by Fiona Zedde
“There is no need to kneel for me, Nyandoro,” she said. “You and I are the same.” Her voice was low, rough.
The children, seeming to sense a change in the room all began to move away from the queen, throwing frightened glances at Nyandoro’s face, the bloodied dagger in her hand, her torn dress. She shoved the dagger into her belt.
“It was them.” Nyandoro jerked her head toward the children, the pregnant women, and the delicate looking ones who looked like they’d never so much as slaughtered a chicken in their lives. “I can’t let those men in here with them.”
“Whatever the reason, it is the right one.”
“Iya…” Anesa clung to the queen’s arm, tears running down her face. “Is it really time?”
Nyandoro frowned at her through the thundering of her heart, the mixed feelings twisting her stomach to shreds. She thought this was what Anesa wanted all along.
“You know this is what we have been expecting, my Anesa. Nothing is forever.”
A sob twisted the young girl’s face, and even the quiet children began to sniffle.
The queen pressed a kiss to Anesa’s forehead then gently pulled away. “I’ve always loved you best,” she said to her daughter.
Anesa’s smile was watery and unconvincing. “I know you say that to all the others.”
Nyandoro’s fingers twitched with impatience. The blood was beginning to dry on her skin. More and more women were losing their lives the longer they continued with…whatever was going on here. Her mouth twisted with impatience.
“First you wanted none of this, now you’re pushing for it to happen!” Anesa snapped. “You’re an animal!”
Nyandoro didn’t have time to decipher what was going on with her. “Either let me have the power or don’t,” she said. “But whatever the decision, we have to do something.”
The queen put a hand on her daughter’s head. “Shh, Anesa. She only wants to help.”
“Now when it is almost too late and we’ve lost so many.”
“Anesa!” The queen snapped her daughter’s name, her patience apparently at an end. The girl shut her mouth. “Come, Nyandoro.”
Anesa reluctantly moved away from her mother, and Nyandoro came to sit next to the Rain Queen, their thighs pressed together, knees raised. The queen twisted slightly so their foreheads were pressed together, their fingers laced. Her breath puffed against Nyandoro’s mouth, warm and faintly sour. She felt cool. But with each passing moment, the places where they were pressed together grew warm.
“Yemaya, grant me the power,” the Rain Queen said softly, the words low and ceremonial, “to give up what you have bestowed upon me for these many seasons.”
For a moment, Nyandoro wondered what she should say, what she should do, then the words appeared in her mind and spilled from her mouth. “Yemaya grant me the power to accept what you so freely give.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the room crackled with power around them. From the contact point between their foreheads, Nyandoro felt a nearly unpleasant heat, as if she’d been lying in the noonday sun too long. Voices whispered. Wind rustled through trees in a place she could not see. Knowledge rushed into her in a dizzying swirl. She tilted her head by instinct, just as she felt the Rain Queen do the same.
Their mouths touched. Power flared between their bodies, a flash of pale lightning. Nyandoro opened her mouth to the liquid press of the queen’s tongue, a blood-quickening suck and release of lips and breath that made her lashes flutter down in embarrassed arousal. Electricity danced between their mouths, slid down her throat and settled in wild heat in her belly. Power. The firm snare of the queen’s teeth on her lower lip quickened desire between her legs, and she squirmed, pressed her thighs together, and, unable to help it, sighed into the hot mouth stroking hers. When the queen pulled back she was smiling.
Nyandoro flushed hot, aware of the children and Anesa nearby. A squeeze of her hand brought her attention back to the purpose of their union.
“We are rain,” the queen said.
“Moonlight.” Nyandoro trembled as she said the word.
“The fecundity of the valleys.”
They spoke as one. “Until we are no more.”
The room seemed to vibrate with each word they spoke, the air crackling, a sharp and bright smell of lighting and the sound of thunder filled the room.
