The moon was full and it lit everything. Sunny was glad. Sasha hadn’t told them what Udide had said to him, but the fact that she’d singled him out and spoken to him at such a crucial time made her uneasy. Sunny had worked hard to put the giant spider out of her mind since everything that had happened nearly two years ago, despite the fact that she knew she was just in denial. But she’d tried . . . and mostly succeeded until today. She shivered, walking faster. Each step she took seemed to bring her closer and closer. Her phone buzzed and she shrieked. She brought it from her pocket and glanced at the time. It was 5:12 A.M. She took a deep breath and answered it.
“H-hi, Mom.”
“Sunny . . . ?”
“I’m almost home,” Sunny said into her phone, putting it on speaker as she walked. She leapt over a gutter and followed the concrete walkway. “I’m okay.”
There was a long pause and then her mother simply said, “Hurry up.”
“I will.” She shut her eyes and took another deep breath. Her mother wouldn’t tell her father that she was out at this late hour, and her mother wouldn’t ask Sunny any more questions. But her mother knew. Not that Sunny was a Leopard Person, not specifically, but on some level she knew. Her mother had seen the same behavior with her own mother . . . who’d died so mysteriously. Back then, because Sunny’s mother was a Lamb, Sunny’s grandmother could never be open about being a Leopard Person to her, and now neither could Sunny. It must have felt so isolating to her mother dealing with such secrecy from her mother and then her daughter.
Sunny took another deep breath. Her mother was trying her best, and she would always be who she was. It wasn’t an easy thing. She shoved her phone in her pocket as she passed the abandoned office building. She glanced at it. Always so creepy, especially at this hour. It was a building that was fully occupied during what her mother called the “dot-com boom,” but all her life it had been slowly crumbling back into the ground, never occupied again. Something behind one of the broken windows moved and Sunny took that as her cue to move faster.
“Just a rat or lizard,” she muttered. “Whatever, not my problem.”
She arrived at the compound entrance and used her key to open the small door beside the gate. When she closed the door behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief. She’d felt as if something was creeping after her, and now that she was home she finally could admit this to herself. Sunny walked that way all the time, sometimes even late at night when she was returning from the funky train. And she could work some pretty powerful protective jujus these days, like the one that smoothly kept everyone four feet away from her at all times or just good old gliding away if something made her uncomfortable. However, the feeling she was having got past all that. And now, standing in the compound, she was sure something was solidly off.
She looked up at the moon. Such a clear and warm night. Not good for Sasha. Moonlight always made juju, no matter what kind, stronger. He would go through it tonight. Was his effect reaching all the way here? Nothing was pulsing, but something was . . . wrong.
“Anyanwu?” she whispered. No answer. Sunny frowned. “Ugh, where are you when I need you?” At least the moonlight lit everything up around her now. She turned around and looked toward the entrance of her home; she couldn’t see it.
A spider the size of a house was standing in front of it.
Sunny’s mouth fell open. How had she not realized all the night creatures had gone silent? Even the warm breeze had stopped. Her mother wouldn’t see her if she looked out the window. Her mother wouldn’t even look out the window. Not at this moment. Sunny knew what she was feeling now. Udide had held time. And in the moment, without looking toward the yellow glowing light beside her, she knew that Anyanwu had finally come back to her.
“Sunny Anyanwu Nwazue Nimmmmmmm,” Udide said. Her voice vibrated into Sunny’s brain, electrical and gravelly.
“O-O-Oga Udide Okwanka, the Great Spider Artist, She who . . .” Sunny struggled to remember it all. In trying to avoid the inevitable, she’d studied up on Udide over the last year. Plus, the subject of Udide constantly came up while researching and learning Nsibidi. And in doing so, she’d become well versed in just who Udide was. “She who is the supreme artist who moves freely underground and through the wilderness. Creator of mmanwu from raffia straw. Spider the Artist.”
The hairs on Udide’s body vibrated pleasure as Sunny spoke her various names. With each vibration, Sunny shivered. She still remembered Orlu’s words from when they’d first met Udide, “Do not faint.” To faint would be a show of weakness Udide would find insulting.
“I greet you,” Sunny finished.
“Do you remember?” Udide asked.
Sunny shut her eyes and let out a great sigh. Here it was. Udide’s request. It was time. Finally. Sunny nodded, accepting that it was time to face the great spider and what she expected. “But why are you coming to me about this?” she asked. “It’s Chichi who—”
“You are Nimm, are you not? A warrior member of the clan.”
Sunny opened and then closed her mouth. She was still getting used to the idea. Nonetheless, it was Chichi who had known that the Nimm women had stolen the ghazal from Udide, not Sunny.
“Everyone is connected to something. Connection brings you benefits, but it also makes you responsible. You, your Chichi, Asuquo, Omni, Gao, Ndom, all Nimm women. The offspring of Asuquo will bear that responsibility . . . and so will you. Get it back for me. It is mine.”
She crept closer to Sunny, all of her legs moving with the harmony of water. Black, the hairs gray. Her body was poetry and nightmare. Sunny held still. As always, Udide’s breath smelled of burning houses and she blew it in Sunny’s face, her mandibles working, her many black eyes focused on Sunny.
