The Golden Ink - Ink Series | Part I

“It is an honor to be the conduit for the goddess — Binta.” Aunt Kayo’s voice cut through the quiet night.

“All women in our bloodline carry this gift, and one of us shall carry forth the divine calling.” It was sharp. Steady. Assured.

Her words clung to my skin like a perfume I particularly disliked but wore anyway, because the world generally expected women to smell like flowers rather than someone who had things to do.

Her face was like a tombstone, which was an impressive contrast to the sheer, unadulterated lunacy spurting out of her mouth.

While she bestowed this “divine ancestral nonsense” upon me, she distractedly rubbed the dark markings etched into her arms.

Swirling spirals of dark tattoos that seemed to tell a story no one could read but pretended to understand.

They never told us the details of the ink, of course. At least, not those of us under the “age of accountability,” which — shocker — was twenty years of age.

Shocker, because women were statistically, well, traditionally, married off by fourteen, sixteen if they got lucky.

Twenty — if you could believe it — was, to the goddess Binta, the age a woman was finally responsible enough to hold a conversation without tripping over her own feet, while the rest of the world considered her ripe for children several years earlier.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

Forgive my tantrum; it’s a sensitive subject.

Anyway, we knew the markings were connected to the secret rituals women who hit the “goddess-approved age” underwent, but for the rest of us, yet to be real adults, at least, according to the goddess, they were simply cool ink we couldn’t wait to get.

In fact, the tattoos were the only part of my awakening ritual I was actually looking forward to when I turned twenty, which — thank fuck — was in a moon phase.

Yes, your assumption is right, I was part of the eeerrrm, unlucky ones who weren’t already married off.

This was for a good reason.

You see, my mama — Ggulu bless her soul — had made what some considered an unforgivable mistake. She oh so foolishly fell in love with a man from the Nkore Tribe, all the way from the western lands of Nganda.

In doing so, she diluted the sacred Bantu blood — the all-holy, chosen tribe that carried the goddess’s bloodline that currently meandered through my veins.

No, I didn’t personally think my blood was “watered down,” but Aunt Kayo never failed to remind me of it every time I breathed in the wrong direction.

But it also served me well; it meant none of the Bantu egotistical and quite frankly unintelligent men considered me “worthy enough” to carry their bloodlines forward.

I was too light-skinned, apparently.

As though this has any bearing on— You know what? It's not important.

So, yes, I was a descendant of Binta, but in my Aunt’s eyes and everyone around me, I would never be a True Blood thanks to my contaminated heritage of dubious origins.

I had long surmised that placing faith in this “ancestral fatuousness” was about as useful as a woman getting an education in a village where she’ll inevitably be sold to the rival Chief’s son for a very handsome bride price and a half-thought-through peace treaty.

It was like finding your soulmate and then standing politely to the side while he married someone who better fit his family’s stature.

I wasn’t built for folklore, childbearing, or the divine — that was not my path.

Since I was a child, I had set my sights on joining the Royal Academy — the Ngabo Guard.

I wasn’t doing it to prove anything to Aunt Kayo, who probably wouldn’t have noticed even if I single-handedly saved the kingdom from a plague of the undead.

I was doing it to shape my own path.

I was doing it to earn a place in Nganda through sheer strength and skill rather than a birthright that had been deemed “lacking” by my own relatives.

More importantly, I wanted to be stationed anywhere in Nganda that wasn’t here. Where I wasn’t seen as a stain. Where people didn’t cross walkways simply to avoid me, or spoke in hushed tones when I dared participate in society.

Joining the Ngabo Guard was a perfectly sensible, grounded, and logical plan.

Until now.

Until today.