N’gai had been blessed with a rare gift. She could see things that others could not. While the rest of the girls and boys played in the shade of the great goddess tree, N’gai would simply look at the world around her: the sky, the landscape, the huts in her village. And marveling at the beauty of it all, she would draw what she’d seen by carving lines into the dry red soil with a stick.
“It’s the tree!’ said B’golo, pausing beside her. “What about me? Could you make a picture of me as well?”
N’gai nodded. “I can try. But I would need you to stay very still so that I can look you all over.”
But B’golo could not stay still, and after only a few cycles of the timbala cicada’s song, he rushed off to return to his games.
“I’ll stay still for you,” said N’giri, N’gai’s younger sister.
So N’gai looked at her sister, really looked at her, and before long she’d created a true likeness of N’giri in the soil.
When she saw the finished picture, N’giri laughed and clapped her hands. She then rushed off to find their mother, who came running, a worried look on her face.
“What is it N’gai?” called her mother. “Are you all right? Your sister says there is something I must see.”
N’gai looked down at the picture, and as her mother came close, her expression softened.
“N’gai!” she exclaimed, suddenly grinning. “You have eyes as keen as that of the mother-goddess herself.” And she took her daughter into her arms.
Later, when the sun had set and the three moons—N’luna, N’lina, and N’lon—shone bright in the night sky, rain fell. As N’gai and her family slept, her pictures became mud and were lost forever.
The next day, N’gai’s father, who had been told of his daughter’s gift, instructed her to accompany him to the mark-makers who worked in a large hut at the south of their village, close to the river. These men and women, gifted with the hands and eyes of the mother-goddess, asked N’gai to show them what she could do. So she studied the features of one of the female mark-makers and with a pointed stick drew the woman’s face in the soil. It was a good likeness, and the woman was pleased. This woman nodded to N’gai’s father.
“After her work, your daughter can come to us and use our tools. We will teach her how to paint and carve and sculpt. If she is hardworking, she will learn much, and if she yokes determination to her gift, she has the chance to become extraordinary.”
N’gai and her father, both round-eyed, thanked the woman and promised to return later that day.
So while the rest of the children played in the shade of the great goddess tree, N’gai was busy with the mark-makers. She helped them to gather the plants and berries that they made their paints and dyes from, and she watched them create pictures with their dip pens, their brushes, and their charcoal holders. She learned how to create bark paintings and how to make paper from plant fibers. She shaped clay and carved wood. And always she watched, and copied, and practiced until, one day, she understood that she was no longer a girl apprentice but a skilled mark-maker on the cusp of womanhood.
One day, N’gai’s mother asked her for a favor.
“N’gai, my sister still grieves for her youngest, B’geno. She confided in me that she can no longer remember exactly what he looked like, and this is what hurts her the most. N’gai, do you remember your cousin, B’geno? Could you conjure him up with your brush? I think it would ease your aunt’s pain.”
N’gai closed her eyes and again saw B’geno’s face.
“Yes, Mother,” she said, on opening her eyes. “I can do that.”
And so it was that N’gai painted a picture of B’geno for her aunt. N’gai was pleased with her efforts, and yet when she went with her mother to give it to her aunt, the bark painting seemed to offer no solace. On seeing the picture, B’geno’s grieving mother wept like the goddess herself, and N’gai’s heart was pierced with sorrow.
“What have I done?” whispered N’gai to her mother. “It must be all wrong.”
“Wait,” her mother replied.
Just then N’gai’s aunt gripped her arm. “Thank you,” she said through her tears. “Thank you.”
Life continued. The seasons were born, they grew, they died, and the next season was birthed with the death of the old. N’gai’s family said it was time she found a husband.
So when five wandering plainsmen came from the southwest and settled around the fire to eat with the villagers, she looked at each of them shyly. Which one of them would make for a good husband? The two handsome ones she instantly rejected. She saw only ambition and pride in their eyes. The ugly ones she dismissed too, for there was a torpor about them that she did not like. Yet she warmed to the fifth man, who was neither handsome nor ugly. There was a confusion about him, as though even he himself didn’t know what kind of man he was. Yes, she could see some pettiness in his eyes, but a love of beauty was there also. So when his gaze fell on N’gai, she smiled and then bowed her head.
“You like that man?” said N’gai’s mother, later.
“I think so,” said N’gai. “Anyway, he is the best of them all, don’t you think?”
Her mother sighed and patted her growing belly. “I don’t see that you have much choice, N’gai. You will have another brother or sister soon, and as the goddess did not favor us with her tears this season, we could do with a hunter to add to the little food we have.”
N’gai nodded. She then placed a hand on her mother’s belly and closed her eyes. “I see a boy. With huge eyes and an even bigger heart.”
N’gai’s mother smiled. “Goddess willing, he will journey to us safely.”
