We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from She Who Knows by Nnedi Okorafor, the first book in a trilogy set in the same universe as Who Fears Death—publishing with DAW on August 20th.
When there is a call, there is often a response.
Najeeba knows.
She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come true: travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.
Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.
Dead Lake
My brother Rayan thought he was on my father’s level because he was almost thirty years old, married with three children, including a male newborn. Ger had married his wife months ago and all he wanted to do was chat with her on his portable the entire time, but also make as much money as possible so they could build on their house before having a baby. All of this added up to them being annoyed I was there.
“You should be home reading manuscripts, papers, and books at the Paper House and getting ready for your husband,” Rayan said over his shoulder. His dusty red camel, whose name was Mars, liked to walk at the front, even ahead of my father. The beast was just as entitled as my brother.
“Didn’t you hear Papa?” I said. “I knew when it was time to go. I had the calling.”
“Not all calls are meant to be answered,” Ger said. He was right beside me and I wanted to punch him.
“Exactly,” Rayan said. “Girls aren’t meant to be out here.”
I looked behind me at my father for backup. He said nothing, only gazing back at me. I frowned and turned around.
“We are all here,” my father said. “Let’s all be here.”
I said little else for the next many hours. It was tiring. I was there; why should I explain why? Why did my own brothers, who liked me, keep saying I should not be there? My father barely defended me. And all around me were miles and miles of desert, no human villages in sight. I let my mind travel to the witch, what I’d seen. I still had no urge to share my experience with any of them, not even with my father. He’d said nothing to my brothers, which made me not want to tell them even more.
I fell asleep on my camel. It was a talent that I had. When I look back, it all makes sense why I was able to do it. I could sit on my camel and sleep deeply without falling off. My brothers and father would say that I’d sway this way and that, but I’d never fall. My brother Rayan said it was as if I’d left a part of myself behind to watch over my body, while the majority of me went elsewhere. So I did not know when we crested the sand dune. I heard my father say, “I never get used to it.”
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She Who Knows
“It scares me,” Ger said. “I described it once to Zora and she said that she never ever wanted to set eyes on this place. I understand.”
“You two are made for each other. Two cowards,” Rayan laughed.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. I’d been awake for a few minutes, but once I understood what I was about to see, I hesitated. Some part of me that had listened to all the words, sentiments of people, who had grown up amongst the Osu-nu, who believed the salt roads were for Osu-nu men only, despite the fact that they were discovered by two women, was certain that when I set eyes upon the ghost of the lake, I’d turn into a pillar of salt. There were documents shelved in
the Paper House that said so. I’d read them myself with Peter last year and we’d thought it funny, because we didn’t think we had to worry about it either way.
I took a leap of faith. I opened my eyes wide. Then… I gasped. My father and brothers all turned to me. “See?” my father said, smiling. “The mere sight of it does not change her.”
“What do you think, Najeeba?” Ger asked.
I took a few moments. Then I said, “The first to see this place were women,” I said. “I’m probably thinking what they thought… that death sometimes creates great beauty.”
The dead lake was the most beautiful and mysterious place I’d ever seen. Down the sand dune, the sand simply ended, and from horizon to horizon the land became salt. The Great Book spoke of Ani awakening and turning her attention back to the Earth, of her then pulling in the stars from which she plucked the Nuru people. Scholars and scientists said there was more to it. Seeing what I was seeing now, I agreed. The peaceful death of a lake could not have done all this. No.
It glistened and sparkled in the sunlight. My father and brothers had already put on their sunglasses and I put mine on now. Crystals, shards, large, medium, and small. More salt than humanity could ever consume. Most of it was murky with detritus, like dead leaves, seaweed, pebbles, dirt, other minerals, but some of it was clearer. Before Ani’s return, the Okeke people had used their twisted technology to strain salt from the sea to make it drinkable. That salt was sometimes dumped into lakes like this one. So there had already been an extremely high concentration of salt in the lake. Maybe while the lake was alive, it was also dead. But that still didn’t explain what I was seeing. Ani had worked her juju here so long ago, and it was still so incredibly powerful.
“Ani is great,” I whispered.
We set up camp on the top of the sand dune. When we finished, my father trudged up an even higher dune, where he just stood looking at the dead lake.
“What’s he doing?” I asked my brother Rayan.
“It’s how Papa always finds the rarest cubes of salt to sell. He goes up and looks right when we arrive. He says certain things stand out for him and that’s where he goes to look.”
