Ziwe | The amateur River Priestess
The words hang between us like smoke—the kind that doesn’t so much rise gracefully as sulk in the air, waiting for someone else to deal with it.
I look up at him, my heart thundering in my chest loud enough to qualify as a small elephant’s footsteps. He doesn’t flinch. Of course, he doesn’t. People like him never do—they let your silence do all the panicking for them.
I dig my nails into my palms, the universal human ritual for pretending one still has control of the situation and about the only movement I can manage because the asshole tied me up.
It doesn’t help. The only thing it achieves is proving that my hands are, in fact, attached and capable of pain, which, given the circumstances, feels like a dubious victory.
He stands too close, in a way a man you only met a few days ago shouldn’t, but with a stance that tells me personal space means nothing to him. Green eyes pin me down—pressing down on me more than his words do.
“I can’t do this, I can’t help you.” I try my luck again.
“Can’t or won’t?” He growls.
Hot breath tickles my skin like it has a right to, breathing in his scent sends something warm crawling in my gut and it makes a home there—another universal sign for being monumentally fucked without even knowing it.
I raise my chin, faking brevity. “I can’t.” Somehow it seeps through my voice, too. Good.
He inches back with predatory grace but holds my gaze steady, the way that has sent wrong commands to my insides on more occasions than I care to admit, because if I did, it’d be like a previously exorcised person admitting they wanted to be possessed.
“You are the spirit-medium of the river Temple of Obur, are you not?” Yes, the ‘river that remembers’.
“Not the spirit-medium. A spirit-medium. I just completed my training.” I counter with a fact I know means nothing to him. He’s from the rival kingdom of Acholai.
Our customs and beliefs are an equivalent of a child’s tantrum to them.
He hesitates. Thinking. I’m surprised he can use his brain, if we are to go by evidence from the past three days, if I’d presented my case to the Elders, I would have won easily like a viper against a bunny.
“But you found it. It’s you, I know it. You found the Bead of Blood during the crimson flood.” His gaze doesn’t waver; either he’s been following me for a while, which somehow makes my traitorous heart somersault, or he has a spy in the Temple of Obur.
“I didn’t.” I lie through my teeth and pray to the gods he isn’t a human lie detector.
“You’re lying.” His deep voice comes out matter-of-factly, and I finally confirm what I’ve long suspected—the gods hate me.
He continues, “I really hate when people lie to me, Priestess.” His voice low and steady, “I get angry. You don’t want to see me angry.”
A shiver runs down my spine, cold and sharp like I’ve suddenly been transported to the snow capped peak of Mt. Nzori. I swallow hard. My body trembles like an adungu* in the hands of an inexperienced, and anxious performer.
Anxiety, it turns out, has no sense of rhythm.
I cave at the incessant scrutiny. “Fine, yes, I found it. But it was by mistake.”
“The gods never make mistakes.” He counters too fast for a man who isn’t supposed to believe in gods.
I’m not making assumptions, he told me himself when I desperately threatened him with the god’s wrath for kidnapping a spirit-medium. I remember the deep, raw sound of his laugh at my half-hearted attempt.
“Suddenly you believe in gods?” I mock.
His lips twitch. “Let’s say you’re rubbing off on me.”
I don’t miss the double entendre. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll go easy on you. I need that Bead of Blood, and you’re going to help me get it.” He speaks with finality and arrogance that only an Acholai soldier can muster.
It’s not a request. It’s a command.
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Adungu* - an arched harp (or bow harp), a significant stringed instrument with a hollowed-out wooden body that produces a gentle, melodic, and rich sound.
