The ceremonial masks stared at Sunny. There were fifty-two of them. Over her months as Sugar Cream’s student, she’d had plenty of time to count. The first time she was here, she’d thought there were only twenty, but then again, she’d been distracted by the fact that she was there at risk of being caned for showing her spirit face to Jibaku.
The masks didn’t stay in the same spot, either. Every few days, some of them moved—sometimes across the wall, sometimes switching with the mask beside them. And some would change the expression on their faces. Sunny had learned early on not to touch them or mutter anything in anger near them. They would sometimes lick, smooch, try to bite or spit on her hand, and they’d tell Sugar Cream anything she said.
Now all the masks looked either angry or deeply interested. Sugar Cream was scowling at Sunny. Sunny gazed right back. It was 5am and she’d walked up the Obi Library stairs alone, since she knew the way to Sugar Cream’s office and she knew the consequences would probably be greater if she fled. She found Sugar Cream in her office sitting at her desk wearing a cream-coloured nightgown, a cup of warm milky coffee in her hand.
“What happened?” Sugar Cream asked icily.
Sunny told Sugar Cream everything. She’d stood with her back straight and chin up. She’d fought to keep her eyes dry and won, though when she described her brother’s ordeal, her voice cracked twice and she felt light-headed. When she told of holding time, only then did Sugar Cream’s eyebrows rise. But only the tiniest bit. Otherwise, her face remained like stone. This early morning, Sunny’s mentor looked ancient. This morning, Sunny knew that she’d be caned.
“Chichi was right,” Sugar Cream said when Sunny finished talking. “Do you see her here?” She paused. “Huh?” she suddenly snapped, making Sunny jump. “DO YOU SEE CHICHI HERE TO BE PUNISHED?”
“No, ma’am,” Sunny quickly said.
“No, you don’t. And it’s not only because she made sure you two remained hidden and that those foul young men thought it was the devil attacking them and not you two. Those men rock the foundation of learning in this country. We Leopard People have been working for years to eliminate these confraternities at their root. You two were given a pass for what you did. But then you crossed the line. You let your rage get the best of you.”
Sunny looked down, frowning. I don’t care, she thought. She knew if she had it all to do again, she’d do the same thing. She had to protect her brother. Sugar Cream knew this, too.
“Do not forget, your power carries a great responsibility, Sunny,” Sugar Cream said. “You’re young. You’re a free agent who knows very little, but who is bursting with potential and passion. You’re not the best or smartest of your age mates, but you are… interesting. This is why I took you on. But you need to learn control.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And you need to learn the consequences.”
After explaining to Sunny what would happen to her, Sugar Cream called two older students in the building. They were not to speak to Sunny. They weren’t even to look at her. All they were to do was walk in front of and behind her. They led Sunny down the hallway to a grey door, and one of the students opened it. It led to a stairway. Sunny followed him in, the other student following behind Sunny. The walls here were made of a grey stone that looked like it had been carved bit by bit with an ice pick.
The steps were also made of the same roughly chiselled stone. As they descended, Sunny couldn’t help the tears that fell from her eyes. She counted thirty steps and still they kept going. It was like travelling into an underground cave. The air grew cooler and cooler until Sunny was shivering. She was glad that she still wore her jeans and the black hooded sweatshirt over her T-shirt.
Down, down, down they went. To the Obi Library’s infamous basement. Sugar Cream had ordered Sunny to stay here for three days as punishment for pulling a Lamb outside of time, a severe violation of Leopard doctrine, even for someone of greater experience and age. Because Sunny was under twentyfive, her punishment was milder than if she were an adult. “If you were twenty-six,” Sugar Cream had said, “you’d be caned and then sent down there for three months.”
“Go in,” one of the students now said. “And don’t try to come up.”
They left her. They didn’t lock the door because there was no door, just an opening in the stone wall with the dimly lit stone stairway that led back up. Sunny turned around and took in her prison. The basement was large, smelled of dirt and mildew, and was filled with bookshelves of mouldering books. Books that had been replicated and brought down here to be disposed of in due time. The bookshelves had rotted, buckled, and fallen into decay. Obviously, some of the books had been forgotten. In the centre of the basement was a dusty wooden platform with an old bronze statue of a squat toad with overly bulbous eyes. Sunny touched its large head with her hand and sat on it as she watched the students leave.
Each day, they would bring her a meal and a large pitcher of water. She was given a bucket as her toilet, which would also be taken and emptied daily. Other than that, she would be alone down there. No blanket, no bathing, no light other than the dim one high on the ceiling.
