Sunny and the Mysteries of Osisi

by Nnedi Okorafor

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I had to!” Sunny sobbed. “I had to! It was my brother! You didn’t see what they…” She couldn’t breathe.

  “Shhh, shhh,” Samya said, holding her back. “Relax. Get ahold of yourself.”

  But Sunny’s entire body was shuddering. Images of her brother’s battered face, eyes swollen, mouth swollen. His pain. Capo’s terrified face as he gasped for air. Lying in wait in the bushes. Darkness. Screams.

  “Sunny,” Samya said shaking her. “You need to calm down.” She paused. “There is something down here that can’t know you are weak.”

  Sunny felt her nerves zing. There was something down here. She felt faint as she pushed her body to calm down. “What is it?”

  “I can’t say, and I can’t come back,” Samya said. “When someone is sent to the basement, a different student must bring down food on each day. I think Sugar Cream sent me first because she knew you’d need me. Don’t expect the others that come to be helpful. They will… follow the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  “Never mind,” she quickly said. “Some things are worth it. Now listen, Sunny, and listen closely if you want to come out of here sane and alive. These books are old. They are used. They have been replaced, then cast aside. They will be dealt with eventually, but for now they are down here. Every book has a soul, every book carries and attracts. There are sterilisation and soothing jujus all over this room, but this is the earth. Something will always come and live here. In this case it is a djinn. It guards and hides in the books.”

  “Does it make fire that doesn’t burn?”

  Samya nodded and frowned. “So you’ve already seen it.”

  “Yes… its bones. I fell asleep and I woke up and it was right over there.” She pointed to mere feet away.

  “Oh my God, so soon?” Samya said, circling her head and snapping her finger. Then she looked at Sunny and gave the most pathetic reassuring smile Sunny had ever seen. “Listen, Sunny. It will try you.”

  “Try what?”

  “You. It knows… Sunny, you aren’t learned yet. You are just a free agent, but you were… are someone who did something in the wilderness. It was a good thing, I think. Otherwise, why would Ekwensu fear you? The thing down here is a djinn, and it’ll read your past life as you being powerful in your present one, some sort of chosen one. So it will try you. It will want to see what you’ve got.” She frowned. “Damn, Sunny, why did you have to get yourself thrown down here?”

  “What do I do?”

  Samya got up. “I don’t really know.” She looked at the staircase as if someone were calling her. Then she looked at Sunny. “Don’t let it take you.” She paused. “And don’t believe the silly Lamb stereotypes about djinni. They don’t grant wishes and what they show you can be an illusion, but more times than not, it is real. They can harm you. Okay, I have to go.” She pointed to the tray. “Eat all of it,” she said. She looked Sunny in the eye. “All of it. You need your strength.”

  “Wait, wait,” Sunny said as Samya moved quickly to the staircase. “My parents! My family. Will someone…”

  “Good luck, Sunny,” she said over her shoulder. “Stay strong. Stay alive.” Then she rushed up the stairs.

  Sunny watched her go, listening as her steps grew fainter and fainter and then were gone. She sat against the bronze toad and stared at her tray of food. A bowl of dry-looking jollof rice with one chunk of tough-looking goat meat in the middle of it, an orange, and a bottle of water. She ate it all quickly, her eyes darting around like a scared rabbit. She didn’t taste a bite of it. The scraping sound had begun again.

  There was water somewhere in the basement. But she couldn’t see it. Drip, drip, drip. Then stop. Then drip, drip, drip. Then stop. As if there was some machine turning it off and on. Trying to drive her mad. That would make two things with the same intention. A machine and a djinn. Sunny giggled to herself. Quietly. She had to stay quiet. The thing that was clumping and scraping about the room didn’t seem to really see her. As the hours passed, she began to believe it was because of the bronze toad. Maybe there was something in it that kept the djinn at bay. For since that first time, it had not shown its bones to her. Maybe I didn’t really see the bones at all, she thought. She giggled again. If I don’t move, then I’ll be safe.

