18
ZED
They walked for an hour before they arrived at the cliff with the view that blew all of their minds. After the first few minutes, it was clear that Sunny needed to lead because twice the path forked in three directions and only she knew the way. The bright yellow Nsibidi path was always solid.
“At least we know that Nsibidi works here,” Sunny said. If anything, it was stronger here, the path allowing her to walk right up to it, even touch the glow. It was warm and insubstantial like incense smoke, but it always drifted back into place. She wondered how far they had before it led them to The Road.
“You think we should slow down?” she asked.
Chichi chuckled. “For what?”
Sunny only shrugged and grinned sheepishly.
“Better to get there sooner than later,” Chichi said.
“You sure about that?”
The jungle to their left and right remained thick for the whole hour they walked. Though she didn’t like how the shade muted everything, she was glad that at least she couldn’t see what occasionally screeched, growled, or thrashed in the bushes and treetops. Also, juju worked here and that was only clear because of the Nsibidi path. But of course, the mosquitos were just as sneaky and itchy as back home, so they’d each worked their mosquito-repelling juju twice, and it had worked. But not before one of the mosquitos had bitten Sunny on the arm.
The insect had been transparent and marigold yellow, and Sunny had fretted for a half hour about its bite being poisonous in a way they’d never experienced. She relaxed when all she felt was the usual itching. Sasha had twice spotted what he described as a small black horse on the path behind them. Not long after this, the path had suddenly veered to the left, feeding onto a wide, flat road that made Sunny’s heart feel like it was pounding in her throat.
However, after a few moments, Sunny concluded this wasn’t The Road . . . it was just a road, a futuristic one. They stood looking in one direction to the other, and their tentativeness saved them because three super-fast, sleek vehicles swept by, right through the Nsibidi path. The four of them crept single-file down the road, cars zooming past them every few minutes. And they were indeed cars . . . colorful cars with flat wheels made for the road; one had slowed down just enough for the driver (an old woman with a large gray Afro) to get a good look at them.
To Sunny’s relief, the path left the busy road and led back into the jungle. They soon arrived at a cliff with a breathtaking view. The cliff ran right along the path, the drop so deep that the sight of it made Sunny dizzy. The treetops of the dense forest below were so far away that the flock of red birds flying over them looked as small as pepper bugs. The jungle was a thousand shades of green, branches waving in the wind for miles and miles, clouds of mist hovering over some places. But this wasn’t what was most stunning about the view. The skyline was.
“My God,” Sunny said, rubbing her temples. “This is too much.”
Sunny had been born and raised in New York City with its famous skyline until she was nine years old. But even to her eye, this otherworldly skyline was epic. It was miles away and they were high enough to see horizon to horizon, and still she couldn’t see where the enormous city ended. And it wasn’t just the size of the city, it was the height that it reached and how the buildings looked.
“Even the smaller skyscrapers make the Burj Khalifa in Dubai look amateur,” Sasha said.
“And small,” Orlu added.
“They look almost like . . . I dunno,” Chichi said, squinting. “Look at the big one on the far left side. Doesn’t that look like a giant flower?”
They were quiet for a moment, just gazing at the sight. The buildings were various shades of green and brown, a few bright blue and pink and even red. And they did look like plants, like giant blades of grass, stems, and roots.
“That’s because they are,” Sunny whispered to herself, shivering with awe.
Chichi stepped to the edge of the cliff, holding her arms out as a strong wind blew in. “Whoo!” she shouted, her voice carrying. A group of something down below replied to her with various octaves of “Whooooooo!” Chichi turned to Sunny with a grin of delight, but Sunny just wanted to move on before whatever responded came to see who was calling to them.
The path led away from the drop, and soon they were surrounded by jungle again. Then they came to a clearing of fallen trees that cut across the path and ended in an old airplane. By this time, the wind had picked up and the sound of the waving leaves around them was almost deafening . . . yet beautiful. It was mystical, like music. Sunny could have listened to it for hours. So when she saw the airplane, her first reaction wasn’t fear or horror, it was wonder. All four of them stepped off the path and went to check it out.
