Rain Queen
by Zelda C. Thorne
At three months of age, blue-eyed Neela of the Hibiri tribe gripped the hem of her mother’s cotton skirts and wiggled her bottom from side to side; before the girl could walk, she danced.
There was much talk in the village of her oddly-coloured eyes. What did it mean? Was she an omen or a blessing? Her mother and father, Ife and Zesiro, knew her for the gift she was and though they tried for another child, the winds did not favour them a second time. Instead, they watched with pride as their two-year-old dove effortlessly in the Omo river, swimming laps around those three times her age.
As the only female healer of their tribe, Ife spent her days tending wounds and mixing herbs, usually to treat foolish children. It kept her busy whilst Zesiro hunted and gathered crops.
One day, Zesiro returned to see his daughter twirling in the long grass. He smiled and asked, “Have you been dancing all day, Neela?”
“Yes!” She sprinted over and he picked her up, settling her on his hip.
“It is wonderful to see you dancing, but you must help your mother too. Next time—”
Ife’s head poked out from inside their hut, dark eyes intent on her husband. “Let her play. Life does not need us to harden it for her.”
He let his daughter slide to the ground and winked. “Your mother is right, of course.”
As Neela grew, she wanted to play with the other children, but every time, she encountered averted eyes and turned backs. She tried until a mean boy with a scar under his right eye threw rocks at her. She ran off, found shade beneath a cycad tree that grew a short way south-west of the village, curled up, and let her tears water the earth.
“Are you OK?”
The voice startled her into a sitting position; she hadn’t heard the boy approach. He was older than her by a few years, his features soft around a broad nose and probing eyes. Abruptly, she felt the winds change, easing the grass in another direction. His name was Shango.
“Why don’t they like me?” she asked.
“They think you’re weird, that’s all.”
“Do you think I’m weird?”
“Yes,” he said, a gentle smile on his lips. “But I don’t mind.”
She shifted to make room for him in the shade and they played at stones until their shadows stretched and their mothers called for them to come home. They carried on that way all through the spring, content in their own world. Neela almost forgot she was different.
At the end of that summer, Neela gave Shango a coffee bean. She had overheard her mother speak of it and knew it to be a good gift, though Shango’s response puzzled her. He frowned, rolling the bean slowly between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you know what this means?”
“Yes. It means we’re friends.”
He eyed her for a moment, weighing her words and then smiled. “That’s right.” He unhooked his necklace, poked a hole through the coffee bean and fixed it in place. It hung against his chest, nestled between rows of seashells painted red, yellow and black. “Friends forever,” he said.
That was also the year the wild animals left the valley, their absence felt in the gentle breeze that did nothing to break the heat. Inevitably, in her eighth year, the day came when Neela accompanied her mother to the rainmaking ceremony. Festive shouts and laughter rode the wind as Neela swayed to the goatskin drum beats reverberating throughout the village, her bare feet making their own rhythm along the dusty path. She breathed deep. The hot air was thick with the aromas of baked doro bread, berbere spice blend — she could pick out cardamom, fenugreek, nutmeg and ginger amongst others — and freshly brewed coffee. They passed a woman grinding sorghum on a large stone in the shade of an acacia tree, her numerous beads and bracelets rattling with each movement.
“Mama,” she said. “Can I dance for the rain?”
Ife sighed. “I have told you many times. Men perform the rain dance, not women.”
“Why?”
“That is the way it has always been.”
“But wh—”
“Enough questions, my child. Be still and watch.”
The rain dance was performed in the wide, open space in front of Chief Panya’s hut. Their Shaman and the tribe’s male elders filled this space as the women and children looked on, adding their prayers to the ceremony. Neela spied her father near the centre and Shango off to the left. His eyes found hers and he smiled; it was his first dance.
Their feet pounded the dry earth as arms whirled and shook, beseeching the indifferent, cloudless sky. Neela’s toes ached and curled with yearning, but she obeyed her mother and remained still, her head bowed in prayer.
The rain did not come.
Another year passed and the parched earth groaned, the river waning to a narrow stream.
When their Shaman died of the sweating sickness, the whole village gathered before the chief’s hut to share
their grief. Chief Panya’s wife, Nuru, broke the solemnity of the moment by striding over to Neela and her mother, singling them out. Nuru held herself with regal poise, her thickly braided hair adorned with numerous red feathers. She held much sway amongst the tribe and not only because she was married to their chief. This woman pointed at Neela and said, “It’s her fault.”