So N’gai pledged herself to the man who loved beauty—B’goro was his name—although, on becoming joined with N’gai in the eyes of the goddess, B’goro made the unusual pronouncement that they would not remain in the village. His gift to his bride would be a quest for beauty. He would take his wife to the northeast where, he had heard, there were shimmering salt waters that sparkled with so much radiance that they made the goddess herself weep at such beauty. Also, they were full of fish, and so they would never starve.
N’gai could do nothing but acquiesce. She would be sorry to say goodbye to her family and the mark-makers, but she was also excited by the prospect of seeing this mysterious blue “ocean” that her husband spoke of. So one morning they set off, following the almost dry river to the northeast, their few possessions and some food on their heads.
They walked for thirteen days, the mother-goddess, Solla, impressing on them her divine power: Solla’s heat was fierce and their progress was slow. Yet the goddess trees, whose roots burrowed deep into the earth, provided them with water; B’goro would tap the tree for its sweet liquor, and he and his wife would drink and be sated. At each tree, N’gai left a token of their gratitude. She molded clay, taken from the sludge of the riverbank, and shaped it into a bulbous human form. It was Solla, fat with fertility. She whispered “thank you” as she placed the figure against the trunk of the tree and thought of how her husband had held her in the night, his naked body against hers. Soon, perhaps, she would be fat with child.
On the fourteenth day, two wonderful sights came into view: a thin band of blue at the horizon and a village in front of it. When they finally arrived at the village, the dark blue band growing ever larger, N’gai was entranced by the sight and sound and smell of it.
“How wonderful!” she exclaimed. “B’goro, what you said is true. This ocean is a beautiful sight indeed.”
B’goro smiled.
The villagers welcomed them and gave them food and water. And when night came, they sat around the fire and listened to what N’gai and B’goro had to tell them: about their journey, and of N’gai’s village and her mark-making skills, and of B’goro’s gift to his wife.
The sea villagers told them about their lives. They spoke to them of the ocean, Seeana, Solla’s twin sister, and how she was a generous but sometimes cruel mistress. She provided them with food in the manner of fish, crustaceans, and seaweed; she also gave them brine, which gave them the twin gifts of drinking water and salt. When the freshwater from the river had all but disappeared, the brine was a blessing indeed. But Seeana also took from the villagers. Many fishermen had lost their lives in her embrace, no matter how many tokens of gratitude they left at her feet.
“Tomorrow, though,” said one of the elders, “we will introduce you to Seeana. B’goro, we can teach you how to fish, and N’gai you will work with our mark-makers. No doubt you will wish to learn from each other.”
So N’gai and B’goro settled into a new life beside the beautiful, if daunting, Seeana. However, life as a fisherman did not suit B’goro. The rocking motion of the boats made him sick to his stomach. N’gai could not help laughing when he returned from a day at sea.
“You look like my younger sister, N’giri, when she first had to wring the neck of a pullum bird.”
B’goro did not laugh and N’gai fell silent as she saw her husband’s eyes cloud with ill temper.
N’gai was learning much from the Seeana mark-makers. They had a particularly intriguing use for sand, which they would melt in a furnace fuelled by the anger of the fire-god himself. The sand turned into a transparent slime that they would twist and turn and add minerals to. They produced many things from this substance, which they named glass: colored vessels, tiles, and spheres that sparkled in the rays of the mother-goddess. When N’gai watched the glass mark-makers at work, she felt awe; it was as though she was witnessing the birth of Solla herself.
One day, B’goro had had enough.
“It is time we left,” he told N’gai.
“But why?” she asked, her heart racing.
“I have no wish to become like some of the fishermen who secretly hate to fish and instead drink themselves sick with firewater when they think no one is watching. No. I am a hunter of creatures that roam the earth. Not the sea. We shall head north, along the coast and to the mountainous regions. We shall settle at a village where my skills can be put to good use.”
“But why can’t we go back to my home? You were appreciated there. My mother said . . .”
“I don’t care about what your mother said. We go north.”
N’gai looked into her husband’s eyes, and seeing the hurt and confusion in them, she nodded and said no more.
When hearing that N’gai was to leave, the mark-makers presented her with a gift. It was a transparent orb, curved and smooth.
“It is for capturing the power of Solla to make fire. It will help you and B’goro to light a fire without having to rely on the mischievous fire-god.”
N’gai took the orb and looked at it. She could immediately see its power; it distorted the world and made things larger than they truly were.
“Thank you, friends, this is a wondrous gift. Goddess willing, we may yet meet again.”
So N’gai and B’goro left the village. They traveled north, along the coast, for ten days; the mountains nothing but a dusky haze in the distance. Goddess trees were scarcer here so sometimes B’goro would boil seawater for them so that they’d have enough to drink. N’gai once offered him the mark-makers’ orb when he was building a fire, but he waved her away. “Us hunters have no need for such tricksy devices. My flint and knife have so far never let me down.” And he continued to call on the fire-god, the flint sparking with mischief.