As the sound of their footsteps receded, the fear set in. She’d heard terrible things about the basement. She sunk to the floor, leaning her head against the toad’s head. “I did the right thing,” she whispered. “I don’t care what anyone says.”
There were red spiders all over the place, especially on the ceiling. As she stared up at it, she noticed a large patch of churning red in the far left corner over one of the few bookcases that still stood. Slowly, Sunny walked across the dusty floor, her sandals grinding on the white marble. It wasn’t just covered with dust, there was sand, too. From where, who knew? She stopped feet from the ceiling corner above, her mouth curling with disgust. Hundreds, maybe thousands of nasty, mewling red spiders churned in the corner. She squinted and shuddered. They were all milling around one enormous red spider the size of a dinner plate.
“Oh God,” she whispered, stepping away slowly. She was sure the thing was watching her, watching closely with its many eyes. She stumbled back to the large bronze toad, the only thing in the room that felt… okay. She rested her back against it and wrapped her arms around her knees. The metal was comfortingly warm and immediately fatigue fell on her. It had to be nearing sunrise.
She’d snuck out of the house, journeyed to campus with Chichi, located and terrorised one of the most powerful confraternities in the area, and now here she was. This was the longest night of her life. Her eyes grew heavy. But there was no rest for the weary. The basement had no windows. She was deep beneath the ground; the place was like a tomb. And the one light bulb, which just had to be near the spiders, was greasy and faint, shining down on the discarded books. There were corners and crevices between fallen shelves, and the room was full of shadows and hiding places. All this made the scraping sound that much more terrifying.
The sound seemed to bear down on the marble floor. Then it dragged. Slow and steady. Then it stopped. Then it dragged and then stopped. It came from right behind one of the bookcases to Sunny’s left. And she could see a bit of a shadow through two fallen shelves. But nothing more. Sunny had nothing with her. Nothing to throw. Nothing to clutch with fear.
“Oh,” she whispered, trying to stay still. Willing herself to be invisible. She could become invisible. But not for very long. And to do so, she had to travel, to move. Would whatever it was come at her? What was it?
Scraaaaape. Pause. Scraaaape. Pause. It stopped just before it came into view. Sunny waited for what felt like fifteen minutes, but the thing didn’t show itself. Instead, quiet as smoke, a flame burst from behind the books. A smokeless one. No smell. No burning. Just the light and shadow of a flame. Sunny, helpless and exhausted, leaned against the neck of the bronze toad, staring at that which she could not see. Soon her eyes went out of focus, and then slowly they shut.
Scraaaaape.
Sunny’s eyes shot open and she jumped up. Her legs wobbled and buckled, and she fell against the toad, banging her hip. A rotten-egg smell of sulphur stung her nose. She winced, turning towards the sound and the stench. What she spotted beside the bookcase made every hair on her body stand up. Even from feet away, she could tell that they were human bones, and not only because the one piled at the top was a clearly human skull. One near the bottom was heavy and long. A femur. And there was a hand sticking out of the centre. The pile looked about the size of one human being, the bones a dirty, rusty grey red.
Sunny didn’t move. She couldn’t move. Her eyes stared and stared. Then they started to water.
Tap, tap, tap. She gasped and looked towards the staircase. Someone was coming down. She looked back at the bones. They were gone.
It was Samya, one of Sugar Cream’s closest assistants. She was one of the few third levellers under the age of thirty that Leopard Knocks had. To pass Ndibu, one had to attend a meeting of masquerades and get a masquerade’s consent to be a third leveller. To attend such a meeting, one had to slip into the wilderness, which meant the person had to die and come back. Only third levellers and up knew how this was done when one was not born with the natural ability. To reach the third level of Ndibu was like earning a PhD, and it was rare for one to be under the age of thirty-five. Samya was twenty-four.
She was a bookish woman who wore red plastic glasses and a long red dress, and had reddish-brown skin like Chichi and Chichi’s mother. She’d piled her long braids atop her head as she carried the small tray. “Oh, Sunny, are you all right?” she asked. The worried look on her face cracked Sunny’s wall of strength like a sheet of thin ice.
Her body grew warm and tingly, and her eyes stung with tears. “No,” she whispered as Samya quickly came to her. She put the tray of food on the floor beside Sunny and gathered her in her arms.
“Why did you do it?”
“I had to!” Sunny sobbed. “I had to! It was my brother! You didn’t see what they…” She couldn’t breathe.
“Shhh, shhh,” Samya said, holding her back. “Relax. Get ahold of yourself.”
But Sunny’s entire body was shuddering. Images of her brother’s battered face, eyes swollen, mouth swollen. His pain. Capo’s terrified face as he gasped for air. Lying in wait in the bushes. Darkness. Screams.