The surrounding villagers collectively held their breath.
“Be still, Nuru,” Ife said, positioning herself in front of her daughter. “She’s just a child.”
“Look at her! She was born with the rain in her eyes! She’s stolen it from us. How long has the drought lasted? Nine years. And how old is she? Nine.”
“She is not the only child to be nine.”
“She is the only one with those demonic blue eyes staring out of an African’s face. It’s not right.”
Chief Panya approached and discreetly placed one hand on his wife’s shoulder. Nuru grit her teeth, shrugged off his hand and stalked away. The villagers parted for her.
Neela peeked out from behind her mother’s skirts at a sea of expressionless faces, smoothed out to hide their thoughts. How many agreed with Nuru? How many looked at her and saw a child, and how many saw something to be feared?
Ife spun round, grabbed Neela’s hand and — without another word or even a backwards glance — took her home.
Later that evening, when she was being put to bed, Neela asked, “What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“Nothing!” Ife reached out and stroked her daughter’s cheek. “They are beautiful, like gemstones. That is why I chose the name Neela for it means ‘sapphire blue’.”
“Then why—”
“Some are afraid of that which they don’t understand. Please, don’t listen to them. Things are rarely the same forever. Things change.”
Neela drank in the words. “So,” she began carefully, “does that mean one day women will dance in the rainmaking ceremony?”
Ife rolled her eyes and chuckled ruefully. “Perhaps,” she said. “Now, close your eyes little one and sleep well.”
That night, Neela’s dreams were filled with thousands of fireflies, red and green and amber, cavorting along the Omo river. Its waters shifting under a glimmer of starlight… until something bad happened, changing the dream forever. Whatever it was, it struck at the fireflies, killing them in mid-air so they fell and disappeared into the turbulent black waters below.
***
One day in her eleventh summer, Neela was inside their hut kneading dough for the corn enjera when Shango’s father came to speak with Ife. They stepped outside and lowered their voices, but Neela still heard enough to make her skin burn.
“She is to stay away from my son, do you understand?”
“Yonas, they’re friends. Where is the harm?”
“My wife does not approve and Nuru is her sister. She says Neela is cursed. I do as my wife commands, Ife. I am not a fool.”
“Such cruel words, Yonas,” she said softly. “You weren’t always like this.”
“Things change.” He said, but when he spoke again, his tone was gentler. “I do not wish for bad feeling between us, but my wife hopes to find a coffee bean in our hut’s bowl some day soon. Please, keep Neela away from Shango.”
Once Yonas left, Ife found Neela on her feet, worry drawing her face inwards.
“What did he mean?”
“About what?” Ife asked, unsure how much her daughter had heard.
“About the coffee bean.”
Ife winced, but explained nonetheless. “When you give someone a coffee bean, it means you wish to marry them. They take it home and put it in a bowl where everyone can see it. Then, the family have fun trying to find out who made the proposal. Afterwards, a formal offer is made and the answer given… Neela? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Neela couldn’t answer for her mouth was suddenly as parched as the ground beneath her feet. In a flurry of excuses, she fled the hut and found the shade of her favourite tree. There, she danced, slow and mournful, until her mother came to take her home.
***
Neela was thirteen when the lions came. They swept in from the west in a flood of sunset, golden-brown and burnt-orange with tufts of coarse, black hair. Crimson stained the earth, splattering the stick huts amidst terror-stricken howls from those unfortunate enough to find themselves in their path.
Playing alone in the dry yellow grass, Neela didn’t know the lion was there until it pounced. White-hot pain ripped through her leg, scorching it as if a thousand tiny suns had embedded themselves in her flesh. Somehow, she flipped onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows to find amber eyes boring into hers. Be brave, she told herself. As last thoughts go, it was one to be proud of, but it was not to be. The lion let out a low growl that vibrated the ground before turning away from Neela to join the rest of the pride, its long tail swishing back and forth in its wake.
Her vision blurred as she tried desperately to get up, to shout a warning. To help. Reaching for her injured leg, she swallowed as her fingers touched upon something wet, warm and sticky. Powerless, she prayed for those she loved — for her mother, father, and Shango — and when the pain forced her to lay back down, she closed her eyes and tried to shut out the screams.
