The night Chimebuka and her mother sat for the first time on the veranda of their new air cabin and she saw a cat—black and sleek—saunter past through the passage like it knew exactly where it was going, she knew something bad laid ahead. To see a lone black cat not moving along stealthily was ominous, but to see it very clearly on a night when no moon or stars graced the sky, was more than a bad omen.
So, when four market days later, two officers from the Ministry of Magic Affairs arrived at their doorstep, she knew even before they spoke that something had happened to her father. After their first visitors, she and Mama hastily threw a few things into a bag. Then, just as she started drawing the circle that would transport them to the headquarters of MMA in Awka, the ding rang out for the second time.
She opened the door to see Lotanna, her father’s aide. Because ever since they became adults, she had seen him only a few times and always in the company of Papa, she asked, “Where is my Father?”
She tried not to wrap her arms around him and hold on or let Mama see the fear in her eyes as she took in his battered face, his crocked posture and his ruffled blue hospital nightwear. She instead gripped tighter the nzu she had been using to draw the circle.
“That’s why I’ve come. Inside, please.” He leaned in and hugged Mama with the hand currently not in a sling. He didn’t hug Chimebuka but kept his eyes on her face as he limped into the house, fell into one of the sofas and took the precious time Chimebuka didn’t have to catch his breath. He glanced at the nzu in her hand and asked simply, “Did they tell you to go to Awka?” When she raised her eyebrows in question, he added, “I saw them leave. What did they want?”
Chimebuka turned to her mother and saw that she was already leaving the room, perhaps, to get something, to keep busy. They were already revved up for the tumble into Awka and couldn’t keep still. She turned back to Lotanna, “No. They wanted to know if Papa—or any of our ancestors—have any links with Ndi Mmiri. One dared to ask if our family ever sold any maid from the Water people. They wouldn’t tell us what’s wrong or why they were asking all those questions.”
“If they’re asking questions, then they’ve not found him.”
“He’s missing? He’s not dead then?” Until she asked, Chimebuka hadn’t realized how much she dreaded the possibility of getting to Awka only to be told that her father was dead. But the fear which had been curled low in her stomach like a viper ready to attack didn’t unfurl; it remained twisted, tight and ready.
Lotanna seemed to notice and said quickly, “His body hasn’t been discovered. When anybody drowns in Isimmiri, the maids bring the body to shore in no more than three days. It’s been five.”
“You were with him, what happened?”
“We were on Isimmiri, on our way home, when our bubble ran into something very hard. The bubble’s sensor didn’t warn us of any impending obstacle. Before it burst, your father sent out a distress call. After that, I don’t remember anything else. I woke up in the hospital and was told General Okolo is unaccounted for.”
“I can’t sense him, that’s why I thought he’s dead,” she finally admitted one of the fears nagging just behind her right ear. Both Lotanna and Mama turned to her sharply. Her gift was not something they talked about. Only four people alive—Lotanna included—knew about her gift of being able to sense people she had met in whatever sphere she was in. She hadn’t known whether to tell her mother that when she had tried to reach out to her father—several times—she had encountered only blank space. “It’s as if he has disappeared,” her eyes widened. “Disappeared.” She whispered. “Oh, Mama. He’s not in this realm.”
Mama gave a strangled cry and leaped up from beside Lotanna where she had sat and had a tray of juice balanced on both her laps. The tray upended and fell to the cloud carpet-protected floor, scattering glassware. The juice—the bright colour of Lotanna’s hospital nightwear—pooled at Mama’s feet as she stood shaking. Neither Lotanna nor Chimebuka dared to touch her.
“Mmiri has taken him,” Mama’s voice—usually soft and sure—was edgy and unrecognizable now. Chimebuka started to come forward to take her hand, but Mama waved her back and began pacing, her momentary fear put aside. “Before we got married, we checked our stars to see if we were compatible. The ogba-aha told us we were compatible, but it is written in your father’s akaraka that the water would take him. You know your father,” she turned to Chimebuka. “He didn’t take the ogba-aha seriously; he laughed it off and told me not to worry. I loved him, so I married him but I couldn’t stop him from his scavenging; it’s family business that had become tradition over generations. And he loved the water. Every time he left, I kept vigil until he returned. It was all I could do.”
“Mama, did he sell a nwa-okpu of Ndi Mmiri?” Chimebuka was horrified at this thought. Selling a maiden of any sphere was a great alu against Ana and a lot of other deities. “It’s an unforgivable alu that stretches out to future generations. Did he do it, Mama?” Desperation made her say what normally, she wouldn’t even contemplate.