“Sunny,” Samya said shaking her. “You need to calm down.” She paused. “There is something down here that can’t know you are weak.”
Sunny felt her nerves zing. There was something down here. She felt faint as she pushed her body to calm down. “What is it?”
“I can’t say, and I can’t come back,” Samya said. “When someone is sent to the basement, a different student must bring down food on each day. I think Sugar Cream sent me first because she knew you’d need me. Don’t expect the others that come to be helpful. They will… follow the rules.”
“Never mind,” she quickly said. “Some things are worth it. Now listen, Sunny, and listen closely if you want to come out of here sane and alive. These books are old. They are used. They have been replaced, then cast aside. They will be dealt with eventually, but for now they are down here. Every book has a soul, every book carries and attracts. There are sterilisation and soothing jujus all over this room, but this is the earth. Something will always come and live here. In this case it is a djinn. It guards and hides in the books.”
“Does it make fire that doesn’t burn?”
Samya nodded and frowned. “So you’ve already seen it.”
“Yes… its bones. I fell asleep and I woke up and it was right over there.” She pointed to mere feet away.
“Oh my God, so soon?” Samya said, circling her head and snapping her finger. Then she looked at Sunny and gave the most pathetic reassuring smile Sunny had ever seen. “Listen, Sunny. It will try you.”
“Try what?”
“You. It knows… Sunny, you aren’t learned yet. You are just a free agent, but you were… are someone who did something in the wilderness. It was a good thing, I think. Otherwise, why would Ekwensu fear you? The thing down here is a djinn, and it’ll read your past life as you being powerful in your present one, some sort of chosen one. So it will try you. It will want to see what you’ve got.” She frowned. “Damn, Sunny, why did you have to get yourself thrown down here?”
“What do I do?”
Samya got up. “I don’t really know.” She looked at the staircase as if someone were calling her. Then she looked at Sunny. “Don’t let it take you.” She paused. “And don’t believe the silly Lamb stereotypes about djinni. They don’t grant wishes and what they show you can be an illusion, but more times than not, it is real. They can harm you. Okay, I have to go.” She pointed to the tray. “Eat all of it,” she said. She looked Sunny in the eye. “All of it. You need your strength.”
“Wait, wait,” Sunny said as Samya moved quickly to the staircase. “My parents! My family. Will someone…”
“Good luck, Sunny,” she said over her shoulder. “Stay strong. Stay alive.” Then she rushed up the stairs.
Sunny watched her go, listening as her steps grew fainter and fainter and then were gone. She sat against the bronze toad and stared at her tray of food. A bowl of dry-looking jollof rice with one chunk of tough-looking goat meat in the middle of it, an orange, and a bottle of water. She ate it all quickly, her eyes darting around like a scared rabbit. She didn’t taste a bite of it. The scraping sound had begun again.
There was water somewhere in the basement. But she couldn’t see it. Drip, drip, drip. Then stop. Then drip, drip, drip. Then stop. As if there was some machine turning it off and on. Trying to drive her mad. That would make two things with the same intention. A machine and a djinn. Sunny giggled to herself. Quietly. She had to stay quiet. The thing that was clumping and scraping about the room didn’t seem to really see her. As the hours passed, she began to believe it was because of the bronze toad. Maybe there was something in it that kept the djinn at bay. For since that first time, it had not shown its bones to her. Maybe I didn’t really see the bones at all, she thought. She giggled again. If I don’t move, then I’ll be safe.
The scraping was on the other side of the large room, its noise echoing about the high ceiling. From where she was, she had a clear view of the red spiders, too. The big one was still in its spot. That was good. Yes, that was good. Her head pounded. How long had it been since Samya left? Three hours? Nine? All she had was the hanging dim light near the spiders.
“Chukwu, you better thank me when I get out of here,” she whispered to herself. It was good to hear her voice, even if she couldn’t raise it. “If I get out of here.” She hugged herself closer to the bronze toad’s warm body, pressing her head to it. Her comb clicked against the metal. She took it out and examined it, glad to have something else to focus on. She held it to her nose and smelled it. It smelled briny like the sea, but there was also a hint of flowers. The smell was pleasant. It smelled of outside. She smiled and whispered “Thank you” to the lady of the sea who’d saved her and then given her a gift that she could admire during a dark time.
“Whooooo oh whoooooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” she heard an ancient male voice suddenly sing. Scraaaaape. “Whooooo oh whooooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” the voice said again. Then another scraaaaape.
