Rise of the Rain Queen Read online

  Ny’s brothers fell back, allowing her to finish her kill. She leapt over its twitching body, avoiding its sharp horns, the scathing agony in its eyes. The buck’s fearful heart thumped hard through its skin, rapping against her palm. Its pelt was hot. Its eyes wide and afraid. She cut its throat, gasping as the blood rushed over her hands and she felt its heart stutter, slow. Then stop.

  Her own heart was a pulsing calm in her chest. With the red on her hands, she looked up. Nitu and Adli were frozen at the edge of everything, watching her as if she was some unexpected thing they’d found in the forest. Ny didn’t understand why when they’d seen her hunt before and killed much bigger prey. Kizo dropped to one knee next to her, a knife already in hand to help gut the buck and get it ready for travel back to the village. Hakim appeared at his side.

  “Well done, sister,” he said. But his eyes were already moving around the grassy plain, already looking for other prey.

  *

  Ny and Adli carried the heavy buck through the fortified gates of the village. Each held on their shoulder one end of the long pole supporting the skinned and cleaned gazelle in the middle. She had insisted on helping to carry the kill, just in case they ran into Duni. Proof that she could provide. But they didn’t see her.

  Although it was dark and the long torches lit up the high stone rocks of the wall, a schoolroom of children greeted them with clapping and shouts, following them in a ragtag parade along the paved stone of the main village road. It felt good, a true triumph that made the pride swell in Ny’s chest although it had only been a few seasons since she had been one of those children trailing successful hunters back from the village gates.

  Darkness crept from the forest to enfold the entire village as they walked in front of the children, huffing from exertion, the smell of the meat and sweat from their bodies high in the evening air despite the carcass being rubbed down with green wood to diminish its scent. Ny’s shoulder ached from the weight of the buck carried nearly two maili from the edges of the forest.

  Kizo, who preferred to carry a machete and knives instead of a spear, cleaned his nails with a small blade as he walked beside Ny. It was a miracle he didn’t cut off his own finger in the dark barely illuminated by the torches along the road. “I don’t see Duni waiting for you to come back with meat to make for her evening meal, Nyandoro.” Kizo teased her without looking up.

  “Because it’s not happening today doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen,” she said, talking braver words than she felt.

  On lesser days, she thought maybe Duni had desires she could never satisfy. Perhaps she was not onek epanga like Ny and wanted only the pleasure of a man on her sleeping mat. But there had been days when Ny exchanged heated glances with Duni, watched as she squirmed under Ny’s naked longing, nipples hardening under her kanga cloth, her tongue flitting out to wet her lips before she looked away.

  “Maybe that’s not the kind of meat Duni wants,” Hakim said, interrupting Ny’s thoughts.

  She winced but kicked out at him anyway, almost losing her balance. “Shut your hole,” she muttered.

  Adli let loose a big, dirty laugh. Kizo lost his place as her favorite when he chuckled along with the others. But he got it back when he rubbed her back in sympathy.

  They made their way along the wide road, through the main square with the empty market stalls, past the council building where Ny’s father spent most of his days, and past the tall flowering trees granting privacy to those who had chosen to build their homes on Jaguar Village’s largest street. The road widened into veins of smaller streets and, as they drew closer to the family’s compound—a plot of land with four houses separated from neighbors by a low stone gate flanked by honey blossom trees—the children drifted away, leaving just Ny and her brothers.

  They had enough meat for the entire family, including their childless aunt Basma, who lived in one of the four houses on their compound. It had been a very good hunt and Ny was proud. The only negative, from Ny’s point of view, was having to help cure the leftover meat.

  Curing the meat with salt was hard and hot work, nothing she looked forward to. Her aunt was too old to do the work, and her brother Ndewele’s wife too heavily pregnant and busy taking care of her own home. That left Ny and her mother to deal with the big buck on their own.

  “After a day like this, I just want a soft place to plant my spear for the night,” Adli said with a suggestive circling of this hips.