“I must have it back in seven days,” Udide said. “There is something that is already here; I want all my tools available.” She moved closer. “It was stolen by your Chichi’s mother; they killed many of my children when it was taken. You and Chichi will get it back for me or you will regret it. All of humanity will. And then I will make you regret it more, for I have reason for such revenge. I will write a story you do not want to read. I will start with your Nimm Village, but I won’t stop there.”
Sunny gasped, “W-wipe out a whole village? But . . . but that’s genocide!”
“The highest stakes are not always death,” Udide said. “Of all people, you should know that. How many times have you died? And yet here you are.”
“Why all these threats?” Sunny whispered. She felt lightheaded. “You just said humanity depends on it. Isn’t that enough?”
Udide raised a leg and then brought it down. The tremor felt horrid and Sunny twitched. She could see them now. Tiny spiders. They skittered and scuttled, behind her eyes, in her veins. Tiny like nanobots. She shuddered some more, rubbing her forearms. She’d never liked spiders. Not at all.
“My venom runs through you, Sunny Anyanwu Nwazue,” Udide said.
“But not through me,” Anyanwu replied. Even in her fear, Sunny couldn’t help smirking.
“Arrogant as always, Anyanwu,” Udide said. “Challenge me? Very well.”
Sunny was looking into Udide’s eyes when she heard it, and for a moment she thought that Udide had decided to dry up and shed her skin. But it wasn’t something Sunny was seeing, it was what she was hearing. Something was crinkling, crumbling, cracking. Then she realized it wasn’t coming from the spider, it was coming from behind the house.
“You have seven days,” Udide repeated, working her mandibles. “For your own sake and everyone else’s . . . do not fail.” She raised her head, twisted her backside, and shot a web into the sky. She scuttled up the web at an incredible speed. When she was high in the sky, the strand extending so high Sunny couldn’t see what it attached to, Udide jumped! She descended with all eight legs stretched out.
“What the—” The spider was falling right toward her. Sunny ran. When she reached the door, she turned around just in time to see Udide slam into the concrete on the driveway. The impact shook everything, knocking Sunny to the ground. She curled herself into a protective ball as chips of rock and dust pelted her. When she looked back, she saw a giant hole in the driveway, its edge barely three feet from her sandals. She slowly crept up and looked into it. Udide was disappearing down the tunnel.
Then the hole began to fall in on itself. Falling and filling, then slabs of the driveway’s concrete refitted. Within minutes, the night was quiet and the driveway was intact, as if one of the most impactful beings on Earth hadn’t been there speaking to her, reminding her, assigning her . . .
Threatening her.
Sunny looked at the moon and her anxiety was so intense that it seemed to be waning right before her eyes. Time was slipping away. Until what? What was Udide going to do? Anyanwu stood where Udide had been; she did a spunky jig.
“It’s not funny,” Sunny said.
“Sometimes it is a good thing to laugh.”
Sunny quickly went inside. She’d had enough. She rushed to her room. She peeked into Ugonna’s room as she passed. He was a lump in his bed, his laptop open and playing rap music. She never understood how he could sleep with that playing.
She shut her bedroom door behind her, dumped her backpack on the floor, and fell facedown onto her bed. She felt Della buzzing beside her ear. “Give me a second,” she said. Then she heard it. Crinkling. She sat up immediately. The sound of dried leaves against dried leaves. Her heartbeat suddenly pounding in her chest, she turned toward the window where the sound was coming from.
“No, no, no, no!” she said, as she rushed to her window. It was open as always. She’d worked a permanent juju to keep mosquitos and anything that bit or carried venom outside. She blinked, feeling dizzy. That sound. Ekwensu. Sunny was suddenly back in Osisi, horrified with the realization that she and her friends were in the giant home of a most powerful masquerade. She was hanging from Ekwensu’s dried, packed leaves for dear life. She was hearing the dry crackle-crinkle of Ekwensu’s leaves. She was hearing it right now.
She grasped the window’s pane and looked outside, sure of what, who she’d see. She stared. And now she was dizzy with a blend of relief and deep, deep foreboding. This was not Ekwensu, but this was not better. This was at her home, and this was a strong warning. The high palm tree that grew right outside her window, just beyond the compound’s wall . . . it was not only dead, it looked as if it had been dead for a decade. Even in the moonlight, she could see this clearly. Its trunk was petrified, and its once green, leafy crown and rich red kernels were all a dead, dry brown. As the breeze blew, the dead tree made that crispy masquerade sound. Sunny shivered as she gazed at it. Udide had done this with a mere rise and fall of one of her legs.
Della flew beside her and buzzed harshly in her ear. She nodded and turned from her window. She smiled as she saw Della’s latest creation, and for a moment, she didn’t think about the dried-up, dead palm tree right outside her window that looked like some sort of masquerade waiting and waiting and waiting—and who wouldn’t wait for long. The wasp artist had created an abstract piece tonight. Placed right at the edge of her dresser, it looked like a tennis ball–sized infinity symbol made from hundreds of tiny white flower petals.
Sunny looked at it closely. The moment she was an inch from it, she was hit with its sweet, sweet scent. “Oooh!” She grinned, sniffing. The scent was so beautiful that for several minutes, it was all that filled her mind. She turned to Della, who sat at the edge of her dresser, waiting. “Della! Beautiful! Oh, my room . . . I’ll sleep so well tonight.”
Pleased, Della zipped around her head and zoomed into its nest, where it was quiet for the rest of the night.