Oluwan and Swana bring his drum; nse, nse
Dhyrma and Nyamba bring his plow; gpopo, gpopo
Mewe and Sparti see our older brother dance—
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect!
Quetzala sharpens his spear; nse, nse
Blessid Valley weaves his wrapper; gpopo, gpopo
Nontes and Biraslov see our older brother dance!
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect?
Djbanti braids his hair; nse, nse
Moreyao brings his gourd; gpopo, gpopo
Eleven moons watch our older brother dance:
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect?
Aritsar’s current older brother, or emperor, was Olugbade Kunleo: a direct descendant of Enoba the Perfect. I used to croon the patriotic anthem in our mango orchards. As I wove between branches, I would talk to an invisible emperor, sharing my thoughts on Arit history and governance. Sometimes I imagined him gazing down like the sun through the clouds, warming my bare shoulders with approval. How perfect he must be, to unite so many lands!
Dhyrma. Nontes. Djbanti. The names of the Arit realms tasted spicy on my tongue. My bones ached for those far places, described by my tutors in rainbow colors: The silk farms of Moreyao. The night festivals of Nyamba. The snowy peaks of Biraslov, the booby-trapped rainforests of Quetzala. I lay on my back, gazing up at the mango trees, trying to imagine the high-rises of Oluwan City: the seat of our divine emperor. Even Swana held its mystery. I had never left our grassland, but heard tales of lush cacao fields, and markets where women hawked candied papaya from baskets on their heads.
But more than cities and rainforests, I craved voices that would not call me demon.
I envied the children who passed by Bhekina House, with their grandparents who jostled them on their knees, their siblings who chased and teased them. The Lady was the only person in the world who touched me willingly.
One morning, as I watched the caravans from my study window, I learned another song.
Eleven danced around the throne,
Eleven moons in glory shone,
They shone around the sun.
But traitors rise and empires fall, And
Sun-Ray-Sun will rule them all,
When all is said-o, all is said
And done-heh, done-heh, done.
I liked the ominous rhyme. I whispered it around the manor like an incantation until a tutor overheard me. She asked, voice quavering, where I had heard such nonsense. I told her . . . and the next day, every window in my study was nailed shut.
I pried at the wooden slats until my small fingers were scratched and torn. That glimpse of the outside had been my lifeline. My portal to Aritsar—to feeling less alone. How dare they make my windows vanish? As The Lady had vanished, and Melu, and everything else I longed for?
I threatened to set the study aflame. “I’ll do it,” I howled at the servants. “Why not? I won’t burn. But your scrolls will. You will.”
My tutors had blanched. “There are things we simply can’t teach you,” they said, looking hunted as they bound my bloodied hands. “It is forbidden.” Like The Lady, my tutors had a habit of disappearing for months. This usually occurred after one of The Lady’s visits, when she found my learning to be unsatisfactory. Then new, nervous faces would replace the old ones.
On my eleventh birthday, two such faces arrived at Bhekina House, and accompanying them was the only birthday present I wanted.
“Mother!” I cried, launching myself at her. The Lady wore a richly patterned wax-dyed wrapper, which scratched my cheek as I clung to her. She cupped my face, a feeling so wonderful I shivered.
“Hello, Made-of-Me,” she said, and hummed that chilling lullaby: Me, mine, she’s me and she is mine.
We stood in Bhekina House’s open-air great hall. Sunlight streamed from our chicken-scattered courtyard, glowing across the hall’s clay tiles and illuminating The Lady’s black cloud of hair. The two strangers flanked her, standing so close to The Lady, I was jealous.
“Friends,” The Lady said, “please tell my daughter that you are her new, permanent guardians.” She seldom addressed me directly. When she did, her words were sparse and halting. I would later realize she was afraid of commanding me by accident—afraid of wasting her third precious wish, which still lay dormant inside me.
The word permanent piqued my interest. I had never kept a servant for more than a few months. The older stranger, a feline woman about The Lady’s age, was dressed entirely in green. Tawny brown skin contrasted with hard green eyes. Curly hair burst from beneath her cloak’s hood, which she wore even in the heat. An isoken, I realized. Isoken people had mixed blood, parents from different Arit realms. To hasten empire unity, the Kunleo imperial treasury rewarded families for every isoken child born.
