Way of the Wizard Read online

  Nkem smacked the steering wheel again and pulled at his budding dreadlocks. Why had he taken this way? At this time of day? The go-slow was always bad here. There was no rhyme or reason. It wasn’t the beginning or end of the work day. There were no especially large potholes. If it was an accident then there must have been an accident here at the same time every day. There were simply a lot of vehicles that came through here at this time. And I knew this, he thought. His blood pressure rose from just thinking about it.

  Two hours of his life wasted. He picked up his cell phone and then put it down. Agnes would wait. She’d wait all day for him. Any woman would.

  “Fuck it,” Nkem grumbled. He rolled up the window, started the car and cranked up the air conditioner. His Jaguar guzzled fuel, but if he ran out, what did it matter? No car was going anywhere anyway. He sat back and shut his eyes as the refreshing, cool air blew against his sweaty face. Closing the window, combined with the roar of the AC, made the singing of the traveling choir in the van beside him significantly more bearable. He leaned back, moaning with the pleasure of the icy-cold air and relative quiet. He shivered and laughed to himself, amazed that he could feel any pleasure at all in a situation of such grand displeasure. Life was complicated like that sometimes.

  He opened his eyes just as the truck in front of him belched out a fresh plume of black greasy smoke. He laughed again and thought I’m going to die out here.

  That would be right in line with the way he felt. He was running to Agnes because he needed to pound something. He wanted to revel in the badness of the act and the sweetness of her flesh. Fake people and fake bullshit, he was surrounded by it. And he was slowly growing convinced that he wasn’t for this world.

  Nkem looked out the window. To his left was a busy market from which colorfully-dressed hawkers emerged to sell items like bagged plantain chips, chin chin, and cashews, skewers of spicy beef suya, and tiny plastic bags of cold “pure” water. But out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something beyond the market—something large and white and heading toward him. He blinked, wondering what it could possibly be. Too large to be a bird. A car maybe?

  Whatever it was was coming fast. He slowly turned his head toward it. His eyes grew very, very wide: A large, white long-horned bull was galloping right at him. There was no time to get out. No time to run. This was it. The crazed beast was going to smash right into his side of the car and impale him with its sharp horns. Then Nkem spotted the animals’ eyes; they were a milky white. Every hair on Nkem’s body stood up. He took in a sharp shocked breath. He hadn’t seen this since he was a kid. Since one of them had last tried to kill him.

  Nkem tried to jump into the passenger seat. Finally, a shout of wild horror escaped his mouth as the steer bore down upon him.

  But at the very last moment, the steer shook its head and changed direction. SCREEEEEE! Its left horn scratched hard across Nkem’s window. The sound was worse than running one’s nails across a chalkboard. It was a wonder that the glass didn’t shatter. “Awo!” Nkem exclaimed, clapping his hands over his ears. After veering away from his car, the beast trotted between the other vehicles, across the street and into a patch of trees on the other side of the road.

  Nkem slowly sat up, staring at the deep foot-long scratch in his window. He’d nearly died like this three times as a kid. When he was three a group of hens had tried to peck him to death. He still remembered how the chickens had all had milky eyes and been shaking their heads like they had an itch in their skulls that they could not scratch. Thankfully his mother had been nearby. That night every one of those chickens was killed, cooked and eaten. No one said anything about the chickens having weird eyes.

  When he was seven, a mad milky-eyed goat had tried to butt him with its horns. Nkem had only escaped it because he was a fast and quick runner. Like the chickens, this beast also had been shaking its head. The last time was when Nkem was twelve years old. He’d been walking home alongside a busy street when a crazed, milky-eyed horse bearing an empty saddle had come running at him.

  The horse shook its head violently and, a few feet before reaching Nkem, galloped into the road right in front of an overcrowded bus. The bus ran over the horse and then veered and smashed into a truck just in time for them both to careen over the bridge down the road. There were mangled bodies all over the road and in the bushes. In the small river that the vehicles had splashed into, more bodies floated and people screamed for help. Nkem had just stood there, physically untouched but mentally touched deeper than he’d ever been.

