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- Herausgeber: CASSAVA REPUBLIC
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Sunny Nwazue is back in this gripping sequel to Nnedi Okorafor's What Sunny Saw in the Flames. Sunny has settled into life at the Leopard Society, with friends Orlu, Chichi and Sasha. Her magic powers continue to grow under the tutelage of her mentor Sugar Cream, as Sunny studies her strange Nsidi book and begins to understand her spirit face, Anyanwu. But Sunny cannot escape from her destiny, and she soon finds she must travel to the shadowy town of Osisi. The journey is fraught with danger, taking Sunny through unseen worlds, and awaiting her is a battle to determine humanity's fate. Sunny & The Mysteries of Osisi is a compelling tale combining culture, fantasy, history and magic.
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“The sheer joy of something like the ‘Sunny’ series is the feeling that I simply have not read this before, and that is so rare… It’s fantasy, yet it comes from a cultural place that isn’t the stuff we’ve already seen 1,000 times before.”—Neil Gaiman
“The reader gets tangled up in Sunny’s journey in the most delicious of ways. The lush world and high-stakes plot are fun, imaginative, timely, and authentic. Sunny as a character is beautiful, strong, and resilient, and her host of friends and allies are well-drawn and compelling, adding to the magic of the story. Okorafor’s novel will ensnare readers and keep them turning pages until the very end.”—Booklist, starred review
“Fans of What Sunny Saw in the Flames will fall again for the wondrously intriguing fantasy world in modern-day Nigeria in this imaginative sequel… Don’t miss this beautifully written fantasy that seamlessly weaves inventive juju with contemporary Nigerian culture and history.”—School Library Journal, starred review
“Okorafor invents wild, fantastical creatures and worlds but she has a rarer gift too: She can describe the effect of using magic—the emotional and physiological repercussions of it—so viscerally, it’s as if it were a fever we’d contracted ourselves… the action sequences are enthralling. Okorafor describes Sunny’s moments of anguish beautifully, as well as her feelings of kinship and wonder. This is a novel about a girl who’s just trying to find her place in the world, when she’s called upon to save it.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A compelling and often terrifying version of one of fantasy literature’s most enduring traditions, [a perilous quest], recast in a thoroughly original way.”—Chicago Tribune
“Mythology, fantasy, science fiction, history, and magic blend into a compelling tale that will hold readers spellbound.”—Chicago Review of Books
“A charming adventure stocked with a house-sized spider, an Afro comb gifted by a goddess, and a giant flying rodent—one who loves hip-hop.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Sunny and the Mysteries of Osisi is Nnedi Okorafor’s sequel to her award-winning novel What Sunny Saw in the Flames… As always, Okorafor effortlessly blends in critiques and observations of modern culture, reflecting on police brutality; the casual, familial misogyny in even the most modern households; and the cultural misunderstanding that can put Africans and African Americans at odds. This book, although written for young adults, is sophisticated in parsing out these adult issues, and it is a salve for grown-ups who may see themselves reflected in these very real, funny kids.”—The Washington Post
Dedicated to the stories that constantly breathe on my neck. I see you.
NSIBIDI FOR “LOVE”
CONTENTS
1
TAINTED PEPPERS
It was stupid to come out here at night, especially considering the disturbing dreams Sunny had been having. The dreams Sunny suspected were not dreams at all. However, her mentor, Sugar Cream, had challenged her, and Sunny wanted to prove her wrong.
Sunny and Sugar Cream had gotten into one of their heated discussions; this one was about modern American girls and their general lack of skills in the kitchen. The old, twisted woman had looked condescendingly at Sunny, chuckled, and said, “You’re so Americanised, you probably can’t even make pepper soup.”
“Yes, I can, ma,” Sunny insisted, annoyed and insulted. Pepper soup wasn’t hard to make at all.
“Oh, sure, but you’re a Leopard Person, aren’t you? So your soup should be made with tainted peppers, not those weak things the Lambs like to grind up and use.”
Sunny had read a recipe for tainted pepper soup in her Fast Facts for Free Agents book but really, truthfully, honestly, she couldn’t live up to Sugar Cream’s challenge of making it. When making tainted pepper soup, if you made the tiniest mistake (like using table salt instead of sea salt), it resulted in some scary consequence like the soup becoming poisonous or exploding. This had discouraged Sunny from ever attempting to make it.
Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to admit her inability to make the soup. Not to Sugar Cream, whom she’d had to prove herself to by defeating one of the most powerful criminals the Leopard community had seen in centuries. Sunny was a mere free agent, a Leopard Person raised among Lambs and therefore ignorant of so much. Still, her chi who showed itself as her spirit face was Anyanwu, someone great in the wilderness. But really, what did it matter if you had been a big badass in the spirit world? Now was now, and she was Sunny Nwazue. She still had to prove to the Head Librarian that she was worthy of having her as a mentor.
So instead, Sunny said she’d leave the Obi Library grounds, despite the fact that it was just after midnight, to go pick three tainted chilli peppers from the patch that grew down the dirt road. Sugar Cream had only rolled her eyes and promised to have all the other ingredients for the soup on her office desk when Sunny returned. Including some freshly cut goat meat.
Sunny left her purse and glasses behind. She was especially glad to leave her glasses. They were made of green feather-light plastic, and she still wasn’t used to them. Over the last year, though being a Leopard Person had lessened her sensitivity to light, it hadn’t done a thing for her eyesight. She’d always had better eyes than most with albinism, but that didn’t mean they were great.
