Nomvula stood alone in Asanda's courtyard, moonlight trimming the rooftops in silver. Crickets chirped so loudly her ears hurt, but all she could offer back was silence.
There was no one around to see or hear, but that didn't mean she'd just break down — never out in the open. Nomvula threw no curses into the world, wiped no tears, held no breath.
When she looked up at the moon, and saw how it's light burned away any nearby star, she couldn't even sympathise. At least those stars were still there somewhere, hidden in the glow, but not gone.
Half of her ancestors had been Suns, a small tribe that could scorch earth or breathe life into wilted plains — as relentless and brilliant as the dawn.
The other half had been Spears, a roaming clan of exiles who sharpened their wits on whetstones and preferred cleaving an open mind to keeping one.
When Lang'engatshoni wed the only rival chief with the courage to meet him in a field, the world took two monsters and made them one spirit. Nomvula gave thanks every day that her children inherited neither the Sun's wrath or the Spear's contempt.
Ndola could be hotheaded, and Khanya — somehow — was always too calm in the fire, but they were neither cruel or cynical. Their spirits were strong, but not hard enough to trap a wargod. Ma had prepared Nomvula for that burden at birth, the firstborn always was...
"Ma?" Asanda was suddenly next to her, hands stuffed in her dress pockets, trembling on a warm night. "Thought I'd find you out here."
"I needed to think," Nomvula lied.
"You need to sleep, you've been through a lot in the last—"
"I stopped counting after twenty years, baba." They scavenged up half a smile between them. "Besides, who says dreams aren't stressful too?"
A long silence followed.
Asanda started fidgeting in her pockets, stopped, then started again. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"When I came to warn you about the poison... you dreaming of me?"
Nomvula's gut tightened. "What makes you say that?"
"You were writhing and thrashing in a cold sweat. It was probably just the buna but... you kept muttering my name."
"It's a name that brings me comfort even on my harshest nights, baba."
"You said it like I was torturing you."
It took a moment to find the truth. "Asi, I couldn't even dream of a world where you bring me anything but joy."
Asanda found the other half of a smile.
"And you've done so well with all of this, I'm proud of you," Nomvula said. "But even my oldest baby needs to sleep."
"Are you going to be okay?" Asi asked.
"One thing's for sure, I'll be right here in the morning."
With a kiss on her daughter's forehead, Nomvula left the courtyard.
There was a shortcut that led straight to her room; she took one that let her leave the manse quietly instead. A guard slept next to a little side gate, a hide shield over his face to block the glare of torches. Nomvula's footsteps gave him enough time to rise with dignity.
"Mamkhonto," he said, scrambling to his feet.
She patted his shoulder on her way through the gate. "Who's that?"
The village had been built inside the valley of five surrounding hills. On each hill was a compound the size of her own, except on First Hill, where the sprawling glory of the Royal House lay abandoned.
Nomvula made her way down Third Hill — her hill — and around Second, where her husband's first wife had lived before illness took her.
Rather than climb all the way up to the Royal House, she took the long walk around the foot of First Hill, where two enormous bounders lay. They loomed over a patch of dark soil with scatterings ash and gold dust. Nomvula made a note to thank the Royal Diviner for maintaining the site, then stuffed it wherever she kept the rest of her thoughts.
She approached the patch of earth with reverence, then anger, then shame. At last, she just approached.
Her husband's most loving act had not been to gift her family with double the cattle they'd asked for. It hadn't been the manse he built for her on Third Hill.
No, for all his extravagance, his greatest act had taken secrecy. She remembered his face that night she left to visit home in the first year of their marriage, after months of finding it hard to eat, sleep or speak. With his two most trusted men, she'd brought a piece of her old life back with her, and kept it here, in the shadow of the Royal House, hidden away from a village's curiosity and a first wife's contempt.
It would have been easier for him to let the Hundred Hills pester his Sunland wife for her foreign ways and prickly relatives. But that wasn't her husband. Kalo's kindness endured for all the years he didn't.
And so Nomvula sunk to her knees, then her hands, and finally her side. As her face pressed into the ash and gold that protected her oldest child's grave, the Sunspear wept.