“Okay, that’s the Mmuo Aku Chichi called up last year,” Sasha said. The one that had nearly killed them all at the social during the Zuma Festival. Oh yes, Sunny remembered it clearly. Death by stinging. Orlu had sent it back but before it left, it had whispered something to Chichi in Efik that even weeks later, Chichi refused to tell Sunny, insisting that what the Mmuo Aku said to her was “private business.” Chichi liked being secretive, and this annoyed Sunny so she eventually just stopped asking. Now that very same Mmuo Aku had shown up in Osisi, found them, and swallowed Chichi, taking her to goodness knew where. Sunny made a key decision at the same time as Sasha.

“What are you doing?” they said to each other.

“Stay here,” they both responded.

They stared at each other.

“Don’t go near the Mmuo Aku! But get out of there!” Orlu shouted from the back of Grashcoatah, who hovered above.

THOOM! THOOM! THOOM! Sunny’s ears itched and her teeth chattered from the sound. The deep beat continued as the crisp tune of a flute laced itself around it. The tune was like a sweet-throated bird serving as the harbinger of death and destruction. Ekwensu was here. Ekwensu was here. Ekwensu was here.

Sunny and Sasha looked at each other. Then Sasha ran one way and Sunny turned and ran in the other direction. Toward the trunk of the dead palm tree growing in the center of the house. The palm tree trunk whose roots now bulged upward as a termite mound pushed through the soil. Sunny clenched her fists and felt her knuckles crack. And still, Anyanwu did not come. The world around her sparkled with shades of a thousand colors. The masks on the walls were looking at her. They had been watching her since she’d entered this place, she realized. She just hadn’t really taken notice.

She hadn’t noticed a lot of things. Like how the leaves of the palm tree that grew through the house were dry. Maybe they were never green, she realized. Maybe the greenness in Grandmother’s Nsibidi was another lie. Sunny felt faint as she understood. Maybe her grandmother knew Sunny wouldn’t come here if she knew this was the home of Ekwensu. Not just home, Sunny thought. Ancestral land. She thought of the ancestral land her father owned and how he and his brothers (such land was only passed through the men) fought over it like dogs. To build on one’s ancestral land was to keep one’s family name alive. It was immortality. One was most powerful on one’s ancestral land. But also most vulnerable, Sunny thought. Right, Grandma?

Termites wiggled out of the rising bulge and flew about the large space. Something also started happening to the tree’s trunk; it had begun to swell, water droplets forming and then dribbling down the smooth bark. The wood snapped and split in several places, but still the trunk continued to swell. The space took on the acrid smell of oil and tar as it warmed.