by Fiona Zedde
“Go fuck the dog who bred you!” She straightened against the wall and tipped her head back, feeling the blood sluggishly run down her face, into her mouth. One of the men jumped in front of her an instant before the chief grabbed for his knife again. This time the men and their logic didn’t stop him. He hacked at the man in front of her to get to her, tearing into his flesh with the knife and splashing blood on the floor. The man shouted in pain and tried to get away.
One of the kidnappers grabbed Nyandoro and dragged her away from the chief and out of the room.
“Stupid woman!”
He threw her in a cell. A small room ripe with the stink of old piss and shit, misery and grief sunk deep in the stone. From the ceiling, a hook dangled, suspended on a long iron chain. The man raked his eyes over her body, bound and helpless with the thin cloth hiking up to her thighs. He grabbed Nyandoro, shoved her into the stone floor. She landed on her bottom, her palms scraping against the floor, bringing fresh pain. Her heart thudded loudly in her ears, fear and fury rushing with equal strength through her. She didn’t take her eyes off him.
She twisted her wrists in the ropes, a silent struggle while she met his narrowed eyes. Those eyes crawled down her face and over her body, the front of his loin cloth began to lift. Nyandoro shrank back into the floor and clenched her fists.
But footsteps sounded just outside the door and then another shadow leaned over her bringing with it the familiar drinking gourd. Relief warred with revulsion. Her eyes skittered to the first man, the one with rape on his mind, then to the water skin filled with the promise of oblivion. Would he…? Before she could finish the thought, the water skin lowered. With no choice, she opened her mouth and closed her eyes, welcoming the disappearance of pain.
*
Nyandoro woke to her body emptying itself. On her stomach, she convulsed on the stone floor of the cell where they’d dumped her. Bile gushed from her mouth in a hot flood. Her belly cramped, clutching hard and tight at nothing. The vomit spread around her cheek pressed into the gritty floor.
After there was nothing left in her stomach to come up, she struggled to sit, wincing from the aches and hurts that stabbed her from face to foot. Her mouth and face were raw from the chief’s fists, her belly was one massive bruise. She felt sick and achy, shivers wracked her body, and her forehead was damp with sweat. Nyandoro drew in a shallow breath and wiped her wet mouth with the back of her hand. She realized then that they’d freed her wrists. But not her ankles. Apparently, they didn’t want her to drown in her vomit. How kind.
It was too dark in her cell to see anything clearly. Her own hands were only vague shadows in front of her face although, with each breath, the outlines of her prison became clearer. She slid back on her bottom until her back hit the wall, consciously not thinking about what else was on the floor aside from her own vomit. The cool stone felt good through the filthy and tattered remains of her breast cloth so she focused on that small mercy.
Nyandoro didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, she never did. It was only the position of the sun in the sky that gave her some clue how long she’d been under the influence of the sleep sap. Although she’d never taken it of her own free will, it was a drug she was familiar with.
Her father’s sister was the village healer before she died, passing the responsibility to her youngest daughter. She knew about berries and herbs to prevent a baby, to make a man or woman fall in love, to ease a headache. And ones to kill. Always curious, Nyandoro had sat with her to learn and ask questions when she was very young. But since her aunt died, she lost interest. Being among the blood berries and high bushes of mint only made her sad.
She must be losing her mind to think now about mint leaves and her long dead aunt. Nyandoro’s head dropped forward, stale breath huffing from between her lips that smelled like…yes, the sleeping sap.
Her body, ambushed by dose after dose of the sap, was rejecting it. The sap wasn’t meant for prolonged use. If they fed her much more of it, she would die. She lifted her head, blinking into the darkness.
They didn’t want to kill her. But she would force them to.
Her life was emptiness now.
But what about Duni? The question whispered at the back of her mind. With it came the last sight she’d had of Duni, her jewel eyes bright with love and anticipation of their future together.