Then Nyandoro couldn’t breathe. Memories, not hers, pressed down on her. This Rain Queen on her first night at the palace, standing naked and in shock as her new wives bathed her. Another queen, long turned to dust, gasping in the throes of childbirth as her first and last daughter slid from between her thighs. Still another queen crouching in the middle of a charred battlefield with lightning exploding from her outspread hands to kill every man in her sight. And more and more.
Stupidly, Nyandoro tried to fight it. Pushing back against the heavy weight of the other queens’ memories, of their lives.
“Breathe. It will be okay,” the Rain Queen said against her cheek, her breath soothing and warm. “Don’t fight. If you fight, it will take longer and it will hurt. Let her in. Allow yourself to be hers.”
Nyandoro unclenched her fists slowly and let go of her fear. Her breathing calmed.
“Àṣẹ.”
Then the lightning and thunder flashed out of existence, and the room was just like any other once again. A wavering moan left the Rain Queen’s throat. She sagged toward the floor, but Nyandoro caught her before she fell. “My queen!”
But the Rain Queen raised a hand that was thinner than it had been just moments before. “I am called Aminifu once again,” she said. “Now, you are as what I once was.” Slowly, the youth began to disappear from Aminifu’s features. Her skin grew papery and thin, age spots peppered the sides of her face, her hands. Aminifu sighed as if releasing a great weight. “Take care of the women here. Take care of Anesa and my other daughters.”
“Iya!” As if the sound of her name had been her signal that the ceremony was over, Anesa rushed to Aminifu’s side, sobs overtaking her. “Please, not yet! I need more time with you. Just a little more.”
“You’ve had three hundred seasons with me, my little one. It is time to let go now.”
Her thin palm brushed across Anesa’s cheek with a sound like paper. Tears rolled down the young girl’s face.
“My queen,” Aminifu said, her voice barely above a whisper. “You must do it now.”
“Yes.” And Nyandoro did know what it was she should do.
She gathered all her will. Then blasted it into the world. Lightning flashed behind her eyelids and her entire world went white.
The power flashed through her like a cleansing fire. She felt everything—the minute growth of her fingernails, the desperation of the women in the palace, the life flowing out of Aminifu.
“She is well taken care of,” a familiar voice whispered in her ear.
It was the same voice that had threaded through her thoughts since she was a small child, the woman who…
“You are her.”
The woman, the being, bowed at the waist and the cowrie collar that hid her breasts shifted, revealing then concealing her brown nipples. “I am.” The long kanga around her waist also moved, drifting around her legs like the waves of the sea.
With her rain washed eyes, she saw the Orisha for who she was. Not the beautiful woman who appeared to her in dreams. But the mother, the mermaid, the warrior woman, all aspects of her that her mind could not grasp before, all shifting from one to the next, never-ending. With Nyandoro in the half dream state where she was aware of the things happening in the world—Anesa crying, Aminifu feeling disoriented by the loss of power, the loss of her intimate conversations with Yemaya.
“I should be angry with you,” Nyandoro said.
“You are angry with me.” Yemaya curled her legs under her, although she had no legs and she wasn’t in fact even resting on the floor with her but floating on a piece of the sea, rippling and bright. Nyandoro absently wond
ered if she touched it, would it be wet.
“Why don’t you touch and see?” Yemaya’s smiles were unlike any she had ever known. Sharp, sweet, dangerous, warm, devilish, mocking, filled with the best intent.
“I am not a child.” Nyandoro didn’t know where that comment came from. As soon as Nyandoro said the words, she knew they were wrong. Only Duni had looked at her like a child, though not for long.
“I know.” Yemaya’s finger trailed down her arm, a cool and shivery sensation that rippled all the way through her. “When you have adjusted to being mine, I will claim you in all the ways one being can claim another. I look forward to tasting you outside of dreams.”
A hint of that promised pleasure snaked down Nyandoro’s spine and made her think again of Duni.
“Am I dreaming now?” she asked with only a hint of the grief she was feeling.
Yemaya smiled again and flicked water over Nyandoro’s face. “You tell me.”
