Who Fears Death (42 page)

Eyess held my leg tightly. She sobbed and eventually buried her face in my hip. If I weren’t carrying a burden on my back, I’d have picked her up. I put my hand on her back and pressed her to me. When the song ended, Chieftess Sessa had to tear Eyess from my leg. She allowed her to give me a hug and a slobbery kiss on the neck before sending her along, then Chieftess Sessa gave each of us a kiss on the cheek. Chief Usson shook Mwita’s hand and kissed Luyu and me on the forehead. Ssaiku and Ting walked us to the edge of the storm.

“Watch closely,” Ssaiku told Ting as we stood before it. “It’s different when you’re close to it. Everyone, kneel down.”

He raised his hands and turned his palms to the storm. He spoke something in Vah and turned his hands downward. The ground shuddered as he pressed the storm’s strength to the ground. Ssaiku’s hands strained and I could see the muscles in his neck flexing underneath his wrinkles. All the sand in the air dropped. The sound reminded me of the sounds the Vah people make so often when they speak their language.
Sssssssss.
We covered our faces from all the dust. Ssaiku pushed forward. A wind blew it all away, clearing the air. The night sky was full of stars. I’d gotten so used to the constant background noise of the storm that the silence was profound.

Ssaiku turned to Ting, “Instead of using words as I did, you’ll write into the air.”

“I know,” she said.

“Learn it again,” he said. “And again.” He looked at Mwita and took his hand. “Take care of Onyesonwu.”

“Always,” Mwita said.

He turned to Luyu. “Ting tells me about you. In many ways, you’re like a man in your bravery and your . . . other appetites. Again, I wonder if Ani is testing me by showing me a woman like you. Do you understand what you move into?”

“Very much so,” Luyu said.

“Then watch over these two. They need you,” he said.

“I know,” Luyu said. “And thank you.” She looked at Ting. “Thank you
both
and I also thank your village. For everything.” She shook hands with Ssaiku and gave Ting a tight hug. Then Ting went to Mwita and gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Neither Ting nor Ssaiku hugged or even touched me.

“Beware of your hands,” Ting told me. “And be aware of them.” She paused, her eyes filling with tears. She shook her head and stepped back.

“You know the way,” Ssaiku said. “Don’t stop going until you get there.”

We were over a mile away when the sandstorm whipped up behind us. It churned and rolled like a living cloud clawing at the clear sky. We sorcerers are certainly a powerful sort. The ferocity and power of that storm only proved this more. Mwita, Luyu, and I turned west and started walking.

“We’re near water,” Mwita said.

Once the sun was up, I pulled my veil lower over my face. Mwita and Luyu did the same. The heat was stifling, but it was a different kind of heat. Heavier, more humid. Mwita was right. There was water close by.

 

Over the next few days, we started wearing our veils all the time to stay cool. But the nights were comfortable. None of us spoke much. Our minds were too heavy. This gave me the time and silence to really mull over all that had happened in Ssolu.

I’d died, been remade, and then brought back. My hands continued to look strange to me, covered in dark black symbols and always bearing the faint scent of burned flowers. When Mwita and Luyu were asleep, I’d sneak out, change into a vulture, and ride the air. It was the only way I kept the darkness of doubt at bay.

As a vulture, the vulture that was Aro, my mind was singular, sharp, and confident. I knew that if I focused and was audacious I could defeat Daib. I understood that I was extremely powerful now, that I could do more than the impossible. But as Onyesonwu the Ewu Sorceress shaped by Ani herself, all I could think about was the thrashing Daib had given me. I’d been no match for him even in my remade state. I should have been dead. And the more the days passed, the more I just wanted to crawl into a cave and give up. Little did I know that I’d soon get my chance to do just that.

FOUR DAYS AFTER LEAVING SSOLU, the land was still cracked, dry and bleached. The only animals we saw were the occasional beetle on the ground and passing hawk in the sky. Thankfully, for the time being, we had enough food so that we didn’t have to eat beetle or hawk. The oddly humid heat made everything hazy and dreamlike.

“Look at that,” Luyu said. She was leading the way, her portable in hand to keep us on track.