When Neela woke, her body felt strange. Tentatively, she slid her fingers down her torso and over her hip to find… nothing. A sickening void where her left leg should have been. Terror clamoured up her throat and she clenched her hand into a quivering fist. No, no, no, no. Then, the familiar cadence of her mother’s voice reached her ears. She cried out and Ife was by her side within seconds, pressing something cool against her lips. Neela drank whilst her mother stroked her hair. Gradually, Neela’s muscles relaxed.
After a few moments, she found her voice. “Where is Papa?”
Ife averted her gaze and the silence told Neela more than she ever wanted to know. Feeling dizzy, she allowed herself to drift in and out of consciousness. Some sounds reached her: footsteps, shouts, sobs… all muffled as if she were underwater. She remembered the last time she had been able to submerge her head in the river, fine droplets trickling down her face, over her skin. When starvation did not skulk in the shadows of every face she knew. A happy time, but that was so very long ago.
At one point, she woke to find Shango staring down at her. His round cheeks slanted in towards his jaw, any hint of softness chiselled away. She didn’t speak, and neither did he. He just sat there, staring through her to some undefinable place, lost in his own thoughts. She couldn’t tell how long he stayed, but once he left, he never returned.
Neela would not cry. Soon, before the end of the summer, Shango would be seventeen: old enough to marry and there would be other undamaged girls who would take notice. She recalled how he had made her feel under the mottled sunlight of the cycad tree and hoped that whoever chose him would be kind.
***
Vultures circled. So many that Neela imagined she could walk on their backs.
If she could walk.
She’d shuffled out to her tree on her bottom, through the dirt where she belonged. Maybe Nuru was right. Perhaps, if she had died, others wouldn’t have. Her father might still live. She yearned to mourn him the only way she knew how, but dancing was a thing of the past. There didn’t seem to be much point to anything anymore.
She tensed as a lolling shadow approached. “Your mother said I would find you here,” Shango said.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, harsher than intended. “Your father will be angry.”
“I want to help.” He moved his arms, producing a long stick from behind his back. “I made this for you.”
“Go away, Shango.”
“Neela, please” —he held out in his hand— “give it a try.”
With his help, she stood. One end fit snug under her armpit and where her hand fell, a carved handle awaited. She wobbled, but remained upright and held her voice steady. “Thank you.”
Shango nodded. “My father once told me: ‘Do not try to fight a lion if you are not one yourself’. I believe the lion did not kill you because it sensed that you were one of them. A lioness.” As though reading her thoughts, he added. “Don’t give up, Neela.”
Her eyes flashed like diamonds as she watched him walk back to the village. After all these years, it was still there, nestled between the multi-coloured shells of Shango’s necklace.
Her dark-brown coffee bean.
***
The time came when what remained of their tribe gathered under a bleak sky for the last rainmaking ceremony. The river had run dry. They would not survive another year.
Neela walked the path as in a dream with her mother by her side. Her gait uneven, but steady. They passed a large stone beneath a barren acacia tree and Neela remembered the woman who used to sit there grinding sorghum. That woman was gone now, but the stone remained.
Despair gnawed at their empty bellies as the last goat was sacrificed. Men danced and women prayed, the same as always, and the rains did not come. Off to one side, Neela leant on her stick and shook her head. She knew it wouldn’t work. This was the end. The land itself would die leaving nothing but dust to be carried away by the wind—
An enraged shriek split the air and Neela looked up just in time to see Nuru bearing down on her.
“You!” she cried. “What are you doing here? If no one else will say it, I will.” She turned to face the crowd, her arms outspread. “Our sacrifice was not enough! It never was… because it is her we must sacrifice. She who holds our water within her very eyes and MOCKS US WITH IT!”
Fast as a cheetah, Neela’s mother leapt forwards and seized Nuru’s throat. They both fell to the ground in a tumult of fists and teeth. The villagers stepped back, unsure how best to stop them — if they should stop them at all. In the distraction, Neela shambled away.
Every elder, man, woman and child were focused on the fight and did not see Neela shimmy into position behind them. As she had practiced for every minute of every hour since Shango’s visit, she began to move. Using her walking stick for more than simply balance, she swept her one leg out in a wide graceful arc and brought it down with a loud smack upon the hardened earth.
