Shadow Speaker, page 10
“You could ask the shadows what they know,” Onion said in between crunches. “Or you could ask him.”
Once the fire was burning, Ejii flipped off her sandals and walked into the pond with all of her clothes on. Her clothes needed washing just as much as her skin did. The water soothed her wounds. “See. It’s fine!” she called to Dikéogu.
Dikéogu still hesitated. But only for a moment. Then he laughed and flung himself into the water. The two swam about for a half hour, despite the cold. When they got out, Onion decided to go in. Dikéogu took his only change of clothes and went behind the palm trees where the firelight didn’t reach. Ejii changed in her tent. She’d have to wear her wool coat to sleep because her tent was made for using under the hottest sun.
“I have to gather water,” Ejii told Dikéogu. “I don’t think that pond water is good for drinking. Onion can drink it, but not us.”
“I’d give you some of my water, but I had to drop everything to outrun that Aejej,” he said, looking guilty.
“It’s all right,” Ejii said.
There was an awkward silence.
“I would have died there . . .”
Ejii looked away. “But you didn’t. And I have a capture station.” She brought out the smooth shiny metal box from her pack.
“Nice. Let me see.” He turned it over in his hands. “It’s not the best, but this is a good one.” He looked at her. “I know your father was no good, but the rest of your family must be okay. Why did you run away?”
“I didn’t run away,” she said. “Not really.” She brought out her e-pal, clicked on the walkabout definition, and handed it to Dikéogu. As he listened, she looked up at the sky. It had thickened with clouds and there was a distant rumble of thunder.
“I don’t understand why anyone would leave their family so they could tramp through the desert on purpose,” he said, handing her e-pal back to her. He looked up at the sky and cringed. “Why didn’t you leave with Jaa??”
“I guess I didn’t make up my mind fast enough, and . . . what’s the matter?”
Dikéogu was staring up at the sky again. “I’m a little afraid of storms,” he said, laughing nervously and stepping back toward the trees.
Ejii frowned. These days, storms didn’t produce much rain, so they didn’t really have to worry about getting soaked. Dikéogu seemed as if he would be afraid of his own shadow. She laughed at the irony that she was a shadow speaker.
“It’s not funny,” he said.
“I’m not laughing at your fear of . . .” She stopped. That was exactly what she was laughing at. “Anyway, it’s best to try and collect some water before the storm moves on. We can put the capture station just past the trees, so that we aren’t too cold tonight.”
They walked some yards away from the small oasis. Ejii unfolded the fiber bag. The bag was yet another mysterious item from Ginen. It was made of a kind of plant fiber that weighed practically nothing but could stretch to hold a thousand gallons if it had to. This capture station would only need to produce four gallons of water. Ejii and her classmates had had the capture station’s history pounded into their heads in school. Invented decades ago by a Nigérien scientist named Dan’Azumi Afer, it was Niger’s pride and joy well before the great change. It was hard for Ejii to believe that Niger was once a desolate country dying of thirst.
Capture stations came in small personal sizes to accommodate a few people and large ones that could irrigate whole fields and keep whole cities awash in clean water. And before the great change, in the dry desert lands of Niger, water was life. The capture station sucked the atmospheric humidity from the clouds and then cleaned and condensed it into drinkable water.
Enriched uranium, Niger’s greatest resource, was the ingredient that allowed the nuclear-powered capture station to be so powerful yet so small and reasonably priced. Niger’s presidential administration immediately saw the enormous potential. Instead of making small fortunes exporting uranium, the government decided to make use of its own resource for once. This turned out to be a great decision, for after the great change, nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants were no longer being made, because the science that had made them no longer worked. This was another result of the great change. Capture stations, however, worked and sold well, not only in Niger, but also all over the world where clean normal water had become scarce.
Along with being a wonderful way to produce water in the Sahara Desert, when capture stations pulled humidity from the sky and cooled it, they produced a wide perimeter of cool air. In Ejii’s village, it was during the hottest part of the day that people turned on their capture stations. On cool nights, it wasn’t very pleasant to be too close to an operating capture station, even a small one like Ejii’s.
