Prologue
The Sun Temple, Royal Island, Kingdom of Oru
1313 FS
MREMÍ
Nine blood moons and one day.
That was how long Mremí hung in the balance between life and death.
The cool evening breeze sent shivers down her spine. This was the night she had feared and with every passing moment she realized how wildly unprepared she was for it. Searing pain washed over her; she shut her eyes, forcing herself to breathe through it until the intense sharp pain dulled into an ache. Thoughts of her mother raced through her mind as she lay on the floor over layers of mats and wrappers. She wished more than anything that she wasn’t miles away from home, scared and alone with only the older woman by her feet shouting at her.
Mremí glanced around the empty room. No matter how beautiful, it was no place to be born. Her child ought to be born into the ocean like she was – like her mother was, and her mother before her. At home, she’d be kneeling in the wet sands at the edge of the sea, feeling the saltwater rush in and out of her, stinging and cleansing, preparing to greet the child whosefirst cry would be from the cold; born of water, born of Òtútù. When she closed her eyes, she heard the rush of the wind and the crash of the waves on the rocks that her home was built upon. She wouldn’t have been pushing alone. She’d have had the force of the mighty ocean urging her child into the world. She could see her sisters standing barefoot in the sinking sand at the shoreline, singing to her, and she could feel the rhythmic strokes of her aunt’s heavy hand drumming against her back.
Most of all, Mremí could hear her mother’s voice pouring strength into her. She needed that voice, but with every wave of contraction, it seemed farther and farther away, and a surge of heat consumed her. She felt a sudden tightness in her chest. Panic overwhelmed her. Her lips trembled as she cried for the mother she feared she’d never see again. The other wives of the High Priest had their mothers with them in the days following their wedding. They followed them everywhere, washing their feet and braiding their hair. But here she was, a stranger in a new world. Wishing that at any time in her twenty first suns, her mother had told her how much bringing forth life would feel like death.
‘Calm down, Mremí! I can’t hear your child’s heartbeat if you keep screaming down the temple,’ the midwife’s shrill voice cut through her thoughts.
‘Oh gods, help me, please?’ Mremí prayed and lifted her gaze to the reddish-brown walls that seemed to close in on her. On them were sand portraits of women – wives of past High Priests. Their dark eyes peered into her soul. Hundreds of them. Had they been as terrified as she was? Had they left this room alive?
A few moments later, the midwife’s eyes locked with Mremí’s; her shoulders dropped, and she shrunk back. ‘I hear nothing.’
‘Ah! Gods forbid! ?m? mi ò lè kú – my child can’t die!’
‘There is nothing to be done,’ the midwife’s voice shattered through her mind, and her ears rang. ‘You’ve lost too much blood, Mremí. Let the child come out.’
Mremí groaned, her chest heaving as she struggled to control her breathing. Unable to move the bottom half of her body, she did the only thing she could think of – the one thing her husband would kill her for. She called upon her gods in the north.
The bargain was simple. Her life for her child’s. She was nothing without her child, so she drew a deep breath and began to chant, ‘Child of my womb, take from my blood, child of my womb, take from my life, come back to me.’ She pitched forward and cried hysterically, ‘?m? mi, gba agbára à mi – my child, take my strength!’ She’d journeyed south through the sands and storms. She’d lied, stolen, and done everything to carry the High Priest’s heir. The child who would save her people. It couldn’t die.
‘Stop that nonsense,’ the midwife shouted and pried herself out of Mremí’s grip. ‘The gods can’t help you. The sun has long set, and they are asleep. It’s you holding this child back.’ She lifted Mremí to her knees and placed her on all fours. ‘Your child will rot inside of you – it must be born, or it’ll be the death of you.’
Mremí ignored the midwife. Her gods didn’t sleep at night. Her gods didn’t rise with the dawn. She reached for the darkness enclosing the room and allowed the void to fill her mind. Hands and knees on the ground, she cried out to the gods of her people, ‘yin Òrì?à àw?n bàbá babá nlá mi, ? má k’hìn sí mi – gods of my ancestors, please don’t turn your back on me.’
Mremí didn’t know if her gods would answer, but she was prepared to die trying. There was no going back.
Mremí’s agbára ignited inside of her. The familiar warmthof her magic rose to the surface of her skin. Her pupils turned an unnatural shade of blue, and wisps of mist seeped from her hands onto the mat.No – not yet. She needed her agbára flowing into her child, not bursting out of her. She shut her eyes firmly until she felt her agbára recede. In the years she’d spent in the kingdom of Oru, she’d never exposed her powers, and she couldn’t afford to now.
A loud voice pulled her out of her thoughts. A handmaiden had rushed into the room. ‘It’s Aya’ba Oyíndà,’ she called out from the doorway. ‘Her child is nearly here!’
Mremí screamed, ‘No!’ She turned to the midwife. ‘I’m ready! I’m ready! Get it out, get it out now!’ her words tumbling over each other. If her child was not born first, it would all have been for nothing.
Mremí summoned all her strength; the powers of the gods, new and old, north and south. She pushed from her shoulders, from the soles of her feet, from the core deep within her, and her agbára ignited like a raging fire flooding her mind and body. This time, she didn’t stop it.
‘I have the head. Push again!’ the midwife yelled.
With a loud cry, Mremí pushed the baby out, wet and wormlike, into the hands of the midwife crouched at her feet. She crashed to the floor and lay on her side. As soon as she caught her breath, she asked with a shaking voice, ‘Is it alive?’
The midwife was busy with the baby, wiping off the fluid and blood that had accompanied it into the world. She carefully removed the liquid from its nose and mouth, then cut off the rope that connected the baby to its mother. ‘It’s so cold,’ the old midwife said, swaddling the child in a cloth and shaking her head. ‘It’s a girl.’
She placed the limp child in the basket next to her, and without raising her head, she said, ‘You need to push out the afterbirth too.’
Mremí followed the midwife’s instructions as the woman skilfully kneaded the afterbirth out of her. Mremí could feel that the midwife was intentionally avoiding her gaze. She watched eagerly as the woman mopped the blood of the baby with a wet cloth. After a few moments of eerie silence, the midwife picked up the baby and stood with her back to Mremí.
‘She’s not crying,’ Mremí said, her voice breaking.
The midwife turned to speak but froze. ‘Yo— you … your eyes!’ she stammered and stepped back. ‘You’re not from here. You’re not of the sands!’
