Akata Witch (17 page)

The driver pointed at Orlu. “I know you.”

“So what?” Orlu snapped, looking annoyed.

Jibaku and Sunny turned back to each other.

“Don’t touch me with your diseased hands, you freak,” Jibaku said.

“Or you’ll what? Eh?”

“I see pepper, o,” the driver said to his friends, laughing. “
Dis oyibo
is trouble.” He laughed harder. “Jibaku, let’s go.”

Orlu tried to pull Sunny back. She snatched her arm away. “No!” she said. “I’m not afraid of this
idiot
!” Jibaku instantly whirled around and launched herself at Sunny. Sunny shoved her back and threw a punch. She had two crazy brothers; she knew how to fight. And Jibaku had it coming.

Jibaku screeched, clasping her eye. She came at Sunny again. Suddenly, they were both on the ground, rolling in the dust, kicking and punching and scratching. Sunny was a hurricane of rage, only vaguely aware of Orlu and the boys exchanging angry words. A crowd gathered. She didn’t care. She rolled on top of Jibaku and slapped her face as hard as she could.

Hands locked around her arms. Calculus and Periwinkle were dragging her off. This gave Jibaku a chance to kick Sunny in the belly, knocking the air out of her. The unfairness of the situation really made her see red. She screamed and wrenched her arms from Periwinkle and Calculus. She was on Jibaku again, pressing her to the ground. She reveled in the fear on Jibaku’s face.

“You try and beat me again—” Sunny said breathlessly. “Remember this the next time you
think
about it!” Without a thought, she brought forth her spirit face.
“Raaaahhhh!”
she roared. Jibaku screamed so loudly that everyone, including the boys, came running. Immediately, Sunny retracted her spirit face and stood.

Jibaku scrabbled away from Sunny into the guy’s arms, her eyes wide and wild. She started crying, burying her face in the guy’s chest. He pointed a finger at Orlu and Sunny. Deepening his voice for emphasis, he said, “You see me again and you go see
plenty
hot peppa.”

Orlu and Sunny watched them all pile into the car and drive off.

“Come on,” Orlu said. “Before the teachers come.”

They walked slowly, Sunny limping a little. Her knees were scraped and she’d bruised her arm.

“You showed her your spirit face, didn’t you?” Orlu said.

“Shut up.”

A blue Mercedes pulled up beside them. The window came down. “Sunny Nwazue?” the woman behind the wheel asked. She wore a green headwrap, dark sunglasses, and black lipstick.

“Who are—”

“Are you Sunny Nwazue?”

“Y-yes,” she said.

“Get in. You’re to be taken to the Obi Library for punishment.”

“But she didn’t mean to,” Orlu begged. “She’s a free agent, just introduced weeks ago. She didn’t work juju on anyone. She just—”

“Get in, Sunny Nwazue,” the woman repeated.

Sunny looked at Orlu. “Go,” he said. “God, that was so stupid, Sunny.”

“What’s going to happen?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” he snapped. He cursed to himself and then said, “Go in.”

The woman drove in silence. From the back window, Sunny waved sadly at Orlu. He just looked at her. She slumped in her seat and took out her cell phone. “No reason to get in trouble twice,” she grumbled.

Her mother answered. “Dr. Nwazue speaking.”

“Hi, Mama,” she said.

“Hi, sweetie, everything okay?”

“Um, yeah,” she said, looking tentatively at the driver.

“How was school?”

“Fine,” she said, lowering her voice. “I got an A on my math exam. And I got an A on my essay in literature and writing class.”

“Wonderful.”

“Mama, can I have dinner with Chichi and Orlu tonight?” She held her breath. The family rarely had dinner together, but her mother liked her and her brothers to be in the house by nighttime.

There was a pause. “As long as you all study, too,” she finally said. Sunny breathed a sigh of relief. She hated lying. “Be back by seven. Anyway, it’s going to be a late day for both myself and your father.”

Sunny put her cell phone in her purse. “Excuse me,” she said to the woman.

She looked at Sunny in the rearview mirror.

“Will—will they throw me in jail or something?” she asked.

“I can’t discuss that with you,” the woman said in her flat voice.

Sunny sat back and looked out the window. The monotony of the drive and the hum of the car were soothing. Soon, she dozed off.

