Golibe rode Nkem, her amoosu into the ground floor of Ejim Business Complex. She tugged on his mane, Nkem lowered his forelegs, and she climbed off. “Stay,” she thought, and Nkem fitted himself in a space between two airtaxis. Satisfied, she made for the bank of lifts at one edge of the parking lot. All eleven lifts were available, but she called for the third, just because she considered three an auspicious number.
Inside, an automated voice accompanied by the brilliant tune of Ndidi Okoye’s “Akwaugo,” greeted her and announced the temperature. Between the buttons labelled North and South on the touchpad screen on the left partition of the lift, she hit South and then, when a new set of buttons appeared, she hit the one labeled G. The lift whisked her twenty-eight floors subterranean and opened onto a large arena. The same voice bid her to enjoy the rest of her morning.
“I definitely will,” she said to herself. She hoped to play outdoor holo beach volley with Anyanwụ before the sun rose.
She stepped off the lift onto the arena and her feet sank into trimmed grass, the greenest she had ever seen anywhere. She took a minute to breathe in the fresh air and admire the life the space offered. The arena didn’t look like it had witnessed—even for a day—the drought that had ravaged Kalamalu for two years. The greenness stretched all over the arena, far into the distances where the sky touched the ground. The field held no structure at all and no sign of inhabitants. Golibe knew the land wasn’t what it appeared to be. It was enchanted land and it bent only to the wishes of its master, appearing to her the way its master commanded it to.
“Take off your shoes,” A voice—soft but firm—blew with the wind in front of her.
Golibe went on one knee and removed one sandal, then the other.
“Come,” the voice came again.
She looked up and discovered in front of her a tree stump housing a shrine. An arm’s length away from the stump was a shelter built out of palm fronds and draped with silk the colour of dusty ash. She hung her sandals on the forefinger of her right hand and approached the shelter.
At the entrance, she called out, “Great one.”
“Enter.”
Despite the invitation, Golibe knocked three times before she bent her head and entered. The shelter was dark and didn’t have the look or eerie feeling of a dibia’s workshop. The floor was covered with dark brown sand instead of the green grass outside. It was empty except for Ejim, the small woman with gray hair who sat cross-legged on the floor. She wore a silver gown that started from her neck and pooled around her feet like water.
She stretched out her hands towards Golibe and said, “Come, I have long been expecting you. Welcome Golibe, daughter of Mma.”
Golibe rolled her eyes skywards. She knew the dibịa had a little gift of sight which she often used to her own amusement. She replied, “Thank you.”
“The journey ahead of you isn’t long.” Ejim continued. “Sit,” The dibịa ordered and Golibe found herself moving closer to her and then, lowering to the ground. “Give me your hand.”
Golibe stared hard at Ejim’s filmed eyes. She realized she hadn’t seen the dibịa blink since she entered the shelter. Perhaps, the woman had isi-eke yet, she had a feeling Ejim could see her clearly. She covered the fear that had begun to creep into her heart with a laugh.
“No,” She told Ejim, “I’m not here for a divining.” She had come in Anyanwu’s stead—to fetch a crate of vulture’s eggs, an essential ingredient her friend would use in concocting a spell to dispel the ones his neighbour had cast on his farm machines. And she told the dibịa as much. She touched a finger to her wristband and a holographic image appeared. “Here’s proof of payment,” she thrust her wrist under Ejim’s nose.
The dibịa took a hold of the wrist and traced the palm with her forefinger. “A short road indeed.” Her grip on Golibe’s wrist tightened and her voice deepened, roughened, “You must find the Isle of Creation.”
“Excuse me?” Golibe attempted to take back her hand. She glanced back up and confronted Ejim’s widened eyes dominating her face which had turned ashy, like the draperies of her shrine. And discovered Ejim was dead serious. She concluded that the woman was mad. The Isle of Creation was a myth, a mere story told to children at bedtime and during moonlight play.
“Myths are born out of truths. Listen to me, Child. The reason for the drought is because the Eye in the Sky has lost its water. You must return water to it.”
