This time Sunny stiffened. To be a student lecturer was a highly respected position that students fought tooth and nail to get. It gave you valued teaching experience and broadcast to everyone that you were a top student. In addition, it showed that you had clout. It was one of the biggest reasons people joined confraternities.
“Really?” she said.
She turned around to find her brother looking straight at her. His face serious. “Yeah,” he said. “Everyone is afraid of me.” His face cracked into a smile. “They think I have strong juju, so they don’t want to mess with me.”
Sunny sat down across from him.
“What did you and Chichi do?” he asked.
“Can’t tell you.”
“So you did something?”
“Can’t say.”
He laughed. “That’s what Chichi says. She gets all tricky and mysterious and tight-lipped. You want to know what Adebayo thinks?”
“What does he think?”
“He had terrible nightmares about me when I was gone,” he said. “About me being sliced up and my parts given to some ritual killer. He said he woke up with his heart slamming in his chest. He thought he was having a heart attack. He thinks God sent witches to take his life. Capo, I have seen him, but he won’t even look at me. He gets all shaky, starts muttering about Jesus, and practically runs in the opposite direction. All the teachers, I don’t know what people are telling them. They smile a lot at me and ask me if I need any help with studying. My math professor offered to give me answers to the exam. I said no.”
“Take no help,” Sunny snapped with disgust. “What would be the point if it was all just . . .”
“I know,” he said. “We both love soccer. What would be the point if we didn’t have to play well to win, right? Same thing with school. I believe in learning . . . just like you.”
Sunny nodded.
He smirked. “That’s what I like about Chichi. Well, and because na dey beautiful, o.”
Sunny rolled her eyes. Does he even know about Sasha?! she wondered. She considered asking, then decided it wasn’t her business.
“Chukwu,” she said. “I’ve got a favor to ask you.” She got up to finish slicing the plantain.
“What is it?”
She sliced for a bit before speaking. If he said no, she had no idea how they’d get to Lagos. Maybe they’d find a funky train that drove out there. But how would she get the time away . . . without their father disowning her? No, she had to do this very, very carefully.
“We need to go to Lagos for something,” she blurted, turning to him. “Can you take us? It’s important.”
She quickly turned to her plantain, horrified with herself. She’d never been good at subtlety. That was Orlu’s strength. This was her brother who used to punch her hard in the arm and call her Clorox as a way of showing sibling love. How could she be subtle or careful with him?
“What’s so important there?” he asked.
“Don’t tell Mom or Dad,” she said. “I . . .”
“You aren’t involved in some dangerous cult thing, right?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. I just need to . . . meet with someone. Please, I can’t say more. You just have to trust me. Even if you won’t take . . .”
“I’ll take you,” he said.
“Huh?”
“I’ll take you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I owe you.”
Sunny shook her head. “No, you don’t.”
“You did something that got me out of a bad situation.”
“You’d do the same for me. You’re my brother.”
They stood looking at each other for a long time. Sunny’s heart beat fast with emotion as she remembered how he’d looked that night. She couldn’t keep the tears from welling up in her eyes.
“Okay,” he said softly. “I don’t owe you.”
“So why help me?”
He shrugged. “I want to make sure you’re safe.”
“Okay,” Sunny said, her throat tight. She turned back to her plantain, grabbing a pan and pouring vegetable oil into it. She added a bit of palm oil for flavor, just as her mother had taught her, and then turned on the heat.
“Plus, Adebayo will be there. He’s spending the break at the house of his rich uncle and auntie. They’re traveling to London, and they needed someone to watch their house.” He laughed. “He’ll have a huge mansion on Victoria Island all to himself. Living there like a king. Let me call him. When do you want to go?”
“Just after Christmas. We can spend New Year’s there, maybe.”
“So you and Chichi? And those other two, too?”
“Yes, me, Chichi, Orlu, and S-Sasha.” Her face grew hot.
“Who is this Sasha? The American, right?” Chukwu asked.
Sunny bit her lip. “Yeah, he’s . . .”
“Oh, I know about him,” Chukwu said. He said no more and Sunny was relieved.
“You think Ugonna will want to come?” Sunny quickly asked.
“And not be here with his sweetheart to ring in the New Year? Doubtful.”
Sunny scrunched her nose. “You mean Dolapo?” She’d met the girl once and was deeply annoyed by the way she looked Sunny up and down and then giggled. Since, Sunny hadn’t spoken a word to her when Ugonna brought her around.
“The one and only.”
“I’ll ask anyway,” Sunny said.
But Chukwu was right. Ugonna wasn’t interested in Lagos, unless he could bring Dolapo. Plus, there wasn’t enough room in the Jeep.
With Chukwu doing the asking, convincing their parents was even easier. “I guess you could use the break,” her father said. He didn’t say a thing about Sunny and her friends tagging along. He didn’t even look at her. With the proud way he clapped Chukwu on the back, Sunny knew they’d be assured plenty of gas money and her father would entrust Chukwu with a nice amount of spending money, too. Good. She was going to Lagos to meet a giant spider.