  The scraping was on the other side of the large room, its noise echoing about the high ceiling. From where she was, she had a clear view of the red spiders, too. The big one was still in its spot. That was good. Yes, that was good. Her head pounded. How long had it been since Samya left? Three hours? Nine? All she had was the hanging dim light near the spiders.

  “Chukwu, you better thank me when I get out of here,” she whispered to herself. It was good to hear her voice, even if she couldn’t raise it. “If I get out of here.” She hugged herself closer to the bronze toad’s warm body, pressing her head to it. Her comb clicked against the metal. She took it out and examined it, glad to have something else to focus on. She held it to her nose and smelled it. It smelled briny like the sea, but there was also a hint of flowers. The smell was pleasant. It smelled of outside. She smiled and whispered “Thank you” to the lady of the sea who’d saved her and then given her a gift that she could admire during a dark time.

  “Whooooo oh whoooooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” she heard an ancient male voice suddenly sing. Scraaaaape. “Whooooo oh whooooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” the voice said again. Then another scraaaaape.

  It had seen her. It had known she was there all along. The bronze toad was just a bronze toad. A decoration. An ornament in a room that was more a giant trash container than anything else. Sunny knew this. She’d just needed something to grasp because they’d given her nothing. They’d thrown her down here, and they hadn’t even given her a gun, a protective stone, a hard stick, nothing. She had her juju knife, but she didn’t know any protective charms against djinni or ghosts.

  She glanced up at the ceiling. The giant red spider was still there and even from where she was, she felt more positive than ever that it was watching her. But the other smaller ones had dissipated. Maybe they were all over the basement now… including on the floor. She looked down and wasn’t surprised to see one scurrying across the sandy marble.

  Suddenly, the entire room reeked so strongly of sulphur that it hurt to breathe. Sunny jumped up and took off towards the stairway that led out of the library basement, coughing. She hadn’t moved much in hours and her muscles were stiff, but she ran up the stairway like a champion. Her sandals slapped the concrete. She didn’t dare glance back. Thus, she couldn’t have been more shocked when she found herself stumbling right back into the Obi Library basement. Her sense of direction and gravity reeled for several moments as she came to understand what had happened.

  “What?!” she screeched.

  “Whooo oh whooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” The voice vibrated, coming from every direction and within Sunny’s head. She pressed her hands over her ears as she frantically looked for a place to hide. There! A small space between two fallen bookcases. Maybe she could hole up in that space for two days, a day and a half, whatever amount of time she had left here. About to run for it, she shivered and looked to her left. This time she did scream. Because she’d been about to run, her leg muscles were like a tightly wound spring. She tried to change directions by a few degrees and her legs tangled. As she went down, she didn’t take her eyes off the pile of bones. The skull had its jaw broken. There was a foot at the top. A hand tumbled down and landed facing upward like a dead white spider.

  Phoom! The dried old bones suddenly burst into quiet smokeless flames.

  Sunny hit the ground, and her hip was an explosion of pain. Still, she managed to roll to her side and pull her juju knife from her pocket. She did a quick flourish and caught the cool invisible pouch in her hand as she lay on her side. Then she drew a square in the air while muttering into the pouch the words Chichi had taught her. The only difference was that she spoke them in her native tongue o
f English instead of Chichi’s native tongue of Efik. “Bring a thick barrier. Hold strong, too. From the very air I breathe. It must hold true!”

  When the tumbled hand rolled towards her and then perched on its fingertips so that it could tap on the barrier, Sunny shivered.

  “Free agent weak frightened magic,” the voice said. “Shatters like glass.” With these words, there was the sound of glass breaking and falling to the marble floor. “What more do you have?”

  Sunny had been practising on her own and incorporating lessons Sugar Cream had taught her over the months. She calmed, forcing herself to look at the ancient pile of human bones that were engulfed in flames but not burning at all.

  “Your entire body must relax, feel it drop. Then imagine your spirit dropping,” Sugar Cream had said. “Think of Anyanwu. You are her and she is you. Remember your initiation? When you were pulled into the ground? Feel that. But feel it as if Anyanwu is pulling from your body.” Before Sunny gave it a try, Sugar Cream had reminded her to make sure she was lying down.

