Awa’s tongue knotted as the axman lifted his bloody blade again. Zamanzi considered women too weak-minded to be griots. Awa was no shadow warrior like Bal and desired no husband. What choice was this? As a warrior, she’d die quickly. “I choose…” She ached to pour a libation to the crossroads gods. No time. “Chief’s wife.”

“No,” Bal cried, and Awa’s heart wrenched. “Too dangerous.” Bal dumped sword and spear at Awa’s feet. “Don’t leave me.” She pressed her Aido cloth bag at Awa’s chest. The axman did not notice. Aido cloth was every color strong but a play of shadows for untrained eyes.

While Zamanzi warriors laughed at Green Elder sentiment, Yari snuck a catalpa anklet in Awa’s hand and whispered in Lahesh, “Survive. We will find each other.”

“How?” Awa whispered Lahesh too.

“You’re the mapmaker, the storyteller. You’ll make a way.”

The axman snatched a weeping, thrashing Awa away from Bal and Yari. He forced a bitter, intoxicating potion down her throat, locked her in a cage, and dumped her in a wagon with two other caged Sprites. Awa banged against the bars as the wagon lurched off. Bal and Yari faded in the mist. Two families lost.

Sprite discipline deserted Awa. Her spirit was too scrambled to make any sort of map for tomorrow. Zamanzi held her in a cage for ritual cleansing—drug potions, cold water baths, hot stones on her belly. The drugs made it hard to think right or feel herself. She was haunted by Yari’s hard eyes as Isra burned alive and Bal’s tearstained cheeks when she chose chief’s wife.

Awa might have done mortal damage to herself, but Yari said, Survive. The moon turned to a pale scar leaking silver light, and her blood came with cramps and heartache for two families lost. Old men leered through the bars, happy she could produce Zamanzi sons and daughters. One must have been her husband to be. Survive. Awa blotted out mottled faces and recited from The Green Elder Songs for Living and Dying.

“Hush that noise,” the axman declared one night. “Tomorrow, twenty-first wife.”

Awa whispered every song, losing herself in the words, rhythms, and rhymes. Better that than go mad. What you know is always yours.

On Awa’s wedding day, the southern barbarians raided during the final cleansing mutilation. Zamanzi women were fracturing her leg—to ensure she couldn’t run away from a chief five times her age—when thief-lords tromped in on elephants. They pierced her husband-to-be with fire arrows. The ancient chief lurched into her, trying to escape.

Awa caught fire too. The barbarians laughed as she rolled in the dirt like Isra and smothered the fire. They let the old chief burn alive, then wrapped Awa’s burnt arm and set her broken leg. Thanks to Zamanzi potions, pain was a distant throb. Survive. We will find each other.