CHAPTER 13
The Sorcerer Kings

The spark to the next telling dream came seven months later, when she was heavy with her next child. Tambo brought her a gift. It was a cloak. Long, orange-brown, trimmed with fur in the collar, two leather straps for fastening at the neck. The moment he unfurled it and showed it to her, she got a sharp feeling in her gut.

“It was meant to be your wedding gift,” he said, smiling. “The first one, I mean. It was among the stolen things back in Kowasa, and I’ve been looking for the merchant who sold it to me. I finally found him.”

She got it from him, held it up. It had a good heft to it, tiny intricate weaves, a smell of newness. And the unseen threat of a telling dream come true.

“You don’t like it?”

“I love it, my husband. Thank you so much.”

“You don’t seem happy about it. Is it the color? I can get a white one, green.”

She could tell him to do that, but he’d feel bad about it. And just like when she’d tried to separate Ramona from her grandfather, somehow she felt that no matter what she did, this cloak would always end up with her. “The color is good; it fits well with my skin tone. Here, put it on me.”

He fastened the leather straps at her neck, turned her around by the hand to admire her. “It looks good on you. But if you really don’t like it, I can have it changed for something else.”

“I really like it. It is just strange to see it is real.”

“See it’s..?” His mouth remained open for the rest of the incomplete statement. “You dreamed of this?”

“Of it. In the future, when it is frayed a bit. I don’t know how many years from now that will be, but I have it on as I walk through some grass. I remember a mountain in the dream. You and I had traveled somewhere… will travel somewhere, and will return to meet the children on this grass field.”

“Children? Are you telling me that you know…?” He pointed at her belly.

“It’s a boy.”

He touched the back of his head, amazed. “Why didn’t you tell me this? You already know his name, don’t you?”

“I do. I can never be sure about these tellings, to be honest.”

“I have been mulling over names for all these months, for both girls and boys. So, the name I will come up with is one you already know?” He paced about. “Well, you can’t tell me, it is bad luck. I have to be the one who says it upon his birth. There’s a name heavy on my mind. It could be the one in the dream. What if I changed it? If I chose another name instead, would that mean I have changed the future? Or the name I pronounce at his birth will actually be the name in the dream, no matter how I come up with it?”

“I can’t say. It confuses me.”

That night, she had a telling dream.

Reema. Angry. Standing akimbo before the fading sorcerers in their falling shack. They were neck-deep into the ground now, the vines around them were thicker, looking more like human limbs than plants.

At the end of two vines were egg-shaped bulbs, pulsating sickeningly, as if about to bloom gigantic flowers. They hadn’t been there before, and Nasomi guessed they had grown over the years as the sorcerers were gradually sucked into the ground.

“Why is she is not dead?” Reema shouted. “I have given you everything!”

“One. More. Thing.” They spoke in unison, their voices whispery and struggling.

“Get rid of her, that’s what I asked, and I gave all my wealth for that. What more do you want?”

“Come. Look. Into. This. Bowl.”

A cracked bowl sprouted from the ground. Water filled it but didn't leak out. Reema, and Nasomi’s ghost in her, moved closer and looked into it. Reema saw a reflection of herself. Happier, and wealthier, with Tambo next to her, kissing her cheek.

“Put. Your. Hand. Bowl.”

Reema brought down her hand but retracted it. “I will not until you give me what I want!”

“Good. Things. Your. Desires. In Bowl. We dying. Need no wealth. You. Do.”

A sack of gold and shiny gems sprout out of the ground, sliding toward Reema. She touched it to check if it was real.

“All. Yours. Our gift. To. Bride.”

Reema touched the water with a finger, then all the fingers. The bowl didn't seem to have a bottom. When her hand was submerged up to her wrist, something in the water pulled.

But not at her hand. At something else inside her. At her life, at her breath deep inside. She felt her joy was being sucked into the bowl.

Nasomi was no longer Reema, but a floating awareness looking down at the scene. Reema was screaming, trying to pull her hand out of the bowl, which did not move from its spot. She was changing. Wrinkling. Withering like a plant scorched by a searing sun.

Nasomi was now inside the sorcerers, both of them at the same time. She felt their sense of triumph, their success at having secured the final ingredient to another phase of their transcendence. This was what they had wanted all along: Reema's essence, the part of her that gave her beauty, happiness, and meaning.

Reema was the ultimate prey, the one in whom they found all the jealousy, hate, desperation and wealth to unlock their power.

Nasomi felt the sorcerers' power changing. Taking new form. One of the bulbs cracked and broke in a spray of black goo. A creature rose from the mess. A hyena.

The other bulb broke and a second hyena emerged. From the final thoughts of the sorcerers, Nasomi understood why they spent their entire witching lives for this one moment: hyenas can eat anything. Flesh and bones. And ethereal substances: magic, and the essence of people. Villages, cities, and kingdoms would be at the mercy of their power. They would be kings among the sorcerers.

But something was wrong. Incomplete. The Bride was not dead yet. She was fighting.