21
BOOK OF SHADOWS
Today, it’s raining in the forest. But by now you know that the water will not drench you. Not that badly. The Idiok have taken shelter, however. They don’t like the mud, and the sound of the rain hitting the tree leaves is good for sleep. Those with young babies will be blessed with much-needed rest.
We are walking in my favorite part of the forest. I was attracted to this place, and that was how the Idiok knew to teach me Nsibidi. Look around you. Do you see that tree to your left with the smooth, narrow trunk and the tiny oval-shaped leaves? Yes, look all the way up and see that it stretches so high that it disappears into the rainclouds. It goes much higher than any normal tree. Imagine the things that crawl up and down that tree, into and out of the forest.
Do you see the vines that wind around it? Yes, you are seeing correctly. They have light green delicate leaves that look delicious enough to eat. I have eaten them; they taste fresh like lettuce. And see their white-pink flowers? See how they open and close, not slowly, not quickly? Like they are one great winding beast that is breathing? And see the ghost hopper perched on the tree trunk beside it? This part of my forest was full—a place that was both wilderness and physical world.
Lambs of the area avoided this place, deeming it long ago a forbidden forest. The patch of forest was small, no more than twenty square meters and easy to avoid, so for centuries, maybe even millennia, it had simply been left alone. For me, being a Leopard Person, it was seeing two layers of reality at once—the magical and the physical. I loved this place as the Idiok did.
By now, you may have come to understand. This book isn’t about learning Nsibidi or my life or how to shape-shift. These are all things that I used to pull you off the ground. If you’ve gotten this far, you are strong in mind and body now. You know how to eat to live, you know how to plan, you know
when you need rest, and you love Nsibidi. You are not my equal but you have my respect, for you are one of my kind. Good.
Right now, this book is about the city of smoke, a huge swath of land in this country that is full. Osisi. I pray that you will not have to see it, for it’s not a place for any person who values his life, but if you have, if you have dreamed it, then you currently are the purpose of this book. There will be more than one of you, but only a handful. You . . .
Sunny had to fight her way out of the Nsibidi’s grasp. This was one thing wholly unaffected by the doubling: her ability to read Nsibidi. She shook her head, flaring her nostrils and frowning, pressing Sugar Cream’s book to her chest. As soon as she could see the light of her reading lamp and she could move her hands, she threw the book across the room. Tomorrow would be hard enough. Now this. All the threads of her life seemed to be winding into a tight bizarre rope that the universe expected her to walk across. Her brother, her questions, Sugar Cream’s book . . . yes, Trickster was a damn good name for it. A perfect name for it. Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits literally shape-shifted, and not only in appearance (the symbols on the cover moved around like bugs) but in reasons for existing, in voice, in narrative. Was it even the same book for every reader?
And why did she have to get to this part on the morning they were leaving? “This is wahala,” she whispered, lying back in her bed. She felt the usual reading fatigue that came with reading the book, and her head still ached from her fresh braids. Last night her mother had cornrowed her bushy yellow hair. The braids were long enough to touch her shoulders. Her hair was really growing. It was nearly the length it had been back when she’d burned it off while gazing into the candle. Two years ago. She’d pressed her Mami Wata comb into one of the side rows. It looked a little asymmetrically strange, but she’d come to see the comb as good luck. She wasn’t about to stop wearing it when they were going where they were going to do what they were going to do.
Bzzz!
She smiled and got up to turn on her bedroom light. It was about five A.M. and still dark outside, and she’d been using her reading light. When she turned her light on, Della buzzed its wings louder. Sunny’s eyebrows went up, and she slowly walked to her cabinet for a better look. Then she just stood there, her mouth open. Staring.
It was a head. She could not tell what Della had used to create it. Maybe the petals of some sort of yellow flower or maybe yellow paper or some kind of yellow paste that it had found in the market. There was gold, too. The face was ringed with pointy gold rays, like a sun. The nose was wide-nostriled and flat like her father’s. The yellow lips were smiling. The eyes were hazel, as if “God had run out of the right color.” They were her eyes. This was her. Della had sculpted a perfect blend of her human and spirit face, Sunny and Anyanwu. How does one hug an insect? she wondered. “Della,” she whispered. “I . . .”
The insect quickly flew circles around her head and then hovered in front of her eyes. Sunny smiled. This was its way of saying, No need for words.
“Do you understand that I will be gone for a few days?”
The insect buzzed.
“You’ve been in here when Chichi and I were talking,” she said. “So you know what is going on.”
It buzzed again.
“Should I be afraid?”
It flew to its art, stood on top of it, and buzzed its wings.
Sunny chuckled. Her wasp artist seemed to know who she was more than she did. And it thought rather highly of her. Della flew up to her and touched her forehead with its long, limp legs and then zipped into its nest on the ceiling.
There was a knock on her door. It was Chukwu.
“Good morning,” she said. “I’m going to get dressed in a little bit. I . . .”
“I need to know something,” he quietly said, coming in.
Sunny shut the door behind him. “Okay,” she said.
“You still can’t talk about it, can you?”
She shook her head. If she spoke, her words would feel heavy and slow the way they always did when she skirted too close to speaking directly about being Leopard.
