Nnedi Okorafor - Who Fears Death

I stepped back and crouched, ready to fight. Mwita grabbed and pulled me to him. Luyu ran in front of me, pulling out a knife. They came running from everywhere. Dark faces. Wounded souls. Wearing raggedy rapas and torn pants. As they gathered so did the smell of blood, urine, pus, and sweat.

“She is here, o! ”

“The girl who will end the slaughter?”

“The woman whispered the truth,” the old woman continued. “Come and see, come and see! Oooooooonyesonwuuuuuuu!!! Ewu, Ewu, Ewu! ”

We were surrounded.

“Take it off,” the old woman said, standing before me. “Let us see your face.”

I glanced at Mwita. His face told me nothing. My hands itched. I removed my veil and a gasp flew through the crowd. “ Ewu, Ewu, Ewu! ” they chanted. A group of men to my right lurched forward.

“Ah ah!” the old woman shouted, holding them back. “We aren’t finished yet! The General should be afraid now! Ha! His match is here!”

“That one there,” a woman said, moving forward, pointing at Mwita. The side of her face was swollen and she was very pregnant. “He’s her husband. Isn’t that what the woman said? That Onyesonwu would come and we would see the truest love? What can be truer than two Ewu who can love each other? Who are able to love?”

“Shut up, Nuru concubine, whore ready to burst with human rot,” a man suddenly spat. “We should hang you and cut out the evil growing in you!”

People quieted. Then several shouted agreement and the crowd lurched this way and that.

I pushed Mwita and Luyu aside and stepped toward the voice. Everyone in front of me jumped back, including the old woman. “Who just spoke!” I shouted. “Come up here. Show yourself!”

Silence. But he was pushed forward. A man of about thirty, maybe older, maybe younger. I couldn’t tell because half his face was destroyed. He looked me up and down. “You’re an Okeke woman’s curse. May Ani help your mother by taking your life.”

My entire body tightened. Mwita grabbed my hand. “Control yourself,” he said into my ear.

I swallowed my instinct to tear off what remained of the man’s head. My voice shook as I spoke. “What’s your story?”

“I come from over there,” he said, pointing west. “They’re at it again and this time they’ll finish us. Five of them raped my wife. Then they slit me up like this. Instead of finishing me off, they let me and my wife go. Laughing, they said they’ll catch up with me soon enough. Later I learned my wife was carrying one of them. One of you . I killed her and the evil thing growing inside her. The thing in her looked wrong even in death.”

He stepped closer. “We are nothing in the face of the General. Listen to me everyone,” he said raising his hands high and turning to the crowd. “We are at the end of our days. Look at us now, looking to this spawn of evil to save us! We should…”

I snatched my arm from Mwita, grabbed the man’s hand with my left hand and held tight. He fought, gnashed his teeth, cursed. Not once did he try to hurt me, though. I concentrated on what I was feeling. This was not the same as when I brought things back to life. I was taking and taking and taking, as a worm eats away rotten flesh from a rotting but alive leg. It felt itchy, painful, and… amazing.

“Move… everyone… back,” I muttered through gritted teeth.

“Back, back! Move!” Mwita shouted, pushing people.

Luyu did the same. “If you value your lives!” she shouted. “Move back!”

I relaxed my body, kneeling down as the man crumbled to the ground. Then I let go and held my breath. When nothing happened, I let it out. “Mwita,” I said weakly, holding out my arm. He helped me stand. The people crowded back in to look at the man. A woman knelt beside him and touched his healed face. He sat up.

Silence.

“See how Oduwu can smile now?” a woman said. “I’ve never seen him smile.”

More whispers as Oduwu slowly stood up. He looked at me and whispered, “Thank you.” A man let Oduwu lean on him and they began to walk away.

“She’s come,” someone else said. “And the General will run.” Everyone started cheering.

They crowded around me and I gave what I could. If I had tried to heal so many people, men, women, children, of disease, anguish, fear, wounds… if I had tried even a fraction of what I did now before what happened with the Red People, I’d have died. Every single one who came to me in those hours, I made better. Yes, I was a different woman from the one who struck the people of Papa Shee blind. But I will never regret what I did to those people because of what they did to Binta.

Mwita concocted herbal medicines for people and checked pregnant women’s bellies to make sure all was well. Even Luyu helped, sitting with the healed and telling stories of our journey. These people were quite prepared to spread the word of the Sorceress Onyesonwu, the Healer Mwita and the Lovely Luyu of the Eastern Exiles.

A man ran up to me as we left. He was whole but limped severely as he walked. He didn’t ask me to heal him. I didn’t offer. “That way,” he said, pointing west. “If you are that woman, they have started again in the corn villages. Gadi is next, the way it looks.”

We camped in a patch of dry naked land not far from Gadi.

“They said an Okeke woman who never ate but looked well fed has been going around ‘whispering the news,’ ” Luyu said, as we sat in the dark. “She predicts an Ewu sorceress will end their suffering.” It was cold but we didn’t want to attract attention by building a rock fire. “They said she spoke softly and had a strange dialect.”

“My mother!” I said. I paused. “They’d have killed us, otherwise.” My mother was going alu, sending herself here and telling the Okeke about me, to expect me and be glad. Aro truly was teaching her, then.

We were silent for a moment, thinking about this. From nearby an owl hooted.

“They’re so wounded,” Luyu said. “But can you blame them?”

“Yes,” Mwita said.

I agreed with Mwita.

“They kept talking about the General,” Luyu said. “They said he’s the one behind all this, at least in the last ten years. They call him the Council’s Broom because he is in charge of cleaning out the Okeke.”

“How successful he’s been since I was his student,” Mwita said bitterly. “I don’t even understand why he took me on if he would do something like this.”

“People change,” Luyu said.

Mwita shook his head. “He’s always hated anything Okeke.”

“Maybe his hate wasn’t so big back then,” Luyu said.

“It was big enough, years before, to rape my mother,” I said. “The way they… never got tired. Daib must have worked some sort of juju on them all.”

“Look at the Vah people,” Luyu said. “They’re a people who openly embrace juju. Eyess was born into a community that thought this way, so though she won’t ever be a sorcerer, she doesn’t fear sorcery. Now see Daib, born and raised in Durfa where all he sees and learns are that the Okeke are slaves and should be treated worse than camels.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “What of his mother, Bisi? She was born and raised in Durfa, too. Yet, she helped Okeke people escape.”

“That’s true,” Luyu said frowning. “And he was taught by Sola.”

“Some people are just born evil,” Mwita said.

“But he wasn’t always that way,” Luyu said. “Remember what Sola said?”

“I don’t care about any of this,” Mwita said, his hands becoming tight fists. “All that matters is what he is now and the fact that he needs to be stopped.”