When the rickety dented red kabu kabu stopped, the four of them piled in. Within seconds, five other guys tried to get in, too.
“Hey, no room!” Sasha said, kicking at a guy who tried to squeeze in. He shoved him out and slammed the door just in time. The car chugged off. “Damn, where are those guys going at this hour?”
“Home,” the driver said, laughing.
“Oh,” Sasha said. “Right.”
“Where na wan’ go?” the driver asked them.
“Ajegunle Market, please,” Sunny said.
“Shey you know e close now,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re just meeting someone around there.”
The drive took a half hour because of traffic. And by the time they got there, Sunny felt light-headed from the exhaust that wafted in through the car’s floor. It was so old and rusted that you could even see the road through large holes.
“I’ll pay,” Orlu said when they arrived at the market. Judging from the grin and number of thank-yous the driver gave, Orlu had tipped him well.
“You didn’t need to do that,” Sasha said. “I’ve got plenty of cash.”
“It’s New Year’s Day,” Orlu said. “Plus, today is important. Don’t worry about it.”
The large market was a series of wooden dividers, shacks, benches, and stalls. All were vacant. It was like a ghost town. “Let’s walk in a bit,” Orlu said.
“Na wao,” Chichi said, running a hand over a bench as they passed it. “I have never seen this place empty.”
“I’ll bet this is when the ghosts come to do business,” Sasha said.
“I think the ghosts do business all the time,” Chichi said. “They’re not afraid of the living. Our world is nothing but a lesser version of this Osisi place we are trying to get to.”
“True that,” Sasha said. “Back in the States, I’ve got an uncle in Atlanta who says there’s a place near a local farmers’ market where once a year at midnight a spirit market opens and the only people who can go are old folks. If you’re not old and you go, you come back all mentally messed up or mute or something.”
“They have those here, too,” Orlu said. “There’s one in Ikare that my great-grandfather has been to twice.”
“What does he buy there?” Sasha asked.
Sunny tuned out their chatter. She felt ill. The marbles were cool in her sweaty hand, but this didn’t help. She didn’t like spiders, for one thing. But that wasn’t the worst of it. What if they succeeded in convincing Udide to weave them this flying grasscutter creature? What if the grasscutter took them to Osisi? What was waiting for her there?
Everyone agreed that it was a wilderling that had shown her the vision in the candle. But everyone also agreed that there was no way to tell if that wilderling was friend or foe. The wilderling’s intentions in showing her the future were unclear. Was this the same with the dreams? What if this was all a trap?!
Her slick hands fumbled with the marbles. “What am I doing here?” she whispered. “Why am I doing this? I could just go home.”
But she continued to lead the way, looking side to side as they walked through the empty market. She felt Anyanwu close and intimate, and this was comforting. They came to a large group of stalls covered by sheets of corrugated tin to make one big roof. It was cool in the shade. They stopped, quiet. The breeze blew and a small bird flew by cheeping. It flew through a ray of light, leaving a wake of dust. Sunny sneezed hard.
“There’s…” Orlu stepped forwards and held up his hands.
“Is there something to undo?” Chichi asked him.
“No,” he said. “But… this part of the market… Leopard People sell here.”
Sunny nodded, rubbing her nose. “Juju powder, I’ll bet.”
They walked on for another few minutes beneath the tin roof. “This place just goes on and on,” Sunny said, her voice nasally from her stuffed nose. “It didn’t look this big from the outside.”
Sasha chuckled and shook his head. “Of course it didn’t. This is a dark market. They can’t be seen from the outside.”
“Dark market?”
“Leopard market,” he said. “They’re common. The ones in the U.S. are actual buildings that move to a different place every month. They’re nothing like the ones here. The prices are set and things are just… sterile.”
“Dark markets are like the market in Leopard Knocks but nestled on Lamb grounds,” Chichi added. “This one doesn’t move around, but some other ones in Nigeria do. This one blends with the normal market, but you can only walk into it if you are Leopard.”
“Well, once in a while a Lamb will walk in,” Orlu said. “Usually sensitive Lambs. Those people are never the same afterwards.” He just shook his head. “Nothing is perfect or absolute.”
“Yeah, except Library Council rules,” Sunny said.
As they walked, she could feel the hairs on her arm stand up. Only the rays of light that crept between the roof’s tin sheets lit their way. Nothing looked any different, not to her eyes. However, Sunny was sure there were things around them. Small shadows in the corners kept moving right outside of her peripheral vision.
“Can we at least get somewhere?” Chichi said impatiently after another five minutes of walking.
Sunny looked back and indeed she could see the way they’d come in, just barely.
“Did you see the size of that ghost hopper?” Sasha asked.
“The one standing in that sun beam?” Orlu asked.
“Had to be over a foot long,” Sasha said.
“Wonder what it sounds like when it sings,” Orlu said.
“It probably sounds like a factory,” Sasha said. “The bigger they are, the worse…”
“Oh, screw it.” Sunny dropped to her knees. “I can’t take it anymore. Let’s just try it here.” She rolled the marbles like small bowling balls, and they tumbled smoothly over the dirt ground. “Come on,” Sunny said, jogging after them. They followed the marbles, which had begun to dimly—then strongly—glow light blue.
They ran and ran. Passing wooden booths, tables, and stands. All empty. The marbles rolled straight ahead, maintaining their speed. Soon the corrugated roof ended, and they were in bright sunshine. They passed more empty tables, but there weren’t as many. There was a lot more space with even trees growing between the tables. Then there were no tables and only a dirt path that ran through a back alley. Sunny could hear the hustle and bustle of the Lagos streets not far away.