“I’m Kathleen,” the woman sighed at me, then turned back to The Lady. “I hope this creature won’t be trouble. Does it have a name besides Made-of-You?”
“The ehru calls her something else,” The Lady said.
I had been trained to recognize accents. Kathleen’s lisp echoed her home realm, Mewe: a land of green, craggy hills in the distant northern fingers of Aritsar.
“My name is Tarisai,” I piped up, and greeted Kathleen in Mewish, hoping to impress. “May your autumn leaves grow back green!” I didn’t know what autumn was, and had never lived in a place where trees changed color, but it sounded like a nice thing to say.
“Am’s Story, Lady,” the isoken woman snorted. “Did you teach the kid all twelve realm tongues?”
“No harm in outshining the competition,” The Lady said smugly.
“They don’t test children on different languages,” Kathleen retorted. “Not anymore. Every realm speaks Arit now. That’s the point of being an empire.”
“Only Arit citizens,” droned the second stranger, “take pride in their cultures being erased. Why be unique, when you could all be the same?” He looked much younger than Kathleen—perhaps twenty, and more boy than man. His voice reminded me of a spider’s web, soft and gossamer. I could not place his accent anywhere in Aritsar.
He scanned me with eyes like half-moons, lifting a tan, angular jaw. A blue cape draped over his arm. Besides that, he wore nothing but trousers, and every inch of his body—face, arms, chest, and feet—was covered in what appeared to be geometric purple tattoos. I probably imagined it, but for a moment, they seemed to glow.
He gave a sardonic bow, straight jet hair shining over his shoulder. “A pleasure, Lady’s Daughter. My name is Woo In. My homeland, thank the Storyteller, lies outside this unnaturally unified empire.”
I gaped. “You’re from Songland!”
“You make it sound like a fairy world.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course I’m from Songland. I’m covered in these pretty pictures, aren’t I?”
His tone was sarcastic. But I did think they were pretty, if a little unsettling. Patterns twisted up his face and neck, like a logic puzzle with no solution. I gulped: Woo In was a Redemptor.
Songland was a poor peninsula nation on the edge of our continent. Their ancestors had refused to recognize Enoba as emperor—and as a result, the tiny realm was excluded from Aritsar’s bustling trade. A jagged range of mountains cut Songland off from the mainland. Aritsar might have ignored Songland altogether, if not for the Redemptors.
Enoba the Perfect had bought peace for our world at a steep price. Every year, three hundred children were sent into the Oruku Breach: the last known entrance to the Underworld. In exchange for this sacrifice, the abiku refrained from ravaging human cities and villages. The children, known as Redemptors, were born with maps on their skin, meant to guide them through the Underworld and back to the realm of the living. Few survived the journey. As a result, some families hid their Redemptor children at birth. But for every missed sacrifice, the abiku would send a horde of beasts and plagues to raze the continent.
Redemptors were supposedly born at random, to any race and class. But for some reason, every R
edemptor in the last five hundred years had been born in Songland.
No one knew why. But guilt-ridden Arits, relieved from the burden of sacrificing their own children, had plenty of theories to help them sleep at night. The Songlanders had offended the Storyteller, they guessed. The Redemptor children were punishment for some historical sin of Songland’s. Or perhaps, Songland was blessed by the Storyteller, and their children were saints, chosen to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. The greater good, of course, was Aritsar.
I peered at Woo In. He did not strike me as particularly saintly. But he must have been special to survive the Oruku Breach. In the rare event that Redemptor children came back alive, they were scarred in mind, if not body.
I smiled at him and Kathleen. Maybe if these strangers—my permanent guardians—liked me, then I could stop talking to invisible emperors. Maybe, for the first time, I could have friends. Real ones.
Don’t think I’m a demon, I prayed. Think I’m a girl. A normal, market-caravan, not-scary girl.
“Do we have to nanny her?” Kathleen whined to The Lady. “Can’t you hire some mute nursemaid, or bribe one into secrecy?”
