Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold(3)

??un was the only person who saw ?àngó’s eyes slide from slate to silver close up. She would walk into the midst of a brewing fight, the crowd parting way for her, and lay a hand across his tense jaw and look up at him. Murderous fire would turn to amorous flame, angry gusts of air into soft billowing breath. She would take his hand and lead him out of his own chaos. All of ?àngó’s girls didn’t matter, because ??un knew she was all of them put together, and more. They were just iterations of her, splintered into lesser forms. There was a smiley girl who lived a few compounds away from ?àngó that he liked to spend time with. ??un didn’t mind this. ??un knew that, when she smiled – rare, but it happened – it was as bright and as intense as the sun at noon. It could intoxicate those around her into such euphoria that, when the high ebbed, they felt like they were plummeting into the depth of all the despairs of the world, compounded. ??un didn’t know what would happen if she laughed. She never did. Then there was the girl that ??un had Constellation Observation class with. ?àngó often visited her after festivities, loosened with palm wine. She was a girl who acted as if she hadn’t drunk since the moment she was born, and whose thirst could only be satiated by ?àngó’s sweat on her tongue. ??un didn’t mind that either. ??un knew that, when they were together, ?àngó drowned in her, died and came back to life in her, and that when their hips rolled together, it was stormy waves; almighty, thrilling, terrifying. She knew she tasted like honey and liquor and that she left him both satiated and insatiable, tipsy, and all at her whim. ??un knew that she was all ?àngó ever wanted and more. She knew it was the More that terrified him. The surplus taunted him. She knew that sometimes having everything you desire can make you question your own worthiness. ?àngó didn’t like the taste of his own insecurities. He never liked to wonder whether he was Enough to match her Too Much, so he had to seek balance with diluted derivations of her. She was fine with all of this until the week before, six days before the Ojude Oba Festival, at her sister Yem?ja’s Earth Journey celebration.

The party was thrown at their compound, and ??un had ventured out into the surrounding forest for a break. She admired her sister, who’d ascended from the school a year ago, but she often found her presence overbearing. When Yem?ja laughed, it sounded like waves crashing against the shore, and often ??un felt like the craggy cliff walls the waves cuffed against and eroded. The two sisters had the same face poured into different forms. ??un felt her sister was a more sophisticated version of her. Yem?ja was taller and lither, whereas ??un was shorter and curvier, defying the prototypical mould for athleticism. Yem?ja was an expert sailor, often leading teams of forty or fifty vessels on voyages of exploration. She had mastered the waters so that she needn’t ever submerge. ??un felt weak for needing to feel the ebbs against her skin. Yem?ja highlighted what ??un lacked, and though ??un loved her sister and her sister loved her back, she couldn’t help but feel lesser around her. People hung on to Yem?ja’s every word and ??un watched them do it, saw them use those words to hoist themselves up spiritually, charmed and bolstered by Yem?ja’s presence. Seeing this, ??un had tried to strike up conversation at that party, in a valiant attempt to emulate her sister’s charisma, but she found that, when she spoke to people, they watched intently as her lips moved, their eyes following how her mouth shaped words, rather than listening. So ??un left the teeming party and went for a walk through the forest, aiming for the river, a place where she felt peace. It was a surprise when, through the thicket by the riverbed, she saw the broad, muscular shoulder of ?àngó, who, a mere thirty minutes earlier, had wrapped a thick arm around ??un’s waist, pulled her to him and whispered that she was his love and that it pained him that he had to socialise when all he wanted was to be with her, but that he needed to collect more ale from the seller with a few of his men. Now that arm was around someone else. Through branches that seemed to cower in embarrassment, ??un saw that ?àngó’s neck was bent as he whispered something into that Someone Else’s ear before kissing it.

He then said, louder, ‘??un doesn’t like to dance. I miss dancing. Dance with me.’

He moved slightly to reveal ?ba; ?àngó’s former lover-friend, pre-??un, her baby-round eyes soft and stupid, small pretty flower mouth, waist moving with smooth respectful reverence as ?àngó called to her with his hips, jutting in response to the beat of the faraway drums. The way her waist moved was polite and coy, technically rhythmic but with no fire of its own. Even in dancing, she was bowing for ?àngó. ??un rolled her eyes. This, ??un hadn’t been fine with. ?ba was meek and irritatingly sweet, a sweetness that ??un found cloying. Even after ??un had successfully captured ?àngó’s attention, ?ba had been kind to ??un, insisting she held no ill-feeling, that all she ever wished was for ?àngó to be happy. ??un had found this exceedingly pathetic and would have had more respect for the girl if she had sworn a vendetta, if she had told her to her face – like a warrior – that she would not be letting him go. However, ?ba’s involvement was not what struck ??un so hard in her chest that she almost stumbled back. It was ?àngó’s words. It was a lie. ??un loved to dance. She and Yem?ja danced by the seashore every night at sunset, drumbeats rising from the ocean for them, their laughter melding with the roar of the tide. ??un danced every time she was in the water. She thought that ?àngó, at least, saw that. Through everything, the one thing that kept her tethered to ?àngó was that he saw her. They saw each other. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, when she was with ?àngó, she felt close to how she felt when she was in the water. She realised now that this was an illusion. Sometimes, when you are hungry enough, you can will the ghost-taste of sweetbread in your mouth. It will make you hungrier, though, and emptier. And sometimes you won’t know how truly bereft of food you are until it’s too late.