I’d been walking with my head down, deep in my gloomy thoughts about Daib and the death I was voluntarily heading toward. I looked up and squinted. From afar, they looked like tall skinny giants having a meeting.

“What is that?” I asked.

“We’ll soon see,” Mwita said.

It was a cluster of dead trees. They were a half mile off from the straight line we were making to the Seven Rivers Kingdom. It was the middle of the day and we needed the shade so we went to the trees. Up close they were even stranger. Not only were they each as wide as a house, they felt like stone not wood. Luyu knocked on a brown-gray trunk as I spread my mat in the shade of another tree’s base.

“So solid,” Luyu said.

“I know this place,” Mwita said with a sigh.

“Really?” Luyu asked. “How?”

But Mwita just shook his head and ambled off.

“He’s moody today,” Luyu said, sitting beside me on my mat.

I shrugged. “He probably came through here when he fled the West,” I said.

“Oh,” Luyu said, looking in his direction. I hadn’t told her much about Mwita’s past. Somehow I didn’t think Mwita wanted me telling anyone about the murder of his parents, his humiliating apprenticeship under Daib, or his child soldier days.

“I can’t imagine how he must feel coming back here,” I said.

After a peaceful two hours of rest, we continued on. It came about five hours later. And it came with a vengeance. Dark gray clouds curdled and surged in the sky.

“This can’t be happening,” Mwita muttered as we stared west. It was heading east, right at us. Not a sandstorm. An ungwa storm, a dangerous storm of terrible lightning and thunder and intermittent deluges of rain. We’d been lucky so far as it was the dry season when we left Jwahir and these storms only happened during the brief rainy season. We’d been traveling for a little less than five months. In Jwahir, this was right on time. I guess it was the same here, too. To be caught out in an ungwa storm was to risk death by lightning strike.

These were the only times that my mother and I were in danger during our nomad days. My mother said it was only by Ani’s will that we survived the ten ungwa storms we encountered.

This one wasn’t far and it was coming fast. All around us was flat dry land. Not a dead tree in sight, not that trees would help. We’d have been in even more danger if this storm had caught us at those stone trees. The wind picked up, nearly blowing my veil off. We had about a half hour.

“I . . . I know a place we could take shelter,” Mwita suddenly said.

“Where?” I asked.

He paused. “A cave. Not far from here.” He plucked Luyu’s portable from her hand and pressed a button on the side of it for light. The clouds had just snuffed out the sun. Though it was about three p.m., it looked like late dusk. “About ten minutes . . . if we run.”

“Okay, which way?” Luyu screeched. “Why are we . . .”

“Or we could try to outrun it,” he suddenly said. “We could head northwest and . . .”

“Are you
crazy?
” I snapped. “We can’t outrun an ungwa storm!”

He muttered something that I couldn’t hear because of the rumble of thunder.

“What?”

He frowned at me. A stroke of lightning cracked the sky. We all looked up.

“Which way to your cave?” I demanded.

Still he said nothing. Luyu looked about to explode. Each second we stood there brought us closer to death by lightning strike.

“I . . . I don’t think we should go there,” he said after a moment.

“So we should stay out here and
die?
” I shouted. “Do you know what will . . .”

“Yes!” he snapped. “I’ve been through it, too! But the shelter . . . that place isn’t right, it . . .”

“Mwita,” Luyu said. “Let’s go, there’s no time for this. We’ll deal with whatever’s there.” She looked fearfully at the sky. “We don’t have a choice.”

I eyed him closely. It was rare to see fear in Mwita but there it was.

“So you can push me toward a masquerade riddled with needles and demand that I face my fear but you can’t face a stupid cave?” I shouted waving my arms about. “You’d rather get us all killed? I thought you were the man and
I
was the woman.”

My words bit deep but I didn’t care. It started to rain along with the lightning and thunder. He pointed a finger in my face and I looked fiercely back at him. Luyu screeched at an especially loud crash of thunder. She pressed close behind me.

“You go too far,” he said.

“I can go much farther!” I shouted, angry tears falling from my eyes and mixing with the rain.

In the middle of nowhere, an ungwa storm about to set upon us, we stood glaring at each other. He snatched my hand and began to pull me along. Over his shoulder he bellowed, “Luyu?”