“Looks like something from our world. How’d this get here?” she asked, gingerly stepping through the short grass.
“Who knows?” Chichi said. “Looks like it’s been here forever.”
The fallen trees had rotted and collapsed into themselves and no new trees had grown in their places. The clearing was full of sunshine and only marred by patches of the short, tough grass . . . and the trail of dry dirt that led up to the airplane, as if plants didn’t dare grow in the path of such a machine. The upper parts of the airplane were dark green, but something had eaten away at the paint on the lower half, exposing its gray-silver skeleton. The propeller that remained intact after the crash was slowly being torn apart by tree roots and rubbery vines. The nose pointed toward the sky, still carrying its original paint, though faded. Here was a face, a huge eye on each side of the plane and a wide toothy grin that extended from one side of the nose to the other. White teeth with red behind.
“That’s an A-26 Invader,” Orlu whispered.
Sunny looked at him, “Since when are you into war planes?”
He shrugged. “I know some.”
“You notice how there are no planes in the sky here?” Chichi said. “Even when we saw the whole sky from the cliff. Doesn’t look like the city would have an airport with the way it’s embedded into the forest with no cleared areas.”
“Yeah,” Sasha said, looking up at the plane’s big grin. “Place seems like paradise; what reason would they have to fly away from it?”
Sunny wanted to tell him that he was right, but she didn’t because he’d then ask why she thought this. And she didn’t want to tell anyone that. Well, there was one she did want to tell, but that one was somewhere up ahead and more standoffish than ever. She wanted to tell Anyanwu. Especially because Anyanwu didn’t know. Anyanwu hadn’t been with her when it happened.
Sunny stood on the path and looked back into the forest. Back in the direction of where they’d crossed over. When she’d crossed, something had happened to her that hadn’t happened to the others. If it had, one of them would have said something about it. Especially Sasha and Chichi. When Sunny had crossed the border, she’d fallen to the ground, but also . . . upward. She’d broken from her body and then spread over the forest, then even farther and farther and higher and higher. And in this way she’d seen, truly seen, where they were. She’d thought it had all been some sort of waking dream, a reflex of her brain to cope with the reality of stepping into another world.
The jungle she saw had been dense and expansive, and then she’d somehow seen the faraway city up close. It was like something out of the wildest science fiction novels. So futuristic that the city had gone not back, but forward to nature, nature being the greatest technology. It was like Osisi if Osisi were built by humans in the future, using the finest and most environmentally conscious tech. And beyond that huge city was not an ounce of human anything. She’d seen a large lake and one wide, rushing river, but it was mostly dense jungle. Then she was zooming out so far that she could see that the entire planet was mostly jungle. How could a whole planet . . . but then again, Earth was mostly water. And then she’d been in space, floating there like some alien. All this she was shown in the seconds before falling back into her body. Why had the Nsibidi brought them here?
“Hello . . . sir, Oga,” she heard Orlu say. His voice sounded startled.
Sunny whirled around.
There was a man standing before Orlu at the plane’s nose. The man was very old, very dark brown skinned, very bald, very muscular, and carried what looked like roots with large flowers tied to their ends. These flowers glowed a bright blue in the shade of the trees. He wore green pants and a top that looked like it was made of green netting. Behind him stood a furry creature the size of a dog. It looked like a giant guinea pig except for its dexterous . . . front and back . . . hands?
“A bush cow,” Sunny whispered, pleased to see something she’d read about in the field guide. She rushed to Sasha and Chichi, who stood closer to her. Slowly, the man put down his armful of plants.
“We’re kind of lost,” Orlu continued. “Just trying to find—”
“You have a papa,” he said.
“Um . . . yes,” Orlu said.
“Yet you’re not from here,” the man said. A statement, not a question.
Orlu looked back at his friends. He turned back to the man. “No.”
“You’re not from Ooni.”
“No, we—”
The man cocked his head and moved toward Orlu so fast that Orlu had no time to bring his hands up.
“Hey!” Sunny shouted. Sasha grabbed her arm.
“Wait,” Sasha told her.
