It used to be that the sky didn’t fully blacken at night; it remained in the cobalt blue of twilight, as if Lisa was reluctant to give Mawu her turn. But as the air grew cooler, the nights grew darker, and I sleep much better now because of it. Or maybe because I’m getting used to this new life.
Bronaugh and I usually share what we’ve managed to pocket during the day to supplement our “supper,” as she calls it—a handful of extra grain, or some berries from the bushes at the edge of the forest. Whenever I can get away with it, I’ll snatch a fresh-caught fish from one of the stalls at the market. Those are the nights when we eat like free women. But today the market wasn’t as crowded as it usually is, and I didn’t think I could take anything fresh without losing a hand for my trouble. I like my hands, so I settled for a small piece of salted cod from a smokehouse, which was unattended while the stout cook haggled with someone outside.
I usually have supper with Bronaugh alone—or rather, with Bronaugh and Saint Brigid, as she calls the little barn cat. But Broskrap took his boys to visit his eldest son in the city today, freeing Airé from her cooking duties, so tonight all three of us huddle around the firepit as the old bones of a ram long since slaughtered boil in the clay pot above. Bronaugh tosses in an extra handful of ground barley. Even a bland, chalky soup is better than a thin, bland, chalky soup.
Now it’s my turn. I shrug apologetically as I take out the small parcel of salted cod, hastily wrapped in a strip of spare cloth. Saint Brigid trots over from her hay-bale perch, as she always does when I have fish. I hold the parcel high, and she flicks her tail in annoyance. “There’s not enough for you tonight,” I scold her.
I’m about to throw the fish in the pot—it needs to boil for a while before it softens enough to eat—when Airé grabs my arm. “Save it, Yafeu,” she says. She shoots me a smile that looks almost coy in the dancing firelight. Then she reaches into her woven basket and emerges with the hindquarters of a freshly slaughtered lamb.
Bronaugh gasps and throws her hands over her mouth. My own belly flips with joy. Even Saint Brigid meows plaintively, weaving herself between Airé’s legs.
“Airé!” Bronaugh exclaims. “How?”
“One of the young ones had foot rot, so Broskrap slaughtered it,” Airé says. “He gave the rest to me.”
I hesitate. Why would Broskrap do such a thing? He’s hardly generous with the rest of us, let alone any of the other thralls. But Bronaugh gets up and starts to dance, and my worry fades away. I can’t help but laugh as she hums atonally and twirls on her callused toes, her long red hair swishing around her shoulders. Even Airé lets out a giggle.
For once, the three of us are all smiles. “Can I prepare it for us?” I ask, already reaching for my knife.
I can’t remember the last time I tasted meat, tasted the fullness of its flavor. Maybe none of us can, as no bite goes untouched.
After the feast, our minds fall into a pleasant lull. A full belly will put your woes to bed—even without any ale. The sounds of cattle shifting in their stalls forms a lullaby with the sizzle and pops of the fire. Feeling indulgent, I feed a small piece of the salted cod to Saint Brigid as Bronaugh entertains us with a story from Ireland. It’s a strange tale about a priest who chased all the snakes around the island until they fled into the ocean, and everyone celebrated. I stare into the crackling fire, picturing the licks of flame as snakes. My mind flits back to the sorcerer in Anfa, to the way he bewitched the rattlesnake and made it dance.
“Why did they celebrate?” I ask, confused. “Did the snakes attack people?”
Bronaugh giggles. “Snakes are bad, Yafeu. They are…messengers. Of the bad angel. We call him the Devil.”
I look to Airé, wondering if she agrees. She says nothing. In the glow of the fire, I can just make out the languid rise and fall of her thin torso. Fast asleep.
“Bronaugh?” I lower my voice to a whisper.
“Mmm?”
“Was it so bad in Ireland that being a thrall here is better?”
She shrugs. “My family is poor, and I have many sisters. My father…he make me live in convent.”
“Convent?” The word is unfamiliar. It sits heavy on my tongue, unwieldy.
“Where women go to worship God.”
A temple just for women? How could that be bad?
“When you are in a convent, you never have love with a man,” she continues, answering my unasked question. “Never marry, never have family.”
“Why?” I ask, taken aback. “What kind of god wants its worshippers to live without love?”
“Because you are married to God, they say. And loving God is…like a big meal.” She gestures to the empty pot. “No love left over.”
“My mother told me that we show love for the gods by honoring all their creations,” I say.
“The—gods?” Now it’s Bronaugh’s turn to be surprised.
It hits me that I haven’t told Bronaugh very much about my own people. “In Wagadu, where I’m from, we worship many gods, not just Nana Buluku, the creator.”
“That is beauti—”
“There are no gods.” The edge in Airé’s voice silences us both. “Not the god of Ireland, not the Aesir and Vanir of Skíringssal, not your gods in Wagadu. They are all lies. Lies our parents tell us, just as their parents told them, so everyone believes that the world is full of magic and justice and everything makes sense. But the world has no magic. No justice. Not if you are a thrall. Not if you are a girl.”
She spits out the last word, and it sinks into me like a poison-tipped dagger. I shudder but say nothing, not wanting to upset her any further. Bronaugh stays quiet too.
I roll to face the wall, watching the hills of our shadows mingling with the shadows of buckets and baskets and the tools hanging from the beams. These shadows no longer make me cry, but thinking about Airé almost does.
Airé is gone, but Bronaugh is still snoring when I wake the next morning.
Strange. Airé is always the first to rise, but I never wake up before Bronaugh. Ordinarily, I savor every extra moment of blissful unconsciousness before she gently shakes me awake for the day of chores. But now I find my limbs are restless, full of a bouncy, roiling nyama that needs to be unshackled in movement. Perhaps it’s the richness of the meal we had last night.
