Nomvula

7 - The Old Ones

"Are you ready?" Asanda asked as she poured a heap of shredded roots onto her palm.

Nomvula adjusted Lifa's head on her lap. "Does it matter?"

She pressed a hand on the split of his brow, where the stoneiris would be — used to be, in the bygone days of witches and sages. A hastily made platter lay on the grass beside her, heaped with charred liver and little mounds of salt. If she were approaching her own ancestors, it would be enough for a casual greeting – barely.

"Be careful," Asanda said.

Nomvula found herself smiling. "Who taught you what that word means?"

A crowd pressed in around the hill, standing far enough to be respectful but well within earshot. Even Dumani stepped back, but not as much as everyone else.

Asanda stuffed Lifa's mouth full of root. "You can chew on it, but don't swallow if you hate the taste of madness. Blink twice if you understand."

He did.

"Old Ones watch over you, Ma."

Nomvula closed her eyes.

She did not draw a deep breath or tense up. That would only keep her anchored to her body. Instead, she listened to the wind, and let it stretch her hearing to the horizon. She pushed her senses past the cool grass, down into the molten depths where titans tossed and groaned in their sleep.

She looked up at the sky until she no longer saw a painted blue wall. It melted like paper in water, giving way to a thousand eyes that sparkled in perfect blackness.

When she was as far as any soul could be from its vessel, she spoke the secret name that tethered earth and air, body and ether.

When Nomvula opened her eyes again, she sat alone on the yard.

"Old Ones of the Inner Plains," she said, and the light at the edge of the dream shimmered. "Here before you is Nomvula of the Sunspears, a humble daughter of Lang'engatshoni, who was son to Duduma, who called you friends in the old world and this one..."

A warm light pressed into her back until it burned, bright enough to throw her shadow to the other side of the yard. She didn't dare turn around.

"...I come as a guest, Old Ones, as does the company in my blood."

An old man's silhouette appeared at the other end of the yard, standing where the grass disappeared into nothing. A companion sat with her hand laid affectionately on his knee, his fingers flowing into her hair where they touched, a seamless connection.

Ten more shadows flanked them, children behind their parents. If the old man had eyes, Nomvula wasn't sure she could bear their weight.

It was Lang'engatshoni, after all, who hunted down a war god and tied it to his house like a lion on a rope.

"As does the company in my bones," she said, all too aware of how its ears perked up.

Nomvula pressed on. "Sitting with me is one of your sons, Lifa, who is a brother to your presiding son, and dying. Old Ones I come to ask–"

The light shifted, moving her shadow like a sundial going the wrong way. Lifa's ancestor stopped in front of Nomvula, a silhouette draped in a blinding cloak. When Lang'engatshoni tilted his head, light bent around his crown in brilliant colours.

The shadows in the yard stretched away from him, anxious to get away.

"I know you have reason to be angry," Nomvula said carefully. "But I am here to speak for Lifa, and to beg his forebears to spare his life."

Lang'engatshoni didn't reign in his displeasure, he simply vanished and took it with him. The other shadows followed.

Nomvula ignored what that meant, and tried to focus on the light looking down at her.

"Lifa is cloaked in disgrace," it said in a burning voice. "He is our child, but when he dies, he must go elsewhere."

If shadowed eyes were heavy, the ones hidden in this one's light made her feel weightless. Queasy. 

"We will make spare him this one time, under one condition." The Old One placed a white finger between her eyes. It hissed like hot metal on ice. "You will burn him alive and scatter his ashes far from home., so that his spirit will drift and never rest. Do you agree?"

In the spirit plane, emotion was a clumsy thing. It came and went as it pleases, so Nomvula spoke before any of it caught up with her. "I have no choice, Old One."

"Then it is done," said the light of a dead king. "And so are we."

His finger pushed Nomvula's head back, and sent her hurtling back to the living world.