Nomvula

51. The Eastern Storm

Great rivers thrived because they did not doubt their own power. If the Wayfarer ever stalled to contemplate itself, it would flood the land. The stone titans sleeping under the earth's crust made volcanic mountains and sky-blotting waves when they crashed, but if they ever stilled in fear of the collision, there would be no magma to melt the fireglass in the northern ranges and pour it the Wayfarer's headwater, where it would make the deposits of clay that formed Anathi's body now. Unlike the Queen, whose spirit was still tied to flesh, Anathi's power was in the uncompromising forces that had erupted and melted and hardened to bring her into existence...

When the Queen's fist was three-quarters to her chest, Anathi centred her spirit under her liver again then nudged it outward. Fireglass pushed through the surface of her skin until she was armoured in it from head to toe. She waited for the Queen to break her wrist on her breastplate.

...and yet, there was that grit of humanity that reminded her what it meant to be small and breakable, and painfully aware of your own temporary self.

She caught the Queen's wrist just before it struck her. There was the force of a rushing elephant in the blow, so when suddenly had nowhere to go, it pushed back towards itself. The bathtub made grooves in the floor as it flew back three feet and the boards under Anathi's heels cracked. She pushed a little of her clay through the bottom of her feet to seal the splintered wood.

The drop of perspiration that had dripped from the tub finally hit the floor.

Anathi turned the Queen's wrist over and sealed the tiny cut in her thumb with a bit of clay. She absorbed her glass armour back under her skin, picked up the woman slumped against her thigh, and carried her to bed. She was about to climb back up to redistribute her form across the ceiling when the Queen said something.

"You think you could stop me, don't you?" 

Her back was to Anathi, so she wasn't really expecting an answer. Besides, she was whispering so softly Anathi had to focus on absorbing the vibrations of her voice through the air. 

"A thumb prick, sure. A few scratches on my back, maybe." She turned to face Anathi, her eyes cooled to the deep brown. The only sheen in them now came from candlelight reflecting on the sheen of tears. "Are spirits capable of complacency?"

Sometimes, Anathi signed with her left hand.

"Are you?"

She hesitated. Sometimes. 

The Queen nodded against her pillow. The window behind her was open; the breeze that bellied the curtains made the drops of water along her bare side quiver.

"Honesty is good. It is a lack of honesty that got us here, so it must be a lack of honesty that gets us out, but a drop of truth is nice every now and again."

Anathi stood, waiting. A moment passed. How long, she couldn't say, but long enough for the Queen to grow cold and crawl under her blankets.

Her eyes were halfway to closing now. "Have you ever lied to me, Anathi?"

No. 

"Have you ever lied to my children? My mother?"

Again, she made herself still as stone. Well, vibrations in the earth could make stone move -- she was stillness made perfect.

"Ah, that's right," the Queen said. "You don't lie, you just wait for the question to pass you by, just as all things in the temporal plane eventually pass you by."

The bathwater was cold when the Queen spoke again.

"That's what I've always feared most about you -- feared and admired. You're the only person--" She yawned. "You're the only person who sees things as I would like to see them, as passing, as inconsequential."

All things have consequence.

"Do they?" She laughed, or rather her lip twitched and her breath huffed. "If I died, would you mourn?"

No.

"See, no consequence."

If you died, you would be with me in the spirit plane, and you would finally understand me.

Her eyes flicked to the featureless void that was Anathi's face.

Why mourn that?

No laugh this time, but that twitch on the Queen's lip lasted a little longer. "The Sunspear's spirit is bound to mine -- I don't think you would want a demon like that in your plane." Her lips flattened, and the lines on either side deepened with the furrows in her brow. "This... thing, it can never blight the land again. It has made scabs in the earth where villages used to be, and if all the life in history were a night sky, it would be a blank moon cratering the stars."

Stillness. Awaiting.

"When my children return, Ndoda must finally be made king, Khaya must be sent away to his rite, and Asanda must take on the role of Head Councillor. When all my children are where I have raised them to be... you and I, we end this."

End this? Whimsy even by the Queen's standards. The Sunspear could not be killed -- how can you cut the head off something that awakens when it bleeds?

"Yes," said Nomvula, she who was named after the eastern storm god. "The milkwater pool under Asanda's bed. Despite what she thinks, it wasn't just built to douse the Sunspear when it was awakened, otherwise why build it twenty feet deep?"

Not one for human gestures, Anathi didn't nod but she understood. Still... Drowning yourself is suicide -- your spirit would die with your flesh.

"Not just my spirit."

And with that, the Queen closed her eyes, and she slept.