It had seen her. It had known she was there all along. The bronze toad was just a bronze toad. A decoration. An ornament in a room that was more a giant trash container than anything else. Sunny knew this. She’d just needed something to grasp because they’d given her nothing. They’d thrown her down here, and they hadn’t even given her a gun, a protective stone, a hard stick, nothing. She had her juju knife, but she didn’t know any protective charms against djinni or ghosts.
She glanced up at the ceiling. The giant red spider was still there and even from where she was, she felt more positive than ever that it was watching her. But the other smaller ones had dissipated. Maybe they were all over the basement now… including on the floor. She looked down and wasn’t surprised to see one scurrying across the sandy marble.
Suddenly, the entire room reeked so strongly of sulphur that it hurt to breathe. Sunny jumped up and took off towards the stairway that led out of the library basement, coughing. She hadn’t moved much in hours and her muscles were stiff, but she ran up the stairway like a champion. Her sandals slapped the concrete. She didn’t dare glance back. Thus, she couldn’t have been more shocked when she found herself stumbling right back into the Obi Library basement. Her sense of direction and gravity reeled for several moments as she came to understand what had happened.
“Whooo oh whooo is Sunny Nwazuuuue?” The voice vibrated, coming from every direction and within Sunny’s head. She pressed her hands over her ears as she frantically looked for a place to hide. There! A small space between two fallen bookcases. Maybe she could hole up in that space for two days, a day and a half, whatever amount of time she had left here. About to run for it, she shivered and looked to her left. This time she did scream. Because she’d been about to run, her leg muscles were like a tightly wound spring. She tried to change directions by a few degrees and her legs tangled. As she went down, she didn’t take her eyes off the pile of bones. The skull had its jaw broken. There was a foot at the top. A hand tumbled down and landed facing upward like a dead white spider.
Phoom! The dried old bones suddenly burst into quiet smokeless flames.
Sunny hit the ground, and her hip was an explosion of pain. Still, she managed to roll to her side and pull her juju knife from her pocket. She did a quick flourish and caught the cool invisible pouch in her hand as she lay on her side. Then she drew a square in the air while muttering into the pouch the words Chichi had taught her. The only difference was that she spoke them in her native tongue of English instead of Chichi’s native tongue of Efik. “Bring a thick barrier. Hold strong, too. From the very air I breathe. It must hold true!”
When the tumbled hand rolled towards her and then perched on its fingertips so that it could tap on the barrier, Sunny shivered.
“Free agent weak frightened magic,” the voice said. “Shatters like glass.” With these words, there was the sound of glass breaking and falling to the marble floor. “What more do you have?”
Sunny had been practising on her own and incorporating lessons Sugar Cream had taught her over the months. She calmed, forcing herself to look at the ancient pile of human bones that were engulfed in flames but not burning at all.
“Your entire body must relax, feel it drop. Then imagine your spirit dropping,” Sugar Cream had said. “Think of Anyanwu. You are her and she is you. Remember your initiation? When you were pulled into the ground? Feel that. But feel it as if Anyanwu is pulling from your body.” Before Sunny gave it a try, Sugar Cream had reminded her to make sure she was lying down.
Now Sunny was already on the floor. She rested her head back, keeping an eye on the bones. Relax, relax, relax, she thought. Breathe. She flared her nostrils, inhaling deeply through her nose. It took all she had, but she calmed herself. She would be okay. She might not have had too many real moments of terror in her thirteen years, but in her past life, she had. She couldn’t remember them clearly, but she could feel those memories. Right on the tip of her mind. And she’d still gone on. Even if she died in this basement, she would go on in spirit. She relaxed more with the comfort of this remote knowledge. She relaxed. She dropped. She felt it physically, but it was much more than that.
“Oh, now it gets interesting,” the voice said. “Welcome.”
The marble floor was cool. It was a pure stone. An old, old stone. Maybe it had been in the earth longer than the Obi Library had existed. Maybe the basement was carved from what was already in the ground. It was so solid. Sunny got up. She flew, passing through the bookcases as if they were clouds. She was nothing but yellow mist. She knew there would be other things here, and she hoped she didn’t run into them. But she couldn’t afford to look around. She had to get away. And she couldn’t stay partially in the wilderness for long. Not yet. Before she knew what she was doing or how quickly she’d travelled across the large room, she smashed into a wall.
They were made of the same marble. She could not pass through them, even if she dropped into the wilderness. How was this possible? What kind of stone is this? she wondered as she crumpled to the ground. Scraaaape. One by one, the bones dragged and tumbled towards her.
“Do you think this place is only your world?” the voice said. “It is physical and wilderness. It is a full place. You can’t escape.”
