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Nakia’s first memory is of water—the sound of it, running beside/beneath/along everywhere she went. Water was in her blood and in her head; in the gullies and the caves of the lowlands, and rivers, rivulets that burbled through the town. The River Tribe had always lived in the warm cradle of the Amanzi Kwakhona Umlambo, Great Mother River, the greatest river in Wakanda. Nakia had asked her mother once, why it flowed through the audience chamber. It must have its voice heard too, her mother had said. And we, as its people, must listen to the wisdom it brings us.
Nakia used to sit on the floor, once the council had been dismissed for the evening, and listen as hard as she could for the wisdom of the Great River. Sometimes she would lay on her belly, and press her ear to the wood—the rushing sound was different like that, muted and somehow deeper. Like when she fell asleep in her father’s arms, the rumbling his voice made in his chest as he told her stories.
(She used to think that the river must be full of stories too, since her father was, and they made the same noises—a child’s belief, but faithfully believed.)
He father was a son of the Merchant Tribe, but he had come to the City of Many Rivers on business and never left, for he had met Nakia’s mother there. “The most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I have traveled beyond the borders of Wakanda,” he always said very seriously, when he was trying to make her mother smile.
“None was so beautiful as mama?” Nakia had asked, for that was her line of the story, always.
“None, not a one,” Nakia’s father said, every time. “Though they were lovely in their own fashion, none of them was so lovely as your mother. I remember, we were in the market and she had smooth stones woven into her braids—when she walked, they swayed and clicked like a river, rushing past me.”
“She bought an oxygen meter!” (This was Uuka’s line, he always said it too quickly, it ruined the rhythm of the story.)
“She did. She told me about how she had been entrusted with the care of the Yellow River Tributary, and she was concerned about the levels of soil erosion given the late-summer flooding. She invited me to see it, to come with her.”
“You invited yourself,” Nakia’s mother would say, if she was near. If she was not, Nakia’s father would say how he waded up to his waist in brackish water to follow her, cut his foot open on a rock, and did battle with a fearsome hippopotamus determined to crush them both. (Some of these things are true.) Either way, the evening ended with the both of them sitting on the shore, and when Nakia’s father reached out and cupped her mother’s elbow, drawing her in, she had let him.
(She had let him kiss her, too, even though it had required some patience, as a Merchant Tribe’s son knew very little about kissing girls with lip-plates.)
Nakia was first sent to the capital city, the Silver City, when she was only ten—the River Tribe councilor beside her, his hand heavy on the back of her neck as he forced her into a bow before the king. All she could think about was how her mother and father had stood in the doorway, waving—Uuka had run after the speeder, shouting, and she had not heard him through the glass and over the hum of the engines. She’d had to press her palm to the window, and hope he understood.
There were no rivers, in the Silver City. Only people, teeming and burbling like water over rocks, but too hot and alive, no great wisdom there. Nakia knew how to swim and take oxygen readings, watch her mother arrange for the easements to be maintained, and hear reports about the floodplain. Nakia knew nothing of people, nor of glittering cities.
People are mostly water, anyway, Uuka says, when she writes to him complaining she is sick for home, she wants to be by the river again. Prince T’Challa is terrible and the Princess Shuri is only a baby; W’Kabi is quiet, and the Dora trainees look at her like they are not sure what to make of her, her very presence.
People are mostly water, anyway, Uuka writes, you understand them, even if you do not think you do.
(Before she was sent away, Nakia had demanded to know why Uuka was allowed to stay with the Tribe when she was not—”Because one day,” her mother said, “Uuka will be the Head of the River, and leader of our people. You will not. You are free.”
Then, Nakia does not feel free.)
Nakia is twelve, and she has been in the Silver City for four years when she meets a War Dog. She knows what a War Dog is, of course—they just do not often venture to the King’s table, to sit beside N’Joba and Ramonda and speak quietly, eating like a starving animal anything and all that is put before them. This War Dog is beautiful, tall, and with even darker skin than Nakia; he keeps switching languages, from Arabic to French and Wakandan, a few words in Russian, when the King asks him a question and he pulls a sour face. English, when he catches her looking.
“What are you staring at?” T’Challa hisses, elbowing her in the side. She shushes him, and when he does not stop, Nakia hisses, “The War Dog, leave me alone.”
He scowls, but turns away and talks to W’kabi for the rest of the evening.
She waits until the hall is empty and Nakia is almost alone—not quite, Ramonda and the King there, but not many others. But still she sidles up to the War Dog, twisting her hands together. “Where have you been, elder brother?” she asks, stumbling over herself with the honorific. The War Dog blinks at her, and then—his face softens, impossibly. Nakia wonders who he left behind, if he has a sister like Uuka has a sister, and he is thinking about her now.
