I pounced the way a starved tiger must have long ago when it found its prey. I was too eager to realize that though his back was turned, his spirit wasn’t. He had been waiting. Aro had never told me how it felt when I’d attacked him. The witch doctor in Papa Shee had simply died, no physical markings on him when he fell over. Now, in this moment with my father, I learned what it was like.

It was the kind of pain that death wouldn’t stop. My father put it to me in full force. He sang as he tore, gorged, stabbed, and twisted at parts of me that I didn’t know were there. He sat at his desk, his back turned. He sang in Nuru but I couldn’t hear the words. I am like my mother, but not completely. I cannot hear and remember as I suffer.

Something in me kicked in. A survival instinct, a responsibility and a memory. This isn’t how I end, I thought. Immediately, I pulled what remained of me away. As I retreated, my father stood and turned around. He looked into what were my eyes and grabbed what was my arm. I tried to pull away. He was too strong. He turned the palm of my right hand over and dug his thumbnail into it, etching some sort of symbol there. He let go and said, “Go back and die in the sands you arose from.”

I traveled backward for what felt like forever, sobbing, pained, fading. As I approached the wall of dust, the world grew bright with spirits and the desert sprouted those strange colorful wilderness trees. I faded completely and remember nothing.

Mwita later told me that I died a second time. That I turned transparent and then completely disappeared. When I reappeared in the same place, I was flesh again, my body bleeding all over, my garments soaked with blood. He couldn’t wake me. For three minutes, I had no pulse. He blew air into my chest and used kind juju. When none of this worked, he sat there, waiting.

During the third minute, I started breathing. Mwita shooed everyone out of the tent and asked two girls walking by to bring him a bucket of warmed water. He bathed me from head to toe, rinsing away the blood, bandaging wounds, rubbing circulation into my flesh and sending me good thoughts. “We have to talk,” he’d said over and over. “Wake up.”

I awoke two days later to see Mwita sitting beside me humming to himself as he wove a basket. I slowly sat up. I looked at Mwita and couldn’t recall who he was. I like him, I thought. What is he? My body ached. I groaned. My stomach rumbled.

“You wouldn’t eat,” Mwita said, putting his basket down. “But you would drink. Otherwise, you’d be dead… again.”

I know him, I thought. Then as if whispered by the winds outside I heard the word he’d spoken to me, Ifunanya. “Mwita?” I said.

“The one and only,” he said coming over to me. Despite my body’s pains and the restriction of bandages on my legs and torso, I threw my arms around him.

“Binta,” I said into Mwita’s shoulder. “Ah! Daib!” I clung to Mwita more tightly, clenching my eyes shut. “The man is no man! He…” Memories began to flood my senses. My journey to the West, seeing his face, his spirit. The pain! Defeat. My heart sank. I had failed.

“Shh,” he said.

“He should have killed me,” I whispered. Even after being recreated by Ani, I still couldn’t take him down.

“No,” Mwita said, taking my face in his hands. I tried to pull my shameful face away but he held me there. Then he kissed me long and full. The voice in my head that was screaming failure and defeat quieted, though it did not stop its mantra. Mwita pulled away and we stared into each other’s eyes.

“My hand,” I whispered. I held it up. The symbol was of a worm coiled around itself. It was black and crusty and hurt when I tried to close my hand into a fist. Failure, the voice in my head whispered. Defeat. Death.

“Didn’t notice that,” Mwita said, frowning as he held it closer to his face. When he touched it with his index finger, he pulled his hand back, hissing.

“What?” I said weakly.

“It’s like it’s charged. Like sticking my finger into an electrical socket,” he said rubbing his hand. “My hand’s numb.”

“He put it there,” I said.

“Daib?”

I nodded. Mwita’s face darkened. “You feel all right otherwise?”

“Look at me,” I said, not wanting him to look at me at all. “How could I feel…”

“Why’d you do that?” he asked, unable to further contain himself.

“Because I…”

“You weren’t even happy to be alive. You weren’t even relieved that you would see us again! Ah, your name truly fits you, o!”

What could I say to that? I hadn’t thought about it. It was instinct. And yet you failed, the voice in my head whispered.

Ssaiku came in. He was dressed as if he’d been traveling, wearing a long caftan and pants fully draped with a long green thick cloth robe. The moment he saw that I was awake, his solemn face warmed. He spread his hands grandiosely. “Heeeeey, she awakens to grace us with her magnificence. Welcome back. We missed you.”

I tried to smile. Mwita scoffed.

“Mwita, how does she look?” Ssaiku asked. “Report.”

“She’s… pretty beaten up. She’s healed most of the open wounds but she can’t heal everything with her Eshu skills. Must have something to do with how they were inflicted. A lot of deep bruises. Looks like something raked at her chest. She has burns on her back… at least that’s what they manifest themselves as. She has a sprained ankle and wrist. No broken bones. From what she’s told me happened, I suspect it will hurt for her to breathe. And when her monthly comes, that too will be painful.”

Ssaiku nodded and Mwita continued.

“I’ve treated everything with three different salves. She should stay off the ankle and avoid the wrist for a few days. She’ll have to eat a diet of desert hare livers for a week when her monthlies begin because her blood will be very heavy. Her monthlies will come tonight, because of the trauma. I’ve already had Ting ask some women to gather the livers and make a stew.”

I noticed for the first time how utterly exhausted Mwita looked. “There’s one thing,” Mwita said. He took my right hand and turned the palm up. “This.”

Ssaiku took my hand, looking closely at the marking. He sucked his teeth, disgusted. “Ah, he put this on her.”

“H-how did you know it was… him?” I asked.

“Where else would you have gone in such a hurry?” he asked. He stood up.

“What is it?” Mwita asked.

“Ting may know,” he said. “At two years old the girl could read Okeke, Vah, and Sipo. She’ll be able to read this.” He patted Mwita on the shoulder. “I wish we had someone like you here. To be so well versed in the physical and spiritual is a rare gift.”

Mwita shook his head. “Not so knowledgeable in the spiritual, Oga,” he said.

Ssaiku chuckled, patting Mwita’s shoulder again. “I’ll be back,” he said. “Mwita, get some rest. She lives. Now go treat yourself as if you do, too.”

Seconds after Ssaiku left, Diti, Luyu, and Fanasi came running in. Diti screamed, planting a kiss on my forehead. Luyu burst into tears and Fanasi just stood there staring.

“Ani is great!” Diti blubbered. “She must love you so much.”

I could have laughed at this sentiment.

“We love you, too,” Luyu said.

Without a word, Fanasi turned and left the tent. On his way out, he almost bumped into Ting. She skirted around him and came right to me. “Let me see,” she said, pushing Luyu and Diti aside.

“What?” Luyu said, trying to see over Ting’s shoulder.

“Shh,” Ting scolded, taking my hand. “I need silence.” She brought her face to my palm and stared for a long time. She touched the symbol and yanked her hand away hissing, glancing at Mwita.

“What is it?” Mwita and I asked at the same time.

“An Nsibidi symbol. Barely. Very very old, though,” Ting said. “It means ‘slow and cruel poison.’ Look, the lines have already begun. They’ll travel up her arm to her heart and squeeze it dead.”