Golibe snatched her hand from Ejim’s grip and hurried to the entrance of the shelter. Almost out of the door, she found Ejim waiting for her outside.
“You’ve a need to help your friend, that’s why you run some of his errands. It is why you’re here. The way I’ll tell you is the only lasting help you can offer.”
Golibe watched Ejim. The dibịa was taller than her, and slightly bigger, but she felt age was at her advantage and she could take her if she wanted. “I’ll listen.”
“You have to find the Isle of Creation. Pluck a Tear of Life, from the ones offered. Take it to the place where Ala is upside down, on the day Kalamalu comes between the sun and the moon. When the moon is completely obscured and the Eye appears in the sky, place the Tear in it. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when neither the sun nor the moon claims the sky afterwards.”
“Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Ala has chosen you to bring life back to her.”
Golibe was aware Ejim wasn’t a priest of Ala. How would she know the mind of a goddess she didn’t serve? “This is a mistake,” she told Ejim.
“The Earth goddess doesn’t make mistakes. You will know what I speak is true when you set your eyes upon the winged cat. And again when you see the eye of the sun beside the winged cat. And a third time, when you decide to find the Isle.”
“Why me?”
Ejim didn’t reply. She waved her left hand, the illusion dissolved and the arena became a scorching desert brewing a sandstorm.
The sandstorm made for Golibe in a furious swirl and she fled, into the waiting lift. The lift closed and started up without her issuing a command. As she watched the numbers decrease, she reached with her mind and summoned her amoosu. “Nkem, I have a need for speed. Get ready, we need to run.”
Nkem was waiting for her in front of the lift. He had taken the form of a winged cheetah. Golibe scrutinized him, the lithe body, the webbed wings with talons at their bends, the soulful brown eyes that never changed and always lit up at the sight of her. And the words of the dibịa—all of them—rushed back to flood her ears. Her heart began to beat fast as she bent to buckle her sandal straps. Then, she swung onto Nkem’s back and guided him out of the parking lot.
Outside, the traffic jam had increased as people were determined to get away from the open before twelve o’clock. Golibe urged Nkem above the—ground and air—traffic into the sky where he bounded through the clouds.
#
“You didn’t bring the eggs?” Anyanwụ asked Golibe, his tone annoyed. He was slouched against one of his hexed machines, his legs crossed at the ankles. A part of his farm, dusty and almost bare of crops , was stretched out behind him. Golibe thought they made quite a picture, the farmer and his farm.
“No,” She answered. She rubbed Nkem’s neck to calm him and herself down. Despite her effort, his muscles throbbed and her heart raced still.
“No? What do you mean no? Simple errand!” Anyanwụ tsked. He straightened from his relaxed pose to reveal a rangy frame made tall by long legs. “Did you not find the place?”
“I did.”
“Then, what happened?”
“Ejim scared me,” she snapped. “And I ran.”
Anyanwụ hurried to her side and peered at her face. “Golibe, did she hurt you? I admit she’s a little mad, but I thought she was harmless.”
“She didn’t hurt me, but she spooked me.” Golibe stepped away from him, pacing to shake off the nerves.
“She didn’t hurt you.” He closed his eyes and sighed.
She turned and found him and Nkem standing side by side watching her. Anyanwụ, the eye of the sun and the winged cat, she recalled. She decided to tell him. “Ejim said I can stop the drought by returning water to the Eye in the Sky.”
“Wait. She said you?”
“Yes.”
Anyanwụ stared at her, honey brown orbs searching stormy ones. “She said something else, didn’t she?”
Golibe opened her mouth and everything the dibịa said to her spilled out, word-for-word. But before Anyanwụ could say anything in return, a shrill sound rent through the air.
She gasped, “Eleven-fifty.”
“Run, Golibe.”
Anyanwụ ran into the farm shelter fifteen seconds before Golibe and Nkem. He pulled a lever adjacent the entrance of the shelter and two transparent covers treated to withstand ultraviolet radiations extracted from their metal seams and met in the middle to cover all of Anyanwụ’s land from the burning glare of the sun.