After her eye exam last month, her doctor had finally said what Sunny knew he’d eventually say: “Let’s get you some glasses.” They were the type that grew shaded in the sunlight, and she hated them. She liked seeing true sunshine, though it hurt her eyes. Nevertheless, lately her eyes’ inability to keep out sunlight had begun to make the world look so washed out that she could barely see any detail. She’d even tried wearing a baseball cap for a week, hoping the peak would shade her eyes. It didn’t help at all, so glasses it was. But whenever she could, she took them off. And this was the best thing about the night.
“I hope the goat meat is hard for her to get at this hour,” Sunny muttered to herself as she stomped out of the Obi Library’s entrance onto the narrow dirt road.
Not a minute later, she felt a mosquito bite her ankle. “Oh, come on,” she muttered. She walked faster. The night was hot and cloying, a perfect companion to her foul mood. It was rainy season, and the clouds had dropped an hour’s worth of rain the day before. The ground had expanded, and the trees and plants were breathing. Insects buzzed excitedly, and she heard small bats chirping as they fed on them. Back the other way, towards the entrance of Leopard Knocks, business was in full swing. It was the hour when both the quieter and noisier transactions were made. Even from where she was, she could hear a few of the noisier ones, including two Igbo men loudly discussing the limitations and the unreasonable cost of luck charms.
Sunny picked up her pace again. The sooner she got to the field where the wild tainted peppers grew, the sooner she could get back to the Obi Library and show Sugar Cream that she indeed had no idea how to make tainted pepper soup, one of the most common dishes of Nigeria’s Leopard People.
Sunny sighed. She’d come to the field several times with her friend Chichi to pick tainted peppers. They grew wild here and were not as concentrated as the ones sold in the Leopard Knocks produce huts and shops, but Sunny liked having functioning taste buds, thank you very much. It was Chichi who always made the soup, and Chichi liked it mild, too. Plus, the tainted peppers here didn’t cost a thing, and you could get them at any time, day or night.
It was the time of the year when the peppers grew fat, or so Orlu and Chichi said. Sunny had only learned of Leopard Knocks’ existence within the last year and a half. This was far from enough time to know the habits of the wild tainted peppers that grew near the fields of flowers used to make juju powder. Chichi and Orlu had been coming to Leopard Knocks all their lives. So Sunny was inclined to believe them. The peppers loved heat and sun, and despite the recent rains, there had been plenty of both.
When she reached the patch, she gathered two nice red ones and put them in her heat-resistant basket. The small patch of tainted peppers glowed like a little galaxy. The yellow-green flash of fireflies was like the occasional alien ship. Beyond the glowing peppers was a field of purple flowers with white centres, which would be picked, dried, and crushed to make many types of the common juju powders. Sunny admired the sight of the field in the late night.
She had been paying attention; she even noticed a tungwa lazily floating yards away just above some of the flowers. Round and large as a basketball, its thin brown skin grazed the tip of a flower. “Ridiculous thing,” she muttered as it exploded with a soft pop, quietly showering tufts of black hair, bits of raw meat, white teeth, and bones on the pepper plants. She knelt down to look for the third pepper she wanted to pick. Two minutes later, she looked up again. All she could do was blink and stare.
“What… the… hell?” she whispered.
She clutched her basket of tainted peppers. She had a sinking feeling that she needed all her senses right now. She was lightheaded from the intensity of her confusion… and her fear.
“Am I dreaming?”
Where the field of purple flowers had been was a lake. Its waters were calm, reflecting the bright half-moon like a mirror. Did the peppers exude some sort of fume that caused hallucinations? She wouldn’t be surprised. When they were overly ripe, they softly smoked and sometimes even sizzled. But she was not only seeing a lake, she smelled it, too—jungly, with the tang of brine, wet. She could even hear frogs singing.
Sunny considered turning tail and running back to the Obi Library. Best to pretend you don’t see anything, a little voice in her head warned. Go back! In Leopard Knocks, sometimes the smartest thing to do when you were a kid who stumbled across some unexplainable weirdness was to turn a blind eye and walk away.
Plus, she had her parents to consider. She was out late on a Saturday evening and she was in Leopard Knocks, a place non-Leopard folk including her parents weren’t allowed to know about, let alone set foot in. Her parents couldn’t know about anything Leopard-related. All they knew was that Sunny was not home, and it was due to something similar to what Sunny’s mother’s mother used to do while she was alive.
Sunny’s mother was probably worried sick but wouldn’t ask a thing when Sunny returned home. And her father would angrily open the door and then wordlessly go back to his room where he, too, would finally be able to sleep. Regardless of the tension between her and her parents, Sunny quietly promised them in her mind that she would remain safe and sound.
But Sunny’s dreams had been crazy lately. If she started having them while awake and on her feet, this would be a new type of problem. She had to make sure this wasn’t that. She brought out her house key and clicked on the tiny flashlight she kept on the ring. Then she crept to the lip of the lake for a better look, pushing aside damp, thick green plants that were not tainted peppers or purple flowers. The ground stayed dry until she reached the edge of the water where it was spongy and waterlogged.
She picked up and threw a small stone. Plunk. The water looked deep. At least seven feet. She flashed her tiny weak beam across it just in time to see the tentacle shoot out and try to slap around her leg. It missed, grabbing and pulling up some of the tall plants instead. Sunny shrieked, stumbling away from the water. More of the squishy, large tentacles shot out.
She whirled around and took off, managing seven strides before tripping over a vine and then falling onto some flowers, yards from the lake. She looked back, relieved to be a safe distance from whatever was in the water. She shuddered and scrambled to her feet, horrified. She couldn’t believe it. But not believing didn’t make it any less true. The lake was now less than two feet from her, its waters creeping closer by the second. It moved fast like a rolling wave in the ocean, the land, flowers and all, quietly tumbling into it.
