Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

Author:Nnedi Okorafor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-31T23:00:00+00:00

“Get out.”

Sunny slowly opened her eyes. They were parked outside of the Obi Library. There must have been a way in wider than a tree bridge.

“Someone will meet you inside.” The moment Sunny got out, the woman drove off, leaving her alone in Leopard Knocks for the first time. There were people going in and out of the library, on the street. She saw a group of kids about her age walking toward Taiwo’s hut. They saw her and waved. She waved back. Then she turned to the library. A cobblestone trail led through the wildly growing grass to the main entrance. As with almost every Leopard building, there was no door, only a silky lavender cloth. She pushed it aside and stepped in.

Books and papers were stacked and piled in corners, set in bookcases as high as the ceiling, scattered on and around clusters of chairs. It was all very untidy and disorganized, and the air had a stale paper odor. People read, talked, wrote, and even performed acts of juju. A man standing in a corner with a book in his hand shouted something and threw some powder up in the air. Poof! A burst of brown moths. He coughed and cursed and threw the book on the floor.

An old woman sat beside a bookcase, surrounded by children. She snapped her fingers and all the children floated inches from the ground. They giggled, trying to make themselves go higher by pumping their legs.

In the center of the large busy room was a round table with a silver sign hovering in midair above it. In large black letters, the sign read WETIN?, which meant “What is it?” in Pidgin English. A youngish man with Yoruba tribal markings on his cheeks sat behind the desk.

“Hello,” she said, nervously. “I’m—”

“Sunny Nwazue,” he said. “Breaker of rule number fortyeight. Such a primary rule.” He called behind her. “Samya.”

“Eh?” came a voice from behind a bookcase. A woman with long braids, red plastic glasses, and reddish brown skin peeked around it.

“Sunny’s here,” he said. “Take her up.”

Samya looked Sunny over and then said, “Come. This way.”

They took the staircase beside the Wetin desk. The second floor was larger, with more bookcases and stacks of paper. The people here were older. Sunny wanted to slap herself. Her first look at the Obi Library University was basically as a criminal.

A haunted moaning came from somewhere on the other side of the floor. Thankfully, they went up another flight of stairs. The third floor had more books and classrooms, too, but she was too nervous to really pay attention. “Please. What is going to happen to me?”

“Can’t talk about it.”

It looked like they were going up another staircase. Instead, Samya led her to perhaps the first actual door Sunny had seen in Leopard Knocks. It was heavy, painted black, and decorated with a white drawing like those on the outer walls of the library. The drawing depicted a person being whipped by another person. There were squiggles, circles, and Xs around the person being whipped.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.