“What do you want?” she muttered. Not far from her on the floor were five red spiders. Two of them just stood there, seeming to watch her. The other three were running for cover.
“I want what you have,” the voice said.
“Why?”
“They throw stupid Leopard People down here often. Timid, angry, weak-minded careless men and women who have nothing for me to take but a piece of their sanity, or some of a family member’s future, meagre gifts. But you… you have a soul that could release me from this place.”
“Sunny?” someone called. “Sunny Nwazue?”
Sunny got to her feet, wobbly for a moment. Then steady. She’d hit the wall as something other than a physical body. She was shaken but okay.
“Sunny?” she heard the man call again. A human man. From near the staircase. Her second meal was here. She’d made it through the second day. But was it breakfast, lunch, or dinner?
“I’m here,” she called, peeking around one of the bookshelves. He was a tall man of about her mother’s age. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt and gym shoes. Not clothes she’d seen any of the Obi Library students wear during the day.
“Here is your dinner,” he said, holding it out to her. If she had to guess, judging from his accent, this guy was from Lagos. He held the tray out to her. It was the same meal of jollof rice, goat meat, and water.
“Thank you,” she said. “So, it’s night, then? Do you know what time it is?”
The man didn’t answer. He wouldn’t even look her in the eye. He turned and started walking away.
“Sir?… Oga? Did you hear me?” Sunny asked, following him as he walked towards the staircase. He moved quicker. Sunny put her tray on the ground, suddenly feeling panicky and invisible.
“Hey!” she shouted.
“I can’t speak or look at you,” he said stiffly, his back still to her. “The punishment is caning.”
Sunny froze. Samya. She pressed her hand to her chest, shocked. “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh no.” She stepped away from the staircase, listening to the sound of the man’s footsteps grow fainter and fainter. Stay strong, Sunny thought, tears in her eyes. I have to survive this. Otherwise, Samya will have been caned in vain.
She whirled around when she heard a crunch. Her plate of rice looked as if a stone as heavy as a car had fallen on it. A red spider had been crushed beside it, too. The bottled water rolled and came to rest beside a bookcase. She heard the djinn chuckle from the other side of the room.
“That’s really funny,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Her mother had once told her that if she ever found herself facing a wild animal, never ever show fear. The djinn wasn’t an animal. Well, not one of the physical world at least, but it was certainly wild. Up to now, Sunny had worn her fear on her sleeve. She couldn’t help it; she was scared. However, her mother also liked to say that it was never too late.
Her legs tingled and shuddered as she slowly walked towards her water bottle. She bent and picked it up, unscrewed the top, and took a deep, deep pull. The water washed into her parched body like rain on dry cracked earth. During the gliding lessons with Sugar Cream, she and Sunny never moved fully into the wilderness. Sunny was far from ready for that and to go in unready meant a quiet peaceful swift death to your physical body. However, Sugar Cream took Sunny “in and out,” where she was in both the wilderness and the physical world, and instead of seeing one place, she saw two layered over each other. Sugar Cream described it as similar to looking at the world through an aquarium.
Learning how to go “in and out” or between was not so hard. Sunny had gone between naturally on her own when she’d first snuck out of the house through the keyhole thinking she’d worked her first juju. It was going into the wilderness completely that was extremely difficult. Whenever Sugar Cream had her do preparatory exercises for going into the wilderness, Sunny always found herself desperate for water afterwards. “That’s because water is life,” Sugar Cream had said. “The body doesn’t like for its soul to even consider entering the wilderness.”
Sunny took another gulp and felt a little better. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human,” she called out. “You should have crushed the water bottle. Humans need water more than food.” Despite her fear, she smiled at her own words.
“I was never human,” the djinn said.
As she drank, she looked around. More red spiders on the books feet away. The djinn’s voice was still coming from the other side of the room but that didn’t mean anything. Her eye went to one of the books in the fallen case in front of her. She pulled it from between two dusty hardcovers. Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X. A Lamb book. “What’s that doing here?” she muttered. Beside it were several volumes on Leopard medicine and even more on Leopard world alliance law.
“Sunny!” She jumped. The voice was right behind her.
“Eep!”
She was yanked back. There was a bright flash in her mind and a metallic sting so intense that she couldn’t tell where she felt it. Then she was plunging into cool water. There was a splash. It was like her initiation when she burst into the river and was pulled along, except this felt like she was being pulled down, down, down instead of horizontally. She felt her body struggling for breath. She couldn’t breathe! The cool water pressed in on her as she descended into the deep blue. She could see the dull basement light above her, slowly pulling itself away as she sank.
