Nnedi Okorafor - Akata Witch

They passed some tall shelves and piles of books. “How does the library keep track of all the books?” Sunny asked. “A lot of them seem…” she trailed off. She wanted to say, “thrown about.”

Sugar Cream laughed. “Don’t be fooled. All books here are accounted for. They’re marked. When they need to be found, they will be.”

“How?”

“Depends on who wants to find it,” she said. They went back to her office, where she sat on the arm of her bronze chair. Sunny remained standing. “Anatov was going to send you here in two weeks. I was going to decide whether or not I would mentor you. Now that you’ve behaved so stupidly, my decision is harder. I need to think about it.”

Sunny’s heart sank. It didn’t matter that she had avoided being whipped or thrown in the library basement; Chichi, Orlu, and even Sasha-who never missed a chance to make trouble-had mentors. For them it had been so simple and obvious. Her path to anything seemed to always be difficult. And she hated how everyone was acting as if she should know the rules so well. It was ridiculous. Couldn’t Sugar Cream cut her some slack?

“ You chose to do what you did,” Sugar Cream said. “So don’t stand there angry at me . For me to mentor you would be a great honor, an honor reserved for a mature girl or boy. You’d be the one and only student I mentor. Your case is complicated.” She sighed. “But you most certainly should be involved in this. I have no doubt about that.”

“How are you so sure?” she asked. Inside she was crying. “I mean, you see how I am, what I did, and you’re rethinking wanting to mentor me. How are you so sure I should even be part of this Oha coven group thing?”

Sugar Cream shook her head, a sad look on her face. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”

Sunny waited for her to go on. “Listen. It was your grandmother, Ozoemena, who taught Otokoto all he knows. She was his mentor. And it was Otokoto who killed your grandmother in a ritual to steal her abilities as he stole her life. You want to know why he is so powerful? All you need to look at is who your grandmother was and who Otokoto was before he became the infamous Black Hat.”

Sunny had no words.

“Yes,” she said. “So you see why this is complicated.”

Soon after that, Sugar Cream sent Sunny home. Sunny remembered saying good-bye and feeling even more like a criminal. She’d walked down the stairs and felt like a criminal. And she got into the council car, feeling like a criminal. She felt unworthy, childish, stupid, and worthless. On top of all this, she was the granddaughter of the scholar who taught a murderous psychopath. Her guilt tired her out so much that she slept the entire drive home.

She spent much of that evening in her room, staring off into space, thinking and thinking about all Sugar Cream told her. She still had homework to do. By eleven P.M., she’d fallen asleep on her books.

Sunny heard knocking. She thought she was dreaming. When it didn’t stop, she swam up to wakefulness and groggily opened her eyes. Aside from her reading lamp, her room was dark. Then she saw a tiny light at the window. She froze, her brain for some reason going all the way back to when she was two and burning up from malaria. The light watched over me .

She blinked, fully waking up. It was the light of a firefly. She slowly opened the window. Sasha, Orlu, and Chichi stood below. “Come down,” Orlu whispered loudly. “Meet us outside the gate.”

She quickly dressed, then made herself invisible and swooped out of the window. When she emerged from the gate, Chichi threw her arms around her. “You’re all right!” she said happily. “I heard you beat the hell out of Jibaku.”

“You okay?” Sasha asked.

“Yeah,” Sunny said.

“We were worried,” Orlu said.

“You didn’t sound like it when they took me away,” Sunny said, annoyed.

“Why’d you have to do it?” Orlu said. “You should-”

“Who cares?” she said. “And you know why, anyway. You of all people.”

“I was about to fight Jibaku’s boyfriend,” Orlu said. “He’s three years older than me and bigger. But I still wouldn’t have done what you did!”

She sighed loudly, rolling her eyes.

“I had to see the council once, too,” Sasha said, putting his arm around Sunny. “Back when I set that masquerade on those guys harassing my sister.” He paused. “I was caned twenty times and then ordered to be sent here.”

“You were actually caned ?” Chichi asked, looking shocked.

“I have the scars to show for it,” Sasha said coldly. He met Orlu’s eyes and then turned to Sunny. “I never expected you to get in my kind of trouble.”

“I just lost it, I guess.”

“So what happened?” Chichi asked.

After she told them everything, including the part about her grandmother, they were all quiet. Then Chichi said, “Your grandmother would have been the one to bring you in, if she’d have lived.”

“He must have eaten some of her flesh,” Sasha said. “That’s the only-”

Chichi angrily shushed him. “She doesn’t need to know that.”

Sunny felt ill. Chichi pushed Sasha away and put her arm around Sunny’s shoulder.

“Sunny, try to find out more about your grandmother,” Orlu said. “If they know about your grandmother’s abilities, then we’ll know that much more about Black Hat.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly.

“Sugar Cream is tough,” Orlu said.

“I know,” she said.

“If she doesn’t come around, I’m sure Anatov will find someone else to mentor you,” Chichi said.

This was not a consolation. She wanted Sugar Cream.

But she did feel better. Her grandmother was no criminal. She’d only been the teacher of a student gone bad. Still, by the time she was back in her room, she wanted to cry again. She couldn’t get Black Hat out of her head. As she went to turn off the light, she saw the red ghost hopper standing on the post of her bed.

“You just have to sit yourself there, don’t you?” she said. It just looked at her with its huge compound orange eyes. She turned off the light. As she closed her eyes, she heard a soft, wavery singing, like a tiny dove who was using its voice to more than coo. It was lovely.

“You could do a lot worse than a ghost hopper. Some people would love to have those,” Orlu had said. Now Sunny understood why. She settled down and let it sing her to sleep.

“You’re lucky your back isn’t stinging,” Anatov said. “Sugar Cream has the flogging done by a very muscular lad.” He stood up and strolled around them with his hands behind his back. “This changes things some. If it weren’t for Sunny’s recklessness, I’d have sent y’all to meet Sugar Cream and get a tour of the Obi Library-not including the fourth floor, of course.”

Sunny was relieved when no one seemed angry.

“Today will be short,” he said. “I’ll lecture on some important jujus. Then you can try a few of the advanced ones.” He sat down and flicked his long beard over his shoulder. “Healing juju is tricky. Do it wrong and you worsen the ailment. First you find the cause. Let’s say that a man has a boil on his nyash .”

Orlu, Chichi, and Sunny snickered. Sasha only frowned.

“You don’t know what nyash means, do you?” Anatov asked Sasha. “Come now. Of all words.”

“It’s ‘ass,’ in Pidgin English,” Chichi said, still laughing.

Sasha humphed and looked away.

“Work harder on your Pidgin English and your Igbo,” Anatov told Sasha. “You don’t even know any general curse words yet? Pathetic.”