  This was the defining moment of twelve-year-old Nkem’s life. Just before it all happened, Nkem had been thinking about his growling stomach. He hadn’t eaten for days. His parents had bought him school books which meant days without food. He was the insignificant seventh son of a poor yam farmer and a crippled mother and all these people had just died because of him. Because the horse would rather run into the street than obey whatever had temporally captured its brain.

  The gruesome scene of the resulting accident had been such a visual spectacle. So impressive that he’d forgotten his hunger. This moment made him yearn to go into film instead of doing medicine. He never learned where the horse came from or where its rider had gone. But aside from everything else, he never forgot the horse’s completely white eyes, not blind, but occupied. The very look he’d just seen now, twenty years later.

  He turned the car off, got out, and ran his fingertips over the scratch. They came away coated with grated glass. The scratch was deep, as if the animal was actually pushing as it turned, purposely scraping his window. The women in the car beside him had stopped singing and were staring at Nkem as if he were Lazarus himself. The man in the truck in front of him leaned out. “The Lord protects you, o! Dat animal de craze!”

  Three shabbily-dressed and winded-looking boys with sticks came running between the cars. “It went that way!” one of the choir women said, pointing at the patch of trees. The boys nodded, too breathless to respond as they ran in the beast’s direction. Nkem slumped in his seat with a relieved sigh, vaguely wondering how much it would cost to replace the window.

  An hour later, the traffic thinned and began to move. Nkem didn’t care. The image of the insane white-eyed steer was branded to his mind. He kept thinking about the way it was shaking its head. Nkem’s urge to fuck was gone, not that he wanted to return to his wife back in Aba, either.

  He drove three fast miles before he came to yet another patch of “go-slow” congestion. As he decelerated, he launched into a string of Igbo and English curses. He had such a terrible headache. He shouldn’t have bothered leaving his hotel room. It would have been better to relax on his balcony, with a glass of cold beer and a good book. He laughed loudly. He didn’t want that either. “I don’t know what I want anymore!” he said to himself. What he did know was that he wasn’t going to get sucked into yet another go-slow.

  Before the cars came to a full halt, he spotted a break in a patch of palm trees. A side road. Did he dare? There had been a terrible storm last night. Was the dirt still wet? It was a hot day. The sun was high in the sky, so most likely not.

  “Fuck it,” he mumbled and pulled the car onto the dirt road. As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t. What if he got stuck in some mud? Last thing he needed was to really mess up his car. But he didn’t want to turn around, either. He was always making impulsive errors of rebellion like this. It was how he found himself walking down the aisle—his family had had the nerve to object and that made him marry her that much faster.

  The dirt road was wide enough for two cars and it was fairly smooth. After five minutes of driving, he had yet to encounter any mud spots. Miraculously, the road seemed to run right alongside the highway. Nkem was sure that eventually there would be an opening for him to get back onto the main road. The forest flanking the sides of the street looked dense and mysterious, the highway visible on the other side about an eighth of a mile away. He smiled to himself; he was moving while the traffic was sta
gnant. The story of his life. He pushed his car to move faster.

  As he sped on, he again noticed something in his peripheral vision. “Ah ah! What in hell is going on today?” he whispered.

  Running along the left side of his car was a large, ostrich-like bird with shaggy black feathers that made him immediately think of a masquerade, the kind that danced and was made of packed raffia. Nkem was going about thirty miles per hour and the bird was easily keeping up. The speed at which it was moving caused its soft, fine feathers to flatten as it ran. It turned its head to look at Nkem, and when it did, he saw its small, red eyes flash like jewels. Clear eyes. Good. At least there’s that, he thought. And it wasn’t shaking its head either.

  Nkem looked away from the creature only to find yet another bird approaching from the right. “Chineke!” he whispered then returned his eyes to the road so that he didn’t swerve off to the side. And that was when he saw yet another one standing in the middle of the road staring right at him. Even from afar, for some reason, he could see right into the bird’s eyes. They were a glowing brown color, like Chocolate with the sun shining through it. Nkem heard a ringing in his ears, his heart danced in his chest, and a terrible, intense brightness momentarily blinded him.