She thrashed and clutched her neck. Her lungs burned. Water rushed into her mouth, down her throat, into her chest. Even then she fought, but she was growing weak. She was dying. The djinn was drowning her.
The water was cool. She was cooling.
She let go of her neck. She let go.
Then the sensation of falling without falling. She hit something hard. Colours zoomed around her. Mostly green. But she was vaguely aware of the library; she was in the library. Her chest felt heavy, full. She coughed sharply and grabbed for the bookcase. There was a red spider right beside her hand, but she didn’t care. “No,” the djinn said in her ear. “There is no escape. Come. Come completely.” She could feel the bookcase melting in her hands, dissolving, as something yanked at her shoulders, pulling her back. She felt it in her chest, a warm sharp tearing sensation. Then she felt her spirit face rush forwards.
“Oh,” she heard the djinn say. Then it chuckled and drawled, “Who are you, Sunny Nwazue?”
She still felt the pain, but all over now, and she felt… dim, somehow muted. She’d held on to the case, trying to will herself out of the wilderness. But then she was holding on to nothing. Then the bookcase became a mass of bushes. But the spider on it didn’t disappear; it sat there on the bush. She gasped. It was one of those creatures that existed in both worlds. It was still red but now the size of a basketball with fluorescent blue rings on its legs. The creature waved a leg at her and scurried away.
Sunny held on to the bush, realising she wasn’t breathing. She wore her spirit face. She was Anyanwu.
Her body. She was no body. She was yellow. The colour of the sun. Light. In a sea of mostly green.
Green blobs undulated past. Pink and green insects with green lines for wings. The wilderness looked like a jungle. There was sound, and it was thick and moist and fertile. Alive. She was afraid to speak.
“I see you,” the djinn said. Its dusty voice was strong here. It was strong here.
All she could think of was death. How many seconds had passed? Would they find her body? Then the djinn was on her like a vampire. They went tumbling into some bushes as she fought to keep it from tearing off her mask. Was it a mask in the wilderness? Could it come off? She vaguely remembered what her father had said about masquerades: “Never unmask a masquerade. That is an abomination!” What happened if one’s spirit face was torn off? Could the djinn then eat her soul like the meat of a cracked clam?
The djinn pinned her down in those bushes. It was stronger. It wasn’t human. It wasn’t dying. It knew this place. She was done for.
There was a large spider on its shoulder. It was red. With blue rings on it. Blue rings. Blue rings. Blue rings. The glimmer of sudden recognition was like a burning focal point of light in her brain, it was brilliant and it seared. She knew blue rings. She… remembered.
“I know you,” she blurted, straining to hold the djinn off her.
“Yes, we’ve spent some time together,” the djinn said, flashing a deeper red. “But don’t worry. Soon, you won’t know much else.”
She wasn’t talking to the djinn. As she desperately stared at the spider, she gasped, “I know you all.”
The djinn’s strength decreased as it tried to figure out what its prey was talking about and whom she was talking to. Then it noticed the spider on its shoulder. It released Anyanwu and scrambled back.
The spider leaped off the djinn and ran up to her and before she could say more, it turned its glowing backside to her and thrust its stinger into her yellow mist.
She was flying again. Backwards, this time, across the marble floor. The sand beneath her bottom. Her skin was cool because she was soaking wet. She came to a stop just in front of the bronze toad. She opened her mouth and inhaled for what felt like forever. Chink, chink, chink, chink! Several tiny copper chittim fell beside her.
For several moments, her vision was distorted. She rubbed her eyes and tried to see. She was seeing too much! The green of the wilderness, the basement, through two sets of eyes, two minds, Sunny and Anyanwu. It was as if she was broken and her selves were sitting beside each other as opposed to being unified within. The sensation was horrifying. She heard her selves screaming. And just when she was sure she’d go mad, she came back together and her world snapped into focus.
She shivered and shuddered and then jumped up to find it. She ran to the bookshelf, looking at the ground. Where was it, where was it? There. She grabbed it and downed the rest of her water. She was soaking wet, yet she felt horribly dehydrated. She grabbed her shirt and began to suck the water from it, too.
“Gah!” she groaned, stumbling back. She’d been able to suck up quite a lot of water. She was that soaked. Her body began to calm, but her mind was popping and crackling, memories exploding like popcorn. “I… What is this? I… I remember them,” she muttered, confused as her mind crowded. She whirled around. “I remember you all!” There, by the toad. Hundreds of them. She was lucky she hadn’t crushed them. But then again, they could probably move much faster than she thought. They were not just spiders. Where was the big one?
