“This is your land,” Mr. Tau had said. “These are your people. It is up to you to choose how you will serve them. Will you be a benevolent god or a vengeful one? Ruled by ire or basos? Demanding or giving? Involved in guiding their decisions or content to watch over their lives?”
“Haw! All this is mine, baba?” Nomvula had asked, enthralled by the vast blueness of the ocean. She’d never imagined there could be so much water, so much she’d never feel bad for stealing water from the air ever again.
“There are others like you. All over this world, some old, some very old, and others only a few centuries. Some are simply healers and diviners. Others have been saviors and tyrants and kings and queens. And a select group are exalted as gods. They achieve immortality through their followers, through belief. Likewise, they can draw intense power through fear, though the effects are short-lived.”
Nomvula frowns at that. She’s had a hard enough time making friends. Getting people to believe in her seems as likely as catching the wind. “And what happens if a god doesn’t have any followers?”
“It’s a sad existence. Imagine an artist with no will to create. A singer whose lips refuse to part for a tune. Down that path lies a slow death, but death will come. That is not your path, my child. I will teach you what I can, for as long as I can,” Mr. Tau had said very firmly, and he had squeezed her hand so tight Nomvula’s fingers hurt. She’d turned and caught him weeping, and for a moment, his face was not quite his own, like the faintest hint of golden eyes and a sharp buzzard’s nose.
Nomvula now knows that Mr. Tau was like that man goat, climbing on top of her mother and having his way and leaving her with a child in her belly, a half Zulu, half god child. And just because it had happened in a dream didn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Nomvula leaves Mama Zafu with a pot and a promise to come back with water, even though her auntie had insisted that they already had enough. Out of habit, Nomvula takes the road that leads to the old broken solar well. Her mind is too caught up with the idea that Mr. Tau could be her father to watch where she’s going. She smacks right into Sofora who falls back and lands rump-first on the dusty ground.
“Nomvula!” she wails out, then nearly jumps back onto her feet. “You’ve ruined my brand-new skirt!”
“It’s just a little dirt,” Nomvula says, almost sorry she’d done it. Almost. She puts her pot down and helps Sofora wipe it off. Sofora slaps her hand away.
“Don’t put your filthy paws on me!”
“I didn’t mean it, honest.”
Sofora storms back toward her home where her older brother Letu tends to a fire and a kettle of what likely contains beer, judging from his lazy eyes. Orange flames lick out from beneath the cast-iron pot like fiery tongues.
“I’m telling my father,” Sofora says. “I’m telling him you pushed me down on purpose because you were jealous, and he’ll make you pay for a new skirt.”
“Silly Sofora, there’s nothing wrong with your skirt, except that maybe it’s a little ugly.”
“What?” Sofora turns around. “Who are you to call anything ugly? Your hand-me-down skirt probably used to be somebody’s old bedsheet.”
Nomvula frowns. Her auntie had made this skirt just for her, sewn with love and not by a stranger in some faraway town. The material isn’t shiny, and all the stitches aren’t the same, but it’s more special than anything Sofora’s father could buy. But girls like Sofora don’t see things that way, and if she wants to be impressed, Nomvula can sure impress her. She knows she shouldn’t, but she does it anyway, calling up that itch between her shoulder blades where her wings meet her skin. She flexes and feels her wings stab through her shirt, and as she spreads them wide, she gives Sofora the smuggest of grins.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” Sofora says, propping a hand on her hip and not even seeming to notice. “You and your crazy eyes. You’re just as crazy as that mother of yours.”
“You take that back,” Nomvula says. She flaps her wings, still to no effect.
“It’s not like I’m the first to say it. Everyone knows she’s been touched by evil spirits. Better be careful or some might rub off on you.”
Nomvula shoves Sofora, but this time Sofora stands her ground and shoves Nomvula right back. Into the dirt, Nomvula goes tumbling, wings and all. By the time she’s up on her feet, Letu has stepped out from behind the beer kettle and has stationed himself between the girls, his lanky arms extended and pushing them away from each other.
“Nomvula, maybe you should go back home,” he says, his tongue thick in his mouth from sampling too much beer. “Before someone gets hurt.”
Nomvula thinks that might be a good idea, but as she bends down to pick her pot back up, she hears Sofora wail again. She looks up and sees fire embers jumping to Sofora’s skirt. It smokes and smolders, then that nice, shiny material goes up in a flash.
“Take off your skirt!” Nomvula screams, but her words aren’t getting through. Sofora runs around like a headless chicken instead. Nomvula finds herself caught in that moment, stuck between helping her enemy or watching her suffer for calling Ma names. Sofora deserves to burn, Nomvula’s vengeful mind tells her, but her merciful heart also has a say, so she quiets her dark thoughts, rushes to the solar well, and pulls the pump.
“It’s still broken!” Letu cries as he throws handfuls of dirt at his sister’s skirt.
Nomvula hits the side of the machine, hoping to jog something loose, but when she whacks it, something surges through her, like a sliver of lightning. She places her hand on the side of the machine, the entire flesh of her palm against cool metal. Threads of white light race right in front of her. Electricity sizzles in her ears in an odd stutter-stop language that she instantly understands.
Work, she tells it, and a second later, a trickle of water drips down onto the ground below. She shoves her pot underneath the spigot and tells the machine again, WORK!
Water gushes out, enough to fill the bucket, and Nomvula takes it and douses Sofora, once, twice, and another time until Sofora is sopping but safe. A small group of neighbors have exited their shacks, catching just the tail end of the drama, including Sofora and Letu’s father.
“Nomvula!” he cries out and then hugs a half-naked and fairly crisp Sofora to his chest. “You have saved my beloved daughter!”
“And she fixed the well!” Letu says, then quiets under his sister’s smoldering glare. But the damage is done. Their father lets out a chirping whistle and hums a deep, rich note as others join in. Singing follows—dozens of voices blending into a beautiful, winding harmony. They hoist Nomvula into the air to the beat, calling her a savior and a hero and a brave soul.
She feels their words more than hears them, and they begin to fill that bottomless pit in her stomach and soothe that never-ending hunger for the first time in her life.
Chapter 13
Sydney