by Fiona Zedde
“I’m going to kill you!” he gasped. “I don’t know what they did to you in that godless place, but I’ll slash you into pieces and bathe in your blood.”
Nyandoro bared her teeth at him. “Come.”
He came at her with a loud roar, careless and angry, leaving his belly wide open. Nyandoro took the gift he gave. She jabbed her knife into his stomach then yanked the small blade up, sharply twisting. He gasped and jerked against her, his body heaving and gushing blood. His tapanga clattered to the floor. Nyandoro shoved him away from her, her fist still gripping her knife and coated with his hot blood. He dropped to his back with a thud, landing in a sprawl with his belly raw red and puckered open, dripping out the ropes of his intestines. His chest heaved with his labored breath. The pulse shivered in his throat. Sweat coated his skin and his flickering lashes drooped low over burst blood vessels in his eye.
“You daughter of a goat!” he panted, his body bloody and twitching on the scattered maps of his planned conquest.
“I am no one’s daughter,” Nyandoro said. “You saw to that.”
She slit his throat.
*
When Aminifu’s last breath left her body, her daughter was by her side. Nyandoro was not, but she was there to take care of the physical body she had left behind. She draped Aminifu’s shell on the traditional funeral bed on the beach. On the white sand, a large stone slab that could have been a bed or even the rock next to the river in Nyandoro’s village, the women of the palace surrounded Aminifu’s body with flowers. Purple orchids, yellow poppies, white lilies still tight in their buds that would open in the afterlife and perfume her journey into Yemaya’s arms. Clad in white, to mourn the death of an elder, sashes of red around their waists to signify the death of the queen, the entire palace of women fanned out on the beach around Aminifu’s silent body.
Nyandoro stood at the head of the funeral slab in her white tunic and lifted her hands toward the ocean and Yemaya’s dwelling place. There were no words needed, only the mournful rhythm of the drums lined along the beach, pounding out a hard beat, a heartbeat, that Aminifu no longer had. It began to rain, small droplets, then larger ones, pattering over their clothes, their heads, while the waves came closer and closer in. The seawater swirled around their feet, eddying around the slab while the rain fell.
With each drop of rain on her skin, Nyandoro felt both renewed and exposed, and tears she hadn’t known were there spilled down her cheeks. She tried to imagine Duni standing by her side, but could not. Why would such a good woman allow herself to be near a murderer, someone who would kill another human and take pleasure from it? Nyandoro had no regrets about killing the lion-skin chief, but she knew that his death more than any other, forever separated her from the person she had been in Jaguar Village, and from the person she wanted.
The rain fell harder and so did her tears. The women began to hum, a rising and falling chorus as the rain fell harder and harder. Patting the petals of the flowers, the leaves growing around the dark lilies, on Aminifu’s white funeral clothes. Nyandoro didn’t notice it at first. The disintegration.
It was so gradual that it seemed just a trick of the late evening light. But then she saw it was true. The raindrops were disintegrating Aminifu’s flesh, turning it to glittering black sand. Her face melted away, slowly, feature by feature, then her throat, her body, becoming nearly liquid and rushing from the funerary slab, slithering down with the heavy wet of the rain down to the sand where it writhed over the white sand, rushing into the ocean.
She didn’t know how long she stood watching Yemaya reclaim her queen, feeling the cool rains on her face and shoulders, but when she looked up, most of the women were gone. A line of their beautiful bodies walked away from the beach and back up to the palace. Only she and Anesa stood with Aminifu’s empty funeral dress and the flowers that had surrounded her.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without her,” Anesa said, sounding lost and far away.
Nyandoro knew the feeling. Losing a parent, no matter how anticipated the loss, was one of the worst hurts under heaven. She put a hand on Anesa’s shoulder. “You’ll do what you have to,” she said. “You’ll survive.”
*
Much later that evening, after most of the women had gone to sleep, Yemaya appeared in her solid form, shimmering, her long skirts the color of abalone shells, her breasts bare, her smile tamed.
