“Come on, dude, no insect is ever so reasonable.” Sasha laughed.

But one of them was, for a pepper bug slowly walked up to Chichi. She looked at Orlu, who nodded. She bent down and let it walk voluntarily onto her spatula. When she put it in the pot, after about ten seconds, the pot’s hot redness faded.

“It’s cool,” Orlu said when he touched the side of his pot tentatively. “That last bug must have told the others what I said.” He picked up the pot using the oven mitts, regardless. “Most insects have a tricky side.”

When they brought the bugs back to Anatov, they watched as he let them loose in his dying pepper patch. The four insects congregated in a square in the center of the dead and dying peppers and brought their legs and hands together, closing the square.

“You all did well,” Anatov said, as they watched the insects perform their healing ceremony. “They’ll be at this all night. By morning there will be fresh new shoots. You can go home now.”

Sunny’s lessons with Sugar Cream were even more challenging. Unlike Anatov, Sugar Cream didn’t have Sunny go out and buy books. She was the Head Librarian; they had all the books they needed right there in the building. They always met in her office on the third floor of the Obi Library. Usually, they met Saturdays. But this weekend, they met on a Sunday evening because Sugar Cream had had an important meeting Saturday afternoon. Sunny couldn’t help but suspect that Sugar Cream also wanted Sunny to journey to Leopard Knocks at night, forcing her to deal with the river beast and her fear of the lake beast. Thankfully, Sunny’s journey to Leopard Knocks that evening had been uneventful and she’d arrived at Sugar Cream’s office promptly at nine P.M.

Sugar Cream was leaning against the doorway when Sunny reached the top of the stairs. “There you are,” Sugar Cream said, smirking. “Come in. Let’s get started.”

Sugar Cream’s focus for the first two weeks had been on the rules and regulations of being a Leopard Person. She had Sunny not only read the thin and annoyingly prejudiced book Fast Facts for Free Agents two more times, but she also had Sunny write a research paper pointing out and deconstructing the book’s bias. Sunny had never had to write such a difficult paper in her life. It forced her to not only look at the way she was given information but also at the background of the author Isong Abong Effiong Isong. It turned out that Isong was not only educated in the West but had fled from Nigeria after a terrible experience with armed robbers. For this reason, Isong had developed a fear and hatred of all things Nigerian. Though the research paper was tough to write, Sunny was glad she’d been forced to write it. Now she understood not only the rules the book taught but how to read those rules. Several small silver chittim had fallen during the writing of that paper.