The periwinkle spark hovered in the air as they pulled their juju knives away. They watched it as it rose a few inches. Then it burst into white light, startling Grashcoatah. He roared with surprise and rose higher. Chichi exclaimed something in Efik as Sasha grabbed her arm so that she wouldn’t tumble off.

“It’s okay,” Sunny said, patting Grashcoatah’s side. “It’s okay.”

He slowed his ascent and grunted. Sasha climbed to his ear and put some music on. “Here, vibe to some Jill Scott, classic,” he said, playing a song called “A Long Walk.”

Grashcoatah’s ears perked up and turned toward the soothing funky beat. Sasha leaned on the ear, a grin on his face as he held up his MP3 player.

“There’s a house,” Sunny pushed herself to say. She scanned the area. “Oh!” She pointed. “There! I see it! That yellow house! Grashcoatah, do you see it? Go there!” She paused. That was the one, all right. “That’s the house my grandmother told me about.”

As they flew, she told them about the piece of paper her grandmother had left her. It was hard to explain how one “read” Nsibidi. “It’s something that you kind of have to do to understand it.” But the fact that she could describe the smell of flowers that lingered around the yellow stone house and its thick clear front door that was round like a hobbit’s door convinced them quickly to just go with it.

In front of the house was a lawn of tall thick overgrown blades of grass. In her grandmother’s Nsibidi note, the lawn had been short and kept. This one was like a large wild field between two large stone librarylike buildings. No one had been here for a long, long while. Before they could climb off Grashcoatah, he went to work and started eating the grass like crazy. Chop, chop, chop! He was like the happiest lawnmower on earth. He didn’t notice when they all tumbled off him and ran to the side.

“Jesus, look at him go,” Orlu said as they watched the grasscutter do what his name said he would do . . . cut grass.

“Check out his flat teeth,” Sasha said. “Reminds me of Barney.”

Sunny laughed.

“Who the hell is Barney?” Chichi asked.

“Big annoying purple dinosaur for kids on TV,” he said. “It’s got this super fake, constant grin of flat white mono-teeth on the top and bottom.”

Grashcoatah grunted with pleasure as he went at the grass. But Sunny was more interested in the house. Even the overgrown lawn. She shaded her eyes in the sun.

“Why is . . .” Chichi tapered off.

“I don’t know,” Sunny said. “It didn’t look this big in the Nsibidi.” She called Anyanwu yet again. No response.

The overgrown area surrounding the house was like its own prairie, as opposed to a lawn. The yellow stone house itself was significantly bigger than the librarylike buildings beside it. From where she stood, she could see a palm tree with a very bushy top growing out of the center of the house. It, too, was wide and expansive. But in the Nsibidi the leaves had been green and alive. Now they were tan and dried up. Had the tree died since her grandmother had been here? They crossed the wild grass.