Zahrah the Windseeker (5 page)

I nodded.

The woman smiled.

"You can always do what I did. Especially when it gets too long, " she said, rubbing her close-to-bald head. My jaw dropped.

"You ... cut your dada hair?"

"My mother and father are still angry," she said with a smirk.

"Why did you do it?" I asked. I couldn't believe it. Couldn't imagine it.

"Why not?"

"Was it because people ... gave you a bad time?" I asked.

She laughed.

"Do people give you a bad time?"

I nodded.

"People will always be difficult when it comes to being dada," she said. "We're more connected to the trees and plants." She smiled, looking up at the Dark Market's green tarp. "And the sky. We're born with memories of long ago."

I didn't really understand what she was saying. And she seemed to notice the confusion on my face.

"Hey, if you're lucky, your greatest problem will be people making fun of you," she said. "Most likely that's all you'll have to overcome, and that's no big deal, really."

"Yeah, I guess," I said with a weak smile.

We stood looking at each other for a moment. One of the baboons made a clicking sound behind the woman and handed her a piece of paper. She looked at what the baboon had scribbled.

"No, I don't think so," she said. All of the baboons waved their sticks and pens in the air. But the woman shook her head again and said, "Not likely."

Then she turned back to me.

"What's your name?"

"Zahrah."

"My name is Nsibidi," she said. "Come and see me sometime, if you're not too scared to return. The idiok seem to like you. Now, go find your oil."

I pushed open my window and took a deep breath. It was one of those warm nights when the wind makes music in the treetops. I turned and looked at myself in my bedroom mirror and smiled at my long white dress. The nightgown was old, but it was my favorite. The material was silky like water. Such clothes were never uncivilized.

I sat on the floor facing the window with my flora computer in my lap. My father had given me the CPU seed when I was seven years old, and I had planted and taken care of it all by myself. It was my first responsibility. My flora computer had grown nicely because of my care. Its light green pod body was slightly yielding, and the large traceboard leaf fit on my lap like a part of my own body. The screen was large and oval, a shape that I had always found soothing. The computer would pull energy from my body heat, and I'd link a vine around my ear so that it could read my brain waves. It would grow in size and complexity, as I grew.

"Music," I said as I looked out the window and touched the traceboard. "The Soft Parade."

I shut my eyes as my computer started to play "Reedy Bells," the Soft Parade's best song. It was an instrumental tune with gentle drumbeats and three birdlike flutes. I always liked to listen to this particular song on windy days. Not surprisingly, a rhythm beetle flew in to enjoy the music. I didn't bother trying to shoo it out. As long as it was only
one
beetle, I was fine.

I could hear my parents chatting away downstairs. There had been a town meeting about this year's yam festival, and once again Papa Grip gave a wonderful speech. Or so I heard my parents saying. I hadn't gone because it was a school night.

"Dari," I said to my computer. The screen turned a light purple, and a few moments later, Dari's face appeared in a small box on the upper right-hand corner of my screen.

"Good evening," he said, straightening his long blue nightshirt and pants. He glanced at himself in the mirror behind him to make sure he looked good. Then he said, "Just a minute. I'm cleaning my room. Almost done. Gimme two minutes."

"OK."

When I saw him turn around and walk to his closet to hang up his clothes, I set my computer on the floor and went to my dresser. I opened the pink slender bottle of rose oil, squirted some onto my palm, and massaged it into my hair.

"You won't believe where I went today," I said proudly. My door was closed and my parents were talking, so I wasn't worried about them hearing.

"Where?"

"The Dark Market!"

There was silence, and then I heard scrambling as Dari ran back to his computer and sat on his bed. The picture shook as he put it on his lap.

"What? You're kidding! Forget your hair! Get over here and talk!"

I laughed, running back to my computer and setting it on my lap. I turned my music down a bit and maximized Dari's face to the size of my entire screen.

"Dari, it
is
a magical place," I whispered, looking out the window at the blowing trees. I had been terrified when I was there, but after I got home and was able to sit and think about it, I realized that the Dark Market was wonderful. There was strange magic and even stranger people. And because I wasn't supposed to be there, well, underneath the guilt, I was excited.

"See? How many times have I told you," Dari said, grinning widely.

"I know. But I was so scared."

"Of course you were scared, " Dari said. "It's a scary place! Why'd you go, anyway?"

I laughed and shook my head. "I needed oil for my hair, and the oil lady was stationed there today."

"How far in did you go?"

"Far, kind of. I dunno. What's far?"

Dari paused to think. "Did you see the man selling mirrors that show jinn if you look into them?"

My eyebrows rose.

"No! Thank goodness."

"I didn't think so. It would have been the first thing you told me about. He's near the middle," Dari said. "He likes to trick people into looking at his mirrors by telling them they have something on their face."

"Oh how cruel!"

"Did you see the lady selling the bush hoppers?"

"Yes," I said grinning. "She was next to the oil lady today."

"Wow, you went much farther than I did my first time!"

"I thought about buying one of them. I've never seen them before."

"Don't bother," Dari said. "Bush hoppers are neat, but they're just like grasshoppers; the first chance they get they escape. And since those things can jump over two thousand feet in the air, you won't be able to recapture them."

