Excerpt from Dazzling by Chikodili Emelumadu, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I curse him inside my mind. If he put hand inside my breast again, I will bite his hand, I don' care what power he have.

The dibia tell Driver to give the goat to the church warden man, and the goat is young and fat, too, even it is tired, and it refuses to go and the man starts dragging it. Am tired. Mummy says me I should first go, so I off my silpas and go down the step to where the dibia is standing inside the water. Under my leg is like okro soup.

Dibia says I should bend. I bend. "Not like that, bend like a woman." I squat. He bends down, collects water with his two hands and pours it on my head. It is smelling. I am trying to see inside the water so that crocodile will not carry me away inside its mouth.

He pours, one time, two time, three times. "Ngwa get up," he says.

As I am getting up, I hear something moving in the water. Crocodile! There are plenty bushes and trees hanging near the water, thick-thick bush. It is through there that I see two eyes like a torch. As I see it, that's when the dibia turns and sees it. The shout he is shouting is what makes me to pick race. But the water floor is drawing like okro soup, and I am falling, the eyes are inside the water, the water is entering my nose, my mouth, like pepper, fire-pepper in my body, my chest. The dibia is dragging me up, up. He is shouting to the thing in the water: "Please, I am not enemy with you! Please, I have kept my hand straight, I have not killed anyone!"

And Mummy is shouting, far away where she is standing. "See, what you have done to my daughter? You bastard. I will sue you to court!"

And Driver is shouting, "Chei! Chei! I saw it! Madam, I saw it." Everybody is looking for the thing that wounded me, but the water is shaking cloth again like nothing is inside, not even crocodile. Dibia helps me to walk, dragging me up the stairs. Him and Driver carry me and put me on a mat. Am cold, my body is shaking and am crying, calling Daddy.

Dibia is saying, "Eighteen years I have been working, and never once has leopard come to my shrine. Madam, take your daughter and go, don't come back. I don't want the thing pursuing you. Leave my goat for me."

My dress has piececesed in my front and there is blood on my chest, on my stomach. There is blood inside the water.

Mummy's voice is high with anger. "Who is going to marry her like this now?"

Excerpted from Dazzling by Chikodili Emelumadu. Copyright © 2023 by Chikodili Emelumadu. Excerpted by permission of The Overlook Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.