Occasionally, they would pass fishermen who would be generous and provide them with fish and a little freshwater. At dusk, they ate salted or grilled fish in silence, B’goro’s wounded pride still raw, his mood still low.
Yet on the eleventh day of their journey, the mountains became more substantial and a teeming mass of huts and people could be seen in the distance. B’goro grinned.
“That’s more like it!” he said, and he hurried N’gai on, although she felt sick and tired.
B’goro was right. This community was a better fit for him. He immediately fell in with a group of huntsmen who took him into the mountains daily. When he came back to N’gai in the evenings he would boast of their exploits, his eyes full of pride.
N’gai found work with the mark-makers, and for a while she thought they’d be happy here. However, skilled as she was in producing likenesses, word soon got about: a woman with the eyes of the goddess herself was among them. This pleased many of the community who longed to see their own faces in paint on paper, but two people in particular were not pleased with this development: B’goro and the goddess-speaker.
B’goro did not like the way that N’gai was often regaled with gifts and admiring words, for it was he that was doing the hard and brave work. N’gai was just doing what she usually did: making people look better in paint than they looked like in real life. What was valiant about that? And the goddess-speaker, who was full of bitterness, didn’t like the way that people no longer looked to her so much. They had N’gai instead. The newcomer could give them pretty reflections of themselves; she could also conjure up pictures of long-dead relatives, merely with a description. Her marks had the power to inspire and enthrall. No, something had to change.
One day, though, it did, when the head huntsman sought out N’gai at dawn and asked her to give his body a mask of paint so that he could go about the mountains unseen. N’gai obliged, and that day the hunter caught the elusive mountain cugarra, the beloved cat of the despised fire-god himself. There were celebrations in the village that night, yet B’goro, angry at the praise the head huntsman lavished on N’gai, slipped away from the crowd and went to the ramshackle hut of the goddess-speaker.
“Do something,” he said, “about my wife.” He puffed out his chest. “I am tired of the way people treat her. She is only a mark-maker, and yet they look on her as though . . . as though she is the goddess herself!”
The goddess-speaker sucked air through her yellow, broken teeth. “That, she is not!” She parted the long, greying locks in front of her face and, turning away from B’goro, surveyed the crammed shelves by the light of her unearthly fire. They were full of pots of potions and withered plants and animal pelts. She muttered to herself as she picked things up and then put them back down again.
“Well?” said B’goro. “Can you do something?”
The goddess-speaker turned her head toward him sharply and looked into his eyes. “You want me to take away her powers?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, for a moment considering how bereft N’gai would be without her ability to make marks. He then disregarded the thought. “It is for the best. She has me. And one day, soon, she will give birth to my child. That is enough.”
The goddess-speaker grinned. “I can do what you ask. Though I will have to invoke the wrath of the fire-god himself. What will you give me in exchange?”
B’goro laughed. “My, you’re a cunning one. I know as well as you that this request can only benefit you. But still . . . I’ll bring you enough fresh meat to put some flesh on your bones.”
The goddess-speaker laughed horribly. “Come back tomorrow evening.”
The morning after B’goro had seen the goddess-speaker again, he unstoppered the jar full of black liquid that she’d given him. He poured a few drops of the evil-looking potion into N’gai’s jug of water.
“Drink up,” he said as N’gai rose. He offered her a cup of water and some fruit.
N’gai drank. She sensed that something about the water was wrong, but she couldn’t pinpoint what. It tasted the same. It had no smell, but it looked . . . a little grey, perhaps? Her eyes seemed to be almost, but not quite, seeing something, but the “something” slithered away from her when she tried to focus on it. So she dismissed her concerns. It was kind of B’goro to think of her, usually he’d already be gone with the other hunters into the mountains. She bit into the yellow fruit, which tasted good. “Thank you,” she said with a smile. It was good to see her husband looking happy. Perhaps this was the right place for them both. Although, with the new life in her belly, she had to admit that she missed her family. She particularly longed for her mother; she wanted to be in her mother’s arms, to be told that everything would be all right.
Day followed day, with B’goro continuing to give his wife the goddess-speaker’s potion. And as day followed day, N’gai’s sight began to fail her, until one morning she woke to nothingness. She cried out, her arms flailing.
“Where am I? Is it nighttime still? B’goro!”
B’goro woke and, trembling, tried to calm his wife, who was now eyeless—where once her eyeballs had been, there was smooth, spherical rock. And instead of tears, there was sand.
“What has happened to me?” N’gai wailed, putting her hands to her solid eyes. “I cannot see, I cannot see!”
B’goro didn’t know what to do. “Be still, I will look after you. I will . . . fetch the goddess-speaker. Yes, that is what I will do. She will know what is to be done.”
