In forest, I am not doing bad thing. In forest, I am not bad person.
So I am standing at the edge of the forest while others are going on ahead of me, but Oluwale stops and turns to me and waves me to him, and even though I am not saying any thing to him, I am thinking that he is knowing that question lives inside me, so much question it is feeling sometime that I am made of question, that if you peel my skin, you will find question spilling out. So I am walking with him.
Very quickly, land is flat and turning to pasture. It is easy to be seeing where they are having home made out of clay that is built and government building that is stone and clay and glass and plaster. It is looking like this is older place than rest of country. Like it is being left behind. I am seeing, in the distance, farmer sitting on chair beneath Piliostigma thonningii tree, which is also being called camel’s foot tree and monkey biscuit tree, while he is having droid machine picking his rows of plants, and the rows are not all straight or even but some are crooked like the grave me and Enyemaka and Xifeng are sometime finding before we are fixing them. But farmer is far away and he is not seeing us.
Is this where you are from? I am asking Uzodinma, who stands next to me. When I am asking like this, it is being more than words. It is being images of laboratory where he is being plugged into machine and made to lift big thing and fire weapon and they are scanning his brain. It is being images of hospital where he is waking up with no leg and they are giving him leg but it is first belonging to someone else. It is being images of him seeing new arm and new leg for the first time and looking in mirror and seeing face and him saying to himself, “This is my body.” It is being Is this where you are from? but also Is this where you are learning that you are mystery?
I don’t know, but when Uzo is telling me this, it is like his word is being colored with hope. I don’t know, but I’m getting closer. And I don’t know, but there are answers here. And I don’t know, but I am glad that you are here with me. All of these thing he is saying to me when he is saying I don’t know.
Sound is beeping and clicking inside my head and suddenly I am knowing that we are in Zaria, in Kaduna State. Suddenly, map is filling my head and I am knowing where is Ahmadu Bello University and the palace of the emir. I am knowing where is the old city and the adobe houses where people are living and I am knowing where is being mosque and mass graves. I am seeing all of these thing at once.
Against the darkening sky, I am seeing Kufena Hills. My brain is telling me the geological formation is being made out of metamorphic rock, that it is looming tall and is wide too and is having old wall built around it that is crumbling now but that is telling me that people are living there once. I am also hearing faraway splashing sound of waterfall, and I am knowing it is Matsirga waterfall, and I am seeing in satellite photo that is being beamed into my brain that the land around it is green and it is supposed to be impossible that the land there is green with all the radiation that has been happening in the world, but they are saying it is because this land, this country, is being blessed.
And I am feeling like all of these thing around me is beautiful, and it is like it is all being untouch by people, and I am wondering if maybe this is what people are calling paradise. Then, I am turning off all these thing in my brain that is showing me what everything is called and where it is, and I am just letting earth and night sky talk to me, and I am closing my eyes and smiling.
When I am lowering my head, I am seeing ahead of me specks moving along the base of Kufena Hills. They are being deeper pieces of black against the larger black of the mountain. The stars make light on the ground so that the grass is silver and glowing, and it is like this with some of the tree and some of the animal that is roaming and making chawp-chawp on the grass. And one of the speck is walking and it is not seeing me, I don’t think, but it is moving to me and it is walking and it is passing beneath a beam of light and I am seeing its face and I am gasping like someone is reaching down my throat and squeezing my lungs tight so there is being no air in them.
I am standing still, not being able to move, and others are spreading out around me, and they are exploring and learning the land, and some of them are walking ahead of me but my eye is frozen on the face I am seeing, and it is like face is jumping straight from my dream, from my remembering, and sitting right in front of me. I am saying, It can’t be, it can’t be. Even as I am turning my braincase back on and being able to hear the beeps and the whirrs and know the name of all things, I am saying to myself, It can’t be, it can’t be.
Because now I am shivering and I am running and I am not paying attention to anything because there she is ahead of me at the base of the mountain, walking back and forth, then standing still like she is waiting for me, like she has been waiting for me my entire life.
Ify.
The ground is exploding with light. Something shining from above us. Then grass is being whipped around me. It is blinding my regular eye, but I am seeing with my other eye helicopter and drone, and my heart is thump-thumping in my chest because I am not needing to strain my ear to hear stomp-stomp of juggernaut. And I am turning back to Ify and I am wanting to scream at her to get away and I am running fast fast.
My brother and sister are running out of the way, and some are being captured in electrified net that is short-circuiting them and making them to lie still, and some of them is vanishing back into the forest. But I am the only one running to Ify because she is real and I must tell her that I have been looking for her all my life. And I am thinking that she is in danger and I am coming here just in time to save her.
CHAPTER
25
Everything happens at once.
A series of small shapes breaks free of the forest behind them. Then helicopters and large drones burst out from over the tops of the trees. Police vehicles zoom into view out of nowhere. And lights shine from the aerial assault vehicles to show that the moving shapes on the ground aren’t animals at all but children. Children moving unnaturally fast.
Ify’s minders grab her and Grace by the arms and try to hustle them into the back seat of their jeep. Grace, too stunned to resist, is swept into the vehicle, but Ify breaks free and stares at one of the children, who bounds straight for her, heedless of the bullets that have started zipping around her, heedless of the way the earth explodes into columns around her with each detonation. Slipping through the legs of the police that try to capture her, vaulting over another officer, wrapping her legs around its neck, and twisting on the way down. Rolling into a sprint. Flicking a knife from out of nowhere into her palm and slicing and stabbing at whatever comes for her, never once taking her eyes off of Ify.
Ify should be scared, should be terrified that this is coming for her, this thing so efficient at killing, but it is a child. A girl no older than fourteen or fifteen. And there is something about her that compels Ify to stand still.
“Madame!” one of her guards is screaming. One of the guards she’d insisted on having at her side at almost all times. One of the guards she’d hoped would keep her safe. Whom she’s now refusing. “Madame! We must go! This is a police operation.”