Yarima Abubakar | Thirteen
THE QUEEN RETURNS
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"The Great Emperor of The Sands, Conqueror of The Dark Ages, Breaker of Curses, Witch of The Crown and Bringer of Rain, Her Royal Highness, Hareti Jaja," the royal court keeper declared Hareti's arrival before the iron doors to the council room, the most sacred and most protected room in the palace was pulled open.
Standing a few steps beside Hareti, who was two feet shorter than I was, I took a quick glance at the side of her face without moving my head. Her chin pointed higher, the sunlight from the council chamber gradually cascading across her stern face as the doors opened, illuminating every lingering expression.
No one else could see it, even if they claimed themselves to be of great intellect, or with the ability to read minds, no one else could truly see what lurked behind those blue eyes: Anger. Fierce and magnetic. Waiting. Tethering along the edge of the most revered, powerful person ever known to the kingdom of Arjana.
But I could. I always saw Hareti in all shades of her. The evil, the bad, the beauty, the good. She was a kaleidoscope of a woman who glittered only for me whenever the light of my eyes shone through her.
I knew a great deal that the day would not pass without the rich red color of blood painting my view. It troubled me. Hareti loathed blood more deeply than the moon's hate for day. But craved it like a fish craved water. It was what made and unmade her. Reti felt betrayed by her people and it festered in her heart like a disease. Darkening her soul from inside out. Someone would have to pay.
My visits to the temple of Oshun were always spent in the arms of Hareti where I felt the safest. She'd rid the temple of all her concubines and ban servants and guests alike from her innermost chambers. When I sharpened my sword over smooth stone, she'd lie in the corner, reading me poems or telling me her favorite tales of war.
When we bathed together in the bath of cherry blossoms, she'd wash my locs with olive oil soap, massage my scalp and lower back with her kind fingers before I was allowed to wash her skin with a soft sponge, from the tip of her toes, to the crown of her head.
If my behavior had been satisfying to her taste that week, she'd spread her legs for me and allow me clean between her legs with my tongue, and afterwards I was allowed to suckle on her nipple before rest. If I hadn't been good, she'd spank me to tease me or leave me kneeling against the wall for a few hours to punish me.
Whether Reti was breaking my skin, or bending me over to her will, I always knew her warmth and it was as beautiful and as fair as her soul.
But the last days we spent in the temple of Oshun before returning to the palace were colder than the falling snow of the west. She was distant from me, deep in her thoughts, plotting, deciding. Mournful silence boomed throughout the temple. There was no worshiping, so there was no merry.
I was in her presence but entirely alone. She neither cuddled me to sleep, or told me tales of war. I considered breaking a few rules. As many as I could to get her to again give me attention. But Reti was not a woman who welcomed deliberate disorderliness. And I wanted to be a safe haven for her to dwell in, until she was ready to blossom again for me.
The cold silence was better than her absence, so I waited for the weeks to come and go, staying close enough for her to feel my willingness to bow at her feet and offer my wisdom if demanded.
It was the second morning of the third week visiting the temple when soft golden rays glided across my face and I shifted in the silk sheets, grumbling just a little from discomfort. The morning had arrived too soon after a long night of training her royal guards.
With my face away successfully from the sun, I began to sink back into the clouds of slumber when I felt a presence in the room. I was being watched and I knew whose eyes were upon me. I turned, lifting the pillow away, and there stood Reti in gallant royal dressing.
In the seven years I had known her, not once had I ever seen her in a crown, or proper royal attire. She'd turned her back on it. All of it. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't dreaming up the sight.
Her crown was made with the same steel as her dagger. Bones shaped like branches ran around it. Cowries and diamonds in significant sizes were placed along it. I had only ever read of the crown, worth more than ten thousand foot soldiers and it was uglier in person. A silver blouse paired with regal white and gold brocade wrapped around her waist and with one going over her left shoulder. The uli make-up on her face and hands were marked with gold chalk instead of black and white.
In astonishment I descended from the bed and bowed before her.
"Heart of my heart," she called and I straightened myself.
"Owner of my soul," I replied, my voice still groggy. "A choice has been made?"
"It has."
I nodded and advanced. "Your kingdom has missed you. When do you leave?"
"In an hour."
"You do move fast." I smiled.
"You shall return with me."
I frowned. "That would not be good fate, Your Majesty. When you return to your court, you need to begin forming new alliances, strengthening old ones. You need a general of worth. People who know the way around the palace. I'll leave for Ara this evening. Send for me when you've found your footing."
She took a step forward and her anklets and bangles jiggled in announcement. With the space between us now closed, her hand cupped my cheek. "You would not return with me as a general."
Those words remained with me as I readied myself for her return. If I wasn't to return as General Abubakar, then who was I? I considered asking but remained focused on preparing to return. She needed me by her side in the palace, and that made me more glad in many new ways.
"We've readied the balloons, Your Majesty," I informed, strolling back into her chambers and joining by the window. "Ready to leave when you are." My hand rested on her lower back as I bent to kiss the cheek she lifted me..
"You look perfect." Her hand ran across my chest covered in thick fur.
"Poems to my ears." I planted another kiss on her forehead.
Turning away, she dipped a finger into the cup of water resting on a stool in front of us and flicked it out the window. The little splash of water grew into a massive water bubble, expanding by the second. She formed a circle with her thumb and index finger and the sound of a crack exploded when the air split in two, as if cutting through the very fabric of space. The water bubble split with it, widening until a huge ring of water sat in front of us.
It was a portal, and on the other side were royal guards, elders, chiefs, generals, falling to their knees in a bow. Water was Oshun's idol and the goddess's essence ran through Reti's veins. I had forgotten how easily Reti could bend time and space, controlling natural elements.
