The book One Way Witch by Nnedi Okorafor is the second installment in the She Who Knows trilogy, serving as a direct sequel to the first book and a companion to the novel Who Fears Death. It follows Najeeba, known as “She Who Knows,” in the aftermath of her daughter Onyesonwu’s world-changing actions. The narrative explores Najeeba’s journey as she transitions from a mother mourning her family to a powerful sorceress coming into her own.
The World of “The Now”
The story is set in a transformed reality. In the “Before,” the world was defined by the Okeke people’s oppression by the Nuru, a genocide fueled by the teachings of the Great Book. However, Onyesonwu used powerful juju to rewrite the Great Book, ending the hatred and ushering in “The Now” a world where Okeke and Nuru live in an uneasy, often confused peace. While most people have forgotten the old hatreds, Najeeba and a few others, like the sorcerer Aro, remember everything. This “remembering” is a painful burden, as it forces Najeeba to carry the weight of a horror that, for the rest of the world, never happened.
Awakening and the Kponyungo
The book begins with Najeeba watching her daughter Onyesonwu leave the town of Jwahir to hunt her biological father, the Nuru general Daib. Alone in her home, Najeeba struggles with a grief that is compounded by the loss of her second husband, Fadil Ogundimu, who died years earlier. To cope with the silence of her life, Najeeba reaches back into a power she had suppressed for decades: the kponyungo.
The kponyungo is a spirit form a massive, fiery lizard made of wind and lightning. Najeeba had first discovered this ability as a teenager on the salt roads, but she buried it when she married her first husband, Idris, wanting to be a “normal woman”. In “The Now,” she finally embraces this part of herself, flying through the desert as a creature of fire, reclaiming the voice that had been reduced to a whisper since the day she was raped by Daib. This act of “witching” (or going elu) becomes her sanctuary.
The Apprenticeship with Aro
Najeeba eventually approaches Aro, the great sorcerer who had taught Onyesonwu. She demands to be trained not as a “sorceress,” but as a sorcerer, asserting her power and rejecting gendered limitations. Aro, initially finding her “terrifying” because of her lack of fear and insecurity, eventually agrees to teach her the Mystic Points.
The Mystic Points are the fundamental forces of the universe that sorcerers manipulate through their “Bushcraft” (toolbox). Aro teaches her the four points:
- Uwa: The physical world, encompassing life, death, and the body.
- Mmuo: The “wilderness” or spiritual world that exists alongside the physical.
- Alusi: The realm of non-human beings, spirits, and deities.
- Okike: The Creator, a point that cannot be touched or turned.
Central to these teachings is the Golden Rule: “To let the eagle and the hawk perch,” a philosophy of tolerance and open space. During her training, Aro reveals a startling truth: because the world has changed and Daib’s curse is broken, Najeeba is fertile again and can have children. This revelation brings a specific sorrow, as it signifies a future that her daughter Onyesonwu will never be a part of.
The Initiation and Sola
Najeeba’s training takes a dark turn when she meets Sola, a mysterious, pale-skinned, bald sorcerer with “rosy lips” who resides in a mystical, glowing tent. Sola is more critical and dismissive than Aro, mocking Najeeba’s age and her “witching”. He subjects her to an initiation that involves “experiencing death”.
During this initiation, Najeeba is thrust into a vision where she inhabits the body of another woman in a ruined, roofless building. They are confronted by a terrifying Alusi a massive, white, ever-unfolding masquerade with fishlike lips and empty eyes. The woman is frightened to death by the entity, and Najeeba feels the actual physical sensation of dying before she is pulled back to reality by Aro’s smoke juju.
The Love of Dedan and the Glass House
Amidst her intense training, Najeeba meets Dedan Maathai, a glassmaker who recently arrived from the Seven Rivers Kingdom. Dedan is a “sensitive” he doesn’t consciously remember the “Before,” but he feels its residue in his spirit. He wears a single earring that was the mark of a slave in the old world, a style he keeps because it “feels familiar”.
