Sankofa looked at Movenpick. “They’ve tried so hard to move on,” she muttered. Across the street, she eyed a woman sitting on her porch watching her. She waved and smiled and the woman slowly waved back. Sankofa had no idea who that woman was. The house itself hadn’t even been there when she left. She went inside.
The house had been gutted. Every piece of furniture, every rug, her brother’s collection of wooden carvings, old photos, everything. It was just an unoccupied home now. Left to crumble back to the dust it came from on its own. However, for Sankofa, it was full. Right there was where her mother used to sit and listen to audiobooks on her mobile phone when she could get it to work. Right there was where her brother would lay out the pages of his school assignments and work his way meticulously through them until dinnertime. Right there was the spot in the kitchen where his father would make a pile of the best shea fruits that fell from the tree in the backyard, the tree that was not a farm tree, but the family tree.
And in the back of the house was the family tree that Sankofa used to secretly climb and hide in for hours. It was taller now, and wider, its branches healthily green with long leathery leaves and unripe plum-sized shea fruit. At its base was where the seed had fallen on her “sky words” and later the box had been pushed through the soil.
She gasped, realizing. “My ‘sky words,’” she whispered, brushing a sandaled foot over the dirt where she used to draw them. She hadn’t thought about them in over a decade. She blinked. “Did my drawings bring the…” She frowned and decided it didn’t matter. Not right now.
Sankofa slowly walked up to the spot before the tree. She knelt down. Movenpick trotted past her and easily climbed up the rough trunk and sat on a thick branch. With her small hands, she started digging. There was only one place on Earth where this thing would be at rest, where this thing would allow her to rest. The red soil was soft, yielding and moist as her fingers dug into it. She inhaled its fragrant aroma, feeling herself begin to glow. Above, the tree seemed to lean over her. Her fingers dug deeper into the soil and soon, she felt something beneath it. Solid, but moving. She did not pull her hands away. Instead, she let it firmly grasp her hand.
The tree’s root, a brownish reddish thing, snaked up. With her free hand, Sankofa reached into the pocket of her worn pink pants and brought out the box. The root wavered before her and then stopped, waiting.
“What are you,” she asked it. “The devil? A demon?” An alien? She blinked, knowing this was true. Knowing that her “sky words” were at least part of why it had come here, to this specific spot. How she’d been able to see and duplicate what she saw in the stars was a question she’d ask herself for a long time. “Fatima,” she said. “My name is Fatima Okwan.” But I’m Sankofa, too, she thought. Always. “Fatima,” she said again, and the faces of her father, mother and brother shined brightly in her mind for just a moment before fading back to the washed-out images they had been since she’d left.
She cast the box into the hole and spat on it. “Stay there. I don’t want you. You weren’t a gift, you were a curse.” Her shoulders slumped as she felt something leave her. The waiting roots slid almost lovingly around the box, their roughness grating softly against the box’s wood, a sound Sankofa would remember for the rest of her life. Then their grip tightened, crushing the box and seed. She saw the seed inside crack in two just before it all descended quickly into the dirt, pulled down by some force Sankofa would never fully understand.
Sankofa felt her legs weaken and she sat down in front of the hole and stared at it. She looked past the hole, at the tree. She looked past the tree and only saw the farm. For a moment, she recalled her father walking in from the farm, a sack of personally picked shea nuts over his shoulder. He always used these ones to make the shea butter his family spread on their skin. Her heart ached.
She put down her satchel and stretched out on the ground, flat, her face to the soil. For an hour, she sat facing the tree, remembering and remembering. No mental walls. No turning away. Her body softly glowing.
She stayed home, curling up on the bare floor and falling into a deep well-earned slumber. Hours later, her empty stomach woke her. It was dark, so she brought forth her glow to light the room. She stretched and went outside to the backyard. Movenpick was in the tree looking down at her. She climbed up to join him. When she looked out over the shea tree farm she was met with an eerie sight. She gasped, clutching the tree’s trunk so she didn’t fall.
In the night, the view was like a galaxy of green stars. They shined from the base of almost all the trees. All except the base of hers, because her seed had been crushed. No one had spent time in the trees as she did. Had that been why the seed was offered to her? Or was it solely because of her “sky words”? What would these grow into? And now that LifeGen had entrenched itself in Wulugu, were they going to harvest them? International corporate-level remote control.
“That would be bad,” she muttered.
And so she brought forth her light. When she did, all the seeds glowing in the soil brightened. She pushed her light to grow brighter. The seeds brightened some more. Then some more.
Then even brighter. And this time, she did it on purpose.
ALSO BY NNEDI OKORAFOR
Akata Witch
Akata Warrior
Lagoon
Who Fears Death
The Book of Phoenix
Kabu Kabu
The Shadow Speaker
Ikenga
Broken Places & Outer Spaces (nonfiction)
Chicken in the Kitchen
Long Juju Man
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NNEDI OKORAFOR, born to Igbo Nigerian parents in Cincinnati, Ohio, is an author of fantasy and science fiction for both adults and younger readers. Her Tordotcom novella Binti won the 2015 Hugo and Nebula Awards; her children’s book Long Juju Man won the 2007–08 Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa; and her adult novel Who Fears Death was a Tiptree Honor Book. You can sign up for email updates here.