Unicorn Tracks (14 page)

When he looked up, Father dropped the ginger root and immediately placed Imrai on the floor. He bit his lip. Like me, he always did that when he was trying to stop himself from showing too much emotion.

“Where have you been?” The question was harsh, but his voice was gentle.

“You know, around,” I said and edged over to smell the ginger ale inside the pot. “Smells like a good batch.”

He nodded and lifted a stirring spoon full of the warm gold liquid to my lips. “Go on. You were always my toughest critic.”

I took a sip and coughed. “Too much yeast!” I gagged.

My father chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. “I let Imrai decide how much we’d put in.” He bent down and picked up the toddler again. “Can you say hello to your sister, Imrai?”

The boy batted his eyelashes at me. He had light gray eyes like my mama, uncommon in Nazwimbe. Mine were dark, like my father’s. His face held no trace of recognition, but he obeyed my father anyway. “Hello, sister.”

I reached for him, and he shrank away back into my father’s neck. Adebayo shrugged. “He’ll come around, once he gets used to seeing you again. It’s good to see you, safe and whole.”

Mama made her way into the kitchen and sat on the edge of the table. “Safe and whole… interesting choice of words, Ade. It might interest you to know that there is a foreign white girl behind the house, carrying an orphan unicorn foal. And Tumelo didn’t come with her.”

My father frowned and passed Imrai to Mama. She took the boy out of the kitchen and into the large bunk-bedroom we all shared. He tilted my chin up to look at him. He sighed, as if noticing the puffiness of my eyes and the greenish circles around them for the first time. “What’s happened?”

I collapsed against his chest, and the words spilled out like water.

When I finished telling him about the poachers, the unicorns, and Tumelo’s capture, he shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe you would be so reckless. I expect that kind of thing from Tumelo—he’s always been rash and silly. But we raised you to take more caution and to think before you try something so stupid. How did you think you could possibly get away with something like that? If they’re smart enough to make a railroad without the General’s knowledge, they’re smart enough to catch a couple of teenagers. I know Arusei from years ago. Now I’ll have to clean up your mess.”

When tears started to fall down my cheeks again, he softened. “It’ll be all right. I think you’re right to say that if Arusei wanted Tumelo dead, he would have just shot him. He’s holding him. They’ll be nervous now, knowing you got away and hoping that you’ll come back to get them. At least he doesn’t know who you are. Tonight, we’ll feed you up, let you sleep in your own bed. All you need to focus on is getting to know your brother again.” He brushed the tears away from my face with the edge of his thumb. “You look too skinny. Tumelo’s working you too hard. When we get him out, I’ll have words with that boy.”

I snuggled deeper into his chest, wishing that I was still Imrai’s age and still believed that my father’s arms could make everything better. While his hold still comforted me, it had lost its magical ability to heal a year ago.

“We’ll ride for the capital in the morning,” he said. “Why don’t you bring your friend inside?”

I released my hold on him and went to find Kara. As I put on my boots, my father appeared behind me at the doorway. “And Mnemba, when this is all over, don’t let it be another year before we see you again.”

WE ATE
dinner in near silence, nibbling at the spiced chicken my mother had prepared. I watched Kara struggle to eat without a knife or fork, the way we did here. After each bite, her greasy fingers hovered in the air and she looked down at her lap in confusion, as if willing a napkin to materialize from nothing. The foal nestled on the floor close to her feet, happy and bloated now that we’d fed him half a bucket of mare’s milk. My parents spent the meal exchanging looks, a silent language only they understood. Only Imrai seemed at peace. He made mountains out of his potatoes and galloped imaginary fig horses across his plate, chattering to my mother with his mouth stuffed.

Father didn’t speak any Echalende. Before they met, Mama had once worked as a secretary in the capital, taking records for the General. She had taught me snippets of the language as a child and Tumelo had helped me get better. I knew my father didn’t want to offend by speaking Nazwim around Kara and my mother wouldn’t want to make my father feel ignorant by showing off her Echalende. So instead none of us said anything, sitting in straight-backed silence.

“This is very good,” Kara said, tentatively breaking off another piece of the tender meat. She held it up and smiled, so that my father could catch the gist of what she was saying. She lifted the unicorn foal from the ground into her lap. “If it’s all right, I’m going to take him outside and feed him again.”

“I’ll help,” I said, rising from the table before Mama could say anything to stop me. I knew the foal might not be hungry again, but I’d take any excuse to leave the table with her.

We went out behind the house, and I followed Kara into the stable block to the strawberry mare’s stall. I recognized her as one of the first horses I’d ridden as a child. She’d been young then, and frisky. Too wild for a little girl, Mama had complained. But Father thought riding wild ponies turned children into formidable adults. I soothed her and played with her inquisitive foal’s ears while Kara pressed the unicorn directly to her teat to suckle.

“It’s nice, seeing your home,” she said, pulling the unicorn’s nose back to make him feed more slowly. Surprisingly, he was ravenous again. “I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances, and I’m sure your family does too, but still, I like it, seeing where you come from.”

“Even with the language barrier?” I teased, leaning over to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. I wanted to kiss her lips, but so soon after our encounter with the guard at Obasi’s well, I couldn’t. “My father barely speaks a word of Echalende. Sorry. It’s not like tourists really come here.”

Tentatively, Kara reached out to stroke my hair. Even though I wanted her to touch me, I stiffened as her fingers wound themselves around a loose braid. An image of a large hand grabbing my braids and throwing me against the ground flashed through my mind. I pulled back and braced myself against the barn’s wall.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispered, a sad frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. “When will you realize that? Sometimes you’re okay and then you back off again. You don’t have to keep pushing away from me.”

