Nnedi Okorafor - Who Fears Death

“You live up the road past the ebony tree, right?” he asked, looking past me.

I nodded absentmindedly, still looking at the envelope.

“Okay,” he said. Then he left. I stood there watching him walk away, barely aware of the fact that the throbbing between my legs had grown worse.

After that day, it seemed I saw Mwita everywhere. He often came to our house with messages. And a few times I ran into him on his way to Papa’s shop.

“How come you didn’t tell me about him before?” I asked my parents one night during dinner. Papa was shoveling spiced rice into his mouth with his right hand. He sat back, chewing, his right hand resting over his food. My mother put another piece of goat meat on his plate.

“I thought you knew,” he said at the same time that my mother said, “I didn’t want to upset you.” My parents knew so much back then. They should have also known that they couldn’t shelter me forever. What was coming would come.

Mwita and I talked whenever we saw each other. Briefly. He was always in a hurry. “Where’re you going?” I asked after he delivered yet another envelope from the elders to Papa. Papa was making a great table for the House of the Osugbo, and the engraved symbols on it had to be perfect. The envelope Mwita brought contained more drawings of the symbols.

“Somewhere else,” Mwita said, smirking.

“Why’re you always hurrying?” I said. “Come on. Just one thing?”

He turned to leave and then he turned back. “All right,” he said. We sat on the steps to the house. After a minute he said, “If you spend enough time in the desert, you will hear it speak.”

“Of course,” I said. “It speaks loudest in wind.”

“Right,” Mwita said. “Butterflies understand the desert well. That’s why they move this way and that. They’re always Holding Conversation with the land. They talk as much as they listen. It’s in the desert’s language that you call the butterflies.”

He lifted his chin, took a deep breath and breathed out. I knew the song. The desert sang it when all was well. In our nomad days, my mother and I would catch scarab beetles slowly flying by on days when the desert sang this song. Remove the hard shells and wings, dry the flesh in the sun, add spices—delicious. Mwita’s song brought three butterflies—a tiny white one and two big black and yellow ones.

“Let me try,” I said, excitedly. I thought about my first home. Then I opened my mouth and sang the desert’s song of peace. I drew two hummingbirds who zipped around our heads before flying off. Mwita leaned away from me, shocked.

“You sing like… your voice is lovely,” he said.

I looked away, pressing my lips together. My voice was a gift from an evil man.

“Some more,” he said. “Sing some more.”

I sang him a song I’d made up when I was happy and free and five years old. My memory of those times was fuzzy, but I clearly remembered the songs I sang.

It was like that each time with Mwita. He’d teach me a bit of simple sorcery and then be shocked by the ease with which I picked it up. He was the third to see it in me (my mother and Papa being the first and second), probably because he had it in him too. I wondered where he learned what he knew. Who were his parents? Where did he live? Mwita was so mysterious… and very handsome.

Binta, Diti, and Luyu first met him at school. He was waiting for me in the yard, something he’d never done. He wasn’t surprised to see me come out of school with Binta, Diti, and Luyu. I’d told him much about them. Everyone was staring. I’m sure many stories were told that day about Mwita and me.

“Good afternoon,” he said, politely nodding.

Luyu was grinning too widely.

“Mwita,” I quickly said. “Meet Luyu, Diti, and Binta, my friends. Luyu, Diti, Binta, meet Mwita, my friend.”

Diti snickered at this.

“So Onyesonwu is a good enough reason to come here?” Luyu asked.

“She’s the only reason,” he said.

My face felt hot, as the eyes of all four turned to me.

“Here,” he said, giving me a book. “Thought I’d lost it but I didn’t.” It was a booklet on human anatomy. When we’d last spoken, he’d been bothered by how little I knew about the many muscles of the body.

“Thanks,” I said, feeling annoyed at my friends’ presence. I wanted to tell them again that Mwita and I were just friends. The only type of interaction Luyu and Diti had with boys was sexual or flirtatious.

Mwita gave me a look and I returned it with a look of agreement. After that, he only approached me when he thought I’d be alone. Most of the time he succeeded but sometimes he was forced to deal with my friends. He was fine.

I was always happy to see Mwita. But one day, months later, I was ecstatic to see him. Relieved . When I saw him coming up the road, an envelope in hand, I jumped up. I’d been sitting on the house steps staring into space, confused and angry, waiting for him. Something had happened.

“Mwita!” I screamed, breaking into a run. But when I got to him, all my words escaped me and I just stood there.

He took my hand. We sat down on the steps.

“I—I—I don’t know,” I babbled. I paused, a great sob welling up in my chest. “It couldn’t have happened, Mwita. Then I wondered if this was what happened before. Something’s been happening to me. Something’s after me! I need to see a healer. I…”

“Just tell me what happened, Onyesonwu,” he said, impatient.

“I’m trying! ”

“Well, try harder.”

I glared at him and he glared back, motioning his hand for me to get on with it.

“I was in the back, looking at my mother’s garden,” I said. “Everything was normal and… then everything went red. A thousand shades of it…”

I stopped. I couldn’t tell him about how a giant red-eyed brown cobra slithered up to me and rose up to my face. And then how I was suddenly hit with a self-loathing so deep and profound that I started raising my hands to gouge out my own eyes! That I was then going to tear my own throat with my nails. I am awful. I am evil. I am filth. I should not be! The mantra was red and white in my mind as I’d stared in horror at the oval eye. I didn’t tell him how a moment later an oily black vulture flew down from the sky, screamed and then pecked at the snake until it slithered away. How I snapped out of it just in time. I skipped all this.

“There was a vulture,” I said. “Looking right at me. Close enough for me to see its eyes. I threw a rock at it and as it flew off, one of its feathers fell off. A long black one. I… went and picked it up. I was standing there wishing I could fly as it did. And then… I don’t…”

“You changed,” Mwita said. He was looking at me very closely.

“Yeah! I became the vulture. I swear to you! I’m not making this…”

“I believe you,” Mwita said. “Finish.”

“I… I had to hop out from underneath my clothes,” I said holding my arms out. “I could hear everything . I could see … it looked as if the world had opened itself to me. I got scared. Then I was lying there, myself again, naked, my clothes next to me. My diamond wasn’t in my mouth. I found it a few feet away and…” I sighed.

“You’re an Eshu,” he said.

“A what?” The word sounded like a sneeze.

“An Eshu. You can shape-shift, among other things. I knew this the day you changed into that sparrow and flew into the tree.”

“What?” I screamed, leaning away from him.

“You know what you know, Onyesonwu,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Why didn’t you tell me? ” I clenched my shaking fists.