“No,” The Lady snapped. “Once my daughter leaves Bhekina House for Oluwan City, I cannot control what she sees and hears. She must be with people I trust.”
Leave?
Leave Bhekina House?
Kathleen crossed her arms. “You’re sure this . . . wish-creature is ready?”
“We are running out of time. Children are already being chosen. If we are not quick, there will be no more room on the Prince’s Council—” The Lady broke off abruptly, tossing me a nervous glance.
“Don’t fret, Lady,” said Kathleen with a smirk. “We can always make room.”
The Lady frowned. “I’m hoping that won’t be necessary. The emperor and his Elev—” She stopped again, glancing at me. “The emperor’s . . . friends . . . are too smart for that. My daughter’s selection must happen as naturally as possible.”
Kathleen laughed. “Do we have to keep censoring what we say? She’s going to find out eventually.”
“Ignorance will make her seem pure,” The Lady said grimly. “The emperor loves girls like that.”
“Then you’re making the wish today?” Woo In asked. The Lady nodded, and to my shock, she cupped Woo In’s face just as she had cupped mine. He leaned into the touch, kissing her palm. I was jealous immediately.
She said, “I know you’ll keep her safe.”
He scanned her features with hunger, a moth before a candle. “I believe in this cause,” he said.
She fondled his hair. “And I believe in you.”
“Why are we going to Oluwan?” I demanded. “Mother, are you coming too?”
“No, Made-of-Me.” The Lady reclined on one of our hall’s broad window seats. The sun backlit her frame in a halo. “I will come for you when the time is right.” She patted her lap, nodding at me.
For the rest of my life, I wished the universe had given me a sign then. A warning of what was about to happen. But no—the air was warm and serene, and honeybirds sang in the distance as I scrambled, eagerly, into my mother’s arms.
She stroked my back for a moment, gazing at the hazy Swanian sky. “How frightened you must be,” she told someone I could not see. “You caged me like a bird, but you could not make me sing.” Then she told Kathleen, “Give her the portrait.”
A gilded oval frame was placed in my hands. A boy stared back at me, with tightly curled hair and the brightest smile I’d ever seen. Naive brown eyes shone from a dark, broad-featured face.
“Why is he happy?” I asked.
The Lady raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you curious who he is?” I shrugged, and so she answered my question. “He is happy because he has everything you want. Power. Wealth. Legacy. His father stole those things from you, and gave them to him.”
“Be careful, Lady,” Kathleen muttered. “Remember: She must fall in love with him.”
My brow creased with confusion. I couldn’t remember ever wanting power or wealth. And why did I have to love him? But The Lady’s pressing arms and the scent of jasmine jumbled my thoughts. I snuggled against her, forgetting the boy with his stolen happiness. I would trade all the wealth in Aritsar to be held. To be touched without fear. To never be called dangerous.
“Are you listening, Made-of-Me?” The Lady whispered. I closed my eyes and nodded, resting my cheek on her breast. Her heart raced like a hummingbird. Her next words were halting, cautious. “When you meet this boy in the portrait . . .”
Something that had slept for years rose in my belly, searing my skin like the cuff on Melu’s arm had. I opened my eyes. For a moment, in my reflection on the portrait’s surface, my eyes glowed like emeralds.
“When you love him the most, and when he anoints you as his own . . .” The Lady touched the boy’s face, blotting out his dazzling smile. “I command you to kill him.”
CHAPTER 3
I Retched into the bowl between my legs, stomach lurching with the jostle of the mule-and-box.
“I told you traveling by lodestone was a bad idea,” Kathleen snapped at Woo In as she emptied my sick bowl out the window. “We should have taken camels. Lodestones are nasty powerful. She’s never been exposed to magic before.”
“She was raised in an invisible manor house,” Woo In pointed out dryly. “She’ll be fine. Besides, from the looks of it, the kid would have been sick however we traveled.”