When the dirt path began to slope downward, the marbles rolled slower. They decelerated to a fast walk. Then a slow walk. Then the marbles stopped completely. Sunny bent down and picked them up, and they continued to glow brightly in her hand.
They were about eight and a half feet below ground level, red dirt overrun with green creeping plants on each side. Above and to the left was the side of a tall office building and to the right was a busy expressway with people walking along the sides. Sunny could make out people in the office building. A man looked out the window but he didn’t look down at them. And on the expressway, people walked on the narrow sidewalk without so much as a glance below.
This was yet another Leopard space hidden in plain sight. Sunny blew her nose and then inhaled through a somewhat unclogged nose. If direct juju was involved, it wasn’t with the use of powder, at least not according to her nose.
The path descended at a steadier, sharper decline a few feet ahead. And this led right down into what could only be Udide’s lair. The cave looked like the yawning cavernous mouth of a great beast of black jagged rock. And it fit so perfectly into the ground that Sunny could only accept the fact that the cave had probably been there before Udide made it one of her many homes. Maybe it had always been there. Yet only a small part of the city’s population can even see it, Sunny thought. According to Sugar Cream, only .05 percent of humanity was Leopard People.
“Might as well keep going now,” Chichi said. “She certainly knows we’re coming.”
She’s known for a long time, Sunny heard Anyanwu say in her head. Sunny felt a shiver go up her spine as she remembered her dream. Of all things, why a spider? Why, why, why? She imagined Udide scrambling out of the cave lightning fast, right at them, her movements like thunder. Udide wasn’t just a spider; she was one of the Great Ones. She was an ultimate storyteller. She was a weaver. And she was a really excellent writer. Sunny had read more of Udide’s Book of Shadows than its numerous spells that Sasha and Chichi were obsessed with. Udide wrote short stories, too. Sunny had been most fond of those. There was one in particular about an alien invasion in Lagos that she especially enjoyed. It was set in the past, a few years back, and it was funny like a Nollywood comedy… with aliens.
Yes, Udide was not just some irrational arachnid that ate flies and looked horrifying. The thought that she was a creature that could be spoken to and possibly negotiated with set Sunny at ease a bit. At least she could beg for her life, if it came to that. She felt Anyanwu nearby bristle at the thought.
The closer they got to the cave the more strongly Sunny could smell it. Smoky, acrid, chemical. Sunny frowned. “Like burning houses,” she whispered. She’d seen a house go up in flames once in New York not far from their townhouse. Sunny had only been five years old when she’d stood in the crowd a block away holding her mother’s hand. However, she would never forget the smell. She shivered at the memory. “Why does it smell like burning houses?”
“What else is a giant spider going to smell like?” Sasha asked. He tried to smile, but it was clear that even he was afraid.
When they got to the opening of the cave, the smell was almost like inhaling smoke itself. The marbles in Sunny’s hands lit everything up. The edges of the cave were covered with thick webbing and when Sunny looked closely she could see that the webbing was peopled with tiny black spiders and dead insects wrapped in more white webs. This was going to be much worse than sitting on the floor of Sugar Cream’s office.
“You think those are her children?” Chichi said, looking closely at the cave’s wall.
“Either that or her minions,” Sasha said.
“I wouldn’t get too close to the walls if I were you,” Orlu said as they entered the cave.
The ground was free of webbing but not of spiders. There were tiny and not so tiny spiders all over the place. For a while, Sunny looked down as she held up the marbles and tried not to step on them. But eventually she realised that these spiders weren’t stupid and were not about to allow themselves to be crushed. With relief, she stopped looking down.
The cave was cool and damp, the burning house smell stronger than ever. The wide path led even deeper beneath the city. Then it opened wide and high as it came to an end. When Sunny laid her eyes on Udide the Ultimate Artist, the Great Hairy Spider, she screamed.
Udide not only smelled like burning houses, she was the size of a house. She was black with a grey sheen in the marble-light, and her many eyes glowed a rich brown, like truck-tyre-sized jewels. She was covered with stiff hairs. Her abdomen was bulbous, the better to weave with, and tipped with a great black stinger. She was on her back, the spiked tips of her eight powerful legs pressed to the cave’s ceiling. And Sunny saw her through both her and Anyanwu’s point of view, which meant she saw Udide on both the spiritual and physical planes. Orlu clapped his hand over his mouth. Sasha started hyperventilating. Chichi just stood there staring, slack-jawed.
Sunny’s eyes were watering as the great spider wriggled slowly, twisting and turning her body so that her legs were on the ground. Then she stood looking down at them. Sunny had watched this process through blurred twitching eyes. Her heart felt as if it was trying to beat itself to death against her rib cage. Of all the things she’d seen since entering Leopard society—ghost hoppers, bush souls, the river beast, the lake beast, the infamous Ekwensu—this creature was the one who threatened to break her grasp of reality.
Udide crouched down, bending her legs to get a closer look at them. Seeing the great spider move again filled Sunny with a strange warmth. The world around her began to swim.
“Do not faint,” she heard Orlu say into her ear as he held her up. He spoke firmly and slowly. “Get a hold of yourself, or we’re all dead.”
His words touched her and she fought her fear with everything she had. Her body wanted to curl up and shut down into a defensive sleep. No, no, no, no, no, she thought. She reached for Anyanwu but couldn’t grasp her. Where had she gone? Sunny wished she could go back in time, before any of this. When she was a different person in a different world. When she wore her hair longer because it looked nice and not because Mami Wata preferred it long. When she wasn’t doubled and had no idea that she could be doubled.
