Excerpt: Maze
It happened again that morning.
As usual, I had no hint anything would go wrong that day. I was playing ball on the veranda with Kotho and Bo. Normally, I wouldn’t have been allowed to play unsupervised without Mama or Papa nearby, but Mama was so busy today that she’d not noticed when I followed my brothers outside.
Summer heat made staying inside unbearable, but Mama had warned us children not to leave the villa. The delicious scent of roasting venison and cornbread wafted from the inside. There was to be some feast later, and Mama, as Vaedi wanted us nearby when it was time to present us to the elders. My younger brothers were going to perform a war dance. Nothing about that was strange. Although Kotho was only eight and Bo was only seven, they already showed the promise of becoming powerful warrior-dancers like Papa. My other four brothers were even younger. I had six brothers altogether. All of them had magic, Mama said. All of them would grow up to be great Zavaedies, Papa predicted.
When I asked what I would grow up to be, Mama and Papa would exchange a long, grim look and change the subject.
Although, at nine winters, I was the oldest, I of course, would not be dancing for the guests. Mama and Father had taught me to dance, but in secret. I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody I had magic, never mind show it off at feasts.
Mama loved me, I knew that. Mama hugged me and kissed me and sang me songs at night. Mama brushed and braided my long hair into pretty styles and crowned me with wildflowers. Mama took me to clearings high in the mountains, just the two of us, to dance together beside the soft-rushing river. Afterwards, we would splash and swim together in the water. Papa loved me, I knew that too. Once when I was four, Papa even took me on a long trip into the wilderness. He took me hunting with him, taught me how to use a bow, a spear, a dagger, how to make my own arrowheads and how to skin a deer. He let me ride on his shoulders, even though now I’m getting too big for that, he still tossed me into the air, saying I’m still too skinny and need to eat more honeycakes.
Sometimes, though…sometimes Mama and Papa flinched away from me, with fear in their eyes. Once, after one of the incidents where I had gone somewhere else, I came back to find them on their knees in front of me, begging me for mercy. They were bruised and bleeding, as though someone had beaten them. When they saw that I was just a little girl, frightened to find my parents hurt and crying, they calmed down. But when I ran to Mama for a hug, Mama held me too tight and cried as if I had broken her heart.
Another time, when Mama and Papa thought I was asleep, I heard Mama weeping in his arms. Mama whispered, “We did everything we could to avoid this, and yet it’s still not enough. Why must we live with this darkness? Why?”
“She is the darkness,” Papa had murmured. He wasn’t crying but he sounded upset too. “We mustn’t let anyone know what she truly is. We tried to rebel against Lady Death’s Curse and we failed. At least we are alive. Never forget, suffering this darkness is the price we paid just to live.”
“I hate the darkness! I want to be a good mother to her, but I can’t…”
“Shhhh,” said Papa.
“Worst of all is how much I love her. She’s so much more powerful than either of us, and yet it’s going to get worse when she truly comes into her power. When she turns sixteen…that’s when he will take her. A marriage made of nightmares… and, if the Visions are true, the destruction of all magic in the world. I hate the future. I hate everything about it. I wish I could shout at the future: ‘She belongs to us, not to you! You can’t have her!’”
“And yet she doesn’t belong to us. She never has.”
“I know what she really is. And I love her in spite of it—because how could I not? But in my heart, I hate…I can’t help it…I hate that thing.”
“Stop it!” Papa had ordered her. “Stop tormenting yourself.”
I stayed awake all night, feeling the weight of Mama’s contempt.
That thing.
She means me.
That’s what I am. A thing. A hateful thing. Darkness.
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