by Fiona Zedde
She stood up, her knees trembling, her body flushed with anger.
“Do you think I’d trade their lives for your dirty power? All I want—” Tears burned Nyandoro from the inside, but she refused to let them fall. “All I want is my family back. My parents, my brothers, my wife.”
Her eyes blurred. Her hands shook. She stared at the children in the courtyard, the green grass and high mountain, the swaying trees she could see beyond the circle of the palace grounds. All this belonged to the queen and could be hers. She remembered then, the night by the river when she told Duni she would one day have a big house, and a wife, wealth enough for a hundred chiefs. Nyandoro bit back a sob, swallowed it until it was nothing more than a sigh.
Had she brought all this on herself, wanting too soon to taste adult things, coveting what was not meant for her? Nyandoro easily remembered Duni in her wedding clothes, the black kanga unwinding from around her body and face to reveal her woman’s body glowing from beneath the bright yellow of her wedding drapery, the brutal fist of lust that had curled in Nyandoro’s belly, making her think MINE.
She shook her head and clenched her trembling hands. No.
Nyandoro couldn’t keep living if that was so. She looked down at the queen. “That’s all I want. My family. Not your disgusting house full of slave women.”
She turned to walk away, but couldn’t move. Her feet were stuck to the floor. “Let me go.”
But the queen didn’t seem to hear her.
“When Yemaya called me, I had no choice.” The queen spoke softly, her voice low like she was remembering that long ago day, that hour. “I’d already reached my twentieth season. I was married and had a child growing in my belly. A life like this—,” she waved her hand to indicate the women talking in the anteroom, their voices a rhythmic percussion in the warm afternoon, the massive courtyard, the palace, “—was so far from my reality that it might as well have been a dream.” Her face hardened. “I had no choice.”
“But I,” Nyandoro thumped her chest, “have a choice.” She had to. Or everything she trusted in—free will, her own personal power—was ashes.
A look of pity settled on the queen’s face. Her eyes dropped to the bowl of water on the table with the sweet orchids. “You may think you can resist this, but you cannot. When Yemaya wants something, she gets it.”
“She can’t force me into this.”
“It wouldn’t be force, it would be a paradise. This life with Yemaya is more than you ever dreamed of in that little village of yours.”
“You don’t know anything about my life before this place, so don’t presume.” Nyandoro crossed her arms. She felt foolish standing while the queen sat before her meal, so she reclaimed her seat. But she was done with the food.
The queen made a motion, and a young woman came to take the remnants of their meal away, head bowed, her bow of a mouth turned down at the corners.
“I know you are in pain.” The queen rested her elbows on the table and linked her fingers, rested her chin on them. “I know you want revenge, even if it is against me.” Her mouth twitched in an unamused smile. “You can have your vengeance with the power you take from me.”
Power. The woman spoke of power as if she could make her family’s murderers fall dead with just one thought. Nyandoro knew that wasn’t possible. Yemaya had sustained her mother’s belief by providing small miracles, keeping her new family safe from the Portuguese invaders who had razed her entire home village. Provided her with a husband whose village was close to a river. Given her a girl child after five large and boisterous boys. But those were minor. Easily explained away with human persistence and her mother’s own strength.
“You say you have power, but I see nothing.” Nyandoro crossed her arms on the table.
The queen’s smile was real this time. “You are truly a heathen. None of your mother’s piety rubbed off on you, I see.”
“My iya is dead.” Nyandoro swallowed the hard lump in her throat. “So is her link to your Yemaya.”
“For your sake, I wish that were true.”
Distantly, Nyandoro heard the sound of thunder, but the skies stayed clear. The queen put a finger in the crystal bowl, stirring the water. The orchids swirled from the current she created but slid away from her finger to one side of the bowl, huddling together in a purple mass.
The queen tapped her finger and water splashed, but instead of falling back into the bowl, the drops of water hovered in the air then leapt onto the back of the queen’s hand, formed the shape of a snake, silver and slick-bodied, to stare at Nyandoro. Its fangs flashed.
