head, craning my neck at awkward angles to protect each yarn plait from the water. The roots throbbed, and my scalp itched with sweat and grime. I paused then, noticing my shadow on the linen screen. My shape was contorted and stiff, like a rooster perched in a barnyard. I felt ridiculous.
So I plunged my head in.
A bubbled sigh escaped my lips as my roots soaked up the water. I could feel the yarn frizz, curls escaping from the tightly coiffed edges. Unruly, the palace braider fretted in my ear. Shameful. Think of your title. Ladies rein every strand into place.
But what title would ever describe me?
Assassin? High Judge Apparent? Puppet demon? Vanquisher of Bush-spirits? I had betrayed Dayo. I had saved his life. No yarn, no matter how tight, could hold back the jumble of contradictions that was Tarisai of Swana. I lathered my scalp and dunked the braids again, letting the suds froth around my ears.
When I emerged from the water, I gasped, braids streaming in a sopping mantle down my back. My limbs felt oddly light. I hummed as I wrung the plaits over the sweet-smelling water. After, I reached for my dusty Imperial Guard uniform, and then thought better of it. Instead I opened my travel pack, pulling out the starry blue garments from Tegoso.
What title can contain me?
The cotton chemise was soft, with sleeves that hung loosely to my elbows. Over the chemise I wound the wrapper, tying it snugly at my waist. I smiled, admiring the woven pattern as it clung to my hips.
Sanjeet was quiet for a moment when I stepped out from behind the screen. Then he said, “It suits you.”
He had bathed and changed too. The kaftan from Tegoso looked imperious on his towering form, and droplets sparkled in his hair. “Ready to go?”
“Not until I’ve said goodbye,” I said.
He followed me, puzzled, as I marched behind Mongwe’s house and strode into the field of tutsu. They whined and tittered again, but I spoke louder, chin high.
“You don’t have to help me,” I told them, shaking my head of gloriously clean, wet hair. “But you will listen when I speak. You will listen, because there is no history I cannot see.” My chest was burning, but this time it didn’t hurt. Instead, the sunstone warmed over my heart, soaking up the heat, and sending it in pleasant tingles down my collarbone. I reached with my Hallow into the ground, consuming the births, deaths, and dances of a million sprites, drinking the tiny stories of power seeping into every blade and flower, every tree and anthill in the vast savannah.
“I am Tarisai of Swana,” I murmured, “and I’ve seen your stories now. They belong to me, as mine belong to you. You don’t have to help me change the world. But you mark my words; when I get going, this world will change. And you can be a part of that … or you can stand back and watch.”
The field went quiet. The specks of light grew still, hovering like stars in the daytime. My heart thrummed in my ears.
Then the tutsu swarmed.
The specks of light dove at me with a deafening hum, surrounding me in a tunnel. I held up my hands in defense and heard Sanjeet cry out … but no pain came. Instead, warmth radiated over my skin as the tutsu streamed beneath my arms, over my shoulders, through my hair: a living breeze.
“They aren’t attacking me,” I yelled.
“No,” Sanjeet yelled back, laughing incredulously. “They’re choosing you.”
My feet left the ground. As the tutsu continued to swirl, something fell into the grass. A length of yarn. Then another, and another. The tutsu unbraided my hair, removing the hundreds of plaits with blurring speed, until there was nothing left but my midnight cloud of hair, unbound and unyielding, bursting from my scalp in a dark halo.
The tutsu set me down at last, and then hovered at a distance. Waiting for orders.
I glanced back at Sanjeet. Mongwe had joined him at the field’s edge, arms crossed.
“Well now,” she said placidly. “Didn’t I tell you a bath would help?”
SANJEET AND I FOLLOWED THE TUTSU FOR what must have been several hours, though it seemed like minutes. My head floated on my shoulders. I realized then that I had suffered from a headache for days, and only now had it vanished.
As the tutsu swarmed above us, a low, rippling cloud across the savannah, I found myself babbling to Sanjeet: a side effect of