“And, you, Nyandoro?” she asked, settling into Nyandoro’s lap. Her skin flickered from warm to cool where they touched. “Will you do what you must?”
Even knowing the limitless nature of Yemaya’s power, Nyandoro couldn’t stop the start of shock at her presence outside the world of dreams. Still, she wound her arms around Yemaya’s waist and better arranged her slight weight so they could both be comfortable on the wooden chair. They sat on the terrace where Aminifu and Nyandoro once shared a meal.
Before Yemaya appeared, she’d been feeling her new power as Rain Queen settle more firmly around her bones, winding through her like smoke then solidifying, becoming part of the very essence of who she was. The memories of the previous queens were a constant litany of whispers just behind her ear, telling her and showing her what her life would be from now on. Being the seemingly non-threatening human emissary of one of the most powerful Orishas ever created. Bringing rains to dry regions that observed the ways of Yemaya. Serving as the seed-mother for women who could not accept the sperm of men to bring children into the world. Nyandoro was now these things and so much more. The responsibility of it all made her belly clench with anxiety. But the combined experiences of the rain queens who’d come before her already provided the strength she’d need in coming centuries.
Nyandoro breathed in acceptance and breathed out a sigh. Beyond where she sat, the courtyard was empty, silent, and the night sky too beautiful for words. Only one thing could make it better.
“What are you asking me?” Nyandoro asked Yemaya finally, although she already knew the answer to her own question.
The death of her family had taken away more than her connection to close blood. It had taken away her will to live. And even with the grace of Yemaya flooding through her invigorated body, in moments, she stood still, flushed with fury, her insides crawling with despair. It was because of Yemaya that she had lost her parents, Nitu, Andwele, Hakim, Adli, and Kizo. Duni. How could she reconcile that with her living in the Orisha’s palace and doing everything she commanded?
Breath that smelled of sea salt wound through the air along with a sigh. “I have no command for you but to be happy,” Yemaya said.
“That’s the only command I cannot follow.”
“Always so stubborn.” Yemaya wound her arms around Nyandoro’s shoulders, slathered a clumsy kiss on her cheek. Despite everything, Nyandoro felt a warm spark of affection for her. “I’ll only ask one thing of you for the moment.” Nyandoro stiffened, then consciously tried to relax when Yemaya trailed cool fingers down the side of her neck. “Only this,” she continued. “Go to the place where this all started. There, you will find some relief from the pain you feel.”
Nyandoro tilted her head to look at the sky. Clouds veiled the moon. The stars were still the same, pinpricks of light in the otherwise opaque and impenetrable fabric of night. The hills of their valley gleamed darkly with the memory of blood and of the men who had flooded down toward the palace at their peril. A night bird shrieked. Relief from her pain, even the smallest measure, seemed then like the most elusive thing in the world.
*
But in the end, Nyandoro did what Yemaya asked. Covered from head to foot in dark robes, she walked into Jaguar Village one late night. Along the path to her parents’ compound, she smelled the familiar honey blossom tree, sweet and most potent, heard the full hum of the river through the trees, the sound of families settling in for the night. The moon was just bright enough to see by.
It was late, nearly the crossover to a new day. She wanted to make sure she had privacy to mourn in peace,
to look at the last place she’d seen her family, alive and then dead.
At the entrance to her family compound, she paused with her hand on the trunk of the plum tree her mother planted the day Ndewele, her first, was born. Its leaves brushed her face, a rough caress, leaving behind its particular green smell.
Ndewele. Gone.
Her hand trembled and fell away from the tree that would no longer mark a life, only honor a death. The tremors took over her whole body, and she felt as helpless as the screaming newborn her dead brother had been. All this power at her fingertips, but for what?
Nyandoro forced herself to walk farther into the compound.
How long had it been since she’d been taken? Weeks? Months? Her sense of time was splintered. The compound was empty, ground neatly swept, the torches dark. No blood soaking into the dirt. No chopped foot stuck in an open door. It was like her family had never died here, or had never lived.