“Do not leave me!” said N’gai, grasping for her husband. “I am scared!”
B’goro extracted himself from his wife. “I promise I’ll be back very soon.”
B’goro ran to the goddess-speaker’s hut and seeing her asleep on her mat shook her awake. “What have you done, you wicked crone? You have deformed my wife! Her beautiful eyes are now . . . rocks.”
The goddess-speaker looked at him disdainfully. “Wasn’t that what you wanted? N’gai’s power lies in her eyes. So I took away her eyes. Like you asked.”
“But I didn’t want this!” B’goro said, shaking the goddess-speaker once more. “Undo what you’ve done!”
“I can’t,” said the crone. “It cannot be undone.”
B’goro, full of the rage of the fire-god himself, began to throttle the old woman. But the next moment, he was holding nothing but air. A snake fell to the ground and slithered away from him.
“Why you wicked old . . .” he began, scanning the hut for a weapon. He picked up a large rock, which was the color and texture of N’gai’s new, dead eyes. “If you don’t turn back into your real shape and undo what you’ve done, I swear I’ll smash you to pieces.”
The snake paused in its retreat and turned to face B’goro, her forked tongue flicking as she considered the man with the rock in his hand.
The snake, quicker than the man, lunged first—she made for B’goro’s right foot and sank her fangs into his flesh. B’goro cried out but still managed to bring the rock down on the snake’s thick body. The snake writhed under the weight of the rock and, unable to escape, dug her fangs ever deeper. B’goro continued to fell the snake with the rock until he could no longer lift his arms. The snake’s poison coursed through his body; it slowed his heart and froze his blood.
The snake, now a bloody pulp, lay at his feet inert, and as the last of B’goro’s strength left him, he collapsed. The snake became the goddess-speaker once more, and there they lay on the floor of the hut, together united in death.
N’gai, frightened and in pain, waited for her husband for as long as she could stand to, and then propelled by fear, she stumbled through her hut to the front door and called for her neighbor.
“N’mata! N’mata!” she cried.
N’mata, a babe strapped across her chest, came running. When she saw N’gai, she gasped. “What has happened to you?”
“N’mata, I cannot see. And B’goro has gone for the goddess-speaker. But he’s been gone so long. Please, can you find him for me? And hurry him along. I am so frightened.”
“Of course. I will come back as soon as I can.”
It did not take long for N’mata to discover what had happened to B’goro. A crowd was beginning to form around the goddess-speaker’s hut, and the horrible news went about the onlookers: There had been an argument between B’goro and the goddess-speaker. A deal gone wrong. Both were dead.
N’mata took the news back to N’gai, who insisted on being led to B’goro. The crowd parted as they saw N’gai, eyeless, leaning on N’mata’s arm. The two women entered the hut, and when they were close to B’goro, N’mata whispered to N’gai that here he was, at her feet. N’gai fell to her knees and placed her hands on the dead body of her husband. She reached for his face, his familiar features smooth and cold under her hands, and then placed a hand on his lifeless chest. So, it was true. She reached for N’mata and then rose. They left the goddess-speaker’s home and the whispering crowds, and when N’gai returned to her own hut, she took to her bed and wished for death to come.
N’mata visited N’gai every day, placing fruit and freshwater by her bedside. “You must eat. If only for your baby’s sake,” she said, stroking N’gai’s hair.
The mark-makers came too.
“As the goddess-speaker did not have an apprentice, there will be a time of choosing,” began one. “The elders will find another goddess-speaker. In time, she could maybe undo what has been done to you.”
“What?” exclaimed N’gai. “Do you think me stupid enough to entrust myself to a novice? Never. No, there is only one goddess-speaker I trust, the one who has known me since childhood, and she lives a long way away from here.”
“But N’gai,” entreated another, “this is not the end. It is another beginning. Your hands . . . they can still create marks. The images are still within you, behind your eyes, and your hands will do the work for you.”
N’gai turned to where the voice was coming from. “The pain . . .” she said, her hand at her eyes. “It is like a thousand knives in my skull. But it is nothing to the pain I feel here,” she said, her hand on her chest. “Now I understand all. B’goro’s betrayal has killed my spirit. And without my spirit, there is nothing to create.”
The mark-makers said no more and left. N’gai was right. Without spirit, there could be no act of creation.
There was one person, though, who disagreed. And that was N’gai’s child. She had spirit enough for the both of them, so one day she kicked her mother into action.
N’gai, aware of the internal challenge, spoke to her daughter. “What would you have me do?” she said.
A kick.
“Get up?”
Another kick.
N’gai rose and slowly walked around her hut, her hands her eyes.
“I could go to the mark-makers and sit with them. Sculpt.”
No movement.
An image came to N’gai. “Or I could return to my family. Talk to the goddess-speaker.”
