Raybearer

by Jordan Ifueko

  The festival drumming tripled in speed, and the acolytes united to dance the irubo: a pantomime of the sacred Pelican flying down to save Queen Earth, piercing its own breast to nurse her. The dancers’ bodies rippled with sweat, chests glistening with crimson paint as they pulsed to the music. They leapt and spun, stretching mantles of feathers across their backs as wings.

  Kirah nudged me again. She looked stunning in the tunic and billowing trousers of her home realm. A gauzy green prayer scarf nestled around her face, and belts of silver coins dangled at her waist and brow. “I’m going to learn it,” she said. “The irubo.”

  I groaned. “Why do you always have to memorize everything?”

  Kirah’s features were round and bright. I suspected that she’d had too much honeywine, though her hazel eyes were hard and clear. “Because I’m tired of limits on what I’m supposed to know.”

  I was quiet for several moments, letting the downbeat of strings, talking drums, and shaker gourds braid themselves together in my ears. Faintly, I had a vision of standing at a window, watching children as they sang beneath me on a rolling grassland.

  But traitors rise and empires fall,

  And Sun-Ray-Sun will rule them all,

  When all is said-o, all is said

  And done-heh, done-heh, done.

  “Wherever I came from,” I told Kirah as irubo dancers whirled around us, “I think music was forbidden. Whenever I hear a song, it feels like I’m stealing something.”

  In the center of the festival, a vast pit gleamed with ominous red light. From within, firebrands and white coals made heat ripples in the crisp night air. Villages dug the pit to represent Am’s journey to the Underworld. If a reveler found an unlucky token in their honeywine, they were considered cursed until the next Nu’ina festival . . . unless a champion crossed the pit on their behalf. A single wooden slab lay across the pit’s mouth, making a laughably narrow bridge. It was only for show. Most festivalgoers would sooner brave a year of bad luck than have a friend cross that deadly oven.

  My palms sweated every time a dancer whirled too close to the edge. I wanted to scream when village children peered into the pit, throwing bits of goat fat and giggling when the flames crackled and popped. Didn’t they know how dangerous fire was? How evil and treacherous?

  No. Those children are normal. You’re the crazy one. I stuffed my mouth with fried plantain, wishing for more honeywine to dull my frayed nerves. My scalp still ached from the tight yarn-plaits, throbbing every time I moved my head.

  As the irubo ended to cheers and applause, the musicians struck up a mischievous tune on bells and shaker gourds. Children flocked to the festival clearing and took turns doing the worst dances they could imagine. They pursed their lips and pulled faces as they chanted, Brother-sister do as I do; don’t laugh as I do; don’t laugh as I do . . . Each child had to copy the leader’s dance without smiling or falling out of step, or else lose the game. My council tried to keep dignified faces, but within minutes our cheeks smarted from laughing. Dayo jumped off the front of our dais, dancing into the circle of children. With mock gravity, he pulsed his hips to the beat, shaping his arms in a tangle of poses.

  The village watched, speechless. Then a little boy dared to giggle. Then, an old woman—and in a tidal wave, the crowd was copying their future emperor’s ridiculous dance, helpless with laughter.

  Dayo grinned. He reminded me of a pool in a savannah, drawing creatures of every stripe to quench their thirst. He made people love him: naturally, permanently. And the brighter he glowed, the more fragile he seemed to me. He was everything our empire hoped for, and everything we had to lose.

  I jumped as the pit flared up again. Someone had tossed a bowl of perfumed oil onto the flames, signaling that it was time for the choosing of tokens. Village elders disguised by large wooden masks chanted over vessels of honeywine. The vessels’ tapered necks shielded the tokens inside from sight. One by one, the masked elders called us to dip smooth-handled drinking gourds into the vessels. We were each to drink until we found a token.

  Dayo went first, fishing a smooth cocoa bean from his gourd. The token had a well-known meaning: a future bitter and sweet. “That is a token you may trade,” intoned one of the elders. “Shall you keep it, Imperial Highness?”