Nakia swallows. “Beyond Wakanda, in the world, what have you—what have you seen, where have you been?”
“Everywhere,” the War Dog says, his voice soft. “But it is not a place for—”
“I am the younger daughter of the River Tribe,” Nakia says quickly, and the War Dog blinks, then smiles.
“Well, then. You are free.”
He tells her about Kyoto and Seoul, Johannesburg and Detroit and Amsterdam and Atlanta. He tells her about pasta, and accents, and arms deals, and the sun over mountains (Applachians, Andes, Hindu Kush.) Nakia sits at the very edge of her seat, listening to him until even the King and Queen retire, until it is just Nakia and the War Dog in the great hall. “You are free,” he says. “If you want to see the world beyond Wakanda, there is nothing stopping you. The whole of the sky is there for your taking and no one will claim duty keeps you here, that duty binds you. That is a gift.”
(She never got his name. She thinks of his face sometimes, when they reassign her, when the name of her contact is male—but it’s never him. She hopes he’s still alive, that somehow he knows. That she sends her dispatches to him, and he smiles to himself, reading them.)
After then, her answer is the same: she will be a War Dog. She will see everywhere and know the sky.
“Umlambohámba,” her father calls her, when she announces her decision. He reaches out, cups her face in his hands. (Once, her father’s hands could hold the whole of the sky, but she is older now. When she lies down on the floor of the River House, she hears only water.) “Truly my daughter, child of the Merchant Tribe and the River Tribe both. A wandering river.”
Nakia calls him baba, and embraces him, but she does not cry, turning away. (Her mother cries, silently, even when Nakia kisses her, and says not to. “I am losing a daughter,” she says, and Nakia only keeps herself from crying by digging her nails into her palm.)
Uuka is standing there too, and he looks at her for a long while. “Tell me what it’s like,” he says at last. “The world beyond Wakanda. Send me a picture of the Amazon, of—other rivers, than this one.”
“I will,” Nakia says. “I will.”
When she fixes her eyes on the horizon, there is only more sky, and more sky, on and on—she stumbles over herself to chase it.
(Your picture was not posted)
Nakia’s first memory is of water—the sound of it, running beside/beneath/along everywhere she went. Water was in her blood and in her head; in the gullies and the caves of the lowlands, and rivers, rivulets that burbled through the town. The River Tribe had always lived in the warm cradle of the Amanzi Kwakhona Umlambo, Great Mother River, the greatest river in Wakanda. Nakia had asked her mother once, why it flowed through the audience chamber. It must have its voice heard too, her mother had said. And we, as its people, must listen to the wisdom it brings us.
Nakia used to sit on the floor, once the council had been dismissed for the evening, and listen as hard as she could for the wisdom of the Great River. Sometimes she would lay on her belly, and press her ear to the wood—the rushing sound was different like that, muted and somehow deeper. Like when she fell asleep in her father’s arms, the rumbling his voice made in his chest as he told her stories.
(She used to think that the river must be full of stories too, since her father was, and they made the same noises—a child’s belief, but faithfully believed.)
He father was a son of the Merchant Tribe, but he had come to the City of Many Rivers on business and never left, for he had met Nakia’s mother there. “The most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I have traveled beyond the borders of Wakanda,” he always said very seriously, when he was trying to make her mother smile.
“None was so beautiful as mama?” Nakia had asked, for that was her line of the story, always.
“None, not a one,” Nakia’s father said, every time. “Though they were lovely in their own fashion, none of them was so lovely as your mother. I remember, we were in the market and she had smooth stones woven into her braids—when she walked, they swayed and clicked like a river, rushing past me.”
“She bought an oxygen meter!” (This was Uuka’s line, he always said it too quickly, it ruined the rhythm of the story.)
“She did. She told me about how she had been entrusted with the care of the Yellow River Tributary, and she was concerned about the levels of soil erosion given the late-summer flooding. She invited me to see it, to come with her.”
“You invited yourself,” Nakia’s mother would say, if she was near. If she was not, Nakia’s father would say how he waded up to his waist in brackish water to follow her, cut his foot open on a rock, and did battle with a fearsome hippopotamus determined to crush them both. (Some of these things are true.) Either way, the evening ended with the both of them sitting on the shore, and when Nakia’s father reached out and cupped her mother’s elbow, drawing her in, she had let him.