“No, I can’t…”
Nyandoro groaned out loud and pressed her face hard into the tops of her knees until it hurt, the self-inflicted pain bringing her back from the abyss of her thoughts. Slowly, she straightened, she rested her head back against the wall, and waited. It was a long time before she heard the distant sound of footsteps, then a scratch outside the door.
She tensed, steeling herself for hands to grab her and truss her up again. This time, she would fight harder—bite, kick, scream—and force one of them to snap her neck. They wanted to. She could see it in their faces.
Her palms pressed down into the gritty floor. She clenched her jaw and waited.
The heavy door pushed open. Bright light flooded in, blinding her, forcing her eyes shut, and she turned away from it, raising her arm. But she only heard the sound of wooden bowls clattering against the stone floor, then the door slammed shut.
One bowl had food, a thin cornmeal, but the other had water. She ignored the food and grabbed the water, forced herself to drink it slowly so her belly wouldn’t cramp and force her to vomit it back up. Her throat was so dry, she was so thirsty. Water dribbling from the corners of her mouth and down her neck. Too quickly, it was all gone. She wiped a hand across her face. Too late, she realized the water was a little too thick, that it had a slightly bitter taste. She gasped, her head spinning, hands braced against the floor. Her stomach seized again and she cursed, sluggishly rolling her body in time to avoid falling flat on her face into the stone.
*
When Nyandoro woke, it was still dark. She shifted her back against the floor, pain twisting in her belly. Her ribs ached and her face felt swollen, her mouth twice its normal size. But the pain wasn’t as bad as before. Her thoughts felt clearer. Her body less sluggish. The bowl of meal was gone, as was the water. Instead there was a neatly folded hand cloth in a small, shallow bowl of water, a smaller bowl of soap. She levered herself upright and toward the soap and water, aware suddenly of how much she stank.
With the soapy rag and water, she cleaned her face, wiping away the traces of vomit on her throat and neck. Her stained and ripped clothes hung from her, rancid with the smell of vomit, sweat, and blood. But she couldn’t do anything about that.
She wrinkled her nose at the now brown water and emptied most of it in the corner of her cell. Cleaning herself up left her panting and weak. She listened for signs of someone guarding the door but heard nothing. Were they all asleep?
Carefully, Nyandoro stood up and hovered by the door, quiet. She stretched her body, limb by limb, testing its limits with this new poison they were feeding her. She was sore all over. Legs, belly, wrists, even her neck from sleeping on the stone floor. But she could move without constant pain. Her body almost felt like hers again.
She ignored her mind, her thoughts, all the things that would make her fall to her knees and scream for her life to end. There was more than one way to get what she wanted. Nyandoro stood and waited.
Eventually, the key’s rattle in the door came again, then the quiet sound of breathing, a flood of light, then a hand low to the floor where she’d been expecting it.
She gripped the hand and pulled. The man grunted and tried to pull back, but she braced her foot on the edge of the door and used her entire body weight to drag him into her cell, and before he could shout out to the others, she cracked the water bowl across his face with a jarring hit she felt all the way through her shoulder. She swung the bowl in the other direction and smashed it into his other cheek. He howled in pain and rage, and tried to grab her, but she jumped on his back, gripped his jaw, and twisted hard.
His
neck cracked, broke. No harder than killing an animal. His brothers in arms were fast, tumbling inside the cell in twos and threes. But he was already dead.
They jumped over the dead man, one set of hands pulled his body through the open door as they shouted to each other, grabbed her, and flung her to the floor. Her back slammed into the ground. Pain. A screaming cry of her shoulder being dislocated, the stone scraping against her shoulders.
Kill me. She willed them to do it, begged them to without saying a word. Kill me.
“He’s dead!”
Someone grabbed her wrists and tied them together, dragged her across the floor and lifted her, hung her on the hook by the rope around her wrists and pulled the hook higher into the air until only the tips of her toes touched the floor.
“We have to get her out of here before the chief kills her.”
