George Martin - The Way of the Wizard

A woman . His eyes had to be deceiving him. But he didn’t dare blink. She was tall with strong, long legs and she wore a dress that resembled the bird’s feathery hide. A woman . Not a giant bird. She dug her foot into the dirt, keeping her arms close to her sides.

“What do you think you are doing?” she demanded, in a hard, deep authoritative voice. “Do you think you can fight me, now?”

The bird-woman was taller than him and looked to be about thirty years old. She had strings of chunky red glass beads and white-brown cowry shells woven into her thick, tightly-braided hair. Her lips were painted dark with black lipstick and her entire dress was made of silky bird feathers. Her beaded braids clicked and clacked as she awkwardly walked around him.

“What are you?” Nkem finally asked, his fists still up.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked.

Nkem lowered his fists. “N… nothing.”

“Why didn’t you leave me to die?”

“I thought you were dead,” he started to say, then paused, catching himself. Why was he acting like this woman was the bird he’d run over?

Before he could say more, they came out of the bushes. One, two, ten, sixteen big birds! I guess they didn’t stop following, he thought. They surrounded him like a group of strange curious women.

A car driving by blew its horn. “ Nah woooooow !” the driver exclaimed out the window, staring. Several more cars slowed down to look.

“ Chineke !” someone else shouted.

A man held a cell phone out of the passenger seat window. Nkem could even see its camera lens adjusting to capture him in perfect high definition focus. “Snap it, now!” the driver said. “Snap it and send, o! Then broadcast live!”

“Look at that !”

Up close the birds had a bitter, grapefruit-like scent. They were all making that low, booming drum beat noise now and the woman was looking at them thoughtfully. Then she looked at Nkem and said something that made his heart flip: “I wanted to die ,” she whispered, then moved close to him. “I… I led some to freedom but too many to death. I should die for not saving them all.”

Nkem blinked, suddenly far too aware of all the cars and people around him. People would certainly recognize him; he was a celebrity, Nigeria’s “Sexist Man Alive.” With so many witnesses, could it be long before the paparazzi showed up?

“Get in the car,” he said.

She looked at him like he was crazy. “These are my friends.”

“Just get in! Let them follow.”

Nkem wasn’t sure if this would deflect attention from him, but it was better than just standing there. He got in the Jaguar and opened the door for the bird-woman. She slowly climbed in, folding her long legs and keeping her eye on Nkem.

He felt ill but at the same time, utterly exhilarated. This was something new. This was unexpected and insane. “Who are you?” he asked as he pulled the car onto the street in front of the rubbernecking traffic. He kept to the outer lane of the street so that the herd of birds could run alongside the car. “What are you?”

“Ogaadi,” she said, looking out the window at the running birds. “That is my name.”

Nkem glanced at her but didn’t say anything else.

“It is 2013,” she proclaimed.

He frowned, looking at her. “Yes.”

“ Chey ! How time flies. Felt more like no time was passing at all.” She opened the window. “I am an amusu , I admit that. My uncle initiated me when I was ten. What was I supposed to do? Say no?!” She glared accusingly at Nkem.

“Uh… I didn’t… you’re a witch?”

“I listened to my uncle,” she continued. “He taught me great things. He was the real thing, sha . He taught me how to eat poison and live, force plants to grow, how to cause my father to become rich in the stock market. Juju is not all bad, you know. But then my… my mother and my sister… ” She swallowed hard. Nkem glanced at her with a frown as she closed her eyes and clenched her fists. He turned his eyes back to the road, feeling a shiver creep up his spine. “What happened to your mother and sister?” Nkem carefully asked.

“They died. And I don’t know why! Some sort of flu,” she said, after a moment. “ I didn’t do it!”

Nkem remained silent, waiting for her to continue.

“My… my uncle was wild with grief when they died,” she said. “He had to blame someone, so he cursed me. He was so close to all of us.” She took a deep breath. “Maybe ten miles from here, just outside of Owerri, my uncle had a farm, raising emu.”

Emu , Nkem thought. That’s what they’re called .

“He changed me into one and threw me in with them,” she continued. “Twenty years he left me there.”

Nkem was having a hard time concentrating on the road. The damn emu herd running alongside the car wasn’t helping, nor was the growing crowd of gawkers on the road to his left. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and took a deep breath. Nonsense , he thought. This is all nonsense! Maybe someone slipped a mild sweetie into my breakfast or something. Maybe one of the cooks hated my films. It was a possibility. Such a thing had happened to another actor some years ago. But the strange thing was that Nkem believed every word this woman said. Somehow he just KNEW all that she was saying was true.

“Twenty years I hid and avoided my uncle,” she said. “Business was good for him. Owerri’s a good place to sell emu meat.” She glanced out the open window at the running emu. She lowered her voice. “People like it. Most don’t even know it’s emu. They think it’s beef. My uncle thought that I had long ago been slaughtered and sold as meat like the other birds. But he taught me well. I had ways of hiding in there. But I could not escape; there was an electrical fence.”

Nkem felt another chill. “Last night — did the storm do something…?”

“To the fence, yes,” she said. “It was struck by lightning. The minute I saw our chance, I got all the emu to stampede. The fence was still sparking and many of us were killed. I… I didn’t know that would happen. It was terrible.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “So, you see, when I saw you speeding toward me, I thought fate was providing me an opportunity. I wanted to end my life… ”

Her words touched him in an odd way. Although her story was fantastic and strange compared to Nkem’s, on some basic level, how she felt was how he felt too. He wasn’t of this world. Maybe he didn’t want to die but he wanted to leave this life of his behind.

“The sacrifice must have broken my uncle’s juju,” she said.

As they drove, more vehicles around them slowed down. Soon, Nkem found he could barely drive faster than twelve miles per hour. Neither Ogaadi nor the rest of the herd liked this. The birds began angrily making that strange drum beat sound in their chests. Ogaadi grew more and more anxious as she looked at the crowd of gawkers.

“Why do these people do this?”

“Come on,” Nkem snapped. “Who wouldn’t come and look?”

Up ahead, the traffic stopped in what looked like another very annoying bit of go-slow. Suddenly, Ogaadi looked at Nkem with bulging eyes and hollered, “You’re working with him!”

“Eh? Who? What?”

“He can stop everything! I know his ways!” She suddenly grabbed at the steering wheel.

“What are you doing?” Nkem screamed.

They narrowly missed two cars as they whipped to the right, careening off the road. Nkem heard the hiss of grass as they rolled into the foliage and thankfully came to a stop without hitting anything. Ogaadi opened the door and leaped out; the emu, meanwhile, did the opposite and lunged at the car, pecking and kicking. Nkem’s mind was in a muddle. “ Stop it !” he screamed, jumping out of the car.