“I’m right behind you!”

We didn’t run. I didn’t care. I wasn’t afraid—I was too angry. Mwita pulled me along at a steady pace, Luyu held my shoulder, her head down. I don’t know how he could see his way in the heavy rain.

We weren’t struck. It wasn’t Ani’s will, I guess. Or maybe it was our will. It took fifteen minutes. When we got to the large granite formation with the cave yawning at the base, we stopped. Luyu and I instantly knew why Mwita didn’t want to come here.

The rain was coming down hard causing streams of water to drape the cave’s opening but with each stroke of lightning you could see them clearly. They swung in the storm’s wind. The bodies of two human beings hanging at the cave’s opening. Bodies so old that they were dried and shriveled from the heat and sun, more bone than flesh.

“How long have they been there?” I whispered. Neither Luyu or Mwita heard me.

There was a loud blast as lightning struck the ground not far behind us. A strong wind shoved us toward the cave. Mwita led the way but he didn’t let go of my hand. I had demanded that we go into the cave so we were all going.

The water falling over the entrance flowed down on my head and shoulders as we entered. My attention was focused on the swinging bodies to my right. They had been a woman and man, at least according to the sun-bleached raggedy clothes. The woman wore a long dress and veil and the man a caftan and pants. You couldn’t tell if they were Okeke, Nuru, or anything else. They hung from thick ropes looped around copper rings embedded in the cave’s ceiling. We had to press against the side of the cave’s entrance to avoid touching them. Inside was too dark to see the cave’s depth.

“The cave isn’t that deep,” Mwita said, pushing some rocks together. I helped, trying to ignore the cave’s tangy, almost metallic scent. We needed to get a nice big rock fire, more for light than warmth. Luyu just stood there staring at the two dead people. I didn’t bother asking her to help. Both Mwita and I had experienced our own deaths. Luyu had not.

“Mwita,” I said quietly.

He shot me a heated look.

I defiantly endured it, mumbling, “I stand by what I said.”

“Of course you do,” he said.

“You have to face your own fears, too,” I said. “And you were going to get us killed.”

After a moment, his face softened. “Okay.” He said. He paused, then said. “I’d never get either of you killed. I just needed a moment to think.” He began to turn away but I took his hand and turned him back to me. “Were they there when you . . .”

“Yes,” Mwita said, avoiding my eyes. “They were much . . . fresher back then, though.”

So these people had been hanging here for more than a decade. I wanted to ask if he knew what they had done. I wanted to ask him many things but it wasn’t the time.

“Luyu,” he said minutes later, after he and I had made a nice pile of stones. “Come over here. Stop staring at them.”

Slowly she turned as if coming out of a trance. Her face was wet. “Sit down,” Mwita said. I walked over and took her hand.

“We should bury them,” she said as I sat her before the pile of cool stones.

“I tried that,” Mwita said. “I don’t know how they were put up there but they can’t be pulled down and their bones won’t fall down.” He looked at me and I understood. Juju kept them up there. Who had they been?

“We’re not even going to try?” she said. “I mean, that’s just rope and you were here, what, as a kid? They should come right down.”

Mwita ignored her as he got the rock fire going. What its light illuminated was enough to drag Luyu’s attention from the dead bodies. I was already feeling unease, now I just wanted to run out into the rain and chance the lightning. In the back of the cave, half covered with sand that had swept in over the years, were possibly hundreds of computers, monitors, portables, and e-books. Now I knew where the metallic smell came from.

The ancient monitors were a half inch thick, not even close to the monitors you saw used today that were much thinner, and most were smashed or cracked. The desktop computers were too large to hold with one hand. Old and amazingly ancient things packed in a cave in the middle of nowhere and long forgotten. I looked at Mwita, appalled.

The Great Book spoke of such places, caves full of computers. They were put here by terrified Okekes trying to escape Ani’s wrath when she turned back to the world and saw the havoc the Okeke had created. This was just before she brought the Nuru from the stars to enslave the Okeke . . . or so the book said. Did this mean that parts of the Great Book were true? Had the Okeke really crammed technology away in caves to hide them from an angry goddess?