“Or before I do.” One of her kidnappers stood in the cell doorway. The tall, scarred one. His eyes burned with anger and he looked ready to kill her. She growled at him.
Kill me.
She deliberately rattled the chains suspending her on the hook. “If you think you can, try it!”
Kill me.
His eyes cut into her and he growled low in his chest. “If we didn’t have to turn you over to them in one piece…”
Nyandoro rattled the chains again. She’d made no one any such promise, and she would kill as many of them as it took for them to break and kill her too. Scar came closer, all threatening lines and angles. Despite the pain pulling at her body, the ropes tying her wrists and ankles, she shifted her weight, gripped the chain that held her up, getting ready to snap her legs up and break his neck, or whatever part of his body he dared to get close enough to her.
But he was smarter than he looked. He stopped. Too late, she noticed a flash of movement behind her. She twisted around to see what or who it was, but a fist smashed into her face. She hissed from the blow. More pain. Hands gripping her legs tight and holding them still. Scar clamped his hand around her jaw and lifted the drinking gourd she hadn’t even noticed. He poured the sap down her throat. She roared at them, but that didn’t stop the pain and choking and helplessness that flooded into her. Like sleep.
Chapter Eight
Nyandoro opened her eyes and knew she was dreaming. She was in a large stone room with white walls, and she was comfortable. Instead of the filthy clothes she’d been wearing the last time her eyes were open, a white cloth covered her body from throat to toes. Sunlight poured over the bed from a window near her feet and the ceiling above her was luxuriously high, its smooth stones shimmering as if lit from within.
It must have been a dream. The smell of green grass and wildflowers drifted through the window, and she heard children laughing. It felt like she was back at the village. Everything was clean. There was no smell of a long journey. No dust. No blood. Here, it seemed entirely possible that her mother would walk in the door at any moment, that she would touch her forehead and ask why she was still sleeping with the sun so high in the sky.
Nyandoro closed her eyes. But that would never happen. Her mother was gone. Dead. Her throat slit by the chief’s men. Nyandoro whimpered, a sound like a dying animal. She clamped her mouth shut and sat up on the mat, bracing herself for pain. But she felt none. The cloth fell away to her waist, baring her breasts and stomach.
“She is awake.”
She heard the voice, speaking in an unfamiliar language that she somehow understood, but didn’t see anyone. For a moment, the cool comfort of the room and the strange female voice just outside the door soothed her. Then she remembered where she’d been the last time she opened her eyes.
No! She wouldn’t let herself be fooled.
Panic jerked her to her feet on top of the sleeping mat. She slammed her back to the wall and looked frantically around for weapons, eyes jumping from the abnormally high and wide sleeping mat where she stood to the nearby stool and woven grass rug on the floor, the chest-high wooden shelf with folded kangas neatly stacked inside it.
There was nothing. All she had to defend herself was her own body. That would be enough.
Nyandoro crouched low, getting ready to strike.
“You should rest.”
A woman came into the room. At least Nyandoro assumed it was a woman. She was beautiful and, with each step she took farther into the room, a warm and welcoming scent flooded over Nyandoro.
She was tall, taller than even Nyandoro’s mother, and wore her hair in dozens of small plaits. The front plaits were pulled up to the top of her head to form a twisting crown, thick plaits of hair only a shade or two darker than her skin. She carried herself like one used to ruling, upright and regal, but her eyes were pulled tight at the corners like everything she did was a great effort. Despite that, those eyes seemed dark and wild, ever changing, like the skies in the midst of a storm. This woman was a stranger to her.
“I don’t want to be in this dream anymore.” Nyandoro turned her head away. She closed her eyes and willed herself to wake up. All this softness was a trap. She’d rather be in the walking nightmare of the chief’s jail than this torment of a life that wasn’t real, whose comforts were a tease and a way to take her off-guard.
“This is no dream, Nyandoro.” The woman sat at the foot of the mat, and Nyandoro slid away from her along the wall. “May I call you that?”
