TLADI

Chapter 23

Once a long, long time ago, a force that had called itself the ancestors, had told Umthunz'omnyama that a pale stranger would come to the village on a certain starlit night. She had been told which night the stranger would appear and that she would be completely withdrawn for the entire period of her stay. The source had made it known to her that this stranger would disappear and when she returned she would be with child. 

Umthunz'omnyama was instructed to care for the child. She was not supposed to love the child but... who can really tell what the future holds? The child was meant to be a tool. The child was not meant to fall in love, but... some things cannot be controlled. She was told that the child would disappear back into the desert and that that was when the hardest part of the job would begin.

Yet who could have predicted that Umthunz'omnyama's evolution would progress like the incoming tide; steadily, stealthily, deceptively fast? She was informed that Tladi was to be her tool to protect The Most Secret Truth. Unfortunately, she had come to love this child. Later, she had come to realize that they were both tools to a manipulation that was not of the ancestors and had no bearing on her inner truth. She was at a dire crossroads; did she continue to follow these alien voices at her own people's peril? Alternatively, should she risk disobeying these strange voices, at the peril of her and Tladi's lives? She was certain of nothing. Nothing at all seemed clear.

She was the reason these occurrences had killed their people. She would be the reason no more. The evening meal was eaten in silence around the fire. It was a measly meal. Shared among eight people, two desert snakes were not much of a meal. Most of their supplies were depleted from the journey across the desert and the perils that they had faced. 

There was no conversation. The atmosphere was strained. Oyena was still suspicious of everyone. Shami felt utterly alone as though he'd woken in a strange place where he didn't remember falling asleep. Umthunz'omnyama was being secretive, as were all her initiates. Stima was as detached as ever and the rest all felt like they were missing something, and thus the moon set on that evening.

In the early hours of that morning, a few hours before sunrise, Shami was awoken by restless movements and heavy breathing. He turned in the direction of the sound and opened his eyes to see Stima, sweating profusely and muttering silently in his sleep. He kept moving restlessly on the desert sand and his breathing was uneven. He began to shiver and shake, his muttering grew louder. Thunder distantly rumbled.

"Stima..." Shami's voice was tense. 

Stima didn't respond, he began to shake violently, his muttering got louder, the thunder rumbled closer. He was saying something, crying something in his sleep, but Shami couldn't quite hear it. He tried to shake Stima awake, the thunder seemed to be rumbling closer and closer. Shami looked up, this was the desert, there was not a cloud in the sky! He slapped Stima, trying to wake him, by this time the loud sounds of Stima's cries in his sleep had woken everyone up and they were looking at him in worry and fear. Shami slapped him harder just as Stima's dark eyes opened wide. Simultaneously, in the most heartbreaking tone anyone had ever heard, Stima screamed out: "TLADI!"

Then, the thunder struck and three more died.

Over a thousand kilometers away, in the desert depths, Tladi's body convulsed violently. She struggled to catch her breath as energy coursed out of her. I thought I heard someone scream my name in the storm... She thought as she rose from her seat. 

An entire white-clad race bowed down before her. Her indigo eye glowed like a laser. For the first time since Unaletastima had arrived on the terrain of her soul, she stopped fighting the character that was she. In the flashing light of the storm, the faces of those bowing looked almost lizard-like. That, however, could have just been a trick of the light...

Yes, the translated secrets were not meant for the world, she could see that now... it was so clear, it was so perfectly clear to Tladi. Her newly acquired role slid around her like a second skin. She had been born for this. This was her destiny. Her destiny was the destiny of her entire race, the self-proclaimed master race, fated and destined to rule the world.

A series of realizations struck Tladi with the potency of a landslide. Yes, this was what she was born to do. The wrong knowledge could destroy the world. She was on the side of preservation. The world had to be saved from itself and she was going to be one of its heroes. She was not born without a reason. I will use these terrible powers to bring about the good of humankind. She thought, she then left her initiation ceremony and went to sleep in the royal tent.

"That you love him is an undeniable fact, but you have these dark urges you know. Your blood cries out to call thunderbolts out of clear skies and burn whole villages down with your passion." He said, then paused.

"This is who you are. This is the nature of your spirit. He loved you as you were, and still does. He loved the dark, dangerous creature. He loved the village terror. To turn your back on that would be to betray not only yourself but also to betray him and his love for you." He continued.

"Something tortured resides within you, and every day you pretend it is not there. Perhaps you became this way because the village spurned you; the only home you have ever known never cared." His voice grew agitated.

"So you would live away from this tortured essence of yourself? You would offer Stima a fraction of the woman he loves and wish him to love you all the same? You would doom him to live a fraction of a life? You would commit such a selfish act? It is better that he thinks that you are dead. Then perhaps there is a chance for him to continue and find a wife -no- a life he loves. If you love him, you will dedicate your life to the cause of keeping him away from the spreading of the most secret truth. You will save the world from itself. If you really love him..." His deep, dark voice like liquid silence reverberating in a huge ancient bell, completed its monologue to the supposedly sleeping Tladi. It said:

"I wish I could say these things to you when you were awake, but it wouldn't be my place to put such thoughts in your head..."

The man was cunning. Firstly, Tladi was 'supposed' to be sleeping and supposedly did not hear the man telling her these things that were meant to control what she thought. Was this man really who he said he was?

"I am your father." The deep masculine voice had said when Tladi had awoken in a strange tent.

This was after five days of wandering the desert when she had lain her head down in dizziness, believing that it would be the last time she closed her eyes. He was the same man who had saved her life on that strange night when she had finally found the suicidal Stima, half-dead in the desert. It was he who had ordered her headcloth removed to see her unusual birthmark and told the familiar race to leave her alone. 

It was he who had said that if the prophecy were true, she would come back. It was he who had offered her comfort, guidance and, for the first time in her life, complete acceptance.

Yet, no, she was wrong; it was not the first time. That was what he wanted her to believe. It was the second; Umthunz'omnyama had loved her as she was, it was Tladi who was not able to reconcile herself with herself.

Stima had never really known all of her, not consciously anyway. Yet he had loved her all the same. That was what Tladi thought. She thought again; Stima had tried to sacrifice himself by going into the desert when he figured out that he was the trigger for Tladi's havoc-wreaking powers. He had truly known her and yet he had loved her enough to give his life so that she could find a semblance of normality in her own.

Umthunz'omnyama had shown her a true mother's love, but this man; her self-proclaimed father, was yet to be tested or trusted...