She closed her eyes against the cool spray. When she opened them, her face was wet and her enemies were dead.
Chapter Ten
The outer rooms of the palace, the courtyard, and the grassy stretch of land around the palace were filled with dead men. Nyandoro stood on the wide stone terrace and stared out at the fertile valley grass that was black from the hundreds of bodies that had simply dropped where they stood. Hearts stopped. Although she’d known they were there and dead because of her, seeing them made her gasp in shock. She swayed into the high railing of the terrace. The moonlight felt too bright on her face.
This power, she thought with bile rising in her throat, could easily turn me into a devil.
“My queen.”
It took her a long time to realize the guard, hovering behind her on the terrace, was talking to her. She turned.
“What shall we do with the bodies?” A gash bled sluggishly high on the woman’s cheekbones, but she didn’t seem bothered by it. She stood with a hand gripping the handle of the tapanga sheathed at her waist.
What should we…? Oh, right. “Bury our sisters,” Nyandoro said. She closed her eyes, and every dead invader around and inside the palace disintegrated into dust.
A ripple of approval came from that place inside her where Yemaya now lived.
But she only felt her own fear. Power pulsed through her hands like a new wound. Her entire body felt lit afire from the inside out, senses on high alert, aware of everything from the touch of the cloth on her skin to the strength of the tides on the nearby sea. It all frightened her. And it made her want safety. It made her want to take back her decision and say “no” to Aminifu, to tell her she’d made some terrible mistake.
But Aminifu was no longer the Rain Queen.
Nyandoro was, and she had things to do.
A warrior in blue armor appeared high on the rise with a bow and empty quiver. Even from there, Nyandoro could see the warrior was exhausted and at the end of her endurance. Smaller figures trailed from behind her, and they began their slow, winding way down into the valley. Nyandoro felt their loss. She could see the blood splashed on their faces, on their hands, and not all of it belonging to their enemies. They’d lost just as she had. Nyandoro was tired of losing.
The pulse hammered in her throat and her hands clenched into fists, driving short nails into her palms. She trembled all over. Was this fear? She’d experienced it enough in her lifetime and learned to mask it with jokes and false bravery. Only when she felt the growl rise in the back of her throat did she realize what she was feeling.
Rage. Mindless and all-consuming rage.
Aminifu and Anesa had what they wanted. The palace was safe from invaders.
She was the one left with nothing. Her life from now on would be empty. She only had a throne she never wanted. A broken marriage promise. Nightmares of dead bodies scattered around a cold hearth. And the men who had done this to her still walked the earth whole and unchanged.
Her anger burned. The heat of it rolled through her and pushed her forward through distance.
She emerged on a rock-paved road just outside the walls of a village. The wall was as tall as four men, the top jagged with sharp blades. Its gates were closed, but with a light push from her mind, Nyandoro opened them. The squeal and clatter of the massive gates yawning brought tall men with spears and tapangas running.
Nyandoro waved a hand infused with power and they fell back, looking confused, before turning back to their posts. The village, like the first time she’d seen it, appeared like any other. A main square and houses with vegetable gardens. Kanga cloths hanging to dry on lines strung between trees.
The streets were wider than Jaguar Village, and quiet. Nighttime left the village nearly deserted, but the strong glow of torchlights high on a hill and surrounding a large stone house, larger than the simple dwellings that spread out in a circle along the village walls, guided her to where she needed to be. The chief was there with advisors, she knew, waiting on news from his men sent to attack the queen.
He wasn’t going to like the news she brought him.
Nyandoro pressed forward. She didn’t hide herself, instead gave the guards a long look at her as she made her way down a narrow hallway toward the room where she sensed the chief’s presence.
Feminine and soft. That’s how she knew she looked to them. Her face was round and pretty in the torchlights, her tunic soft and loose around her body as it brushed the floor with each step. Her small knife, traded out for the more obvious tapanga, seemed a negligible presence at her waist.