The tentacles slipped around her right ankle before she could move away. They yanked her off her feet, as two then three more tentacles slapped around her left ankle, torso, and thigh. Grass ground into her jeans and T-shirt and then bare skin on her back as it dragged her towards the water. Sunny had never been a great swimmer. When she was a young child, swimming was always something done in the sun, so she avoided it. It was night-time, but she definitely wanted to avoid swimming now.
She thrashed and twisted, fighting terror; panic would get her nowhere. This was one of the first things Sugar Cream had taught her on the first day of her mentorship. Sugar Cream. She’d be wondering where Sunny was. She was almost to the water now.
Suddenly, one of the tentacles let go. Then another. And another. She was… free. She scrambled back from the water, feeling the mud and soggy leaves and flowers mash beneath her. She stared at the water, dizzy with adrenaline-fuelled fright. For a moment, she bizarrely saw through two sets of eyes, those of her spirit face and her mortal one. Through them, she simultaneously saw water and somewhere else. The double vision made her stomach lurch. She held her belly, blinking several times. “But I’m okay, I’m okay,” she whispered.
When she looked again, in the moonlight, bobbing at the surface of the lake was a black-skinned woman with what looked like bushy long, long dreadlocks. She laughed a guttural laugh and dived back into the deep. She has a fin, Sunny thought. She giggled. “Lake monsters are real and Mami Wata is real.” Sunny leaned back on her elbows for a moment, shut her eyes, and took a deep breath. Orlu would know about the lake beast; he’d probably know every detail about it from its scientific name to its mating patterns. She giggled some more. Then she froze because there was loud splashing coming from behind her, and the land beneath her was growing wetter and wetter. Sunny dared a look back.
Roiling in the water was what looked like a ball of tentacles filling the lake. The beginnings of a bulbous wet head emerged. Octopus! A massive octopus. It tilted its head back, exposing a car-sized powerful beak. The monster loudly chomped down and opened it several times and then made a strong hacking sound that was more terrifying than if it had roared.
The woman bobbed between her and the monster, her back to Sunny. The beast paused, but Sunny could see it still eyeing her. Sunny jumped up, turned, and ran. She heard the flap of wings and looked up just in time to see a huge dark winged figure zip by overhead. “What?” she breathed. “Is that…” But she had to save her breath for running. She reached the dirt road and, without a look back or up, kept running.
The pepper soup smelled like the nectar of life. Strong. It was made with tainted peppers and goat meat. There was fish in it, too. Mackerel? The room was warm. She was alive. The pattering of rain came from outside through the window. The sound drew her to wakefulness. She opened her eyes to hundreds of ceremonial masks hanging on the wall—some smiling, some snarling, some staring. Big eyes, bulging eyes, narrow eyes. Gods and spirits of many colours, shapes, and attitudes. Sugar Cream had told her to shut up and sit down for ten minutes. When Sugar Cream left the office to “go get some things,” Sunny must have dozed off.
Now the old woman knelt beside her, carrying a bowl of what Sunny assumed was pepper soup. She was hunched forwards, her twisted spine making it difficult for her to kneel. “Since you had such a hard time getting the peppers, I went and bought them myself,” she said. She slowly got up, looking pleased. “I met Miknikstic on the way to the all-night market.” Miknikstic was a Zuma Wrestling Champion who was killed in a match and became a guardian angel.
“He… he was here?” So that was him I saw fly by, she thought.
“Sit up,” Sugar Cream said.
She handed Sunny the bowl of soup. Sunny began to eat, and the soup warmed her body nicely. Sunny had been lying on a mat. She glanced around the floor for the tiny red spiders Sugar Cream always had lurking about in her office. She spotted one a few feet away and shivered. But she didn’t get up. Sugar Cream said the spiders were poisonous, but if she didn’t bother them, they would not bother her. They also didn’t take well to rude treatment, so she wasn’t allowed to move away from them immediately.
“There was a lake,” Sunny said. “Where the tainted peppers and those purple flowers grow. I know it sounds crazy but…” She touched her hair and frowned. She was sporting a medium-length Afro these days, and something was in it. Her irrational mind told her it was a giant red spider, and her entire body seized up.
“You’re fine,” Sugar Cream said with a wave of a hand. “You met the lake beast, cousin of the river beast. I don’t know why it tried to eat you, though.”
Sunny felt dizzy as her attention split between trying to figure out what was on her head and processing the fact that the river beast had relatives. “The river beast has family?” Sunny asked.
“Doesn’t everything?”
Sunny rubbed her face. The river beast dwelled beneath the narrow bridge that led to Leopard Knocks. The first time she’d crossed the bridge it had tried to trick her to her death. If Sasha hadn’t grabbed her by her necklace, it would have succeeded. To think that that thing had family did not set her mind at ease.
“And then it was Ogbuide who saved you from it,” Sugar Cream continued.
Sunny blinked, looking up. “You mean Mami Wata? The water spirit?” Sunny asked, her temples starting to throb. She reached up to touch her head, but then brought her hands down. “My mum always talks about her because she was terrified of being kidnapped by her as a child.”
“Nonsense stories,” Sugar Cream said. “Ogbuide doesn’t kidnap anyone. When Lambs don’t understand something or they forget the real story of things, they replace it with fear. Anyway, you’re still fresh. Most Leopard People know to walk away when they see a lake that should not be where it is.”
“Is there something on my head?” Sunny whispered, working hard not to drop her bowl. She wanted to ask if it was a spider, but she didn’t want to irritate her mentor any more than she already had by nearly dying.
“It’s a comb,” Sugar Cream said.
Relieved, Sunny reached up and pulled it out. “Oooh,” she quietly crooned. “Pretty.” It looked like the inside of an oyster shell, shining iridescent blue and pink, but it was heavy and solid like metal. She looked at Sugar Cream for an explanation.
