I flailed to the surface, except that the air seemed still and sticky, as though it were not air at all. As through a long tunnel resonant with echoes, I heard female voices speaking far away.
“Poor Esi was very disappointed. It’s all she’s talked of this year, a betrothal for her with Andevai. She would never accept being second wife to an outsider like this one, so I wonder why the mansa did not have his nephew take this one as his third wife and let Esi marry the young man? That would have solved the problem.”
“Prohibited in the contract, so I heard. That the girl could not be brought in as a secondary wife. It is Kena’anic custom, I believe, that states a man may marry one woman only.”
“That can’t be true!”
“It’s said a Kena’ani woman may marry more than one man, if she chooses. What would you think of that, eh?”
Their laughter swept like waves.
“When I was young, maybe! It’s just as well, for Esi’s sake, that she was not allowed to marry Andevai. Youth is handsome, but youth fades. His upbringing, his people, will always drag him down. Sss! Why do you think he was sent to the duty of this contract? If harm comes of the binding, better it fall on him than on one of the precious lads.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. The high magisters say little, but you know it’s whispered Andevai has as cold a reach as they’ve seen in three generations. Maybe they thought he was the only one strong enough. Is she still under?”
I was still under, arms flailing and groping upward, and yet my hands never broke the flashing surface. My lungs were empty. There was no floor to push off of, nothing under my feet, only an abyss of black water like my future into which I was sinking.
Drowning.
I am six years old and the water closes over my head and my mother’s strong hand slips out from mine as she is wrenched away by the furious current. No amount of clawing at the rushing liquid aids me. I have to open my mouth for a breath of air, but all that rushes in is water, filling my lungs and dragging me down into the depths.
The spirits that guarded the House did not want me. They were dragging me down into my worst memory, the one I had tried so hard to block out.
We are drowning in the Rhenus River, and I have lost both Papa and Mama.
“Daughter,” a male voice says urgently. His powerful arms push me up.
I breached, heaving and coughing, and there I stood in the tiled pool, the water up to only my shoulders as I shook in the grip of memory, blinded by tears.
“Once more,” they said.
I was afraid.
After that I was always afraid of deep water, which is shameful for the Kena’ani.
But I had no choice.
I pretended that a mother’s bracelet ringed my wrist, giving me my mother’s courage. I pretended that my papa was waiting with his stories and his cheerful smile. He would never let anyone harm me. I took in a huge shuddering breath and dropped down under the water.
And came up again, water streaming down my face. I glanced around, fearing it had been too easy, that I had drowned in truth and emerged as one of the rephaim into my stone tomb.
The sleep of the dead was not likely enlivened by men singing crude songs about male anatomy and sexual prowess or its particular lack, which I heard from beyond the curtain separating life and death or, at least right now, woman and man. I was warmed through from the heated water but shivering in my heart as I dripped up onto the stone. Yet, after all, memories cannot kill you. My companions roughly toweled me dry, although my thick hair remained damp. It had to be combed out wet, no easy task, although they seemed happy to fuss over my hair as they plied me with questions.
“He’ll not have approached the marriage bed until the mansa has accepted you into the house.”
A pause, pregnant with intention. I cleared my throat. When they saw I didn’t mean to answer this impertinent comment, they went on.
“Is it true you Kena’anic women can take two husbands?”
I was thankful to find something to feel annoyed about, because now I could talk. “It’s not common but not unknown. If a woman of stature is head of a trading house in a foreign city, she would, of course, marry a Kena’ani man who would spend much of the year traveling for trade. Then she might choose to take a secondary husband from among the local families, someone whose connections would bring benefit to the house.”
“How can it be that men would put up with such an arrangement?”
“Why do some people demand it of women but not of men? It is just another way of doing things. As my father would have said, folk will have their customs according to their nature and their surroundings.”