"Wow!" I said, fascinated. "I wish I had bought one anyway."

"You can buy one the next time we go," he said.

I grinned but didn't say anything. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go there again.

"So what else did you see?"

"There was a fish who spat water at me and sang like a rainbow spirit," I said, leaning back. "The man selling it laughed so hard, he almost fell out of his seat. And I saw where they sell the personal peppers, and ... oh! How could I forget, there was a woman with many baboons! She was beautiful but not in the usual way."

"I've seen her," said Dari.

I frowned and bit my lip. "You have? Are you sure?"

Dari nodded. "She has really short hair, and some marking just below her neck."

"Yeah, that's her," I said. "I stopped and asked her if she knew where the oil lady was, and then she talked to me a bit ... did you know she is dada?"

Saying the word made me think about my ability to float. I hadn't thought about it since I'd gone into the Dark Market. All the strangeness there made my own strangeness seem normal, almost forgettable. But now it bothered me again.

"Really? No, that can't be right, she doesn't—"

I said, "She cut hers."

"No," Dari said.

"Yes."

Dari ran his hand over his rough hair.

"Her hair is shorter than
mine,
" said Dan.

"Yeah."

"That's sad," he said. He paused and then shrugged. "Maybe she just wanted to be normal. No. She still stood out, from what I remember."

We both sat there for a moment, quiet.

"Dari?" I said.

"Mmm."

I was going to tell him.

When I'd gotten home and gone to the backyard to water the plants, a strong breeze blew by, and my feet completely left the ground! I thought that I'd be swept away! Thankfully the breeze died down and I landed on shaky legs a few feet away between my mother's favorite disk flowers. No one saw me. What if it happened again when I was walking to school or just out in public? Imagine the talk that would spread.

Dari was very observant and he picked up on my new anxiousness. I stared at his face on my screen; his thick lips were slightly smirking like usual, and his dark brown eyes were looking into mine. He seemed to be looking right into my eyes, his mind perfectly understanding mine. I could tell him anything, and he would know what to say and do. But I was still scared and confused, not ready to talk about it. Instead I shook my head.

"Nothing," I said.

Dari rolled his eyes. "OK, Zahrah. Anyway, have you finished your Ginen history homework yet? I'm way ahead! All that stuff about all those southwesterners who migrated south during the Carro Wars and were never seen again, that was so amazingly interesting. Did you know that some people speculate that they actually
walked
into another world called Earth? But there's no proof that Earth exists. No one who has supposedly gone has ever returned and..."

I settled back, glad to let Dari talk about one of his favorite subjects. I hadn't done my history homework yet. I knew that I probably wouldn't have to after listening to Dari.

I was like a tree clam rolling a pebble under its tongue until it made a pearl. I was meticulous, thorough. I liked to gain some sort of comfort with things that bothered me before I discussed them with others. That was just me, I guess. And so it was a while before I spoke my secret aloud. Three weeks, to be exact.

Whatever had started happening to me that day was still very much happening. The only difference was that my control of it increased. I could truly levitate. I began to relax and even enjoy it at times. It was nice to sleep an inch off the bed. The air was more comfortable than my mattress! And I could water the delicate green flowers that grew near my ceiling much more easily.

As I grew a little more used to being able to float, I realized that I didn't feel as bad at school when Ciwanke and her entourage of friends gathered around me in the hallway and talked their nonsense. Their words sounded sillier, more childish. Still, I wished they'd quit it, though. Why did they have to be so cruel? Sometimes I thought about levitating right in front of them and watching them all run away screaming. They often called me "swamp witch," so why not do something witchlike? Just the thought was enough. Of course, I'd never
do
such a thing.

Telling my mother or my lather was a laughable idea. I was sure that they'd just make a big fuss and then, before I knew it, they'd decide that I should be taken to the hospital where doctors would stick me with needles or make me swallow pills. Or equally horrible, they'd take me to the witch doctor, who'd make me drink some foul-smelling concoction.

I considered asking Papa Grip if he knew anything about what was happening to me. He certainly wouldn't laugh at me, plus he was old, and old people tend to have a wide range of knowledge about a wide range of things. But I knew Papa Grip would tell my parents after I spoke to him. Or if he didn't, he'd say that it was only right that I tell them, and then I'd either have to tell my parents or lie to Papa Grip. No, I'd just have to keep it to myself.

I thought about going back to the Dark Market and asking Nsibidi, the dada woman. But what would Nsibidi know? She'd cut her dadalocks off. And what if being dada had nothing to do with my ability? And even if Nsibidi knew something, I wasn't about to go back to the Dark Market without Dari.

I had to tell him first.

We were sitting in the baobab tree behind my house, studying for our organic mathematics class. The baobab tree was our favorite because it grew wide and low and had sturdy thick branches from the bottom all the way to the top. Of course, I stayed on the low thick branch due to my fear of heights, and Dari was on the one above it. Whenever we studied in it, I brought my potted glow lily, which provided a soft pink light. The light was easy on our eyes. We'd been silently engulfed in equations, numbers, cells, and patterns when I said, "Dari?"