Then she felt the sting on her leg, and she screamed again. There was a large spider on her pant leg working its fangs through the cloth deeper into her flesh. She shuddered and swiped at it, dropping the marbles. She felt Anyanwu start with surprise, and when she looked at the cave wall to her right, she saw a dim golden glow spread over the surface. She screeched again, stumbling into Orlu. Her leg felt like a rod of heat. Orlu began frantically looking at the ground, as he held her. “Are there more?” he babbled. “Sunny, you okay?”
“No!” Sunny screeched.
Udide used a leg to grip her webbing, and then Sunny saw her throw the web at Chichi. It hit Chichi in the chest and she screeched, too, pulling at the thick grey sticky rope in the dim marble light. Sasha grabbed Chichi from behind, but Udide yanked her right out of his grasp and then proceeded to wildly wrap Chichi around and around in webbing.
“Nimm princess,” Udide said. Her deep booming female voice shook the cave so hard that dirt and pebbles tumbled from the ceiling and the walls. The spider’s every hair vibrated at the sound, and all the spiders in the area ran in circles at the sound of her voice. “Trouble. Wahala. Kata kata. Tricky strong women and strong sneaky men. You have taken something from me.”
“Taken what?” Sunny screamed as she strained with pain. “We just got here!”
“The beginning is never the beginning,” Udide said. Chichi was wrapped now from feet to neck and struggling uselessly.
Sasha pulled out his juju knife and threw juju at Udide. Whatever it was, it didn’t even move one of Udide’s many hairs. He tried throwing another juju and received the same non-result. He picked up a rock and threw it. It bounced off Udide like a pebble.
“There is no juju that can kill a spider,” Udide said. “We are sacred.”
“Sasha, stop it!” Orlu said, his voice calm. But his eyes were watering with tears.
“She’s going to kill her!” Sasha screamed, his voice cracking. He looked around and spotted a spider. He stamped on it.
Udide angrily puffed out a great stench of burning houses.
“You don’t like that?!” Sasha screamed. He grabbed his backpack and brought out a can of Raid. “You think you’re smart? I’m smarter!” Before he could fumble the cap off, Orlu let go of Sunny to grab Sasha. The can of Raid dropped to the ground. The two tussled, but Orlu was stronger. He held Sasha’s wrists. “Stop!” Orlu said, straining, as Sasha looked around wildly.
“Please!” Chichi said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“But your name does, DNA does, your molecules do,” Udide said. “I should kill you myself instead of letting my people feast on you.”
Sunny had fallen to the ground, her heart beating dangerously faster than ever. She stared at the glow pressed to the wall feet away; she could hear Anyanwu in her mind, though she sounded so far away that Sunny couldn’t understand what she was saying. When Sunny spoke to the great spider, she could barely catch her breath and her mouth felt slow and gummy. “Udide… Ma… Oga Udide, we came a long way. We need to…” She felt another sting, this time on her neck. She could feel the scratchy spider scramble to her cheek. She groaned.
“Nimm warrior,” Udide said. “Something is wrong with you, and that is interesting to me. You are two, but you both are one. They will take you next. Thieves. All of you. I let you live out there only because you people make for good stories, and you have the nerve to come down here and face me.”
She wrapped Chichi some more and more, thicker and thicker. Chichi wriggled and wriggled to no avail.
“Oga Udide,” Orlu said, moving forwards with Sasha. He pressed his hand to Sasha’s mouth, and Sunny heard him whisper, “Not a word.” He stood up straight and spoke loudly. “My friend Sasha here is from Chicago, in the United States. He grew up on the South Side, in a place called Hyde Park. His grandparents are from Mississippi and participated fully in the civil rights movement, though they were more on the Malcolm X side than the Martin Luther King Jr. side. They passed that down to Sasha, too. He’s a fighter, born and bred through the racist fire that still burns in the United States of America.” He paused. “He was sent here to Nigeria to stay with my family and me because his parents wanted to keep him out of trouble. He’s too smart and rebellious.
“He is the one who found your Book of Shadows. And Chichi, there, Chichi is the Nimm princess you are wrapping up and preparing to kill. But she is Sasha’s girlfriend, and she, too, is obsessed with your words and ideas. Both of them used one of your jujus to call an Aku masquerade at a party almost a year ago. Your teachings are good and effective, though dangerous to the reckless.
“Me, I have read parts of your Book of Shadows, but it is not your spells and stories that I am interested in. It is you, Udide. I’ve read a book called The Book of High Beasts. In it, you are cited as the true creator of destiny. You are one of the few who answers only to Chukwu, the Supreme One. There is a Great Crab who lives deep in the Atlantic Ocean whom you love and see once every millennium. The hairs on your body can change the passage of time. You and Mami Wata have inspired human rebellions on every continent.”
“You know much,” Udide said.
Orlu nodded frantically. “And… and this girl here, Sunny Nwazue. That is her name. I love her very much.” He glanced at Sunny. She could feel saliva running from the side of her mouth. “Sunny recently met and freed the spider named Ogwu and her children.”
“She did not free Ogwu,” Udide said. “Ogwu freed herself. Ogwu saved your Sunny from a djinn.”
“Sorry, Ma Udide,” Orlu said respectfully. “You are right. But Sunny helped Ogwu free herself, and Ogwu sends her greetings to you from a place of freedom.” He paused, taking a breath. “Please, Chichi is like my sister. Please. We have come here for a good reason. I know your kind can sting venom and the antidote to the venom into a person. Please do this for the girl I love and my… my sister. Don’t let them die. Please.” He calmly nodded his head and again said, “Please.”
There was a long, long pause. Then Udide hummed deep, sending out a vibration.
