The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

  WHEN HIRUT AND Aklilu get back to the campfire, they pause, surprised by the exuberant scene in front of them. Men and women have formed a large circle and are dancing near the women’s camp, a spontaneous celebration after Kidane’s announcement that they will wage war against the Italians from here. They will not march into other territory. They will fight on familiar ground. The women leap, their figures caught in pale moonlight, illumined by the glowing campfire. Hirut puts a hand to her chest, made unsteady by this unexpected pleasure, her headache disappearing. Aklilu smiles down at her, then tugs her into the circle of dancers. He steps in front of her and settles his hands on his waist, and nods as Minim’s masinqo starts beating out a gentle melody that is getting faster. Aklilu leans toward her and for a moment, she is breathless, captivated by his agility and the wide grin. He shakes his shoulders, the first moves of an expert eskesta dancer, then beckons her with his eyes to follow suit. Hirut steps forward, her chest near him, and lets herself go free, lets her shoulders move of their own accord, lets them shiver as if the weight of bones and blood did not exist. They dance, each leaping high, then higher, their bodies shivering and caught in the surge of cheers and shouts. Minim nods to her and begins to sing of the great warrior Aklilu and the woman who conquered his heart, and the two who move together to fight for mother Ethiopia.

  A burst of ululations rises up as the singer’s voice climbs, trembling with emotion, his pitch high and sweet. Hirut blinks back the tears to get a better look at those who have gathered around her, and encourage them on. This is happiness, she thinks, this is what it means to be free. As she dances with Aklilu, her rhythm bending his, his propelling her faster, she feels the tears climb into her eyes, and then she does not care when they roll down her cheek as she begins to sing and Aklilu sees and nods and smiles gently at her and draws closer. She leaps, her heart pounds erratically, her legs stay firm and strong. Only once, she searches for Aster but cannot see her, so Hirut loses herself in the group, dancing and cheering and singing beneath the thick beam of light filtering through the trees. This is where all the light in the world has settled, she thinks. This is where it has been while she was struggling in such darkness.

  Aklilu throws his head back and laughs, nudging his chin toward Seifu, drawing him forward, jumping so high in front of the other man that the others pause and gape, and start to shout. Hirut steps back and gives Seifu room, and together they watch Aklilu. He is soaring, shoulders moving with the breathtaking speed of the greatest dancers, a body defying its own construction. Seifu cheers, thrilled by the dazzling display, the joy shifting his features, revealing his handsome smile. He waves his gun and lifts his arms, and his son, Tariku, darts into the circle next to his father. Tariku’s mother, Marta, steps next to them and begins to dance. They are reflections of each other, one a younger version of his parents. Seifu mimes swift, cutting motions with his knife and Tariku mimics tilting the blade to gleam in moonlight. The crowd roars, the azmari launches into a new verse about twin lions roaming the fields in search of Italians. Hirut clasps her hands to her chest and lets the laughter loose. She begins to dance again, drawn into the center of the music and movement, her heart tumbling without reserve. They dance with abandon, finding ways to combine the body’s awful capabilities into a fluid, unbroken rhythm.

  Chorus

  VOICE I:

  But you will feel a watchful presence even as you lie down to end the day. This is why you will tuck yourself into your blanket and clutch your hands as you try to fall asleep. You will pray a thousand prayers that you will count, one by one. You will pretend not to hear him when he approaches. You will close your eyes and clamp your mouth when he bends low. You will stiffen as he takes your shoulder and tugs to lead you away. You will not answer to your name. You will look up instead and say, Please. You will say, I am not a slave. You will say, I am Getey’s daughter. You will say, I am the daughter of Fasil. You will say, again, because you do not think he heard the first time, Please. And you will say it until the word becomes a wall that you build around yourself as you are pulled out of your bed and into the blackest night of your life.

