Page 92 of Earthbound

Her words sting and I fall to my knees. ‘My children, my children.’

‘They will not know you,’ she says.

I go to her, pushing through the thorns that scratch at my skin. With bleeding hands I reach for her stomach.

The ground surges up around me to block me from her path.

‘Mosima is ours. No child of our blood will be defenceless here. Do not come here again.’

‘Mosima?’ It means freedom in the human language. She wishes to be free of me. I start to panic. ‘Do not leave me, Hady.’

‘It is not I who left. You broke this world when you bound us to it.’

‘I can fix it! I can fix it all. I’ll learn how to give the humans back their bodies…’

‘And what of the fae? Those you murdered, whose souls have gone to the beyond?’

I cannot help the scowl that forms on my face. ‘You saw how they treated us. They would do the same.’

‘But they could not do the same. Only you, Afa, know how to bind to the earth.’

‘Do you castigate the blacksmith for making the sharpest blade his own? No. This was no equal playing field.’

‘A playing field.’ She shakes her head. ‘Life is no game.’

I realise then that she no longer loves me. That I have shattered what was between us.

‘Please, Hady. Let me love my children.’

‘No,’ she whispers. Then she turns and says ‘Aiftarri.’ The magic of the boundary parts for her, then ripples closed.

I try to follow. ‘Aiftarri! ‘I shout. ‘Aiftarri! Aiftarri! Aiftarri!’

But the boundary does not admit me.

In my rage I conjure animals of teeth and poison, I fill the land around Mosima with swamps and springs that bubble sulphur. Only when my anger is spent do I stop and listen to the silence.

I am alone. Truly alone.

What have I done? It is my first true feeling of guilt.

I walk back to Kaa’pah’lie like a mortal. Though I no longer have to walk anywhere at all. I can call to the wind and the rivers to travel along their channels. But I walk until my feet bleed, then heal, then bleed again. Perhaps it is because I punish myself.

I come across the first human body early in my journey. I bury my shame within the flesh of my soil. I wrap their bones in roots and grow a conifer tree upon the grave.

‘Rest well, child of Asase,’ I say before kissing the bark and moving on.

It is a family I come across next. Parents and two children. I sob as I enfold the babes’ bodies in roots and place the sarcophagus deep within the ground. I coax four conifers to grow, marking their resting place.

Twenty-five years it takes me to bury every body on the mountain range. By the end they are nothing but trees.

Every day I call to Hady. I see our children born through her eyes. A girl and a boy.

I weep and beg her to let me see them.

She is silent.

Tell them of me, Hady, tell them of me.