The elders gasped and shock rippled through the crowd, halting the fight in its tracks. Scrambling to her feet, Nuru rushed forwards only to find her path blocked by Shango. He met her gaze, his spear gripped across his chest.
“Let her dance,” he ordered.
“No!” Nuru cried. “Look at her eyes, Shango! She looks blind!”
“She sees more than you do,” he said. “You see only one way of thinking, when there are many.”
“Women cannot perform the rain dance!”
“Things change, Nuru.” This was said by a young man with a scar under his right eye. He stood alongside Shango with his spear raised.
Nuru couldn’t believe it. “She will doom us all!”
“We are already doomed, Mother,” a young woman said, joining the line protecting Neela from the elders and anyone else that would stop her.
All was still and silent except for the girl who danced. Her delicate hands wove shapes in the air as she spun on her toes, the stick becoming a whirling part of her ballet, cracking down on the earth as and when it was needed.
Nuru dared to take a step and thunder crashed overhead, making her flinch backwards. Rapidly darkening clouds rolled towards them as lightning flashed to the north. It was in that moment that raindrops began to fall, but only on Neela. She bent, lifting her chin to the sky and the rain intensified until her form shimmered beneath the cascade.
Then, her stick dropped to the ground with an ominous thud.
Shango spun round to find that Neela had not fallen as he feared. Instead, she continued to leap and whirl. His eyes widened; her missing leg was whole. It shone and glistened an azure blue, like sapphires, like Neela’s eyes, and moved as water.
She danced and the rains thundered down, thrashing the ground, forming deep puddles and rivulets that snaked their way across the dry, cracked soil.
She danced and the sky blossomed, bringing softer rain that showered the tribe, washing away their tears and their sins. All had fallen to their knees in the mud with disbelieving fingers sliding into wet earth.
She danced and the naked tree branches bent over, bowing to her majesty.
The lightning flashed closer, turning her see-through, her bones translucent pearls swaying in the downpour. The girl born with water in her eyes blessed the villagers, as gracious and forgiving as any God could hope to be. Her body turned from blue to silver and white as her form blended into the waterfall, ebbing farther and farther away with each second that passed until there was nothing left but the land, and the rain.
There was much talk in the village of her oddly-coloured eyes. What did it mean? Was she an omen or a blessing? Her mother and father, Ife and Zesiro, knew her for the gift she was and though they tried for another child, the winds did not favour them a second time. Instead, they watched with pride as their two-year-old dove effortlessly in the Omo river, swimming laps around those three times her age.
As the only female healer of their tribe, Ife spent her days tending wounds and mixing herbs, usually to treat foolish children. It kept her busy whilst Zesiro hunted and gathered crops.
One day, Zesiro returned to see his daughter twirling in the long grass. He smiled and asked, “Have you been dancing all day, Neela?”
“Yes!” She sprinted over and he picked her up, settling her on his hip.
“It is wonderful to see you dancing, but you must help your mother too. Next time—”
Ife’s head poked out from inside their hut, dark eyes intent on her husband. “Let her play. Life does not need us to harden it for her.”
He let his daughter slide to the ground and winked. “Your mother is right, of course.”
As Neela grew, she wanted to play with the other children, but every time, she encountered averted eyes and turned backs. She tried until a mean boy with a scar under his right eye threw rocks at her. She ran off, found shade beneath a cycad tree that grew a short way south-west of the village, curled up, and let her tears water the earth.
“Are you OK?”
The voice startled her into a sitting position; she hadn’t heard the boy approach. He was older than her by a few years, his features soft around a broad nose and probing eyes. Abruptly, she felt the winds change, easing the grass in another direction. His name was Shango.
“Why don’t they like me?” she asked.
“They think you’re weird, that’s all.”
“Do you think I’m weird?”
“Yes,” he said, a gentle smile on his lips. “But I don’t mind.”
She shifted to make room for him in the shade and they played at stones until their shadows stretched and their mothers called for them to come home. They carried on that way all through the spring, content in their own world. Neela almost forgot she was different.
At the end of that summer, Neela gave Shango a coffee bean. She had overheard her mother speak of it and knew it to be a good gift, though Shango’s response puzzled her. He frowned, rolling the bean slowly between his thumb and forefinger. “Do you know what this means?”