The sound of the alarm cut off as abruptly as it had begun when the clock struck twelve. They both looked to the horizon to watch the sun appear, a fiery ball primed to engage the sky in a dance. It painted the sky a beautiful orange colour that made Golibe so wistful she wondered how a thing so beautiful could be equally dangerous.
Golibe cut her gaze to the farm, at the expanse of nothingness. Once it had boasted of healthy plantain, cucumber, pineapple and pepper plants, the best in the whole of Kalamalu. Now, it was a wasteland and produced barely enough for sales. She was beginning to forget what the farm had looked like before the drought. The farm had been her haven—a place far removed from her parents’ house—since she and Anyanwụ became friends in nursery school. “The farm is dying.”
Anyanwụ nodded, “More with each rise of the sun. I have started to dip into the irrigation water to run the machine. At this rate, we won’t have enough water to last three months. We can’t afford the fortune the government charges for daily rations.”
“I have asked you to let me help. I can bring you two gallons of water each day from my parents’ dam.”
“And have your mother send a squad of armed men to apprehend me.”
“I can’t believe I’m thinking about doing this. This is all your neighbour’s fault. His foolishness took me to Ejim’s place in the first place. Why don’t we kill him in his sleep?”
Anyanwụ chuckled. “Jide was a good man, neighbourly. Remember, he babysat us and at each New Yam Festival before the drought, treated us to a feast. My family never had any problems with him until the drought. He’s only bitter he has no crops on his land while we do.”
“This is the twelfth time he’s hexed your machines, and each time, he comes to your face to brag about it. I say we smother him in his sleep.”
“Or, we can do as Ejim said. Stop the drought entirely.”
“What do a couple fifteen-year-olds know about finding a mythical island?”
“We can try to find answers.” Anyanwụ’s gaze shifted to Golibe’s leg. “Let me get that.” He pointed to her calf where grains of sand shades darker than her oak complexion were settled against her skin. He bent to dust the grains off. The moment he touched her, a vision gripped him.
It took him to his knees, snapped his head back and turned his eyes opaque. When he spoke, his voice echoed thrice: “You owe Ala the very life you have.”
Golibe lowered herself so she could be at eye level with Anyanwụ and did what she always did when his visions came, listened carefully.
“You were born sick. Except for the beat of your heart, you appeared unalive. You didn’t cry or open your eyes. No one could tell what was wrong with you despite series of tests. Finally, your father consulted an afa priest who told him that you wouldn’t live to the day of your naming and there was nothing to be done.
“But the dibịa seeing how desperate your father was told him of an ancient practice. Sickly newborns were buried in Earth or immersed in water or suspended in air and left alone for a whole night. In the morning when they are retrieved, they’re either dead or fully healthy. Your father thought Earth the safest element, so he covered you up to your neck in the soil in your mother’s garden. In the morning, your wails woke him.
“Ala saved you then, now, you’ll let her guide you. Heed the words of the folk song, ‘When the World.’”
The vision released Anyanwụ. He fell to the floor and laid down staring at the ceiling. As always, it left him weary. Golibe had seen his visions come enough times to know to let him be immediately after. She sat on her haunches beside him and clasped his hand.
Finally, Anyanwụ spoke, incredulity evident in his voice. “Your parents lied.”
Golibe bobbed her head. The new information shocked her too. She was aware that she had been born sick. Her father always told her—during his tantrums, and subsequent lectures about her dreads or her intended major in school, or her friendship with Anyanwụ who apparently was below her status or anything else—that it was his foresight and quick action that had saved her life after her birth. “They never told me how Papa’s so-called foresight and quick action achieved this feat of saving my life.”
She refused to dwell on it. She asked, “Anyanwụ, how are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“The words of ‘When the World’ says,
“When the world starts to die.
And all hope is lost.
Take the path of the East road.
Travel until you can’t anymore.
The Earth python will find you.
Gift it a palm fruit.
And it will take you to
Mother Nature who will help.”
“Anyanwụ, what are you going to do about the farm?” She asked.
“My parents will manage it until we return. What are you going to tell your parents?”