  Now Sunny was already on the floor. She rested her head back, keeping an eye on the bones. Relax, relax, relax, she thought. Breathe. She flared her nostrils, inhaling deeply through her nose. It took all she had, but she calmed herself. She would be okay. She might not have had too many real moments of terror in her thirteen years, but in her past life, she had. She couldn’t remember them clearly, but she could feel those memories. Right on the tip of her mind. And she’d still gone on. Even if she died in this basement, she would go on in spirit. She relaxed more with the comfort of this remote knowledge. She relaxed. She dropped. She felt it physically, but it was much more than that.

  “Oh, now it gets interesting,” the voice said. “Welcome.”

  The marble floor was cool. It was a pure stone. An old, old stone. Maybe it had been in the earth longer than the Obi Library had existed. Maybe the basement was carved from what was already in the ground. It was so solid. Sunny got up. She flew, passing through the bookcases as if they were clouds. She was nothing but yellow mist. She knew there would be other things here, and she hoped she didn’t run into them. But she couldn’t afford to look around. She had to get away. And she couldn’t stay partially in the wilderness for long. Not yet. Before she knew what she was doing or how quickly she’d travelled across the large room, she smashed into a wall.

  They were made of the same marble. She could not pass through them, even if she dropped into the wilderness. How was this possible? What kind of stone is this? she wondered as she crumpled to the ground. Scraaaape. One by one, the bones dragged and tumbled towards her.

  “Do you think this place is only your world?” the voice said. “It is physical and wilderness. It is a full place. You can’t escape.”

  “What do you want?” she muttered. Not far from her on the floor were five red spiders. Two of them just stood there, seeming to watch her. The other three were running for cover.

  “I want what you have,” the voice said.

  “Why?”

  “They throw stupid Leopard People down here often. Timid, angry, weak-minded careless men and women who have nothing for me to take but a piece of their sanity, or some of a family member’s future, meagre gifts. But you… you have a soul that could release me from this place.”

  “Sunny?” someone called. “Sunny Nwazue?”

  Sunny got to her feet, wobbly for a moment. Then steady. She’d hit the wall as something other than a physical body. She was shaken but okay.

  “Sunny?” she heard the man call again. A human man. From near the staircase. Her second meal was here. She’d made it through the second day. But was it breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

  “I’m here,” she called, peeking around one of the bookshelves. He was a tall man of about her mother’s age. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt and gym shoes. Not clothes she’d seen any of the Obi Library students wear during the day.

  “Here is your dinner,” he said, holding it out to her. If she had to guess, judging from his accent, this guy was from Lagos. He held the tray out to her. It was the same meal of jollof rice, goat meat, and water.

  “Thank you,” she said. “So, it’s night, then? Do you know what time it is?”

  The man didn’t answer. He wouldn’t even look her in the eye. He turned and started walking away.

  “Sir?… Oga? Did you hear me?” Sunny asked, following him as he walked towards the staircase. He moved quicker. Sunny put her tray on the ground, suddenly feeling panicky and invisible.

  “Hey!” she shouted.

  “I can’t speak or look at you,” he said stiffly, his back still to her. “The punishment is caning.”

  Sunny froze. Samya. She pressed her hand to her chest, shocked. “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh no.” She stepped away from the staircase, listening to the sound of the man’s footsteps grow fainter and fainter. Stay strong, Sunny thought, tears in her eyes. I have to survive this. Otherwise, Samya will have been caned in vain.

  She whirled around when she heard a crunch. Her plate of rice looked as if a stone as heavy as a car had fallen on it. A red spider had been crushed beside it, too. The bottled water rolled and came to rest beside a bookcase. She heard the djinn chuckle from the other side of the room.

  “That’s really funny,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Her mother had once told her that if she ever found herself facing a wild animal, never ever show fear. The djinn wasn’t an animal. Well, not one of the physical world at least, but it was certainly wild. Up to now, Sunny had worn her fear on her sleeve. She couldn’t help it; she was scared. However, her mother also liked to say that it was never too late.