The fires of her mother’s cookhouse would never again burn. Kizo would never clasp her shoulder, never share a drink with her. Nyandoro clenched her fingers into her thigh and willed the tears away. They burned to be released, but she was no longer that girl who indulged so easily in her emotions.
“Ny?”
She turned sharply at the sound of her childhood name, the thick drapes of cloth she wore fluttering up around her and flying up dust. Her throat tightened around a cry.
Duni stood beneath Ndewele’s plum tree, hands clutching the trunk of the tree as if, without its support, she would fall. In the moonlight, sharp and unforgiving, she looked tired and worn out. The cloth around her body was frayed, her feet dusty, and her sandals on the verge of falling off. But her hair.
She had always been vain about her hair. Making the time, above anything else, to make sure her hair was oiled and combed, the twists of her hair glistened in the light. But now her hair was uncombed and dry, loose around her face and matted against her head in places. Nyandoro wanted to touch her. Was she real?
Duni jerked away with a gasp. Only then did Nyandoro realize she had come close, too quickly, and hovered there, a cowled stranger. She pushed the cloth away from her head and face. Duni choked on another gasp.
“It is you!” She stumbled back against the tree and slid down the rough bark to drop into the dirt. “Or am I dreaming again?” Tears spilled down her face and carved twin paths through the dust on her cheeks.
Duni’s tears broke the paralysis that held Nyandoro back. She dropped to her knees and took Duni’s hands. They were rough and work-worn, but she’d never felt anything so wonderful in her life. “No. I’m really here.”
Duni stared at her, unblinking, her mouth opening and closing though no words came. Nyandoro squeezed her hands and tried to send her calm, but her own heart was fluttering in her chest. Misery and happiness coiled together inside her, painfully twisting her insides. The battle raged even more when Duni threw her arms around her and held on tight.
And as tightly as Duni held on, Nyandoro felt herself hold on tighter. The days trapped in alternate moments of unconsciousness and terror had kept her from this woman and from the love that could have been even greater if those men hadn’t come bringing death. Nyandoro clamped her lips together to stop the desperate noises that throbbed in her throat, wanting to be set free. Cries she wanted to make because she had the woman in her arms who she could not keep. Trembling, she savored Duni’s warmth against her body, the desperate clutch of fingernails into her waist through the thin cloth of her robe.
“You’re here!” Duni whispered over and over again through her tears. After a long moment, she drew back, trembling. “Where have you been?” The tears had spiked her lashes and she looked vulnerable, delicate.
“I’ve been far away.”
Her eyes pecked over Nyandoro from her uncovered head, faintly damp with rain, to her bare feet with the rings on her toes, gleaming faintly gold in the darkness. She pressed closer to Nyandoro, nearly sitting in her lap.
“Your family…everyone. They’re gone.”
“I know.” Nyandoro breathed through the sharp and sudden pain that lanced under her ribs. “I came here right after it happened. The men who killed them took me.”
“No!” Duni gripped her waist again, her eyes wide. “Are you well?”
“Yes…” Was she?
Her body was unharmed and felt even better than before the men had taken her. She was strong again, nearly invincible, all of her smooth and unscarred. But inside, she felt like a throbbing wound.
Yemaya had sent her back to the village to ease some of her pain. More pain, though, was what she’d found instead. Duni, crying and defeated, her tear-stained face only making Nyandoro question the decision she’d made to leave her in peace and not sully her with bloodied hands.
At the palace, that decision had made sense. But here in the courtyard, she could almost smell Kizo’s blood and see her mother’s dead eyes. Every place she looked was a reminder of what she had lost. These things made her want to hold tight to Duni and never let her go. She was all Nyandoro had left.
But that would be selfish.
“I…” I have to go. The words hovered on Nyandoro’s lips. She knew she had to say them. But this was Duni, the only family she had left. Despite the warmth of the night, she shivered.
“What’s wrong?” Duni asked.
