Alexa, age 8
The fire behind the grate hissed and
crackled, a soft addition to the sound of my parent’s voices, their words a low
hum in the semi-darkness of our home. Mama thought I was asleep, with my head
in her lap, but I wasn’t. I wanted to hear what they had to say. Though the
brush of her fingers through my hair was making me very sleepy. I had to
crack one eye barely open, just a slit, to keep myself from accidentally
drifting off.
Papa was a shadow silhouetted
against the orange light of the flames. He sat on the ground, the sword he’d
been sharpening earlier now resting in his lap. His fingers were curled around
the hilt, almost as if he expected someone to burst through the door at any
moment.
“You shouldn’t allow her to train
with you. It isn’t right,” Mama was saying. Which was why I’d worked so hard to
stay awake: they were talking about me.
“She’s a natural. And she wants to
learn. Why would I refuse? Because she’s a girl?”
I felt Mama nod, all the way down
through her hand as her fingers paused on my head.
“That’s not good enough for me,”
Papa said. “She doesn’t have to be helpless. I want my daughter to be able to
defend herself.”
“She doesn’t need to be able to
defend herself. She’ll have Marcel once he’s trained. She has you.” Her
fingers began to slip through my hair once more, but I could feel a tension in
her touch that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“And what if something happens to
me? What then?”
“Nothing is going to happen to you,”
Mama’s words were suddenly fierce. It was the voice she only used when she was
really upset. “You are the best—”
“That’s no guarantee,” he cut her
off. “Not if the rumors are true.” Papa gently set the sword down and stood up.
As he crossed to where I lay with my head in Mama’s lap, I quickly shut my
eyes. “Nailah, did you ever meet one of them before your family left?”
Every part of Mama stiffened at his
question. “You mean . . .” she trailed off, almost like she didn’t want to say
the words out loud.
“A black sorcerer. I know you were
very young when you lived in Dansii, but did you ever see what they can do?”
There was a weighted silence, like
the breath before the rain began to pour from the sky. And then Mama murmured,
“You know we did. You know that’s why we left—why my father brought us here, to
Antion.”
Papa sat down beside us, lifting my
legs to place them across his lap, and letting his hands rest on my calves. I
couldn’t feel the callouses I knew marked his hands through the rough, homespun
fabric of my nightgown. When he trained with his sword, I couldn’t help but
long to be like him. Papa wielding a sword was an extraordinary kind of magic
that I wanted for myself. It was a strange ache, deep inside of me. Almost like
the way I felt when I hadn’t eaten for too long and my belly was so empty, that
I wanted to devour all the food on the table all at once.
Papa lifted one hand from my leg and
let it rest on top of Mama’s fingers that still pressed into my hair. “I will
continue to train her, Nailah. And she will prove to you and everyone else that
she can be just as good if not better than any boy. There’s something special
about her. . . .” He trailed off.
“You don’t think that she’s . . .”
Mama’s voice had gone soft, hushed.
“No. No, she’s not. But I can sense something.
Something more than normal. She’s special, Nailah. Alexa is my little Zhànshì
Nánwū.”
His words rang in my ears long after
he lifted me and carried me to my bed beside Marcel. I didn’t know what they
meant, but for some reason, it made me feel warm inside, right next to my
heart.
Like maybe, just maybe, I could
claim his magic for myself. Someday.