Nasomi was omniscient again, looking at the entire room. Then she became Reema. There were other things down the bottomless bowl. Something slithered by her hand. She touched hair and rock and what felt like warm oil. Felt a wind. Then a piece of metal, a large coin. She grabbed at it. And that seemed to give her part of her will back.

With a cry, Reema pulled her hand out of the bowl and sprawled backward. The anguish affected Nasomi as well, hurling her out of Reema’s body. Reema looked old and ugly, thin, nigh dead. Her beauty was gone. “You tricked me!” she yelled. She got up, with much effort. “You tricked me, you bastards! Look what you've done to me!”

The sorcerers' human heads cracked and dissolved into dust. The hyenas walked to each other, faced Reema. “How did she resist it?” one hyena said, its voice raspy.

“How did she remove her hand?” the other yelled.

“It will all be for nothing if she isn’t drained,” the other said.

They stalked toward Reema, chuckling. She backed away until her back hit a vined wall. She sidled and her hand came to the curtain on the door.

“Let’s suck it from her corpse!”

“Give us the rest of your essence, Bride!”

The hyenas bound at Reema, but she was already out the door, running into the night. She ran through and over a field of creeping vines. She stumbled and the hyenas were upon her.

Nasomi was waking as Reema's scream rippled through the last vestiges of the dream.

“They killed her!” she shouted. “They have killed Reema!”

Tambo jumped off the bed. “Call me names if you want, old man!” he said, then looked to the left then the right. He ran halfway to the door, stopped and turned around. Embarrassed, he massaged his neck with both hands as he came back to the bed. “What was that you said, my love?”

“A dream. Another one. Reema! She went back to the sorcerers, and they killed her.”

“Eh? Killed her?”

“How could this happen? Why did she go to them? Couldn’t she tell how dangerous they were?”

Tambo held her. “If she could, she was blinded by her desire for revenge.”

“It’s all my fault.” The room started closing in around her, and she had trouble breathing. She wheezed and pulled herself from his embrace. “It’s all my fault!”

As she went out of the room, Tambo followed her saying, “It can’t be your fault, Nasomi. She alone is to blame for this. That’s the type of woman she is.”

Nasomi ran down the corridor, trying to race against the shadowed walls getting smaller, trying to gnaw her. She needed to get outside, she needed to breathe. She unlocked the door.

Tambo was close behind. “Where are you going, Nasomi? Please, listen to me. It is not your fault.”

She was outside before he could catch up. The air was sweet. It filled her lungs with some relief. “If it wasn’t for me — if I hadn’t come in between you — none of this would have happened. I feel like I am a bad person.”

“You’re not a bad person,” he said, coming close but not touching her. “I loved you, and love you still. I would choose you a thousand times. We must feel bad for Reema’s unfortunate end, but you must not blame yourself for it.”

“I’m trying not to, but it’s hard, Tambo. And the dreams… Why do I have to dream about these things? I want to be a normal woman!”

She wondered why this area was called a rich area when there were so little trees, hardly any bushes, so much stone, and paving everywhere. She missed kneeling beneath the senegalia trees at their previous home. She missed smelling the plants and listening to nightingale songs. Why did I suggest we move here? she thought.

“What can I do, my husband? Who will mourn her? Who will believe me when I tell my dream? Reema has died alone and afraid. She has no one to go to bring her body and bury her proper. And this will haunt me for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I can bear it.”

He embraced her. “Let’s share that burden together. Like all life’s challenges, you may not know what to do about this for now, but the answer will come. I’ll be here by your side.”

A sharp pain burned in her lower back, and her insides pulled and twisted. The cramps eased and came again. “Tambo. I think it’s time. The baby is coming.”

Tambo helped her inside. She could hardly walk by herself, and she was hot and sweating. Her vision was whitening. Tambo shouted something, but she couldn’t distinguish the words over the pain that gripped her.

Presently, there were more hands touching and holding her, more voices telling her to be strong, it would be over soon; she saw faces: her handmaiden, her midwives, Naena. Naena was here! That thought comforted her.

There was excited frenzy all about her. They made her lie down, opened up her legs, and daubed the sweat off her forehead. Bring warm water! Hold her hands! Where is that cloth! I thought I told you to prepare the cot! Did she eat? The voices spoke all about her. She let herself be lost in them, let them wash away the strong guilt.

Like all life’s challenges, you may not know what to do about this for now, but the answer will come. That’s what her husband said. And she knew what to do now. She pushed and let the new life come out of her. She let go of the pain of Reema’s death and reveled in the pain of her son’s birth.

When he cried, tears filled her eyes and she laughed in joy.

“We'll call him Meron,” Tambo said when they let him in.

“A nice name,” Nasomi said, as the little boy sucked her nipple. She could think of nothing more beautiful than having brought forth life and seeing it depend on you.

“It’s a name from the Binoan people of Kon. It means ‘everlasting peace’”. He stroked the little boy. “Is it the name in the dream?"

“Yes,” Nasomi said.

He laughed. “I guess it was inevitable, even though I thought I tried to be clever by giving him a name outside Nari’s walls. Welcome to our life, Meron.”