“Shh!” Chichi said. “Guy doesn’t seem the violent type, just weird. I think he lives out here.”
They looked back. The man was staring Orlu down. Sniffing him.
“How do you know?” Sunny snapped.
“His body language,” Sasha said.
“Decades,” the man whispered, stepping back from Orlu. “I haven’t smelled that smell in decades. Never thought I’d smell it again. Never wanted to . . . but I kind of did.”
Orlu was more cautious than afraid now. “Are you from . . .”
“Biafra,” the man said.
Orlu stared at him. “What?”
“How did you children get here?” the man asked.
Sunny slowly joined Orlu, pulling Chichi with her. Sasha came, too. “The Desert Magician,” Sunny said. “He opened the way—”
The old man stiffened, stepping back. “I have forgotten how to speak Igbo,” he said. “It’s like something in me is broken. I cannot curse in the way that I want to curse. You stay here long enough and you lose it. The Desert Magician.” He kissed his teeth loudly. “That one changed my life without my permission.”
“The A-26 Invader was your plane,” Orlu said. “You crashed here.”
He nodded. “In 1967. And could never go back.”
“We’re trying to get . . . somewhere,” Orlu said. “But we’re lost.”
Sunny squinted at the man. Would he even understand where they were going? There was no way to tell if he was a Leopard Person . . . Did they even have Leopard People here? And if this man was a Lamb, how did he know about the papa? And would the council still somehow come for them if they revealed themselves to him?
“My name was Nnabuike, now I am just Zed because this is where my journey ended.” He waited, and it was Orlu who realized he was waiting for them to introduce themselves. They each did so, and Zed looked very pleased. “I don’t like strangers,” he said. “And now you are not.” The bush cow at his feet turned and started walking its bumbling walk back where they’d come from. “And that is Nnabuike. He’s a bush cow, and bush cows like to steal. He stole my old name. But I am fine with that. Come to my home. It will be dark soon enough, and whether you come with me or not, wherever you think you’re going, you won’t get there today.”
They followed him for twenty minutes, the bush cow leading the way, knowing which paths to turn onto. Orlu walked with Zed, talking to him about goodness knew what, and Sunny lagged behind with Sasha and Chichi.
“This jungle is wild, man,” Sasha said. He ran a foot over a bunch of fern-like plants, and tiny red flowers opened up between the tiny leaves. “Seen plants that fold up when you touch them, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen ones that open and basically say, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ ”
“I think I see something up there in the trees,” Chichi said, pointing.
The three of them looked up, and, indeed, looking right back at them from the crown of a tall skinny palm tree was a fat, furry, gray blob about the size of a child with eyes so large Sunny could see them from where she stood.
“That wasn’t in the field guide excerpt,” Chichi said.
The thing in the tree twitched its face (for there was really no head) to turn and watch as they continued on. Sunny pressed her fingertips to her temples. She needed to rest, to stop moving so that she could digest all that had happened without missing anything. She felt dizzy, stumbling to the side a bit. Thankfully Chichi and Sasha were so preoccupied with spotting another of those fat, gray, furry mammals in the treetops that they didn’t notice.
Sunny looked at her feet as she tried to reach out to Anyanwu. And that was how she saw Zed’s home before she arrived there. Did he build this himself? Sunny asked. She smiled when Anyanwu responded to her.
Doubtful.
It looked like a baobab tree . . . It was a tree. Another one with a function that was more than just being a tree. It was a house, and who knew how long it had taken to become this. Anyanwu floated all around it, and Sunny found she had to concentrate extra hard on walking as she was paying such close attention to what Anyanwu was seeing. The front door was round like a hobbit’s door, but it was part of the tree. It had been grown that way, not carved out or installed. She could only see that it was a door because it seemed logical due to the location of the two large, oblong windows to its left and right. The outline of the door was something Anyanwu had to look at very closely.
The glass in the windows was thick and smoothly embedded into the wood. There were other windows all around the building and another door in the back . . . Well, maybe the front was on the other side. She actually couldn’t tell which side was the front. The whole house was surrounded by a sort of cleared area just like the baobab tree back in the Nimm Village. The jungle didn’t encroach over this invisible perimeter, leaving the flattened red soil free of even a bud.