“Is . . . whatever you all are doing in Lagos dangerous?” he asked.
Sunny thought about it. “We can handle it,” she said.
“It doesn’t involve any of these ritual people? Because they’re murderers and . . .”
“I’ve never ever been involved with those people,” she firmly said.
“Lagos is a big crazy place for you,” he added.
“No more than it is for you. Plus, Orlu and Chichi know it well,” she said. “And Sasha has . . . international street smarts.”
Chukwu scoffed. “Sasha? No comment.”
“We’ll be fine,” she said. “And I’ll have my cell phone.” But if all went as planned, there would be a few days where he wouldn’t be able to reach her. She’d cross that bridge when she got to it.
What Sunny was more worried about was Sasha and Chukwu being in the same space for so many hours. As far as Sunny knew, Chichi refused to make a choice between the two, and both refused to cut things off with Chichi, so the love triangle was very much intact. How was this even going to go?
There was another knock on the door.
“What are you talking about in here?” Ugonna said, coming in.
“Just the trip,” Chukwu said. “Why are you up?”
“Are you planning something?” he asked, ignoring Chukwu’s question. He was looking at Sunny.
“No . . .”
“Because I don’t see why you and your friends are going,” he continued.
“If you want to go,” Sunny said, “you could squeeze in. We talked about this.”
“I’m not going,” he said. “I just want to know why you are.” He put his arms across his chest. “I got a weird feeling about it.”
Sunny was about to say he was just imagining things. She was about to laugh and say he sounded like their superstitious aunt Udobi. But she couldn’t do it. For months her brother had been sensing things about her, drawing and drawing pictures that she now realized were of Osisi. He was worried about her in a way that only a brother could worry about his sister. “It’s something I have to do,” Sunny said, taking his hands and looking right into his eyes.
He looked back into hers. He let go and said, “Okay.”
Sunny breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t have said more if she wanted to.
“Text me,” Ugonna said. “Not Mom, not Dad, me. Both of you.”
“We will,” Sunny said.
There was an awkward pause among the three siblings. The air was so heavy with secrets that Sunny could practically feel them pressing down on her shoulders. But at the same time, never in her entire life had she felt so close to her brothers. And that’s why she did something she’d never done: she reached out to both of them and pulled them to her in a tight hug. For a moment, they resisted, but then they gave in.
“Sunny, I will whoop the hell out of you myself if anything happens to you,” Chukwu said into her neck.
“Okay,” Sunny whispered.
When they let go, her brothers quickly left the room. “We leave in an hour and a half,” Chukwu said as he closed the door behind him.
Sunny climbed back into bed. She was tired from reading her Nsibidi book. A good half hour would do. Plenty of time.
Orlu arrived within the hour, early as usual. Chichi and Sasha arrived together minutes later. Sunny stood in the kitchen watching as Sasha and Chukwu were introduced to each other by Chichi. She quickly took off her glasses, wiped the lenses, and put them back on. She wanted to see this clearly. Sasha and her brother were nearly the same height, Sasha being tall for his age and standing not far from Chukwu’s six feet. But where Chukwu was made of bulky muscle, Sasha was lean, springy muscle. Chukwu seemed to flex his biceps more as he held out his hand to sha
ke Sasha’s. Sunny wished she could have been outside to hear them greet each other.
Sasha quickly used the excuse of packing his bag in the Jeep to walk away from Chukwu. Chichi came into the kitchen all grins.
“That is so wrong,” Sunny said.
“What?”
Sunny just shook her head. “You brought Udide’s Book of Shadows, right?”
“Right here,” she said, putting her backpack down. She brought forth the satchel slung over her right shoulder and took out a large brownish-black book. The pages were thick and yellowed with age and dirt. It carried the smell of burned paper that Sunny could smell from where she stood. The cover was etched with hundreds of slightly raised lines, like it was wrapped in the thin long legs of spiders. Sunny felt skittish just looking at it. She kept imagining the lines lifting from the cover, unfolding, and the book standing up. She shuddered.
“You want to see?” Chichi asked. “The writing is so neat, but really small. It’s like a computer wrote it!”
Sunny held up her hands and shook her head. “No, that’s okay.”
Chichi giggled and put it back in the satchel. “Sasha finding it . . . He really has a good eye, sha. I hear that it can only be seen when it wants to be seen. It’s got a mind of its own like that ring in Lord of the Rings. The book isn’t all evil, but it’s not all good, either. Sasha and I were studying it last night. Udide likes to speak in stories. The spell for how to find her is in there, but she tells it in third person as an adventure story about some stupid guy who doesn’t know how to mind his own business. He was some teenage Yoruba guy from a long line of wealthy kings near Lagos who thought he was entitled to know everything.”
Sunny chuckled. “I know a guy like that.”
“We all do,” Chichi said. “And he’s not always a Yoruba guy.”
“Yeah, but it’s always a guy,” Sunny said, grinning.
They both had a good laugh. “So anyway,” Chichi continued. “Udide hears most things and she especially hears all things that involve her.”
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