By now, you may have come to understand. This book isn’t about learning Nsibidi or my life or how to shape-shift. These are all things that I used to pull you off the ground. If you’ve gotten this far, you are strong in mind and body now. You know how to eat to live, you know how to plan, you know when you need rest, and you love Nsibidi. You are not my equal but you have my respect, for you are one of my kind. Good.

Right now, this book is about the city of smoke, a huge swath of land in this country that is full. Osisi. I pray that you will not have to see it, for it’s not a place for any person who values his life, but if you have, if you have dreamed it, then you currently are the purpose of this book. There will be more than one of you, but only a handful. You . . .

Sunny had to fight her way out of the Nsibidi’s grasp. This was one thing wholly unaffected by the doubling: her ability to read Nsibidi. She shook her head, flaring her nostrils and frowning, pressing Sugar Cream’s book to her chest. As soon as she could see the light of her reading lamp and she could move her hands, she threw the book across the room. Tomorrow would be hard enough. Now this. All the threads of her life seemed to be winding into a tight bizarre rope that the universe expected her to walk across. Her brother, her questions, Sugar Cream’s book . . . yes, Trickster was a damn good name for it. A perfect name for it. Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits literally shape-shifted, and not only in appearance (the symbols on the cover moved around like bugs) but in reasons for existing, in voice, in narrative. Was it even the same book for every reader?

And why did she have to get to this part on the morning they were leaving? “This is wahala,” she whispered, lying back in her bed. She felt the usual reading fatigue that came with reading the book, and her head still ached from her fresh braids. Last night her mother had cornrowed her bushy yellow hair. The braids were long enough to touch her shoulders. Her hair was really growing. It was nearly the length it had been back when she’d burned it off while gazing into the candle. Two years ago. She’d pressed her Mami Wata comb into one of the side rows. It looked a little asymmetrically strange, but she’d come to see the comb as good luck. She wasn’t about to stop wearing it when they were going where they were going to do what they were going to do.

Bzzz!

She smiled and got up to turn on her bedroom light. It was about five A.M. and still dark outside, and she’d been using her reading light. When she turned her light on, Della buzzed its wings louder. Sunny’s eyebrows went up, and she slowly walked to her cabinet for a better look. Then she just stood there, her mouth open. Staring.