Then Anyanwu went up and over the tree, which was quite high. At its top lived another of those furry blob things. It reacted to Anyanwu’s presence by trying to sniff her with its wide, flat, velvety nose. It even had its own tiny room that the tree seemed have grown for it up there. Anyanwu reached down and patted it.
When they arrived at the house, Sunny stayed quiet while the others walked around it and asked Zed a thousand questions. She could see Anyanwu standing near the front door, the blob thing with her, then she saw her disappear inside.
“Come in,” Zed said, stepping to the door. “I’m sure you all could use a hot meal.” He touched the door and it silently swung up, the bush cow quickly trotting in before him.
“Hell yeah,” Sasha said, following Zed in.
“Thank you,” Orlu said.
“What do you have?” Chichi asked. She turned back. “Sunny, hurry up.”
Sunny was about to enter, then something caught her eye. She looked at the open door and then to her left. The path. It had changed to a more detailed cascade of lively Nsibidi, swirling lines and loops of it, but all still remaining within a line that was about two feet wide. Some of the symbols were the size of a tennis ball, others swept yards in length. Cartwheeling, wriggling, twirling, stretching, and shrinking into a path that began just beyond the house and went into the forest.
Sunny hesitated for a moment. She turned and started toward the path. “Oh,” she whispered. It was almost as if it were aware that she was aware of it and thus decided to truly show itself. Now it stretched from her feet up the path. Up close, the symbols looked like insubstantial living things. Protozoan ghosts, she thought. She bent down and tried to touch the symbols, and her hand passed right through them. She brought her hand to her nose; it smelled floral and smoky, like incense. She moved closer. The Nsibidi ran from her feet, farther up along the path. “And this is the direction we’ll continue in,” she said to herself aloud. “Cool. Good to know.”
“Sunny, what are you doing?” Chichi called from the doorway behind her. “Come on.”
“Just looking at the way we’re supposed to go. The path looks different now.”
“I guess that’s not all that surprising when you consider everything,” Chichi said. “I’ll bet it manifests a little differently in every world. It’s not going to disappear or anything, right?”
Sunny considered this possibility. “I hope not.”
They both paused for a moment, the uncomfortable question of What if it does? hanging between them. Chichi shrugged. “Come and eat. He’s got jollof rice, plantain, and some kind of roasted meat he says tastes better than chicken!”
The meat was from a large mammal and it was delicious. Everything was. “My God, this is the best food I’ve ever eaten,” Sasha said, sitting back in his chair and patting his belly. He sat up and took another skewer of what Zed called orb fish.
“Ginen food makes Earth food taste like sawdust,” Zed said. “Hopefully when you return home, you won’t quite remember the taste. Otherwise, you’re ruined for life. Nothing will ever measure up.”
It was all truly scrumptious, but between seeing the Nsibidi path extending from her to the closed door and the hyper-futuristic quality of Zed’s weird tree home, Sunny couldn’t fully focus on the food. She sat back and looked around yet again. The inside of the house was far more spacious than it looked from the outside, with a high ceiling and large main room. But also, Zed had next to nothing cluttering up the place.
On one side was the dinner table and on the other side a fireplace. There was nothing on the smooth walls, though Zed said when places on the wall’s surface were touched, drawers and cabinets and even the inside of what he called a “cool plant” would open up. And above the fireplace was a bud that projected “Networks.” All the lights in the home were “glow lilies,” and twice Sunny saw what Zed called hush monkeys, monkeys that lived in his home. He said they had an overly focused need to pick up any refuse on the floor, and they even cleaned up after themselves.
The floors were soft and green with a type of moss Zed said was unaffected by foot traffic. Sunny took her shoes off, and the softness was a dream. Chichi had even gone to lie on it near the fireplace on the other side of the large space. Zed’s bedroom was up a flight of stairs, a small room that was the only room upstairs. “For now,” he said. “In another two years, a second room will grow. There’s already a bud of one. I use it as a closet.”
