Free Zahrah the Windseeker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

politics really," Dari had said the night before as we talked on our computers. It was the first time we'd talked through the net since getting caught in the Dark Market. Our parents said we had only fifteen minutes a night for a week. "Nsibidi said you should practice. What better place to practice?"
    Though Kirki was a pleasant town, it also, like any other town, had a bush radio. "Bush radio" is Ooni slang for "gossip." News travels fast in Kirki because it's such a small town. The bush radio would have been hard at work if I had gone with Dari to my backyard to practice.
    Mama Ogbuji, my neighbor, would have peeked over the fence while she was gardening and seen me floating in the air. She'd exclaim, "Great Joukoujou!" in that annoying way she does when she sees something that would make good gossip. Then she'd immediately run to her net-phone and call her best friend, Ama, and say, "You won't
believe
what I saw the Tsamis' daughter doing! She was zooming about the yard like a witch!"
    Ama would call his friends—let's say they were named Ngozi and Bola—and tell them, "You know that dada girl, Zahrah? A friend of mine just told me she saw her turn into a bat and fly around her backyard! And that boy she likes to hang around with, well he was growing hair like a bush beast!"
    Bola would then call her sister and say, "I hear there is a witch in town! Keep your eyes open when you go to the market! She probably does her business in the Dark Market." And so the bush radio would continue growing and dropping seeds of nonsense from person to person. Dari was right to seek out such a quiet, unused place.
    Nevertheless, I also suspected that Dari just wanted to go into the jungle to see it for himself. He'd been reading that field guide a lot, absorbing its every detail. All our lives we'd been told not to set foot in the forbidden jungle. Few children ever asked why, and the ones who did were told, "It's just not the right thing to do. It's a place of madness." And we accepted this.
    "Zahrah, this book is
amazing,
" Dari had said the night before. We went offline after agreeing to meet after school. Then Dari sneaked a quick call back a half-hour later, utterly energized by the field guide.
    "Did you know that there's a tree that changes the color and shape of its leaves every year? The Forbidden Greeny Jungle is the rest of the world! We live in isolation with our eyes closed!"
    I rolled my eyes and said, "Sure, Dari," and quickly got offline. The Forbidden Greeny Jungle was insanity. Its outskirts, as the librarian had said, were the only useful place. Once one went a few miles in, everything grew ragingly wild. And anyone who ventured in was not likely to come out.
    But the book had charmed Dari since the day he'd borrowed it from the library. He'd even started wearing green, as the writers of the book had, and pumping his fist in the air and chanting the Great Explorer's slogan "Down with ignorance!" He also lectured his friends at school about how they lived in an isolated world because they were afraid to explore the places just outside their home. People listened as always because it was Dari talking and he could make anything sound wonderful. Still, no one was so moved that they started to believe him.
    "This book tells you everything," Dari said as we passed a path to the palm tree farm.
    "Hey?" someone shouted behind us. "Where are you kids goin'?"
    We both whirled around and then froze. We'd been caught!
    "Dari," I hissed with panic. "I thought you said we wouldn't meet any—"
    "I thought we'd have heard someone coming," he said, looking frantic.
    Oh, we were in trouble. There was no point in running. If we ran, they would catch us. And even if they didn't, they'd certainly report us.
Oh my goodness,
I thought,
our parents are going to go crazy.
    "Stay fresh," Dari whispered.
    But I didn't feel fresh at all. I felt trapped and terrified. We were caught, and all we had in the future was punishment. A minute