She gasped and jerked back in her chair, tried to jump to her feet, but the queen’s hand clamped on to her thigh under the table and held her down. Nyandoro’s breath whistled between her teeth as she fought against the hand, against the force, keeping her still. The snake wriggled across the table, leaving a wet trail.
Nyandoro tried to pull herself away from the thing that shouldn’t exist, but it twisted toward her, tongue extended, a hissing sound like water falling from high rocks. The snake leapt onto her arm from the table, body cool and almost pleasant if it wasn’t for the fear threatening to choke her. On her shoulder it curled, seeming to preen under her terrified stare.
Then it licked her face. Stroking her cheek with its cool and wet tongue. It turned to the queen, permission in every line of its body. The woman crooked her finger. The snake stretched its body as if it meant to leap away toward the bowl. But with a flick of the queen’s fingers, it disintegrated in a splash. Water splattered Nyandoro’s skin, wetting her dress, her face. She jerked in the chair, nearly falling back. That was when she realized she could move again. Nyandoro jumped to her feet, ready to slap the queen, her fear quickly turning into rage.
But at the table, the queen was shaking, her face no longer calm. Her breath came quickly from parted lips.
“Yemaya is mighty,” she said despite her breathlessness. “She is not cruel. At least not very much.” A smile twitched across her face. “It is not by her hand that your family died. Other forces are at work. She is not the only Orisha with power who still moves in this world.”
“Is it the Orishas, or is it you?” Nyandoro injected as much scorn as she could into the last word.
At the edge of her awareness, the view of the world beyond the compound shifted, wavering like she looked at it through a wall of water. Then, as the queen’s breathing smoothed, the image righted itself and gradually became what it was. Clear.
Nyandoro suddenly remembered. The dream of rain and The Woman she’d had on a night long ago while Duni slept at her side. She’d dreamt of the pale palace and its surrounding compound, of the power that kept them hidden. Looking at the queen now, Nyandoro knew the power that concealed the palace and its women was weak and getting weaker by the moment. It wouldn’t keep them separate from the outside world for much longer.
The queen splashed her face with the water from the bowl of flowers then dried her skin with a cloth that appeared instantly from the hand of one of her women. Nyandoro flinched from the sight. Only moments before, a snake made of water had emerged from that bowl and done the woman’s bidding. After her face was sufficiently dry, she put the cloth away.
“Come with me,” the queen said. “There are things I must make you understand.”
Chapter Nine
When they came in from the terrace, the women in the anteroom quieted and watched Nyandoro and their queen with collective concern in their eyes. They did not act like servants. Interesting.
“We are going for a walk,” the queen told the gathering of women.
Two women unfolded themselves from the group, reaching for spears that Nyandoro hadn’t noticed before. These women were neither tall nor strong. But the experience in their faces spoke of many battles, and not all of them won.
“No, stay here,” the queen said. “We will not be long.”
None of the women looked pleased. Nyandoro only waited with her hands clasped behin
d her back for the walk to begin. One of the women, who sat with a sleeping child in her lap, spoke up.
“My queen, your safety…”
“I will be perfectly safe with Nyandoro at my side. Yemaya has shown me she is very good with a spear. Her entire body is a weapon.” She smiled grimly at that.
“This is what we are afraid of, my queen.”
“Stop worrying.” The queen dismissed their concern with a wave of her hand, not at all treating the women as if they were slaves or even servants. She gestured for Nyandoro to walk with her.
“Wives,” she said with a faint smile. “They worry.”
Wives? Nyandoro looked over her shoulder again at the women. A quick count told her there were eleven in all gathered in the room. Then she remembered where she was. Of course, someone who lived in an entire palace could afford to care for nearly a dozen wives. The thought of Duni tore at her. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. That life didn’t exist anymore.