“Why won’t your bedroom just get bigger?” Sasha asked.
Zed shrugged. “When a tree decides a room is done, it’s done. This one decided about three years ago.”
“Can we help you clear the table?” Orlu asked.
Zed waved a hand and the hush monkeys came out. Where they’d been hanging out all this time, Sunny didn’t know. They were about the size of cats with long black tails, dark brown fur, and white furred manes around their black faces. One of them slapped at Sunny’s ankles as it passed her, and she quickly moved aside. They sniffed at and ate the leftovers, took the plates, tidied up, and within minutes the table was clear.
Sunny, Sasha, and Orlu joined Chichi on the floor.
“I have an oil bath in the back that you can each use, and if you are fine with it, you can sleep here for the night. As long as you don’t mind the hush monkeys joining you. They’re very clean and won’t mind being around you as long as you are clean, too.”
“Oil bath?” Sunny asked.
“Oil cleans better than water,” he said. “And it keeps you looking fresh, too. Would any of you like to take one?”
They all looked at each other. “Do you have a . . . normal shower?” Chichi asked. “With, uh, water?” she grinned sheepishly.
He shrugged. “If you like. I don’t use it much, these days, but I do.”
“Yes!” Chichi said.
Sunny bit her lip and spoke up. “I’d like to try the oil bath.”
Sasha laughed loudly and Orlu frowned at her.
“Really?” Chichi asked.
“Yeah,” Sunny said. She was curious.
Zed led Sunny to the far side of the house and opened a door. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll get you a robe, some clothes, and a towel.”
When he left, she looked around. Large glow lilies on the low ceiling gave the room a sunshiny feel, despite the fact that it was night. The walls were rounded at the corners, and they were polished so smooth they shone. However, the floor was rough with tiny ridges—and for good reason. In the center of the room was a wide tree stump with its insides carved out and filled to the brim with clear oil. The fragrant woody smell was probably from the oil.
“These should be okay,” Zed said, reentering the room with his arms full of clothes. “From the family stack. Plenty where those came from, don’t worry. Keep what you need.”
“Thank you,” Sunny said. “You have family here?”
“After so many decades? You can’t live here and not have family. Ooni people never forget their own, even if you’ve been gone a hundred generations.”
“Oh, okay.” She didn’t understand what he meant, but it sounded cool.
“So the bath is ready . . . it always is,” he said. “It looks like a tree stump, but it’s alive. When you finish bathing, the oil will drain through an opening here.” He pointed at the base of the stump that touched the wall. “It goes into the soil and feeds the house.”
“A symbiotic relationship,” Sunny said.
He nodded. “Take as long as you like. To come out, just touch the door.” Then he left. Sunny waited until she heard the door click and seal itself. She looked at her clothes and grimaced. No amount of antiperspirant could freshen them. She looked around one more time and then undressed. When she got into the oil, she sighed. It was soft and warm and smelled wonderful—like the sage her auntie was always burning. The bath had a bench, and when she sat on it, she was submerged all the way to her shoulders.
“Oh man, this is so awesome,” she whispered. She felt more buoyant in this oil than in water, so there was an odd sensation that she was floating. After a few minutes, her skin felt a little itchy, and when she rubbed it, a dirty layer sloughed off. It was both gross and satisfying. This was like the spa treatment her mother was always talking about.
Sunny scrubbed all over and the dead skin came off and sunk to the bottom of the bath. Then she took a breath and submerged her whole head under the oil, shaking out her hair and massaging her scalp. When she came up for air, her Afro was weighed down with the lovely nourishing oil, resting near her shoulders. She giggled and did it again and a third time. Then she sat back for a few minutes, feeling so relaxed that she even fell asleep for a moment.
She began thinking about the weird thing that had happened when she crossed into this world, but she pushed it away. “Nah,” she said. “Just chill, Sunny. Be in the moment.” She smiled. She was here. She was alive. She knew where she was going. Without realizing she was doing it, she called to Anyanwu. How could she not share this moment with herself? No answer. She called again. No answer.