“I’ll text them that I’m staying at yours. Then, I’ll turn off my cell,” she finished, dismissing the matter with a wave of her hand. “The eclipse is in five days. We have only that long to find the Isle of Creation. Take a tear to the place where Ala is upside down – wherever that is. And put water back in the Eye.”
“There’s only one place I can think of where Ala is upside down.”
“Where?”
“In the home of the Sky Sandwich in Nkịtị forest. I have been there once with Father to collect sand from the land. They say that if you sprinkle the sand from there on your farmland, you harvest will be bountiful. It isn’t true.”
#
It was past seven o’clock in the evening when Anyanwụ bids his parents farewell, lifted his backpack, swiped the key to his mother’s camper off the living room’s table and headed out. Golibe stayed to receive Anyanwụ’s mother’s kisses and his father’s pat on the head before she lifted her own bag and headed out too.
Outside, natural light still ruled the sky. Guided by them, Anyanwụ walked to the vehicle. Inside, the camper was the size of a very narrow and short passage. It had a driver’s compartment, a kitchen area which had been closed off since the drought, solar power, A/C vents, two beds placed against the windows opposite each other, two cupboards above each bed and one toilet with a sink at the rear.
Anyanwụ dropped his bag on one of the beds and went about looking over the things he considered necessities. He checked the camper’s water gauge, the extra supply of water for the camper, their supply of drinking water and the foils of food, change of clothes his mother had packed. And most importantly, a can of palm fruits and a glass jar for the Tear.
Golibe and Nkem—who at that moment was a kitten, his natural form—joined Anyanwụ and settled in the passenger seat and the space between the two beds respectively. He started the engine and drove away pretending not to see his parents standing at the door, waving.
Well away from his home, he pushed the button for self-drive and a screen lit up on the dash. A droid’s face, with its plastic beauty, appeared and greeted, “Good evening. What can I do for you, sir?”
Anyanwụ answered, “Good morning, Elo. Continue East.”
“Yes, sir.”
He let go of the steering and retreated to the back of the vehicle. He reached into his bag and pulled out his personal computer and logged into a scrabble game. Turning back to Golibe with the device raised to his face, he asked, “Do you want to play?”
Golibe nodded and went into the back of the camper. She sat cross-legged on the bed facing Anyanwụ. Her nerves still left her a wreck. She imagined thinking up words would help settle them. She took the computer and placed it between them. “I’ll start,” she said and spelt out “Quest” as her first word.
Thinking of words indeed settled her. Soon, the near-silence that had ruled the air between them evaporated and she was chatting with Anyanwu.
“Last night, I told my parents I wanted to take a gap year,” she confided.
“What did they say?”
“They thought it was your idea and threatened to nullify your scholarship.”
Anyanwụ bobbed his head, “Okay.”
They talked until morning. When the sun rose, they shared two foils of meal and water with Nkem and then climbed into their beds and slept.
As Elo took them due East, past residential areas, abandoned industries, dried-up rivers, empty dams, into miles and miles of empty land that Golibe wasn’t even sure was part of Kalamalu, their routine revolved mostly around eating, drinking, playing games, reading and sleeping.
On the third day, while Nkem dozed on her bed and they laid on the floor with their heads touching at their crowns, sleep heavy on their lids, Golibe nudged Anyanwụ’s head, “Did you know Ejim is blind?”
“Yes. She was born with isi-eke.”
#
“Obstacle! Eight miles away!” Elo’s voice woke Golibe.
Disoriented, she sat until her head cleared. She looked at her wristband and discovered it was past three in the afternoon.
“Obstacle! Six miles away!” Elo said.
“Go over it.” She rose and went to the toilet.
“It’s solid material and it goes way into the sky. There’s no way over,” Elo replied.
As she sanitized her hands, she heard Anyanwụ rise from his bed and shuffle to the driver’s seat.
“Golibe, there’s no way over it,” Anyanwụ called. “Maybe, this is it. Or we can try to go around and then continue East.”
She came up behind and peered around him. “There’s nothing there.”