Sunny heard them first. More spiders. Then she saw them. These ones were tarantula-like with hairy abdomens and wiggling tails on those abdomens. They scuttled up to her. Then she also heard the sound of their fangs puncturing the skin on both her hands. She gritted her teeth against the pain. Immediately, even that pain began to fade and she started to feel better. Her muscles loosened and Orlu quickly helped her up. “Okay?” he asked.
“Weak…”
“Fake it,” he whispered. “She doesn’t respect weakness.”
When she straightened in Orlu’s arms and looked up, she was positive that the great spider was looking directly at her. Into her. With her many, many eyes. Fffffff! The smell burst from the spider in a soft powerful warm blast. The whole cave could have been filled with a thousand burning houses. Sunny fought not to cough and fought even harder not to sneeze. Udide dumped Chichi on the ground, and Sasha ran to drag the woundup Chichi away from the giant spider. When he got to Orlu and Sunny, he tore at the webbing. Chichi quickly wriggled out like a caterpillar. “Goddamn insane bug,” Chichi muttered, rubbing her arm. “I think it left a fang in me.”
“Shut up,” Orlu hissed.
“Sunny Nwazue,” Udide said.
Sunny felt as if her head would explode from the sheer vibratory force of Udide’s voice. She held her head and as she did, she felt Anyanwu come to her. Then she did the only thing that she could do, even with her friends there. She brought forth her spirit face.
“Greetings, Oga Udide,” she said, her voice low and sultry. She stood up straighter. She could stand on her toes. Udide would see her as poised and graceful.
The great spider gave off her stench again, and Sunny stumbled back. “Anyanwu,” Udide said.
“Yes.”
Udide stared at her. “I know you.”
“I know you, as well.”
“In this life, you’ve been doubled and you live. You’re strong in many ways.”
“It’s a strange life, this one.”
“I want to speak to Sunny Nwazue. Because she wants to speak to me.”
The others stood behind her as she let Anyanwu retreat into her.
“We’re here, Sunny,” Orlu whispered.
“Yes,” Udide said. “But what difference does that make?”
“We’re her friends,” Chichi said, stepping up beside her. She leaned heavily on Orlu, trying to look tough. “We’ll suffer whatever she suffers. She’s not alone.”
“And we don’t suffer without making others suffer,” Sasha added.
“Sasha from America,” Udide said. “My Book of Shadows found you, and it will kill you. That will make a great story.”
“Don’t worry. I know how to use it,” Sasha said with obviously false bravado.
“That’s not how your story goes,” Udide said. “You will die by that book.”
“No, he won’t,” Chichi screeched. “We’ve both used it! We’re…”
“I only have business with this incomplete, damaged one,” Udide said. “Sunny Nwazue, why have you come?”
“I need something from you. A flying grasscutter.”
“What will you give me in return?”
Sunny thought about it for a moment. Then she said what she’d planned to say, especially after Orlu had just saved all of them by doing the same thing. “A story,” she said. Udide’s hairs rippled with what Sunny could only guess was delight.
“You know me well,” she said. “But you must remember, I am storyteller. I am old. I’ve dwelled for years at a time beneath this city over many decades. Since its birth. I lie on my back and I put my legs to the ceiling of this cave and I listen to the vibration of Lagos. I listen to its millions of stories. And I weave just as many. Lagos breathes stories. It is life and death; it is many worlds in one. And I have done the same in many cities of the world. New York, Cairo, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Dubai, Rio. Tell me a story I have not heard.”
The spider got down low in front of Sunny. She came very close, within a foot. Sunny felt her bladder try to let go. She squeezed and stayed where she stood. Her friends were behind her, but as Udide stared deep into Sunny’s eyes with her door-sized eyes, Sunny was alone. Alone with a giant storytelling, probably immortal, hyper-intelligent, merciless spider.
“No,” Sunny said. She felt Anyanwu inside her, part of her. “I can’t tell you a story you have not heard. But I can tell you my own particular story. It’s mine. Only mine. There is only one me in this world. So in a way, maybe yes, this is the only story of its kind.” She took a deep breath and then began to talk.
“I lived the first nine years of my life in New York City.” Her legs were shaking, and something in her said she should sit down. Her experience with Sugar Cream’s office told her that there would be spiders on the floor, but these spiders were smart and she doubted they’d climb on her. Even the ones in Sugar Cream’s office knew not to do this… unless they meant to. So she sat before Udide in the dirt of the cave. She turned to her friends and nodded. They, too, sat. Then, miraculously, Udide also settled. She did not sit, because spiders do not sit. However, she rested her legs a bit and puffed out her fumes and made a contented hum that seemed to come from deep in her abdomen.
Sunny shut her eyes for a moment and calmed herself. Anyanwu, she said in her mind. Give me strength. Help me tell this well. Once Sunny started talking, she found that it wasn’t as hard as she thought to tell a giant spider and her best friends about the most painful day of her childhood.
I went to a Catholic school in Manhattan. My classmates were all kinds. You had Africans; African Americans; American whites; all kinds of Caribbeans; some Asians, mostly from India and Pakistan; multiracial; Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus. I should have fit right in. Mostly, I did. I had a lot of friends. But though we were all mixed up there, the other kids really didn’t mix, you know? Kids stayed with their own kinds, especially black and white. The African people kept to themselves in my school. The African Americans acted like they were kings. And queens.
I sort of moved from group to group. I didn’t fit in anywhere. I was African, but not really African. I was born in America, but not really African American. Half the time, I didn’t understand African American slang. I had a bit of a Nigerian accent that I’d picked up from my parents, which was strange since I was born in America. I loved the Caribbeans, but we all knew I wasn’t one of them, either. I was light-skinned like the whites, but my puffy hair and the way I look, I could never fool anyone.
