Women Of Steel | ✔

XXX

There is a terse moment of silence between the both of us. Although I cannot see her very clearly in the dark, I can tell that she is assessing me as I do the same to her, I might need Arewa’s help but it does not mean I trust her one bit. She is fifteen, a child and yet, I realized that I have always looked at her as an equal, not as someone beneath me, mostly because I grew up with the whole palace sneering down at me and excusing their insubordination with excuses about my age. You know nothing, I was always told. But I know Arewa and I know that she knows a lot more than nothing.

Arewa is tricky; I know that if there is a chance that she will help me, she will only do so if it guarantees the safety of the people she loves, a very short list of people. The last time I saw her, she left with Remilekun and looked glad to go. For all I know, she doesn’t care and is all too happy to watch her mother wreck havoc as long as her sister is safe.

I don’t need her now, I escaped the cage on my own, but she stands before me now, unless I can take her out quietly, one scream from her and I will find myself back in that cage with much more injuries.

“The first time, you found me, now, I return the favor.” She says in a cheerful tone, I blink. “Now, let me lead you to your death.”

“Let us go,” She adds with a hint of irritation in her voice.

“To my death?” I ask her foolishly.

“Don’t you want to meet my mother?” She asks.

“Yes, but why are you helping me?” I ask, resisting the urge to tell her that I had a whole eulogy in my head to sing to her.  “For all I know, this is just some plot to lead me to my death.”

Arewa laughs again, quieter this time. “I had a knife to your throat, I am not a believer in dragging out the fate of a man. If death is in line for you, then you will have it when it’s time.”

I grunt something unladylike under my breath. “Spending too much time with your monster of a mother has you now speaking cryptically.”

I startle as she reaches for my arm suddenly and tug me along, her limp is even more noticeable than before and for the first time, I wonder if Arewa has been shown an inkling of the love she thought she was going to get from her mother.

“How the tables have turned,” She muses aloud and she turns in the dark of the night to flash me a grin. “You were the prissy princess who didn’t realize the extent of devastation that her family caused and I was the rebel fighting for a cause.”

I refrain from telling her that her own cause was more selfish than heroic but then I think things through and realize that there isn’t a right or wrong side of war, I am not a hero now.

“Now, look at you, Princess, you have become the rebel and I have become the prissy princess trying to justify the sins of my mother.” Arewa’s voice is quieter, contemplative even.

“Well, I had a lot to realize,” I tell her. She nods and lets go of my hand but I continue to walk by her side.

“And so have I.”

“Where is Boluwatife?” I ask her.

Arewa stiffens.

“We tried to escape the camp, she was killed.” Arewa tells me coldly but her voice shakes a little, without thinking, I reach for her hand and draw her into a tight hug. I expect Arewa to push me away or fight my hold but she shudders instead.

“I am sorry,” I say.

“I never wanted any part in this, I just wanted my sister, I wanted a fresh start for us but there is no place for girls like us, girls like us end up dead and forgotten. Remilekun brought us under fake guises and made us feel powerful, useful and loved even.” She recounts the tale with simmering anger in her voice. “Then she murdered one of us, her own daughter, a sister that I never knew I had.”

We draw closer to a group of soldiers being addressed by their superior, he mentions something about how a settlement was caught in a sandstorm and says to the men that there are orders for them to move camp tomorrow. I listen with careful ears but apart from the mention of the weather, there is nothing else discussed.

“Do you ever wonder why she has stayed youthful all these years?” Arewa asks me.

I shake my head. I know of her magic but I don’t know its limits or its source.

“She bathes in the blood of her children.” Arewa says in a deathly calm voice.

A chill snakes down my spine and I fight off a shiver.

“She needs whatever power she will get from you desperately because there are few of us left to kill,” Arewa says flatly. What Remilekun is doing should be impossible, there should be a limit to magic but there is no line she is not willing to cross, even going to the extents of killing a god.

A sudden violent wind garners a dune of sand, blowing past several tents and uprooting them from the ground to send them flying in the air and instinctively, I bend and cover my hands over my bowed face. Sand fills me mouth and clothes and when the brief storm passes, I stumble to my feet.

“The storms are getting worse.” Arewa notes.

“Why hasn’t she killed you yet?” I ask Arewa hesitantly.

She continues to limp ahead and I follow. We pass people searching for cover in the remaining tents, nobody pays any attention to us as we walk.

“You! Who are you talking to?” One man hollers at me as he gathers fallen tent cloth in his hands.

I look at Arewa and take a step back. That man was talking to me, somehow he did not see Arewa even though she is walking besides me.

“When I tried to escape with Boluwatife, it was on a night like this, the two of us didn’t get very far. We both died, Omolara.”

She fixes me with a stare and I remember how she felt cold to the touch. I remember that I am the demigoddess of death.

“Omolara, I am not alive.”