“Okay, okay, o,” Bola said, sitting back before Sunny. “Focus,” she whispered to herself. “There is so much.” She took a deep breath as she gazed at Sunny. Then she exhaled, pointed at Sunny, and said, “Okay. You. Sunny Nwazue. I know of this problem you have. Never witnessed a victim of it who still carried life, but I know the condition. It’s called doubling. It sounds like a misnomer because you have lost a part of yourself, but your spirit face is just not here. So in a sense, you’ve been doubled. Ekwensu did it to you.

“She threw one of her beads at you. The moment it hit you—” Bola snapped her fingers loudly enough to make Sunny jump. “Anyanwu was cut from you.” Bola narrowed her eyes and tapped at her head. “Ekwensu is smart. It was the only way to distract Anyanwu enough so Ekwensu could push out of the wilderness without having to deal with Anyanwu while she was weak. But Ekwensu took a great risk, too. If you had caught that bead, you and Anyanwu could have destroyed Ekwensu right then and there. That bead was one of her iyi-uwa, her power.

“Anyway, it’s done. She’s in the world and you have been doubled, the connection between you and Anyanwu has been ripped apart . . . but somehow you both live. Your Anyanwu is out there. I don’t know where she is.”

Sunny felt ill. “Will she come back to me?” Sunny asked. Then she asked the question that had been nagging her since she realized Anyanwu was gone. “Even if the bond is broken, why would she leave me?” Tears welled up in her eyes again, and Orlu took her hand. “She’s gone. I don’t even feel her near. If this could kill me, why would she leave? Why . . .”

“Anyanwu is old,” Bola said. “I know of her. All the elders, priestesses, priests, know her, Sunny. The ancient will travel; it is not for us to question. Especially with Ekwensu now probably able to occupy the mundane world and the wilderness, too.”

“But . . .”

“Usually, I require payment for my services,” she said. “My payment today is that you’ve shown me something I have never seen before: a living Leopard Person with no spirit face. I’d have said this was an abomination an hour ago, but you have taught me otherwise. Debt paid. Plus, I want to see what the cowries tell me about you.”

She stood up and stretched her back. Then she brought out some cowries from her skirt pocket and moved to an open space in the room.

“So what is it that you especially want to know, Sunny? Aside from how to find your spirit face?”

Sunny paused for a moment, thinking. Since Anyanwu had disappeared, she hadn’t thought about much else. What did anything else really matter? Then she remembered. “I’ve been having dreams of the . . . end,” she said. “Before I discovered I was a free agent, I was shown the world’s end in the flame of a candle. Sugar Cream says that some of my spirit friends or enemies from the wilderness showed all of that to me. I don’t know why. But in a lot of ways, it led me to Leopard society. But these new dreams . . . they’re different.” They leave me asking myself who I am, she wanted to say. But she’d never admit something so pathetic in front of Orlu. “I just want to know . . . what the dreams mean. Do they mean that soon . . .”