“It works every time,” Ger added. “Though he doesn’t always know what kind of weird salt he’ll find. Watch. Before we leave, he’ll find something.”
Papa stood up there for nearly an hour. When he came down, he said nothing, acting like what he’d done was perfectly normal. To my brothers, I guess, it was. Once we’d settled in a bit, we went to the dead lake. The camels were happy to stay behind. We left our mining equipment with them. We would start all that tomorrow.
“Does anything live here?” I asked.
“Not really,” my father said. “Some birds come here to roost, but they find food elsewhere. Vultures come to prey on the ones who die while roosting.”
The closer we got to the salt, the more surreal it seemed. We crossed an area that had obviously been mined. When you looked up, this barely left a dent in the miles and miles of crystals. Human beings would go extinct before the salt here ran out, no matter how much people came and took. When my brothers and father stopped to look at a particular salt cube, I turned the other way, toward the crystal wilderness.
“Ani is great,” I whispered. In the distance, a cluster of cubes and shards glistened orange-yellow in the waning sunlight. As I stared at it, the light shifted, and I could have sworn I saw something long and lean rise from the salt. Or maybe it was just the heat. I snapped my fingers above my head to ward off the evil eye and turned back to Papa and my brothers, who’d decided the cube wasn’t worth pulling up. Still, when we started walking, I looked back. The orange-yellow light was gone.
“This place is strange,” I muttered.
We reached the thicker shards and cubes, my father tapping on each and gazing into them like an oracle gazing into a pool or water or mirror. My brothers did the same, but it was clear that my father knew better what to look and listen for than they did. Locating good salt was not just a skill, it was a talent. The ground cracked and shattered, leaving footprints. I found the sound and feel satisfying and I stamped my feet as I walked.
“Be serious,” Rayan snapped.
“Why? What does it even matter?”
“Just have some respect,” he said. “This place is sacred. It is the livelihood of our people.”
I rolled my eyes, stamped one more foot, and then treaded lightly.
“It’s her first time here,” Ger said. “Don’t act like you didn’t do the same thing when it was you.”
Up ahead, our father had stepped onto a large cube. He stood on it and looked down. The sun was shining through it so clearly that I had to shield my eyes. “Ah! We are lucky. This is a good one,” he said. “See how clear it is, Najeeba? Like ice. No detritus trapped inside, no dead creatures.”
“Kai! Good find, Papa,” Rayan said. “And we just got here!”
“There can be dead things in the salt?” I asked.
“Almost always, yes,” he said. “This one is unusual.” He knelt down and placed a solar flag on it. This would make it easy to locate tomorrow. “It’s one of the ways we know this lake did not die naturally. It died fast… and hot.”
I sat on a smaller cube, my brothers sitting on a shard and another cube. We stayed like that for a while, listening to the quiet. It wasn’t the same type of quiet as the desert, which is a heavy, cleansing quiet that stills the soul. It was a frantic quiet, as if something was vibrating in privacy. The sun was setting and soon the area was reflecting brilliant oranges, pinks, and periwinkles.
“Come on,” my father said, after a quick look around. “It’s not good to be out here after dark.”
We set up camp on the edge of the dead lake, my brothers building a large fire for us to sleep around. The nights here were cold. I sat on my mat nibbling on some smoked goat meat as I faced the dead lake. I’d sprinkled a little salt on it, and I savored the smoky, chewy, salty combination. Salt is life. The moon had risen and it reflected off the lake, lighting up the night. A breeze blew and I wondered if there were ever witches out here and what would happen if I ran into one. I smiled. I knew what I’d do if there Were.
I thought about the witch again. How I’d changed. How freeing my encounter with it was, especially after I’d chosen to run into it. I looked at my father, who’d always worked so hard. He’d allowed me to come along because I wanted to, but did he ever have the freedom I had?
“Papa,” I said, “how… how did it happen? To your family?” The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. I’d never asked Papa this. My brothers hadn’t, either. I clapped my hands over my mouth, as if I could push the words back in and swallow them.
My father looked hard at me and both of my brothers sat up.
“Najeeba,” Ger hissed. “Don’t you ever think before speaking?”
I cringed, wanting to hide under my mat.
My father raised a hand. “No… I’ve been waiting for one of you to ask.” He paused. “I did not think it would be my daughter.”
My brothers looked at each other. None of us knew what to do. My father, when angry, sometimes showed it in really complicated ways that were hard to read. It was best to just sit and take whatever it was.
Excerpted from She Who Knows, copyright © 2024 by Nnedi Okorafor.