She and the queen walked through the main hallway of the palace, a slow meandering past rooms and weapons and casually displayed riches. Art on the walls. Teenagers playing with well-made drums. Precious metals melted into bowls. The queen was showing off, showing Nyandoro what could be hers. She walked at her side with little to add about the compound’s self-sustainability, the bargains that chiefs near and far had struck with her for rain. Despite her deliberate cultivation of disinterest, however, Nyandoro noticed everything.
The palace was beautiful. All the women—and Nyandoro noticed immediately that there were no men, no boys—were well dressed, healthy-looking, and happy. They glanced at her with curiosity, then at the queen with some version of love or respect then carried on with whatever they were doing.
The large hallway branched off into different rooms, all brightly lit. As she passed one room, its entranceway wide and arched, she smelled food, heard laughter and conversation, felt the faint heat from a hearth fire.
The courtyard held many shade trees. A few women. The children still playing in their circle. Under a wide fig tree, a woman dressed in a warrior’s short tunic nursed a baby at her breast while she rested her head on the tree’s thick trunk. Sunlight slid through the leaves and shifted over her face, over the baby, glimmering gold on their skin. A spear leaned near her. Nyandoro looked away from them, feeling as if she were disturbing their quiet.
The palace rested in a valley, but the path Nyandoro and the queen took on foot wound them through long fields of green grass, through tall trees swaying with the breeze, with the chattering of monkeys perched above, and the sound of the sea not far away.
It felt good to walk outside again. Her legs had been shaky with the first step, and the second. But she grew stronger with each long stride she took at the queen’s side, her legs and feet moving with surprising power under the bright yellow dress that brushed the ground and caressed her thighs and legs. The dress felt too cumbersome to fight in but was a whisper of luxury against her skin.
They walked to the ocean, mimicking each other’s footsteps across the sand. The queen’s dress was shorter than hers. She moved across the beach more freely, her sandaled feet sinking into the white to contrast with her dark feet. They skirted the edge of the water, still in silence.
A flash of something caught Nyandoro’s eyes. The curved side of one boat, then two. She blinked to see if it was an illusion, a trick of rain and water. But when her eyes opened, the boats were still there.
Nyandoro flickered her gaze between the boats and the forest and the route they had taken, noticing the limited avenues for escape, plotting how long it would take her to make her way through the trees after killing the queen. They had walked for what could have been two or more maili. The queen looked weak. Her show of power at the table had cost her. She wasn’t strong enough to take Nyandoro in a fight.
A coconut tree had fallen across the sand, its long and dark body stretched from the forest to the water, leaves sweeping to and fro in the tide. The queen sat on the tree’s trunk, straddling it like a young girl, and stared out to sea. A salt-laced breeze whispered around and over them.
The queen began to speak. “When I took the mantle of Rain Queen almost three hundred seasons ago”—Nyandoro drew in a shocked breath—“I took it willingly, despite the life I had to leave behind. As did my predecessor. We won’t force you into this.”
Nyandoro choked back a laugh of disbelief. “Your search for a new queen killed my family and dragged me halfway across the world. It made me give up the woman I love. All this feels like force to me.”
“Except for you then, no one has come here by force.” The wind dragged at her dress and flapped it against her thighs, bare and taut draped over the trunk of the coconut tree. “This place is a refuge,” the queen said. She spoke like she was explaining things to a child. “Many of the women here came from other villages where they were cast off by their husbands and had no family or place else to turn.”
Like Duni.
Nyandoro latched on to the thought of her would-be wife, something precious she’d kept for herself through the long journey from Jaguar Village to this place. The alternative to dying or giving in to the Rain Queen’s demands was escaping and going back to Duni. But then what? Nyandoro couldn’t imagine the rest. They had taken so much from her.
Sorrow rippled under her skin and pulled her face tight. She crossed her arms over her belly. “I thought you killed all the men here and got rid of all the boy children.”
