The Black Pages by Okorafor Nnedi

Author:Okorafor, Nnedi [Okorafor, Nnedi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adult
ISBN: 9781542032704
Amazon: B098T11H5Q
Goodreads: 58647675
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2021-08-31T07:00:00+00:00

The side of Issaka’s face was pressed to the warm, rough sand. The feel of it took him back to when he was five years old, when he had the strange habit of going to the back of the house at the height of the day and lying in the middle of the yard, pressing his face to the sand. This was one of his earliest memories.

“I’m listening,” he told his mother when she asked him what he was doing. Issaka didn’t remember what he had been listening for or what he heard, if anything, but he remembered the powerful urge to do it and the sting of the sand’s heat. His mother had let him lie there until he grew too hot to stand it and came inside. His father had never known anything about the habit.

Issaka slowly opened his eyes and immediately they started stinging and tearing up. He blinked and blinked, his eyes itching and stinging more. Desert. He was in the desert, the sand soft and hot on his cheek. But not that hot. He was in the shade of a large stone, thank goodness. A few more feet and his face would have been burning. He opened his mouth to inhale the hot hot air.

“My God,” he muttered. Not far off, the land grew gravelly, dotted with dry, stunted trees, and then climbed up to form jagged steep hills and rocky peaks that looked almost like hands cringing from the sky. He exhaled and his chest felt as if it were full of ash and flames. He coughed and pulled himself up. He fell onto his back and just lay there. Staring at the bright naked sky above.

“Mama,” he whispered. Then he saw her in his mind. Slammed to the ceiling by some invisible force. He saw his mother wince with pain, and then he saw her expression harden in a way he’d never seen her face move. She took whatever was attacking her and slammed it to the ground. There was blood in her eyes and bubbling out of her nose, but her eyes were wide and she was grinning a bloody pink grin.

He’d seen this. He curled into himself, feeling as if he’d been punched in the chest. He coughed again, his throat rough. He tasted ash on his lips and he spit.

He was still coughing when he looked up and saw . . . Faro. She was sitting cross-legged now. In the hot hot sun. It had to be over a hundred degrees out here. He blinked. Faro loved the heat. He coughed again, still trying to stare through his tear-filled eyes. In his mind, clear as if he were right there with her, he saw his mother’s head ripped from her body. He whimpered, his mouth open with shock and revulsion. He shrieked, feeling his very being pulse and then begin to tear. Something pulled his eyes to the left and he focused on her. Faro. Sitting cross-legged. In midair. What?

“Are you done?” she asked.

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