Free Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor Page B

but she could feel her touch. She knocked on it and it made a hollow sound.
    Her spirit face was smiling. Still, somehow she knew it could be angry if it had to be. Her eyes were carved slits, yet she could see perfectly. The nose was shaped like her nose. As she stood there, she watched herself change back, her human face sucking her spirit face in.
    She was scared, but she was excited, too. Her spirit face was beautiful. And it was utterly crazy-looking. And it was hers .
    All through the night, she battled herself. Or battled to know herself. She fell apart and then put herself back together and then she fell apart again and put herself back together, over and over.
    Finally, she opened her window. She needed fresh cool air. Her room was on the second floor of the house, so the mosquitoes weren’t so bad. At least that’s what she told herself. She’d have told herself anything—the fresh air felt that good. She eventually fell asleep right there, beside her window.
     
    Red. A river at sunrise. She was swimming in it, and through the water she could see the wavy red sky above. A new day. She laughed and did a somersault. Then she looked down and met the two large eyes of the river beast deep below her, just close enough to catch the glint of red sunshine from above.
     
     
     
    When Sunny awoke, the sun was shining directly on her face. She’d been sleeping in it for hours. She gasped and quickly moved out of the raw bright sunshine. Her face was almost certainly badly burned.
    She tentatively touched her cheek. She froze. She touched her cheek again. Then she got up and ran to her mirror. Her face looked fine! She grinned. Then she laughed out loud, and rushed to stand in the sunshine again. She closed her eyes and soaked in the warm light. She didn’t need to stand in there for an hour to know—she knew deep in her skin. The sunshine felt like a warm friend, not an angry enemy. She didn’t need her umbrella anymore.
    “Oh my goodness,” she whispered. “I can play soccer!”
    Realizing what she was was the beginning of something, all right . . . but it was also the end of something else.

What Is a Free Agent?
A free agent is one who isn’t privileged with even one pure Leopard spiritline from the survivors of the Great Attempt. She or he is a random of nature, a result of mixed-up and confused spiritual genetics. Free agents are the hardest to understand, predict, or explain. Learning will not come easy to you. You are a Leopard Person only by the will of the Supreme Creator, and as we all know, She isn’t very concerned with Her own creations.
After your initiation, make sure that someone is there to help you, for you will not be able to help yourself, so new the world will be to you and so fragile your ego. You’re like an infant. You will be dumbfounded and disoriented. What’s most important is—

6
    The Skull
    Sunny threw the book across the room. How am I supposed to read this? she thought. What a pompous, discriminating idiot of an author . If they have racism in the Leopard world, this book is so “racist” against free agents!
    She sighed. The last thing she wanted was to return to Anatov still ignorant and prove the author right. As she grudgingly got up to get the book, something began to happen to it. Tiny black legs sprouted from the spine. Sunny fought hard not to flee. The legs suctioned themselves to the floor and pulled the book up, pages facing the ceiling.
    Sunny scrambled to the other side of the room as the book walked back to her bed, climbed up the side, and plopped itself near her pillows. The legs retreated back into the book’s spine with a soft slurping sound. Sunny didn’t move, staring at the book, waiting for it to do something. When nothing did, she crept toward it.
    Once at her bed, she slowly reached forward, planning to grab the book and fling it back across the room. When she was within an inch of it, the book flew open. She leaped back. The pages leafed this way