  Dayo’s slender fingers closed around the bean. “Of course,” he said, raising the token above his head and making the traditional speech. “I will swallow bitterness so the lives of my people may be sweet.” The villagers cheered as Dayo chewed the raw bean, and my stomach churned for reasons I could not name. A young village girl crowned Dayo with a wreath of woven grass, and then trembled before him with an unspoken request. He knelt to hear it, and the girl pointed shyly to his mask.

  “Make it sparkle,” she lisped.

  Dayo grinned, then cried the word emblazoned on the mask in old Arit, calling its power as only true Raybearers could. “Oloye!”

  The mask’s eyes burst into scintillating light, making all who watched gasp and shield their faces. Then the villagers whooped and burst into applause: To be touched by the divine light of a Raybearer, many believed, meant a year of splendid luck.

  Thaddace and Mbali claimed their tokens and festival crowns next, then my council siblings, until only Sanjeet and I remained. When I drank from the gourd, something hard clicked against my teeth. I spat the object into my palm.

  It was a small sunstone, erupting with fiery light. A small hole had been bored into the gem, as if meant for a chain. The heat of skin seared deep in its memory, along with the pound-pound-pound of a strong, stubborn heart.

  The elders seemed confused for a moment, their immense wooden masks bobbing in conference. “Dominance,” one of them intoned at last. “That is the traditional meaning of such a token, as sunstones rest on the brows of Arit emperors. But you are a girl, and so the meaning refers to your proximity to greatness. You shall, perhaps,” said the elder, bowing his head coyly, “bear the fruit of dominance.”

  My face burned. A murmur rippled through the village crowd, peppered with stifled giggles. Apparently the rumors about me and Dayo had spread farther than Oluwan City.

  Kirah gave an irreverent snort. My gaze met hers. She rolled her eyes so hard, laughter bubbled in my throat, and my shame fell away.

  I held up the sunstone. “I will bear fruit for Aritsar,” I said sharply, “with my imperial scepter. As your High Lady Judge, equality and justice will be my children. Perhaps,” I added coolly, “my only children. Long live the sun and moons.” The crowd fell silent. Without rushing, I pocketed the sunstone, collected my crown of grass, and returned to my seat. As I passed, the villagers who had snickered lowered their eyes in fear. Good.

  Then it was Sanjeet’s turn. He looked resplendent in black as he approached the vessels, decked in the long embroidered tunic and linen trousers of Dhyrma princes. When the elders saw his token, they were silent for even longer than they had been for me. From a distance away, Sanjeet seemed to hold an ivory stone. Then he turned the object toward the firelight.

  It was a small carved skull.

  “Your hands were made for death,” a masked elder said simply. “There is no other interpretation. You may not trade this token.”

  An indignant murmur rose from my council’s dais. “That’s not fair,” I sputtered.

  But Sanjeet only shrugged. “It’s nothing I don’t already know.” He rolled the skull around in his wide palm. “I hoped once that Am would use my hands to heal instead of kill. But I am overruled. A High Lord General protects the innocent. I will dirty my hands to keep my prince clean.” Then he knelt to accept his festival crown.

  The village girl who held the wreaths didn’t move. When Sanjeet glanced up at her, the whites of her eyes flashed in terror.

  “Rude girl,” one of the village mothers scolded, looking embarrassed. “You must crown His Anointed Honor.”

  The child did not move, staring at Sanjeet like a cornered deer. “I don’t want to,” she mewled. �
��I don’t want to.”

  Sanjeet paled. “Please.” He held out his hand to the child and smiled. “Don’t be afraid.”

  She leapt as though Sanjeet had tried to strike her. “No, Prince’s Bear, don’t hurt me—” She burst into tears and bolted back into the crowd, abandoning Sanjeet’s grass crown in the dirt.

  Sanjeet knelt for a long time, staring at the crown in silence. Then he stood, face hardening into its usual mask. A few brave villagers came to dust the crown off, flocking around Sanjeet and bobbing with apologies, as Dayo and the others made a fuss, demanding the elders supply another interpretation.

