An hour later, about halfway through the drive back, they stopped at a raggedy-looking shack on the side of the road. It looked as if the next rainy season would wash it away. The walls were made of worn-out wood, the roof made of tin. Behind and beside it were tangles of trees, bushes, and plants. There were no buildings to its left or right. The shack had no sign. Yet there were cars parked all along the roadside.
“What are we doing here?” Chichi snapped.
“Lunch,” Chukwu said, putting the car in park.
“They serve food in there?” Chichi asked. “And you want to go in and eat it? Kai! Do you want to die of dysentery?”
Sasha snickered.
“Why not just wait until we see a better place?” Sunny asked.
“Don’t let the look of the place fool you,” Chukwu said. “I’m not just stopping here randomly. Adebayo told me about this place. He said it serves some of the best grasscutter stew he’s ever tasted. He said the meat is so sweet you’d think they fed the thing chocolate for a year before they slaughtered it.”
“Let’s do it!” Sasha said, getting out of the Jeep. “My father had grasscutter meat the first time he came to Nigeria and hasn’t stopped talking about it since. I want to try it.”
Chichi got out, too. “I know good grasscutter stew. Let’s see if Adebayo knows what he is talking about.”
Orlu was still in the car, frowning. Sunny got out and opened his door. He didn’t have to say anything; she knew what he was thinking and why he was frowning. She took his hand. “Come on. They are not going to be serving the meat of flying grasscutters. Just the regular kind. And you can eat something else. If it makes you feel better, I will, too. I’ve never liked eating grasscutter, even before we made friends with a giant flying one.”
Orlu sighed and got out of the Jeep. They both heard a soft grunt directly above them. An image of lush bush bloomed in Sunny’s mind. Grashcoatah was going into the bush behind the building to see what he could find to eat.
“Okay,” Orlu said.
“How will he know when we leave?” Sunny quietly asked Orlu, as they followed Chukwu, Sasha, and Chichi.
Orlu smiled mysteriously. “I’ll tell him.”
The grasscutter stew was indeed the best on Earth, at least according to Chichi. Sasha ate three bowls, Chukwu four. By the time they were all done, he and Chukwu were in such high spirits that they were talking and laughing at each other’s jokes.
“It’s like they are drunk on stew,” Sunny told Chichi, as they walked out the front door. The owner of the restaurant had told them the restrooms were in the back. Sunny wasn’t too confident about what she thought they’d find. If worse came to worst, she was content with going in the bushes.
“Well, it was good stew,” Chichi said, picking at her teeth with a pinky finger.
“They make good ogbono soup, too,” Sunny said. “With chicken.”
“They just need to do some remodelling,” Chichi said. “At least a sign for the place. Word of mouth can only go so far.”
The sun was setting, but the heat of the day seemed intent on staying. The pepper soup Sunny had eaten was extra spicy. Not tainted-pepper spicy that left her tongue and mouth tingly while enhancing the flavour of everything else she ate, just a normal type of spicy that warmed every part of her and cleared out her sinuses. This warmth mixed with the heat of outside made her feel a little dizzy.
As soon as they walked to the side of the shack, the chatter from the filled dining room receded. The grass here was tall and unkempt, a narrow path through it roughly hacked. When they got to the back, the grass was shorter. Sunny expected to see Grashcoatah at work here making the grass even shorter, but he was nowhere in sight.
On the back of the shack was a large door with garbage bags on both sides of it. The door was ajar, and Sunny heard the clink and splash of cutlery, cups, and dishes being washed. There was a small clearing of dirt directly behind the shack where a large thick wooden table sat. Behind the table were three red outhouses with tin roofs. And behind the outhouses, more trees and bushes grew.
“Disgusting,” Chichi said, stepping up to the large table. It was slick with congealing and dried blood, bits of meat (there was even a chopped-off paw), and milling flies. “I hope this isn’t where they cut the meat they use in the restaurant.”
