Who Fears Death

Onye and Mwita stop speaking to one another. One night a few weeks later, she dreams she is in a far off Nuru village. In the distance, she sees a very tall man and can “hear him laughing from miles away” (70). He turns to her, and his red eyes merge into one single eye searing into her. He growls at her to stop breathing. Onye jolts awake, unable to breathe. Gradually she regains her breath; however, as she walks down the hall to breakfast she sees bruises around her neck and realizes that the red eye belongs to her biological father, and “he’d just tried to throttle [her] in [her] sleep” (70).

The same day as the dream, a photographer comes to down with “photos from the West of dead, charred, mutilated Okeke people. Okeke women being raped. Okeke children with missing limbs and bloated bellies. Okeke men hanging from buildings or rotted to near-dust in the desert” (71). The photographer tells the people in the market that “he’s coming” and urges them to flee; as evidence, he allows each person, one by one, to look through his photo album. Once he finishes, the people of Jwahir help him to clean up, feed him, then ask him to leave Jwahir due to the stress he’s caused its citizens.

Following his departure, a Ndiichie—an urgent town meeting run by the Osugbo elders—is called. Oyo the Ponderer argues that it is unlikely that the violence will reach Jwahir, so the people should remain; people are persuaded by this claim, but Onye feels that this isn’t the point. Dika the Seer seconds Oyo’s argument and suggests that the townspeople must all have faith. Nana the Wise ends the meeting; people argue excitedly, but Onye notes that people were no longer panicked.

On her way out, she runs into Mwita, and the two speak for the first time in weeks. Onye realizes that she is in love with Mwita; still, the two argue over her decision to visit Aro, Mwita claiming that her impulsiveness only further proves the point. He tells her, however, that while he believes she is irrational, he does not believe it is because of her gender.

Mwita explains that he told Aro that Onye came of her own volition because Aro would never train someone who is “drive[n] by others” (75). He tells her that there is a test one has to pass in order to learn the Mystic Points, and that “you can only take it once. Failure is awful. The closer you get to passing, the more painful it is” (75). Those who fail are taught some basic spells as consolation, but they are not taught to be true sorcerers.

Onye is about to tell Mwita about her biological father’s attacks when he leans in and kisses her deeply. They begin to go further, but Onye is suddenly in pain “so sharp that [her] body jumped” (76). They stop, and Mwita tells her he’ll see her soon. He also tells her that the pain is due to her Rite: the scalpel used in the Rite is treated by Aro such that “a women feels pain whenever she is too aroused … until she’s married” (76).

Onye understands now why a scalpel was used: “A scalpel, simpler in design, was much easier to bewitch” than a laser knife” (77). She considers ridding herself of the belly chain and the diamond, but “somewhere along the way, these two items had become part of [her] identity” (77).

A couple days later, Onye meets up with her friends after school. When Luyu arrives, she is in bad shape, in a lot of pain. In private, Luyu tells the others that she tried to wait as promised, but that she had tried to have intercourse with one of the boys recently because she’s always enjoyed it. However, the pain was far too intense. Luyu is angry: “Soon we’ll be eighteen, fully fledged adults! Why wait until marriage to enjoy what Ani gave me!” (78-79).

The girls begin to discuss whether or not it’s a curse; Onye takes offense when they turn to her for confirmation. Diti claims that it is, as she and her boyfriend had experienced the same thing two years prior. Binta, however, tells them that it’s Ani protecting them. When the other girls continue, Binta admits that she believes the magic is helping to protect her from her father’s advances. “He-he understands now,” she says. “He won’t touch me anymore” (79).

Later that day, Onye runs into Mwita on the way home. Mwita tells her that the Ada, whose name was originally Yere, and Aro were once in love. It was apparently their decision, together, to put juju—magic—on the Rite scalpel, believing it would protect the girls.

One morning, Onye wakes up to see the red eye shrouded in mist over her bed and a scorpion crawling toward her; she manages to flick it away just in time. Angry, she turns into a vulture and flies out the window. She finds that changing into related creatures is easy, but when she turns back, she sometimes retains features of the animal for some time. Other creatures, such as flies and mice, are more difficult for her to handle; as a mouse, for example, her dominant emotion was fear “of being crushed, eaten, found, starving,” feelings which remained with her for hours after she changed back (83).

As a vulture, she bypasses the cactuses outside Aro’s hut while he is teaching two lazy boys she hates. Aro recognizes her, however, and tells her to leave. “The finality of his tone dashed away any hope I had,” she tells the reader, and she flees (83).

After school the same day, Onye goes to the Ada’s house, thinking that as Aro’s wife, the Ada may be able to teach her the Mystic Points instead. The Ada tells Onye that Aro is far older than he looks, and that “if he wanted to, he could take [Onye’s] life and make everyone, including [her] mother, forget [she] existed” (85). This is why the Ada and Aro had initially hated one another: the Ada believed that “no one should have that kind of power” (85). However, as they got to know one another, she discovered that they had complementary effects on one another.

The Ada decides to tell Onye a secret to make her feel better. When she was fifteen, she was pressured into having sexual intercourse with a boy in her village. After a month, he stopped speaking to her; however, she had gotten pregnant by that point. Her parents were furious and sent her to live with her aunt and uncle in Banza, where she had to remain inside until she gave birth.

