have his eyes.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s all we have in common.” And our ability to sing, I thought.

  “Your father was my teacher,” he said. “He’s Daib. I’ve told you about him. He’s the reason my uncle and aunt, those who saved and raised me, were killed.”

  The news hit me as if my mother had slapped me, as if Aro had punched me, as if Mwita were strangling me. I hung my mouth open to breathe. Both my own mother and the man I love have reason to hate me, I thought helplessly. All they need to do is look into my eyes. I rubbed the back of my head expecting my headache to return but it didn’t. Mwita brought his face up to mine. “How much of this did you know, Onye?”

  I frowned not only at his question but at the way he asked it. “None, Mwita.”

  “This Sola you told me about, did he plan . . .”

  “There’s no plot against you, Mwita. Do you really believe I’m a false . . .”

  “Daib is a powerful, powerful sorcerer,” Mwita said. “He can bend time, he can make things appear that should never be there, he can make people think wrong things, and he has a heart full of the most evil stuff. I know him well,” He brought his face even closer. “Even Aro couldn’t keep Daib from killing you.”

  “Well, he did, somehow,” I said.

  Mwita sat back, frustrated. “Okay,” he said after a while. “Okay. But . . . still, Onye, we’re practically siblings.”

  I understood what he meant. My biological father, Daib, had been his first Master, his teacher. Though Daib hadn’t allowed Mwita to attempt initiation, Mwita had been his student for years. And to be one’s student of sorcery was a very close relationship—in many ways, closer than that of a parent. Aro, for all my conflict with him, was a second father to me—Papa being my first, not Daib. Aro had birthed me through another canal of life. I shivered and Mwita nodded.

  “Daib would sing as he beat me,” Mwita said. “My discipline and ability to learn so fast are because of your father’s heavy hand. Whenever I did something wrong, or was too slow, or inaccurate, I would get to hear him sing. His voice always brought lizards and scarab beetles.”

  He looked deep into my eyes and I knew he was deciding. I took the moment to decide, too. To decide if I was being manipulated. If we all were. Since I was eleven, things had been happening to me, pushing me toward a specific path. It was easy to imagine that someone of great mystical power was manipulating my life. Except for one thing: the shocked and almost scared look on Daib’s face when he saw me. Someone like Daib could never fake fear and ill preparedness. That look was real and true. No, Daib had as much control over all of this as I did.

  That night Mwita would not let go of me, and I didn’t need to hold onto him.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE NEXT DAY, we started off before dawn. West. Due west. We had a compass and we had the not too harsh sun. Luyu, Fanasi, Diti, and Binta started playing a guessing game. I wasn’t in the mood, so I hung back. Mwita walked ahead of all of us. He hadn’t spoken more than a “good morning” to me since we got up. Luyu left the guessing game to walk with me. “Stupid game,” she said, hoisting her pack up.

  “I agree,” I said.

  After a moment, she put her hand on my shoulder and stopped me. “So what’s been going on with you two?”

  I glanced at the others as they kept moving and shook my head.

  She frowned, annoyed. “Don’t keep me in the dark. I’m not moving another step until you tell me something.”

  “Suit yourself.” I started walking.

  She followed me. “Onye, I’m your friend. Let me in on some of this. You and Mwita will tear each other apart if you don’t share some of the load. I’m sure Mwita confides some in Fanasi.”

  I looked at her.

  “They talk,” she said. “You see how they go off sometimes. You can talk to me.” />
  It was probably true. The two were different, Fanasi traditional by upbringing and Mwita nontraditional by birth, but sometimes difference leads to sameness.

  “I don’t want Diti and Binta to know these things,” I said after a moment.

  “Of course,” Luyu said.

  “I . . .” Suddenly, I felt like crying. I swallowed. “I’m Aro’s student.”

  “I know,” she said frowning deeply “You were initiated and . . .”

  “And . . . there are consequences to it,” I said.

  “The headaches,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “We all know that,” Luyu said.

  “But it’s not so simple. The headaches are because of something. They’re . . . ghosts of the future.” We’d stopped walking.

  “Of what in the future?”

  “How I die,” I said. “Part of initiation is to face your own death.”

  “And how do you die?”

  “I’m taken before a mob of Nurus, buried to my neck, and stoned to death.”

  Luyu flared her nostrils. “How . . . how old are you when it happens?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see my face.”

  “Your headaches, they feel like the stones thrown at your head?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, Ani,” she said. She put her arm around me.

  “There’s one other thing,” I said, after a moment. “The prophecy was wrong . . .”

  “It will be an Ewu woman,” Luyu said.

  “How did . . .”

  “I guessed. It makes more sense now.” She chuckled. “I walk with a legend.”

  I smiled sadly. “Not yet.”

  CHAPTER 30

  OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Mwita and I found it hard to talk to each other. But when we retired, we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. I was still afraid of getting pregnant but our physical needs were greater. There was such love between us, yet we couldn’t speak. It was the only way. We tried to be quiet, but everyone heard us. Mwita and I were so wrapped up in ourselves during the night and then during the day in our dark thoughts, that this wasn’t our concern. It was only when Diti accosted me one cold evening that I realized something was festering among us.