Leopard Person Term Analysis

“But I can tell there’s more to you. I just know it.”

“What do you mean, more?”

Chichi smiled mysteriously. “People say stuff about people like you. That you’re all ghost, or a half and half, one foot in this world and one foot in another.” She paused. “That you can…see things.”

Sunny rolled her eyes. Not this again, she thought. So cliché. Everyone thinks the old lady, the hunchback, the crazy man, and the albino have magical evil powers. “Whatever,” she grumbled. She didn’t want to think about the candle.

Chichi laughed. “You’re right, those are silly stereotypes about albinos. But in your case, I think there’s something to it.”

Her father believed that all one needed to succeed in life was an education. He had gone to school for many years to become a barrister, and then gone on to be the most successful child in his family. Sunny’s mother was an MD, and often talked about how excelling in school had opened opportunities to her that girls only two decades before didn’t normally get. So Sunny believed in education, too. But here was Chichi’s mother, surrounded by the hundreds of books she’d read, living in a decrepit old mud hut with her daughter.

“If not for Sunny, we wouldn’t have come today.”

“Things have a way of working themselves out,” Anatov said. “It’s as I taught you: the world is bigger and more important than you.”

“But I’ve always known of my Leopard inheritance and I’ve always been able to do small things like make mosquitoes stay away, warm my bathwater, things like that. Initiation meant something different to me than to you. It’s more a mark of beginning my life’s journey. Yours was, too—but it was also the actual beginning of your Self.”

“Money and material things make you king or queen of the Lamb world. You can do no wrong, you can do anything.

“Leopard People are different. The only way you can earn chittim is by learning. The more you learn, the more chittim you earn. Knowledge is the center of all things. The Head Librarian of the Obi Library of Leopard Knocks is the keeper of the greatest stock of knowledge in West Africa.”

She closed her eyes and soaked in the warm light. She didn’t need to stand in there for an hour to know—she knew deep in her skin. The sunshine felt like a warm friend, not an angry enemy. She didn’t need her umbrella anymore.

“Oh my goodness,” she whispered. “I can play soccer!”

Realizing what she was was the beginning of something, all right…but it was also the end of something else.

“Knowledge does not always evolve into wisdom.”

“So because I’m a Leopard albino, I can—”

“Yes. Certain attributes tend to yield certain talents. […] Abilities are things people are able to do without the use of a juju knife, powders, or other ingredients like the head of an ebett. They just come naturally.”

“If you’d have all perished, we’d have found you and your bodies would have been returned to your parents with…explanation,” Kehinde said.

Sunny’s mouth fell open. What kind of barbaric coldhearted man was this?

“Come now,” Kehinde said, pulling out a newspaper. He shook it at them. “Have you seen the news lately? If you haven’t noticed, a person’s life, especially a young person’s, isn’t worth much these days. The world is bigger than all of you. Chances have to be taken. But thankfully, here you are.”

“The second and third are the university, for true scholars. Third levelers, Ndibus, who want to keep evolving.”

“My mother goes there,” Chichi said proudly. “She’s one of the younger students, though.”

“Younger?” Chichi’s mother was about her mother’s age.

“It’s not like with Lambs,” Orlu said. “Age is one of the requirements to even start at the Obi University of Pre-Scholars. You have to be over forty-two.”

“You expect us to capture this Black Hat, who is like you, one of these people who has passed the highest of the highest level of juju ability? That’s—I mean no disrespect—” She paused, the irritation that had been brewing in her for weeks suddenly flaring bright. She felt used. “That’s insane! And—and I’m beginning to know how you people think! You’ll just find some other kids to do it if we’re all murdered! And why am I included in this?! I don’t know anything!”

“This is bigger than you,” Taiwo said, turning very serious. “But you’re part of it, too. It would be unfair for me to expect you to understand this just yet, but you will.”

“Listen. It was your grandmother, Ozoemena, who taught Otokoto all he knows. She was his mentor. And it was Otokoto who killed your grandmother in a ritual to steal her abilities as he stole her life. You want to know why he is so powerful? All you need to look at is who your grandmother was and who Otokoto was before he became the infamous Black Hat.”

“Your parents born here?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Then you from here and there. Dual thing, you know?”

She laughed. “If you say so.”

“I know so.”

“So what’s that make me, then?”

“Who cares?” he said. “You want a juju knife, right?”

“You’re neck-deep in Leopard society right now. The good thing is that it doesn’t get any deeper than this. Sometimes it’s best to just jump in. Then, after that first shock, you can handle anything.”

“Yeah,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “I—I got my juju knife today, too.”

“That’s wonderful,” he said. He looked down at her. “Use it well and true. There are more valuable things in life than safety and comfort. Learn. You owe it to yourself. All this”—he motioned around them—“you’ll get used to in time.”

One of the other boys in white laughed and said something in a language she didn’t understand. Two other boys in white laughed hard, too. There was a rise in the chatter from the audience. She was used to ridicule, but this hurt more than usual. This wasn’t just about her being albino, this was about her being a girl—an ugly girl. Stupid boys. Stupid, blockhead, idiot boys, she thought.

“No one is willing to push the envelope. So what if she called up a damn Mmuo Aku and it went wild! She still did it! She still performed the most sophisticated juju any of them had ever seen.”

“True, but you’re wrong,” Orlu said. “We can’t live in chaos. The ages are set for each level for a reason. You can be able to do something and not be mature enough to deal with the consequences.”

“You’ve made good progress, Sunny,” Anatov said.

“Thanks.”

“What I’d like you to think about, though, is who you are. Because within that knowledge is the key to how much you can learn.”

She frowned, thinking about what had just happened with her mother. “Oga,” she whispered, “these days I don’t really think I know who I am.” Anatov was silent. “What do you know of my grandmother? Who was she?”

Sunny frowned. “You mean you’ve sent other groups like ours? And—”

“We have and will continue to until Black Hat is taken down,” Yaboko said. “More is at stake than your lives.”

“Black Hat is a shrewd sorcerer,” Abok said. “He has protection, but we have watched for loopholes. The children that returned maimed but alive were all rescued by Oha covens.”

“Did the rescuers escape, too?” she asked.

None of the scholars replied. That was answer enough.

“You come any closer and you’ll ruin what’s already in motion. Then I’ll have to slaughter you two instead of just these children. Get outside,” Black Hat said. Then he seemed to be speaking to someone else. “You all may leave, too. These kids are harmless. Go watch for real threats,” he said. All the commotion and squawking behind Sunny instantly stopped as the bush souls obeyed.

On instinct, Sunny let her spirit face move forward. In that moment, her fear of everything left her—her fear of Ekwensu’s evil, of being flayed alive by the monster’s fronds, of her family learning of her death, of the world’s end. It all evaporated. Sunny smiled. She knew how the world would end. She knew that someday she would die. She knew her family would live on if she died right now. And she realized that she knew Ekwensu.

And Sunny hated her.

“Grandma,” she whispered. As the old blind woman at the council meeting had said, Sunny looked nothing like her. But what did that matter? She smiled to herself and carefully put the picture back in the box.