“I have to leave.”
“All right.” Duni braced herself against Nyandoro’s shoulder to stand up. “Just let me get my things.”
Just tell her. “You can’t…”
“I can’t what?” Behind Duni, the stars were a sprinkling of light in the bleakness of the sky.
“You can’t come with me,” Nyandoro said. “I’m not the same person you knew before.”
“And do I look the same to you?” Duni gestured to herself, and Nyandoro couldn’t help but notice again how thin she was, the ashiness of her elbows and knees, the faded color of her kanga.
No, Duni was not the same. Even with the worry of sharing the same house with Ibada, she had kept herself shimmering and beautiful. And although Nyandoro still loved Duni, she could see that it was not only the kanga that was faded. Some of the life and passion and been drained from her too.
“You told me we had forever,” Duni said.
It was an accusation and it stung Nyandoro, but the truth was more important than her hurt feelings. “Ny promised you forever,” she said, feeling as separate from that carefree girl as night was from day. “She died here with her family.”
“A change in your circumstances does not absolve you of your responsibilities, Nyandoro.”
Responsibilities? No. Loving Duni had never been a responsibility, and promising to join their lives together was simply an extension of their love. How could she make Duni understand?
She drew in a long breath and released it. But could find no words to fill the silence.
“Take me with you,” Duni said, frowning as Nyandoro’s silence grew. “We can still be together.”
Crickets shrilled and the darkness of the evening suddenly seemed oppressive, weighing Nyandoro down.
Duni drew a hissing breath, the hope draining from her face. “If you have to think that hard about whether or not to take me with you, then go. I won’t beg.” Duni raised herself to her full height, taller than Nyandoro, and stared down at her in scorn. “Have a good life.” She paused. “Wife.”
Nyandoro winced. Yes, that was what she once wanted. To be a wife to one woman, for one woman to be a wife to her. But that was before they took everything away from her.
But now you’re the one throwing her away.
Nyandoro startled at the voice threading through her mind.
“Stay out of my thoughts!” She snapped out before she could think.
A breeze rose up suddenly and hissed through the trees. Fat raindrops spat from the sky, a quick burst that wet Nyandoro’s hair and clothes, wet Duni. But the voice said nothing else.
“Who are you talking to
?” Duni asked, staring up at the sky that was once again dry. “What’s going—? You know what? Never mind.” She wiped the water from her face with hands that trembled. “Whatever you have going on is no concern of mine.” She walked away.
And Nyandoro allowed it. She felt that pain again under her ribs, sharper, a knife splitting her open and laying her entrails out in the dirt. She opened her mouth to call Duni back. But nothing came out. Nothing.
Duni walked farther and farther away, past the place where Kizo had died, past Ndewele’s tree, then—
Yemaya appeared in Duni’s path. Her face beautiful and human, the ends of her braided hair brushing her shoulders, her peacock skirts fluttering around her hips and floating down to the ground. Her breasts were bare under the trailing ends of the beaded collar flowing from her slender throat. Light pulsed around her, a subtle and hypnotic glowing.
Duni stopped when she saw her, footsteps hesitating. “Do I know you? You seem…familiar.”
Worried, Nyandoro took a step to come between them, but a step was the farthest she moved before an invisible and immovable force stopped her short.
“You don’t have to stay in this village, Duni,” Yemaya said, lulling and soft. Her skirts moved with the breeze and the salt sweetness of the ocean filled the air.
Duni backed away, her hands extended blindly behind her. “Who are you?”
“I’m who Nyandoro has been with all this time.”
Duni looked sharply back at Nyandoro and clenched her arms tight around her stomach. Nyandoro didn’t think it was possible, but she looked even worse than before. Not just hurt, but betrayed and confused.
“You can come with me too,” Yemaya said.
But Duni shook her head, paying attention only to Nyandoro. Her eyes were wide and bleak. “This is what you’ve been doing while I’ve been dying here without you?” Duni’s shout was pain itself.