Women Of Steel | ✔

VIII

Y'all have no idea what's coming!!!! Enjoy this early update :-)

***

There is nothing in the cold sand to run from, no dead rotten army crawling from the underworld, caked in blood and gore. Just me and the girl. For a moment, I contemplate running, eyes closed and pretending as if I saw nothing but when I blink she remains on the sand and before I know it, my legs are taking me to her, and when I crouch to touch her, I hesitate for a second, peering down at her face.

Scars line her face, thin ones that make me imagine the wicked ways they came to be, they are almost invisible on her light brown skin and when I bring my hand down to trace them, I flinch back because her skin is as cold as the biting wind that nips at my covered skin.

Her lips are blue and chapped, pursed thin as if in death.

A faint pulse flutters at the base of her throat, it makes me heave a sigh of relief and tense at the same time. She might be alive now, but for how long. My eyes trace from where I kneel to the camp far in the distant, hidden by the darkness of the night.

I am half surprised by my calm as I mull over running over to the camp to get help but who knows what wicked things prowl this dunes of sand at this ungodly hour. The rush of freedom that filled my blood a few minutes ago has faded to a dull ache in my head and when I rise, I tug at the woman then bend again to carry her.

I grunt and drop her, she weighs little, certainly not as much as I do but she is still human nonetheless and heavier than what I can carry. I settle for half carrying her and half dragging her on the cold sand all while muttering prayers under my breath.

Please don't die.

Many times, I drop her and bend to catch my breath, and when I see the camps in sight, I heave a sigh of relief, a smile blooming on my face when I notice a dark figure by the oasis.

"Help!"

I am not sure the covered man understands my words but he certainly acknowledges my cry, he quickens his pace in time to catch the woman in my arms before she slips again.

"I found her in the sands." I feel the urge to explain to the man who has a bushy beard. He nods as if he understand, maybe he does and isn't just a big talker. He carries the woman as if she weighs nothing and when he begins to walk, I follow behind, taking a moment to study him, half wondering if he is wondering why I decided to take a late night walk..

He is younger than I thought, although the thick beard on his face does not help, he is certainly a few years older than I am and has skin lighter than I have ever seen. He wears the white kaftan I have come to connect with the men in the camp and a bulky head scarf.

The man bends to enter one of the biggest tents in the camp and I follow in after him, determined to see that the woman is taken care of. To my surprise, he sets her down on the sole mat in the tent with gentleness, it is only then that I realize that I have unconsciously come to think of these men as brutes — the way I have been taught to see wild men like these, bigger men like these.

"I will go outside to call a servant girl, stay with her."

I jolt when I realize that he speaks perfect Ede albeit thick with the accent I have come to recognize with everyone who lives in this desert, another unwitting judgement that makes me ashamed. He looks at me strangely, the oil lamp in the room making his light brown eyes flicker gold in the dark, for a second his lips twist into a smile, making the dimple on his right cheek pop.

I blink and realize I have yet to give him and answer. I nod and he leaves, throwing me one last blank look over his shoulder.

My attention flickers to the girl immediately, and instinctively, I crouch besides her, and draw the oil lamp closer to warm her cold skin. I cannot stop staring at the scars on her face, on a closer look, they look like whip marks and they make me glance down at the scar on my wrist, forever marked as goods to a man long dead. I wonder what hell she has gone through, I wonder if there's a heaven for her, for the girls at that slavery camp.

I begin to draw away from her when I notice the slightest movement of her lips, slow at first, then quick that I almost miss the word that she slurs, unfamiliar to me.

"Tife, Boluwtife,"

***

"She is awake," the man tells me on the third day, a man who I still don't know his name. In the past few days we have formed a sort of comradeship, in the mornings I wake up to the hut and help the maids help clean the still mystery woman, sometimes she wakes briefly and utters strange words. Other times, he beats me there, and he is always standing and waiting, a small calabash of tea in hand.

We never never speak much, I don't ask his name and he never addresses me by mine — that is if he even knows it but the surely he must have the fast spreading rumours and my name on the lips of everyone in the camp. Nobody says anything unkind to me but they all wonder about my presence.

I blink and nod, still taken aback every time I see him wearing that head scarf considering the fact the mornings are always hot.

He steps aside so I can enter and I smile when I see the woman sitting up, pale but healthier than when I first saw her, I feel a jolt of satisfaction that soon fades when her face blanches as her eyes meet mine.

I mistake the gesture for fear, raising my hand in surrender. "I am not here to hurt you, I found you in the desert some days ago and I brought you here."

"She remembers all that, she asked especially to see you." The brute by the tent flap tells me, for a man so big, he is certainly a quiet one and the sudden call of his voice makes me jump.

I furrow my brows, looking from the gaping woman to the man.

"But she doesn't know me, how could she have asked for me?" I point out.

The brute crosses his arms over his chest and it is only when I squint at his face do I notice that he has trimmed the thick beard on his face, it is not as bushy as it was when I met him.

"She asked for the woman with the sad eyes." He tells me, his eyes giving nothing away. Mine slide away from his, ashamed that my eyes give away the storm in my heart.

I move closer to the sitting woman and she shifts slightly, no longer wide eyed but sharply narrowed with distrust and something else I cannot identify. She is barely a woman, on a closer look, her eyes give away her youth and she is not as fully bodied as a grown woman, she might be even a few years younger than I am.

"You asked for me," I tell her, sinking down so I sit eye to eye with her. She does not flinch but her eyes dart the slightest away as if afraid to give away a secret.

"I wanted to see the woman I have been seeing in my visions."