The back of her neck prickled. She looked up. The thick-legged spider the size of a dinner plate was perched on the wall right above her head. Sunny addressed it in Igbo because she knew this was its preferred language. She knew so much. “Ogwu,” she said. “Descendant of Udide the Great Spider of all Great Spiders, I remember you. I remember you and all of your children.”
The spider’s entire body scrunched up with surprise. Good, Sunny thought. Then it began to descend on a thick thread of webbing. Sunny knew she didn’t have much time, so she spoke fast. “Do you remember me? My name is Anyanwu but here, my name is Sunny Nwazue. I am the granddaughter of Ozoemena Nimm. So…” She fought to remember what her grandmother had written in the letter she’d left for Sunny. She’d read it so many times, but she’d just died and come back to life. “So that makes me of the warrior folk of the Nimm clan, descendant… of Mgbafo of the warrior Efuru Nimm and Odili of the ghost people. I am thirteen years old, of Igbo ancestry and American birth, New York City. I am a free agent who only learned this fact a year and a half ago. So you have to know that I can’t fight this djinn.”
Its voice made her feel like a tuning fork was being held close to her flesh. The vibration made her want to stick her pinky in her ear. It was vaguely female. “I know you, Anyanwu,” she said. She hung before Sunny’s eyes. Even with her life being in danger, her fear of spiders made her tense up.
“I know what you all tried and failed at so long ago,” Sunny said.
The spider clenched her legs to her body. Sunny suppressed a disgusted shudder.
“You were on the plane,” Sunny said. “The Enola Gay. I know. You were on the bomb, and you tried to weave the storytelling juju your people are most known for. You wove a thick thread that was supposed to cause the bomb not to work when they dropped it on Hiroshima. But when you attached it, you misspoke one of the binding words, and it snapped when the bomb was released. You failed and no one has seen you since. So, this basement is where you came with all your descendants to hide from the world.”
“No, this basement is where Udide cursed us to stay until I have completed my task,” she said. “Which is impossible because I have already failed.”
The lights flickered. And Sunny heard a scraping sound from across the room. The djinn had located its nerve. Such things never give up so quickly, she knew.
“Wait, please,” Sunny said. “Help me.”
“We will not,” Ogwu said. “We can’t help anyone. I am useless and my children are useless. The djinn takes from those sent down here for punishment, but we have only seen it kill one person punished down here. And that was forty years ago. A young man whose bones were so strong they could not break. Let it take from you, some blood, some years from your life, some of your life’s good luck. Then leave this place and never do anything stupid enough to cause your return. Or… maybe yes, it will kill you, Anyanwu. I will see you in the wilderness.” Ogwu started to ascend on her web, and Sunny began to panic. The djinn feared the spider. As soon as she was far enough from Sunny, it would have nothing to fear.
“Sunny Nwazuuuuue,” the djinn sang. “I’m coming for youuuuu!”
“I know how you can break your curse,” Sunny quickly said. Ogwu stopped. She waited.
“I need to do what you all tried to do but on a larger scale.” She was making it up on the spot. Sunny had no clue why she’d been shown the vision in the candle and was having the strange dreams. But this wasn’t a time to worry about flat-out lying. “I’ve seen the end. And this time it’s not just a city in flames, it’s the entire world. I’ve seen it in a candle. That’s what caused me to discover I was a free agent Leopard Person. And I’ve been seeing it over and over in my dreams for the last few months! So maybe it’s supposed to happen soon! Oh, saving the world will require more than just me, but I am needed. Please. Help me. If you do, you’ll be doing what you should have done back in 1945! And this time, it’ll be on a grander scale! You won’t just be saving a city, you’ll be saving the earth! Fear of failure leads to more failure! And you won’t fail this time! You will be able to leave this place, trust me. Remember sunlight? You’ll see it again, if you help!! I am… I am ignorant. I can’t defeat a djinn!”
“You’re Anyanwu; we knew each other well. You can crush this djinn like a pepper seed.”
“I don’t remember how!”
“Then you have no idea who you are!”
Sunny pressed her lips together but didn’t argue.
Ogwu paused and then quickly ascended up her web. Sunny’s stomach dropped. When she looked at the bronze toad, all of Ogwu’s children were gone, too. Hiding wherever they liked to hide. Probably poised to watch the djinn take her life. Sunny would be like the guy from forty years ago. How could Sugar Cream throw her down here knowing that had happened? How could they send anyone down here knowing about it?! The Leopard People could be a callous people, especially when it came to adhering to certain rules. The damn rules.
Sunny brought out her juju knife. There were the bones. Right beside her. And the smell of sulphur. She ran through the handful of jujus she’d learned so far. How to bring music, how to keep mosquitoes away, healing minor injuries, staying dry in the rain, making a cup of polluted fresh water drinkable, testing if something was cursed or poisoned, how to push back a heavy aggressor, creating a barrier. She paused. The barrier, she was good at that one.
