Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold(5)

‘Ah. That’s Erinl?. He is joining the academy next season. He won the country-wide competition for a spot and was invited to this festival as an early introduction.’ They had shifted away from ?àngó and his boys – not that it mattered. They wouldn’t have been able to hear the sisters speaking over the sound of their own voices and the giggling girls surrounding them anyway.

??un nodded and sipped at her palm wine. Yem?ja smiled wider. ??un barely drank. ‘What won him a place here?’ Their academy was selective, a training campus for the gifted. One was either born into it, being of celestial heritage, high-blood (??un, Yem?ja and ?àngó), while others were scouted for their particular skill, sourced through tales of power and often mysticism throughout the counties. They were known as the earth-born; of the rooted realm.

‘Hunting, my heart,’ Yem?ja said, allowing herself the indulgence of using an intimate term of endearment. To Yem?ja’s pleasure, ??un didn’t flinch.

??un nodded and poured more wine into both their bronze cups from a gourd.

‘So he’s an earth-born.’

Yem?ja shrugged. ‘Aburo mi, it means nothing. We are all equal here. Those who are supposedly high-born often act like they were born beneath ground.’ Yem?ja sidled her eyes to where ?àngó was sat, tipsily jeering, and ??un bit into her smile.

Yem?ja continued, shuffling closer to ??un, so their shoulders were touching. If strangers saw them, they might have presumed that they’d always been this way, companions, confidantes, sisters by blood and friends by choice, that they sat between each other’s knees and braided each other’s hair while gossiping as ritual.

‘He is a master bowman. Farmer too. It’s said he can bring crops to life with a touch. Good with his hands.’ She shot a knowing, playful look at ??un, and to Yem?ja’s surprise, ??un allowed herself a tiny, fraction of a smile. It made Yem?ja feel like she’d won something and she felt bolstered to continue. ‘It’s said that the scars on his chest are from when he fought a lion. They say the lion wanted to eat his heart for his strength.’

??un took a sip of her wine. ‘Or the lion wanted to eat his heart because it was a lion.’

To ??un’s surprise, Yem?ja released her ocean roar of a laugh; it bubbled out of her. People didn’t often laugh around her. Did she say something funny? She wasn’t aware, but she found she liked the feeling of being enjoyed for what she freely gave.

‘Well, Erinl? won. Clearly. As you can see.’ ??un looked up and saw that Erinl? was now in front of her, in the middle of the courtyard, a talking drum leaning against his taut torso and his arm, joining in with the music. Her eyes dropped and she realised that, around his waist, was a wide strip of tanned, sandy hide over his deep rust-hued woven cloth. Lion-skin.

Erinl? was smiling as he made the talking drum sing, joining in easily with The Tellers. The Tellers were notoriously unwelcoming to newcomers, an elite band of expert musicians who came from expert musicians. But here they were, folding him in, and Erinl? not only matched them, he made them better. Now that he was closer, she could examine him more. His skin was a deep reddish brown; the exact tone of the earth by the riverbed at her favourite place to swim.

‘May I speak with you?’

She heard a low, cool voice that she somehow knew belonged to Erinl?, and yet his mouth didn’t open. His eyes were trained on her intently. She held still. ??un was very sure that he had spoken without speaking.

‘It seems that you’ve already allowed yourself that honour,’ ??un dared to think, playing with the notion that he might hear her. From the broadening of his smile and the light in his eye, it was clear that he had.

‘No. I was just knocking. Testing. Seeing. We both know that, if you didn’t want me to speak with you, I wouldn’t be here.’

??un could see now that time had stopped – or at least it had been suspended. The red earth and deep green of the forest melted into a thick smog. ?àngó’s laughter sounded as if it had been submerged in water, and her sister’s warmth had ebbed away. Everybody was a blur. The festival was occurring in slow-motion, as if it were a dream. She found that she was now standing opposite Erinl?, inches away from him, close enough to reach out and touch the ridges of his scars if she were so inclined.

??un forced her eyes away from his chest and directed them plainly into his. ‘Why would I want you in my mind? I don’t know you.’

Erinl?’s gaze made ??un’s blood blaze beneath her skin.

‘I don’t know you, but you’ve been in my mind. I guess just not in the same way. Not in this literal sense.’

??un tried to swallow her curiosity (she wasn’t used to the taste, as she rarely found what men said to be interesting), but it rose back up to push a question from her lips. ‘In which sense, then?’

‘In the sense of a young man wondering about the woman who would one day hold his heart.’

??un found it in her to roll her eyes, to conjure the semblance of dismissal, despite the fact that every cell in her body thrummed with the knowledge that this man wasn’t speaking with regular flat flattery – this was not an attraction tethered to how her being in his possession would make him feel. He spoke plainly of her power over him, and he didn’t cower, didn’t puff up his chest to over-compensate.

‘And how do you know that’s me?’