by Fiona Zedde
The girl dipped her eyes. “As you wish. I will leave the tray here in case you change your mind. Also, if you chose not to eat, I am also here to help you with your bath.”
It was on the tip of Nyandoro’s tongue to refuse that as well. But she looked down at her naked body. Even though she no longer wore the clothes from her village—torn, bloodied, foul with her body’s fluids—whatever cleaning had been done to her body was only superficial. Her mouth felt thick and sour, her skin was gritty with dirty in places, and under her fingernails was dark with blood.
“A bath,” she said.
“Good. I will prepare one for you.” The girl slipped from the room but was back within moments, followed by four women who carried a large bathing tub between them. Another two came with water gourds, filling up the tub before leaving behind a bathing cloth and soap near the tub. The whole thing happened within moments. The girl who’d brought the food approached Nyandoro.
“Come,” she said. “I will bathe you now.”
Nyandoro crouched on the edge of the sleeping mat and looked down at the girl. “No. I don’t want you to touch me. I can bathe myself.”
The girl froze, like she didn’t know what to do with Nyandoro’s refusal. “But the queen said—”
“Tell her that I insist on bathing myself. I will bathe and I will only eat with the queen if she shares a meal with me.” She wasn’t prideful enough to refuse food. She was hungry enough that her belly cramped with it. But she wasn’t taking the chance of being drugged again.
The girl’s face was tense. She chewed her bottom lip before making a small movement of resignation.
“Very well.” She left the room and left Nyandoro alone.
It was disorienting. Coming from her living nightmare of captivity to this…this opulent kindness. Surely a trap. Nyandoro felt like she was suffocating under cloth, separated from the real world by nightmares and dreams she could not tell from reality.
She knew she should be more agitated, more ready to kill, looking for something to kill this woman with and escape to…to somewhere. But all she felt was weak and bereaved. Her family was dead and Duni, though alive, might as well be in another world. If she were a different person, not her mother’s daughter, she would’ve cut her own throat and left this entire misery behind so she could join her family wherever they were.
But she was who she was.
Once, when she was just learning to hunt, Nyandoro had fallen in the grass and twisted her ankle. Her shout of pain had startled a nearby herd of ostriches. They ran over her, stampeded over her body curled protectively into itself on the ground. She felt every crush of their feet, bruises flaring up under her skin, each stomp of their feet on her curled body. Pulped. She’s felt pulped like an orange flung hard into the ground while everything soft inside her rolled around loose under her bruised flesh. A hand grabbed her—Kizo’s, she found out later—and yanked her from under the thunderous feet and into the cool protection of the underbrush. Like then, her entire body was a massive bruise, but Kizo was not here to save her now. Nyandoro bit into her clenched fist.
The young girl came back into the room, this time with a wash cloth and square of cake soap in her hands. At the look at Nyandoro, she faltered. Then continued into the room to put the cloth and soap on the edge of the tub. She pulled a stool closer to the window and sat down to continue weaving a small, unfinished straw basket.
Nyandoro climbed into the tub. The water, hot and scented with mint, slid over her flesh, over the bruises on her feet, legs, thighs. It lapped at her skin, a comfort and calm. She didn’t trust those feelings. They didn’t make sense to her. Not when she was in a stranger’s house, in a stranger’s tub, and a woman whose name she did not even know watched her bathe.
“What’s your name?” she asked the girl.
Wide, long-lashed eyes flashed up from the basket. She blinked as if she wasn’t sure Nyandoro was talking to her. “Um…I’m Anesa.”
“It’s good to meet you, Anesa.” Nyandoro picked up the washcloth and soap and began to clean herself. “Can you tell me where I am?”
Anesa bit her lip, looking uncertain. “We are in the palace of the Rain Queen,” she said with more than a little reluctance.
The Rain Queen who didn’t exist? Did this girl take her for a fool? “But where is that? Are we still in the shadow of the great white mountain Kilimanjaro?”
The basket whispered between Anesa’s hands as she wove the thick blades of grass together. “We are all in the shadow of the great white mountain,” she said. “You, me, the queen. By the grace of Yemaya, we will remain.”