She attached the fiber bag to the capture station, making sure the tiny metal vial at the bottom for collecting the trace amounts of nuclear waste was secure.
“We should get a lot of good water,” she said, looking up at the fat clouds.
“Can I flip it on??” Dikéogu said, scuttling over, keeping his head low. “I’ve always wanted to, but my father never let me. It was always the ‘servant’s job.’”
“Servant? I thought you were a slave.”
“I was,” was all he said. Ejii stepped aside so he could flip the switch on the side. Then they both stepped back some more. The capture station wasn’t even close to as earsplitting as the Aejej, but it was noisy.
“Praise Allah,” Dikéogu whispered with a grin, seeming to temporarily forget his fear of storms. “I’ve always wanted to just stand and watch this.”
The white funnel of spiraling air rose from the silver box and slowly extended into the plump clouds above. It was like a ghost’s delicate finger. The air around them cooled as the spiral grew thick with condensed water.
“That’s good water,” Ejii said. “I’m glad I . . .”
Ejii felt it first, from the ground. Like gossamer spiderwebs softly blowing up from the Earth and tickling the hairs on her legs, arms, face. She heard and felt the short hair on her head prickle. Her eyes met Dikéogu’s just before it happened. His eyes were wide with fear and his lips were pressed together as if he were bracing himself. Then . . .
PhhhhhhhBAM!
The bolt of lightning flashed down from the sky, a jagged ribbon of neon blue and white. She had a moment to see it zip right for Dikéogu and then it was as if she were on a cloud of static. She wasn’t thrown violently. It was more like being picked up and carried several feet away and then put heavily onto the sandy earth. She slid back a few more feet and then came to a stop. She could hear the shadows whipping around her, whispering, touching. She strained to understand. He is not from the desert. Then they, too, grew quiet. Over and over, she thought, How is it I’m alive? How is it I’m alive?
Silence. Then the padding of Onion’s hooves. He looked down at her. He sniffed her face, seemed satisfied with what he smelled, and then walked over to Dikéogu.
Silence.
“Ejii!” she heard Dikéogu shout as he ran over, Onion in tow. “Are you all right?”
She lay there, still in shock. How is it I’m alive? How is it he’s alive and fine? When all she continued to do was stare at him, Dikéogu did the only thing that he could probably think of. He slapped her.
Ejii scrambled to her feet and so did Dikéogu. They stood staring at each other.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What?!” she said, still breathing hard.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Do . . . I . . . look okay?!” she said, starting to hyperventilate. She’d seen him slammed with lightning. He should have been some feet away, dead. She should have been dead. Onion trotted over to her and pushed his hide against her. She leaned on him and soon her breathing slowed. She glared at Dikéogu. “Is something . . . wrong with you? Has someone cursed you? Is that why you’re all alone? Is that why the Aejej was after you?”
She felt bad as soon as the words were out.
“It’s better if we talk under the trees,” he quietly said.
As they sat at the fire, despite all that had just happened, Ejii’s stomach growled. Without a word, she got up and went to her supplies. She looked back at Dikéogu, who sat with his back against the palm tree, looking into the fire. As she unpacked a plate, her hands shook. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She brought out another plate and put fried plantain, dates, bread, and some hunks of salted goat meat on both of them. She stood up, walked to Dikéogu and put a plate of food before him.
“It’s over a day old,” she said, sitting down, aware that her voice was hoarse. “But it’s okay. Just check the bread for mold, it doesn’t last long.”
Dikéogu looked at the food with wide, very hungry eyes. Ejii leaned over and pushed the plate closer to him. “Take.”
Dikéogu hesitated, glanced at Ejii, and then said, “Thank you.”
She nodded, placing another piece of goat meat on his plate. They both looked up as Kola left her tree, her powerful wings not making a sound.
