The same funky train that dropped them off picked them up. It was a tenth of the size they’d left it in, even smaller than a van, and it was empty. There was a white throne for Anatov in the second row.
“Hey,” Sasha asked, sitting behind Jesus’s General. “What music you got?”
“If it’s got gam-gbam dim-dim that shakes the very air I breathe, I dey grab,” Jesus’s General said. He and Sasha slapped hands. Sasha clicked through Jesus’s General’s digital collection.
Anatov sat in his seat, opened up the day’s paper, and began to read. Chichi sat beside him and did the same. Orlu and Sunny went to the back. As they drove off, Sasha got the music going. He and the general bobbed their heads to the beat.
“Hey,” Orlu said. “Remember what I said about you guys being careful. Chichi knows her way around, but you’re new, so be extra careful.”
“Sure,” Sunny said, rolling her eyes. “So, did you and Chichi come to this together last year?”
“Yeah,” Orlu said.
“Your parents and Chichi’s mother are friends?”
Orlu frowned and cocked his head. “Yeah… sort of.” He lowered his voice. “Chichi gets her weirdness from her mother. Her mother’s really, really brilliant. She’s an assistant to Sugar Cream and she’s a Nimm priestess.”
“What’s-”
“Women who become Nimm priestesses are chosen at birth. Their intelligence is tested before their mother even gets a chance to hold them. If they pass, they’re ‘sold’ to Nimm, a female spirit who lives in the wilderness.”
“Like Osu people?” she asked, horrified. These were Igbo people sold as slaves to an Igbo deity.
“Sort of. Nimm women aren’t outcasts like the Osu,” he said. “Nimm women all have ‘Nimm’ as a last name, and they’re never allowed to marry. And they reject wealth.”
“Is that why Chichi’s father left?”
Orlu laughed bitterly. “No. I overheard my mother telling my aunt that he was one of the most selfish men she’d ever met. He didn’t know that Chichi’s mother is Leopard, though.” He paused. “I’ll bet if he knew he couldn’t marry her mother, he’d have fought to marry her.”
“Oh,” she said, realizing something. “So Chichi’s not pure Leopard?”
Orlu shrugged. “No one’s ‘pure.’ We’ve all got Lambs in our spiritline somewhere. Anyway, Nimm women are… kind of eccentric. My parents are friendly with her, but not friends.”
There was a silence. Music drifted back from the front of the funky train.
“Orlu,” Sunny finally said, glancing at Chichi, who was reading her newspaper, “what do I…
“What do you mean?”
“Am I supposed to keep all this stuff from my family for the rest of my life? Who can live like that? It’s already weird. What do free agents
“Well, for one, the pact we made prevents you from telling anyone about it,” Orlu said. The trust knot, the symbols on the book, and the juju knife-it seemed like years ago, not just a few months. “I don’t know, Sunny. You know what, though?”
“What?”
“You really need to find out about your grandmother,” he said. “Especially from your mother. You didn’t inherit the spiritline from your mother, but maybe your mother knows more than you think.”
The Abuja market was about ten minutes from the Hilton. Sunny hadn’t expected them to go to a Lamb market, especially not this one. It was the first African market she had visited, a few months after her family had returned to Nigeria when they’d stayed with her aunt. Talk about culture shock! The American supermarkets were always neat, the prices rigid, everything so sterile. The Abuja Market in particular was ripe, unpredictable, and loud. She’d been overwhelmed by what the market sold, and how the vendors sold it. Now it was just a market.
After Anatov paid Jesus’s General, they all went straight to a shaded part of the market. A crude roof of wooden planks was built over all the booths here.
“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure!” a man announced in a gruff voice. Junk Man. He had a look that practically screamed that he was far more than what he seemed. He was short and fat, his head shaven so close that it shone like a black bowling ball. In contrast, he had a bushy gray mustache and a long equally bushy gray- black beard. He wore a bronze ring on every finger. His cushioned chair creaked whenever he moved.
His booth was the same size as everyone else’s, about twelve feet by twelve feet. Wooden dividers separated his shop from a utensil shop to his right and a basket shop to his left. But his place was packed! A narrow path led through his wares. He raised his fat hands and shouted, “Hey! Anatov!”
“Junk Man,” Anatov said, as they vigorously shook hands. Junk Man’s rings clicked loudly.
“That one?” Junk Man said, pointing at Sunny. Anatov nodded. “Ah, an albino,” he said. He smiled, and a dimple appeared on his left cheek. “Go on, have a look-see. But none of it is free. Don’t be shy. Look, then you buy. But don’t touch the things you don’t think you should. Especially those parrot feathers. For some reason, people don’t know better. Then they get home and wonder why all they want to do is chatter about nonsense.”
Sasha, Orlu, and Chichi were already looking around. Sunny had no idea what not to touch. There were so many items-most on tables, some on the ground or hanging from nails on the wooden dividers.
There were baskets; ebony and bronze statues; rings, necklaces, and anklets of various metals; piles of colorful stones and crystals; ancient-looking coins; cowry shells the size of her pinky and larger than her head; scary and smiling ceremonial masks; a jar of gold powder; a pile of jewels and rusted daggers; bags of colored feathers. An eight-foot-tall ebony statue of a stern-looking goddess watched from the far corner.
“Hey, you see this?” Sasha asked Chichi. The two huddled close around something. That snickering again.
Sunny stopped to look at a mask emitting a very foul odor.
“Sunny,” Orlu said, “here are the knives.”
They were piled in a beat-up cardboard box. Some had jeweled handles; others were made of metal, copper, bronze, or what looked like gold. Another looked like wood. Another was plastic.
“How do I-”
“You American?” Junk Man asked. Suddenly, he was right next to her.
She jumped. “Um-yeah, sort of. I was born there and lived there for nine years before we came back.”
“Who’s older? Him?” he asked, pointing at Orlu.
Sunny shrugged. “Only by a few months.”
“Your parents born here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Then you from here
She laughed. “If you say so.”
“I know so.”
“So what’s that make me, then?” she asked.
“Who cares?” he said. “You want a juju knife, right?”
She nodded, grinning. She liked Junk Man very much.
“Close your eyes, reach in there, and pick one up.”
She shut her eyes. As she rummaged around, one of the knives cut her. “Ah!” She snatched her hand away and opened her eyes.
Junk Man immediately reached into the box. “We have a winner,” he said. The knife he brought out had a small smear of her blood on the blade. “Funny,” he said.
She stared at it. “What is that?”
“Oh. Weird,” Orlu said.
“Is that the one that chose you?” Chichi asked, coming over.
“Oh, that’s-uh, that’s different,” Sasha said.
Its handle was an unremarkable smooth silver, but the blade was paper-thin, made of a clear green material, like glass.
“Man from the north gave me this one for free after I bought some others from him,” Junk Man said. “He wore a thick veil, so I didn’t see his face. But he had eyes pretty like a woman’s and a very kind voice. You can always tell a man’s nature by his voice, a woman’s nature is more in the eyes. Anyway, there’s your knife. It picked you fair