This one day when I was in third grade was bad. Those older African American girls, I don’t know why they hated me so much. They truly truly hated me. I think if I had been hit by a car and was dying in the street, they’d point and laugh and watch my slow death. Anyway, this day, I went to the bathroom during my lunch, and they followed me in there. They must have followed me. You had to ask permission to go to the bathroom, and there were four of them. No teacher would have let them all go at the same time like that. They snuck out. To follow me. It wasn’t a coincidence.
I knew they were in there with me while I was in my stall. So I waited and waited. But I could see their feet. They weren’t going anywhere. They were waiting, too. For me to come out. Anytime a girl would come in, they’d bark at her to go use another bathroom. Eventually, I knew I had to come out. I couldn’t stay in there all day and miss my classes. So I flushed the toilet and came out.
These were sixth graders. Big ones. The leader was this overweight, very angry girl named Faye Jackson. She was always getting into fights with other girls in her grade. She’d only spit cruel names at me; we’d never fought. I don’t know why they came after me this day.
I moved quickly to the tap to wash my hands. They stood at the sink near the door, blocking any quick exit I could make. So I was forced to go to the sink farthest away from them, near the foggy window on the far side of the bathroom, farthest from the door. Bad move. As soon as I did this, they closed in.
“Why you so ugly?” Faye asked as they stood over me.
“She so nasty,” one of the other girls said. Her name was Shanika, and she was never mean to me except when she was with Faye. “Shouldn’t you be at the retard school?”
“At least away from us,” Yinka said. Yinka was Nigerian, but you wouldn’t know it the way she tried to hide it. She was very darkskinned, too, except for her face, which she was always slathering with skin-bleaching cream. And when she wasn’t, her mother was. You’d see her mother do it to her every morning when she dropped her off at school. “Wouldn’t want any disease that would eat all my colour like that,” Yinka added.
I could feel myself getting mad. I needed to get back to class, and I didn’t know why they were trying to scare me. They were standing very close, towering over me. I was only eight, and I wasn’t very tall for eight. I’ve grown a lot in the last three years. And in the last year, I’ve gotten really strong and muscular, but back then, I was small, and they were all tall and big.
“It’s not contagious,” I muttered, my hands wet as I turned off the tap. And that’s when Faye slapped me on the side of my head. I stumbled as the world got really bright and I saw stars. She’d hit me really hard. For no reason. Without me even speaking directly to her.
I was angry as hell now. I’d been harassed before and it upset me, but never had I grown angry like this. I was in there alone. I hadn’t done a thing to them. They’d pressured me to move into the far part of the bathroom while one of them stood watch at the door. I was like prey to them. Because what? I don’t know.
“Dirty African booty scratcher,” Faye spat. “Filthy diseased Shaka Zulu bitch. Yo’ mama probably got AIDS and yo’ daddy got syphilis, that’s why you came out looking like that.”
Yinka cackled hysterically. I couldn’t believe it. What was wrong with that girl? Who was diseased?! Even at eight years old I knew when something was completely twisted. Shanika looked a little worried, but she didn’t do anything to shut her friend up. The one at the door, whose name I didn’t know, was peeking back into the hallway. The bell rang. Lunch was over. I felt more rage boil in me.
Faye was about to hit me again when I looked her right in the face. I was sweating and shaking, and that’s when I saw it. Right there on Faye’s white pants. A large circle of red. Blood. My mum had explained periods to me earlier that year. So I knew exactly what I was seeing and why Faye was probably so angry. I knew many things in that moment. So I went for the kill.
“I’m filthy?” I growled. “You, YOU’RE the one who is filthy! Look at your pants. You’re bleeding all over them. Phew! Stinking! Filthy akata! Who are you?”
The word was something my mother sometimes called African Americans when she was talking to her friends. Some told me the word meant “cotton picker,” others claimed it meant “bush animal.” Whatever anyone thinks it means, it is a nasty word. At the time, the way those girls were behaving, I was glad to call them “akata.” I’d have loved to see the pain in their faces if they then learned what the word meant. But a word like that, you don’t really need to know what it means. The meaning is all in the way it’s said, the sound of it. It’s ugly. It’s an insult. It’s like a dagger that is a word. She was bleeding, and I’d just drawn more blood.
She looked down and saw the blood on her pants, and a look of horror passed over her face. She was so embarrassed. The other girls looked embarrassed, too, and a disgusted look passed over Yinka’s face. Yinka was just a mean, foul person, turning on everyone in two seconds. In all the years I’d known her, she was always the same. Mean, and loyal to only herself. Faye’s embarrassed face changed then to that look girls get when they are going to destroy something.
I tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. They descended upon me. Slapping me in the face, pulling my hair, shoving me against the wall. Then Faye dragged me to the coat hooks. She was so big that picking me up was easy. I struggled, but the other girls helped, too. They hung me there by my sweater. I couldn’t get down, no matter how hard I tried. They laughed at me, and then they left me there.
I was bruised and achy. My face felt like it was on fire, and my nose was bleeding onto my white sweater. My cheeks were wet and itchy with tears. I was so mad, but I was also ashamed and scared… scared of myself. Even back then I knew what I’d said was evil. I was American, too. And their history was connected to mine, even if it was not exactly the same. Faye’s ancestors had made America what it was, built it with their own blood, sweat, and tears, by force. They’d suffered and persevered. She was the product of survival. I knew this better than my mother, who wasn’t born there. And I shouldn’t have made fun of that girl’s shame, either. I knew what it was like to be made fun of and hated because of the way I looked.
