Prologue
AMARAE
“Urghh… I didn’t expect to wake up.”
The words barely made it past my lips.
For a moment, I thought perhaps I hadn’t.
Perhaps I had finally crossed into Ayéla sometime during the night and simply hadn’t noticed. After so many mornings spent surprised to find myself still breathing, it seemed entirely possible that death would arrive quietly enough to confuse me.
I waited.
Nothing.
No ancestors appeared to welcome me. No familiar voice laughed at my confusion.
No Lyara.
Instead, warmth pressed against one side of my face from the fire. Wood smoke mixed with resin and the bitter scent of healing leaves, thick enough in the hut that I could taste it at the back of my throat.
So this was clearly not Ayéla.
A shame.
I had been hoping Lyara would be the first person I saw.
Singing drifted through the walls.
Low at first, then stronger as more voices joined. Women outside the hut carried the melody together, letting it rise and fall in long waves before leaving a small space between each verse.
I knew that song.
Of course I did.
I had heard it sung for dying men and women before. I had simply never expected to hear it while being the reason everyone was singing.
I opened my eyes properly.
Edo sat nearest the entrance with both hands resting on his carved staff. Joya’s invocation beads moved slowly between his fingers, his lips forming words too quietly for me to hear.
Baba sat with his head bowed.
Sesi held a woven palm fan near her face, though there was little heat left in the room to justify it.
Goran stood against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.
Silent.
I almost smiled.
Perhaps dying had finally taught me how to silence Goran.
Makeva and Zola were farther back. Zira stood in one corner, so still she looked ready for battle rather than death. Rani remained near the entrance, watching everything.
And beside me was Zuri.
My daughter sat closest, her hand wrapped around mine.
She looked exhausted.
I wondered how long she had been sitting there.
Knowing Zuri, probably longer than anyone had asked her to.
Her eyes lifted when she realized I was awake.
“Abah?”
There it was.
That voice.
No matter how old she became, some part of me would always hear the little girl who used to run through the halls calling for me as though whatever she needed could not possibly wait another moment.
“You’re still here,” I whispered.
Her mouth trembled. “Where else would I be?”
“Sleeping.”
“I can sleep later.”
“Stubborn.”
That almost earned me a smile.
Almost.
I studied her face.
Twenty-five years, and there were still moments when looking at her hurt.
“You look so much like her.”
Zuri’s expression softened.
“Mama?”
“Who else?”
Her thumb moved over the back of my hand.
There was Lyara in her face, certainly. In the shape of her eyes. In the way her mouth tightened when she was trying not to show what she felt.
But Zuri was not simply a reflection of her mother.
There was something else in her. Something I had spent years trying to understand.
Something I had never seen in Lyara.
Never seen in myself either.
I still didn’t know what it was.
But I thought she would.
A cough tore through my chest before I could speak again.
Pain followed.
Sharp. Deep.
My body folded around it before I could stop myself.
“Abah.”
Zuri moved closer.
Someone reached for my shoulders. Baba, I thought, though my vision blurred before I could be certain.
I coughed again.
And again.
By the time it passed, every breath scraped.
Zuri’s hand was against my face.
“Easy, Abah, easy.”
I closed my eyes until the room stopped moving.
When I opened them again, everyone was watching me.
That was irritating.
“I am dying,” I managed. “Not performing.”
A sound escaped Edo that might have been a laugh before he swallowed it.
Good.
At least someone still had sense.
I looked back at Zuri.
There were things I had spent months trying to say to her.
Advice offered over meals. Conversations during walks. Warnings disguised as stories because she became suspicious whenever I sounded too much like a father preparing his daughter for life without him.
She had known what I was doing.
Of course she had.
She simply hadn’t wanted to name it.
Neither had I.
But there was no more time for pretending.
“When I am gone…”
Her fingers tightened around mine.
“Abah.”
“When I am gone, they will turn to you.”
Her eyes dropped.
“I am not ready.”
“No one is ready before, Zuri.”
She looked at me again.
“Readiness is a story people tell after they survive the thing that frightened them.”
Her face crumpled for the briefest moment before she forced it still.
“What if I fail?”
“You will.”
Her eyes widened.
I heard someone shift behind her.
“Probably more than once,” I added.
“Abah.”
“You asked.”
That did it. A broken little laugh escaped her, tangled with something dangerously close to a sob.
I squeezed her hand, or tried to.
“You will make mistakes. You will anger people. You will doubt yourself. None of those things give you permission to stop.”
She blinked quickly.
“You spent your whole life teaching me how you would do things.”
“And now I am telling you not to.”
Her brow pulled together.
“Do not spend your life trying to become me. And do not spend it trying to become your mother.”
I drew another careful breath.
“You are ours, but you are not us.”
The singing outside rose again.
For a while, I listened.
They were walking beside me for as long as they still could.
I looked beyond Zuri toward the others.
These people had followed me farther than I had any right to ask.
Some had left homes.
Positions.
Families.
Lives that would have been easier if they had simply remained where they were.
And now I was leaving them first.
“When I am gone…”
I hated how weak my voice sounded.
Zira straightened.
Rani’s attention sharpened.
“Stand with her.”
My eyes moved between them, then toward the others.
“Don’t let them decide for her.”
Someone answered.
I couldn’t make out who.
The room had begun to feel strangely distant.
Zuri leaned closer.
“Abah?”
I looked at her.
“Liora.”
Her face changed.
“You haven’t called me that in years.”
“I know.”
I lifted my hand toward her cheek.
Or I thought I did.
I couldn’t feel her.
My fingers touched her skin, but there was nothing.
No warmth.
No softness.
Nothing.
The pain was gone too.
I frowned.
Then I opened my eyes.
Zuri was below me.
For a moment, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
She was bent over an old man lying on the bed, clutching his hand between both of hers.
My hand.
My body.
Fear came quickly then.
Not because I was looking at myself.
Because she was still holding my hand and I could no longer feel hers.
“Zuri?”
She didn’t hear me.
Something moved near the doorway.
Not a person.
The cloth shifted inward though no one had touched it, and a breeze passed through the hut.
With it came a scent I had not smelled in years.
My whole being stilled.
No.
I knew that scent.
“Lyara?”
Something touched the edge of my hearing.
Almost a laugh.
Almost.
Then Zuri cried out.
“Abah, please.”
Her voice caught me.
The hut slammed back into place.
Pain crashed through my chest.
Air tore into my lungs.
And suddenly I was inside this useless old body again.
Zuri was crying now.
I had forgotten something.
Something I needed to tell her.
Something I had carried for too long.
I forced my eyes open.
“Listen to the wind, Liora.”
She bent closer.
“What?”
“It carries her voice.”
Breathing hurt.
Everything hurt.
“When it calls, follow it.”
Confusion filled her face.
“What do you mean? Abah, what does that mean?”
I wanted to tell her.
I wanted to explain everything.
But my body had finally decided it had given me enough time.
So I looked at my daughter.
At the woman she had become.
At the woman she still did not know she could become.
And for once, I was not afraid for her.
Lyara.
Then I let go.
Before dawn, the Koraï sounded once, twice, then a third time.
And everything that had been waiting began.
