Read an Excerpt From One Way Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from One Way Witch, the second novel in Nnedi Okorafor’s Africanfuturist She Who Knows trilogy—publishing with DAW on April 29^th.

As a teen, Najeeba learned to become the beast of wind, fire and dust: the kponyungo. When that took too much from her, including the life of her father, she let it all go, and for a time, she was happy—until only a few years later, when the small, normal life she’d built was violently destroyed.

Now in her forties and years beyond the death of her second husband, Najeeba has just lost her beloved daughter. Onyesonwu saved the world. Najeeba knows this well, but the world does not. This is how the juju her daughter evoked works. One other person who remembers is Onyesonwu’s teacher Aro, a harsh and hard-headed sorcerer. Najeeba has decided to ask him to teach her the Mystic Points, the powerful heart of sorcery. There is something awful Najeeba needs to kill and the Mystic Points are the only way. Najeeba is truly her daughter’s mother.

When Aro agrees to help, Najeeba is at last ready to forge her future. But first, she must confront her past—for certain memories cannot lie in unmarked graves.

I was at home when it happened, sitting in the living room with the Ada and Nana the Wise. Nana the Wise had brought three jugs of the beer she loved to brew. That early evening, the three of us were drunk and laughing raucously.

“Oh I have one,” Nana the Wise was saying. She leaned way back on the couch as she finished off another cup of the delicious beer. “If you could be a man for one day, what is the first thing you would do?” “Oh, that’s easy,” the Ada said. She’d had the most cups of beer as usual. She got up, teetered for a second and then brought her hand to her crotch and simulated masturbation. This sent all three of us into gales of screaming laughter. My world was spinning. I hadn’t laughed this hard since long before Onyesonwu had left. She’d been gone for nearly five months now.

“I think I’d go outside with no shirt on,” I said in my whispery voice, when I could finally breathe. “Then maybe I’d look for a man to fight.”

More laughter. Nana the Wise was laughing so hard that she was wheezing. Still laughing, the Ada quickly jumped up to hug her. “Are you all right?” she asked.

This was when it crushed me. I was laughing and looking at the only two friends I had in the world–the town custodian of girl and woman traditions and one of the town’s leaders. Old women. Powerful women. Women who were pivotal in making Jwahir the peaceful comfortable town it was. Far west from all the killing. Nowhere near where I’d come from.

I felt harsh pains in my head. Right between my temples. The at the bridge of my nose. Then my left cheek. The back of my head. My chin. My left eye. I gasped from the raw pain of it all. I felt every stone that they threw at my daughter’s head in a city so far away from me that the sun was still high. I fell off my chair, holding my head. My head felt wet, parts of it exposed. But it wasn’t the pain. No, no, no, the pain was a distant second to the realization.

“Onyesonwu,” I softly screamed. I had no voice and never had this fact angered me so deeply. I rolled to my side and started punching the chair in front of me. By this time, the Ada was at my side, Nana the Wise slowly kneeling beside her. But all I could focus on was that my daughter was dying. She was slipping away. As she went, she was still. She was quiet. Onyesonwu was looking somewhere else. She was focused. Because she was calm, I calmed.

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One Way Witch

Nnedi Okorafor

She spoke to me. Not in voice, in spirit. So calm. For the first time, my daughter who had been born raging at the world was at peace. “Mama, here I go,” she said. There was a moment. Then I burst into tears as I curled in on myself on the floor.

“What is wrong?” Nana the Wise asked. My eyes were squeezed shut, so I couldn’t see her face, but she sounded terrified.

“Breathe,” the Ada said. She put her hand on my shoulder.

I opened my mouth wide and took a loud, ragged deep breath.

“Now, exhale,” she said.

I exhaled. And when I did, I felt it all change. The sensation was like warm water flowing over me. I slowly opened my eyes and I could see it. It was like a hallucination. I was looking at the Ada and Nana the Wise, as they crouched over me. They both looked so concerned. The Ada was wearing one of her loose dresses, it was green. Nana the Wise was wearing pants and a matching top made of orange silky mate- rial. Neither wore shoes. Nana the Wise had her hair shaven close to her head and she wore her signature bronze hoop earrings. The Ada wore a necklace and bracelets made of braided palm fibers.

Right before my eyes, the Ada’s dress became blue and she was now wearing silver bangles, a necklace and several tiny silver hoop earrings that went up her ear. Nana the Wise’s orange clothes became white and her hair became long thick grey braids. Then Nana the Wise sprouted brown wings like a giant eagle. They stretched as she leaned in and the Ada moved away from them as if she was used to the wings’ being there. Then another waterlike wave passed, and Nana the Wise’s wings disappeared.

I inhaled and exhaled again. My head felt better. But even in my bones, I could feel that everything was different. Neither Nana the Wise nor the Ada no- ticed a thing. They didn’t look at their clothes with confusion. Nana the Wise pushed her hair back be- fore helping me up, as if it had always been there. The Ada’s signature bronze hoop earrings were gone. Her silver bangles clicked as she took my other shoulder, and she seemed used to their clinking.

Both of them were very worried about me. They couldn’t understand what had happened. When I said, “My daughter. I think something happened,” they both looked even more worried.

“I think you might have had a little too much beer,” Nana the Wise said. They helped me to the couch. Then they both stepped away but I could hear Nana the Wise whisper, “It’s making her hallucinate about her baby. Do you feel all right? Maybe my beer is bad.”

“I feel fine,” the Ada said. “And I had twice as much as her.”

They helped me dress for bed and then they left. It was interesting. They had been staying at my place to keep me company for weeks. Now, it was as if they’d never done so. I didn’t go outside until the morning. I was afraid.