“No man has ever been welcomed into the palace,” the queen said with a pleased smile. “Some of the women come already pregnant. The ones who stay and take other women as wives are blessed by Yemaya with baby girls.”
“What?” The women had babies with each other?
“Yemaya makes many things possible. Especially such a small thing as having a family to call your own.”
“So you have daughters here? Other than Anesa?”
“Of course. I’ve been here for a very long time and I enjoy taking my wives to bed.” A wicked light flickered in the queen’s eyes. “It is one of many joys that come with the throne.”
She was pitifully transparent, trying to tempt Nyandoro with all she had. But it wasn’t working.
“All that sounds very well and good, but I still won’t accept it.”
All humor fell from the queen’s face. Her eyes flashed white. “You have to.”
“I don’t have to do anything but die.”
“Then you will die without avenging the death of your family.” The queen’s words were like arrows slamming into Nyandoro’s chest. She drew in a breath, and it hurt.
But that hurt quickly turned to anger. It lashed through her like a lightning storm and incinerated any sense of caution she might have had. She looked across the water. Kizo had wanted to wander the world and see all the beauty it had to offer. Now he never would.
Nyandoro clenched her trembling hand into a fist. And swung it at the queen. The woman didn’t hesitate. She jerked back from Nyandoro’s fist so fast her dress threshed the air with the sound of frightened birds, and she was returning the blow, leaping into Nyandoro instead of away. Hands shoved hard into Nyandoro’s chest and she staggered back, eyes narrowing, her body readying itself for a real fight.
This was not the weak woman she expected. The queen slammed a fist into her belly. She gasped at the pain and leapt back, the sand sucking her feet deep. But she steadied herself, whirled back into the fray with her body feeling even stronger than before, the blood rushing through her fast and sweet.
Yes. This was more like it. An equal fight where she could defend herself or at least die with the enemy’s blood on her lips. She flipped to the other side of the tree, using precious moments to rip the hem of her dress so she could free her legs from their betraying softness. The queen came at her in a graceful somersault, blue dress flapping around her slender body, the sun glinting off her skin. Her foot kicked high and Nyandoro ducked, catching the blow on her
shoulder instead of her head. It hurt. But she twisted into the queen with a hard thrust of her palm and she staggered back. And came for Nyandoro as if the blow never happened. She was definitely strong. And Nyandoro realized, her breath coming faster, sweat gathering in the small of her back and on her forehead, they were evenly matched.
The queen came at her, blow after blow, pushing her into the sea. The salt water splashed up around their legs, into her face, her mouth. The thumping rhythm, the sting of their blows took her back to another place, sparring with her brothers, feeling the bite of their fists or feet on her body, the satisfaction of landing a hit of her own. And because that memory came to her, she fought the queen harder. Spinning and kicking.
She could feel her lips skinning back from her teeth, the rage from earlier at the table take her over, make her want to see red blood spilled on the white sand. Because of this woman, her family was gone. Because of this woman, she had no one. Because of this woman, she was forced to wander the continent like a clan-less person. She roared and came at the bitch again.
The queen’s skin glowed with sweat, but she was almost smiling. There was no bloodlust in her. Her movements were graceful and practiced, like she was doing work that was necessary, not something she enjoyed or even whose outcome she was invested in seeing. That made Nyandoro even angrier.
“I’ll gut you, bitch!”
The queen had the nerve to laugh in her face. “You can try.” She wasn’t even breathing hard.
The queen’s hand flashed out and caught Nyandoro in the face. She felt her lip split, felt blood gush, tasted it. But she didn’t dwell on it. She kicked out, snarled in triumph when the blow connected and the queen dropped back into the sand. But before Nyandoro could take advantage, the queen was back on her feet and darting away. She followed to grab her but felt the slam of a fist instead. She lashed out through the pain and caught the queen high up on her cheekbone. She could feel the skin split under her knuckle and growled in triumph, ready to take her down.