Akata Witch

A loud murmur flew through the room.

“Do it, then,” someone said.

“Yeah, I want to see,” someone else added.

“I hear that you can die if you fail.”

“Do it!”

“What do you mean, you’ve done it?” Orlu asked. Then something seemed to dawn on him.

Sasha smiled. “Yeah, it was that day at your house.”

Orlu was silent.

Yao and Ibou whispered to each other, and when they stopped, they didn’t look so terrified. “Okay, I accept,” Yao said. “Do it. But you have to do it, not him.”

“Who do you think showed him how?” Chichi said mysteriously. “And if you didn’t know, my mother is a third leveler. I come from thick spiritual blood.”

Yao and Ibou’s smiles faltered. Sunny glanced at Orlu, wondering if she should grab his hand and get them both out of there. Even she knew a masquerade was bad news. And there was no stopping Sasha and Chichi combined.

“What of your father?” a girl behind her said. “I hear he’s Lamb. Your spirit blood can’t be that thick.”

Chichi glared at the girl. “Don’t you worry about my father,” Chichi said. “I certainly don’t.”

“Chichi, don’t do this,” Orlu said. “Masquerades are hard to control even when they’re successfully called. They can force their freedom.”

But Chichi had already sat down. “I have it all in my head,” she softly said. She started drawing in the dirt with her knife.

“Ugh! Goddammit,” Orlu angrily whispered to Sunny. “I want to just kick her! Do you know how bad this is?”

Even before becoming a Leopard Person, Sunny knew about masquerades. They were supposedly spirits of the dead, or just spirits in general who for various reasons came to the physical world through termite mounds. During weddings, birth celebrations, funerals, and festivals, people dressed as them and pretended to be them. That was the key word, pretend. But in the Leopard world, they were real.

“Chichi,” she said. “Maybe you should-”

“Back off,” Chichi said, still drawing. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Of course you do,” Orlu said. “Until you get us all killed.”

“Didn’t you hear? We’ve done it before,” Sasha said. “Chill.”

The entire tent was quiet as everyone watched. For the first time that night, Sunny wished some figures of authority were allowed to keep an eye on things. “Are you sure you won’t get sent to the Abuja Leopard Council?” Sunny asked loudly.

“Do you see any goddamn Lambs around?” Chichi snapped. The design she was drawing looked like a giant circle with lines radiating out and into it.

She quickly made a cross in the center and then sat back, looking at her work. She stood up and began chanting something in Efik as she cut the air with her knife.

“Look,” Sunny said to Orlu. People started to whisper to each other. Many either stepped back or ran out of the tent, especially when the dirt in the center of the drawing began to churn up into a small mound.

A minute passed. The mound grew taller and taller. It looked like the beginning of a termite mound, the places through which masquerades were believed to enter the physical world. It reached about six feet before it stopped. Termites emerged from tiny holes throughout the hill. The winged ones immediately took to the air. Sunny swatted at one that landed on her arm.

“This juju charm,” Chichi said dramatically, “is straight from Udide’s Book of Shadows.”

Several of the remaining people gasped. More turned and ran out of the tent.

“Udide’s Book of Shadows?” Yao almost shouted. Now he looked highly alarmed. Ibou must have fled, because Sunny didn’t see him anywhere. “You’re crazy! Do you know what you’ve just invited?”

“Udide respects the intelligent, the creative, and the brave,” Chichi said, turning back to the termite mound.

Only friendship kept Sunny from running-especially after the wailing started. It was a high-pitched wavery sort of ghostly noise, like the ululations of women from the Middle East. Then the trademark tock tock tock started, the sound of tiny drums. A playful flute wove in and out of the wailing and drumming. Then there came the tooth-vibrating DOOOM DOOOM of a deep-barreled talking drum.

“Sunny, if you value your life, do not run,” Orlu warned.

The mound was caving in at the center. They all stepped back as a wooden knob rose from it. It was attached to the top of a large tuft of thick raffia. Then the termite mound expanded. They backed away some more. The creature’s body was large and bulbous, covered with beautiful blue shiny cloth. Cowry shells and blue and white beads hung from pieces of blue yarn. They clicked and clacked as the masquerade grew.

When it reached over fifteen feet high, it stopped. The drumbeat and the flute reached a crescendo. The large tuft of raffia at the top fell away, revealing a four-faced head.

Students called for Allah, Legba, Chukwu, Jesus, Mawu, God, Chineke, Oya, Ani, Asaase Yaa, Allat, and many other deities to protect them. Sunny moaned and pressed close to Orlu, who was cursing under his breath. Chichi seemed to be in a trance, Sasha watching wordlessly behind her.

The masquerade faces looked around at them, the expressions animated. The smiling face grinned. The angry face scowled. The surprised face looked more and more shocked. And the curious face looked very, very inquisitive. The knob at the top grazed the tent’s ceiling.

Then the wooden mask fell away. Orlu and Sunny dodged the falling pieces. On the other side, a student beside Yao shouted in pain as one hit her on the shoulder.

“Oh my God!” Sunny screeched. Orlu grabbed her arm.

Underneath the mask was a huge undulating mass of red termites, wasps, bees, mosquitoes, flies, and ants! It wasn’t raffia and palm fronds that stuffed the masquerade’s blue cloth-covered body-it was stinging insects. People started screaming and the masquerade began to dance, a cloud of insects rising around it.

“Everyone! Get down!” Orlu shouted. “Right now! Right now!”

But people were too panicked. They were running amok. Orlu shoved Sunny to the ground. Something stung her arm. “Stay down!” he said. Then he shouted, “Chichi, Sasha, down! It’s going to happen any minute!”

The masquerade danced, whirling and whirling faster and faster. It whipped thousands of insects to the rhythm and speed of the drums and flute, laughing its shrill womanly laugh and buzzing its insectile buzz.

Orlu dropped down beside Sunny and said, “Hold your breath.”

As soon as she did so, the buzzing grew a thousand times louder. Insects blasted in all directions. The blue cloth collapsed, empty. Sunny was buried in thousands of ants, and bees and wasps smacked into her and flew around her head. She screamed and cried along with everyone else.

Death by stinging. It could happen. A boy in her town had been killed by a swarm of angry wasps when he tried to knock down a hive behind his house. We’re all going to die here, she thought, curling herself tighter. She felt two more stings on her legs and wondered what her parents and brothers would think when she was returned home all swollen and red and dead. I should have stayed home, she thought. This is what I get for lying.

She felt Orlu start to get up. “What are you doing?” she screamed, pulling him back down. Something stung her arm.

He pulled away and got up again. She shielded her eyes and looked at him. Orlu seemed far from himself, calm and unafraid. He was holding out his hands and bringing them in, holding out his hands and bringing them in. Each time he did this, more insects piled themselves under the masquerade’s cloth.

“Go home,” he coaxed in Igbo. She could hear his voice through the screaming and buzzing. “You’ve seen, you