The Vehicle Of The Living, Part One

13. Nfumu Matondo's Daughter

The Kongo Empire's army was once commanded by General Matondo. He was a brilliant military strategist, passionate about the art of war. Not the slightest weapon held any secrets for him. He had led and won most of the battles that allowed for the annexation of several kingdoms to the empire and, therefore, to its expansion. He was called " Nfumu Matondo, " which means " Prince Matondo, " because of his noble ancestry and his kinship with Queen Dyana, ruler of the Luanda kingdom on the west coast. Although not very tall, he had an imposing build, enormous forearms, impressive physical strength, and iron discipline.

Invincible in hand-to-hand combat, Nfumu laughed little. No one knew what the smile looked like on that face with the thick mustache. He had joined the imperial army at the age of seventeen, when the young Nsemi was still just a prince. Two decades later, he was the most indispensable asset of his emperor, Nzita Phanzu, Nsemi's father. Nzita had even made a personal friend of him.

Matondo loved a woman named Simba, whom he married when he was only twenty-one years old. Most of the time, his military duty kept him away from his wife, with whom he did not end up having children. Contrary to the generally prevailing practice in this type of case, Nfumu did not repudiate his wife and accepted life without any offspring. Simba was a girl from the City of Sirens, a land in the west, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The women there were particularly beautiful and cultured. And like her husband, Simba was from a noble family, for her father was an honorable lieutenant of the empire. She got married when she was sixteen.

One evening, after their victorious return from a battle that was crucial to the empire's future, the imperial army's senior ranks were invited to celebrate their victory in the emperor's court. It was then that Prince Nsemi noticed the divine Simba and approached her. The heir to the Kongo throne then courted the descendant of the sirens throughout the evening, even suggesting that she leave her husband. But Simba, with all the tact in the world, rebuffed his advances. She told him, however, that she had a twin sister named Nzuzi, who remained in the City of Sirens, who would surely please His Majesty.

The proposal seemed satisfactory to Nsemi, who ordered that Simba's twin should come to his palace the next day. At the sight of the young lady, he couldn't tell the slightest difference from the woman he'd been crazy about the night before. A few days later, Simba's sister became Nsemi's spouse and, a few years later, the wife of a Kongo emperor.

However, as time passed, it seemed to Nsemi that the resemblance between Nzuzi and her twin was diminishing. Simba seemed more beautiful, more elegant, and exponentially more irresistible to him each time he saw her by her husband Matondo's side. He wanted Matondo to perish on a battlefield, but the opposite was happening. Quite the contrary, Matondo was climbing the army's ranks. He rose so far as to be appointed general commander of the imperial army, shortly before Emperor Nzita Phanzu died.

After his father's death, and having immediately become emperor, Nsemi used his power to take his army general's wife by force. He had Matondo convicted of high treason on the basis of false charges Nsemi himself had created, and he had Simba locked up in a palace in the empire's capital, unbeknownst to her sister Nzuzi, who was expecting. A few days before Matondo's execution, Simba realized that, like her sister, she was also pregnant by the Emperor. That's when, against all odds, a faction of warriors loyal to Nfumu Matondo stormed the prison where he was incarcerated and helped him escape. They also freed Simba and fled with the Matondo couple to the eastern mountains of the Kongo Empire.

Simba passed away at the foot of the Shiwa volcano, giving birth to a daughter who was named after her mother. Matondo raised the child and made a fighter out of her as formidable as himself. Simba meant "lion." The people from the mountains nicknamed the little girl "Simba Shiwa," which meant "the Shiwa Lioness." She was Princess Kisita's half-sister through her biological father, Emperor Nsemi. Kisita was born just a few days before Shiwa. Their mothers were identical twins and therefore looked a lot alike, but Shiwa and Kisita were indistinguishable from each other.

When she reached adulthood, her adoptive father revealed to the young Shiwa who her father really was, as well as the true circumstances of her mother's death. The Lioness swore then that Nsemi and his entire family would perish by her spear. She also decided to wear a mask until the day she would take the life of Kisita, the one who prevented her from having a face.