Two kicks.
N’gai smiled. “Very well,” she said. “Home it is. Though the journey will not be easy.”
“Do not go,” said N’mata. “It will be hard on both you and your baby. Alone and unseeing . . . you are vulnerable.”
“But I do not belong here. I must return home. The goddess-speaker may be able to help me, and besides, I want to be with my family. To be with my mother again. You understand what it is like. And I do not want to be a burden to anyone here. You are kind to me. As are the mark-makers, but I will need much help when the baby comes. I cannot ask it of you.”
N’mata nodded. “I do understand. But promise me this. That you let my eldest go with you for part of the journey.”
N’gai began to shake her head.
“I insist!” said N’mata, placing a gentle hand on her friend’s cheek. “And there is no point in you continuing to say no. I would just make B’mebo follow at a distance.”
N’gai laughed. “I see there is no way to outwit you, so I will accept your kind offer.”
So the next day, N’gai and B’mebo journeyed south. N’gai carried a stick in her hand, for testing out the path ahead of her, and she took B’mebo’s hand when the ground beneath their feet became rocky. They carried food and vessels of water on their heads, as well as some of N’gai’s most prized possessions, and for the most part, they journeyed in companionable silence. After five days, B’mebo said he must return. This was the farthest he had ever traveled, and as loath as he was to leave N’gai, he felt he must.
“Of course you must go,” said N’gai. “Please do not worry about me. The mother-goddess will keep me safe. Besides, I have gentle sand beneath my feet and the sea by my side to guide me south to the fishing village I once knew and loved. I have enough food and water for many days. All I need to do is walk. How hard could that be?”
So B’mebo left N’gai to journey alone. The first three days passed by uneventfully. But then the wind rose, prickling N’gai’s skin with sand and fear. Dark thoughts entered her mind, and Seeana sent skittish waves across the sand to surprise and unsettle her footing. Solla, too, did not seem keen to make her journey smooth. The mother-goddess argued with the fire-god, their cursing could be heard in the sky above, and it only ended, as it always did, when the tears of the goddess fell from the heavens. It rained so much that the beach was more swamp than sand, and N’gai had to move farther away from the water’s edge than she wanted to. She spent much energy in seeking out shelter from the rain, so that she could spend the night in the dry. She woke the next morning, disoriented, to discover that her vessel of freshwater had spilled in the night. Thirsty and dispirited, she went in search of a goddess tree, but there were none. So instead, she refound her path south.
Solla bore down on her. The baby kicked and fussed and made every step across the heavy sand difficult. Thirst tore at her throat. Her head was all pain. N’gai sank to her knees and prayed for a miracle. When none came, she got up once again and walked a few paces. Her sounding stick hit wood instead of sand, and she suddenly thought of the orb that the sea villagers had given her. She would make a fire with it and turn seawater into freshwater. And though she was unskilled in the art of fire making, N’gai understood that this was the miracle that she had to make happen.
N’gai found the orb and B’goro’s fire-making tools. She recalled the time she’d once asked him to teach her the tricks of the fire-god. Kindling a fire is man’s work, he’d said. She’d wanted to argue, to say that in her village that was not the case, but the look in his eyes had told her to remain silent.
Careful not to injure herself on B’goro’s knife, N’gai felt within her husband’s old leather bag and found some tinder and dry sticks. There was enough to get a fire going, and with the several pieces of driftwood she’d come across, she’d be able to sustain a fire for long enough to turn seawater into freshwater. She went to the sea’s edge and filled a pan with water. She was so thirsty she considered drinking the pan of liquid, but she knew it would only make her feel worse.
So N’gai set up the fire stack—kindling amongst the smaller twigs, more twigs propped above the kindling, like the poles of a tent, and driftwood beneath—just like B’goro had done. She then held the translucent orb above the dry grass kindling, capturing Solla’s rays and focusing them onto the brittle grass. She felt the rising of unnatural heat and suddenly there was a crackle—the kindling had caught alight. The heat increased and grew. N’gai then balanced the pan on the fire, her hands dangerously close to the flames as she placed the curious lid with the downward spout onto the pan. She then put a jar underneath the spout and waited.
Sure enough, Solla rewarded N’gai’s efforts; pure water dribbled into the jar, and N’gai was able to drink and be sated.
N’gai stayed by the fire and collected enough water to fill her jar. She ate some of the salted meat and dried fruit N’mata had given her, and then, exhausted, she lay down by the fire and slept.
She woke much later, the cool of dusk on her skin. Still, there in the background was the heat of the fire, although it was much diminished. She sat up, drank some more water, and then chewed on a strip of dried fruit. She thought about the daughters of the mother-goddess, the three moons that would be in the night sky now: N’luna, N’lina, and N’lon. She missed being able to see them.