(She had let him kiss her, too, even though it had required some patience, as a Merchant Tribe’s son knew very little about kissing girls with lip-plates.)
Nakia was first sent to the capital city, the Silver City, when she was only ten—the River Tribe councilor beside her, his hand heavy on the back of her neck as he forced her into a bow before the king. All she could think about was how her mother and father had stood in the doorway, waving—Uuka had run after the speeder, shouting, and she had not heard him through the glass and over the hum of the engines. She’d had to press her palm to the window, and hope he understood.
There were no rivers, in the Silver City. Only people, teeming and burbling like water over rocks, but too hot and alive, no great wisdom there. Nakia knew how to swim and take oxygen readings, watch her mother arrange for the easements to be maintained, and hear reports about the floodplain. Nakia knew nothing of people, nor of glittering cities.
People are mostly water, anyway, Uuka says, when she writes to him complaining she is sick for home, she wants to be by the river again. Prince T’Challa is terrible and the Princess Shuri is only a baby; W’Kabi is quiet, and the Dora trainees look at her like they are not sure what to make of her, her very presence.
People are mostly water, anyway, Uuka writes, you understand them, even if you do not think you do.
(Before she was sent away, Nakia had demanded to know why Uuka was allowed to stay with the Tribe when she was not—”Because one day,” her mother said, “Uuka will be the Head of the River, and leader of our people. You will not. You are free.”
Then, Nakia does not feel free.)
Nakia is twelve, and she has been in the Silver City for four years when she meets a War Dog. She knows what a War Dog is, of course—they just do not often venture to the King’s table, to sit beside N’Joba and Ramonda and speak quietly, eating like a starving animal anything and all that is put before them. This War Dog is beautiful, tall, and with even darker skin than Nakia; he keeps switching languages, from Arabic to French and Wakandan, a few words in Russian, when the King asks him a question and he pulls a sour face. English, when he catches her looking.
“What are you staring at?” T’Challa hisses, elbowing her in the side. She shushes him, and when he does not stop, Nakia hisses, “The War Dog, leave me alone.”
He scowls, but turns away and talks to W’kabi for the rest of the evening.
She waits until the hall is empty and Nakia is almost alone—not quite, Ramonda and the King there, but not many others. But still she sidles up to the War Dog, twisting her hands together. “Where have you been, elder brother?” she asks, stumbling over herself with the honorific. The War Dog blinks at her, and then—his face softens, impossibly. Nakia wonders who he left behind, if he has a sister like Uuka has a sister, and he is thinking about her now.
Nakia swallows. “Beyond Wakanda, in the world, what have you—what have you seen, where have you been?”
“Everywhere,” the War Dog says, his voice soft. “But it is not a place for—”
“I am the younger daughter of the River Tribe,” Nakia says quickly, and the War Dog blinks, then smiles.
“Well, then. You are free.”
He tells her about Kyoto and Seoul, Johannesburg and Detroit and Amsterdam and Atlanta. He tells her about pasta, and accents, and arms deals, and the sun over mountains (Applachians, Andes, Hindu Kush.) Nakia sits at the very edge of her seat, listening to him until even the King and Queen retire, until it is just Nakia and the War Dog in the great hall. “You are free,” he says. “If you want to see the world beyond Wakanda, there is nothing stopping you. The whole of the sky is there for your taking and no one will claim duty keeps you here, that duty binds you. That is a gift.”
(She never got his name. She thinks of his face sometimes, when they reassign her, when the name of her contact is male—but it’s never him. She hopes he’s still alive, that somehow he knows. That she sends her dispatches to him, and he smiles to himself, reading them.)
After then, her answer is the same: she will be a War Dog. She will see everywhere and know the sky.
“Umlambohámba,” her father calls her, when she announces her decision. He reaches out, cups her face in his hands. (Once, her father’s hands could hold the whole of the sky, but she is older now. When she lies down on the floor of the River House, she hears only water.) “Truly my daughter, child of the Merchant Tribe and the River Tribe both. A wandering river.”
Nakia calls him baba, and embraces him, but she does not cry, turning away. (Her mother cries, silently, even when Nakia kisses her, and says not to. “I am losing a daughter,” she says, and Nakia only keeps herself from crying by digging her nails into her palm.)
Uuka is standing there too, and he looks at her for a long while. “Tell me what it’s like,” he says at last. “The world beyond Wakanda. Send me a picture of the Amazon, of—other rivers, than this one.”
“I will,” Nakia says. “I will.”
When she fixes her eyes on the horizon, there is only more sky, and more sky, on and on—she stumbles over herself to chase it.
(Your picture was not posted)