I traced her jawline with my finger. Her sadness made me feel guilty, even though I couldn’t help the way my body was reacting. “I think it’s just… seeing the Pits today. Knowing he’s so close.”

“What do you think will happen? Will he kill himself?”

I shrugged. “They all do in the end.”

“But what if it takes years? Is he going to haunt you for that whole time?”

“I try to think about other things. It helps when I’m away from here, working. I love my family, but it’s worse every time I come here. When it first happened, my father never really got it. He kept saying again and again, ‘We caught him, we caught him, it’s over.’ He didn’t understand why the rest of me didn’t heal when my cuts did.”

Kara adjusted her position so she could lean up against the wall beside me. She looked up toward the barn’s rafters. “We need to get Tumelo back.”

I nodded. Our shoulders brushed. The accidental touch disarmed me, and my body relaxed. “What do we do about the stone?”

“Give it to the General?”

“I’m not sure… we have these legends. I was always taught that they were stories, just fairy tales. But they talk about a moonstone that can be used to stir the unicorns into battle fever. They respond to it, and it makes them vicious. Kings used it.”

She slowly rested her head against my shoulder. “So it’s more than just a way to lure them. It changes their behavior.”

“If the legends are true.”

The foal struggled to be put down. We carried him outside the mare’s stall and let him try his legs on the solid earth. His legs splayed, and he shuffled around the inside of the barn, nosing curiously at stray wisps of hay and empty buckets.

Laying down in the clean straw, we watched our quadrupedal little orphan explore his world on wobbly, bowed legs.

Kara stroked my stomach as I breathed in the scent of fresh cut straw. “Do you trust the General with it? If it turns out to be everything the legends say it is?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Then for now, we keep it close.”

MAMA LIFTED
Imrai to the assembly bell, helping him swing the ceremonial gong with his chubby toddler arms. Someday, calling the warriors’ gatherings would fall to him, and by the time he was a man, Mama wanted Imrai to feel like his exercising his power was as natural as taking a breath. When he finished ringing the bell, he waved at me in excitement. I’d made friends with my brother again by slipping him cubes of sugar at breakfast when Mama’s back was turned.

The village warriors drew around my father in a semicircle, pulling their masks down over their faces. Our central square filled with the men and their tall horses. They wore thick paint smeared across their chests in jagged scratches of red and green. Each of the twenty men had a rifle slung over his back, and wore the ceremonial claws covering their right hands. They presented themselves as a deadly mix of new technology and formidable dedication to tradition.

I struggled to climb into Elikia’s saddle, my legs restricted by the fabric of the new dress Mama had given me and forced me to wear. It wouldn’t do for me to appear before the General dressed in dusty man’s clothes like an ill-bred tramp. Kara and I parked our horses behind my father, facing the crescent moon of assembled warriors.

I felt out of place in the warriors’ gatherings with so many of Obasi’s friends and former brothers appraising me like an enemy. In Nazwimbe, when you were elected to the warrior’s guild by the chief, the position was for life. The guild became your family. Before I left with Tumelo, I had told my father how I felt several times, but he always dismissed me.
They understood
, he’d comforted,
they knew that what Obasi did was unforgivable.
It’s all in your head, Mnemba. When will you stop believing the whole town is your enemy?
But if that was the case, then why did I always feel like they waited for me to do something? Like their eyes held hope, pity, and accusation all at the same time?

Tumelo was the only one who understood, who had listened to me and noticed how differently they treated me after it happened. He’d come back from his studies at the guide’s academy in Mugdani and had found me a shell of the person I used to be.
Come with me, cousin
, he’d said, his eyes bright.
Let’s see if we can put some spirit back inside you.
I closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of the gathering horses and the roosters crowing the early morning. We had to get him back, whatever it took.

“One of our own has been taken,” my father began, raising his voice to a loud boom. All the men assembled already knew what had happened to Tumelo. My father had sent out runners the night before to make sure that all of them would be ready to leave at daybreak. But the announcement, the stirring of suspense and blood rage by the chief’s speech—these were our traditions. Mama stepped behind him and settled his headdress over his dark braids. “My nephew and a foreigner who was his guest have been taken captive by a slaver’s group who would overthrow our beloved General.”

The warriors raised their clawed hands into the air and chanted, “We follow you.”

“You honor me,” my father replied.

At the noise of the bell, most of the villagers emerged from their huts, rubbing their eyes. They raised their fists sleepily, some of them covering yawns. A naked toddler ran out into the street, and his mother chased after him, grabbing him in her arms and belatedly raising her fist with a rueful grin.

Kara leaned over to me, so close that her soft hair brushed against my cheek. Mama had given her a new bag to hold the foal. He nipped my shoulder playfully when she drew close. “What are they saying? Doing?”

I shrugged. “It’s a ritual. We always do it before the warriors leave the village. Back before Nazwimbe was all one country, and the chiefs used to fight each other, it was a promise between the chief, the warriors, and the town’s people that we were all bound together. Now it’s just tradition, and my father likes to continue it.”

Mama handed Father his chieftain’s spear, and he raised it to signal the warriors to file out. She blew me a kiss and lifted Imrai so he could wave us off. Kara and I rode up alongside Father, with the men following behind us. I felt their eyes boring into me, and I wished we could go to the General without the ceremonial guard. General Zuberi commanded a force of men larger than the total population of our village. He didn’t need the warriors Father brought to ride out against Arusei, but for a chief to greet his overlord alone signaled disrespect.