Hareti walked through the ring as if taking a walk through the room, only this time, we were crossing into a whole different city and I followed.
"Long live the queen," said the hand of the queen.
"Long live the queen, Long live the queen, long live the queen," echoed over a hundred royal dignitaries who had come to witness her return rather than welcome her.
The portal snapped shut behind us and the force and sharp wind it triggered compelled jerks and soft gasps from the dignitaries. Once they had quieted down, the hand of the queen cleared his throat to begin a welcome speech.
"The council room," Hareti simply said before his words came.
Most of the palace officials shuddered, falling to their knees as we moved through the stone hallways of the fortified mountain palace. They had never seen the queen. Neither had most of the chiefs or elders for that matter, it was apparent from the way they continued to steal glances.
Hareti in front. Me, following a few steps behind, then a hundred other people who were graveyard silent following. A hundred people, yet all that could be heard was the marching of footsteps thundering across the hallways in unison. The floor was made of polished green marble that carried every sound.
The palace and the mountain were one and the same. Our ancestors built the palace by carving it into the mountain. High steps spiraled into different sections. The royal banner, the head of a tigress imprinted of red silk hung in every hallway. I had been in the mountain palace a number of times but never that high. A one star General could only go so far up. I took in the palace with enthusiasm. Hareti's home. That was where she grew up.
Wandering gazes sweeping left and right fell on me, all in question of who I was to queen, what I was. Maybe they already knew, Fadimah had of course informed me about the gossips only three weeks prior. I was in full uniform worthy of a general. The single star on my gold belt was how one could tell what my position was.
Those judgmental gazes only grew more intense when Hareti and I were finally seated in the council room, surrounded by aged elders of the council.
Confusion, deceit, all of them trying to decipher why the queen had returned. They loved her far away in the desert. They always loved the queen best when she wasn't sitting on the throne. In her truest power, she became too much, a problem–she became the opposition.
"The Great Emperor, Witch of–" Elder Ori, the queen's eighty-five-year-old right hand began, rising from his seat after over ten minutes of silence loomed.
"Sit," Hareti commanded and he crumbled back into his seat. "Elder Tokunbo," she called coldly, turning in the direction of the kingdom's sixty-five-year-old treasurer.
"Your Majesty," she replied.
"Are you aware I knew your great, great grandfather?"
Her wrinkled face managed a smile. "This is pleasant news, Your Majesty."
"He was anything but a pleasant man," Hareti countered and the smile on Elder Tokunbo's face vanished. "I was the age of fourteen when I first met him. Exactly a year before my mothers passing and two years into her war. You see, I grew impatient with her war. It took her away from me, mentally and physically. And every chance I got, I hassled her about it, accusing her of abandoning her child and choosing her nation. I was a mouthy, fussy, little girl."
She shifted in her seat until her back was resting and her legs were crossed.
"One evening, Mama decided to bring me along on a raid in the village of Udozana. To show me why Arjana had to come first. She had grown weary of my disrespect. They were to raid a chief's compound and Mama wanted to be the one to drive the sword into his heart. I couldn't understand why until I saw it." She swallowed, her gazing fluttering across the room, as if to warn the council of her next words. "Your great great grandfather was a slave trader," Hareti declared and tension in the room stiffened.
"He had a tunnel under his compound where he kept hundreds, hundreds of his own kind. Chained, beaten, ready to be exported like cattle for the white slavers." Hareti rose from her seat and the table straightened up. As she moved round the table, her footsteps were silent, like she was floating. Hareti still conformed to the old ways and barely wore any footwear, except for her anklets. She arrived behind Arjana's High General Commander. A shrewd man, muscular and built for battle whose presence I had only ever encountered once before and placed her hand on his shoulders.
"That was not the worst part," Hareti continued. She was a detailed storyteller. "It was the corpses. You see, Mama was coming hard on slavers during the war, and your great great grandfather had no other choice but to hide them for ninety days in the tunnel with no water, except rain water, and no food. The children, young babes with tiny hands that could barely lift a brick, were stacked in there too. By the time Mama arrived, forty-five children were dead. Some from starvation. But most, from strangulation." She let go of the Commander's shoulders and continued her stroll around the table.
"You see, their mothers had no option than to strangle them, because the green vein disease had infected them. Afterwards, they had to sit and watch their children's body decompose. Barely hanging on themselves." Hareti breathed and I flexed my jaw. That was a story I had never heard in all her tales.
"Do you know what it feels like to have to strangle your own children so they may embrace an easier death. It's terrifying. It destroys you—forever." She turned to look Elder Tokunbo in the eyes. "That is who your great, great grandfather was." She breathed and began to point. "And yours, and yours, and yours. Slavers. The people they sold were not white. They spoke the same language, ate the same food, danced to the same music, their skin colors were the same. Kin brothers and sisters. Yet, your ancestors sold them to the white slavers for a few jewels."
My eyes followed her to the window where she left her gaze pinned on the vast city, stretching out into the horizon. "The white slavers brought this sickness to Africa. But it would not have been possible without our own. Yet, here you seat, on the highest table in this kingdom, in this continent, free. Because it is your birthright. Do you not think yourself deserving of punishment for the atrocities your ancestors committed?" There was silence for far too long before Hareti returned her gaze to the council with a lifted brow. "Speak."
"No, Your Majesty." Their chorused answer rang unevenly.
"No? I would think otherwise, seeing as you are as unforgiving as the god you serve." Her face darkened, taunting every eyes that dared behold it. "Explain to me, how is it that slavery still runs my economy," she demanded in a frightful tone.
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Thank you for reading. Gentle reminder to vote.