An enormous globe rested on a wooden stand in my study. Jagged continents curved around a deep blue ocean I had never seen. The largest continent, which included Swana, was a patchwork of savannahs, forests, deserts, and snowy tundras. This was Aritsar, my tutors said. The Deathless Arit empire, may Kunleo live forever.
Most of the history scrolls in my study were edited. My tutors would blot out lines and sometimes whole pages with black ink, refusing to tell me why. Once, I managed to hold papers to the light, reading several paragraphs before a tutor snatched them away.
Long ago, the papers said, Aritsar had not existed. In its place, a jumble of isolated islands had floated on a vast sea. The twelve weak, rivaling lands were ravaged by abiku: demons from the Underworld. Then a warlord named Enoba “the Perfect” Kunleo had unleashed a power from the earth, uniting the lands into one massive continent. He had crowned himself emperor, enlisting twelve of the continent’s rulers as his vassals. Then he battled the abiku with his newly christened Army of Twelve Realms. The mortal and immortal armies had been so evenly matched that Enoba’s war dragged on for decades before, at last, the exhausted forces struck a truce.
Enoba was celebrated as Aritsar’s savior. The continent rulers credited him for bringing peace, and so, for centuries, his line had ruled Aritsar from their home realm of Oluwan, uniting twelve cultures in a network of art, science, and trade. Whenever caravans passed by Bhekina House, I heard merchant families singing of the empire, rocking infants on their hips as children skipped across the savannah:
Oluwan and Swana bring his drum; nse, nse
Dhyrma and Nyamba bring his plow; gpopo, gpopo
Mewe and Sparti see our older brother dance—
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect!
Quetzala sharpens his spear; nse, nse
Blessid Valley weaves his wrapper; gpopo, gpopo
Nontes and Biraslov see our older brother dance!
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect?
Djbanti braids his hair; nse, nse
Moreyao brings his gourd; gpopo, gpopo
Eleven moons watch our older brother dance:
Black and gold, isn’t he perfect?
Aritsar’s current older brother, or emperor, was Olugbade Kunleo: a direct descendant of Enoba the Perfect. I used to croon the patriotic anthem in our mango orchards. As I wove between branches, I would talk to an invisible emperor, sharing my thoughts on Arit history and governance. Sometimes I imagined him gazing down like the sun through the clouds, warming my bare shoulders with approval. How perfect he must be, to unite so many lands!
Dhyrma. Nontes. Djbanti. The names of the Arit realms tasted spicy on my tongue. My bones ached for those far places, described by my tutors in rainbow colors: The silk farms of Moreyao. The night festivals of Nyamba. The snowy peaks of Biraslov, the booby-trapped rainforests of Quetzala. I lay on my back, gazing up at the mango trees, trying to imagine the high-rises of Oluwan City: the seat of our divine emperor. Even Swana held its mystery. I had never left our grassland, but heard tales of lush cacao fields, and markets where women hawked candied papaya from baskets on their heads.
But more than cities and rainforests, I craved voices that would not call me demon.
I envied the children who passed by Bhekina House, with their grandparents who jostled them on their knees, their siblings who chased and teased them. The Lady was the only person in the world who touched me willingly.
One morning, as I watched the caravans from my study window, I learned another song.
Eleven danced around the throne,
Eleven moons in glory shone,
They shone around the sun.
But traitors rise and empires fall,
And Sun-Ray-Sun will rule them all,
When all is said-o, all is said
And done-heh, done-heh, done.
I liked the ominous rhyme. I whispered it around the manor like an incantation until a tutor overheard me. She asked, voice quavering, where I had heard such nonsense. I told her … and the next day, every window in my study was nailed shut.
I pried at the wooden slats until my small fingers were scratched and torn. That glimpse of the outside had been my lifeline. My portal to Aritsar—to feeling less alone. How dare they make my windows vanish? As The Lady had vanished, and Melu, and everything else I longed for?
I threatened to set the study aflame. “I’ll do it,” I howled at the servants. “Why not? I won’t burn. But your scrolls will. You will.”
My tutors had blanched. “There are things we simply can’t teach you,” they said, looking hunted as they bound my bloodied hands. “It is forbidden.” Like The Lady, my tutors had a habit of disappearing for months. This usually occurred after one of The Lady’s visits, when she found my learning to be unsatisfactory. Then new, nervous faces would replace the old ones.
On my eleventh birthday, two such faces arrived at Bhekina House, and accompanying them was the only birthday present I wanted.
“Mother!” I cried, launching myself at her. The Lady wore a richly patterned wax-dyed wrapper, which scratched my cheek as I clung to her. She cupped my face, a feeling so wonderful I shivered.
“Hello, Made-of-Me,” she said, and hummed that chilling lullaby: Me, mine, she’s me and she is mine.
We stood in Bhekina House’s open-air great hall. Sunlight streamed from our chicken-scattered courtyard, glowing across the hall’s clay tiles and illuminating The Lady’s black cloud of hair. The two strangers flanked her, standing so close to The Lady, I was jealous.
“Friends,” The Lady said, “please tell my daughter that you are her new, permanent guardians.” She seldom addressed me directly. When she did, her words were sparse and halting. I would later realize she was afraid of commanding me by accident—afraid of wasting her third precious wish, which still lay dormant inside me.
The word permanent piqued my interest. I had never kept a servant for more than a few months. The older stranger, a feline woman about The Lady’s age, was dressed entirely in green. Tawny brown skin contrasted with hard green eyes. Curly hair burst from beneath her cloak’s hood, which she wore even in the heat. An isoken, I realized. Isoken people had mixed blood, parents from different Arit realms. To hasten empire unity, the Kunleo imperial treasury rewarded families for every isoken child born.
“I’m Kathleen,” the woman sighed at me, then turned back to The Lady. “I hope this creature won’t be trouble. Does it have a name besides Made-of-You?”
“The ehru calls her something else,” The Lady said.
I had been trained to recognize accents. Kathleen’s lisp echoed her home realm, Mewe: a land of green, craggy hills in the distant northern fingers of Aritsar.
“My name is Tarisai,” I piped up, and greeted Kathleen in Mewish, hoping to impress. “May your autumn leaves grow back green!” I didn’t know what autumn was, and had never lived in a place where trees changed color, but it sounded like a nice thing to say.
“Am’s Story, Lady,” the isoken woman snorted. “Did you teach the kid all twelve realm tongues?”
“No harm in outshining the competition,” The Lady said smugly.
“They don’t test children on different languages,” Kathleen retorted. “Not anymore. Every realm speaks Arit now. That’s the point of being an empire.”
“Only Arit citizens,” droned the second stranger, “take pride in their cultures being erased. Why be unique, when you could all be the same?” He looked much younger than Kathleen—perhaps twenty, and more boy than man. His voice reminded me of a spider’s web, soft and gossamer. I could not place his accent anywhere in Aritsar.