  Her legs tingled and shuddered as she slowly walked towards her water bottle. She bent and picked it up, unscrewed the top, and took a deep, deep pull. The water washed into her parched body like rain on dry cracked earth. During the gliding lessons with Sugar Cream, she and Sunny never moved fully into the wilderness. Sunny was far from ready for that and to go in unready meant a quiet peaceful swift death to your physical body. However, Sugar Cream took Sunny “in and out,” where she was in both the wilderness and the physical world, and instead of seeing one place, she saw two layered over each other. Sugar Cream described it as similar to looking at the world through an aquarium.

  Learning how to go “in and out” or between was not so hard. Sunny had gone between naturally on her own when she’d first snuck out of the house through the keyhole thinking she’d worked her first juju. It was going into the wilderness completely that was extremely difficult. Whenever Sugar Cream had her do preparatory exercises for going into the wilderness, Sunny always found herself desperate for water afterwards. “That’s because water is life,” Sugar Cream had said. “The body doesn’t like for its soul to even consider entering the wilderness.”

  Sunny took another gulp and felt a little better. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human,” she called out. “You should have crushed the water bottle. Humans need water more than food.” Despite her fear, she smiled at her own words.

  “I was never human,” the djinn said.

  As she drank, she looked around. More red spiders on the books feet away. The djinn’s voice was still coming from the other side of the room but that didn’t mean anything. Her eye went to one of the books in the fallen case in front of her. She pulled it from between two dusty hardcovers. Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X. A Lamb book. “What’s that doing here?” she muttered. Beside it were several volumes on Leopard medicine and even more on Leopard world alliance law.

  “Sunny!” She jumped. The voice was right behind her.

  “Eep!”

  She was yanked back. There was a bright flash in her mind and a metallic sting so intense that she couldn’t tell where she felt it. Then she was plunging into cool water. There was a splash. It was like her initiation when she burst into the river and was pulled along, except this felt like she was being pulled down, down, down instead of horizontally. She felt her b
ody struggling for breath. She couldn’t breathe! The cool water pressed in on her as she descended into the deep blue. She could see the dull basement light above her, slowly pulling itself away as she sank.

  She thrashed and clutched her neck. Her lungs burned. Water rushed into her mouth, down her throat, into her chest. Even then she fought, but she was growing weak. She was dying. The djinn was drowning her.

  The water was cool. She was cooling.

  She let go of her neck. She let go.

  Then the sensation of falling without falling. She hit something hard. Colours zoomed around her. Mostly green. But she was vaguely aware of the library; she was in the library. Her chest felt heavy, full. She coughed sharply and grabbed for the bookcase. There was a red spider right beside her hand, but she didn’t care. “No,” the djinn said in her ear. “There is no escape. Come. Come completely.” She could feel the bookcase melting in her hands, dissolving, as something yanked at her shoulders, pulling her back. She felt it in her chest, a warm sharp tearing sensation. Then she felt her spirit face rush forwards.

  “Oh,” she heard the djinn say. Then it chuckled and drawled, “Who are you, Sunny Nwazue?”

  She still felt the pain, but all over now, and she felt… dim, somehow muted. She’d held on to the case, trying to will herself out of the wilderness. But then she was holding on to nothing. Then the bookcase became a mass of bushes. But the spider on it didn’t disappear; it sat there on the bush. She gasped. It was one of those creatures that existed in both worlds. It was still red but now the size of a basketball with fluorescent blue rings on its legs. The creature waved a leg at her and scurried away.

  Sunny held on to the bush, realising she wasn’t breathing. She wore her spirit face. She was Anyanwu.

  Her body. She was no body. She was yellow. The colour of the sun. Light. In a sea of mostly green.

  Green blobs undulated past. Pink and green insects with green lines for wings. The wilderness looked like a jungle. There was sound, and it was thick and moist and fertile. Alive. She was afraid to speak.