She gave birth to twins; twins are considered to be fortunate for a town, and they are often paid to live in a town as a result. After a year, the Ada returned to Jwahir, leaving the twins in Banza. They should be in their thirties now, she says, and tells Onye that this is the reason for the Eleventh Rite juju: “Girls need to be protected from their own stupidity and not suffer the stupidity of boys. The juju forces her to put her foot down when she must” (87).

She tells Onye that Aro refused to teach her anything about the Mystic Points, too, and only laughed at her. Further, he refused to perform even small juju to help her. The Ada began to feel that there were too many secrets between her and Aro, so she left him; however, they are still married, and he still comes to visit sometimes.

Onye reminds her that it was she herself who said that she should see Aro; however, the Ada grows annoyed with this and tells Onye that she was foolish, and that Onye should stop going to see Aro because he just enjoys saying no.

Three months later, a storyteller comes to town promising stories from the West about the Okeke and the Nuru. None of the girls want to go, so Onye goes with Mwita.

The storyteller begins by repeating the creation myth of the Great Book that makes the Okeke the slaves of the Nuru. After this initial tale, however, the storyteller shifts to the recent past, telling of how the Nuru slaughtered and raped her village while she hid as a child. She tells the audience that the killing continues and asks them if it is right that they remain in their village, content, while Okeke are slaughtered back west.

A man responds with indifference that Okeke who revolt against the Nuru should be slaughtered, because they go against the Great Book. The storyteller replies, however, that neither she nor her parents were part of any uprising, yet her parents were raped and murdered anyway. Onye realizes that the storyteller doesn’t believe in the creation myth and was only using it as juxtaposition.

The storyteller continues to tell that there is a prophecy that a tall, gentle, bearded Nuru sorcerer will come to force the rewriting of the Great Book. Following the performance, Mwita and Onye speak with the storyteller and ask about the prophecy. She tells them that the Nuru seer who foretold it must not be lying because he hates Okeke with a passion, so the prophecy goes against everything he believes.

As they walk home, Mwita tells Onye that he intends to plead with Aro to teach her because he doesn’t feel it’s right. However, the next day, when he doesn’t mention it, she knows that Aro has rejected her yet again.

Three days later, Onye decides to see Nana the Wise at the House of Osugbo instead of going to school. Upon entering, she encounters two very old men, one who is kind and another who is meaner. The kind man offers to take her message to Nana, but the meaner man says that she should be in her chambers and that Onye should go right there. Onye accepts. However, shortly after, Onye learns that “in the House of Osugbo, one doesn’t choose where to go or what to do there. The House does” (98).

After some time, Onye grows angry and begins to think about leaving; however, she encounters two younger apprentices who are kinder than the men earlier. They cannot tell her where to go, though; they give her some dates to eat, then part ways.

She finally finds the narrow spiral stairway leading to Nana, but it seems to take forever to climb. She passes Aro as she climbs, who does not acknowledge her.

Finally, she finds Nana’s room, hours after she began looking; she tells Nana she hates the house, and Nana replies that “people hate what they don’t understand” (100). Onye begs Nana to learn the Mystic Points, but she tells her that she doesn’t know them and will not get between “two spirits like yourselves” (100). However, she tells Onye that the House is full of books, and so Onye may be able to learn the Mystic Points by reading about them. Nana takes her to a large room filled with books and tells her that aside from the elders’ personal chambers, “the rest of the House is everybody’s” (101). However, Onye is unable to find anything helpful and leaves the house angry.

When Papa falls sick with heart problems, Onye grows frustrated again, knowing that if she knew the Mystic Points she might be able to help him. She sets out for Aro’s hut, then notices a black vulture observing her; she realizes that the vulture whose feather she had first used to change had actually been Aro: “What a mistake that feather falling from his body had been for him” (104).

When she arrives at Aro’s hut, a masquerade—a mythical monster—is guarding it. The masquerade rushes at Onye and swipes at her, but Onye doesn’t move, so the spirit stops and stands still. When Onye stands her ground, the masquerade eventually leads her to Aro’s hut, disappearing as it does.

She enters Aro’s hut and demands that Aro teach her, growing angrier as he refuses to respond. Suddenly she drops into the spirit world, as she did the night of her Rite; instinctively, she attacks Aro and batters him until he knocks her back into the real world. As Aro lies on the ground, Onye tells him that she understands now that he won’t teach women because he’s afraid of them.

News of what Onye did to Aro spreads quickly through Jwahir. Mwita is furious, both because Aro is like a father to him and because if Aro dies, he knows that the village will turn on them as “children of violence”: “They’ll come after us. We’ll go the way of my parents” (106). Days pass as Aro lays dying; Onye packs a bag, preparing to leave before the mob comes if he passes.

Following her father’s funeral—which opened the novel, and in which Onye momentarily brought her father back to life—the townspeople grow even warier of Onye, believing they should have stoned her after her attack on Aro. For the sake of her mother, Onye decides to leave in the night. As she is about to, though, Aro visits their home.

Aro examines her hand—the one that had fused with Papa—and after a few moments finally agrees to teach her the Mystic Points, as he believes Onye is a danger to everyone if he doesn’t teach her to control her powers. He tells her that he’ll prevent the mob from coming for her. Further, he tells her that her biological father is a sorcerer who is only able to find her because she went through her Rite, and that Aro has in fact been protecting her all this time. She asks why her father wants to kill her, and Aro tells her it’s because she’s a failure since she isn’t a boy. As he leaves, he tells her to get rid of her diamond, that it’s meant to keep her grounded but is “useless to you” (111).