Mama Agba shoves me aside with so much force I tumble to the ground.
“Here,” she interrupts with a handful of coins. “Just take it.”
“Mama, don’t—”
She whips around with a glare that turns my body to stone. I shut my mouth and crawl to my feet, shrinking into the patterned cloth of my mannequin.
Coins jingle as the guard counts the bronze pieces placed into his palm. He lets out a grunt when he finishes. “It’s not enough.”
“It has to be,” Mama Agba says, desperation breaking into her voice. “This is it. This is everything I have.”
Hatred simmers beneath my skin, prickling sharp and hot. This isn’t right. Mama Agba shouldn’t have to beg. I lift my gaze and catch the guard’s eye. A mistake. Before I can turn away or mask my disgust, he grabs me by the hair.
“Ah!” I cry out as pain lances through my skull. In an instant the guard slams me to the ground facedown, knocking the breath from my throat.
“You may not have any money.” The guard digs into my back with his knee. “But you sure have your fair share of maggots.” He grips my thigh with a rough hand. “I’ll start with this one.”
My skin grows hot as I gasp for breath, clenching my hands to hide the trembling. I want to scream, to break every bone in his body, but with each second I wither. His touch erases everything I am, everything I’ve fought so hard to become.
In this moment I’m that little girl again, helpless as the soldier drags my mother away.
“That’s enough.” Mama Agba pushes the guard back and pulls me to her chest, snarling like a bull-horned lionaire protecting her cub. “You have my coin and that’s all you’re getting. Leave. Now.”
The guard’s anger boils at her audacity. He moves to unsheathe his sword, but the other guard holds him back.
“Come on. We’ve got to cover the village by dusk.”
Though the darker guard keeps his voice light, his jaw sets in a tight line. Maybe in our faces he sees a mother or sister, a reminder of someone he’d want to protect.
The other soldier is still for a moment, so still I don’t know what he’ll do. Eventually he unhands his sword, cutting instead with his glare. “Teach these maggots to stay in line,” he warns Mama Agba. “Or I will.”
His gaze shifts to me; though my body drips with sweat, my insides freeze. The guard runs his eyes up and down my frame, a warning of what he can take.
Try it, I want to snap, but my mouth is too dry to speak. We stand in silence until the guards exit and the stomping of their metal-soled boots fades away.
Mama Agba’s strength disappears like a candle blown out by the wind. She grabs on to a mannequin for support, the lethal warrior I know diminishing into a frail, old stranger.
“Mama…”
I move to help her, but she slaps my hand away. “òd5!”
Fool, she scolds me in Yoruba, the maji tongue outlawed after the Raid. I haven’t heard our language in so long, it takes me a few moments to remember what the word even means.
“What in the gods’ names is wrong with you?”
Once again, every eye in the ahéré is on me. Even little Bisi stares me down. But how can Mama Agba yell at me? How is this my fault when those crooked guards are the thieves?
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Protect me?” Mama Agba repeats. “You knew your lip wouldn’t change a damn thing. You could’ve gotten all of us killed!”
I stumble, taken aback by the harshness of her words. I’ve never seen such disappointment in her eyes.
“If I can’t fight them, why are we here?” My voice cracks, but I choke down my tears. “What’s the point of training if we can’t protect ourselves? Why do this if we can’t protect you?”
“For gods’ sakes, think, Zélie. Think about someone other than yourself! Who would protect your father if you hurt those men? Who would keep Tzain safe when the guards come for blood?”
I open my mouth to retort, but there’s nothing I can say. She’s right. Even if I took down a few guards, I couldn’t take on the whole army. Sooner or later they would find me.
Sooner or later they would break the people I love.
“Mama Agba?” Bisi’s voice shrinks, small like a mouse. She clings to Yemi’s draped pants as tears well in her eyes. “Why do they hate us?”
A weariness settles on Mama’s frame. She opens her arms to Bisi. “They don’t hate you, my child. They hate what you were meant to become.”
Bisi buries herself inside the fabric of Mama’s kaftan, muffling her sobs. As she cries, Mama Agba surveys the room, seeing all the tears the other girls hold back.
“Zélie asked why we are here. It’s a valid question. We often talk of how you must fight, but we never talk about why.” Mama sets Bisi down and motions for Yemi to bring her a stool. “You girls have to remember that the world wasn’t always like this. There was a time when everyone was on the same side.”
As Mama Agba settles herself onto the chair, the girls gather around, eager to listen. Each day, Mama’s lessons end with a tale or fable, a teaching from another time. Normally I would push myself to the front to savor each word. Today I stay on the outskirts, too ashamed to get close.
Mama Agba rubs her hands together, slow and methodical. Despite everything that’s happened, a thin smile hangs on her lips, a smile only one tale can summon. Unable to resist, I step in closer, pushing past a few girls. This is our story. Our history.
A truth the king tried to bury with our dead.
“In the beginning, Or?sha was a land where the rare and sacred maji thrived. Each of the ten clans was gifted by the gods above and given a different power over the land. There were maji who could control water, others who commanded fire. There were maji with the power to read minds, maji who could even peer through time!”
Though we’ve all heard this story at one point or another—from Mama Agba, from parents we no longer have—hearing it again doesn’t take the wonder away from its words. Our eyes light up as Mama Agba describes maji with the gift of healing and the ability to cause disease. We lean in when she speaks of maji who tamed the wild beasts of the land, of maji who wielded light and darkness in the palms of their hands.
“Each maji was born with white hair, the sign of the gods’ touch. They used their gifts to care for the people of Or?sha and were revered throughout the nation. But not everyone was gifted by the gods.” Mama Agba gestures around the room. “Because of this, every time new maji were born, entire provinces rejoiced, celebrating at the first sight of their white coils. The chosen children couldn’t do magic before they turned thirteen, so until their powers manifested, they were called the ibawi, ‘the divine.’”