Zahrah the Windseeker (3 page)

At first, it was just that annoyingly mysterious soft breeze blowing about my room. Then my skin began to feel tmgly and itchy, the way a scab feels right before it falls off to reveal new skin. I scratched my arms and legs but still felt irritated. Then I,
myself,
felt light and breezy, like a feather swept high into the air by the wind. Then slowly, I began to rise off the bed!!

At first I thought I was dreaming.

I was terrified of heights. As a matter of fact, just the thought of the great city made me nauseous. The buildings and towers were so tall, and the idea of being inside them, way up in the sky, made me want to sink to the floor with my hands over my head.

Nevertheless, when I slept I often dreamed of the very thing I feared. Being in the sky. But in my dream, I flew about, circling the great city towers, even as high as the Ooni Palace. I woke from these dreams with my heart beating fast, feeling horrified but exhilarated. It didn't make sense.

However, what happened that night was different. I was awake, wide awake.

"What...?"

I felt for the bed but reached several inches below me before I found it. Slowly, I looked around. My room was dark, lit only by the moonlight, but I could see myself in the large mirror next to my bed. It was the most eerie sight. My hair and bed sheets were hanging down as I floated above my bed. Immediately, I dropped down onto it with a thud.

"Oof!" I said, rolling onto my side and then jumping to my feet. "What the...?!"

I stood there in the middle of my room, my legs slightly bent, prepared to run away from whatever was coming after me. I don't know why I thought something was after me. There were no noises in my room, other than the sound of flapping paper as the breeze continued to blow about. But still, I had this feeling. When I think about it now, I wonder if it was a premonition of the near future.

I slowly climbed back into bed. Maybe it was just a really vivid dream.

Yes a dream,
I thought drowsily. I was extremely tired from all the excitement of the day and my eyes quickly grew heavy. I lay back down and tried to get comfortable. The minute my body relaxed, the breeze started again. This time, I was sure I was awake. I looked around but didn't move. I held my breath.

And then I felt it, right through my covers: a soft current of air circulating around me. Then I started to rise! I rose about two inches from my bed. The current of air lightly blew underneath my long yellow nightgown.

"Oh my," I whispered breathlessly. I tried to wiggle my toes, and I dropped down again. I frowned. I wasn't one to kid myself when something was obvious. This was really happening.
But why?
I wondered.
And ... can I make it happen? If so, how?

I considered calling my mother. But instead I licked my lips and took a deep breath. Then I concentrated on the air current.

I imagined the breeze to be a light blue friendly mist surrounding me and slowly lifting me off the bed. Nothing happened. Even the breeze died down.

I just lay there for several minutes, confused. Then I tried again. Still nothing happened. By the third try, I was slightly disillusioned, and I visualized the blue mist with little hope of anything happening. I was relaxed and nonchalant. Suddenly, the breeze quickly returned as did the circulating air.

Easily, I floated a little higher. I urged myself to go higher and higher until I realized that I didn't know how to stop or get down! Nothing was supporting me, and there was nothing to grab on to. The moment panic set in, I plopped back onto my bed.

I blinked and looked around.
What's happening to me?
I thought. I looked around my small bedroom again. I had several potted leafy green plants growing in the windowsill and another leafy green plant growing out of the wall around my large mirror. I could see my desk weighed down with my schoolbooks. Everything looked normal. I concentrated and tried again. Nothing.

Then I just lay thinking and thinking and thinking. I didn't sleep much that night. And when I did, I dreamed of flying.

A few days later, I stopped just outside the market.

I leaned against a large tree and pulled off the piece of twine holding my hair together. I wanted to scratch my scalp, but I knew there were people already staring at my freed dadalocks. If they only knew that my hair was far from the most peculiar thing about me. Since that first night, the floating thing had happened several times. Actually, I'd
made
it happen.

The night before I even did it on the first try, and I managed to float halfway to the ceiling! I was too scared to go much higher. Always, the minute I lost concentration or got nervous, I'd plop down. I can't convey to you what it felt like to be able to do something so odd and impossible.

But at the time, all I could think of was my dry itchy scalp and the fact that it wasn't polite to scratch it. The day before, I'd washed it before I realized I'd run out of the rose oil I always used afterward. By lunchtime at school, my hair had finally dried, but boy was my scalp itchy!

"Just scratch your head if you want to!" Dari had exclaimed at school. "Why do you torture yourself?" Then he'd dug his hands into my hair and scratched until I was crying with laughter. Dari usually came with me to visit my mother at the market, but that day he'd had too many chores to do.

I shook out my hair, and that gave me a little relief. Then I retied the twine, brought out my mirror from my backpack, and made sure I looked OK. My hair was neat, and my long green dress was spotless and unwrinkled. I smiled at myself in my mirror. I avoided looking at my dadalocks. Even if they were neatly tied back, they were only a blemish to my appearance. Still, I looked nice and civilized.

The oldest tree in Kirki, a tall, tall iroko tree whose top was seen only by the birds and the army of leaf-cutter branch hoppers that took care of it marked the entrance of the market. I tapped its trunk as I passed. To do so brought good luck.

The market was busy as always, and I was glad to quickly be swallowed into it. My mother's fruit stand was on the far left side, which gave me plenty of time to listen to arguments and discussions along the way. The market was always full of life. Tomatoes, videophones, both hydrogen and flora-powered cars, netevisions, clothes, crude leather, digi-books, leaf-clipping and -mending beetles, paper books, all species of CPU seeds, from the most expensive to the cheap—one could find anything at the market if one knew where to look. I walked slowly, as I always did, taking in all that was around me.