Najeeba and Dedan form a deep connection. Dedan is an artist building a Glass House on the outskirts of Jwahir, a structure made of clear and colored glass blocks that sparkles like a “growing jewel”. Najeeba finds peace in his company, and their relationship becomes a source of “reckless” joy. She eventually reveals the entire truth of the “Before” to him, sharing her trauma and the story of Onyesonwu. Dedan, though shaken, accepts her truth and chooses to stay with her.
Resurrection and the Wilderness
Aro continues Najeeba’s training with a lesson in bringing the dead back to the physical world. He kills a dying camel named MorningStar to force Najeeba to pull its spirit back. To succeed, Najeeba leaves her body as the kponyungo and, following an instinct she can’t explain, digs into the Earth to pull up a “red blur” of energy to feed the camel’s spirit. She successfully resurrects MorningStar, a feat that demonstrates her burgeoning power but leaves her physically and spiritually drained.
Later, while witching with Sola (who takes the form of a massive green Dragon), Najeeba is abandoned in a “dried ocean” of salt. There, she encounters seven real kponyungo. One of them, named Sonnn, reveals that she is the one who “blew smoke” into Najeeba as a teenager, giving her the spirit form. Najeeba spends years in the “Wilderness” (the Mmuo Point) with these creatures, where time flows differently. She learns that the Mmuo Point is her strongest area of sorcery, just as the Uwa Point was Onyesonwu’s.
The Revelation of the Phoenix
Najeeba’s most profound revelation occurs during a water-gazing session at the House of Osugbo. Using a stolen blue stone bowl, she looks into the past and future. She sees a vision of a winged woman the Phoenix who is not a goddess from the Great Book but a creation of dark science. She witnesses this woman in a state of despair, releasing a fire that consumes the entire planet.
This vision shatters Najeeba’s understanding of the world. She realizes the Great Book was a lie concocted to explain away a human-made apocalypse. This discovery gives her back her physical voice no longer a whisper, she screams “LIES!” in a voice that rumbles with power. Aro, recognizing the weight of this knowledge, is humbled and admits that even he did not know this truth.
The Atonement of Daib
The story reaches a climax when Daib, the man who raped Najeeba and fathered Onyesonwu, arrives in Jwahir. He is undergoing a “sorcerer’s atonement,” a powerful juju that has forced him to travel hundreds of miles on foot to seek forgiveness. Daib remembers everything from the “Before” and is tormented by the “root of evil” still living inside him.
Najeeba, now a master sorceress, confronts him. Instead of killing him, she uses her spirit form to reach into his head and physically yank out the evil, a “brown wet, coiling, roiling, fibrous thing”. She flies it beyond the stratosphere and drops it into the ocean, effectively “curing” Daib of the darkness that had defined him. However, she does not forgive him; she leaves him to live with the memory of his actions as his ultimate atonement.
The Great Flood and the One Way Witch
Najeeba’s final test of power comes when she recklessly practices a “dead juju” intended to bring rain. Though told the magic hasn’t worked in 500 years, Najeeba’s internal voice is so powerful that she inadvertently calls down a massive, unprecedented storm that floods all of Jwahir. Houses are submerged, and the road becomes a “raging river”.
During the chaos, Najeeba discovers she can now shapeshift her physical body, developing webbing between her fingers and toes to swim through the torrents. She saves a neighbor’s daughter, Kadidia, from a lethal whirlpool, a feat that cements her reputation as a hero in the town.
The book concludes with the arrival of orange butterflies, an omen signifyng Najeeba has reached mastery. She prepares to leave Jwahir to fulfill a long-held vow: to return to her original village and kill the Cleanser, a mysterious being that “cleanses” children into something “different”. Dedan, having destroyed his Glass House to free himself from the lies of a “perfect” world, insists on going with her. Aro watches them go, noting that Najeeba is now the “One Way Witch” a sorceress who can only go forward.