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“Mother! Mother!” I gasp again, squeezing her tight. Kissing her cheeks and nuzzling my chin across her tightly coiled, short-cropped brown hair.
Thankfully, her skin hasn’t changed into that shimmering white of Sarla’s other godsworn, and her eyes are still the soft, welcoming black I know. But those are the only things that have remained constant.
When I was growing up, Mother always seemed voluptuous, with the exaggerated curves that distinguish many tribesmen from the deep Southern provinces. But now I can feel that she’s become wiry, having lost much of her pleasing plumpness. And in a surprising twist of fate, I’ve grown taller than her—me, Deka, the one all my friends mocked for never achieving the towering height that distinguishes most Northerners.
Of all the things I expected when my blood first ran gold, this was the farthest from my mind: that one day, my own mother would look up at me instead of my looking up at her. That Umu, the woman who was once a Shadow, a deadly assassin and spy, would one day have to tilt up her chin to gaze into my eyes, tears of joy dripping from hers.
“Oh, Deka.” She sniffles. “It’s you, it’s really you. Sarla told me you’d be coming, but I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t allow myself to—” She abruptly takes a step back, examines me, astonished. “Just look at you; you’ve become strong. And what is this dress?” Then she notices Ixa. She kneels down in front of him. “And who is this charming little ebiki?”
Ixa lets out a long, contented purr as she strokes him under his chin. Ixa like, he says happily to me. Deka do more this.
But all my attention is on Mother, who has stood once again and is now looking me over as if her eyes cannot get enough of me. “You look like…” Her eyes widen, as if the thought awes her. “You look like one of them,” she says, nodding toward the thrones. “You look like a god.”
A familiar expression shines in her eyes, one I’ve seen all too often in the past few months—especially when I was Nuru, supposed daughter to the gods.
Reverence.
The sight of it turns my stomach.
I can tolerate it from strangers, even acquaintances, but I can’t take it from her. Never her.
I embrace her again, if only to remind her that I’m flesh and blood. “I look like your daughter,” I say firmly, gazing into her eyes. “No matter what, I’m your daughter.”
I may have once been a seed, a golden spark of divinity, but she was the one who carried me for eleven months—much longer than is usual for a human pregnancy. She was the one who nurtured and protected me when I thought I was nothing more than a human girl.
In all the ways that count, I’m her daughter.
Mother nods. “I know, Deka,” she whispers. “Of course I know. I’m just—” She sniffles once more and wipes away a tear. “I’m just so happy!”
I embrace her again. “I’ve missed you so much, Mother. So much.”
“And I you,” she replies. Then she bursts into tears, her eyes filled with misery. “And I’m so sorry, Deka. Sorry I couldn’t save you, sorry for all you had to go through, and your father—”
“He’s dead.” I cut her off before she goes any further, the words a vise squeezing all the air out of my chest.
Talking about Father is like opening a raw, painful wound and then digging the knife deeper into it. Yes, he apologized as he died, and yes, I forgave him. But I didn’t forget. I will never forget. How can you forget the man who beheaded you instead of protecting you? Father not only gave me to the village elders when my blood first ran gold, he beheaded me himself when I resurrected the first time. Left me in that temple cellar to experience many more deaths until White Hands intervened and took me with her to the Warthu Bera. How can you forget such a betrayal? How can you forget the man who would rather obey the lies of an ancient book than the tug of his own conscience?
I might have let go of my anger over his actions, but never again will I allow anyone to treat me so poorly, to manipulate me so. I will never again mistake abuse for love and cherish it the way I once did with the man I used to call Father.
Mother looks down, nods. “I know he is. I felt it when it happened. When you live with someone for so long…sometimes you just know.” She looks up at me, her eyes brimming with a thousand emotions, a thousand words left unsaid. “My deepest apologies, my daughter. I heard what he did to you. I heard all the things he—”
Her voice abruptly quakes, and she bends slightly, struggling to breathe, struggling to regain her composure. “I heard about the Ritual of Purity and the temple and the cellar and the beheading—”
When she turns away, her breath coming in strangled gasps, I hurry to embrace her. “I survived it,” I swiftly say. “I overcame it.”
“But you shouldn’t have had to do that. You shouldn’t have had to. I trusted that man. Trusted him to keep you safe and he—”
I squeeze tighter. “What’s done is done. And it’s not your fault, Mother. You didn’t put that sword in his hand or force him to betray me.” Mother nods again, but I can almost feel the guilt radiating from her, the guilt that no doubt looks very much like my own.
Is this where I got it from, this habit of blaming myself for anything and everything?
But no, Otera is the reason, the culprit. Its culture is. The Infinite Wisdoms—the false holy books on which I was raised—conditions women to take on the sins of everyone else. No matter the situation, no matter the person, if something happens, it’s always the woman’s fault. And barring that, it is the fault of the men who love other men, or the yandau, or the maimed and injured, the infirm—anyone who isn’t a typical Oteran man.
It is always the fault of those on the periphery.
We are the ones Otera sees as inherently weak, shameful. We are the ones who must always shoulder the blame.
The reminder is sobering. Joyous as I am to reunite with Mother, I need to focus on what I came here for: taking back my kelai. Using it to kill the Gilded Ones and the Idugu and get Otera back to peace. And even more important than that, creating a world where everyone is equal. Where people are seen and loved for themselves instead of castigated for their differences. Which, again, is why I need to speak to the gods of Maiwuri.