  I said nothing, though my feet carried me from the dais. The scene around me faded to white noise, and my vision tunneled. I had to keep moving—I could not back down, not now. As my skin poured with cold sweat, a panicked cry cut through the air.

  “Anointed Honor Tarisai is crossing the pit!”

  My bare soles chafed on the hot wooden grain. I had left my sandals on the pit’s edge. The board was barely wide enough for both my feet; I had to place one in front of the other, forcing me to look down.

  The inferno grinned at me.

  I choked back a cry as the coals shifted, sending up a cloud of embers. The pit was gone, and I was running again toward the Children’s Palace bedroom doors. The air was blistering, and I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, and Dayo was going to die all over again and it would all be my fault . . .

  My vision swirled in red and white, blind as my feet continued to cross that flimsy board. My eyes stung and wept from the smoke. A sea of forked tongues rose with the heat and light, roaring in my ears: ours, ours, ours. And in that moment, I realized the true reason I feared fire.

  It knew.

  Fire recognized me for what I was. It claimed me as a daughter; it crackled and commanded that I burn and destroy. Fire would not hurt me, because fire had made me.

  And someday, Made-of-Me, murmured a voice as my nostrils filled with a musky floral smell, I will have you once again.

  “No,” I whispered, and stumbled. Then my soles met cool, dark earth. Arms reached to steady me as my guards and council siblings babbled with relief. They checked me for burns and dusted the embers from my wrapper, stamping the sparks in the dirt. I shook all over but ignored the fuss, pushing through the crowd to where Sanjeet stood frozen.

  Water pooled in his eyes. The mask had fallen from his face, replaced with shock, disbelief, and a simmering passion that made my knees weak.

  I took the skull from him and held it above my head. “I have broken Sanjeet of Dhyrma’s curse,” I croaked, voice still parched from the smoke. “His hands were made for life, not death. Bear witness.” Then I hurled the skull into the flames. The village cheered, and the drummers pounded a deafening beat. I retrieved the last wreath crown and placed it in his combed curls, and Sanjeet caught my hands and held them against his face. My heart slammed in my chest, but just as abruptly he relinquished me, striding over to the elders.

  Sanjeet held out his hand, demanding the drinking gourd without a word.

  “Yes,” an elder said, handing over the gourd hesitantly. “Since your last token has been revoked, you may choose again.”

  Sanjeet plunged the gourd into the vessel, tossed back some honeywine, and spat out a glittering ruby.

  “Ah,” the elders crowed. “An excellent token. Am has smiled on you—”

  The revelers gasped as Sanjeet threw the ruby in the dirt. He submerged the gourd into the vessel again, and this time he fished out an emerald the size of a plum pit: twice as valuable as the token before. He tossed that aside too.

  Speechless, the entire village watched as Sanjeet drank and plunged, over and over, discarding a small mound of treasures in the dirt. At last, he stopped and smiled. A small round token winked in his palm.

  A cowrie shell.

  CHAPTER 16

  Sanjeet pocketed the token and left the festival grounds without a word. His back melted into the shadows beyond the pit’s glow. I stared after him even when the musicians began another song and revelers gyrated around me to the tonal beat of talking drums.

  From her dais across the grounds, High Priestess Mbali waved me toward her. She stood and began to descend from her dais, but before she could, an arm pulled me into the crowd. I jumped, prepared to rebuke an impertinent villager . . . and found myself scowling up at Dayo’s grinning face. Why did he always spirit me away when I tried to speak with Mbali?

  “I don’t dance,” I reminded him.

  “But you can,” he said. The obsidian mask glittered on his chest as he moved in a rhythmic circle around me. “I saw you. Years ago at the Children’s Palace. You snuck up to the roof with Kirah to watch the festivals in the city. And you danced.”

  “You followed me?”

  He placed a hand on my waist, coaxing it to sway instinctively. “I followed you.”