“Yes. It means we’re friends.”
He eyed her for a moment, weighing her words and then smiled. “That’s right.” He unhooked his necklace, poked a hole through the coffee bean and fixed it in place. It hung against his chest, nestled between rows of seashells painted red, yellow and black. “Friends forever,” he said.
That was also the year the wild animals left the valley, their absence felt in the gentle breeze that did nothing to break the heat. Inevitably, in her eighth year, the day came when Neela accompanied her mother to the rainmaking ceremony. Festive shouts and laughter rode the wind as Neela swayed to the goatskin drum beats reverberating throughout the village, her bare feet making their own rhythm along the dusty path. She breathed deep. The hot air was thick with the aromas of baked doro bread, berbere spice blend — she could pick out cardamom, fenugreek, nutmeg and ginger amongst others — and freshly brewed coffee. They passed a woman grinding sorghum on a large stone in the shade of an acacia tree, her numerous beads and bracelets rattling with each movement.
“Mama,” she said. “Can I dance for the rain?”
Ife sighed. “I have told you many times. Men perform the rain dance, not women.”
“Why?”
“That is the way it has always been.”
“But wh—”
“Enough questions, my child. Be still and watch.”
The rain dance was performed in the wide, open space in front of Chief Panya’s hut. Their Shaman and the tribe’s male elders filled this space as the women and children looked on, adding their prayers to the ceremony. Neela spied her father near the centre and Shango off to the left. His eyes found hers and he smiled; it was his first dance.
Their feet pounded the dry earth as arms whirled and shook, beseeching the indifferent, cloudless sky. Neela’s toes ached and curled with yearning, but she obeyed her mother and remained still, her head bowed in prayer.
The rain did not come.
Another year passed and the parched earth groaned, the river waning to a narrow stream.
When their Shaman died of the sweating sickness, the whole village gathered before the chief’s hut to share
their grief. Chief Panya’s wife, Nuru, broke the solemnity of the moment by striding over to Neela and her mother, singling them out. Nuru held herself with regal poise, her thickly braided hair adorned with numerous red feathers. She held much sway amongst the tribe and not only because she was married to their chief. This woman pointed at Neela and said, “It’s her fault.”
The surrounding villagers collectively held their breath.
“Be still, Nuru,” Ife said, positioning herself in front of her daughter. “She’s just a child.”
“Look at her! She was born with the rain in her eyes! She’s stolen it from us. How long has the drought lasted? Nine years. And how old is she? Nine.”
“She is not the only child to be nine.”
“She is the only one with those demonic blue eyes staring out of an African’s face. It’s not right.”
Chief Panya approached and discreetly placed one hand on his wife’s shoulder. Nuru grit her teeth, shrugged off his hand and stalked away. The villagers parted for her.
Neela peeked out from behind her mother’s skirts at a sea of expressionless faces, smoothed out to hide their thoughts. How many agreed with Nuru? How many looked at her and saw a child, and how many saw something to be feared?
Ife spun round, grabbed Neela’s hand and — without another word or even a backwards glance — took her home.
Later that evening, when she was being put to bed, Neela asked, “What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“Nothing!” Ife reached out and stroked her daughter’s cheek. “They are beautiful, like gemstones. That is why I chose the name Neela for it means ‘sapphire blue’.”
“Then why—”
“Some are afraid of that which they don’t understand. Please, don’t listen to them. Things are rarely the same forever. Things change.”
Neela drank in the words. “So,” she began carefully, “does that mean one day women will dance in the rainmaking ceremony?”
Ife rolled her eyes and chuckled ruefully. “Perhaps,” she said. “Now, close your eyes little one and sleep well.”
That night, Neela’s dreams were filled with thousands of fireflies, red and green and amber, cavorting along the Omo river. Its waters shifting under a glimmer of starlight… until something bad happened, changing the dream forever. Whatever it was, it struck at the fireflies, killing them in mid-air so they fell and disappeared into the turbulent black waters below.
***
One day in her eleventh summer, Neela was inside their hut kneading dough for the corn enjera when Shango’s father came to speak with Ife. They stepped outside and lowered their voices, but Neela still heard enough to make her skin burn.
“She is to stay away from my son, do you understand?”
“Yonas, they’re friends. Where is the harm?”