It was my first time in a mule-and-box—in anything with wheels. After leaving Bhekina House, we had crossed two realms in two weeks. By mule, camel, or river barge, the trip would have taken months. But we had traveled by lodestone: a powerful, hazardous magic that dissolved bodies and reformed them leagues away. Ports were scattered throughout Aritsar, guarded by imperial soldiers. Whenever we passed through them, Kathleen had forced my face beneath a hood.
“Stay down,” she had grunted. “You’re The Lady’s spitting image.”
I didn’t understand why resembling my mother was dangerous. In fact—in the thrill of adventure—I often forgot all about The Lady’s wish. Her lethal words grew hazy as I witnessed marvels from my books and scrolls. Town. Market. Mountain. Lake. Forest. In a world so big, what were the chances of meeting that boy in the portrait?
After the first lodestone crossing, I had vomited my breakfast onto Kathleen’s boots. The Imperial Guard warriors had warned against traveling by lodestone more than once a month, but Woo In had insisted on two crossings a week.
After the fourth crossing, my left arm vanished.
I had nearly fainted in terror, and the limb flickered a few times before deciding, at last, to return. Woo In had relented then, switching us to a mule-and-box. We endured hours of stiff, dusty travel, stopping only to sleep at mudbrick village inns. I inhaled ginger soup to settle my stomach before collapsing onto a straw bedroll, too exhausted to dream.
Today, the lodestone nausea had finally begun to subside. After retching into the bowl, I felt much better, and I leaned curiously from the mule-and-box window. Our destination of Oluwan was coastal, a land of ferny palms and orange groves, with long, warm days and cool, rain-kissed nights. My heart thrummed as the unfamiliar landscape rushed by: bumpy plains of green and gold, dotted with lakes and palm trees. I gulped the morning air. It tasted like citrus and salt water.
“Little demon,” hissed Kathleen when she noticed me. She tried to pull me back, grappling with my blue cotton wrapper. “For Am’s sake—someone could see, you brat. Stay down!”
“I won’t,” I said, gasping in laughter as the wind whipped my beaded braids. “I’ll never stay away from a window again.”
“You won’t live to see another,” Kathleen threatened, managing to wrestle me down at last. “Not if you keep making a spectacle. You’re a secret, brat. You’re not supposed to exist.”
I frowned. “Because my father’s an ehru?”
“It would not matter if your father was the devil,” K
athleen said. “To the emperor, your mother will always be the greater threat.”
I pressed her, but Kathleen refused to say anything more. So I sulked, scooting away from her and joining Woo In on his side of the cramped sitting space.
I still hadn’t forgiven Woo In for kissing The Lady’s hand, but at least he left me alone. Half the time he hardly spoke at all, except to mutter sarcastic remarks, or to curse when his birthmarks glowed.
“Those pictures hurt you, don’t they?” I frowned up at him. “Why didn’t the map go away when you came back from the Breach?”
Woo In stiffened. “The map will disappear when the nightmares do,” he said sourly.
I knew better than to ask more questions, but curiosity gnawed at me. How old had Woo In been when his parents gave him up to the abiku? What had the Underworld been like?
Once, at an inn, I had pretended to sleep as Woo In gazed through our second-story window. His shoulders had trembled, and after a moment, I realized he was sobbing. As if fleeing from monsters only he could see, he threw on his silk cape and leapt from the window. Then he soared above the dark rooftops, his lean body silhouetted against the moon.
“Can all Songlanders fly?” I asked him, jostling his shoulder in the mule-and-box.
His smooth brow furrowed, displeased that I knew his secret. “No. It’s my Hallow.”
“Hallow?”
“My birth gift. Only those with Hallows may serve The Lady. All of us have one.”
All of us. The phrase made me curious: How many friends did The Lady have? “Do you have a Hallow?” I asked Kathleen.
She nodded. “I can change the appearance of whoever I please. Including you, though I think the lodestones have jumbled your insides quite enough already.” She scowled out the window, growing thoughtful. “My gift comes in handy, since Mewish people gawk at isokens. At least in Oluwan City, no one cares if I’m striped or spotted.”
“Show me,” I begged, and suddenly, instead of Kathleen, a second Woo In sat across from me. I jumped, grabbing the first Woo In’s arm in fright. But now he was Kathleen.
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