But as Nyandoro came closer, one of the guards stared at her with growing suspicion. He recognizing her from when she’d been there before. A prisoner. He pointed his spear and opened his mouth to say something to her, but she waved her hand and put him to sleep along with the others.
Nyandoro opened the door. She saw the chief sitting high and tall on an ornate chair and talking with three of his men. The room was bright with torchlights. Two of the men stood near a table spread with maps, while the third leaned against a nearby wall with his spear propped up beside him, his arms crossed over his chest and his chin dropped low like he was taking a nap.
“We will win,” one of the men was saying. He stood with his scarred fists braced against the wooden surface of the table. “The men were right behind the messengers carrying the girl. They were far enough behind that the women couldn’t detect them, but close enough to have already started the fight.”
“It won’t be a fight,” the chief said with a dismissive shrug. “You only fight with an equal.” His eyes swept over the map. “We sent every available man. Their queen” he spat the word with contempt, “should be dead by now and her women rounded up for the foreign slavers.”
“You’re almost half right,” Nyandoro said as she stepped fully into the room.
Their shock almost made her smile. She floated across the room, showing off now, her feet not touching the floor.
“Who are you?” One of the men near the table confronted her the same time the chief jumped to his feet, reaching for the tapanga at his waist.
“Grab her!” the chief growled.
Nyandoro did smile then. “I’d love to see you try. I’m not as weak as the last time I was here.”
The last time had been tears and vomit and blood. All hers. This time would be a different story.
The one who had been napping against the wall moved the fastest. He had his spear in hand and was shooting toward Nyandoro before the other men properly registered the order from their chief. And the napping man looked familiar. He was one of the men who had touched her before and held her down. She remembered his smell, could almost feel the imprint of his hands on her skin.
It wasn’t a good memory.
She grabbed him from mid-air and threw him into the wall. A hoarse shout and he splattered open, slid down the wall in red and brain streaks then was still. The other men didn’t waste any more time. They rushed at her with their raised blades and the ring of the chief’s orders in the air
. Nyandoro didn’t prolong it. She wasn’t there for them. She dodged the first one, darting past his slashing tapanga and kicking him in the back. He grunted as he tripped forward and crashed into the table. Quickly, he righted himself and swung back to Nyandoro with his blade. But she’d already yanked the second one close and snapped his neck. Snarling, she grabbed the dead man by his feet and swung the limp body around in a wide circle, using it like a club to beat the other one back down. His big body slammed into the table again, this time breaking it in two with a sharp crack. A shard of wood from the table lanced through his chest the same time his agonized shriek filled the room. She dropped his friend’s body in disgust.
Then it was just Nyandoro and the chief in the wrecked room. He stood only a few steps from her, his breath harsh and steady like a bull’s, stance wide and the tapanga gripped tightly in a gray-knuckled hand.
“What do you want?” he spat.
“What would you want if someone killed everything you loved and took you prisoner?”
She asked the question casually, barely breathing hard after getting his men out of the way. A discarded spear clattered to the floor from the inclined surface of the broken table. Nyandoro picked it up. She snapped the wood from the metal blade and tested the sharpness of the blade with her thumb. She smiled in satisfaction when a line of blood appeared in its wake. A sharp movement of her hand flicked the blood away.
She looked up at the chief. “Hmm? What would you do if you were in my place?”
But he was looking down at her thumb where the blade had cut. She wasn’t bleeding anymore, and the cut healed as she watched.
“You still bleed,” he growled and rushed her.
She grinned. “So do you.”
Nyandoro easily sidestepped his fist and the sharp thrust of the tapanga, dancing back and out of his way. Her robes fluttered around her as she moved.
Stop playing with him.
The familiar voice was gentle reason in her head. But she didn’t want reason. She wanted blood. Nyandoro jumped over the broken table, a foot landing on the back of a dead man, and she used the body to push herself off and up high in the air, coming down with the blade raised high and slashing. The chief darted out of her way and kicked out, landing a hit to her ribs. She grunted and fell back, sighed when the pain only briefly registered before disappearing altogether.