“Udide respects the intelligent, the creative, and the brave,” Chichi said, turning back to the termite mound.
Only friendship kept Sunny from running-especially after the wailing started. It was a high-pitched wavery sort of ghostly noise, like the ululations of women from the Middle East. Then the trademark tock tock tock started, the sound of tiny drums. A playful flute wove in and out of the wailing and drumming. Then there came the tooth-vibrating DOOOM DOOOM of a deep-barreled talking drum.
“Sunny, if you value your life, do not run,” Orlu warned.
The mound was caving in at the center. They all stepped back as a wooden knob rose from it. It was attached to the top of a large tuft of thick raffia. Then the termite mound expanded. They backed away some more. The creature’s body was large and bulbous, covered with beautiful blue shiny cloth. Cowry shells and blue and white beads hung from pieces of blue yarn. They clicked and clacked as the masquerade grew.
When it reached over fifteen feet high, it stopped. The drumbeat and the flute reached a crescendo. The large tuft of raffia at the top fell away, revealing a four-faced head.
Students called for Allah, Legba, Chukwu, Jesus, Mawu, God, Chineke, Oya, Ani, Asaase Yaa, Allat, and many other deities to protect them. Sunny moaned and pressed close to Orlu, who was cursing under his breath. Chichi seemed to be in a trance, Sasha watching wordlessly behind her.
The masquerade faces looked around at them, the expressions animated. The smiling face grinned. The angry face scowled. The surprised face looked more and more shocked. And the curious face looked very, very inquisitive. The knob at the top grazed the tent’s ceiling.
Then the wooden mask fell away. Orlu and Sunny dodged the falling pieces. On the other side, a student beside Yao shouted in pain as one hit her on the shoulder.
“Oh my God!” Sunny screeched. Orlu grabbed her arm.
Underneath the mask was a huge undulating mass of red termites, wasps, bees, mosquitoes, flies, and ants! It wasn’t raffia and palm fronds that stuffed the masquerade’s blue cloth-covered body-it was stinging insects. People started screaming and the masquerade began to dance, a cloud of insects rising around it.
“Everyone! Get down!” Orlu shouted. “Right now! Right now!”
But people were too panicked. They were running amok. Orlu shoved Sunny to the ground. Something stung her arm. “Stay down!” he said. Then he shouted, “Chichi, Sasha, down! It’s going to happen any minute!”
The masquerade danced, whirling and whirling faster and faster. It whipped thousands of insects to the rhythm and speed of the drums and flute, laughing its shrill womanly laugh and buzzing its insectile buzz.
Orlu dropped down beside Sunny and said, “Hold your breath.”
As soon as she did so, the buzzing grew a thousand times louder. Insects blasted in all directions. The blue cloth collapsed, empty. Sunny was buried in thousands of ants, and bees and wasps smacked into her and flew around her head. She screamed and cried along with everyone else.
Death by stinging. It could happen. A boy in her town had been killed by a swarm of angry wasps when he tried to knock down a hive behind his house. We’re all going to die here, she thought, curling herself tighter. She felt two more stings on her legs and wondered what her parents and brothers would think when she was returned home all swollen and red and dead. I should have stayed home, she thought. This is what I get for lying.
She felt Orlu start to get up. “What are you doing?” she screamed, pulling him back down. Something stung her arm.
He pulled away and got up again. She shielded her eyes and looked at him. Orlu seemed far from himself, calm and unafraid. He was holding out his hands and bringing them in, holding out his hands and bringing them in. Each time he did this, more insects piled themselves under the masquerade’s cloth.
“Go home,” he coaxed in Igbo. She could hear his voice through the screaming and buzzing. “You’ve seen, you have stung, you have terrified-now, go home.”
Soon Orlu had made the masquerade gather itself completely, and there it stood. It pointed at Chichi, who was looking up from her crouched position. It spoke something in what Sunny assumed to be Efik. Then it slowly descended back into its termite mound and the mound descended back into the earth.
“Is everyone all right?” Orlu asked.
They walked briskly to the festival entrance. It was a quarter past eleven. They were late. “Don’t,” Orlu said, walking fast. “I hate false apologies.”
“I’m not apologizing,” Chichi said, almost running to keep up with him. “I’m just thanking you!”
“Shut up,” Orlu snapped.
“Don’t be such a tight-ass,” Sasha said, rubbing one of his many stings.
Orlu stopped so abruptly that Sunny ran into his back. She didn’t want to talk about any of it. She just wanted to find Anatov, go back to the hotel, check her skin for stingers she’d missed, rub her entire body with calamine lotion, and go to sleep.
“Do you have any idea what could have happened?” Orlu shouted. “Everyone knows how brilliant you are! I guess you needed to show how stupid you are, too!”
“No one was really hurt, though,” Chichi pointed out. “Everyone will just use some Healing Hands powder to get rid of the stings.”
“Not because of you!”
“Hey, I knew you were there,” she said. “You think I didn’t consider that?”
“You always make a mess assuming I’ll clean it up,” Orlu said. “Why don’t you try to learn some undoing jujus yourself?”
“Because you were born with it,” Chichi snapped. “You can always save the day.”
Orlu looked disgusted. “Don’t make this about me. People could have died because of you. You called up Mmuo Aku! If it had decided to start really stinging-ugh! Don’t you read up on things before calling on them?” He took a deep breath. “And what did it say to you?”
Chichi opened her mouth but then just stubbornly looked away. “It’s my business,” she mumbled.
“Let me guess,” Orlu said sarcastically. “The damn thing said ‘thank you’ before it went back.”
“Sorry,” Chichi said quietly.
“I said, I don’t want your apologies,” Orlu shouted, walking off.
Anatov looked angry but very tired when they got to the entrance. About fifty other people were also waiting for the funky train.
“You’re lucky it’s late,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d have left it to y’all to find your way to the hotel.” They apologized. He yawned and waved a hand at them. “So I hear you four have made a name for yourselves this year.”
They all looked at their feet.
“How many chittim fell when it was over?”
“Seven coppers,” Orlu mumbled. “We could have gotten people killed and we got paid for it.”
“As a group you made a mistake and you learned you could also right it,” Anatov said. “Get on the bus. Sasha, you’re an idiot.”
Sasha looked surprised and then looked at his hands.
Disgusted, Anatov continued, “Orlu’s mother told me right away about all the noise that night and how the house felt as if it were underwater. Obviously, you called Mmuo Miri, and she is not like that small one you called back in the States. Mmuo Miri is a water masquerade that only an experienced third leveler has any business calling. You could have all drowned in that house. Do you have some sort of death wish?”