  Oluwan dancing relied almost entirely on hips. The drums pulsed fast and high, like the heartbeat of a wild hare. I lacked the natural grace of Oluwan women. I was awkward and stilted in places they were fluid and sultry. My steps faltered, and my face heated with embarrassment. “Everyone’s watching,” I muttered.

  “Don’t look at them,” Dayo said. “Look at me.”

  I did. His broad Kunleo features were radiant. He winked, teeth bright against his skin, which was beautiful even with the burn scar. I remembered how cheerfully Dayo had mocked himself in the earlier game, and I envied his childlike freedom. My hips began to roll to the beat, and I mirrored Dayo’s arms.

  “Don’t look,” he reminded me as my gaze slid to the crowd of villagers around us. The Ray hummed in my ears and I heard him add Do you love me now, Tarisai of Swana?

  The music’s tempo increased. My muscles loosened; we revolved like moths in firelight. Dayo’s long, lean form grew suddenly unfamiliar as I tried to imagine it near mine, closer than we’d ever been: a promise beyond council vows. I heard the question buried beneath his words. Look at me.

  I had always felt close to Dayo in a way I couldn’t explain. We knew the rumors surrounding us, the public expectation that I would bear Dayo’s heir. But the intimacy we shared had never invoked the heat between our legs. I loved him—would die for him—but this new language, the message we sent with our bodies as we danced, felt . . . insincere. Staged. As though we were acting out parts that the world expected us to perform.

  I found my mind slipping away, gone to those shadows beyond the festival grounds, where another man waited in the welcoming darkness.

  When the song finished, I backed away from Dayo, letting the revelers form a river between us. He looked on, confused, craning his neck to find me. But I turned and ran from the festival.

  Like hurling a stone into a well, I sent the Ray into the darkness. After several moments I found Sanjeet; he had walked half a mile from the village, to where the Obasi Ocean lapped at the mouth of the valley.

  When I arrived, the tide was low, revealing a patchwork of pools that winked with shells and sand dollars. The waves crashed like soft cymbals. Blue sprites hummed in the balmy night, winking in Sanjeet’s shadow.

  He didn’t look up when I approached. He was leaning against a boulder jeweled with barnacles, his hands busy with something I couldn’t see.

  “You sure made a lot of villagers happy,” I said. “They lunged for those jewels you threw away.”

  “Good for them.” He still did not look up.

  I swallowed and changed the subject. “Why do we give village elders so much power, anyway? What right do they have to say who you are—who anyone is? It’s a dumb tradition.” I scowled at my reflection in a tide pool. “When I’m High Lady Judge, I’m going to change it. Don’t let me forget.”

  “And off she goes,” Sanjeet murmured. His voice was cavernous, even against the roar of the waves. “Bent on winning freedom for the entire world. Tarisai of Swana.” He laughed, a gentle growl that made my insides restless. “She would have us be masters of our own f
ates, whether we like it or not.”

  “You think I’m naive.”

  “No. I think you’re Aritsar’s best hope. I think there are people in power who see what I see, and they are scared witless. And I think I’ve loved you,” he said, “since that night you pulled a shackle off my arm.”

  Sanjeet crossed the dappled mirror of tide pools, and my heart raced, but not with shame or fear. I reached for his cheek, and he leaned into my hand, lips brushing my palm.

  “Which laws would you break for me?” I asked.

  “Your pick.” His jaw ticked with humor. “You’re the High Lady Judge.”

  I flushed. “I want to be responsible.”

  “We’ll be careful.”

  “No, I meant . . . I want to be responsible for you. For your good dreams. Your nightmares, Jeet. I want to know them all.” My hands fell to his chest, where solid muscle warmed through black linen. “I won’t always know how to help. But I want to be there for all of it.”

  “As my council sister?”

  My nose wrinkled with distaste, and he chuckled. “I’ve come,” I said, gripping the front of his tunic, “to claim that cowrie shell.”