“Since I’m going to wake up any moment now, you can call me anything you want.”
“This is no dream,” the woman said again. “The men came with you in the night and left you here. They are gone now.”
At the mention of her jailors, the men who had killed her family, Nyandoro stiffened. Slowly, she straightened but did not let her guard down. “What are you talking about?”
“The men left. I told them they could go. Without them here, I can give you a proper welcome to my home.”
Nyandoro pressed her back even more into the wall, and her heart beat even faster in her chest. “You did this? You sent them to bring me here?”
“Of course. You belong here.”
The pulse thundered in her ears. “You? You did this?” Her hands started to shake. “You’re the reason my family is dead?”
The woman’s blank face grew even more so. “Dead? No one should be dead.”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know!” Nyandoro snarled. “You’re the reason this happened!” She tensed, ready to jump on the woman and punch her face in until all the bones cracked and the white walls were splashed with her blood. But the crisp and calming scent pushed her back into the wall, soothed her muscles until she was vibrating against the wall, heavy with violent intent but helpless to do anything about it.
The woman stood up. “What did they do?”
Nyandoro panted through her clenched her teeth, tried to fight the odd effect of the woman’s smell. Her muscles useless and hard, pressed to the wall and shaking.
What in the name of heaven is happening to me?
She wanted to curse at the woman, to do something, but instead the terror of the previous nights, of the night she found her family, came rushing to her in a flood. The nausea. Anger. Pain beyond pain.
“They came at night,” she finally said. “I first saw one of them in the market when I was with my iya.” The day rushed back, the heat of the morning, her mother’s laugh that she would never hear again. Through trembling lips, she tortured herself with the story of what happened. Even as it all seemed like some terrible nightmare while she stood on soft sheets and the smell of sunlight and nearby rains flooding her senses. Those things, she thought to herself even as she told her story, her parents’ death and the softness of the room she found herself in, should not exist in the same world. “The last thing I remember is being in a cell. They wanted to defile me. They wanted to kill me.”
With each word Nyandoro spoke, the woman seemed to sag inside her skin, her glow diminishing to a sickly gray, the corners of her eyes pulling tight. When Nyandoro finished, looking up in a daze, she saw that
the woman was again sitting on the sleeping mat, her palms flat against it as if only that kept her from falling over.
“No!” the woman said. “That is not what I told them to do.”
“Well, that is what they did,” Nyandoro hissed, fighting the effect of the woman’s smell on her. She did not want to be calmed. “And I’d rather slit your throat than be welcomed here in your house.”
The woman shook her head, eyes wide and white in her face, a flash of pale that obliterated all the brown. She beat her chest once, threw her head back to stare at the ceiling. Nyandoro thought she heard a crack of thunder in the distance. The woman stumbled to her feet and did not look at her. With a stuttering stride that made her look at once sick and uncertain, she left the room.
When she left, she took her calming scent with her. Nyandoro sagged back down into a crouch, finally able to move. What did that woman do to her?
She looked frantically around the room. I need to leave. I have—
A rustling in the doorway brought her head around and her fists up. A young woman hovered there, her eyes on Nyandoro. She was delicate and beautiful with wide eyes and a bud-like mouth. Her body was covered from throat to toes in a flowing, bright blue dress. The girl carried a tray with food and drink.
Something about her delicate looks, the halo of hair around her face, and her large eyes, made Nyandoro feel protective toward her, like the last thing she wanted to do was hurt someone like her. Was this more trickery and magic?
“My pardons, mistress.” She put the tray on the small table near the bed and stepped back with her hands clasped at her belly. “The queen sends food for you and something to quench your thirst.”
Still staring at the girl, Nyandoro shook her head. “I’m not hungry.” But her belly chose that moment to rumble loudly. Her stomach might hunger for food, but she didn’t want to take the chance of being drugged again. She’d rather walk toward the fires of hell with her eyes wide open than wake to find herself already in it.