“She saved you,” she said. “Then she gave you a gift.”
Sunny had been attacked by an octopus monster that roamed around using a giant lake like a spider uses its web. Then she’d been saved by Ogbuide, the renowned deity of the water. Then she’d seen Miknikstic fly by. Sunny was speechless.
“Keep it well,” Sugar Cream said. “And if I were you, I’d not cut my hair anytime soon, either. Ogbuide probably expects you to have hair that can hold that comb. Also, buy something nice and shiny and go to a real lake or pond or the beach and throw it in. She’ll catch it.”
Sunny finished her pepper soup. Then she endured another thirty minutes of Sugar Cream lecturing her about being a more cautious rational Leopard girl. As Sugar Cream walked Sunny out of the building into the rain, she handed Sunny a black umbrella very much like the one Sunny used to use a little more than a year ago. “Are you all right with crossing the bridge alone?”
Sunny bit her lip, paused, and then nodded. “I’ll glide across.” To glide was to drop her spirit into the wilderness, or spirit world, and shift her physical body into invisibility. She would make an agreement with the air and then zip through it as a swift-moving breeze.
She had first glided by instinct when crossing the Leopard Knocks Bridge for the third time, hoping to avoid the river beast. With Sugar Cream’s subsequent instruction, Sunny had now perfected the skill so expertly that she didn’t emit even the usual puff of warm air when she passed people by. With the help of juju powder, all Leopard People could glide, but Sunny’s natural ability allowed her to glide powder-free. To do it this way was to dangerously step partially into the wilderness. However, Sunny did it so often and enjoyed it so much that she didn’t fret over it.
“You have money for the funky train?”
“I do,” Sunny said. “I’ll be fine.”
“I expect you to prepare a nice batch of tainted pepper soup for me by next week.”Sunny fought hard not to groan. She’d buy the tainted peppers this time. There was no way she was going back to the field down the road. Not for a while. Sunny held the umbrella over her head and stepped into the warm, rainy early morning. On the way home, she saw plenty of puddles and one rushing river, but thankfully no more lakes.
NSIBIDI FOR “NSIBIDI”
This book will never be a bestseller. The language in which it is written is much like that of the highest level of academia. It is selfishly exclusive by definition. It is self-indulgent. This is the nature of anything written in the mystic juju-rooted script known as Nsibidi.
You can hear me. You are special. You are in that exclusive group. You can do something most Leopard People cannot. So shut it down, turn it off, power down, log off. You feel the breeze; it is warm and fresh. It smells like palm and iroko leaves, damp red soil; they have not started drilling for oil here. There are few roads, so leaded fuel has not poisoned the air. There is a dived in the palm tree on your right, and it looks down at you with its soft, cautious black eyes. A mosquito tries to bite you and you slap your arm. Now you scratch your arm because you were too slow.
Walk with me…
—from Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits
2
YAAAAWN
“In social studies we learn about history, geography, and economics. We put it all together so that we can study how we live with one another,” Mrs. Oluwatosin said as she sat in her chair at the front of the class. “But in many ways, social studies class is all about you. It should help you look at yourself and ask, ‘Who am I? And who do I want to be when I am an adult?’ So today, I want to ask you all: Who do you want to be? What do you want to do when you grow up?”
She paused, waiting. No one in the class raised a hand. Sunny yawned, pushing up her glasses for the millionth time. She was too busy navigating an intense magical world to figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up. She’d only managed two hours of sleep after she’d returned home. And those two hours were plagued by thoughts of the giant lake-dwelling octopus that had tried to grab her. What the hell was its problem?. She’d been too sluggish to bother with breakfast, and though she’d finished all her homework, she could barely remember what she’d done. Beside her, Precious Agu raised a hand. Mrs. Oluwatosin smiled with relief and nodded for her to speak.
“I want to be president,” Precious said with a grand smile.
There was a pause, and then the entire class burst out laughing.
“You can’t be president when you are not rich,” Periwinkle said from the other side of the room.
“What will your husband think?” a boy beside him asked. They slapped hands.
Precious cut her eyes at them and turned away, hissing. “You people are still living in the Dark Ages,” she muttered.
“Because we live on the Dark Continent,” Periwinkle retorted, and the class laughed harder.
“Quiet!” Mrs. Oluwatosin snapped. “Precious, that is a fine idea. Nigeria could use its first female president. Hold on to your dream and study hard, and you may be the one to make it come true.”
Precious seemed to swell with pride, despite the snickering of the boys. Sunny watched all this through her groggy haze. She liked Mrs. Oluwatosin. She had just joined the faculty at Sunny’s exclusive secondary school, and she was a welcome addition; she was the type of teacher who truly believed in the potential of her students.
Periwinkle raised his hand. When Mrs. Oluwatosin called on him, he said, “I want to be chief of the police force.”
“So that people can be dashing you money all over the place?” Jibaku asked.
More laughter.
Periwinkle nodded. “I plan to have many, many wives, so I’ll need to make extra money to keep them all happy.” He winked at Jibaku, and she sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes.
“You’ll be lucky to even have one wife,” she retorted. “With your fat head.”
Sunny chuckled, resting her chin on her hands. Jibaku’s meanness was certainly funnier when it wasn’t aimed at her. She shut her eyes for a moment, feeling sleep try to take her. In the darkness behind her eyes she felt that thing again, like something was pulling her to the left and something else was pulling her to the right. It was unsettling, but for a moment she tried to analyse it. Doing so made her stomach lurch. She felt her body sway and was about to open her eyes when she heard snoring.
Oh no! I’m asleep, she thought, quickly opening her eyes, sure people would be staring at her. No one was, thank goodness. Apparently her snoring had been in her head.