She suddenly froze as she heard a voice in the distance. A man was singing. And not in a way that was good. N’gai scrabbled about for B’goro’s knife, knocking some of her precious pots of ink about the place. The fire! She had to put it out and then hide. She began to throw sand onto the fire.
“Hey!” called the voice. “Don’t do that! That’s a good fire you’ve got going.”
N’gai stopped what she was doing. She suddenly heard the slap of oars and then splashing. The man, a fisherman she presumed, was pulling his boat ashore.
“N’gai?” said the man, suddenly close by and reeking of firewater. “Is that you?”
N’gai nodded.
“What happened to your eyes? And where’s B’goro?”
There was more glugging as the fisherman drank.
“It’s a long story,” she said, gripping the knife tighter.
The fisherman thrust the pouch of firewater at N’gai. “Have a drink and tell me all about it.”
N’gai wanted to push the pouch away, but she sensed it would be the wrong thing to do. With her free hand, she put it to her mouth and took a few sips of the firewater. It tasted foul.
The fisherman took back his pouch and then sat down with a thud. He continued to glug away, emptying the pouch.
N’gai searched her mind for the man’s name.
“Well,” he said. A belch. “What happened?”
“You’re B’somi, aren’t you?” she replied. “I once painted a picture of your brother’s wife. Such a beautiful—”
“Don’t talk to me about that woman! My brother’s only been dead for ten days, and she’s already chosen her next husband. And it’s not me. When it should have been me! She can drown in Seeana’s embrace for all I care.”
N’gai was silent, her body tense.
B’somi threw down the now-empty pouch. N’gai sensed him move closer.
“Such strange eyes,” he said, his hand suddenly on her cheek. “Still, you’ve got a pretty face.” And then his other hand was caressing her hair, his stinking breath on her lips.
N’gai recoiled and then thrust the knife at B’somi. “If you come any closer, I swear I’ll use this!”
B’somi backed away, his foul breath receding. But then N’gai felt her head implode with pain as B’somi dealt her a blow; she was reeling backward. Her grip on the knife loosened. Still, she could sense it there, just at her fingertips, unnatural heat behind it.
“Don’t you dare threaten me!” said B’somi. “Have you any idea of what I’ve been through?”
N’gai sensed B’somi coming close again. This time his hands were pulling at her clothes.
N’gai stretched her hand and refound the knife, which was warm from the fire. It was also covered in a slippery liquid she knew well. Ink.
With one swift movement, N’gai plunged the knife into the fire and once more thrust it at B’somi. It plucked at his skin, and he let go of her.
“You’re a good man, B’somi, I know you are. Even though I am blind, I can see into your heart. But you’re grieving. And poisoned with firewater. And angry with your once sister. And you’re not yourself.”
N’gai took a deep breath.
“You’re stronger than me. And you have the gift of sight. You know I can’t do you much harm, but what I can do is mark you forever with ink. And if you choose to defy the goddess and defile me, your skin will forever hold my cry for mercy.”
There was a thud as B’somi fell onto the sand. Then the sound of sobbing. And then silence. And when N’gai was sure that B’somi was fast asleep, she packed away her things and walked through the night and most of the morning until the sounds of the people of the sea village came upon her ears. Then she felt the fear that had kept her body moving recede, as she finally realized that she was safe.
When N’gai entered the sea village, the mark-makers took it upon themselves to look after her, and unbeknownst to N’gai, one of them went to fetch their goddess-speaker.
“I see that someone has stolen from you,” she said, when she saw N’gai. “And I am sorry for that.”
N’gai started when she realized that she was being addressed by their goddess-speaker.
“Who brought you to me? I did not want to be looked over by you!”
The goddess-speaker placed a gentle hand on N’gai’s arm. “Forgive me. And forgive the messenger who brought me to you. We did not mean any harm by it.”
N’gai’s heart softened. “I can hear in your voice that you want to help, but I am sure you cannot.”
The goddess-speaker looked at N’gai’s sightless eyes. “You are right. I cannot undo what has been done to you, but I can at least give you some relief from the pain. It is a plant that, when chewed, takes away pain. Do you wish for me to bring you this plant?”
A sob caught in N’gai’s throat. “Please,” she managed to say, willing herself not to cry; experience had taught her that tears of sand were a form of torture almost impossible to bear.
N’gai slept and ate. She told the mark-makers that she did not plan to stay long, that she needed to go home. But the more she chewed on the kratoma plant leaves, the less she talked about leaving.
The kratoma plant took away her pain, but it also took away her dreams and determination. She kept to her bed, her thoughts folded away, and there she would have stayed for the rest of her life if it weren’t for B’somi.
One day, the sound of an argument roused her from her stupor. She could hear the mark-makers telling someone to go away and leave them be. Then she recognized B’somi’s voice. Her heart beat like mad and she quickly sat upright.