  Ny rolled her eyes, but the others gave their versions of agreement, bringing up the names of which women or men in the village they would soon seek out. Although Ny would’ve loved to unwind by playing a few songs on her kora, she knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  Sometimes she wished her brothers found it as easy to help their mother as they did their father. But they had definite ideas of what was women’s work, especially the twins. Ny shrugged off the familiar but unproductive thoughts to focus on the moment.

  In their family compound, torches were set at the doorway to each of the four houses, round dwellings made of dark river rock, with thatched roofs and the insignia of their family—a cheetah leaping over a flowing river—stamped into each wooden front door.

  Ndewele, their parents’ firstborn, shared a house with his wife while the wifeless brothers (except for Kizo) shared one home and Aunt Basma had her own. There was plenty of room on the grounds for at least three more dwellings, but everyone insisted they enjoyed the space and illusion of privacy that came from having the houses spaced so far apart.

  Ny and her brothers tracked their sandaled feet across the hard-packed brown dirt to the largest house in the family compound, the one that belonged to Ny and their parents. Her brothers, each born a year apart, had chosen to move from their parents’ home in preparation to have families of their own. But so far none except Ndewele had found mates to their liking.

  They took the buck to the smaller, separate cook house at the back of the family dwelling. It was a space her mother had designed and helped to build with her own hands. She told Ny she didn’t want the smell of food to live in their clothes and in the fabric of their everyday lives. An affectation that many women in the village first scorned and now copied. They thought it showed off their wealth.

  Ny settled her half of the burden on the large, raised stone slab near the water pump and window overlooking the small corn field out back.

  “I see you’ve brought much work for me, daughter.” Her mother appeared at the entrance to the cooking hut as Ny lit the last of the torches. As tall as Ny’s father, she had to walk carefully not to bang her head on any of the pots and utensils hanging from the cooking hut’s ceiling. Her cheeks crinkled with the force of her smile, the light from the torches flickering over the sprinkling of beauty marks on her face. She touched Ny’s cheek with a soft hand. “Go and bathe. You have blood all over you.”

  “I’ll bathe after I help with the meat.”

  Her brother’s wife, Xolani, appeared at the entrance to the cooking hut, eyes flickering over the gazelle and small game Ny and her brothers had brought. Pregnant with her husband’s first child, she was always ravenous and eyed the meat as if she would cook and eat it all. She greeted Ny with a kiss and a teasing wrinkle of her nose, a hint at Ny’s less than pleasant smell. “I’ve made the evening meal for all of us. You can cure the meat after.”

  Ny didn’t have to be told again. “Let me have a bath then I’ll come eat.”

  Instead of using the bathing room attached to the house, she grabbed the basket with her soaps and cloth then made her way to the river.

  The high moon guided her down the winding path that seemed to shine with an otherworldly glow. After hunting, she always felt everything more sharply, her skin tingling with life, her heart beating quickly in her breast. Kizo called it bloodlust, but her father said it was the excitement of being alive. An excitement that only came from taking another life.

  But weren’t that and bloodlust the same thing?

  At the riv
er, Ny found her favorite deserted spot, stripped, and quickly bathed, washing her blood-stained body and hair that was musky with sweat. She dunked beneath the gently rushing water to rinse away the soap. She broke the surface to the sound of humming. Ny held her breath, blinking away the water to watch the shadowy approach of a slim shape along the riverbank. The way the woman walked was familiar, the swaying motion of hips, footsteps that barely disturbed the ground.

  Duni.

  She held her breath as Duni walked past. Ny swore she smelled her on the breeze, feminine sweat, wood smoke, and a hint of something flowery. One of the oils they sold in the market.

  What was she doing out here on her own? Ny stood in the water with the slippery rocks pressing into her feet, the cool water running over her skin like a caress. She wanted this woman, but was she bold enough to do something about it?

  Yes. You are.

