“Not dead, the wilderness,” I said. “The spirit world.”

“But you can’t be alive there,” she said. “So it’s the world of the dead.”

“I…” I sighed again and recited one of Aro’s lessons. “Just because something is not alive, does not mean it is dead. You have to be alive first to be dead.” I closed my eyes and lay back. “The wilderness is someplace else. Neither of flesh nor time.”

“So why’d it happen during our rite?” she asked.

I laughed. “It’s a long story.”

“Onye, what’s wrong with you?” she asked after a moment. “You haven’t looked right since… since that masquerade did that thing to you.” She moved closer when I didn’t answer. “Remember what we talked about way back when we first left home?”

I only looked at her.

“We agreed to share the load, you and I,” she said. She took my hand and a large spark popped off it. A look of pain crossed her face as she slowly put my hand down. She smiled at me but didn’t try to take my hand again. “Talk. Tell me.”

I looked away, suppressing the urge to cry. I didn’t want to burden anyone with any of it. I turned to her, noting dark brown skin, flawless even after all we’d been through. Her thick lips pressed firmly together. Her large almond-shaped eyes looked deep into mine, never flinching. I sat up. “Okay,” I said. “Come walk with me.”

We strolled along the outskirts of Ssolu, in the half mile between the storm and the last of the tents. Only groups of livestock congregated here. The guinea fowl and chickens kept their distance. So among camels and goats, I talked and Luyu listened.

“You should tell Mwita,” she said when I finished. I had to stop and bend forward as a wave of hunger-induced fatigue passed over me.

“I don’t want to…”

“It’s not only about you,” she said. She stepped forward about to help me up. She quickly stepped back. “Are you all right?”

“No.”

“Can I…”

“No.” Slowly, I straightened up. “Go ahead. Say what you were going to say.”

“Well, something is…” She paused, looking me in the eye. “A few days, you have this retreat. I think, well, you probably already know.”

I nodded. “Something is going to happen but I don’t know what.”

“Mwita can make it better, I think,” she said.

“Maybe,” I muttered.

It dropped right at my feet. A yellow lizard with a large scaly head. It flipped onto its feet and began to slowly walk away. I laughed to myself, assuming it had been swept up by the storm and thrown into Ssolu like so many other creatures. All I wanted to do was sit on the sandy ground and watch it go.

Another strange wave of hyperawareness blew over me. I glanced at Luyu. She was watching me closely. I could see every cell on her face.

“You see that?” I asked. I feebly pointed at the lizard as it turned to face us. I wanted to shift Luyu’s attention. She was about to run off to get Mwita; I just knew it.

Luyu frowned. “See what?”

I shook my head, my eye following the lizard. I sank to the sand. I was so weak.

Another wave of awareness blew over me, and I heard a soft moan. I wasn’t sure if it came from me or the wilderness springing up around me again. There was a wilderness tree right beside Luyu. Then things flickered and became only the physical world again. I wanted to vomit.

“Stay where you are. I’m going to get Mwita,” Luyu said. “You just went all transparent again.”

I was too weak to respond. The lizard was slowly walking up to me, and I focused on it as Luyu ran off.

“Let her go,” a voice said. It was a female voice but low and strong like a man’s. It was coming from the approaching lizard. Something about the voice was vaguely familiar.

“I didn’t intend to stop her,” I said with a weak laugh. “Who are you?” I wondered if I was imagining the voice. I knew I wasn’t. I was suffering from an illness passed on to me by a great spirit of the wilderness. It had come to me to do just that. Then it had gone and met with Ssaiku, Ting later told me. Nothing that happened to me after my encounter with the masquerade would be a figment of my imagination.

“You’ve come far,” it said, ignoring my question. “I’ll take you farther.”

“Are you really here?” I asked.

“Very much so.”

“Will you bring me back?”

“Could anyone take you from Mwita?”

“No,” I said. “Where will you take me?” I was just talking now. Not really interested in the answers. I needed something to keep me calm as the lizard began to grow and change colors.

“I will take you where you need to go,” she said, her voice becoming more sonorous and full as she grew. It began to sound like three of the same voice in one. “I’ll show you what you need to see, Onyesonwu.”

So she knew me. I narrowed my eyes. “What do you know of my fate?” I asked.

“I know what you know.”

“What of my biological father?”

“That he is an evil, evil man.”

I forgot the rest of my questions. I forgot everything. Before me stood what I could only call a Kponyungo, a firespitter. The size of four camels, it was the brilliant color of every shade of fire. Its body was wiry and strong like a snake’s, its large round head carried long coiling horns and a magnificent jaw full of sharp teeth. Its eyes were like small suns. It sweat a thin smoke and smelled like roasting sand and steam.

When my mother and I were nomads, during the hottest parts of the day we’d sit in our tent and she’d tell me stories about these creatures. “Kponyungo like to befriend travelers,” she said. “They come to life during the hottest part of the day just like now. They rise from the salt of long dead oceans. If one befriends you, you will never be alone.”

My mother was one of the only people I knew who spoke of oceans as if they’d truly existed. She always told me stories about them when something scared me, like the sight of a rotting camel or when the sky grew too cloudy. To her, Kponyungo were kind, majestic beings. But oftentimes, encountering something in real life is not the same as encountering it in stories. Like now.

I had no words. I knew it was here. Standing before me, as everyone in Ssolu went about their business a half mile away. Passersby may have noticed me standing there staring but they wouldn’t have stopped. I was untouchable to them, I was strange, a sorceress, even if they did like me. Could they see the Kponyungo standing before me? Maybe. Maybe not. If they could, maybe it was custom to leave me to my fate.

I felt a now familiar sensation, a sort of detachment and then deep mobility. I was going “away” again. This time it was happening close to a town of people, without Mwita at my side. I was all alone and this creature was taking me. As I floated upward, the Kponyungo flew beside me. I could feel its heat.

“A creature like myself is not so different from a bird,” she said in her strange voice. “Change yourself.”

Could I change myself when I was “traveling” like this? I’d never considered it. But she was correct. I’d changed myself into a lizard once and it was not so different from changing into a sparrow or even a vulture. I reached out to touch the Kponyungo’s rough skin. I quickly pulled my hand back, suddenly afraid.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“Are you… are you hot?”

“Find out,” she said. Her face didn’t express it but I knew she was amused. I slowly reached out and touched a scale. I actually heard and smelled my skin sizzle.

“Ah!” I yelped, shaking my hand. Still, she took me higher and higher. We were fifty feet above Ssolu now. “Am I…?” I looked at my hand. It didn’t look burned, nor did it hurt as much as it should have.

“You are you even when in wilderness,” she said. “But your own abilities and mine protect us.”

“Can I die like this?”

“Yes, in a way,” she said. “But you won’t,” she said at the same time that I said, “But I won’t.”