But they hurt me. Just because I was African and had a defect. They, too, called me dirty. Why do we people from Africa always call each other dirty? Even I did. And why did they hate me so much? Why? I know why I confuse people. When people are confused, sometimes they get mean and violent. I wonder if this has anything to do with what I saw in the candle. Confusion.
“That’s my story,” Sunny concluded. She let out a long breath, not wanting to look up at the spider or at her friends who now knew something about her that even her mother didn’t know. “You may have heard it before, or not. But this version is mine.”
When she heard nothing for several moments, she looked up. Udide seemed to be staring at her, her fuzzy black mandibles working in and out and her many hairs rippled. She felt a hand touch her shoulder and then squeeze, but she didn’t look back to see whose it was.
When Udide finally spoke, her voice was deep and booming but less harsh. “Yours is part of a long story of humanity,” she said. “Always a treat to my sensitive hairs.” She blew out the burned house smell and stood up and turned around. “Home, one’s house, dwellings doused. In flames, sad games, you’ll all be ashamed. It’ll be the greatest story ever told and only those like me will see it unfold.”
Sunny ventured a look at Orlu, Chichi, and Sasha. It was Sasha’s hand that was on her shoulder.
“Sorry,” she said to him.
“For what?”
“That word.”
He shrugged. “If I’d been in your shoes, I’d have said a lot worse.”
“Step back,” Udide said. She’d moved to the far side of the cave. “To weave one, I’ll need space.”
“The flying grasscutter?” Sunny asked.
“Step back,” Udide repeated.
She held up a leg and pulled webbing to the tip of this leg with another leg. Then she moved both legs away, and the piece of webbing hovered softly in the air. She brought another thread of webbing to that one and then something stranger began to happen. All of the hairs on her body rippled in such a fluid motion that it looked as if she were encased in water. Sunny shuddered and again felt her bladder contract. She could even smell a hint of salt water over the smell of burning houses. Another smell accompanied these two conflicting smells of fire and water. She could not describe it but she knew its origin. The strange smell and the presence of water—Udide was calling on the wilderness.
“Three of you, move away, unless you want to abandon your bodies and cross over,” Udide said. Her voice rumbled and vibrated; rocks fell from the cave’s ceiling this time. “Sunny-Anyanwu, you may stay or move with your friends.”
Sunny stayed. She wanted to see this. She could feel it rising around her now. It was like standing on the rising surf of a large beach. It was rising all around her, gradually. Sunny blinked as her perspective doubled with Anyanwu’s, but her attention was on Udide and what she was weaving. Udide was still black and hairy, but she was also turning red and growing larger. And Sunny could see another version of Udide juxtaposed with the other two; this version of her looked as if she were made of shiny metal.
Udide worked fast, wrapping more webbing around the suspended strand. It took the shape of a white sticky-looking sphere about the size of a tennis ball. Then Udide raised a leg and started spinning. It whirled, slowly at first and then quickly. Then the great spider really began to work. She attached and wove and shaped so quickly now that Sunny’s eye couldn’t follow it. And as Udide worked, Sunny saw some of the spirits around her stop to watch. One looked like the shape of a man, only he was nothing but oily blue light. He stood beside Udide, a hand on a hip. Then he raised his other hand, brought it to his chin, and seemed to blow. His breath was blue, and it wafted right into the thing Udide was weaving.
Another wilderness creature came and did the same thing. And as they each added these ethereal ingredients, Udide’s creature began to shift and take on different colours. It went from being spherical to a blob with many appendages on the sides, top, and bottom. It also began to grow. From tennis-ball sized to the size of a horse and then to the size of a van.
Sunny had since moved back to join her friends, who were all gawking.
One of what Sunny had begun to call coloured-spirit people came and blew at the large still-growing mass Udide was weaving, and Udide seemed to get annoyed and shoved it away. For some reason, this made Sunny’s belly cramp with hysterics.
“What is wrong with you?” Chichi whispered, frowning at her. “Are you all right?”
Sunny only shook her head. “Maybe the leftover spider poison is making me giddy, I don’t know.” Her body certainly still ached. But this didn’t stop the laughs that kept bubbling up from within her. When she looked up, she saw Anyanwu’s dimly luminescent form perched upside down on the cave’s ceiling, surrounded by spiders as she watched Udide weave.
“What is so funny?” Sasha asked. When she looked at him, he was smirking.
“This. Everything,” she whispered.
And that got Sasha snickering, too. Orlu tried his best, but he, too, was clearly tired and overwhelmed and terrified. Soon, his eyes were watering from trying not to laugh. Only Chichi sulked, her arms across her chest.
Sunny was laughing so hard that when the large hovering mass that Udide was weaving plopped to the floor, she wasn’t afraid. She took a deep breath and tried not to think about the fact that she was deep in a cave beneath the city of Lagos with a spider the size of a house who was weaving some mass of webbing that was starting to wriggle.
She turned away from everything and looked down the dark cave. That helped quell her giggles. The marbles she’d dropped lit the cavernous cave well enough, but their light didn’t reach down the tunnel for even a few yards. It was as if the light bent towards Udide. Sunny inhaled and then exhaled and inhaled again. She could feel each place where the spiders had bitten her to inject venom and then the antidote. Those spots felt itchy and were probably red and swollen. But she was otherwise okay.
“What a life I have,” she whispered.
To her left, she could see about thirty large spiders on the cave wall scrambling into the darkness. To where, she had no idea and didn’t care one way or another.
All four of them bounced as Udide lifted the great web-wrapped mass and then let it fall to the ground again. They coughed and scrambled together, grabbing each other as the cloud of dust rushed over them. Everything was light blue as the blue marbles that sat on the ground between them, and Udide and her creation glowed brighter in the settling dust.