  The sound of the voice, faint but so very close, wasn’t a surprise. It was a voice she’d heard since she was a child. Truthfully, it was the voice that got her into half the trouble she’d found herself in over the seasons. But this was trouble she definitely wanted. She crept from the river, water running down her flesh, a rush of cooling wet over her suddenly overheated body, and scrambled up to the riverbank to hastily arrange the kanga over her body and tuck her bathing basket out of sight.

  It didn’t take her long to find Duni. She’d only traveled a short distance away and sat on top of a high rock at the water’s edge. It was a rock the younger children jumped from to splash into the river. But tonight, Duni was alone. She sat high on the rock with her legs dangling over the water, a small pot of oil near her hip, combing her hair in the moonlit night. She was humming.

  Duni reminded Ny of the legends she’d heard from her mother of river women, half-fish, half-human females, who spent the rainy summer days on the riverbank combing their hair and singing to lure careless river travelers close. Ny crept up behind Duni.

  “Will you lure me to my death with your song?”

  Duni jerked in shock, her indrawn breath loud in the darkness. Her comb tumbled from her hand and fell into the water. She gasped. “My comb!”

  Ny didn’t stop to think. She scrambled up on the rock beside Duni and jumped into the water after the comb. She fell in with a splash that took her breath away. The water, cold and deep and dark, churned with tides that would easily carry something as small and insignificant as a little comb away. It could be anywhere. But the moment the water covered her head, the coolness embraced her from crown to foot and she felt a confidence in the foolish gesture she hadn’t felt before she dove in.

  She opened her eyes under the water, discerned immediately the darkness and the rocks and the fish moving lazily beneath its surface. The moon’s glow penetrated the water, a silver blade of light that illuminated everything around Nyandoro, especially Duni’s pale comb. It floated slowly downstream, the white bone like a petrified smile under the water. She grabbed the comb and twisted in the water, bubbles floating up. The comb’s unyielding contours pressed into her palm, and she blinked down at it, amazed she could see it so clearly. She looked up and the world enshrouded in night was floating above and past her. It was beautiful.

  A voice, muffled and urgent, came at her from above, far away and easy to ignore. But it took only seconds to realize that it must have been Duni. Ny squeezed her hand around the comb and darted toward the water’s surface. Duni’s rock was farther upstream now, a dark shape against the darker night. But Duni wasn’t there. Still, Ny heard her voice.

  “Nyandoro!” Duni’s hysterical cry cut through the night. “Where are you?” Her voice dropped to a harsh mutter. “If I get the minister’s only daughter killed, he will kill me with his own bare hands.”

  “No one is going to kill you,” Ny called out softly, keeping her voice low. She swam against the current, arms burning. In moments, she was at Duni’s rock and Duni was back there too, leaning down with a hand toward Ny to help pull her from the water. Ny shook her head and pointed to the bank that had easier access to the shore. She held up the comb in triumph as she got out of the water.

  “Your comb, my lady.”

  Duni grabbed Ny’s hand that held the comb, took the comb back, and held it to her chest. “The comb wasn’t that important.” But her actions made a lie of her words. “I didn’t mean for you to jump in there after it.”

  “But I did, and everything is fine.” She wiped the water from her eyes and staggered to the rock, weighed down by the water in her clothes. It was a miracle she hadn’t been dragged deeper into the water and carried off. But she hadn’t been thinking about that at the time. “How about you?” she asked with a breathless grin. “Are you fine?”

  “By the pearls of Yemaya, of course. You’re the one who—” Then she must have seen that Ny was joking. Duni pressed her lips together. “You’re making fun of me.” She sat on the rock next to Ny, still gripping the comb to her chest.

  “Never.” But Ny didn’t hide her smile.

  Duni was even more beautiful from close up. Every time Ny had seen her, it had been sneaked glances, hungry looks that she’d tried not to let linger too long. But now, here was Duni, soft and stunning under the moon and stars, her narrow eyes and yam root skin glowing close enough for her to touch.

  “You’re gorgeous,” Ny said.

  Duni pulled back in surprise. She looked Ny over from her toes with their gold rings to the top of her limp, wet hair. Duni shook her head, saying nothing.