  VOICE II:

  I know how he will do it. I know how he will say it. I know why Hirut will shut her eyes when she enters that terrifying sinkhole. She will imagine she can forget what she does not see, that all disappears when sunlight punctures the night. Hirut. I know that she will hear her name but she will not answer. She, too, will crouch and take shelter in her own arms and curse the powers that gave her to this fate. She will push her back against a wall and still hear that voice tap against her chest. He will tell her to say his name. He, a favored son of Ethiopia. She, no more than a space for him to fill. He will order her to hold him and mimic emotions she does not feel. He will forget what he breeds will burn forever, a hatred as pure as water, bendable and swift, small enough to fit into the tiniest crevices of a shrinking life.

  VOICE III:

  O blessed daughter, you who spin in slow circles. You who spread your arms and lift your face and follow the spiraling sway of the Earth. How long will you keep pace with its momentum? How long before you see that there is nowhere else to go? There is no escape but what you make on your own. Do not heed the other voices: Let it be, they will whisper. Who are you to resist, they will say. He is our leader, they will contend. Leave us to sleep, they will add. Let Aster be on this cursed night. Leave her to stumble on the narrow paths of her own making, cursing her husband’s name. Daughter, you who think you are helpless and alone in your distress, stand in the fields and fight. Beg no more for mercy.

  Chorus

  Become the soldier you were meant to be. Arise, Hirut.

  KIDANE IS ETCHED IN THE SAME HARD LIGHT THAT COATS THE ROCKY path between them.

  He extends his arm in her direction and beckons. This is the move that begins the theft. It is this gesture that seals the night. The hand that stretches forth also violates a natural order. This is why Hirut shivers: she has just glimpsed what lurks in the newly ushered dark.

  Hirut, come. Kidane makes of himself a looming figure, a hazy nightmare forming bones.

  Hirut closes her eyes and wraps her arms around her knees. She holds herself tight, then she waits, a quaking figure pretending to sleep while listening to a man speak her name.

  Hirut. He has found a level between silence and whisper, a tone that makes the distance between them shrink.

  Hirut stares into the mouth of the forest. There are hours left in this night, so many unlit paths that lead only to greater darkness.

  Little One, let’s go.

  Something is bending her toward obedience as if she were born only to serve.

  I’m not going to make it through this war, he adds. I’m going to die. Do you understand what I’m saying?

  There is a long, pregnant silence that stretches between them, a vast land that opens and she is sinking, helpless to stop the downward momentum.

  Little One, you don’t understand but you’ll see. Get up.

  When he says her name again, it comes to her as a warm, thick breath against the side of her face. It is a new obscenity crawling over her skin. He reaches for her arms and she looks up into the dark well of his eyes. It takes one minute, two minutes, three minutes for her to form the thought that they are face-to-face in an intimacy that makes her recoil but: a body capable of dying in war is also capable of injury, and what she knows of the body is its tender places, those areas incapable of complete protection, and of the many things Dawit has taught her, it is this that is her most important lesson: that men, too, can bleed in many ways. So when Hirut rams her forehead against Kidane’s, she is just testing a theory, uncertain and unsure of what she is doing.

  Wujigra, she whispers.

  And when he blinks, surprised, but does not move away, she does it again with the force of a stone sprung loose of its slingshot. She hits Kidane’s forehead with her own so hard, with such quickness and precision, that her ears ache from the deadening cru
nch. The impact shoots bright sparks behind her eyes and blinds her momentarily and she flounders in dizziness while he sinks against her for balance. Then Hirut, newly heroic and still afraid, finds her center, pushes him off, and stands to run.

  That there is no sound is a fact she will remember only later. What she notes is the way night molds itself around her like a shield. She picks up speed and fills her chest with air and the darkness, too, moves aside and lets her go unhindered. Hirut sees the faintest of lights in the horizon, tucked into the trees, and she thinks: beacon, hope, shelter. She thinks: safety. She believes she will make it because she has left servitude behind and made of herself a weapon, like a bullet released and searching for its bloody rest. But he catches her by the legs and throws her down. Then he flips her over and flattens himself on top of her and even then, Hirut cannot grasp what is happening. She cannot understand why she is not still moving toward shelter. When Kidane pulls himself higher and pushes his groin into the space between her flailing legs, Hirut keeps searching the hills for that light.

  And before Hirut can grasp what is happening, Kidane takes both her hands and holds them above her head and promises: Stop, stop, I’m not going to hurt you.