“Oh my God, it’s exactly how I imagined,” Orlu said. “Thryonomys volante, wow.”
“You imagined this?” Sasha asked, pointing at it.
“Disgusting,” Chichi said.
The mass was undulating. The blue marble light only lit part of it. There was something inside. Unt, unt, unt, the thing inside grunted. It sounded like a giant pig. Udide scurried around the mass three times, laying three of her legs on it after each rotation. Then she plucked a hair from her back and stuck it into the mass like a pin, using two of her legs. The mass calmed, and Udide let out a great billow of her smoky stench, which made Sunny’s eyes water. Then Udide stepped back and waited.
“One of us has to release it,” Orlu said after several moments.
They all looked at Sunny. She shook her head.
“Because we’ll all die if we get close to it,” Chichi said. “We can’t survive the wilderness.”
“It is safe now,” Udide said. “Just like Osisi is safe for you all; I have pulled down the veil of the wilderness. The creature is mortal and alive.”
“Then you go,” Sunny said to Orlu. “You’re the one who likes animals so much.”
“Yeah,” Sasha agreed. “Which one of us knew its scientific name?”
“Okay,” Orlu said.
“We can’t all go?” Chichi asked.
“No, only one at first,” Orlu said. He crept forwards and slowly walked across the great cave. It took him nearly five minutes to get halfway across. He stopped, his hands clenching and unclenching. Then he started moving them quickly in the air.
“What is that?” Sunny shouted.
“It’s…” He worked his hands some more. “Never mind. I’m okay.”
“He’s undoing jujus,” Chichi said.
“It’s protected itself,” Orlu shouted. “And… well, I think it’s joking with me. But not in a good way. If any of you had been in my shoes, you’d be on the floor itching and screaming right now from the stings of Seven Stinger Mosquitoes.”
“Damn!” Sasha said. “I used that juju once in the Leopard Library of Chicago because this guy shoved me aside to get a book we both wanted. The man hollered like crazy.”
“It’s not even out of its cocoon, and it’s already showing it’s got a sick sense of humour,” Orlu shouted. “This is why it’s best for only one person to approach it.” When he reached the cocoon, he paused and stared at Udide. “I know exactly what he’s feeling,” Sunny muttered. There was nothing like having Udide’s undivided attention.
Orlu was too far for them to hear anything, but he was clearly speaking to Udide. Then he stepped up to the cocoon and brought out his juju knife. Sunny could hear the cutting from where she was, sort of an unzipping sound.
“Oh my God,” Sunny whispered when she saw the shiny grey-brown head pop out of and then rip through the cut Orlu had made. Its big head was round, it had round fluffy-furred ears and large round blue eyes. It had some sort of black markings on its forehead, but she couldn’t see them from where she was. It didn’t look much like the grasscutters she was familiar with, large groundhoglike rodents related to porcupines. It sniffed around with its great nose. It sniffed Orlu, who stood very still. Then it looked at Udide, started, and retreated back into its cocoon.
Udide brought a leg up and kicked the back of the cocoon, and the flying grasscutter grunted loudly like a pig and shot out. It came running right at Sunny, Chichi, and Sasha; its huge blue eyes wide with fear and shock. They all turned to run. Then Sunny heard Orlu’s voice right beside her ear. “Get down!” And because she was so used to trusting her friends, Sunny dropped to the ground, landing on top of Chichi. Sasha dropped right beside them.
Foooo! The flying grasscutter lived right up to its name as it took off low enough over their heads that they could feel and hear its wake. Sunny looked up just in time to see it whip and snap its long furry tail as it zoomed towards the cave ceiling and then disappeared.
“Just wait,” Orlu’s voice said. When she looked back, he was standing there, his juju knife to his neck. He was using voice-throwing juju and specifying it to just the three of them.
“There!” Sasha said, pointing at the entrance to the cave that led into darkness.
The flying grasscutter stood with its backside pressed to the wall as it looked into the cave.
“It wants to run, but it’s too scared,” Chichi said. She laughed.
From afar, the great creature looked forlorn and kind of cute as it grunted and pressed itself to the wall. It was basically a newborn. What a place to wake up to—a giant spider and a dark cave full of smaller spiders. “I’d be scared, too,” Sunny muttered.
“Don’t let it flee,” Orlu’s voice said. He was walking to them. “If it flies into the cave, it’ll escape and we won’t be able to catch it, trust me. They are intelligent. It’s made by Udide, so it’ll understand any language. Talk to it or something… softly. But hurry.”
They walked over to the grasscutter. It stared at them, its nostrils flaring widely. The marble light was dim here, but it reflected its eyes and in that moment, Sunny knew she could gaze into them for hours. They were like jewels and they were kind, too. But there was something else about the creature’s face as a whole that made her want to slow down. It wasn’t just cute, it was sneaky and sly. This was verified when she felt the ground pulled from beneath her feet. She fell awkwardly.
Chichi also tripped and fell as a tree root came up from the ground right in front of her foot. She cursed in Efik as she stumbled. Sasha looked at them, then he chuckled. “Just go,” Chichi said. “If you haven’t fallen, then maybe the damn animal likes you.” She tried to get up, but the root wrapped more tightly around her foot. Sunny knew not to bother and just sat there.
“’Sup,” Sasha said to it. “I think I’ve got wha’chu need, dude.” He brought his backpack around. He looked back. “Orlu,” he said, as Orlu came up beside Chichi and Sunny. Sasha motioned him to come. “See if it lets you.”
“Are you guys okay?” Orlu asked Chichi and Sunny.