  Ny felt a moment of shame. Had it been a mistake for her to be so bold?

  Never. The voice prodded her toward the course she’d already chosen.

  Duni shifted on the rock, her face a study in conflict, her expression shifting between gratitude and anxiety and another emotion Ny couldn’t place. Ny leaned back into the cold rock, any reminder of the sun’s bright heat buried beneath the surface.

  “You are gorgeous, you know.”

  Ny committed herself to the course again and worried at her lip with her teeth. Duni, though, sat next to her, dry and concerned. Arms wrapped around her raised knees, only two small braids done, and the rest of her hair loose and sticking up toward heaven. The emotional tides drifted from her face until she only looked thoughtful, evidence of some decision settling into the smooth contours of her skin.

  Ny wanted to tug at Duni’s woolly hair, twist it between her fingers and learn its texture, offer to finish braiding Duni’s hair while she rested her cheek on the solid line of Ny’s thigh. Braiding. Yes. She wanted to braid Duni’s hair. She had to laugh at herself.

  “Is it wrong to say I find you beautiful?” Ny asked.

  Duni squirmed, her tongue flicking out to wet the corner of her mouth. “I have a husband,” she finally said. “You know that.”

  Ny grinned at Duni in relief. She was concerned about her marriage, the appearance of things, not about being pursued by another woman. Her smile widened.

  “People have divorces all the time. You can decide you no longer want him and leave.” She slid closer, but slowly, not wanting to frighten Duni away.

  “Then what would I do? Leave my comfortable home to live with you in your mother’s house? It doesn’t work like that. You are a child.” Duni touched Ny’s jaw, a glancing brush of fingers that might have been nothing, except for the way her gaze dropped to Ny’s mouth, a look that sparked something new and dangerous under Ny’s skin.

  “I am no child,” Ny said, emboldened. She leaned closer, close enough to sip the air from Duni’s lips. “Didn’t you see the buck I brought home today? I killed it myself.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Duni drew back. “You are a child who killed a gazelle then.”

  Ny opened her mouth to argue again, but the sound of footsteps and a low voice calling out her name pulled her attention from Duni. She scrambled to get up.

  Ny cursed. “I promised I would help with the meat.” She stumbled to her feet, rearranged the soaked clothes over her skin to the so
und of Duni’s soft laughter.

  “Yes, go, child. Your mama needs you.”

  Ny pressed her lips together. She wanted to disprove Duni’s claim that she was only a child and good only for teasing. Swiftly, she leaned in to press her mouth to Duni’s. Duni froze, her eyes flickering wide. Then she drew in an open-mouthed breath that invited in the flick of Ny’s tongue, a serpent’s lick. She made a startled sound, whimpered, and dove into Ny, lips parted, breath hot, a devouring suck and lick that tugged Ny’s nipples hard and dripped a shock of wetness between her thighs. Ny moaned in helpless want. It would be easy, maybe, to slick her fingers between Duni’s thighs as she’d so often done in dreams, stroke and kiss until they both lost their breath and—

  Shuddering, Ny pulled back. Her entire body ached with lust. But she didn’t know what to do. Inexperience and indecision locked her helplessly into place. Then a sound too close by freed her from her paralysis. She stumbled off the rock and ran toward her things downriver. Ny got there in time to see Kizo searching for her with a torch held high, the flames flickering orange light over his serious face. His look was suspicious.

  “Mama is wondering where you got off to.”

  She grabbed up her basket with her dirty clothes, oils, and soap. “I was taking a bath.”

  Kizo lifted his torch higher, eyes searching around the clearing and farther up the riverbank. “You’re not a good liar, sister.”

  Ny grabbed his arm. “Come. Mama is waiting, and I’m starved.”

  He looked beyond her again. “I’m sure you are.”

  The family, already gathered around the low fire with the evening meal, greeted Ny with greetings of concern, mock annoyance.

  “Are you clean enough, sister?” Nitu had the nerve to look like he knew exactly what had distracted Ny at the river.