Rise of the Rain Queen by Fiona Zedde

Author:Fiona Zedde [Zedde, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626395930
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2016-07-12T06:00:00+00:00

It was raining. The wet slid down Nyandoro’s face and bare shoulders, licking her skin with the sensation of warm tongues. She looked up into the sky and closed her eyes, enjoying the touch of the water that was like the sweet after-love feeling she had in Duni’s arms. Duni who seemed so far away from this place, like she didn’t even exist.

The woman beside her spoke. “If you want her to be here, she can.”

Ny opened her eyes and looked down to a valley. To the large, white building in its center, like a palace from Arabia and attached to many smaller buildings, also white, that spread out in a semi-circle and faced a high stone archway. There was no fence around the buildings, but Nyandoro sensed an invisible border of some sort separating the compound from the rest of the world. Something that prevented those on the outside from seeing it.

“If Duni comes, will you leave?”

“No, I will always be here.” Under the rain, the woman’s mouth curved into a smile.

A feeling of gladness opened her throat. She didn’t know why. She only knew that the stranger was a constant and welcome presence, like the three gold rings on her toes, gifts from her mother for each five-year cycle of her life. Nyandoro examined the feeling, like a bug under glass. Why would she feel this for a stranger? A woman she’d only met in dreams?

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Who are you?” the woman asked her in turn, smiling again.

Nyandoro found herself smiling. This game, question for question, she often played with her brothers. “I think I asked you first.”

“You like games, I see.” The woman actually laughed at Ny. Then her smile faded. “I like it here. I laugh here and it feels good.”

Did that mean the woman had a real world too? Nyandoro wished the rain would stop so she could properly see the woman’s face. She remembered her being beautiful enough to stop her breath. But the rain seemed like a shield of tears, and she did not want to see her coated in a layer of sadness. The woman stood up and stretched, with each sleek and eel-like movement of her body, the rain drained more and more from the sky.

“Did you make the rain stop?”

At Nyandoro’s question, the woman laughed again. Drops of rain kissed her face, her throat, bare shoulders, her belly. The water clung to the cloth that sat on her hips. Her teeth flashed in her face, bright lightning. “Your strength is beautiful,” the woman said. “It will be even more so when you realize it for yourself.

Nyandoro turned to look at the woman. And woke up.

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