  WHAM! Whump whump!

  Nkem felt the impact as if he himself had been run over. All the air left his lungs and everything went white just for a moment. Then the pain was gone. Somehow he was able to get his foot to hit the break. His tires bit into the road’s dirt and he came to a silent stop. From nearby, he could hear the slow, slow traffic of the highway.

  No time to consider the situation. The other birds were coming toward his car. He glared at them then turned to look at the body in the middle of the road. A heap of feathery meat. Definitely dead. One of the birds ran up to his window and tapped it with its short but strong black beak. Tick, tick, tick, just below the scratch from the steer’s horn. Nkem let out a short breath and sat back for a moment.

  “Since when are there goddamn ostriches in Imo State?” he wondered, leaning his head back and looking up at the black roof of his car. He considered calling his friend Festus, who was an amateur birdwatcher. He grabbed his cell phone then put it down, knowing he’d sound like a lunatic if he told Festus any of this.

  One of the birds brought its head closer to the window. “What do you want, bird?” he asked. It ambled off. Nkem turned to the dead creature again, his leather seat creaking as he strained for a better look. Whatever the fuck they were, what were they doing here? And if they could run that fast, why stand in the middle of the fucking road and get run over?

  An idea came to mind, and Nkem pinched and tugged at his short beard. He laughed to himself. Should he do it? “Why not,” he said. He had an old sheet covering the bottom of his trunk. The boy he’d once been, the one who never wasted an ounce of food because he never had food to waste, was alive and well within him, despite his now lavish lifestyle. Why waste good meat? He laughed again. No, he wasn’t going to go see Agnes. He would go see his mother who lived an hour away. She’d appreciate this huge amount of meat.

  Nkem backed up to the dead bird and, leaving the car running, slowly got out. All the loitering birds raised their long-necked heads at attention.

  “You all,” he muttered. “Stay back. Stay back.”

  The birds kept their distance. Some of them, he couldn’t tell how many, started making a loud booming sound in their throats. It almost sounded like deep drum beats. That is creepy, he thought. He looked down at the dead creature. This one was bigger than the others and looked somewhat different. There was a bright blue tint along its broken neck and deep red shadowing above its eyes. Its long neck was plumed with fluffy white feathers, and the top of its head was crowned with three long black ones. It was an attractive beast.

  Thing’s going to be heavy, Nkem thought, but he was tall and lifted weights daily—he was a strong guy. Even if the bird weighed more than a hundred pounds, he’d still be able to get it into the car’s trunk. But goddamn, what a huge bird! It would feed everyone in the village for days. He bent down and scooped his arms underneath it. His white silk shirt would be ruined if the bird was dirty or oily, he realized, but then thought Fuck it, I can afford another. He lifted. It was heavy, easily over a hundred and twenty pounds. Something fell to the ground from between the bird’s thick feathers as he lifted it. It looked like a small piece of ice.

  The bird’s head hung limply, like a piece of boiled cassava, and bumped against his leg. Nkem glanced at the other birds, hoping they didn’t take notice of what he was doing. There were now at least ten of them standing around, blank faced, turning their heads this way and that, eying him.

  Nkem placed the dead bird in the trunk then knelt down and scooped up the thing that had fallen from the bird’s feathers. Some kind of gemstone? He turned it over and held it before his eyes. Quartz, maybe. He put it into the pocket of his jeans and got into the car.

  For about two miles, the huge wingless birds ran beside the car on the dirt path as he drove. It was oddly exhilarating. He almost felt like one of them as he pushed the car to drive faster and, for a while, they kept up. Eventually, his car outran them, leaving them in the dust.

  About a mile later, dead bird in his trunk, he got back on the highway. He was free and clear.

  Or so he thought. Ten minutes after returning to the highway, Nkem pulled over after hearing a repetitive thumping sound coming from the back of the car. “How can I have a flat tire?!” he groaned. But as he pulled off the road, he began to wonder if it was something else. The thumping wasn’t the rhythmic thud-thud-thud that a flat tire typically makes. As a matter of fact, the thumping was quite erratic.

