It isn’t until they find refuge on the ridge of a large, verdant bowl empty of people, of all sign of habitation, that Ify realizes where Ngozi’s been taking them. The van is parked a ways off. Ngozi has left her rifle in there but has a pistol tucked into her pants. Grace brings up the rear and hangs back while Ify stands at Ngozi’s side. Together, they survey the landscape: the rolling hillside, the mountains to either side of them, their clay sides red like open wounds. And Ify knows were she to dig deep enough into the ground here—anywhere here—she’d find Chukwu glowing blue right at her. The mineral over which a whole war was fought.

“We’re in Biafra, aren’t we?”

Ngozi sniffs and keeps playing with her chewing stick. “You didn’t get to know Onyii the way I did, so I figured I would show you what she lived for.”

“And what she died for,” Ify says to herself, quietly. Then Ify looks back up at the land before her, and she recalls the winding journey they’ve taken, the forests they’ve passed through, the roads they’ve ridden down, the flightlines they’ve taken, the hillsides on which they’ve camped. This was her homeland. “I’ve never seen it like this.”

“There used to be more people,” Ngozi says casually. Ify knows the callousness of the statement is a mask for very real hurt. She’s ridden enough with Ngozi to know that the war veteran still aches for the people she will never see again, for the life that once filled these places but that now leaves them desolate and too quiet. This land, not even the animals will touch.

“Ify,” Grace says, insistent.

Ify realizes that Grace must have been calling her name for some time. She turns, and together the two of them walk out of Ngozi’s earshot.

“What are we doing?” Grace hisses. “We have a mission.”

Ify looks around, searching for an answer. If she is honest with herself, she wants to stay because Onyii, somehow, is here, in this place beneath her feet, in the air around her, in the lowing and growling and buzzing of the winged and feathered world around her. Dying children wait for her high in space, but doesn’t she deserve her own brand of peace? “If we leave and are captured by the security services, what happens to us?” she asks Grace.

Grace smolders but takes the point. “We can’t just do nothing. Are we going to sit in her van, driving around this country until she figures out what she wants to do with us?”