“Orlu,” Mrs. Oluwatosin said. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Sunny perked up. Orlu was at the front of the class so she couldn’t see his face. She’d barely had a chance to say hello to him this morning, but it seemed Orlu had gotten a fine night’s sleep. She wondered what his mentor, Taiwo, had him doing last night and how he’d been able to return early enough to sleep well.
“A zoologist, I think,” he said. “I love studying animals.”
“Very nice,” Mrs. Oluwatosin said. “That’s an excellent career. And an exciting one, too.”
Sunny agreed. Plus, Orlu was already like a walking encyclopedia when it came to creatures and beasts, magical or non-magical.
“Sunny? What about you?”
Sunny opened her mouth and then closed it. She didn’t know what she wanted to be. A professional soccer player? she thought. I’m good at that.
For the past few months, she’d been playing soccer with her male classmates when they gathered in the field beside the school. Proving to them that she was worthy enough to play with them had been easy. All she had to do was take the soccer ball and do her thing; it came as naturally as breathing.
However, it was explaining how she could have albinism and yet play in the pounding Nigerian sun that was trickier; she certainly couldn’t tell them that her ability to do this was linked to her being a Leopard Person. “My father had a drug delivered from America that makes me able to be in the sun,” she told the boys who asked. She was such an excellent soccer player that they all accepted her answer and let her play. When she was on the field, she was so so happy.
But being a soccer player wasn’t a career. Not really. Not for a girl. And honestly, did she want to make such a spectacle of herself for a living? If she played, she’d play for Nigeria, and she’d stand out too much, having albinism. She frowned, her own thought stinging her. I’m not really good at anything else, she thought. “Um… I… I don’t know, ma,” she said. “I’m still figuring it out.”
Mrs. Oluwatosin chuckled. “That’s okay, you have plenty of time. But let yourself think about it. God has plans for you; you want to know what they are, right?”
“Yes, ma,” Sunny said quietly. She was glad when Mrs. Oluwatosin moved on with the lesson. Considering the chaos of last year, Sunny wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to know what “God had planned” for her. I would be surprised if God took notice of me at all, she thought tiredly.
“That lake beast and the river beast clearly have a thing for you,” Sasha said that afternoon in Chichi’s mother’s hut. “What’d you do to them in your past life?” He laughed loudly. Chichi snickered, plopping down onto his lap and leaning back against his chest. She was carrying a large heavy book, and Sasha wheezed beneath her weight. “Jesus, Chichi, you trying to kill me?”
“Oh, you’ll live,” she said, kissing him on the cheek and nuzzling it with her nose. With effort, she brought the book up and began to flip through the pages. Sunny rolled her eyes but smiled. Ever since she and Orlu had caught them kissing the year before, the two had become inseparable. It was nice to see her friends happy after all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.
“The lake beast is of the genus Enteroctopus,” Orlu said. “They’re born and raised in the full lands by large extended families. Most of them venture out into the world moving with their bodies of water. Why was it in Leopard Knocks?”
“What are ‘full lands’?” Sunny asked.
“Places that mix evenly with the wilderness,” he said. “A few places in Nigeria are known full lands: Osisi, Arochukwu, Ikare-Akoko, and sometimes Chibok gets a little full. Full places are a little bit of here and a little bit of there, layered over and meshed with each other.”
“A beast attacked her in Leopard Knocks,” Chichi said. “Who cares why it was there? Things come and go all the time for whatever reason. I’m more interested in who saved you! Hey, can I see the comb?!”
Sunny plucked it from the front of her hair and handed it to Chichi. As soon as it was out of her hair, she was very aware of it not being there. The comb was rather heavy, but it was a nice kind of heavy, comforting. The oysterlike colouring went well with Sunny’s thick blonde Afro.
“What’s this? Metal or shell?” Chichi asked.
Sunny shrugged as she got up. “I have to go home.”
Chichi handed the comb back to her, and Sunny tucked it into her hair. She slapped hands with Sasha, and Chichi gave her a hug. “Are you all right?” Chichi asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “It didn’t get me; I’m alive.”
“Don’t know why that thing goes after you when it can more easily catch smaller weaker prey out there,” Chichi said, pinching one of Sunny’s strong arms.
Sunny smiled but looked away from Chichi. Sunny’d always been somewhat tall, but even she had to admit, she’d become quite strong. It was probably all the soccer she was playing with the boys, but there was something more to it, too. She wasn’t bulking up like a body-builder, but there were… changes, like being able to squeeze someone’s wrist into terrible pain, being able to kick the soccer ball so hard that it hurt if it hit anyone, and being able to lift things she hadn’t been able to lift last year.
“You want me to work some juju on it to humiliate all of its ancestors and deform every single one of its offspring?” Sasha asked.
Sunny smiled, pausing to consider. “Nah,” she said. “I’ll let karma handle it.”
“Juju works better and faster than karma,” Chichi said.
Sunny walked out and Orlu followed her, gently taking her hand. When Sunny let go of his hand as she stepped onto the empty road, Orlu said, “See you tomorrow.”
Sunny smiled at him, looking into his sweet eyes, and said, “Yeah.”
You’re not yet reading this correctly if this is your first time reading Nsibidi. Keep reading. It will come. But you can hear my voice and that’s the first step. I am with you. I am your guide.
Nsibidi is the script of the wilderness. It is not made for the use of humankind. However, just because it is not made for us does not mean we cannot use it. Some of us can. Nsibidi is to “play” and it is to truly see. If you lose this book, it will find you again but not without forcing you to suffer a punishment… if you deserve it. Don’t lose this book…
—from Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits
3
HOME
Sunny’s oldest brother, Chukwu, sat in his Jeep in front of the house staring at the screen of his cell phone as he furiously typed a text. Sunny watched him as she quietly crept closer. He was frowning deeply, his nostrils flared. He’d discovered his potential to easily bulk up last year, and his recently swollen biceps and pectorals twitched as he grasped the phone.