“She sees a meal,” Dikéogu said, looking cautiously at Ejii. “She can always find food, no matter where we are.” He paused. “She saved my life a year ago . . . I must not be meant to live if my life has to keep being saved and the sky keeps trying to kill me.”
“Where are you from?” Ejii asked. “All the shadows tell me is that you’re not from the desert, not originally.”
“They’re like a sixth sense to you?” Dikéogu said.
“Huh?”
“The shadows.”
“Oh. No. And I can’t control them.”
“Hmm,” Dikéogu said. “Can they tell you the wrong thing?”
“They don’t lie,” Ejii said. “Dishonesty’s a human habit, they say. But enough about me, I want to know . . .”
“So you were born . . . like that?”
Ejii sighed. “Yes. Dikéogu, just tell me what hap . . .”
“I will,” he said. “I just need to . . . Where do your shadows say I’m from?”
Deciding to go along with him, she tried to hear an answer if they gave one. Dikéogu looked around as the shadows gathered and the darkness around them deepened.
“Relax,” she said. She smiled as she herself relaxed and realized the ease of hearing them. She was getting better at it. Then she shrugged. “You don’t want them to tell me, they say,” Ejii said. “All they keep saying is that you’re not from the desert.”
“Does that happen all the time?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“Just then,” he said. “When you were listening to the shadows . . . you got all black. Your skin. I mean, you’re pretty dark already, but you got darker. Then you looked normal again. Or maybe it’s just the firelight.”
Ejii looked at her arms, thinking about how Mazi Godwin said that travel strongly affected shadow speakers. Maybe this was one of the effects, as was her increased eased at hearing the shadows.
“Well, it’s good that they won’t tell you everything,” Dikéogu said. “No one should know everything.” He paused and said, “Okay, I . . . I was born in Arondizuogu. That’s a village in the southeast part of Nigeria.”
“Are you Igbo, Yoruba, or Efik?” she asked. “Igbo, I’d guess, by your name, but your mother could be something else or you could be New Tuareg.”
“I’m Igbo. And you’re New Tuareg. Your father was Wodaabe, right?”
“Yes, and my mother is New Tuareg; her mother, my grandmother, started off Igbo. She and her sister migrated from Nigeria to Niger to join the New Tuareg. Dikéogu, tell me what happened to you. Please.”
Dikéogu distrustfully eyed Ejii. He took a big bite of his goat meat and chewed and swallowed and said, “It’s a long story, Ejii.”
“Well, I think I deserve to know. I almost just died because of you.”
“How do you know it was because of me?” Dikéogu asked. “Is that what your stupid shadows told you?”
“Will you just tell me?” Ejii snapped.
He took another bite of goat meat, chewed and swallowed. When he spoke, he didn’t speak in Hausa, the language they’d been speaking in since they’d met. He spoke in his first language, which was Igbo. “All those rumors and news stories about child slavery in northern Niger are true . . .
• • •
Assamakka is the center of it. You always have this feeling that stuff like that can’t happen to you. Some of us there were only five, others seventeen. We were slaves. My group worked on cocoa farms. They had us rub ourselves with weather gel, so the heat wouldn’t kill us . . . not too quickly at least. Weather gel isn’t even for human skin!
I remember one of the slavers in particular. A light-skinned African man who always wore white. He was so evil. They only fed us bad fruit and old meat. The capture stations that irrigated the fields gave us clean water. But this evil man would sit there eating chocolate bars, as we worked. Sweet smooth delicious chocolate, thick blocks of it, every damn day. There was a girl who always cried whenever she saw him eating it. He’d beat her for “wasting time.” Then he’d bite into his chocolate bar and laugh with his chocolaty breath, his tongue brown like he’d swallowed mud.
We carried sacks that were too heavy, planted seeds, pulled dead leaves in the hot sun and dug holes in the hard dirt. They beat us when we got tired. Sometimes they killed us. Even covered in itchy weather gel, it was so hot. It really was like being in hell. The plantations were surrounded by miles of desert. Who knows how they got the soil that the cocoa plants grew in to this desert-surrounded place. Probably more of Earth’s weirdness. Whatever the reason, it was a perfect place to hold us captive. Most of us, at least.