  They are a great shifting mass draped in dull light, a thing both grotesque and familiar, made beastly by a girl’s dazed anguish.

  You have to knock a goat senseless so you can kill it, the cook once said to her. Slap your hand across its nose, hit that place just between the eyes. Hold it by the neck then throw it to its knees, it’ll have no choice but obedience.

  Hirut kicks and yanks and bites until she scrambles to her feet. She is so busy looking for her mother and the cook that she does not sense the hands flinging her back on the ground. Instead, she believes the sudden flight is proof of miraculous ascent. She imagines the separation between her feet and the earth as evidence of a greater feat. And as she rises in the air, held in a relentless man’s grip, Hirut thinks of those men who turn into hyenas, she thinks of angels disguised as men, she thinks of Kidus Giorgis and his dragon-slaying sword and the saint’s horse lifting its hooves to vanquish evil. Even when the ground rushes up to meet her back and Kidane’s face looms above hers, Hirut still imagines flight. Soon, she will have to admit what is happening, but for now, her mind gifts her a small mercy: it leads her back into the cave where Dawit lies, his leg healed, the bandages off, his breaths back to normal. He extends her Wujigra and nods for her to take it. In the corner, Beniam holds his arms out for a warm embrace. O brave soldier, they say to her, past the ringing in her ears, past the cushion of blessed silence: Go ahead and shoot, make us proud.

  Aster shouts into the night, a voice curdling with hatred and agony.

  Hirut slides into herself again: the soft flesh, the slender bones, the tender crevices, and then she is just a girl struggling against oblivion. She says her mother’s name, Getey, Getey, as he starts to move against her.

  I tried to help Getey, Kidane says. It’s because of me she could marry your father. I gave her that hut you lived in. I wouldn’t let anyone take it. It’s yours when we go back. Stop fighting, please.

  Remember this on the day you die. Remember this and know why I killed you, Hirut says.

  It is because some part of her still remains intact that Hirut is capable of speaking so boldly. It is because she has not yet been forcibly split that she is loud enough for the entire camp to hear. Because she is still whole, she is still sure of miracles, and this leaves no room to track the path of his hands. She numbs herself to the pressure of his pelvis while cursing the air he breathes. She grows deaf to his rapid sighs. She cannot hear Aster unleashing her husband’s name in total and complete abandon. Nor can she imagine that Aklilu stands on the plateau above them, rigid with fury. Instead, she feels Kidane pause and believes, in that fleeting moment, in the power of her hatred.

  Then Kidane spreads her legs with his knees and she watches her own spirit stand from her stained body, and walk away.

  A BLACKBIRD PARTS the folds of darkness and flies against the sun. The soft lilt of women’s voices tumbles down the hill. The tang of fresh injera coats the air above her head, and in the trampled grass at her feet, a mouse scurries from the frozen figure lying in its way. Hirut blinks, unsure of where she is and how she has come to be there. A light wind swirls dust across her face as she sits up and tries to move her legs. They are leaden, strange objects pinned to the earth. She tries again and fails, and tries again. She looks down. There is nothing to stop her from getting to her feet and walking away. There is no reason she cannot stand.

  Let me help you. Aklilu stands off to the side and holds out a blanket and her Wujigra. I got it back for you, he says. He sets them down next to her and kneels, his eyes full of concern.

  She turns her head. I’m fine.

  I put food by the tree over there. He gazes into her eyes without embarrassment or judgment. I’m not leaving until you’re on your feet, he says.

  She has to bite her lip. To move will unravel her calm and throw her into shame. To give in to the shame will mean tears, and if she begins to cry, she will never be able to stop.

  I’m okay, she says.

  He shakes his head. I’ll help you stand. We’re moving out of here after we eat. And look, you finally have your gun. Aklilu looks down at her. There’s no choice. Aster’s waiting for you, you have to be strong.

  She sent you?

  No one sent me. He holds her gaze. I wanted to be here when you woke up.

  Above her, the morning fog creeps low in the horizon. A cool band of wind lifts itself from the mountains and slides down to meet the shivering trees. What has changed is what is here, this girl struggling to flex her legs to move them. Over Aklilu’s shoulder, a gray bird hops and pecks at the ground.