“My wife does not approve and Nuru is her sister. She says Neela is cursed. I do as my wife commands, Ife. I am not a fool.”
“Such cruel words, Yonas,” she said softly. “You weren’t always like this.”
“Things change.” He said, but when he spoke again, his tone was gentler. “I do not wish for bad feeling between us, but my wife hopes to find a coffee bean in our hut’s bowl some day soon. Please, keep Neela away from Shango.”
Once Yonas left, Ife found Neela on her feet, worry drawing her face inwards.
“What did he mean?”
“About what?” Ife asked, unsure how much her daughter had heard.
“About the coffee bean.”
Ife winced, but explained nonetheless. “When you give someone a coffee bean, it means you wish to marry them. They take it home and put it in a bowl where everyone can see it. Then, the family have fun trying to find out who made the proposal. Afterwards, a formal offer is made and the answer given… Neela? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Neela couldn’t answer for her mouth was suddenly as parched as the ground beneath her feet. In a flurry of excuses, she fled the hut and found the shade of her favourite tree. There, she danced, slow and mournful, until her mother came to take her home.
***
Neela was thirteen when the lions came. They swept in from the west in a flood of sunset, golden-brown and burnt-orange with tufts of coarse, black hair. Crimson stained the earth, splattering the stick huts amidst terror-stricken howls from those unfortunate enough to find themselves in their path.
Playing alone in the dry yellow grass, Neela didn’t know the lion was there until it pounced. White-hot pain ripped through her leg, scorching it as if a thousand tiny suns had embedded themselves in her flesh. Somehow, she flipped onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows to find amber eyes boring into hers. Be brave, she told herself. As last thoughts go, it was one to be proud of, but it was not to be. The lion let out a low growl that vibrated the ground before turning away from Neela to join the rest of the pride, its long tail swishing back and forth in its wake.
Her vision blurred as she tried desperately to get up, to shout a warning. To help. Reaching for her injured leg, she swallowed as her fingers touched upon something wet, warm and sticky. Powerless, she prayed for those she loved — for her mother, father, and Shango — and when the pain forced her to lay back down, she closed her eyes and tried to shut out the screams.
When Neela woke, her body felt strange. Tentatively, she slid her fingers down her torso and over her hip to find… nothing. A sickening void where her left leg should have been. Terror clamoured up her throat and she clenched her hand into a quivering fist. No, no, no, no. Then, the familiar cadence of her mother’s voice reached her ears. She cried out and Ife was by her side within seconds, pressing something cool against her lips. Neela drank whilst her mother stroked her hair. Gradually, Neela’s muscles relaxed.
After a few moments, she found her voice. “Where is Papa?”
Ife averted her gaze and the silence told Neela more than she ever wanted to know. Feeling dizzy, she allowed herself to drift in and out of consciousness. Some sounds reached her: footsteps, shouts, sobs… all muffled as if she were underwater. She remembered the last time she had been able to submerge her head in the river, fine droplets trickling down her face, over her skin. When starvation did not skulk in the shadows of every face she knew. A happy time, but that was so very long ago.
At one point, she woke to find Shango staring down at her. His round cheeks slanted in towards his jaw, any hint of softness chiselled away. She didn’t speak, and neither did he. He just sat there, staring through her to some undefinable place, lost in his own thoughts. She couldn’t tell how long he stayed, but once he left, he never returned.
Neela would not cry. Soon, before the end of the summer, Shango would be seventeen: old enough to marry and there would be other undamaged girls who would take notice. She recalled how he had made her feel under the mottled sunlight of the cycad tree and hoped that whoever chose him would be kind.
***
Vultures circled. So many that Neela imagined she could walk on their backs.
If she could walk.
She’d shuffled out to her tree on her bottom, through the dirt where she belonged. Maybe Nuru was right. Perhaps, if she had died, others wouldn’t have. Her father might still live. She yearned to mourn him the only way she knew how, but dancing was a thing of the past. There didn’t seem to be much point to anything anymore.
She tensed as a lolling shadow approached. “Your mother said I would find you here,” Shango said.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, harsher than intended. “Your father will be angry.”
“I want to help.” He moved his arms, producing a long stick from behind his back. “I made this for you.”
“Go away, Shango.”
“Neela, please” —he held out in his hand— “give it a try.”
