Who Fears Death. Ннеди Окорафор
“What’s noble about eating dead things and stealing meat from chopping blocks?”
“Everything must eat.”
“Mwita,” I said. “You have to teach me more. I have to learn to protect myself.”
“From what?”
Tears dribbled from my eyes. “I think something wants to kill me.”
He paused, looked me in the eye and then said, “I’ll never let that happen.”
According to my mother, all things are fixed. To her there was a reason for everything from the massacres in the West to the love she found in the East. But the mind behind all things, I call it Fate, is harsh and cold. It’s so logical that no one could call him or herself a better person if he or she bowed down to it. Fate is fixed like brittle crystal in the dark. Still, when it came to Mwita, I bow down to Fate and say thank you.
We met twice a week, after school. Mwita’s lessons were exactly what I needed to hold back my fear of the red eye. I’m a fighter by nature and simply having tools to fight, no matter how inadequate, was enough to take the crippling edge off my anxiety. At least during those days.
Mwita himself was also a good distraction. He was well spoken, well dressed, and he carried himself with respect. And he didn’t have the same type of outcast reputation I had. Luyu and Diti were envious of my time with him. They took pleasure in telling me about the rumors that he liked older married girls in their late teens. Girls who’d completed school and had more to offer intellectually.
No one could figure Mwita out. Some said that he was self-taught and lived with an old woman to whom he read books in exchange for a room and spending money. Some said he owned his own house. I didn’t ask. I knew he wouldn’t tell me. Still he was Ewu and so every so often, I’d hear people mention his “unhealthy” skin and “foul” odor and how no matter how many books he read, he’d only amount to something bad.
I TOOK MY DIAMOND FROM MY MOUTH and handed it to Mwita, my heart beating fast. If a man touched my stone, he’d have the ability to do great harm or good to me. Though Mwita didn’t respect Jwahir’s traditions, he knew I did. So he was careful taking it.
It was a weekend morning. The sun had just come up. My parents were asleep. We were in the garden. I was exactly where I wanted to be.
“According to what I know, whatever you’ve turned into, you retain the knowledge of it forever,” he said. “Does that feel right to you?”
I nodded. When I focused on the idea, I felt the vulture and the sparrow just below my skin.
“It’s right there, under the surface,” he said, slowly. “Feel the feather with your fingers. Rub it, knead it. Shut your eyes. Remember. Draw from it. Then be it.”
The feather in my hand was smooth, delicate. I knew just where it would go. In the empty shaft on my wing. This time I was aware and in control. It wasn’t like melting into a pool of something shapeless and then taking another shape. I was always something. My bones softly buckled and cracked and shrunk. It didn’t hurt. My body’s tissue was undulating and shifting. My mind changed focus. I was still me, but from a different perspective. I heard soft popping and sucking sounds and I smelled that rich smell that I only noticed during moments of oddness.
I flew high. My sense of touch was less, for my flesh was protected by feathers. But I saw all. My hearing was so sharp that I could hear the land breathing. When I returned, I was exhausted and moved to tears. All my senses buzzed, even after I changed back. I didn’t care that I was naked. Mwita had to wrap me in my rapa as I cried on his shoulder. For the first time in my life, I could escape. When things felt too tight, too close, I could retreat to the sky. From up there, I could easily see the desert stretching far beyond Jwahir. I could fly so high that not even the oval eye could see me.
That afternoon, as we sat before my mother’s garden, I told Mwita much about myself. I told him the story of my mother. I told him about the desert. I told him about how I’d gone somewhere else when I was circumcised. And I finally told him the details about the red eye. Mwita wasn’t shocked even by this. That should have given me pause, but I was too enamored by him to care.
It was my idea to go to the desert. It was his idea to go that very night. It was my second time sneaking out of the house. We hiked across the sand for several miles. When we stopped, we made a fire. All around us was darkness. The desert hadn’t changed since I’d left it six years ago. We were so at peace in cool quietness around us that we were speechless for the next ten minutes. Then Mwita poked at the fire and said, “I’m not like you. Not completely.”
“Eh?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“I usually just let people think what they think,” he said. “You were like that to me. Even after I got to know you. It’s been over a year since I saw you in that tree.”
“Just get to the point,” I said impatiently.
“No,” he snapped. “I’ll say this the way I want to say it, Onyesonwu.” He looked away from me, annoyed. “You need to learn to be quiet sometimes.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
I bit my lower lip, trying to keep quiet.
“I’m not completely like you,” he finally said. “Just listen, okay?”
“Fine.”
“Your mother … she was assaulted. My mother was not. Everyone believes an Ewu child is like you, that his or her mother was attacked by a Nuru man and he succeeded in impregnating her. Well, my mother fell in love with a Nuru man.”
I scoffed. “This is not something to joke about.”
“It happens,” he insisted. “And, yes, we come out looking the same as children of … of rape. You shouldn’t believe all that you hear and read.”
“Okay,” I softly said. “Go … go on.”
“My aunt said that my mother worked for a Nuru family and their son used to talk to her in secret. They fell in love and a year later my mother was pregnant. When I was born, the news that I was Ewu got out. There’d been no attacks in the area, so people were perplexed as to how I came about. Soon the love between my parents was discovered. My aunt said that someone saw my mother and father together just after my birth, that my father had snuck into the tent. I’ll never know if it was a Nuru or Okeke who betrayed us.
“A mob came and, again, I don’t know if it was of Nurus or Okekes. They came for my mother with stones. They came for my father with fists. They forgot about me. My aunt, my father’s sister, took me to safety. She and her husband kept me. My father’s death seemed to absolve my existence.
“If one’s father is Nuru, then the child is. So I was raised as a Nuru in my aunt and uncle’s home. When I was six, my uncle had me become the apprentice of a sorcerer named Daib. I guess I should have been grateful. Daib was known for often going off on exhibitions. My uncle said he was once a military man. He knew literature, too. Owned many books … all of which would eventually be destroyed.”
Mwita paused, frowning. I waited for him to continue.
“My uncle had to beg and pay Daib to teach me … because I was Ewu. I was there when my uncle begged him.” Mwita looked disgusted. “On his hands and knees. Daib spat on him saying that he only did the favor because he knew my grandmother. My hatred of Daib fueled my learning. I was young but I hated like a middle-aged man at the end of his prime.
“My uncle