“I am Igri,” Chichi said in a deep male voice. She laughed, doing a backflip. Sunny stumbled away, startled by Chichi’s sudden flexibility and agility. Chichi was always quick and on point, but now those qualities were exaggerated. The oddest thing was that Chichi’s spirit face still somehow looked like Chichi. She did have a pointy chin and a long face. She changed herself back, and for a moment the girls just stared at each other.
“What’s Igri?” Sunny asked.
“My spirit name.”
“So I have my own spirit face, too?”
“Yeah.”
Sunny held the chewing stick Sasha had given her, and though it was all frayed, she put it in her mouth. She was glad it was still minty. “So, how do I-”
“Do you remember how you felt when Anatov brought you back?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Like the best ballet dancer on Earth.” Chichi smiled. “Wait a minute, you and Orlu-and Anatov-”
“Yeah, we all saw,” Chichi said, looking guilty. “I only looked for a second before I turned away.”
“But you said it’s like being naked.”
Chichi smiled sheepishly. “Yeah.”
“Oh my goodness! I’m so embarrassed!”
“Come on, we’re your friends.”
“Look at all the stuff you said before you would even give me a peek of your spirit face! Yet there I was for everyone to see! It’s like my butt was exposed!”
“Different context,” she said with a laugh. “And your spirit face is nothing like your butt.”
“At least Sasha wasn’t there,” she mumbled. “So… what did I look like?”
Chichi gestured at Sunny’s umbrella. “It’s funny. You know how you told me you need this when noon hits? Well, your spirit face looked… you looked like the sun!”
Sunny shrank back. “What?”
Chichi just shrugged. “So you felt like a ballerina?”
Sunny blinked and then nodded. “Yeah. All graceful and…” she tapered off. “I’ve always loved ballet but I can’t do it.”
“Okay, well-here.” Chichi reached into her pocket and took out a knife with a jade handle and a bronzed blade. She cut the air in front of Sunny and spoke some words. Sunny didn’t understand, but she recognized them as Efik, the language and ethnic group of Chichi’s mother. Suddenly, classical music began playing. Right above Sunny’s head, to her left, to her right, she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Sunny had always felt a strange, sometimes painful, pull whenever she heard classical music. It was part of the reason she liked ballet so much. Now that feeling was stronger than ever.
“Concentrate on the ballet music and cross the bridge,” Chichi said quickly. “Your grace will protect you from falling… I think.”
“You think?” she asked. But something was taking her over. She could feel that tightening sensation on her face. A languidness in her body. She strode onto the bridge, disregarding its narrowness.
She felt so good and confident that she laughed, thinking, Man, this is going to be easy. With her peripheral vision she could see golden points radiating from her face. Her spirit face had sun rays, too! She laughed again, feeling a wave of pleasure as the classical music hit a crescendo. She danced over the narrow bridge on her sandaled toes, once in a while doing leaps that took her dangerously close to the edge. She felt not an ounce of fear.
Beneath, the water swirled, pounded, gushed, and thrashed. She watched it as she danced, glimpsing an enormous dark, round face under the water. Whatever the creature was, the river’s strength was nothing to it. It was watching her. She did a leap for the monster, a chaîné turn, and then a pirouette. She looked it in the eye, another laugh in her throat. Only a few feet away, the white mist swirled and gave way to the end of the bridge and whatever lay beyond it.
Suddenly, her confidence wavered.
The wind blew harder and Leopard Knocks opened up before her like the New York skyline. It was nowhere near as big, but it was grand. Huts stacked upon huts like hats at a hat shop. Not a European-style building in sight. All this was African.
She quickly walked to the end of the bridge. When she got there, something possessed her to stretch herself into an arabesque. The music abruptly stopped. She felt her spirit face pull in and she gasped, teetering on the bridge’s slippery wood. Directly below, she saw something undulate. The river creature! She thrust out her arms to keep her balance.
“Ah!” she shouted as she fell. Something tugged hard at her neck. Sasha had her by her gold necklace. He pulled her forward and she stumbled into his arms. As he held her, she looked back, tears in her eyes.
“Here,” Sasha said, helping her to a nearby picnic table under a large iroko tree. “Sit.”
“You okay?” Orlu said, running over.
She nodded. “Thanks, Sasha.”
“Thank your necklace,” he said.
“What happened?” Chichi said a minute later, after emerging from the mist.
“What do you think?” Orlu said.
“Oh,” she said. “The juju should have lasted longer than-”
“Come on, the river beast can break that, easy,” Orlu said. “It probably waited until she was close to safety to make the fall to her death more dramatic.”
“One of these days, someone’s going to get rid of that thing,” Chichi said, kneeling before Sunny.
Sasha laughed and said, “Girl, please. Anatov told me that monster is older than time. It’ll be here messing with shit long after we’re all gone.”
Sunny shivered, knowing they’d have to go back over the bridge to get home. It was already noon. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, she thought drily.
As her heartbeat slowed, she took in her surroundings.
So this was Leopard Knocks. The entrance was flanked by two tall iroko trees. They were slowly shedding a constant shower of leaves, though their tops remained healthy and bushy. At the foot of each tree were small piles of leaves. Beyond was the strangest place Sunny had ever seen.
She’d traveled to Jos in Northern Nigeria to visit relatives. She’d been to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, too. She’d been to Amsterdam, Rome, Brazzaville, Dubai. She, her parents, and her brothers were seasoned travelers. But this place was something else entirely.
The buildings were made of thick gray clay and red mud with thatch roofs. They reminded her of Chichi’s house, but more sophisticated. Almost all of them were quite large. Many had more than one story; several had three or four. How clay and mud could stand up to this kind of use was beyond her. Every building was full of windows of various shapes and sizes. Large squares, circles, triangles-one building had a window shaped like a giant heart. All were decorated with white intricate drawings-snakes, squiggles, steer, stars, circles, people, faces, fish. The list of things was infinite. Pink smoke billowed from the center of a large one-story hut.
The buildings were crowded tightly together. Still, tall palm trees and bushes managed to grow between them, and a dirt road packed with people wound among the buildings. From somewhere nearby, up-tempo highlife music played. She turned around and saw more people emerging from the mist. She stepped closer to Chichi, feeling like an intruder. “Maybe I should just go home,” she whispered. She thought about the monster again and cursed.
“Huh? Why?” Chichi said, looking surprised.
“I’m not supposed to be here.”
Chichi laughed. “You’ve got over a hundred chittim in your purse! Trust me, you’re very welcome here!”