“Yemaya?” She was surprised at the mention of the Orisha of her mother. “What does she have to do with this?”
Anesa looked at her almost in pity. “Your iya bargained with Yemaya. If—when she gave birth to a girl, she would keep her while she remained a child then give her to Yemaya once she became a woman.”
“Why would she?” Nyandoro asked, though she remembered all too well the many, many times her mother poured libations and made offerings to Yemaya, especially in the days before her death. “My iya paid Yemaya every respect, even when Yemaya did nothing for her.” Nyandoro didn’t bother to explain her indifference where the Orishas were concerned. Most times, she doubted they even existed.
“The Orishas do not work in the most direct way,” Anesa said. “There might have been honors Yemaya granted your family you are unaware of, favors that were made to look as if they came from another human.”
“I’ve always preferred the direct approach, and want others to do the same.”
“Not everything in the world can be as you like.” Anesa shrugged and went back to her weaving.
She didn’t look up for a long time. But when Nyandoro stepped out of the water, she was waiting next to the tub with a clean towel, oils for her skin, and a new dress. Nyandoro dried herself while Anesa went back to her weaving.
It was easy to imagine that all this was a true respite from everything she’d been through over the last few days. The kindness of the women. Her first hot bath in months. But Nyandoro was no one’s fool.
“I’m ready,” she said once she was dry, oiled, and dressed.
“You don’t have to be ready. Just rest. You don’t have to go anywhere.” Anesa sat with the unfinished basket in her lap, her gaze soft and kind. But Nyandoro didn’t want that kindness directed at her. She wanted to see their true faces. They didn’t bring her all this way, kill her family, and take her away from her life just to be kind.
“No,” Nyandoro said. “Take me to her or wherever you want me to go.”
Anesa put aside her weaving. The chair creaked when she stood up. Frowning, she touched Nyandoro’s shoulder, pushing her gently toward the bed. But she didn’t allow herself to be moved.
Anesa was young, as young as her brother’s wife had been. Nyandoro tensed to push her away, but she couldn’t bring herself to harm the girl. She was just a servant in this place. She wasn’t to blame for anything that happened. And Nyandoro was tired. The bath had washed away the dirt from her skin, but left exhaustion in its wake.
“Rest,” Anesa said again. “It will be okay.”
Nyandoro allowed herself to be pushed toward the mat this time. The bedding was soft and her eyes were closing. Her body relaxed.
“Thank you, Anesa,” she said because she was weak.
“It is my honor to help care for you.” The girl’s words followed her down into sleep.
When the dream came, she was grateful for it. The woman was there.
“I missed you,” Nyandoro said, surprising herself.
The woman looked pleased. “Did you really?”
Nyandoro didn’t feel the need to repeat herself. She and the woman sat alone on a familiar high rock overlooking a familiar river. Down the path and through the bush, if she dared to follow, would she find her parents, her family alive and waiting for her to return?
“No, you won’t.” The woman tossed a
handful of seeds into the river below their feet. “I’m sorry.”
The anger rose in Nyandoro, bitter and dangerous even muffled beneath the softness of dreams. “Then why bring me here?”
“I did not. Your heart did.”
Nyandoro grabbed at her chest, discovering then that she was naked. “My heart? My heart?” She sank her fingers into her skin, found it surprisingly easy to push them even deeper, below the flesh, through tissue and straight to the pulsing meat of her heart. It felt useless in her fist with its blood and thumping heat. What was it good for? With a hoarse scream, she yanked the heart out of her chest. It drummed, a red and wet sound, and dripped scarlet through the clench of her fingers and down her wrist.
“I have no heart,” she said, and tossed the useless thing toward the river.
The woman cried out, a hand flinging out to reach for the useless heart as it sailed through the air. “No! It’s mine.”
But the muscle landed with a bloody splash in the water. Golden sunlight glimmered over the river’s swirling surface and on the discarded heart that pulsed, once then twice, before sinking beneath rippling eddies.