“Yeah,” Sunny said. “I think it just likes Sasha.”
Orlu looked and then took a few steps forwards. When nothing happened, he kept going and was soon standing beside Sasha. The flying grasscutter looked at them both with narrowed eyes. It took a tentative step back, but that was all. Sasha opened his backpack and Orlu looked inside. When Orlu laughed, the flying grasscutter didn’t flee as Sunny had been sure it would. Instead, it moved forwards to see what was in the backpack.
“Sasha, you’re a genius.” Orlu said.
“It dawned on me this morning,” he said.
When he brought out the first handful of grass, the flying grasscutter lapped it from his hands with a giant blue tongue. It chewed and as it experienced its first taste of “foodular” pleasure, its entire body shivered with joy. Sasha fed it some more grass.
“Come,” Orlu said to Sunny and Chichi. Slowly they got up and came towards the beast. It eyed them suspiciously but inflicted no more juju on them. Sasha handed the backpack to Sunny. “Give it some grass.”
It didn’t hesitate to take the handfuls she offered it. She watched as it ate, noticing that it wasn’t just grey brown. When Anyanwu appeared beside her, so dim that Sunny suspected only she saw her, the grasscutter paused in its chewing. It sniffed at Anyanwu and then humphed and continued chewing. Its brown fur was tipped with white filaments that looked like thick spiderwebbing. Sunny frowned and took a chance and stepped closer. It watched her as she reached forth and touched its furry cheek. She’d been wondering what it felt like. Was it sticky like spiderwebbing? No. It was soft. So very soft.
When Chichi fed it, the creature left slobber all over her hand. Orlu shook his head at her, and she swallowed what was surely an exclamation of disgust. Sunny could have sworn she saw the grasscutter’s eyes twinkle. Chichi quickly moved behind Orlu and Sasha, fighting the urge not to rub her wet hand on her clothes.
“My name is Orlu and I am a human being,” he said. “This is Sasha. This is Sunny. And this is Chichi. We are on Earth, a planet. We will show you. Can you read?”
Sunny thought Orlu had lost his mind, but then the grasscutter grunted, shoving its tongue into the backpack and taking more than half the grass.
“Good,” Orlu said, smiling. “What is your name?”
Sunny gasped as the image burst in her mind. A huge field of green, green grass under a lovely sun in the sky. Chop! Chop! Chop! an enormous pair of flat teeth cut at the grass like a lawnmower.
“Grasscutter?” Orlu said. “That’s your name?”
It grunted. Another image burst into their heads. They saw Udide’s Book of Shadows suspended in midair. The pages opened up and flipped this way and that way until they found one of Udide’s many stories. An image of an old man and a grasscutter in deep discussion rose from the pages. The old Efik man had a strong accent. His yam farm was constantly raided by a grasscutter and he’d had to travel into one of its burrows to negotiate with it. In the story the grasscutter had liked how the man said its name.
Orlu pronounced it the way the old man did. “Grashcoatah? That’s how you want us to say your name?”
It affirmed a happy assent by blowing air through its nose.
Sasha laughed. “Oh my God.”
“Well, would you like another name?”
The grasscutter grunted an obvious no.
“Okay, Grashcoatah,” Orlu said. “We understand.”
“Ow!” Chichi screeched. “Who pinched me?!” She looked at Grashcoatah. “You did!”
Grashcoatah grunted gleefully and whipped and snapped its ten-foot-long narrow black tail.
“Well, most of us understand,” Orlu said. “Will you come with us?”
It took more grass from the backpack.
“We can show you more than more of this grass,” Sasha said. “We can show you a place where the grass is different colours!”
Grashcoatah purred deep in its belly, its eyes lidded with pleasure.
“Don’t lie to it,” Orlu said.
“I’m not,” Sasha said. “I heard that there are all kinds of weird grasses in Osisi.”
The ground vibrated as Udide approached them. “This is what you wanted?” she asked.
Grashcoatah suddenly disappeared down the cave behind them. But Sunny could hear its soft grunting. The creature was still there.
“You will treat it well?” she asked. Sunny could sense the threat behind Udide’s question. Saying yes was only a small part of Udide’s request. If anything happened to Grashcoatah, they would suffer.
“Yes,” Sunny said.
“Then go,” Udide said. “But there is one thing.” She pointed a great leg at Chichi and then at Sunny. “The venom of my people is in both of you now. It will never leave you. It has decoded and bonded to your DNA. I can find you anywhere. I will know where you are at all times.”
Sunny shivered. In all the excitement, the ache of the bites had retreated to the back of her mind. Now she felt their heated ache again.
Chichi gasped.
“Yes, you know what I am talking about, Chichi. You know more than you let on. You are not ignorant. Not completely. You have heard rumour. You have heard myth. You have heard gossip. You know who to ask. When you finish this quest, bring me what is mine. Go to your people and bring it back. This one, Sunny, she is of the warrior clan of your people. She will be your ‘woman show,’ your bodyguard. If you don’t bring it back, I know where to find you.”
Chichi nodded, her eyes wide with terror.
“Smart child,” Udide said. She walked back to where she’d been when they first arrived. She turned onto her back and pressed her thick hairy legs to the ceiling. “Leave me. It’s a new year. Lagos is the tangled web I weave.”
The marbles rolled back to Sunny, and she picked them up. As they left the cave, escorted by a parade of the nastiest spiders Sunny had ever seen, Orlu explained to Grashcoatah that it had the power to make itself invisible. Then Orlu explained why it had to keep itself invisible. Grashcoatah, who glided above them, only grunted that it understood. Whether it would cooperate or not was something they’d have to learn when they exited the cave.