Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor Page A

Akai-ma and Ajany shivered at the same time, night haloes atop their heads.
    “Italeo akitap,” Akai-ma started. “That part is forbidden!”
    A light flashed in the sky.
    Akai-ma’s eyes bright, voice low. “There’s a python,” she warned. “There’s a python. And all the red stone belongs to it.” She glowered at Ajany. “It sucks spirit out and leaves shadows for you to rot in.”
    An incantation.
    Akai-ma’s eyes met Ajany’s.
    Oddly, for the first time in both their lives, Akai-ma’s eyes slid away first.
    Later that night.
    Odidi and Ajany had washed, eaten fermented meat soup, crawled into their beds, and drifted to sleep. Both woke mid-rest and discovered there were new ways of being afraid. Separately, they longed for daylight. From that day, their days were stuffed with choked fear, suffocated by the family habit of silence. At night, when wind jolted doum palms, nightmares made of white bones, teeth-filled mouths, and indecipherable words showed up. Twice in the night, Ajany woke up to find that the shadows from within her dreams had become a presence that stood over her. Behind the presence, a baby’s long wail, the sorrow of which made Ajany cover her head. The presence dissolved; the unseen child and its incessant wailing lingered.
    One night, four days later, Ajany tore out of her room and jumped onto Odidi’s bed. “Odi … Obarogo came. He wants my face.”
    Odidi said, “I’ll fight him. I’ll punch his bones until he has a face.”
    Ajany had not laughed. “Promise, ’Didi?”
    “Promise forever, ’Jany.” Odidi turned down his coverlet.
    Ajany snuggled down next to him and grabbed his hand. She was drifting to sleep when she thought she heard him whisper, “Good you’re here, silly. Me, too, I was scared.” She could have heard wrong, because she knew Odidi was not afraid of anything.
    Under a harvest moon, a woman now sleeps. Childhood pillows do not offer simple dreams. Before dawn, a new name explodes from out of her underworld. “Bernardo!” she howls.
    To name the unnameable is a curse.
    Bernardo! The entity rips at her heart and she arches her back, away from the sense of salted wounds that still bleed, still seethe, still yearn, still make her moan. She tugs at air, fighting portions of her life that are trying to disintegrate into Bernardo again. She clings to another name for protection: a talisman. He has always known what to do.

    A bird somewhere cackles with a hint of hysteria. In the library, a cold feeling starts at the base of Isaiah’s spine and rushes to his head, making his hair stand on end. Is the night watching me? He blinks away the mad idea. What time is it? He touches his watch. Wuoth Ogik. Not just words anymore. He gropes for and finds a window chair, falls into it. His bag falls by his feet. He touches it, relishing the cool of its leather against his palms.
    The house shivers when its old tanks creak.
    Isaiah recoils.
    Aggravated insomnia. Isaiah has not slept for two days. Jet lag. That is the problem. Explains the whisperings he hears in the land’s nights, the return of nightmares, those things he thought he was finished with. For more than three years, he has been unable to sleep without all-night radio chatter or a night light. He had started experimenting with being in total darkness six months ago, and it had been successful. But now, in this space of no boundaries, the darkness has a throbbing, dense menace to it. He feels safer watching it.
    He also needs to talk to someone about Hugh. A day earlier, Isaiah had retrieved sheets of paper with more of Hugh’s signatures—plans, sketches, designed spaces, lines, curves, and outlines of this house, which had been tucked into some large books. He had sat for a long time on the edge of a couch, reconciling exhaustion with the bittersweetness of a conviction that he was in his father’s home.
    Old man Oganda stiffens every time he approaches. Spends his days digging a hole, and pretends