“It probably is,” Sunny said, the food in her belly rolling.
Chichi picked up the grasscutter paw and held it up.
“Ugh!” Sunny said “How can you touch th—”
Click. Click, clack, click.
Chichi looked past Sunny and her eyes grew wide. “Oh my God.”
Sunny stared at the source of the clicking. Then she quickly slapped the grasscutter paw out of Chichi’s hand. But really it was a useless gesture. If the oily-looking black vultures with wingspans wider than her height standing on top of the outhouses had wanted the paw, they’d have taken it long ago. There were five in all. The click-clacking sound was their talons on the tin roofs of the outhouses as they moved around.
“They’re probably here for the meat when they are chopping it up,” Sunny said. “Disgusting, lazy birds. I’ll bet they live here, scavenging off of whatever the restaurant people throw away.” She shook her head and started to step away. “I’m going to go pee in the bushes. I’m not going near those vultures, let alone those nasty outhouses. I can smell them from–”
“Sunny,” Chichi said. And that’s when Sunny noticed that Chichi wasn’t even looking at the vultures. She was looking towards the trees. As Sunny turned her eyes in that direction, she felt every hair on her body stand up. There was a ringing in her ears and pressure on her face. Sunny’s nostrils flared. She smelled smoke. A very specific type of smoke.
“Shhh,” Chichi said, still staring towards the trees. “Don’t speak.”
Sunny had to resist the urge to scream. If she screamed, someone from the kitchen might hear and come to investigate. Then he or she would see the glorious giant bristly spider with legs powerful enough to part trees standing in the shadows. Would seeing Udide be a breach of the Leopard rules? Udide was more than a magical beast. Udide was one of Chukwu’s deputies – a deity.
Udide blasted a thick puff of breath at them. Burned houses, that was the specific smoky smell. Sunny and Chichi clutched each other, the soon-to-set sun beating against their backs.
“Didn’t I tell you that I can find you anywhere?” Udide asked, her voice vibrating in Sunny’s head like a passing train. By the look on Chichi’s face, the same was happening to her, too. “The venom of my people is bound to your very DNA.”
“I know what you want,” Chichi said, straining. A line of red tumbled from her nose to her lip. Sunny touched her nose and found that hers was bleeding, as well. “Please!”
“You have heard rumour,” Udide said. “You have heard myth. You have heard gossip. You know what I ask.”
Sunny shook her head. “We don’t…”
“We can’t go in there,” Chichi said. She paused. Sunny was shocked to see that Chichi looked absolutely horrid, tears streaming down her face. “The last time my mother was there, they nearly killed her!” She took a deep breath. “Because of me. They… they nearly killed her.”
“It is a story,” the spider said. “My story. Written as a ghazal on a tablet-shaped Möbius band made of the same material as your juju knife, albino girl of Nimm, so you will recognise it. It will call to you. It cannot be broken. It is mine. One of my greatest masterpieces. It belongs to me. Go there, get it, and bring it back to me. My venom is in your blood. The doubled albino girl is a Nimm warrior; this story has made that clear. She will be your woman show.”
Sunny frowned, rolling the idea in her mind. Woman show? Her brother had worked as a “man show” during wrestling matches when he wasn’t wrestling. A bodyguard. She would be Chichi’s bodyguard.
“You are a Nimm warrior, Sunny. Like your grandmother,” Udide said, retreating into the trees. Her voice was fading now. “My venom is adhered to your DNA.” Then she was gone. Chichi stood there, silent, tears flowing from her eyes.
“Let’s go,” Sunny said, putting an arm around Chichi. Never had she felt so much taller than her best friend. So much bigger. Physically so much stronger. Chichi looked up at her with trembling eyes and pressed lips.
“What is it?” Sunny asked. “Why are you looking like that?”
Chichi only shook her head and tiredly looked away.
“Let’s just get home,” Sunny said. “We’ll deal with all this later.”