We camped for the night, detaching the horse from the carriage and tying it to a pair of palm trees. There was a small pond with water just clear enough to drink fresh, surrounded by tufts of green grass and fallen leaves from the trees that circled it. We used the leaves to make a small shelter, but there was no need to make a fire that night, she told me. It would be hot and bright all night thanks to the season. After months on a sailing ship in the frozen winter and damp spring, this was the best news I'd heard in a long time.
We sat on rocks as tall as stepping stools just outside the leaf-tent. When a bobcat approached the pond, I reached for my scythe, but The Huntress stayed my hand with hers. She whispered, "This is his home, too. The wild-cat needs to drink to live, just like us."
I asked, "Couldn't you skin him and sell it?"
She shook her head. "Look." She pointed at a trio of gazelles, drinking water on the opposite side. "This place is safe for everyone. Here, fighting only muddies the water."
"Which hurts everyone," I followed. "It's a truce."
"He'll follow them back to their herd, and hunt their little ones. And when he's nice and full, I'll hunt him, so I can sell a nice, shiny pelt instead of a dry rag."
"Speaking of shiny pelts," I said to her, leaning a little closer.
"Oohf, your lines need work," she frowned.
I leaned back. "Tell me about it," I chuckled, and embarrassment found me. I took a deep breath, and let it out.
She rolled her eyes. "What's it like for you, back home? Anything like here?"
"Ireland? It's cold as fuck, and there's more grass and bugs. But I'm surprised by Africa. I was always told it was a primitive wasteland where people with bone piercings ran around naked, eating each other!"
"That's funny," she said lowly, "I heard the same thing about Ireland." She laughed.
"Seriously, that city I just came from? It was like the future: buildings taller than life, made with sand and stone, stronger than wood; palm trees on every corner, lush as life itself; colors and flags everywhere, everything so ornate."
"Yeah," she nodded, "I've been."
"Everyone dressed so nice, in different clothes I've never seen. So many rules to make things fair, so many different kinds of food-"
She grinned, "Have you tried it? I love tagine," and patted her belly.
I nodded. "Yeah, I did. I got invited to dinner by people I'd never met. Everyone's so polite, more than I thought I was."
"You ARE very rude," she nodded, without cracking up. "Talk too much."
I stuck out my tongue, and laughed. "I see you do have some, though – piercings." I pointed gingerly to a few fragments poking through the sides and lobes of her ears.
"You like them?" she smiled, and turned her head to dazzle me with them. "They were my mother's."
I joked, "Are you sure? They're quite basic. You didn't mix them up this morning?"
She was not impressed, and her mood flattened all at once. "Don't joke, my mother is gone."
I backed up. "Sorry. Mine too," I mumbled. "...plague?"
"No," she said, holding still as she could. "My father."
I may have been feeling a buzz of amour, but hearing that flattened my mood too. I grimaced. "Why would he do that?"
She stood up. "I don't want to talk about it." She walked to the water to cup a drink in her hands.
I waited for a bit, and listened to the foreign-sounding chirping of bugs I didn't know the names of. After a while, I walked up to the pond to fill my wetskin, a little bit away from her so she'd have some space.
She insisted, "I DON'T want to talk. It's too much."
I said softly, "I get it." I walked back to sit down.
She came back, looked at me, and sat down without breaking eye contact. "Okay, you can NEVER repeat this to anyone."
I nodded.
She said, "My grandmother was an orisha, but my mother was a blind fool in fancy jewelry. One day, my grandmother's blindness took her eyes completely, and she told my mother: 'You will marry a behemoth. In his rage, he will give you a child, and then you will die in his stampede. His anger will then become his death.' This was when I was very young."
I nodded gently, listening.
"My father was the behemoth. He buys whiskey from sailors, and drinks himself angry almost every night. He leaves often, but then comes back to ruin things again. He told us he was a descendant of The Prophet. But I don't think he tells the truth, about anything. I never believed him in the first place, I was just happy to be fed. He bought her whatever she wanted, so she let him do as he pleased."
"Been there," I commented. It made me think of Fogborn.
"He's always gone, so I never have to deal with him. But when he's here, he's the worst person I've ever met. He smells like oil, puke, and cheap perfume. He stomps and yells, and smacks us around. He hits so hard, I'm not sure he's even human. It's like he takes his anger from somewhere else. But I've only been hit a few times – it's usually everyone else that he hurts. They put up with him because he has gold, he says from the oil in Arabia. But no one I've asked from that country says they sell oil at all. They say there was one geyser, now it's dry."
My eyes narrowed. 'Suspicious. But, the world is a big place', I thought. 'Must be a common type of monster.'
She cleared her throat. "One night, he told me he had a better life in Heaven, and that I was ungrateful. My mother told him not to talk to me like that." She pauses, as her throat tightens. "Then he-"
I handed her some water, and watched her drink.
She continued. "He strangled my mother to death. When my grandmother told him what she had foreseen, he strangled her, too. Then, at the top of his lungs, he shouted: 'NOW LET'S SEE YOUR MAGIC KILL ME!' So, after that, I learned not to come home. He never came looking for me. I wasn't old enough to learn how to be a shaman, and there was nobody left to teach me. Instead, I have been traveling ever since, sleeping at temples in the great cities."
I glanced to the side, to process what I'd heard. "There's a 'but' coming, isn't there?"
"But..." she continued, "...I have to meet him at Timbuktu, in two months. When I turn eighteen, I am meant to choose a husband and return to my village. He has forced everyone to vote that my husband... will be him."
"Ugh," I shuddered. "That's just disgusting. Why go back?"
She looked forlorn. "It's tradition... I must bair a child. He will choose a suitor for me, for that. It's not for him, it's for my people."
"I had someone like him back home, too. He was the worst person I'd ever met. I had to wait him out, but I got away with my dignity intact. And there was another guy who was almost as bad – I pissed in his grain and ran, and I've been much better off since. It's all Greek History, now."
She lowered her brow at me. "You'd be dead tonight without me."
I pursed my lips.
She went on, "Not everything is solved by running away and playing tricks. If I let my father lead the village alone, he'll kill them all."
"Couldn't he have already done that?"
"He's not that old yet. Madness from drink takes time. But soon, it will come. And I'll need all my strength to kill him, fairly and in defense."
I slid off my rock and leaned against it, seated on the sand. "Why can't your village kill him for you?"
She slid off of her rock, too. "Because he's made them scared, and weak. Only The Prince could dare, but he's too busy getting groomed by slaves."
A Prince. My heart sank. "Lemme guess... you're The Princess."
She nodded, slow and nervous. "I really do like it when you call me Huntress, though."