“What have you done?” For the first time, true emotion showed on the woman’s face, a sadness as deep as the river.
“Nothing that hasn’t already been done in truth. I think you already know that.”
The woman’s chin quivered and her large eyes flashed with unshed tears. She called Nyandoro’s name and reached out, but Nyandoro turned away from her and from the river. A flash of yellow on the path drew her eyes and she shot to her feet.
It was Duni. She was walking away in her wedding yellow, a basket balanced on her head and her hips swaying beneath the drape of waist beads. Nyandoro watched her, and wished she had kept that pulsing mess in her chest to give to its rightful owner.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Duni’s retreating back. And meant it.
She woke up to Anesa on the edge of her sleeping mat. The girl had her hand on Nyandoro’s ankle, a hot and unpleasant weight. “Are you all right? You cried out in your sleep.”
Nyandoro gently eased her foot away from Anesa’s touch while pieces of the dream clung to her still. The despair of being back in her village and knowing her family was not there. The ache of seeing Duni alive, but with her back turned, as if she’d moved on from the promises she and Nyandoro had made to each other.
“I’m awake,” Nyandoro said in response to Anise’s question.
She sat up on the mat and shoved the last of sleep away. Despite the clinging pieces of the dream, she felt more clearheaded than she had in a long time. “I’d like to see the queen.”
After looking at her for a long moment, Anesa nodded. “Very well.”
When Nyandoro was dressed, Anesa led her down a long hallway, through a palace that glowed with wealth. Not just in the gold gleaming on the arms of the women they passed or the complex construction of the building or even the silk tapestries on the walls. It was in the happiness of the women, most of whom sat on wide chairs, talking. They mended spears, they wove baskets, they held children in their laps. And they all watched Nyandoro.
They found the queen on a terrace overlooking a large courtyard. Like most of the women in the palace, she wore bright blue, a color that well-suited her onyx skin.
“Thank you, Anesa.” The queen touched the girl’s arm.
Anesa blushed, a hand rushing out to squeeze the elbow of the woman who called herself queen. There was sadness there. Nyandoro looked away from their quick display of affection, because it was unmistakably affection.
She sat at the table set for two. In the center of the table lay a shallow bowl filled with water and sprinkled with tiny orchids. The purple flowers swam on the surface of the water as if carried along on some invisible tide. They smelled sweet.
“Thank you for joining me,” the queen said once Anesa had gone back inside.
“Did I have a choice?”
A spasm of an emotion moved across her face, then a smile took its place. Not a real one, though. “Of course. If you didn’t want to come out here, I would have come to you.”
The queen leaned back in her chair and looked Nyandoro over, her changeable eyes touching every visible inch of her, obviously searching for something she hoped to find across the table from her.
But Nyandoro was growing impatient with her stares. The terrace had a view of a massive, grassy courtyard with enough space to fit her own family compound ten times over. Scattered fruit trees of all kinds provided shade and food, and the wide wings of the palace spread out in a semi-circle whose open mouth yawned toward the arched stone gateway leading out into the larger valley. Everything about this place was familiar, like she’d seen it before but couldn’t recall where. Frowning, Nyandoro turned her gaze back to the queen.
“Why am I here?” she asked.
“Because I want to show you what is mine.” The queen glanced over Nyandoro’s shoulder and signaled to someone with a lazy curl of her fingers, apparently done with her visual inventory.
“I don’t care what belongs to you,” Nyandoro said.
“You will.”
Footsteps approached the table, and the queen moved back to allow two women to arrange food and drink before them. The two women were not young, but they moved like they were, setting out the meal with quick, spare motions. The food they left smelled tempting, like heat and spice. Bite-sized pieces of meat simmered in a creamy sauce flecked with pieces of red pepper and green onion. Pale slices of yam, still hot from the cook fire, made a pretty circle around meat on the platter.
The queen gestured to the platter and two serving plates. “Please, eat.”
Outside the walls of the palace, the breeze was mild and cool, fluttering the edges of Nyandoro’s dress. While they talked, a group of children had wandered into the courtyard. They played and danced in a wide circle, chattering in a different language. It took a moment for Nyandoro to realize they were all girls.