All the other kids were too scared of dying in the desert to try to escape. I’d been there for months and I felt like my soul was drying up in the sun. I couldn’t stand the thought of being there all my life. There were teenagers who’d been there since they were five! So I ran off. I’d rather die in the desert than die from too much work with that chocolate-tongued man watching and laughing at me.
I waited for the next new moon, when it’s the darkest. There were guards, but they always fell asleep by midnight. When I left, it was nothing like when you left. I didn’t have supplies or a camel to talk to. And I wasn’t leaving a happy place. I had nothing but my satchel with my book, my own two feet, and the tattered clothes I wore. I walked for days! If I thought about dying, I might have died. I came across a monkey-bread tree and two spontaneous ponds. They saved my life, at least for those days. During that time, I was actually happy. I was more alone than I’d ever been in my life. But I was happy.
I read My Cyborg Manifesto over and over. Have you ever read while walking? I walked miles with my head in that book. It made me feel like what I was going through was normal. In the story the Scribe tells, Jaa was kidnapped . . . but she still made something of herself. The ponds eventually disappeared, and soon I was baking in the day and freezing at night. At some point, I passed out. I remember the sun was near setting. I was walking and then I fell and the world went black.
I woke up to the smell of mangos. I thought I was dead. But right in front of my nose was a mango and an owl. Kola. That was the name that came to me when I saw her. By the time I was done eating the mango, she had returned with an orange from who knows where. Eating it stung my cracked lips but it was so so good. She brought me more fruits and even coconuts filled with water. How an owl can even grasp a coconut is beyond me! Kola brought me back from the dead. And since then, she’s been with me. Sometimes she leaves for a day or so, but she always finds me.
With her help, I made it to Biafra City, where I did some petty work for food, clothes, and travel things. At first I was trying to make it home, but . . . it’s been over a year now. I’ve changed my mind.
• • •
“. . . If anyone tells you that my story is not true, then he’s full of camelshit.”
Ejii glanced at Onion, who only humphed and said, “Why not human shit?”
“But . . .” She hesitated. “Dikéogu, what about the lightning?”
“I’m not telling you about that,” he snapped. “I don’t know you. I can say that I’m . . . relatively safe. How often do storm clouds gather? Not often at all.” He hesitated, looking angry. “If you want to part ways now, then . . . fine!”
Ejii was so angry that she almost jumped up and kicked sand at him. But his story had touched her heart so she held her anger back. She balled her fists and sat back down. “So, how did you end up in Assamakka in the first place?” she asked.
But Dikéogu only sucked his teeth. “That’s more camelshit. Doesn’t matter.”
“Ah, you’re so . . . ugh!” She got up and walked into the darkness, away from the capture station’s cool air. As she looked out at the quiet calm desert, she tried to consult the shadows, but they remained silent. This was her decision to make. His story was easy to guess. He’d probably run away from home for some reason he now regretted and then been picked up by the slavers . . . but that didn’t explain the lightning. Maybe he’s some sort of meta-human, she thought. But if he was, why would he be so secretive about it? Especially to her?
By the time she returned to the fire to tell him her decision, he had curled up under a tree, laid his head on his satchel, and fallen asleep. Who knows if he’ll still be there when I wake up anyway, she thought as she climbed into her tent. Most likely not.
CHAPTER 12
City of Burrows
“Ejii, wake up,” she heard Dikéogu say. She felt as if she’d just closed her eyes.
For a moment she lingered in her strange dream of Dikéogu getting struck by lightning again, the sparks nipping at her arms as she shielded her face. The strangest thing was that in the dream it all happened backwards. Instead of the lightning striking him, it shot from him into the sky. She’d tried to shout to him, but her words came out backward, too, and all she could think of was that backward meant away from Jaa.