“I just wanted to tell N’gai something. Please.”
She could hear the desire for forgiveness in his voice.
There was a scuffle and then more “go aways.” Then nothing more.
N’gai’s first instinct was to reach for the kratoma plant—to blot out the memory of the night she’d met B’somi on the beach—but she found herself trembling and unable to move for shock.
Day passed into night; one of the mark-makers brought N’gai some food and water at dusk. And as the kratoma plant took leave of her body, N’gai began to think clearly. What was she doing here still? Why hadn’t she left?
A weak kick from within her belly told her to get moving. So, sluggish and slow, N’gai got up and packed her things. And in the middle of the night, when everyone was fast asleep, she clumsily found her way out of the village and to the river, which would lead her back home.
N’gai walked through the night, following the river southwest, her sounding stick her guide. As Solla rose the pain returned to her head, where her hard sandstone eyes met flesh, but the pain, she told herself, was a gift. It would urge her home. To her family, and to the one goddess-speaker who she knew wouldn’t fail her.
The recent rain had helped to swell the meager river, and goddess trees were more plentiful here, so N’gai did not thirst for water. One day, stooping at one of the trees, she found a clay statue in the shape of the mother-goddess. It was one that she had made many moons ago, when she had first traveled this way with B’goro. N’gai sighed as she put the statue back. So much had changed since then.
N’gai’s progress was slow but uneventful. Then one day, she understood that she was very close to home; she could smell it in the air.
Suddenly there was a shout—“N’gai!”—and the sound of running footsteps. Her siblings. She was being embraced and talked at and then there came the lull . . . Her eyes. What had happened to her eyes? And where was B’goro?
N’gai allowed herself to be carried along to her father and mother and her baby brother, who was fast asleep against his mother’s chest. It was only when she found herself being held by her parents that she understood how much she had missed them.
N’gai’s mother wept, first with joy, and then with sadness.
“Tell us what happened.”
So N’gai told them about what had happened to her eyes. Her father cursed B’goro and the goddess-speaker of the mountain village, and her mother stroked N’gai’s hair as she wept her motherly tears.
“You are home now,” said her mother. “That is all that matters. We will look after you. And tomorrow we will ask the goddess-speaker for her help.”
So the next day the goddess-speaker came to talk to N’gai. She asked to be alone with N’gai, to give counsel with no one else present. N’gai said that she would allow this.
“Your mother has told me what happened to you.” She sighed. “Sometimes, for some goddess-speakers, the goddess is not enough. They crave more. They make bargains with unworthy men and the unfathomable fire-god that have cruel outcomes. They end up hurting their sisters. I do not know why these things happen. But they do. However, I also sense that there is more to your story than what you told your family.”
N’gai exhaled deeply. “I did not want to add to their sorrow.”
“Go on,” said the goddess-speaker.
“I almost died of thirst on the journey home. But then the goddess sent me help. I came across driftwood and made a fire with this orb that the mark-makers at the sea village gave me.” N’gai took the smooth glass orb from her pouch and showed it to the goddess-speaker. “So I was able to turn seawater into freshwater. But then a fisherman, his blood poisoned with firewater, saw the fire. He . . . he tried to hurt me. But I managed to escape. I threatened to ink his flesh with B’goro’s knife.”
“I see.” The goddess-speaker took the orb from N’gai and held it up to the light. “Go on,” she said, studying it carefully.
“I made it to the sea village. The goddess-speaker there offered me kratoma plant leaves for the pain in my head.”
The goddess-speaker shook her head. “It was stupid of her to offer it to you. It is like firewater, but more difficult to shake off.”
“But I managed to. And now I am here.”
The goddess-speaker took N’gai’s hands. “You have been through so much, N’gai. And when so many have harmed you, your trust in me has remained intact. If I told you that there might be a way to help you, what would you think?”
N’gai thought for a moment. “I would be glad. It would mean that I was right to return home. But is there a way back? Can you return my sight?”
The goddess-speaker took a deep breath. “No. I cannot return to you your eyes as they once were. But I think I can turn the unnatural eyes you have now into something else. Something better. And the pain should go. But the process will hurt . . . and I cannot guarantee that it will work.”
N’gai let go of the goddess-speaker’s hands. “Well then, I must think about what you have said.”
A few days later, and after speaking with her mother and father, N’gai made a decision.
“I do trust you,” she told the goddess-speaker, “and I want you to try to help me. But I will only undergo what you suggest after my daughter is born.”
“Very well,” said the goddess-speaker. “That is a good decision. When you are ready, let me know.”
So in the days that followed, the goddess-speaker busied herself with the preparations for N’gai’s transformation, and N’gai focused all her energy and determination on birthing her daughter.