“What is wrong with this silly girl?” he muttered as Sunny leaned against the Jeep with her arm on the warm door. She didn’t need to worry about dirt. As always, it was spotless. Sunny suspected he paid some of the younger boys in the neighbourhood to wash it often. Chukwu had gotten the Jeep three weeks ago, and he would take it with him to the University of Port Harcourt in five days.
He didn’t see her standing there. He never saw her. Since they were young, she could do this to him; to her other brother, Ugonna; to her father. She never crept up on her mother. Something in her, even when she was three years old, told her never to do that.
Sunny rolled her eyes. This was her oldest brother. Reeking of cologne. Wearing the finest clothes. His hair shaved close and perfect. Seventeen years old, soon to be eighteen, and already adept at juggling four girlfriends he’d leave behind in less than a week. Going on five if he could convince the one he was texting to go out with him this weekend. Sunny read as his fingers flew over the touch screen.
Just try me, he typed. U kno u interested, cuz u kno I show you a gud time.
Sunny was glad that she’d never gotten that into texting. Look how it stupid it made you sound! Plus, she didn’t need it. She only used her cell phone to call her parents to let them know where she was. When you knew juju, a lot of technology seemed primitive.
“Are you serious?” she finally said, when she couldn’t stand watching him make an ass of himself any longer.
He screeched and jolted, dropping his cell phone on his lap. Then he glared at Sunny. “Damn! What is wrong with you?”
Sunny giggled.
“I hate when you do that!”
On his lap, his phone buzzed. He picked it up. “This is private. Go cook dinner or something. I’m hungry. Make yourself useful.”
“Don’t you have enough girlfriends?”
He flashed a toothy grin, quickly texting the girl back. “It’s just so easy. I can’t help myself.”
“Stupid,” Sunny muttered, walking towards the house.
“Where are you coming from all sweaty like that?” he asked her, looking up.
She’d been playing soccer with the boys. Chukwu’s soccer group was older, so he had no idea she was playing now. If he did, Sunny didn’t know how she’d explain. Really, she had more to worry about with Ugonna, who was sixteen. Sometimes her age mates played with the boys from his age group. Thankfully, he wasn’t that interested in soccer. Thus, so far, so good.
“None of your business,” she said over her shoulder, quickly going inside.
Her parents wouldn’t be home for a few hours. Her mother was on call and had sent a text to all of them describing what they could eat. And their father always came home late on Thursdays. Ugonna was at the kitchen table nibbling on an orange. He had a pencil in his hand. He was drawing again. Sunny considered leaving the kitchen, but she was hungry.
Ugonna had always liked to draw; he’d sketch things like smiling faces and vague images of girls, trees, cars he liked, and gym shoes. But in the last year, after discovering an instruction website on the Internet, he’d gotten more serious with his skill. Instead of going out with his friends, he began to spend more and more time at the kitchen table, drawing. He was best at drawing faces and abstract images of forests.
Some of these abstract drawings reminded Sunny of the Nsibidi she was learning to read. Not that they looked the same, but they carried a similar energy. His drawings didn’t literally move as the Nsibidi in her book did, but they seemed to move. The trees seemed to blow, the insects on the branches seemed to walk.
Then last month, he’d drawn what she’d been dreaming about since a week after facing Ekwensu. The city of smoke. It was a good drawing. Their mother had thought it was so beautiful she’d had it framed. Sunny had to look at that image on the family room wall every day now whenever she wanted to watch TV or exit the house. The dreams themselves were horrible enough.
They were worse than the vision of the world ending. The dreams were what happened as it ended. A city of smoke that rippled as it burned, that looked almost like another world entirely. It was like seeing through the eyes of a god. The first time she’d had the dream, she’d woken up, run to the bathroom in the dark, and vomited into the toilet. The second time, a week later, she’d fallen sick hours afterwards and been unable to leave the house for two days while fighting a horrible case of malaria. The third time, she woke crying uncontrollably. She’d told no one about the dreams. Not even Sugar Cream. Yet her non-Leopard brother was drawing it, and her mother had framed and hung it on the family room wall.
“Hey,” she grunted, walking quickly past Ugonna to the refrigerator.
“Good afternoon,” he said, not taking his eyes from what he was drawing.
She opened the fridge, her belly growling horribly. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, had forgotten her lunch, hadn’t had enough money to buy a snack during lunch, didn’t feel like asking Orlu yet again; essentially, she hadn’t eaten since the pepper soup Sugar Cream had given her last night after the attack. She brought out three ripe plantain.
“Is Chukwu still in his Jeep?” Ugonna asked.
“Yeah.”
“His head is so big,” Ugonna said. “I don’t know why Mummy and Daddy had to buy him that! He’s staying in the government hostel, how’s that even going to look?”
“Dad tried,” Sunny said with a shrug. Chukwu was going to make a big splash at the university. Not only had he been one of the top students in his graduating class, he was the best soccer player in the area. Still, his father wanted his oldest son to really experience university life. Thus, instead of having Chukwu stay in one of the cushier private student hostels off campus, he’d insisted Chukwu stay at the more stripped-down government-owned hostels on campus. He’d have to stay in one large room with five other students. Chukwu had angrily protested, but he finally shut up when he learned that their mother had bought him the used Jeep.
Ugonna chuckled. Sunny did, too. She slit the black-yellow plantain skins and peeled them off. As she sliced the plantain and heated the oil, she resisted the urge to look at what her brother was drawing. Yet again she wondered how it was that he’d drawn that horrible burning city. He wasn’t a Leopard Person. Was someone working some sort of juju on her? On her family?