I throw on my apron, strap the knife to my thigh, and put on the large old boots. A few moments later, I push open the barn door.
The cold air slaps my face. I can see my own breath billowing in front of me. Lisa has not yet appeared above the bushy hillside to the east, though the sky has lightened from twilight to dawn, signaling his approach.
If only I could go hunting. A thought that’s occurred to me countless times over the last two moons. But I don’t even know if this stupid kitchen knife is sharp enough to kill; with its odd shape, I couldn’t throw it with any accuracy anyway.
Frustrated, I decide to walk to the forest for a bath. Bronaugh showed me where the stream widens and forms a little pool, just a short hike past the lea. The frigid water will help douse the fire in my blood.
Soon I quicken my pace to a jog. The light exertion and the sound of my feet hitting the dirt in a steady rhythm calms my restlessness. I take in the beauty of the white-capped mountains rising in the north, the ancient massifs huddled as if for warmth under blankets of shadow and light.
It’s not just the mountains. Endless greens, blues, and shades of gray form the unique personality of this place. At first, I found it lacking compared with the palette I’m used to, the rich browns and reds and tans of Wagadu. I still ache for those colors. But as the weeks have passed, I’ve come to accept that Skíringssal is simply its own painting. No more or less; just different.
I enter the woods, breathing in the fresh, resinous smell of the trees. Supple brown spikes litter the ground, cushioning my step. After a short trek uphill and back down again, I hear the familiar sound of running water, and I come upon the pool.
I approach it with my heart feeling lighter than it has in a long time—even more so when I notice Airé, already shoulder-deep in the chilly blue water. She’s facing away from me, but her calm movements and small splashes reveal a peacefulness I rarely see in her. It brings a smile to my lips. No wonder she always wakes before the sun.
I am wondering whether I should join her or leave her be when a hulking form emerges from the other side of the dell.
I freeze. From the corner of my eye, I watch Broskrap spy on Airé as she bathes, unaware of the intrusion.
At least he’s unaware of me. For once, luck is on my side.
Slowing my nyama, I duck silently behind the trunk of a tree. Broskrap lopes over to the stream. The look on his face makes my stomach twist. Airé spins and stares up at him, eyes widening in alarm. Her hands fly to cover her naked chest.
“Come here, girl,” he says, grabbing her thin arm and yanking her out of the water onto the bank. She lets out a strained yelp. I can feel the pain and fear in her nyama. My breathing quickens, every muscle tensing with rage.
Broskrap kicks her down and holds her there with his mud-covered foot. She lies there limply, facedown in the grass.
I can’t wait any longer. I reach under my shift, my fingers clasping around the spiral handle of the knife. I remove it from the strap as Broskrap undoes the knot that holds his pants closed and lowers himself over Airé.
With my measly weapon in hand, I creep forward. Their backs are to me, his over hers.
The ringing between my ears grows louder and louder. I feel myself trembling. The dam breaks, and this time I don’t care. I want it to flood. I want every last drop.
I expect a sea, but what I get instead is fire. It burns away everything between me and Broskrap.
I finally see the truth of it—the truth I spent so many years trying not to see, not to feel. I was always pushing it away, but it was always pushing back. It lingered in my blood. It lurked in my bones. Not an evil spirit, not a vengeful ancestor: just me. The other part of me, like Mawu and Lisa are two parts of one being.
Rage.
Rage is focus. Rage is power. Rage is the instinct that acts through me to do what must be done.
I raise my arm and spring. A primal yell rips through me as I tackle him to the ground, setting Airé free.
Hoarse gasps ravage my lungs as I tower over Broskrap’s lifeless body. Blood spurts from the large vein in his neck and pools around his head, like the unraveling of a lustrous red scarf. His face is beaten raw. I feel my own face and find drops of his blood sprayed there, still warm.
I killed him.
I should be upset. I should be horrified. But I can’t feel anything other than exhilaration, sweet and pure and shockingly potent, like the first bloom after the rains. It’s the same feeling that was written on Alvtir’s face as she butchered the slavers in Anfa.
Broskrap is dead. I killed him.
As my breath slows, I wait for a blanket of guilt—or grief, or even fear—to snuff out the exhilaration, but it doesn’t come.
After a long moment, I turn my attention to Airé. She sits with her arms wrapped around her legs, still naked and shivering violently.
It’s then that I finally feel something: worry.
I kneel next to her. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence, her wide eyes glued to Broskrap’s corpse. I reach out to touch her shoulder, but she squeaks and recoils, and I realize that my hands are soiled with Broskrap’s blood.
I flash to the moment I touched Ampah’s shoulder, that very first night in the desert. Her reaction was the same.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
Airé flings her gaze like a dagger in my direction. The anger in her eyes hits me harder than Broskrap ever could. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
I frown, confused. “I s-saved you.”
She shakes her head from side to side, as if the force will fling her from this moment.
Now I feel afraid.
“You’ve killed us!” she shrieks. “You’ve killed all of us, Yafeu!”
Her words dance around me, just outside my grasp. I hadn’t thought—I had only seen her suffering, his monstrosity…“I wanted you to be safe,” I say again, like an idiot.
“But they don’t! Don’t you understand? How could you be so foolish?”
I don’t know what else to say, so I just kneel there, dumbfounded. Abruptly, Airé stands and throws her shift over her mud-caked body. Broskrap’s handprints look like burn marks on her arms; soon they will blossom into purple-blue bruises.
She stalks off toward the barn. My feet follow her, but my mind stays in the pool, drowning in disbelief.
I saved her. I saved all of us.
Didn’t I?