Weeks passed and as N’gai’s baby thrived, so did N’gai. Her spirit had returned in full force with the birth of her daughter, whom she had named N’solla, and with it, the determination to be rid of her stone eyes and the pain and darkness they brought her.
“Do it!” she ordered the goddess-speaker one day. “Before I change my mind.” N’gai passed her sleeping daughter, who had just now suckled asleep, to N’solla’s grandmother.
“She will be fine with me,” said N’gai’s mother, putting her arm around her daughter’s shoulder.
N’gai sighed and then allowed herself to be led to the goddess-speaker’s hut. It was perhaps better that she was not able to see the stone bed at the back of the hut that the goddess-speaker took her to; for with its leather straps on metal hooks, it was not a welcome sight.
The goddess-speaker asked N’gai to lie down on it, which she did. “I must strap your arms down, N’gai, so that you do not try to touch your eyes. And I must also strap down your head.” N’gai’s heart began to beat fast, but she acquiesced. She felt the straps going over her wrists, a strap tightening over her forehead. “For it is imperative that your head remains perfectly still.” N’gai’s stomach tightened.
“Now then,” began the goddess-speaker. “You must keep your eyelids open so that I can make a fire on your eyes. I will do my best to protect your skin with the ointments I have prepared.”
N’gai felt cool, oily cream being placed on her face and the skin around her eyes.
“But you will still feel the heat clawing at you. A great heat. But you must endure it for as long as you can. The longer the better.”
N’gai heard the crackle of fire and then the goddess-speaker coming close. She made sure to keep her eyelids wide open. Still, when the first ember touched her solid eyes the heat, dulled though it was, frightened her. She cried out.
“Forgive me,” said the goddess-speaker. “There is no other way to perform this transformation.”
The goddess-speaker piled on more and more embers. N’gai clenched her fists and bit her tongue and tried to ignore the ghastly smell of smoke.
The goddess-speaker began to chant while stoking the flames. N’gai’s whole body tensed, the heat at the skin around her eyes intensifying.
N’gai suddenly felt her head become warm, and the reek of burning hair was at her nose. She screamed and tried to touch her head, but of course her hands were restrained.
The heat at N’gai’s head suddenly subsided; the goddess-speaker had poured water on the flames. “Forgive me again! I should have dowsed you earlier. This fire is desperate to escape.”
N’gai struggled. “What else is to catch fire? How much longer? The heat is unbearable!”
“Longer!” said the goddess-speaker. “It needs to be as hot as the goddess herself!”
N’gai struggled and writhed as the goddess-speaker continued to pile on fuel and to chant and to add precious minerals to the fire burning on N’gai’s sandstone eyes, which were now two glowing orbs.
N’gai cried out again. “I can stand it no longer!”
“Almost there! Just a little longer. Keep perfectly still.”
N’gai kicked out and then heard herself scream. She was all pain, nothing but pain, and there was nothing beyond the pain but more pain.
And then there was the whoosh of water and the shock of not-pain.
She heard the labored breathing of the goddess-speaker and then the loosening of her restraints, the scraping of a stool.
Light began to flood into N’gai’s eyes. But the images were white and otherworldly, tinged with blue and green, the objects strangely magnified and distorted.
N’gai raised herself and then looked across the smoke-filled hut. The goddess-speaker, exhausted, was on the stool, her body bent double.
N’gai left the bed and helped the goddess-speaker off the stool. “We must get out of here. The air is filthy.”
The goddess-speaker allowed N’gai to lead her out of the hut and back to N’gai’s home.
“I don’t know what you did to me,” began N’gai, her voice trembling, “but . . . I can see. Everything looks strange . . . but I can see! What is it that you did to me?”
The goddess-speaker smiled wearily. “It was your orb that gave me the idea. You should look at your reflection one day. For your eyes are beautiful. Like . . . glass.”
When N’gai reached her home, her family was astonished by her transformation.
“N’gai . . .” began her younger sister, N’giri. “You have the eyes of the goddess herself! You really do!”
They crowded around N’gai in wonder. They laughed and questioned N’gai and thanked the goddess-speaker over and over.
N’gai’s mother, tears streaming down her face, passed N’gai’s daughter back to her. “Can you really see? Then what do you think of your daughter?” she asked. “And the pain, is it gone?”
N’gai looked down at her daughter’s face and began to cry soft, salty tears. “Yes, Mother,” she said, “I can see my daughter.” She smiled. “She is beautiful. And, yes, the pain has gone. And all that there is, is light.”
Later, when the sun had set and the three moons, the children of the mother-goddess, shone bright in the night sky, rain fell. While the rest of her family slept, N’gai fed her baby, stroking her fuzzy black hair as she suckled away. She looked out at the three moons. How she had missed seeing them! As her new glass eyes focused on the moons, she saw what no one else had ever seen before. The faces of three women: N’luna, N’lina, and N’lon. And they were smiling at her.