Then she was thinking of Udide. And what Udide would do if they failed to bring back the ghazal. And those Nimm cousins punching Chichi. And how she was doubled . . . broken, unable to ever be fixed. She wasn’t a triumph, she was a tragedy. Her eyes stung with tears. “Enough of this,” she muttered, getting up.
The ridged floor was perfect for preventing slipping, even with all the oil that dripped from her body. As she stood there, she saw that there was something about the ridges that channeled the dripping oil to a hole near the base of the trunk. Whoever had created this place had thought of everything. There was a spiderweb in the window with a large black spider sitting in the center, and she could see why. There were gnat-like insects who hovered around the hole, landing on it and then flying away. “Just a normal spider,” she muttered. “As long as you stay over there, we’re cool.”
She toweled off and put on the clothes Zed had given her, light green pants and a matching top made of a thin cloth. Very comfortable. She sat and braided her softened hair into three thick braids and then wrapped them with the cloth he’d left for her of the same material. There were no mirrors in the room, but she didn’t need one to know that that bath left her skin and hair looking fantastic. She put her glasses on and rejoined the others.
They were already changed and lying down in the main room when she came out.
“Took you long enough,” Sasha said.
She laughed, plopping down on the couch. “It was worth it.”
“Told you,” Zed said from upstairs. His bush cow, Nnabuike, stood beside him, munching on a thick stalk that ended in a yellow flower.
“It was fantastic!” Sunny said.
“Need anything else? I’m going to bed.”
“Nothing else,” Sunny said. “Thank you so much, Zed.”
He nodded and went into his room, followed by Nnabuike, who’d finished his flower stalk.
“The man is too nice,” Sasha said.
“His bush cow is sneaky,” Orlu said. “Caught him rummaging in my backpack. Tried to steal my ChapStick!”
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Chichi said. “We’re lucky to be in here. That jungle at night is probably so treacherous”
“Maybe that’s why everyone here is so nice,” Sasha said. “How else could anyone survive here? Everyone has to help everyone.”
“We are definitely not on Earth anymore,” Chichi said.
Sunny slept on the couch, Orlu on a mat on the floor beside her, Chichi and Sasha beside him. Sunny was just settling down when she felt one of the hush monkeys come, sniff her legs, and then stretch out on the couch with her. Five more came and nestled down among Sasha, Chichi, and Orlu, too. For about a minute, Sunny lay awake freaking out about the fact that a monkey was sleeping on her, and then she was fast asleep, too.
She was awakened by her cell phone. It wasn’t buzzing or ringing. It was cool in her pocket, like a piece of ice. This was actually not unpleasant at all, since the room was a little warm. A soft light was shining through the windows; it must have been just after dawn. She brought her phone from her pant pocket. On the screen, in blue letters with a black background, it said COOL MODE ACTIVE. She held her phone to her cheek. This place has done something to my phone, she thought. Phones don’t air-condition. She turned to show Orlu, but he wasn’t there.
She sat up, looking around. Sasha and Chichi were both asleep on their mats. She heard Orlu’s voice; it sounded like he was outside. She crept to the window on the side of the house opposite from where they’d entered and pressed her face to the glass. The window was cracked open, so she could hear them perfectly—Orlu, Zed, and whatever those things were.
“They have no official name here,” Zed said. “I call them Gari. They are kind.”
Two of the large gray blobs rolled to Orlu, leaning on him. Slowly, he reached a hand down and patted the top of one as Anyanwu had. It looked up at him with its huge eyes and he took his hand away. “You sure they’re nice?” he asked, his voice shaky.
“Yes. And they’re harmless,” Zeb said.
The Gari leaned closer and pushed some of its blobby body under his hand. “Ooh,” he said. “Warm.”
“They saved me,” Zed was saying. “When I crashed, the front window was smashed in. As the plane was slapping into the jungle, one of them jumped in and inflated like those fish in the ocean. That’s the only reason I survived.”
“Did you know you’d . . . crossed here?”
Zed frowned. “That magician appeared in my cockpit not long before my engine failed. I was flying over the jungle near Calabar. Then he disappeared.” He paused. “The war was bad. We could not have won it. But we needed to.” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
They were quiet for a moment, Orlu kneeling down to let the Gari see his face up close. He laughed.
