Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor Page A

greet a friend of mine. Orlu, Chichi, you know of Kehinde.”
    “What?” Sasha exclaimed. “ I even know of him and I just got here. He’s one of the most brilliant juju workers in the world. Isn’t he practically a recluse?”
    “Kehinde’s a close friend of mine,” Anatov said. “He’s a recluse to folks he doesn’t think are important. I was discussing you four with him yesterday. He wants to meet you.”
    “Why?” Sasha asked. “Why us?”
    Orlu looked aghast. “And we don’t even . . . we can’t go—”
    “Kehinde wants to see you,” Anatov repeated. “Figure out how to get to him. That’s today’s lesson, too. Oh, and beware of some of Kehinde’s . . . friends. They’re a bit possessive. Give him my regards. Peace out.”
419 Scams and Leopard People
The 419 scam is an illegal practice that Nigeria has become known for all over the world because of a small group of Internet-savvy criminals. It is a pox on this great nation’s reputation; a symptom of its marrowdeep disease of corruption. If you use e-mail, you have to have seen the ones offering to pay you insane amounts of money if you help Chief or Prince So-and-So get his money out of the bank. That is an example of the billions of 419 scam e-mails sent out daily. In Nigeria, Leopard 419 scammers use a blend of Internet technology and juju to make the target individual’s electronic funds disappear and reappear elsewhere. Thankfully, even these people cannot tamper with whatever provides us with chittim . Still, Leopard 419 scammers can get up to some darker business in the Lamb world. It is believed that as we speak, some are using the Net to design a network of virus-driven juju-powered supercomputers so infectious that they could bring down the Lamb world’s biggest economies with a few pecks of the keyboard. We will speak no more of this here. If you are approached by one of these criminals, decline involvement.
 
from Fast Facts for Free Agents

7
    Night Runner Forest
    Again, they were hurried out of Anatov’s hut. A little way down the path back toward Leopard Knocks, they stopped. Orlu, Sasha, and Chichi just stood there.
    “What’s the problem now?” Sunny asked. “Who’s Kehinde?”
    “Sunny, weren’t you listening?” Chichi asked.
    “Just tell me again. Unlike you, I don’t have a photographic memory.”
    Chichi chuckled. “Okay. There are eight living people in Nigeria who have passed the last level, right? Four of them are Anatov, Sugar Cream, and the twins named Taiwo and the one we’re supposed to go see, Kehinde. They are the scholars of Leopard Knocks; they’re kind of like elders, but not all of them are super old—only Sugar Cream, really. The problem with seeing Kehinde is he lives in Night Runner Forest.”
    “Is that far away or something?” Sunny asked. She didn’t want to take another funky train.
    “Humph,” Orlu said. “Now I know why he chose tonight instead of Saturday afternoon for this. You can only enter Night Runner Forest at night.”
    Chichi cursed. “And it disappears in”—she looked at her watch—“four hours.”
    Sunny looked at her watch. It was one A.M. Chichi was referring to sunrise. “We’ll be back by then, right?” she asked.
    “Let’s go,” Sasha said. “We use a vévé to get there, right?”
    “Yeah,” Chichi said, looking intense. “If we work together.”
    Sasha knelt down and took a small bag out of his pocket. He drew on the ground by making a fist and letting the powder sift out. “This,” he said to Sunny, “is a vévé , a magical drawing. The faster you draw it the better. But you can’t make a mistake.”
    “You memorize them?” she asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “Is it hard?”
    The drawing looked like a tree with a circle around it and four X s around the circle:

    “Not for me,” he said.
    “What will it—”
    “Just watch.” He brought a dagger from his pocket and stabbed into the center of the vévé . “One of you has to say it,” Sasha