“Sunny,” she heard someone softly whisper.

When she looked at her book, she felt cool, soft hands press her cheeks to steady her head.

“Hold,” the voice said.

Everything dropped. Away.

Nothing but the whispering symbols.

Oral and written words combined.

There was warmth on her face, like sunshine.

Sunshine now, not before her initiation into the Ekpe society. The Leopard society. The sunshine didn’t burn.

She walked along a path, wild jungle to her left, wild jungle to her right. Drums beat but she could hear Sugar Cream’s voice clearly; Sunny saw the symbols dancing before her when Sugar Cream called them, burrowing into the dirt when spoken, swirling into a tornadolike cycle when uttered.

“This book’s titled Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits. But this book is tricky. Like me, it shape-shifts. It goes by another name, an inside name for those who can read it. Trickster: My Life and My Lessons, by Sugar Cream, is its inside name, its true name. This book is a part of me. It is wonderful that you are here and you are hearing. It is good.”

Sugar Cream went on to tell/show Sunny that this jungle was where she grew up. She was introducing an old fluffy baboon from a clan that she called the Idiok when Sunny suddenly came back to herself. She had to blink several times to get her eyes and mind to focus. There was knocking at the door, and she glanced at her cell phone’s time. Two hours had passed! She’d turned one page.

“Sunny?” her mother called again. Sunny tensed up. No one in her family knew a thing about a thing. They could not, by both juju and Leopard law. Among many other issues, this sometimes made reading the Nsibidi book difficult. Her mother knocked on the door. “What are you doing in there?”

Chink, chink, chink, chink! Ten heavy copper chittim fell onto the floor in front of Sunny’s bed. The Leopard currency dropped whenever knowledge was earned, and these were the most prized kind. Shaped like curved rods, chittim came in many sizes and could be made of copper, bronze, silver, or gold—copper being the most valuable and gold being the least. No one knew who dropped them or why they never injured anyone when they fell.

Sunny jumped up and quickly grabbed the chittim and piled them in her purse. Yes, she’d learned something big, and she knew she could look into the book and “hear” Nsibidi in the same way again. “Wow,” she whispered, putting her heavy purse beside her, the chittim inside clinking loudly. The pain in her belly hit her then, and she doubled over. Hunger, but a terrible aggressive hunger. She cleared her throat and tried to sound normal. “I’m just studying, Mom.”

Her mother tried to open the door. “Why is the door locked, then?”

Sunny dragged herself to the edge of her bed. She placed her feet on the cool floor. “Sorry, Mom,” she said, forcing herself to stand.