With his help, she stood. One end fit snug under her armpit and where her hand fell, a carved handle awaited. She wobbled, but remained upright and held her voice steady. “Thank you.”
Shango nodded. “My father once told me: ‘Do not try to fight a lion if you are not one yourself’. I believe the lion did not kill you because it sensed that you were one of them. A lioness.” As though reading her thoughts, he added. “Don’t give up, Neela.”
Her eyes flashed like diamonds as she watched him walk back to the village. After all these years, it was still there, nestled between the multi-coloured shells of Shango’s necklace.
Her dark-brown coffee bean.
***
The time came when what remained of their tribe gathered under a bleak sky for the last rainmaking ceremony. The river had run dry. They would not survive another year.
Neela walked the path as in a dream with her mother by her side. Her gait uneven, but steady. They passed a large stone beneath a barren acacia tree and Neela remembered the woman who used to sit there grinding sorghum. That woman was gone now, but the stone remained.
Despair gnawed at their empty bellies as the last goat was sacrificed. Men danced and women prayed, the same as always, and the rains did not come. Off to one side, Neela leant on her stick and shook her head. She knew it wouldn’t work. This was the end. The land itself would die leaving nothing but dust to be carried away by the wind—
An enraged shriek split the air and Neela looked up just in time to see Nuru bearing down on her.
“You!” she cried. “What are you doing here? If no one else will say it, I will.” She turned to face the crowd, her arms outspread. “Our sacrifice was not enough! It never was… because it is her we must sacrifice. She who holds our water within her very eyes and MOCKS US WITH IT!”
Fast as a cheetah, Neela’s mother leapt forwards and seized Nuru’s throat. They both fell to the ground in a tumult of fists and teeth. The villagers stepped back, unsure how best to stop them — if they should stop them at all. In the distraction, Neela shambled away.
Every elder, man, woman and child were focused on the fight and did not see Neela shimmy into position behind them. As she had practiced for every minute of every hour since Shango’s visit, she began to move. Using her walking stick for more than simply balance, she swept her one leg out in a wide graceful arc and brought it down with a loud smack upon the hardened earth.
The elders gasped and shock rippled through the crowd, halting the fight in its tracks. Scrambling to her feet, Nuru rushed forwards only to find her path blocked by Shango. He met her gaze, his spear gripped across his chest.
“Let her dance,” he ordered.
“No!” Nuru cried. “Look at her eyes, Shango! She looks blind!”
“She sees more than you do,” he said. “You see only one way of thinking, when there are many.”
“Women cannot perform the rain dance!”
“Things change, Nuru.” This was said by a young man with a scar under his right eye. He stood alongside Shango with his spear raised.
Nuru couldn’t believe it. “She will doom us all!”
“We are already doomed, Mother,” a young woman said, joining the line protecting Neela from the elders and anyone else that would stop her.
All was still and silent except for the girl who danced. Her delicate hands wove shapes in the air as she spun on her toes, the stick becoming a whirling part of her ballet, cracking down on the earth as and when it was needed.
Nuru dared to take a step and thunder crashed overhead, making her flinch backwards. Rapidly darkening clouds rolled towards them as lightning flashed to the north. It was in that moment that raindrops began to fall, but only on Neela. She bent, lifting her chin to the sky and the rain intensified until her form shimmered beneath the cascade.
Then, her stick dropped to the ground with an ominous thud.
Shango spun round to find that Neela had not fallen as he feared. Instead, she continued to leap and whirl. His eyes widened; her missing leg was whole. It shone and glistened an azure blue, like sapphires, like Neela’s eyes, and moved as water.
She danced and the rains thundered down, thrashing the ground, forming deep puddles and rivulets that snaked their way across the dry, cracked soil.
She danced and the sky blossomed, bringing softer rain that showered the tribe, washing away their tears and their sins. All had fallen to their knees in the mud with disbelieving fingers sliding into wet earth.
She danced and the naked tree branches bent over, bowing to her majesty.
The lightning flashed closer, turning her see-through, her bones translucent pearls swaying in the downpour. The girl born with water in her eyes blessed the villagers, as gracious and forgiving as any God could hope to be. Her body turned from blue to silver and white as her form blended into the waterfall, ebbing farther and farther away with each second that passed until there was nothing left but the land, and the rain.