She frowned, flipping the frying plantain over. She dished out the first batch, her mouth filled with saliva as it savoured the tangy, sweet fried fruit. Perfect.
She focused on her task, and not on the talk she planned to have with Sugar Cream tomorrow night. Not on the fact that she had been keeping such deep secrets from her friends. From Orlu, in particular, it was the most difficult. Soon, she’d tell them. All three of them would hit the roof.
She put the plate of plantain in the middle of the table. “You want some?” she asked, placing several slices on her plate.
Ugonna looked at the plantain, then got up to get a plate.
“Thanks.”
They both ate and watched a Nollywood movie on the kitchen TV. Minutes later Chukwu joined them. As they laughed at the stupid woman who was so dumb that she’d left her baby in the taxi cab, Sunny glanced at Ugonna’s drawing. It was of a tricked-out Viper with a sultry-looking woman draped on the hood.
She smiled and enjoyed her plantain and her brother.
That night, Sunny lay on her bed, gazing at the photo of her grandmother. Her grandmother, the only one of all her relatives who was a Leopard Person, the only person she could have talked to about all things Leopard. Where Sunny was albino, having pale skin, hair, and eyes, her grandmother was indigo black with closely cropped black hair. Sunny held the photo closer and looked at the juju knife her grandmother held to her chest.
It was particularly large, almost like a pointed machete, and looked made of a heavy raw iron. And both edges were notched with many sharp teeth and etched with deep designs. Did they bury you with it? Sunny wondered. Did you even have a body to burn after Black Hat murdered you? She shut her eyes. It was late and she was tired. This was not a place to go in her mind right before bed. She put the photo aside and unfolded the only other item that had been in the box with the letter from her grandma, the thin piece of paper with the Nsibidi symbols on it.
Sunny tried to read it yet again. When she felt the nausea setting in, she folded it back up. She shut her eyes, willing the nausea to pass. The first time, she hadn’t heeded her body’s warning; she kept trying and trying to read it. She wound up vomiting like crazy. It was so much that her father was overcome with wild worry no matter how much her mother, who was a medical doctor, assured him that Sunny was okay.
“What’s wrong with taking her to the hospital, anyway?” he kept angrily asking, as he stood at her bedside with her mother. “Kai! This is a regular illness, isn’t it? Then the cure is regular!” Eventually the nausea did pass, leaving Sunny with the nagging question of what the Nsibidi on the piece of paper said. She’d have to get better at reading Nsibidi in order to find out. She glanced at the piece of paper just for a brief second. Then she put all her grandmother’s things away and grabbed her book Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits instead.
She wasn’t ready to read her grandmother’s complex Nsibidi page, but each day, she got better and better at “reading” Sugar Cream’s book—particularly when she was rested, had eaten a good meal, and managed to go most of the day without talking to anyone. One did not simply read Nsibidi as one read a book or even music. Nsibidi was a magical writing script. It had to call you, and it only called those who could and wanted to change their shape.
Shape-shifters who saw Nsibidi would see the symbols moving and even hear it whispering. Sunny had experienced this the moment she picked up the book of Nsibidi at random in Bola’s Store for Books last year. And though the book had cost some heavy chittim it was worth it. It was her first lesson in mastering a Leopard art. Learning to read Nsibidi was initially intuitive, forcing the reader to reach deep within and understand that the symbols were alive and that they were shape-shifters, too. And when Nsibidi symbols changed shape for you, the whole world shifted.
The first time it happened had been two weeks ago, after Sunny thought she’d already learned to read Nsibidi. She’d managed to get through the first page, which was basically an introduction to the book, or at least, this was what she thought. Sugar Cream wrote that her book would never be a bestseller. So few could “hear” Nsibidi and even fewer wanted to listen. She said that Nsibidi was more a language of the spirits than one for the use of humankind. Then she began explaining how the book was split into sections. The book was quite thin, so the sections were very short. This was as far as Sunny had gotten.
For some reason, no matter how much she turned the wiggling symbols over in her head, unfocused her eyes, and strained to “hear” what the whispers were saying, she could get no further in her reading. She’d hit a wall.
Sweating and frustrated, she’d set the book down on her bed, the thick pages open. She leaned against the pillows on her bed.
“Come on,” she whispered tiredly.
Understanding that first page had been deeply satisfying. With all that she’d experienced in the past year, here was something she felt made sense. Every part of her being loved and wanted to learn Nsibidi. And it seemed as if the understanding came to her because of this. It was exhausting, mentally taxing and frustrating, but she loved it. So it came. Then she hit this wall.
Now, as she looked at the thin book with thick cream-coloured pages and maroon, almost jellylike symbols that wiggled and sometimes rotated, shrank, and stretched, she relaxed. She sighed.
“It will come,” she whispered. She relaxed more. Her heartbeat slowed. She had other homework to do. Nsibidi was her friend, not a lion to tame or anything else to beat into submission. She was about to go get something to eat. Her stomach felt empty, though she had just eaten dinner.
“Sunny,” she heard someone softly whisper.
When she looked at her book, she felt cool, soft hands press her cheeks to steady her head.
“Hold,” the voice said.
Everything dropped. Away.
Nothing but the whispering symbols.
Oral and written words combined.
There was warmth on her face, like sunshine.
Sunshine now, not before her initiation into the Ekpe society. The Leopard society. The sunshine didn’t burn.
She walked along a path, wild jungle to her left, wild jungle to her right. Drums beat but she could hear Sugar Cream’s voice clearly; Sunny saw the symbols dancing before her when Sugar Cream called them, burrowing into the dirt when spoken, swirling into a tornado-like cycle when uttered.