“Get out.”

Sunny slowly opened her eyes. They were parked outside of the Obi Library. There must have been a way in wider than a tree bridge.

“Someone will meet you inside.” The moment Sunny got out, the woman drove off, leaving her alone in Leopard Knocks for the first time. There were people going in and out of the library, on the street. She saw a group of kids about her age walking toward Taiwo’s hut. They saw her and waved. She waved back. Then she turned to the library. A cobblestone trail led through the wildly growing grass to the main entrance. As with almost every Leopard building, there was no door, only a silky lavender cloth. She pushed it aside and stepped in.

Books and papers were stacked and piled in corners, set in bookcases as high as the ceiling, scattered on and around clusters of chairs. It was all very untidy and disorganized, and the air had a stale paper odor. People read, talked, wrote, and even performed acts of juju. A man standing in a corner with a book in his hand shouted something and threw some powder up in the air.
Poof!
A burst of brown moths. He coughed and cursed and threw the book on the floor.

An old woman sat beside a bookcase, surrounded by children. She snapped her fingers and all the children floated inches from the ground. They giggled, trying to make themselves go higher by pumping their legs.

In the center of the large busy room was a round table with a silver sign hovering in midair above it. In large black letters, the sign read WETIN?, which meant “What is it?” in Pidgin English. A youngish man with Yoruba tribal markings on his cheeks sat behind the desk.

“Hello,” she said, nervously. “I’m—”

“Sunny Nwazue,” he said. “Breaker of rule number fortyeight. Such a primary rule.” He called behind her. “Samya.”

“Eh?” came a voice from behind a bookcase. A woman with long braids, red plastic glasses, and reddish brown skin peeked around it.

“Sunny’s here,” he said. “Take her up.”

Samya looked Sunny over and then said, “Come. This way.”

They took the staircase beside the Wetin desk. The second floor was larger, with more bookcases and stacks of paper. The people here were older. Sunny wanted to slap herself. Her first look at the Obi Library University was basically as a criminal.

A haunted moaning came from somewhere on the other side of the floor. Thankfully, they went up another flight of stairs. The third floor had more books and classrooms, too, but she was too nervous to really pay attention. “Please. What is going to happen to me?”

“Can’t talk about it.”

It looked like they were going up another staircase. Instead, Samya led her to perhaps the first actual door Sunny had seen in Leopard Knocks. It was heavy, painted black, and decorated with a white drawing like those on the outer walls of the library. The drawing depicted a person being whipped by another person. There were squiggles, circles, and
X
s around the person being whipped. She assumed they illustrated cries of pain.

Samya knocked on the door. “Stay here until you’re asked to enter,” she said. Then she left.

Five minutes passed.
Man, I wish the door would open,
she thought. Anything to get away from the sounds in the hallway—the moans and wheezy, hysterical laughter and whispers, like some confused ghost. A large brown bird flew by and red spiders scurried across the high ceiling. She even felt a blast of warm wet air pass. Someone was moving invisibly.

She considered sitting on the floor, but more red spiders were scurrying about there. Another ten minutes passed. Frustrated, she finally tried the door. The knob turned easily. She held her breath and pushed. She peeked in. Sitting on a solid bronze chair was a dark-skinned old woman dressed in a cream-colored
buba
and matching pants. She was slightly hunched to the side and looked uncomfortable.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sunny said, retreating.

“Come in. Only those who want to come in are allowed in.”

She stood before the woman. Dozens of masquerade masks covered the walls, hanging close to one another. Some looked angry, with mouths full of teeth; others were fat-cheeked and comical, sticking their tongues out.

“So I could have just turned and left?”

“Maybe,” the woman said. “But you’re in here now.” The door closed. “Sit on the floor,” the woman said. “You don’t deserve a chair.”

Sunny looked at the floor, spotting two more red spiders a few feet away. Slowly, she sat down, drawing her legs in close. “I’m sorry for what I did,” she quickly said.

“Are you?”

“Ye—” Then she caught herself. “No.”

“So you’d do it again if given a chance to redo the incident?”

Sunny thought about it for a moment. The mere thought of Jibaku angered her. She knew her answer. She kept her mouth shut.

