Free Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor Page A

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.

CHAPTER 7
    Lessons Learned
    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