  I can’t move, she finally says, alarmed. She has taken it all for granted, she thinks. She once simply willed herself to enter rooms and climbs hills and wade into rivers and it was so. She once believed she belonged to herself.

  Aklilu drapes the blanket over her and slips his arms beneath her armpits.

  Hirut feels herself pulled upright. Balancing on unsteady legs, she squints into the dawning sky and swallows the tears that form a knot in the center of her chest. Aklilu hands her the rifle and she takes it, tracing the familiar lines her father made.

  Can you walk?

  She nods, made dizzy and ungainly by what is newly missing.

  He wraps the edge of the blanket around her wrist and leads her to the tree, where an agelgil with food awaits.

  Hirut shuffles behind him, staring at his hand, grateful for the material that guards her skin against human touch. She cannot think yet about this gesture. She is aware only of the compassion in the act. She does not question how he knows to turn his back and leave her be while he prepares a bite of injera. She does not ask how it is that he waits until she swallows her sobs before he turns around. He feeds her as if he is giving her gursha, as if this were a festive meal and his assistance were an act of affection and not pity. She eats the mouthful of food instinctively, guided by Aklilu’s instructions to chew it all, and don’t think about it, and you need your strength, and you must be brave, and I’ll help you, and I’ll watch over you, and eat, one more bite, do this one and we’re done. He feeds her the gursha as if he is a host insisting a guest take one more bite because her presence is an honor, and she is loved.

  KIDANE READS THE MESSAGE FROM FERRES: CARLO FUCELLI IS GOING to construct a new prison in the cliffs of Debark, it will not be built to hold prisoners and keep them alive, it will mimic the most deadly prison camps he commanded in Libya, move closer to him, do not let him start, destroy everything he does, the real war has just begun. Kidane tries to focus but there are bite marks on his hands and wrists. His neck stings from scratches that trail up to the small bruise in the center of his forehead. All he can think as he slips the note into his pocket is that it should not have happened as it did. Tired, he rubs his eyes then quickly drops his
hands. Her smell sticks to his skin and drifts into his nose every time he moves. It is an assault. He has not been able to eat without that acrid scent drifting up and into his mouth. Every bite of dabo this morning reeked of old wood and rancid butter, of fright and youth.

  Aklilu is waiting quietly outside of his tent for the day’s instructions. The rest of his men are gathering their belongings and packing supplies onto donkeys. They have been working without their normal banter. No one has appeared from the women’s camp to distribute the rest of the day’s rations. Aster has not made her normal entry to inquire about new developments and new plans. A heavy pall has settled over his camp and the unease is another layer draped over the intensifying heat.

  Should I come back later, Dejazmach?

  Aklilu sounds tense, despite the politeness. Kidane knows the young man well enough to know he has not had his morning coffee or bread yet. He will wait until they are done arranging supplies and his men have finished their meal before he allows himself any food.

  Stay there, Kidane says. He has to speak so the cut at the corner of his mouth doesn’t bleed. I need two men to do some surveillance, he adds. Bring them here. Tell the camp we’ll be moving higher into the hills, the march won’t be as long. Tell the guards to secure the trail.

  Seifu’s been sending Tariku on scouts already, Aklilu says. He’s good with surveillance.

  Get Tariku and anyone else, Kidane says. Just do it. He reads the message from Ferres again.

  No one has discovered that Ferres is a stunningly beautiful woman named Fifi, once known as Faven. Not even the emperor’s best spies have managed to find out where she is located. Her messages come from nearly every corner of the country, and they are distributed to runners by her brother, Biruk, a blind weaver who travels from mercato to mercato selling his wares. The rumors say Biruk has never even heard this elusive Ferres’s voice himself. The rumors contend that the weaver simply passes along written messages, all of them in a tight, neat script, every character of the fidel precise. The rumors hint that Ferres is an Italian, an officer of aristocratic blood with deep empathy for Ethiopia. They do not imagine that Ferres is a woman who provides special services for only the richest Italian men at an astonishing price. No one will ever know that once, before she was Ferres, Fifi also brought Kidane comfort and small joys in private moments.