“This book’s titled Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits. But this book is tricky. Like me, it shape-shifts. It goes by another name, an inside name for those who can read it. Trickster: My Life and My Lessons, by Sugar Cream, is its inside name, its true name. This book is a part of me. It is wonderful that you are here and you are hearing. It is good.”
Sugar Cream went on to tell/show Sunny that this jungle was where she grew up. She was introducing an old fluffy baboon from a clan that she called the Idiok when Sunny suddenly came back to herself. She had to blink several times to get her eyes and mind to focus. There was knocking at the door, and she glanced at the time on her cell phone. Two hours had passed! She’d turned one page.
“Sunny?” her mother called again. Sunny tensed up. No one in her family knew a thing about a thing. They could not, by both juju and Leopard law. Among many other issues, this sometimes made reading the Nsibidi book difficult. Her mother knocked on the door. “What are you doing in there?”
Chink, chink, chink, chink! Ten heavy copper chittim fell onto the floor in front of Sunny’s bed. The Leopard currency dropped whenever knowledge was earned, and these were the most prized kind. Shaped like curved rods, chittim came in many sizes and could be made of copper, bronze, silver, or gold—copper being the most valuable and gold being the least. No one knew who dropped them or why they never injured anyone when they fell.
Sunny jumped up and quickly grabbed the chittim and piled them in her purse. Yes, she’d learned something big, and she knew she could look into the book and “hear” Nsibidi in the same way again. “Wow,” she whispered, putting her heavy purse beside her, the chittim inside clinking loudly. The pain in her belly hit her then, and she doubled over. Hunger, but a terrible aggressive hunger. She cleared her throat and tried to sound normal. “I’m just studying, Mum.”
Her mother tried to open the door. “Why is the door locked, then?”
Sunny dragged herself to the edge of her bed. She placed her feet on the cool floor. “Sorry, Mum,” she said, forcing herself to stand.
When she opened the door, her mother stared at her for a long time. She searched Sunny’s face, sniffing the room, listening for anything, anything at all. Sunny knew the routine. The unspoken between her and her mother increased every single day. But the love remained, too. So it was okay. “I’m… I’m okay, Mum,” Sunny stammered. She smiled the most fake smile ever.
“Are you sure?” her mother whispered. Sunny wrapped her arms around her. At thirteen and a half, Sunny was as tall as her mother’s five foot eight.
“Yes, Mum,” she said. “Just studying… really hard.”
“It’s ten o’clock. You should get ready for bed.” Her mother glanced over Sunny’s shoulder at the book on her bed that was not a textbook.
“I will,” Sunny said. “After I eat something.”
“But you just ate dinner.”
“I know. But I’m hungry again, I guess. A little.”
“Okay, o,” her mother sighed. “There’s plenty of leftover plantain.”
Sunny grinned. “Perfect.” She could never eat enough fried, juicy, sweet, scrumptious yummies. When she finished, she brushed her teeth again and returned to her room. She shut off her light, fell back into bed, and was asleep within thirty seconds. Five minutes later, she was dreaming about the end of the world…
The city was burning so furiously it looked like a city of smoke. She witnessed it from above the lush green forest. She was flying. But she was not a bird. What was she? Who am I? she wondered.
It was always like this here. She could smell it as she rushed towards the burning city. She did not smell smoke, however. The wind must have been tumbling away from her. She smelled flowers,instead. Sweetness, as if the trees below were seeding the air with pollen.
She tried to stop, but the force that she was riding wanted to go towards the city. She was a mind in a body that had other plans. There were spiralling edifices. Smaller structures on the ground, bulbous like giant smoky eggs. All of it undulated with smoke. This was the end. Was this Lagos? New York? Tokyo? Cairo?
Closer.
She felt like screaming. She didn’t want to look anymore. But she had no body to look away with. It was like reading Nsibidi. Nsibidi? she thought, panicky. What is that?
She was too close to the burning city. Soon she’d be upon it. What were those flying out of it? Bits of incinerating building? They looked like bats. Demons.
She could feel her heart beating. Slamming in her chest; it wanted out. My heart? I have a heart? She was shaking. She was falling now. The forest trees crashing towards her…
Her body jerked as she hit the floor. Her eyes shot open as she thrashed in the darkness. The floor was hard. Familiar scents. She calmed. Her scent. She touched her mashed up Afro; she’d forgotten to take out the comb Mami Wata had given to her. Then she climbed back into bed and lay there until she slept a restless, yet thankfully dreamless sleep.
4
READING NSIBIDI IS RISKY
Saturday evening, Sunny went to see Sugar Cream in the Obi Library as usual. She was used to crossing the bridge to Leopard Knocks alone. The river beast made her nervous, but each and every time, she stared it down as she crossed. Even this time. It lurked just beneath the surface, a shadow the size of a house with eyes that glowed a dull yellow. Watching. Waiting. For what, Sunny didn’t know. But when she brought forth her spirit face, and Anyanwu filled her up with confidence, poise, and courage, she didn’t care. She dared the river beast to do its worst; then she’d have a reason to kick its backside once and for all.
When she arrived at Sugar Cream’s office at around eight o’clock, her mentor was not there yet. One of the ancestral masks on the wall, the red one with inflated cheeks and wild eyes, opened its mouth and silently laughed at her. Another stuck its tongue out. The masks were so annoying. They were like having a chorus of children behind Sugar Cream’s back who jeered and made fun of her as she was scolded or when she made mistakes.
“Oh, stop it,” she said to the long-faced ebony mask that narrowed its eyes and sucked its teeth at her as she went to Sugar Cream’s desk. There was a note on it. Sit. We will practice gliding today. So clear your head. I will return shortly.