“No, no. Your father would never do that; besides, he knows there are consequences. His great grandmother was from the water. Her husband, his great grandfather lured her away from her people and married her without the biamaru uno ritual. They never forgave him and now, they’ve taken your father away from us. Despite your father’s status, the ministry won’t be eager to help when they find out the problem is ancestral.”
“He’s partly of the water. They won’t hurt him,” Chimebuka said, more to reassure herself than her mother. “We’ll bring him back, Mama.” She promised. She didn’t know how they could manage that but she didn’t like the look that had yet again come into her mother’s eyes. “We’ll bring him home.”
“How?” The question was a hopeless cry.
Lotanna wobbled to his feet. “I know of a great dibia.”
Convincing her mother to remain home while she and Lotanna went to Anaku to consult the dibia hadn’t been easy. But by the time they set out, Mama agreed to stay back in case Papa returned or called home. She looked so small and fragile as she stood at the door and watched them descend, Chimebuka almost told her to come along.
They chose to take the ground route to Anaku rather than the air route because, though it was bumpier, it had less traffic. The vehicle—round and streamlined—which Lotanna had insisted on driving himself, moved steadily at a speed of a little over 140km/hr but Chimebuka felt it moved slower than giant home-grown snails.
“Could you go faster?” She growled for the umpteenth time.
Lotanna merely glanced at her and thought how he had missed her. He couldn’t believe how distant they had become. Once, in what seemed like a very long time ago, they had been as close as two nuts in a groundnut husk. Their mothers had been best of friends and they had grown up like brother and sister until that year she had been fifteen and he sixteen, and something had come between them.
A kiss.
Now, as he stole glances at her from the corner of his eye, he wished they could go back to the way they were back then. He couldn’t give up that one kiss they had shared and the fondle that had followed, for anything. In a blink he would go back a second time and attend that New Yam Festival where they had shared that one dance in the lovers’ circle and he had laid his lips on hers, and tasted her mouth for the first time. But he wished they hadn’t avoided each other afterwards, he wished they had sat down and talked about it.
Then, he wouldn’t have been so far away to see her dark skin grow shinier, her face leaner, her brown eyes sharper, her lips and body fuller—all this as her womanhood bloomed. He wouldn’t have had to just nod politely at her on the few occasions they saw each other.
“What happened to us, Ofunwa?” He called her by the name they hadn’t called each other in a very very long time. The name drew out a gasp from Chimebuka, more than the question would have.
She couldn’t pretend to misunderstand him, so, she remained quiet.
He put the vehicle on auto-pilot and shifted to face her. He pushed, “Ofunwa.”
The name had come from a very long time ago after they had realized that their parents wouldn’t give them siblings. It had started, at first as a joke, then it had stuck till their teenage years.
And now.
“We are here.” She couldn’t quite disguise the relief she felt at the interruption.
The vehicle had stopped in front of a palm-frond wall with no gate. The GPS on the dashboard blinked an arrow a furious red and the arrow pointed up. Lotanna changed gears and swung up and into the compound.
The dibia’s apprentice greeted them by name. They looked at each other, incredulously.
“Please, come. Onu is expecting you.” The apprentice took them further into the compound and then disappeared when he brought them to the mouth of the shrine adorned chiefly in red and black.
“Remove your footwear and come inside.” A voice said. They had to bow their heads slightly to pass the cave-like entrance. Inside, a face was put to the voice, and the young, innocent-looking face was a contrast to the gruff voice that welcomed them.
“I’m Onu Ujuagu, the mouthpiece of Ujuagu. I knew before you knew yourselves that you would come.” He picked a twin metal gong and its stick from beside him and beat a harmonic tune. “Ujuagu, my agbala told me.”
Lotanna whose idea it had been to visit the dibia, watched him now, his eyes shinning skepticism. Chimebuka knew there were dibias who really had the sight and knew what they were doing and there were ones who pretended they did and played simple parlour tricks. “Did your agbala tell you why we’ve come too.”
Onu focused bi-coloured eyes on her and smiled widely, as if he knew a secret about her, she didn’t know. “Ujuagu will forgive you because—though you have gifts—you see not with the same eyes that Ujuagu does.” He turned serious, shared a look between them. “You have come because somebody you both love immensely is missing, presumed dead.”