“Impact with obstacle,” Elo said, before the camper collided with something and stopped.
Anyanwụ turned to her, his eyes wide. “Are you saying you can’t see the mountain in front of us?”
“I don’t see any obstacles, Anyanwụ,” Golibe answered, her eyes questioning.
“We’ll check it out when the sun sets.”
“If I had ignored you and gotten at least one protective suit from my parents’, we wouldn’t have to wait until sunset.”
He bared his teeth at her. “Not even you can stop your mother from making me sleep in jail for a night.”
After the sun disappeared from the sky, he opened the door a bit and held his food wrapper out of the camper with a skewer. When the sun didn’t fry it, he smiled at her, “We are a go.”
Golibe shoved the door open and went outside with Anyanwụ and Nkem on her trail. She ran with her right hand stretched out in front of her. She encountered the obstacle within moments, she felt the matter rearrange and allow her hand go through it. She withdrew her hand, “This is it. Let’s grab our things,” she said but didn’t step away from the obstacle. She bent down to examine the camper and breathed out a sigh when she realized it had only sustained damage to its fender.
Anyanwụ hissed and went back to the vehicle. He returned with both their bags on his shoulders. Golibe already had Nkem in the crook of her arm. She grabbed his hand and led him, headfirst, into the obstacle. Inside, it was pitch-black, Golibe had to rely on her other senses to keep going in a straight line. She tightened her grip on Anyanwụ as they waded through the darkness until they fell into sudden light.
Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the brightness, her mouth opened wider and she merely stared.
Anyanwụ, overwhelmed by the beauty of the place breathed deep, “Goodness gracious.”
The sun was in the sky, round and red, right on the horizon and its feel on the skin didn’t burn, rather it warmed. It watched over a grove adorned with beautiful trees and colourful birds and moonbeams. A small pond, the size of the mouth of a big bucket with colour as blue as the sky opposite it was nestled in the middle of the grove.
Golibe echoed Anyanwụ’s words in her mind.
A python with yellow and black stripes was wrapped around the thick branch of a guava tree watching them with unblinking eyes. The python reminded Golibe of Ejim and her unblinking stare.
They both approached it. Anyanwụ knelt on the ground, rummaged through his bag until he located the can of palm fruit. He chose the choicest fruit, a red robust ball and offered it to the python, but it ignored him.
Golibe passed Nkem to Anyanwụ and relieved him of the fruit. She offered it by herself. The python uncoiled and moved toward her. She had to dig her heels into the ground so she wouldn’t retreat. The python reached with its head and plucked the fruit from her palm. Then, it turned away and slithered under the tree, into a hole just big enough to pass an adult.
They followed the python down the hole and fell into an island through another hole. The Island, greener than the leaves of a mango tree, sat in an azure ocean. At one part of the Island, a huge figure of a woman formed from Earth sat on a stool with her hands held palms up at her stomach as if in offering. Tears, in fat balls, dropped from her eyes to gather in her cupped palms, then down her body to pool at her feet and flow into the ocean.
The Isle was the beginning of all living things. It was in it Chukwu Okike, the creator dwelt when she first came to Earth to breathe life onto it. And even centuries after her departure, her essence remained, nourishing her creations.
Golibe stood from the ground, her gaze fixed on the figure. “The one offered,” she recalled. She took one Tear, a crystal ball the size of a child’s fist from the figure’s palms and put it in the jar Anyanwụ held open for her. She plucked a second teardrop, but it liquefied in her hand. She plucked a third and it dissolved too.
Anyanwụ plucked one himself. The Tear dissolved the same time a hiss came from the snake which had remained silent at the mouth of the hole watching them.
Wide-eyed, Golibe looked around. Seeing that no part of the island collapsed, she heaved a sigh. “It seems we can only take one. Now, let’s return to Kalamalu and head to Nkịtị forest.”
#
At the mouth of what was once Nkịtị forest, Golibe fed Nkem water from their gallon. Afterwards, she sat down on the sand beside Anyanwụ and tilted her head onto his right shoulder. They shared the last of their water and silence while staring at the vast desert.