Another Gari rolled in a circle around Zed, though Zed seemed too deep in his thoughts to care. “The people here are a mostly kind, content people,” he said. He sat down on the dusty dirt, the Gari still rolling circles around him. “The Ooni Kingdom is like Africa if it were never Africa, you know what I mean? Five thousand years from now! And they don’t care for air travel. No need for it. So when I crashed, they knew I was an alien. But these Gari were what convinced them that I was human. You know the nickname they are given here? ‘Little judges.’ Ooni people don’t pay them much mind, but they will listen to them when they judge a thing.”
The Gari that had been inspecting Orlu rolled toward Sunny, and Orlu and Zed turned to her. She stepped back from the window as the Gari rolled right up the glass to the top of the house.
“Sunny,” Orlu said.
Sunny smiled. “I didn’t want to interrupt.” Plus, she didn’t want one of those things pressing its weird fufu body to her.
“Sunny day,” Zed said.
“It’s a greeting,” Orlu added, seeing her confusion.
“Oh,” Sunny said. “Sunny day.”
Zed smiled and nodded. “Are the others awake?”
“We are now,” Sasha said, coming up behind Sunny.
“Are those breakfast?” Chichi asked, pointing at the Gari behind Orlu.
It muttered something that sounded almost like human language . . . offended human language, and then rolled to and up the side of the house.
The two women arrived just after Sunny and her friends had finished breakfast and were packing their things. They were muscular and wore the most beautiful dresses Sunny had ever seen. But she wondered how heavy the dresses were, since they were made entirely of tightly woven, tiny, colorful glass beads. The one who was tall like Sunny wore a close-fitting yellow dress over her lean frame. The other wore a red and white dress and had vines for bracelets on each wrist.
“They just need some company and direction,” Zed told the women. He turned to the four of them. “This is Ogwu.” He motioned to the tall one. “And this is Ten.” He motioned to the one with the vines on her wrists. “Meet Sasha, Orlu, Chichi, and Sunny.”
“Where are you going?” Ogwu asked the four of them.
After a moment, Sunny pointed in the direction she’d seen the Nsibidi path extend and then said, “That way.”
Ogwu frowned, looking and rubbing the yellow beads of her dress. “Well, that’s not—”
“The Gari suggest they go to the southwestern market,” Zed said. He looked at Sunny. “It’s in the same direction.”
“How do they . . . How do you talk to them?” Sunny asked.
The two women laughed and Zed rolled his eyes. “I understand their language. It’s in the way they move and grunt. Ooni people for some reason find this hilarious. But it doesn’t keep them from seeking answers from me and the Gari for all kinds of things.” He looked at Ten. “Like where husbands go after the Festival of Mirrors.”
The smile immediately dropped from Ten’s face.
“Anyway,” Zed said, turning back to them. “The Gari think you should go to Gra Gra.”
“Eh!” Ten said. “Why?” She looked at them and asked, “Is where you are going terrible? Gra Gra only sends people to terrible places.”
“Who’s Gra Gra?” Chichi asked, pulling Sunny to her as she frowned at the woman.
“These are just children,” Ogwu snapped, then she laughed. “But . . . that man will consume them, Zed. You sure that’s a good idea?”
Now Ten was laughing, too. These two women seemed to have their own ideas of what was funny.
“He’s a man who knows much,” Zed said to Chichi. “Don’t mind them. They enjoy exaggeration.”
“Are you going to go with them, Zed?” Ogwu asked.
“No,” he said. “These four can handle themselves better than you think.”
Sasha sneezed. “Excuse me,” he muttered.
“Hey,” Ten said, pointing at Sasha.
“What?” he said.
“You see that?” she asked Ogwu.
“Yes.”
“See what?” Sunny asked.
“I sneezed,” Sasha said, frowning. “I don’t have a cold or anything.”
“What’s cold? It’s nice outside,” Ogwu said.
“Ah, I see,” Ten said. “They’re Village People.”
Ogwu nodded. “Been a while since I met Village People.”
