“Can’t talk about it.”
It looked like they were going up another staircase. Instead, Samya led her to perhaps the first actual door Sunny had seen in Leopard Knocks. It was heavy, painted black, and decorated with a white drawing like those on the outer walls of the library. The drawing depicted a person being whipped by another person. There were squiggles, circles, and Xs around the person being whipped. She assumed they illustrated cries of pain.
Samya knocked on the door. “Stay here until you’re asked to enter,” she said. Then she left.
Five minutes passed. Man, I wish the door would open, she thought. Anything to get away from the sounds in the hallway-the moans and wheezy, hysterical laughter and whispers, like some confused ghost. A large brown bird flew by and red spiders scurried across the high ceiling. She even felt a blast of warm wet air pass. Someone was moving invisibly.
She considered sitting on the floor, but more red spiders were scurrying about there. Another ten minutes passed. Frustrated, she finally tried the door. The knob turned easily. She held her breath and pushed. She peeked in. Sitting on a solid bronze chair was a dark-skinned old woman dressed in a cream-colored buba and matching pants. She was slightly hunched to the side and looked uncomfortable.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sunny said, retreating.
“Come in. Only those who want to come in are allowed in.”
She stood before the woman. Dozens of masquerade masks covered the walls, hanging close to one another. Some looked angry, with mouths full of teeth; others were fat-cheeked and comical, sticking their tongues out.
“So I could have just turned and left?”
“Maybe,” the woman said. “But you’re in here now.” The door closed. “Sit on the floor,” the woman said. “You don’t deserve a chair.”
Sunny looked at the floor, spotting two more red spiders a few feet away. Slowly, she sat down, drawing her legs in close. “I’m sorry for what I did,” she quickly said.
“Are you?”
“Ye-” Then she caught herself. “No.”
“So you’d do it again if given a chance to redo the incident?”
Sunny thought about it for a moment. The mere thought of Jibaku angered her. She knew her answer. She kept her mouth shut.
“You’ll be flogged, then,” the woman said.
She gasped and shook her head.
“Or I’ll have you put into the library basement with no lights,” the woman said. “Things roam down there that would scare some sense into you.”
“Please,” she begged, tears coming to her eyes.
The woman nodded. “Yes, I will do that. Samya!”
“Please,” Sunny screeched. “I’m sorry! I understand now! Please!”
The woman looked down her nose at Sunny, irritably flaring her nostrils. “You’re a free agent,” she said, her voice softening.
“Yes,” Sunny said. “I just-”
“The council always knows when something like this happens, when prime rules are broken. Didn’t you read that in your free agent book?”
Sunny slowly nodded, her eyes on the ground.
“Next time, I’ll have you brought right to this office and flogged thirty times and then thrown in the dirtiest, dampest, oldest room in the library basement, where you’ll stay for a week with nothing but watered garri to eat. You hear me?”
Sunny swallowed and said, “Yes.”
“I won’t tolerate stupid behavior,” the woman said angrily.
“I understand,” she said.
“Do you?”
“Yes,” she said. She was shaking.
“Next time fight fair,” she said. “From what I’ve heard, your brothers have shown you how to do that.”
“Yeah,” she said. Her heart was slamming about in her chest.
The woman looked her over. “So how has it been?”
“Huh?” Sunny was trying not to hyperventilate.
“Since you’ve come into the Leopard world.”
“Be-before today or since this happened?”
“It’s not a safe world,” she said. “You can’t go around doing whatever you like. Some of us behave like that, but it’s not proper. It’s not what I expect of you.” She sat back and shifted her position, but she still looked hunched to the side. “Anatov has told me of you,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d be meeting you this way.”
Sunny cocked her head and then said, “You’re Sugar Cream, aren’t you?”
“Finally, you ask.”
“Sorry,” she said. She paused. “Yes, I was stupid. It’s just that I wanted to put the fear of-of God into her.” She paused, clenching her fists. “I can’t stand her!”
“Well, that certainly is one way to do it,” Sugar Cream said. “Albeit illegal.”
A spider was walking toward Sunny’s foot. She scooted back.
She was more afraid of Sugar Cream when there was silence, so she asked the first question on her exhausted mind. “So, ah, why do they call you ‘Sugar Cream’?”
Sugar Cream smiled and Sunny relaxed a bit. “An old story,” she said. “When I was very small, I walked out of the forest. A young man found me. I was like a little monkey, wild and feral. Some people think that actual monkeys might have even looked after me for a while. Somehow I’d survived in the bush. I couldn’t have been over three years old.
“Anyway, the only way I would come to the man who found me was when he offered me his cup of tea which he’d put a lot of sugar and cream into. He took me to his home and raised me as his daughter, even though he was only seventeen years old. He grew up to be a professor at the University of Lagos and I went on to the Obi Library.”
A lot of holes in that story, Sunny thought. “What of your true parents?”
“To this day, I don’t know, Sunny,” she said. She stood up and stretched, raising her arms over her head. Sunny stared. The woman’s spine. It wasn’t right. But from the front, she couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong. She quickly lowered her eyes.
“I hate sitting for too long,” she said. “It’s uncomfortable. Even with this hard, sturdy chair. Walk with me.”
Sunny quickly followed her out. She couldn’t help staring at Sugar Cream’s back. One shoulder was higher than the other, and her spine curved in a most profound S. Had she been like this as a baby? Maybe this was why her parents had abandoned her. But if they were Leopard People, they’d have jumped for joy at this deformity.
“You should know how it is,” Sugar Cream said, turning to her. “When people stare at you from behind. You always know when they’re doing it.”
Sunny stepped back. “I-I didn’t mean to.”
“I have severe scoliosis. And no, I was not born this way. And I don’t think I was abandoned by my parents. I think they were killed.”
Despite her deformity, Sugar Cream walked briskly. She greeted the students they passed. “Good afternoon, Oga,” an old white man with a British accent shyly said.
“Good afternoon, Albert,” she said.
When they were alone again, Sunny asked what she’d wanted to ask since Sugar Cream had stood up. “I was wondering… what ability do you have?”
“I’m a shape-shifter, as you are.”
“No, I’m not,” Sunny said. She froze, mortified by her rudeness.
“Can you not turn yourself into something like warm vapor? You’re a type of shape-shifter. I can become a snake,” she said, making her hand move in an S motion. “My ability is a physical manifestation. Yours is spiritual. The reason you can become vapor is because you can step into the spirit world, literally. I doubt you’ve done this yet. You’d know it if you had.”
“How do I-”