Nomvula

29 - Pulp

Cold hands pulled Nomvula from a paralysing dream. Cool, damp cloth pressed against her throbbing temples, the back of her neck, her chest, her back... Her back. Numb.

A forearm pinned her shoulder to the bed before she could sit up.

"Careful, Ma," came Khaya's voice. "You'll tear your stitches."

Nomvula slowed her breathing before opening her eyes to Asanda's bedroom ceiling. Half the runelights were dead, and the air was tainted with the cloying smell of dead flowers. Her body was only half under her own control, but that no longer made her heart thunder. There was a chasm of difference between the pleasant lethargy of poppymilk and the paralysing euphoria of being possessed by the Sunspear, one that her body knew well but that her tired mind was only now coming to grips with.

Like a bead rolling down a hillside, her gaze fell to her son. "Diviner."

"Oho." Khaya's smile touched his lips but couldn't push past the red webs in the whites of his eyes. "Good morning to you too."

Nomvula started to furrow her brow before the poppymilk made her features lax again; she couldn't find any urgency to knead into her voice. "Diviner, Khaya."

His smile waned as he pointed his chin to Nomvula's left. It took a lot of effort to turn her head even that much; the underside of her jaw felt swollen, her throat too thick and raw. Asanda stood over a second bed, her eyes clouded with singular focus as she applied black clay to a naked slip of skin on the Royal Diviner's ear. Her flat chest rose steadily under a white silk sheet.

Nomvula closed her eyes and drifted halfway to sleep. Khetiwe had been a fool to try and exorcise the Sunspear. Sonele's ancestors were great, and more importantly, close – but all of Dumani's fear and all the chaos it had wrought for all three nations was rooted in one ancestral strain that she had hoped against hope had died with her–

Her eyes opened again. This was not the time for self-pity.

"Asanda."

Her daughter was by Lifa's bed this time, listening to the old man's snores. Khaya was sleeping on Asanda's bed beside a square hole cut into the floor beside it. The smell of chalky waters pushed Nomvula's stomach into her throat.

"Asanda."

At last she looked up. Nomvula saw the effort her daughter put into extracting her mind from her thoughts and focusing on the present. The gift of a longthinker was a blessing to most parents, but it came with the curse of a child who too often had an easy way of hiding from the harsher world. Still, it had other advantages, and there was one Nomvula was loath to bring up.

"Ma." Asanda padded to Nomvula's bed. "You need to lie still until I'm sure your stitches won't bleed."

Nomvula made the unthinkably large effort to lift her arm and take her daughter's hand in her own. She was suddenly aware of the weight of the bags under her eyes, and the light-headedness even that little motion produced.

"I know," Nomvula said. I also need to find out what has happened since I've been here. She squeezed her daughter's hand, ran her thumb along the leathery plains of her palms. "But I need you to do something for me."

"Anything, Ma." Infinite trust in her daughter's voice.

Guilt turned like some sleeping terror in Nomvula's innards. "I need to take stock of everything, but I cannot move."

She didn't see the tension in Asanda's face until her mouth flattened. "You are not strong enough for the rune-eye."

"Don't turn me into an excuse," Nomvula said, as sharply as the poppymilk would allow. "My child..." The throbbing in her temples intensified. "If you don't want to do it, say so and that will be the end of it."

"I don't want to, Mama."

"I understand perfectly."

"But I will if you need me to."

Too weak for even a light grip, Nomvula's hand fell away. "Asanda, you more than anyone else understands what the rune-eye means."

"I will make the sacrifice, but..." Nomvula had long since stopped looking for truths in expressions or mannerisms; truth lived in the hole behind the eyes, the knot of muscle between shoulder blades, between the creases fingers made when they curled. In all these places, Asanda's fear showed itself naked, even though her voice was calm. "Will the Sunspear follow?"

It is the Sunspear I wish to leave behind more than anything else.

"No," Nomvula said with iron resolve. "I will make sure I leave it behind. Still, before we go, tie my body down with iron chains."