“I knew the moment I saw them. They’d just arrived and this one already had a papa,” Zed said. He turned to Orlu. “Here, papas are common, but only those who, uh, know what they are doing can command them.”
“Village People,” Ogwu said.
“Oh,” Orlu said.
Sunny frowned. Back home, the phrase “village people” was a very negative term for people and evil spirits who wished misfortune on you. Here, it was another way of saying Leopard Person.
“Fine, fine, we’ll take them,” Ogwu said. “Village People can handle Gra Gra. Maybe.”
Zed walked with them up the path for a few minutes before turning onto a smaller one that led into a darker part of the jungle. Before he’d walked away, he’d taken Orlu to the side and they’d spoken for a few minutes.
When Sunny asked what that was about, Orlu said, “He doubts his family survived the war, but he wants me to check on them . . . when we get back . . . and some other things. And he gave me this.” He held up his right wrist, on which he now wore a bracelet of pinkish coral beads. “It’s the only thing he owned from Earth. He doesn’t want them anymore.”
“Why?”
Orlu shrugged. “He’s left it all behind, mostly. The war wasn’t good to him, Nigeria wasn’t. Most of his immediate family was killed in the North in the Igbo massacres—five brothers, his parents, aunts, uncles. All he had left was a sister and his wife when he went off to fight.”
“That’s terrible,” Sunny said, looking at her feet. Before the Igbo rebels declared the self-made country of Biafra, seceding from the country of Nigeria, the Hausa and Fulani people were killing Igbos in the North. Though most of Sunny’s relatives were in the southeast, Sunny had relatives who never made it back, too. It was a dark time the elders would always talk about when they got together. She looked at Orlu. “Can I see it?”
He handed it to her, and she put it on. It was weighty. She took off her glasses and held it up close. The beads were rough, the holes through them narrow. “This is nice. These are the real thing.”
“You can tell?”
“Yep. My mother loves coral,” she said. “She’s got this big chunky coral necklace from her wedding day. It’s worth two million naira. And she’s got this blue coral bracelet that looks like it belongs to Mami Wata. She taught me all she knows about how to tell the paste junk from the real thing.”
“Can I have it back now?” Orlu asked.
“No.”
He laughed and rolled his eyes.
Sunny glanced at the papa on his left arm, swallowing the question on her lips. The less attention he pays to it, the sooner it’ll heal, she reminded herself.
The women showed them through a village of green houses that looked to be made of braided plants, and they were quickly surrounded by curious children around five to eight years old on their way to school. They wore uniforms of yellow pants and tops embroidered with red beads, and Sunny noticed that almost all of them wore vines around their wrists.
“Sunny day,” they said, their curiosity focusing most on Orlu.
“Did you name it?” one girl asked.
“What did you do?” another asked.
A boy tapped Orlu on the shoulder and asked, “Did it come in your sleep?”
“Where are you from?”
The path had widened, and twice they’d all had to squeeze to the side to let one of the sleek, flat vehicles pass, neither of which had distracted the kids one bit.
“A land far, far away,” Orlu said to the kid closest to him.
“Give it this,” a girl said, handing Orlu a palm leaf. When Orlu held it to the papa, it grabbed the leaf with its third arm and started to eat, gently working its insectile mandibles.
“Thank you!” Orlu said.
The girl laughed and walked off. A deep bell rang and the rest of the children ran off.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Chichi said. She wore a new necklace of leaves.
“It’s a school village,” Ten said. “The children are always comfortable here. You don’t want to know what would happen if any of those kids felt scared and called for help.”
“I do,” Sasha said. He was up front walking with Ogwu.
“See those trees next to the classrooms?”
“Those are classrooms?” he asked. “I thought they were houses.”
“Everything in the village is the school,” she said. “If you tried to harm one of the students, the Nchebe Ants would come down those trees and no one would recognize you if you lived.”
“Like . . . ant ants?” Sasha asked. “The tiny black insects who always have things to do?”
“Busy insects, yes, but they are white and nearly as big as you,” she said.
“Let’s walk faster,” Sasha said, doing exactly that.