He didn’t give them time to break out of their surprised trance and comment before he broke into rapid incantation. “Anya mmuo abughi anya mmadu. He’s being held so that he cannot return. He’s hidden, it’s only his will to return that is making him seen at all.”
“Will you help us?” Lotanna was leaning forward in his stool, both his hands braced on his laps, his eyes earnest.
“Ask, Ujuagu,” he said to Chimebuka and pointed at a figure, a carved image of a willowy woman who had her hands stretched forward as if in receipt of something. “And call your father by name.”
“Please, Ujuagu, help us bring General Obinna Okolo home.”
Onu stood abruptly from his stool and turned in circles as though he was possessed by a wild evil spirit. With his back first, he went through a door draped with raffia mat. When he came back, he held a charm wrapped in fabric similar to the ones adorning the shrine and tied in thin threads.
“Take this,” he gave it to Lotanna. “The woman shouldn’t touch it because a woman who still bleeds shouldn’t. Keep it close, always, until your return. It’ll permit you to enter into the Water realm undetected.
“You’ll come back and thank Ujuagu after, only then will I tell you my fee. If you don’t come, Ujuagu will hunt you down. “He turned his back on them, “Go, now.” then he added, “Do not look back.”
They both stood to leave. Lotanna had to use both hands to tuck the charm carefully into his bag and he winced doing it.
Onu hurried to him and touched the hand in a sling. “You can’t journey there injured. Ujuagu said to inform you that you’ll spend half the night in her healing pond. You’ll drop the fee for healing in that bowl now.”
When Lotanna had first been deployed to search and dig in River Awka beside General Okolo for olanyanwu, the magical gem that aided the growth of plants in the dying world, the second person he had wanted to tell was Mama but he hadn’t because he had bruised her heart. He had bruised a heart that had loved and nurtured him after his parents’ death when he chose the water—which she feared—over taking charge of his parents’ conglomerate. When she heard of his promotion, she had traveled all the way to Awka to bring him a cake and they were back to how they had been in the past, and no reconciliatory words were said between them.
After that, he had told her everything exactly as it was, until now, and even though he felt really guilty, he didn’t say this to Chimebuka. Instead, he said, “We should have told her the whole truth.” But she cut her eyes away from him. She agreed with him, but they couldn’t have told Mama that her daughter was going into the water too.
“Soon, all these would be mere stories.” She whispered.
Lotanna remained quiet. He was standing at the wheels urging the bubble as fast as it could move to the centre of Isimmiri, from where they could see no land or even a mirage of one. From there, they could shift and the shift wouldn’t be noticed or recorded in the Hall of Magic in Awka. And because of the charm, it wouldn’t be noticed either in the sphere of Ndi Mmiri.
Feeling a yearning to be close to Chimebuka, to at least smell her long, dreadlocked hair, as he had done while they sat together at Ujuagu’s, he automated the vehicle and wandered to the glass refrigerator, took out two cans of Fanta and had the vending machine attached to it dispense a bowl of biscuits. He went to the crystal table where Chimebuka sat, studying the map of Isimmiri. He clicked the program off and sat the bowl and tubes before her.
“Take a break,” he said, “there’s nothing else to do until we get there.” He sat beside her and bit into a biscuit. They had barely gone through a quarter of the bowl—in silence—when he asked again, “What happened to us, Ofunwa?”
This time, there would be no interruption that would prevent her from answering. She finished chewing and considered stuffing another biscuit into her mouth. She shrugged, “I guess we drifted apart.” She met his gaze, her eyes daring him to say otherwise.
But he agreed with her. “Because we let ourselves drift apart. We could drift back again.”
“We’ll never be what we once were.” They could never have that innocuous friendship that only children could manage. Not after the lover’s circle on that New Yam Festival. She looked at him and saw in his eyes that he remembered. “We can’t.”
“I know, but I don’t want us to. You don’t want us to,” he settled his can on the table and leaned forward and took her hands. When she didn’t withdraw them, he took it as a sign, good or bad, he wasn’t sure. But he marveled at the familiarity of her hands, after such a long time. He slanted his palm—broad and rough—over her narrow one with long tapered fingers and linked them, lifted them to his lips and kissed softly.
She watched him from under her lashes. Dark and tall with a face that was a crooked nose away from being too beautiful, he could never remain the object of her sisterly affection. She had come to terms with that after she had stopped denying her attraction. She couldn’t deny it now so, she met his eyes with hers and assessed him as he did her.