  Thump, thump!

  There it was again. He rolled to a stop and listened.

  THUMP!

  Shit! he thought. It was coming from the trunk. The bird was still alive. Even as a kid, he’d never liked wringing even a chicken’s neck. Now he’d have to wring the neck of a gigantic half-dead mystery bird.

  THUMP! THUMP, THUMP!

  The front of his car was already slightly dented from the impact, and now the damn thing was going to dent his trunk too if he didn’t do something about it fast. He jumped out of the car and walked around to the back, then stood looking at the closed trunk, his knuckles on his hips. The afternoon sun beat against his neck and sweat trickled down his armpits.

  THUMP THUMP!

  He could see the metal of his trunk dome up each time. THUMP THUMP! “Okay, let’s do this,” he said, and quickly ran his finger over the sensor on his key to pop the trunk. The trunk flew open and out leapt a figure, graceful as an ostrich, shaggy feathery coat undulating with every movement. Nkem jumped back, nearly screaming. He instinctively raised his fists, ready to battle like hell.

  A woman. His eyes had to be deceiving him. But he didn’t dare blink. She was tall with strong, long legs and she wore a dress that resembled the bird’s feathery hide. A woman. Not a giant bird. She dug her foot into the dirt, keeping her arms close to her sides.

  “What do you think you are doing?” she demanded, in a hard, deep authoritative voice. “Do you think you can fight me, now?”

  The bird-woman was taller than him and looked to be about thirty years old. She had strings of chunky red glass beads and white-brown cowry shells woven into her thick, tightly-braided hair. Her lips were painted dark with black lipstick and her entire dress was made of silky bird feathers. Her beaded braids clicked and clacked as she awkwardly walked around him.

  “What are you?” Nkem finally asked, his fists still up.

  “What is wrong with you?” she asked.

  Nkem lowered his fists. “N . . . nothing.”

  “Why didn’t you leave me to die?”

  “I thought you were dead,” he started to say, then paused, catching himself. Why was he acting like this woman was the bird he’d run over?

  Before he could say more, they came out of the bushes. One, two, ten, sixteen big bird
s! I guess they didn’t stop following, he thought. They surrounded him like a group of strange curious women.

  A car driving by blew its horn. “Nah woooooow!” the driver exclaimed out the window, staring. Several more cars slowed down to look.

  “Chineke!” someone else shouted.

  A man held a cell phone out of the passenger seat window. Nkem could even see its camera lens adjusting to capture him in perfect high definition focus. “Snap it, now!” the driver said. “Snap it and send, o! Then broadcast live!”

  “Look at that!”

  Up close the birds had a bitter, grapefruit-like scent. They were all making that low, booming drum beat noise now and the woman was looking at them thoughtfully. Then she looked at Nkem and said something that made his heart flip: “I wanted to die,” she whispered, then moved close to him. “I . . . I led some to freedom but too many to death. I should die for not saving them all.”

  Nkem blinked, suddenly far too aware of all the cars and people around him. People would certainly recognize him; he was a celebrity, Nigeria’s “Sexist Man Alive.” With so many witnesses, could it be long before the paparazzi showed up?

  “Get in the car,” he said.

  She looked at him like he was crazy. “These are my friends.”

  “Just get in! Let them follow.”

  Nkem wasn’t sure if this would deflect attention from him, but it was better than just standing there. He got in the Jaguar and opened the door for the bird-woman. She slowly climbed in, folding her long legs and keeping her eye on Nkem.

  He felt ill but at the same time, utterly exhilarated. This was something new. This was unexpected and insane. “Who are you?” he asked as he pulled the car onto the street in front of the rubbernecking traffic. He kept to the outer lane of the street so that the herd of birds could run alongside the car. “What are you?”

  “Ogaadi,” she said, looking out the window at the running birds. “That is my name.”

  Nkem glanced at her but didn’t say anything else.