“You’ll be flogged, then,” the woman said.

She gasped and shook her head.

“Or I’ll have you put into the library basement with no lights,” the woman said. “Things roam down there that would scare some sense into you.”

“Please,” she begged, tears coming to her eyes.

The woman nodded. “Yes, I will do that. Samya!”

“Please,” Sunny screeched. “I’m sorry! I understand now!
Please!
”

The woman looked down her nose at Sunny, irritably flaring her nostrils. “You’re a free agent,” she said, her voice softening.

“Yes,” Sunny said. “I just—”

“The council
always
knows when something like this happens, when prime rules are broken. Didn’t you read that in your free agent book?”

Sunny slowly nodded, her eyes on the ground.

“Next time, I’ll have you brought right to this office and flogged thirty times and then thrown in the dirtiest, dampest, oldest room in the library basement, where you’ll stay for a week with nothing but watered
garri
to eat. You hear me?”

Sunny swallowed and said, “Yes.”

“I won’t tolerate stupid behavior,” the woman said angrily.

“I understand,” she said.

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she said. She was shaking.

“Next time fight
fair
,” she said. “From what I’ve heard, your brothers have shown you how to do that.”

“Yeah,” she said. Her heart was slamming about in her chest.

The woman looked her over. “So how has it been?”

“Huh?” Sunny was trying not to hyperventilate.

“Since you’ve come into the Leopard world.”

“Be—before today or since this happened?”

“It’s not a safe world,” she said. “You can’t go around doing whatever you like. Some of us behave like that, but it’s not proper. It’s not what I expect of you.” She sat back and shifted her position, but she still looked hunched to the side. “Anatov has told me of you,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be meeting you this way.”

Sunny cocked her head and then said, “You’re Sugar Cream, aren’t you?”

“Finally, you ask.”

“Sorry,” she said. She paused. “Yes, I
was
stupid. It’s just that I wanted to put the fear of—of God into her.” She paused, clenching her fists. “I can’t stand her!”

“Well, that certainly is one way to do it,” Sugar Cream said. “Albeit illegal.”

A spider was walking toward Sunny’s foot. She scooted back.

She was more afraid of Sugar Cream when there was silence, so she asked the first question on her exhausted mind. “So, ah, why do they call you ‘Sugar Cream’?”

Sugar Cream smiled and Sunny relaxed a bit. “An old story,” she said. “When I was very small, I walked out of the forest. A young man found me. I was like a little monkey, wild and feral. Some people think that actual monkeys might have even looked after me for a while. Somehow I’d survived in the bush. I couldn’t have been over three years old.

“Anyway, the only way I would come to the man who found me was when he offered me his cup of tea which he’d put a lot of sugar and cream into. He took me to his home and raised me as his daughter, even though he was only seventeen years old. He grew up to be a professor at the University of Lagos and I went on to the Obi Library.”

A
lot
of holes in that story
, Sunny thought. “What of your true parents?”

“To this day, I don’t know, Sunny,” she said. She stood up and stretched, raising her arms over her head. Sunny stared. The woman’s spine. It wasn’t right. But from the front, she couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong. She quickly lowered her eyes.

“I hate sitting for too long,” she said. “It’s uncomfortable. Even with this hard, sturdy chair. Walk with me.”

Sunny quickly followed her out. She couldn’t help staring at Sugar Cream’s back. One shoulder was higher than the other, and her spine curved in a most profound S. Had she been like this as a baby? Maybe this was why her parents had abandoned her. But if they were Leopard People, they’d have jumped for joy at this deformity.

“You should know how it is,” Sugar Cream said, turning to her. “When people stare at you from behind. You
always
know when they’re doing it.”

Sunny stepped back. “I—I didn’t mean to.”

“I have severe scoliosis. And no, I was not born this way. And I don’t think I was abandoned by my parents. I think they were killed.”

Despite her deformity, Sugar Cream walked briskly. She greeted the students they passed. “Good afternoon,
Oga
,” an old white man with a British accent shyly said.

“Good afternoon, Albert,” she said.

When they were alone again, Sunny asked what she’d wanted to ask since Sugar Cream had stood up. “I was wondering . . . what ability do you have?”

“I’m a shape-shifter, as you are.”