Lotanna raised his hand to her face, pushed two long brown dreadlocks behind her ear, smiled into her eyes. And as always, was knocked back by them.
Onu had informed him while he had lounged in the pond that he didn’t need any charms to make him immune to the sirens’ charms because his heart had already been taken. He hadn’t needed Onu to tell him so, he knew already and was reminded every time he saw her. He was reminded every time her father mentioned her name. He was reminded at every glance at the small things that reminded him of her.
But he had surely needed the slight push from Onu urging him to tell her. Not yet though, he thought. He would wait until all this fiasco was over. Now, he would have to settle for tasting her lips again. He dropped his eyes to them, then brought them back to her eyes, searching.
Chimebuka smiled slowly and let him see the shine in her eyes before she said in a breathless, low voice , “Kiss me.” Then, she took his mouth, gingerly at first, then not.
Their lips battled for dominance. She moaned and dug her fingers into his thick dark hair and pressed his face closer. His tongue caressed her bottom lip, then slipped inside to tango with hers. Groaning into her mouth, he lifted her from the cushion and brought her to saddle his laps.
Unconsciously, she shifted to settle properly and dragged a deep moan from Lotanna. He snatched his mouth from her neck and groaned, “Damn, Ofunwa.” He kissed her again, swallowing her moans. “Don’t do that again.”
She smiled, a triumphant smile that told him she understood perfectly. “What?” She moved again and took her time climbing off him.
And they began to laugh. And laugh. And they laughed and laughed until they couldn’t anymore.
“How I’ve missed you.” He said it so simply that she turned, went to where he stood near the controls looking through the glass at the passing waves and hugged him from behind.
“Me too,” she said. “We’ll talk.”
“Yes, we will. First, we bring General Okolo home.”
The bubble stood in place and waved in tune with the gentle lapping of the water against it. They had changed from their simple attire of jeans and T-shirts to nylon lined swim suits that were resistant to both heat and cold. Watching Chimebuka strip—as if he wasn’t there—and shimmy into her swim suit had been refreshing and quite satisfying.
Now, as he watched her drawing the circle, he tried to put it out of his mind and focus on the task ahead. Again, he checked his back pack, checked hers too and ticked off his mental list. Hydrotorch, check. Cans of food, oxygen strips, double edge retractable swords, swim suits, check. And most importantly, nzu and the charm. When he finished, Chimebuka was done drawing and was standing in one of the two small spaces she had made in the circle.
He joined her inside the circle and stood opposite her. She stared into his eyes and murmured words that to him, were gibberish and soon, they were flying and flying. The world passed—white and very fast—before their eyes, the air stopped and if they listened hard, beyond the buzzing in their head, they could actually hear silence. And they were falling and falling. Then, they were both standing outside the closed door of a mansion which was white and regal in its entirety.
Lotanna quickly turned to Chimebuka and asked, “Are you okay?” and found out even before he thought it that he could speak and breathe easily.
Chimebuka replied, “I’m fine,” and created a flurry of smaller bubbles from her mouth. She reached out and started to take his hand but two very shiny people, a maid and a man holding hands came at them propelled by their scissoring legs at a surprising speed. The maid and the man swam through them, pushed the door open and went inside. The door closed after them.
“Woo, they can’t see us.”
“That shows the charm is genuine. I had my doubts.” Lotanna took her hand. “We too should scissor our legs behind us,” he demonstrated and figured he just floated quite fluidly.
A pair of glowfish circled around them before moving on and Chimebuka would have smiled had her heart not been beating so fast. They pushed open the door and went through and were greatly taken aback. The inside was magnificent and the people decked out in all manner of sparkly shells and strange ornaments stood and walked on both legs. Perhaps because, Chimebuka imagined, there was no water inside for them to swim in and for a moment, she wondered why the water stopped just at the mouth of the mansion and didn’t come through the open windows.
“Look,” Lotanna’s voice was heavy with terror. His grip on Chimebuka’s hand tightened.
She glanced up to where he had pointed and saw Papa—dark and beefy—draped in shiny ornaments. He was smiling into the eyes of a woman who was wearing a crown, kneeling before him and holding a wooden cup. The woman raised the cup to her lips, took a sip and with a half smile on her lips, handed the cup to Papa. He took the cup very gently from her, drained its content and stuffed a handful of pearls into it, sealing their marriage vows.