Had they been kidnapped by the queen too?
“I was told you wouldn’t eat unless I did.” The queen reached for the platter. Nyandoro’s stomach rumbled. Impelled by her hunger, she took the food before the queen did, turning it around so that the pieces of meat the queen was reaching for were turned toward her instead.
“That’s true. I won’t.” Nyandoro sat back in her chair without touching her food.
The burn of anger and sorrow and shame—how could I have let this happen?—held her locked to the chair. A terror that, after a bite of food, she would lose her awareness then wake to more blood, more pain, more loss. Duni’s face, and the last time she saw its beloved curve, flashed behind her lowered eyelids and her belly clenched, the sadness rising with a sob. She swallowed it and smoothed her face.
The queen looked at her with that peculiar hurt expression again. She put some meat on her plate, then paused, allowing Nyandoro to do what she would with the other plate—she did nothing—and reached for a slice of yam. The yam was white with curling trails of steam rising from it. Nyandoro didn’t flinch from its heat.
Reaching for her food, the queen accidentally bumped the small bowl holding the purple orchids. Her women could have easily removed it. If anything, it was in the way. But the queen moved reverently around the bowl as if it belonged at the table more than she did.
She poured herself a mug of fruit juice. “There are no words that can express my regret about what happened to your family.”
Regret? Nyandoro snarled across the table at her. “You’re right. So don’t try to offer them.” The queen winced again. But she deserved none of Nyandoro’s mercy. “Because of you, I have no family. I have nothing.”
“That’s not what I sent them to do. They were—”
Nyandoro cut her off before she could go any further. “It doesn’t matter what you intended.”
The muscles along the queen’s jaw tensed and released. She put a hand, palm down, on the table. “Eat,” she said.
Only
after the queen took bites of the food and drank from the fruit juice she poured from the gourd did Nyandoro reach for her own portion.
The meat was tender and flavorful. Its juices exploded on Nyandoro’s tongue like a well-pleased woman. She swallowed thickly, banishing the thought of Duni before it could fully form. She had to focus on what was before her, not behind. This woman wanted something from her, something she wasn’t afraid to resort to kidnapping for. Nyandoro couldn’t afford to get distracted from thoughts of escape, and revenge, by good food and innocent-looking women. Those things she’d had in abundance in her village and could have anywhere. But she kept eating. She needed her body to be strong for whatever was to come.
Across from her, the Rain Queen ate in silence, only occasionally looking out at the children in the courtyard or up at the clear sky. Thin wisps of clouds floated across the sharp blue sky and over the entrance to the compound in a way that pricked at Nyandoro’s memory. She’d never been to this place before, but something about it reminded her strongly of somewhere else.
“I am dying.”
One of the little girls in the courtyard waved up at them. Nyandoro waved back.
“What does that have to do with me?” she asked.
The queen wiped her hands on a damp cloth and carefully put the cloth back on the table. “Yemaya has decided, after I die, you will take my place.”
“No.” Nyandoro flinched back in automatic revulsion. “What you and your spirits decide has nothing to do with me.”
“She did not ask your opinion on the matter.”
“Obviously. But I’m telling you and her both, I’m not a pawn and I’m not a toy. Whatever you have in mind for me, forget it.”
You do not refuse an Orisha. The voice that had been so absent from her head for the past few weeks returned, weak but undeniable.
Nyandoro clenched her teeth. I will tell anyone what I damn well please.
“Don’t refuse this honor just because of your pride.”
“My pride?” The urge to do violence flared quickly inside Nyandoro, the only warning the hot flush across her cheekbones, the snap of her teeth. “You think this is about my fucking pride?” Nyandoro’s hands clenched into fists, and she pushed herself back from the table to stop herself from leaping across it and pummeling this so-called dying woman to death. “I refuse you and your bitch because YOU. KILLED. MY. FAMILY.” Her shout ricocheted around the terrace, down into the courtyard. Nyandoro felt the women watching her, the children’s frightened faces, but didn’t care.