Nnedi Okorafor - Who Fears Death

When I touched the book, it was warm. Feverish. I rested my hand on the hard cover. It was rough, like sandpaper. I wanted to consider this but I knew I had no time. I dragged it into my lap and opened it. Immediately, I felt as if someone had hit me hard about the head causing my vision to go wrong. I could barely look at the writing on the pages, it bothered my eyes and head so much. I was focused, by now. I was there for only one purpose, a purpose that had been prophesied in that very hut.

I flipped the book’s pages and stopped on a page that felt hotter than the rest. I lay my left hand on it. It didn’t make any sense to me but I was inclined to do it, so sick the book felt. I paused. No , I thought. I switched hands, remembering Ting’s words about my hand, “We don’t know what the consequence will be.” This book was full of hate and that was what caused its sickness. My right hand was full of Daib’s hate.

“I don’t hate you,” I whispered. “I’d rather die.” Then I began to sing. I sang the song that I had made up when I was four years old and living with my mother in the desert. During the happiest time of my life. I had sung this song to the desert when it was content, at peace, settled. I sang it now to the mysterious book in my lap.

My hand grew hot and I saw the symbols on my right hand split. The duplicates dribbled down into the book where they settled between the other symbols into a script I still couldn’t read. I could feel the book sucking from me, as a child does from its mother’s breast. Taking and taking. I felt something click within my womb. I stopped singing. As I watched, the book grew dimmer and dimmer. But not so dim that I could not see it. It hid there in the corner as the men burst in and found me.

Change takes time and I’d run out of it.

The moment I finished with that book, something began to happen. As it happened, I got up to run and realized I was caught. What I can tell you is that the book and all that it touched and then all that touched what it touched and so on, everything in that small sandstone hut began to shift. Not to the wilderness, that wouldn’t have scared me. Someplace else. I dare say a pocket in time, a slit in time and space. To a place where all was gray, white, and black. I would have loved to stand and watch. But by then they were dragging me by my hair past what remained of Luyu’s body, onto one of the boats. They were too blind to see what had begun to happen.

I sit here. They will come and take me. I have no reason to resist. No purpose in living. Mwita, Luyu, and Binta are dead. My mother is too far away. No, she won’t come to see me. She knows better. She knows fate must play out. The child in me, the child of Mwita and me is doomed. But to live even for three days is to live. She’ll understand. I shouldn’t have made her. I was selfish. But she will understand. Her time will come again as mine will when the time is right. But this place that you know, this kingdom, it will change after today. Read it in your Great Book. You won’t notice that it has been rewritten. Not yet. But it has. Everything has. The curse of the Okeke is lifted. It never existed, sha .

I sat with her all those hours, typing and listening, mostly listening. Onyesonwu. She looked at her symboled hands and then brought them to her face. Finally, she wept. “It’s done,” she sobbed. “Leave me now.”

At first I refused but then I saw her face change. I saw it become like a tiger’s face, stripes and fur and sharp teeth. I ran out of there clutching my laptop. I didn’t sleep that night. She haunted me. She could’ve escaped, flown away, made herself invisible, moved herself into the astral world and run off, or “glided” off as she liked to say. But she wouldn’t do any of that. Because of what she’d seen during her initiation. She was like a character locked in a story. It was truly awful.

The next time I saw her was as they dragged her to that hole in the ground and buried her to her neck. They’d chopped off her long bushy hair and what was left stood on end, as defiant as she was. I stood in the crowd of men and few women. Everyone was shouting for blood and revenge. “Kill the Ewu! ” “Tear her apart, o! ” “ Ewu demon!” People laughed and jeered. “The Okeke Savior is uglier than the Okeke!” “Sorceress indeed, she is capable of nothing but hurting our eyes,” “ Ewu murderer!”

I noticed a tall bearded man with a partially burned face, what looked like a severely mangled leg, and only one arm. He was near the front leaning on a staff. Like everyone else, he was Nuru. Unlike everyone else he was calm, observant. I’d never seen Daib but Onyesonwu had described him clearly. I’m sure this was him.

What happened when those rocks hit her head? I’m still asking that. There was light that flowed from her, a mixture of blue and green. The sand surrounding her buried body began to melt. More happened, but I dare not mention it all. Those things are only for those of us who were there, the witnesses.

Then the ground shook and people started running. I think in that moment, everyone, all of us Nuru understood where we’d gone wrong. Maybe her rewriting had finally kicked in. We were all sure that Ani had come to grind us back to dust. So much had already happened. Onyesonwu told the truth. The entire town of Durfa, all the fertile men were wiped out and all the fertile women were vomiting and pregnant.

The young children didn’t know what to do. There was chaos in the streets all over the Seven Kingdoms. Many of the remaining Okeke refused to work and that caused more chaos and violence. The Seer Rana, who had predicted something would happen, was dead. Daib’s building had burned to the ground. We were all sure it was the end.

So, we left her there. In that hole. Dead.

But my sister and I didn’t run far. We went back after fifteen minutes. My sister… yes, I am a twin. My sister, my twin, she uses my computer. And she has been reading Onyesonwu’s story. She came with me to the execution. And when it was all over, we were the only ones who returned.

And because my sister knew Onyesonwu’s story, and because she is my twin, she was unafraid. As twins, we’ve always felt a responsibility to do good in the world. My status as one of Chassa’s twins was why they allowed me to see her in jail. It’s what drove me to take down her story. And it is what will help me fight to publish it and keep my sister and myself safe through the backlash. My parents were two of the few Nuru who thought it was all wrong, the way we lived, behaved, the Great Book. They didn’t believe in Ani. So my sister and I grew up nonbelievers, too.

As we were walking back to Onyesonwu’s body, my sister yelped. When I looked at her, she was floating an inch off the ground. My sister can fly. We would later find out that she was not the only one. All the women, Okeke and Nuru, found that something had changed about them. Some could turn wine to fresh sweet drinking water, others glowed in the dark at night, some could hear the dead. Others remembered the past, before the Great Book. Others could peruse the spirit world and still live in the physical. Thousands of abilities. All bestowed upon women. There it was. Onye’s gift. In the death of herself and her child, Onye gave birth to us all. This place will never be the same. Slavery here is over.

We removed her body from that hole. It was not easy because all around her was melted sand, glass. We had to shatter it to get her out. My sister cried the entire time, her feet barely touching the ground. I cried, too. But we took her. My sister removed her veil and covered Onye’s broken head with it. We used a camel to help take her body out to the desert, east of here. We brought another camel with us to carry the wood. We burned Onyesonwu’s corpse on the funeral pyre she deserved and we buried her ashes near two palm trees. As we filled in the hole, a vulture landed in the tree and watched. When we finished, it flew away. We said a few words for Onyesonwu and then went home.