She held up her hand and opened her palm. Then she brought up her juju knife and made a circular flourish. She caught the pouch with the same hand while keeping the other one up. The invisible packet was cool and wet in her palm. “Stay back,” she said firmly. Before she could speak the activating words the wilderness descended on her, layering her world. A black shadow flew from the pile of bones. Eyes wide, Sunny stood her ground. She opened her mouth to speak, but it was on her too quickly. Something sank into her arm like fifty needles. She screamed and her entire world, both physical and wilderness, flashed bright. She felt the djinn sucking as she tried to shake it off. But there was nothing to shake off. It had no body. Not even bones. There was nothing but a thick oily brown shade.
Suddenly, it froze. Then it let go. Sunny rolled away, avoiding her arm. She got to her feet and ran for the nearest bookcase. Only when she got around it did she chance a look back. It was disgusting. Hundreds of red spiders had pinned the djinn to the floor like a sheet of brown-red solid smoke. Sunny had to blink to fully understand what she was seeing. On one plane, the djinn was a pile of dry bones and the spiders were the size of American quarters, Ogwu the size of a dinner plate. On the other, the djinn was a large blob of brownish smoke and the spiders were large as basketballs, Ogwu the size of a small child. On both planes they were tearing the djinn apart.
She could hear the dry bones snapping, crunching, and crumbling. And she could hear the wet smacking as the large spiderlike creatures tore off tiny pieces of the djinn with their sharp legs and ate them. All the writhing legs and bodies made her stomach turn. The djinn didn’t make a sound. It accepted its sudden defeat like an old man giving up on life.
As they ate, the hanging light bulb at the ceiling brightened, flooding the basement. It was like sunshine in its purity and warmth. Sunny shaded her eyes.
“Udide has seen us!” she heard Ogwu shout. “Udide has seen us!!”
The spiders left the mess that was the djinn and went running to the wall, Ogwu leading the way. Up the wall they crept. Then they scrambled to the ceiling. Towards the hanging light. Ogwu stopped above it and pointed a leg at the light. “Go, my children, go! We’re free! I will show you the world!”
Group by group they lowered themselves on their webs into the light, which flashed blue whenever a spider entered it.
“Anyanwu,” Ogwu said. “Sunny Nwazue, good luck! We’ve saved you here, but all of our lives depend on what you and the others do. Stop Ekwensu.”
“How do you know it’s her?” Sunny asked. She hadn’t mentioned Ekwensu. “You’ve been down here all…”
“I’ve been down here, but you know my children and I are not just of this place. We dwell in the wilderness also. We know the news there.”
The basement flashed and flashed as if it contained its own lightning. Sunny looked back at the remains of the djinn. She was firmly in the physical world now and there was nothing but dust left of it. “Is it dead?” she asked Ogwu.
“It was never alive.”
“Will it rise again?”
“Not for a while. Eventually. But we will not be here when it does.”
Sunny smiled. She had one more night to spend here and she’d spend it alone. Thank goodness.
“Sunny Anyanwu, Anyanwu Sunny,” Ogwu said. Her children were all gone, and she was finally lowering herself towards the light. “Thank you for giving me this chance to finally act, to play a role. The Great Spider Udide blesses you. If you ever meet her, send her my greetings and love.” Then she was gone in a flash of blue light.
Silence. A good kind of silence. Sunny was safe. She held up her arm to look at where the djinn had bitten her and saw that her bicep was swollen and red. What did a bite from a djinn do? She had at least half a day left down here.
“The medical books!” she said, remembering. There were volumes of them in the case near the bronze toad. Her muscles felt sore and her head ached. But she felt good. She felt strong. The memory of Ogwu’s failure and curse was vivid in her head. As Anyanwu, she had been part of the group that sent Ogwu to stop the atomic bomb from dropping. She’d been a part of a group trying to prevent one of the worst human-caused disasters of all time, back in 1945. Wow.
It didn’t take Sunny long to find information in the medical books about the bite of a djinn. Apparently, they were common in the Sahara and all over the Middle East. They could kill you and take your soul if they held you in the wilderness long enough, which was probably what it had done to the man with the hard bones forty years ago and planned to do to Sunny. However, their bites only caused a low-grade fever and dryness in the mouth. Sunny would have to suffer until her final meal and release came.
Thankfully, the suffering was short-lived. Minutes after reading the djinni information, she sat beside the bronze toad and fell into a deep undisturbed exhausted sleep.