A man wearing a long white caftan was standing in his market space, looking miserable. He was selling every kind of music one could think of on flash disk: Highlife, Hip-Pocalypso, Tree Rhythm, Spice Soul, Hip-Hop, Ju Ju Funk, Jungle, and everything in between. At that moment, he was blasting Highlife on his flash disk player to attract customers. Normally one would be happy to work around such music, but this man looked as if his dog had just died. I found myself smiling and walking to the beat as I passed him. I giggled to myself, trying not to look him in the eye.

The reason he was miserable was that his music had attracted a swarm of rhythm beetles, and an insect party was going on above the man's head. Several landed on his arms and in his thick Afro. He swatted at them in annoyance as a customer handed him a flash disk she wanted to purchase.

Most of the beetles were crowded on his umbrella; they were raising their shiny black wings and shaking their behinds to the beat of the music. Some of them had even landed on the flash disk player to dance.
He must be used to them,
I thought. Though rhythm beetles were more active at night, they were attracted to music like moths to bright lights.

I moved on, inhaling the smells around me, and for the moment I forgot about the strangeness of the last few days. Perfume, sweat, cooked meat, leaves, soil, fruit—there was a bit of everything. I loved the hustle and bustle that went on whether I was there or not. I smiled when I saw my mother sitting among her pyramids of oranges, mangoes, and lychee fruits. The lychee fruits were my favorite.

The small round fruits had thin brown skins that were easily peeled to reveal the sweet white fruit. I could never get enough of sucking the soft fruit from the brown smooth seed in the middle. My mother bought all her fruit from a family connection at the farms on the fringes of the Forbidden Greeny Jungle. So it was always the best. Sometimes I'd pop one in my mouth and peel the fruit with my tongue! My mother would always yell at me when she saw me doing it. She said it was unladylike the way I spat out the fruit skin. Of course I did this only at home, never in public.

"Good afternoon, Mama," I said, walking around the fruits and setting down my backpack. I sat on the small wooden stool.

"Good afternoon," said my mother. "How was school?"

I shrugged. "The usual."

"Are you feeling fine?" she asked. I had been feeling slightly queasy and crampy since the day before. In the morning, my mother had me eat a mango and drink some warmed goat milk sweetened with honey. It helped.

I nodded. The coming of my menses was not as much of an ordeal as I thought it would be. Once my mother showed me what to do and I realized it was just a part of life, it really was no big deal at all. What was a big deal was the fact that I could float in the air when I chose to. And sometimes when I didn't.

A breeze picked up around me and I felt my stomach rise. I could feel myself lifting slightly. Luckily my mother's back was turned.

"I have a lot of homework," I said, grabbing the stool and pulling myself back down.

"Nothing you cannot handle?" my mother asked.

The breeze continued, but I was able to keep myself on the ground.

I smiled and said, "No. Nothing I can't handle."

"Good. Now, go buy me a bag of cashew fruit and some light bulbs," my mother said, handing me two petri flowers. The red flowers were about the size of my hand. They each had five petals. "That should be more than enough."

"OK."

"Be quick. I need you to sort this fresh batch of lychee fruit."

I got up and said, "Is it OK if I buy some rose oil, assuming I use some of my gift money?"

"Just be quick."

I nodded.

"I hope I can find it," I said. "The lady who sells it is always moving her stand around."

"That's bad for business," my mother said, turning to a new customer. She smiled at the woman and asked, "Can I help you?"

"I'll be back, Mama," I said, stepping into the milling crowd.

I loved being by myself in the market with money in my pocket. Everything I could afford suddenly looked brighter. And I loved the feeling of being on a mission. It was almost like being someone else, someone who was capable of anything. My mother could always rely on me. It didn't take long to get the cashew fruits and the light bulbs. Like my mother, both sellers had kept their stands in the same place for years.

"You look nice, Zahrah," the woman who sold light bulbs said. Her daughter was the annoying Ciwanke Mairiga from school, my worst harasser. Nevertheless, unlike her daughter, she was quite nice.

"Thank you, madam," I said. "So do you."

"How is your father? Your mother?" Mrs. Mairiga asked.

"They're fine, madam," I said, taking the potted light bulbs. The light bulbs were buried in the cups of soil, though I could still see their glow. My mother was the best at coaxing the light-producing plants into the walls at home. "Do you know where the oil lady is today?"

"I think she's in the Dark Market," Mrs. Mairiga said apologetically. "Soriy. You'll probably find her elsewhere tomorrow."

I frowned, my shoulders drooping. The Dark Market was where the strangest market items were sold, like stockfish teeth, six-legged dogs, and juju magic potions. You could even buy dream ticks, insects that bit you and injected an opiate into your blood that was fifty times stronger than the one used in hospitals ... among other darker items. My parents always warned me not to go there, and I never had. Dari, on the other hand, had sneaked into the Dark Market several times.

"I don't just blindly believe everything I hear," he would say. "I need a good reason. And no one could give me one when it came to the Dark Market, except, 'Oh, it's a bad place.' Why?! That's not good enough," he'd said after the first time. "I needed to see for myself." He crept closer to me with a mischievous grin on his face, a small brown sack in his hands. "And you know what, Zahrah? It was great! Look at these!"

He held the sack up to my face and I peered in. The smell that came from it made me sneeze. Then I gasped.

"Personal pepper seeds!? Dari!"

He laughed with glee and I frowned with disapproval. Not only had he gone to a place that every parent told his or her child not to go, but he'd also
bought
something there!

"Hey, I had to have something to prove that I went," he said, still grinning. "Plus I didn't go very far. I just bought the first thing I could afford."

"Well, you certainly don't need those," I said.