A little over two years before, Nkịtị had been a rainforest, the greatest in Kalamalu, with rainfall year-round. But the drought came and swept through Nkịtị first leaving it barren even before it affected the rest of Kalamalu.
It had been over three hours since the sun disappeared from the sky, yet Golibe and Anyanwụ lingered. They waited for the moon to come because the home of the Sky Sandwich could only be revealed under the glow cast by a full moon.
The moon finally came, full, bigger, and closer to land than usual, Anyanwụ got up and dragged Golibe to her feet. They watched a mound appear in the distance where there had previously been desert sand.
Suddenly, he turned to face Golibe, took back her hand and gifted her a beautiful smile. “Golibe, I have a good feeling we’re almost at a fitting end.”
Golibe watched his entire face lighten up and returned his smile. She knew Anyanwụ’s intuition was as sharp as his visions were true. She wished they had started before two years ago, then perhaps, he would have known the drought was coming.
She scratched Nkem behind his ears, spoke to him in her mind, then said out loud to Anyanwụ. “Nkem doesn’t have enough water in him to fly us there.”
“He can take us however he can manage.”
She spoke to Nkem again and shifted away. In a wink, the kitten imploded and, in its place, a two-humped camel emerged.
“Oh, no,” Anyanwụ scrubbed his face with his palm. “I forgot Nkem can only carry one.”
Golibe smiled. “Well, I discovered that just like Nkem has nine lives, he also has nine alter egos,” She finished and waved her hand at Nkem.
Another Nkem stepped out of the original one.
“Wow. Since when could he multiply?”
“Since the night before we set out.”
“Cool,” Anyanwụ went to the second Nkem, buried his face in his neck and breathed. “Well, let do this and go home.”
They both mounted and rode side-by-side into Nkịtị. The air was hot and dry, and irritated her nose. Golibe took a blouse out of her bag and tied it over her nose. They were halfway to where the mound appeared to be when a shadow started to crawl over the moon.
Anyanwụ gasped as he stared at the moon now settled directly above the mound. “Faster, Golibe.”
Golibe’s heart drummed in her chest. She urged Nkem to go faster but the amoosu ignored her.
The shadow continued to slide over the surface of the moon. It covered a quarter of it and still Nkem kept at the same pace. Only one-eighth of the moon remained uncovered when they arrived at the steps to the mound. Golibe dismounted and ran all the way up to the entrance of the mound with Anyanwụ on her heels.
She went on her knees and crawled inside the mound. “Come on,” she told Nkem who blinked back to a kitten and followed her.
Outside, the heap had the look of a mound formed by soldier ants, only so much bigger, but inside, it was like a cratered cave. In the middle was a pale-blue sky housing only a single cloud, land stretched out under it forming a part of the floor of the mound and above it, forming its roof. A splinter of light came from where there was a crack in the mound and bathed the sky.
“There’s no eye,” Golibe cried and turned to settle frightened eyes on Anyanwụ.
Anyanwụ rushed to the entrance of the mound, laid on his back, thrust his head out. “The shadow is just now covering the moon entirely.”
Golibe saw The Eye, a pale gray and almond shaped orb, appear in the sky. It was missing a pupil. “I can see it now,” she informed Anyanwụ. She took the Tear from its container and place it carefully in the hole in the middle of the iris.
The Eye blinked and disappeared. Globe imagined the shadow had begun shifting from the moon. She smelt the rain, the throat-tickling scent of brown dust mixed with water, before she saw the single cloud darken and release rain to hit both the land under and above it. She heard water beating the ground outside. She whirled around and wrapped her arm around Anyanwụ’s neck. Then, she put Nkem down and crawled out of the mound before Anyanwụ. They laid on the sand of Nkịtị and allowed the rain to drench them.
When they both felt their skin couldn’t absorb any more water, they waited inside the mound for the rain to abate before they returned to the camper. It didn’t and Nkem had to sail them out of Nkiti. It rained all through their way home. And even after they had returned home, it continued raining that neither the sun nor the moon graced the sky for days.
