I hear the man in the feathered cape whisper, “Uexolotl,” and I know it is a curse. A lance thrown down the throat of the haughty European. But the European does not respond; he continues his speech. The realization comes to me slowly, but I grasp it. The magic-cape man—with his brown skin and his shiny black hair—he cannot be seen by the European.
“He and his kind are dead,” a voice whispers. I look around, but there is no one here. No one who would have whispered such a thing. The men surrounding me do not whisper. Their voices insist and impose. They flail dark-robed arms and toss white-wigged heads. The men shackled behind me are silent.
“Dance,” the voice whispers.
“What?” I ask with dry lips.
“Dance,” the voice whispers again. I listen harder. I may be crazy, keeping company with dead, feathered men. I may be crazy, hearing words on the wind. I may be crazy, but I am certain this is your voice. You, who are not here, but I think you must be reaching for me. I imagine you peering through Grandfather’s murky liquids, whistling into beakers, wondering how you can bring me home.
I stand.
“Now dance.”
Before I can move a muscle, the scar starts to screech.
“Dance the Royale?”
The scar wails in guttural tones, begging me to sit. It speaks in a language I can’t decipher, but fear needs no words to be understood.
“Dip.”
I don’t know where this scar came from or how it was born, but I know you. I have been waiting to dance for you since the moment I met you. Before you can whisper another word, I dip. My hands flick helplessly, no razors to grasp. A club blurs toward me, and I slide back, snaking my hips low. It crashes against my knee, but it doesn’t matter. I’m in the Royale now.
They surround me—black robes, rotten teeth, anger. They surround me, but they can’t catch me. The Royale has me. That ancient vibe has slipped into my skin and nested down into my chest. It guides me, showing me the gaps, and I glide through, ducking just when they think I’m captured. Then just like that, the Royale leaves me. It rolls up behind me and shoves me forward. I stumble under the force, and then I run.
I scramble over benches and climb through an open window. As soon as my feet touch the ground, I take off running. I hear sounds behind me: explosions and shouts. I feel tiny fires shooting past me. The Royale pants behind me, low and fierce. Every pant is like a heartbeat. I dare not still my feet.
Out the corner of my eye I see feathers flying next to me. They rush, creating a wind that pushes me faster and faster. I run beyond my pursuers. I run beyond the trees. I run beyond the Royale. Then I hear the gritty sound of time grinding into a different gear, or year. My limbs go liquid and lose their speed.
Intense heat is the first thing I feel, then exhaustion. I feel it down to my bones. Muscles like mush, as if I’ve been walking for miles. To the right and left of me are sand dunes, notched with hypnotizing ridges where the wind has kissed them. Before me is a woman’s back, her head hangs low as she plods along a footpath. I look behind me. More women, a long line of them snaking back further than I can see. They all wear dingy white robes and tattered headwraps. I hold up my arms. The same dingy cloth covers me.
My eyes swing back up to the woman’s neck. Foreign memories flash in my mind. Men with black-lined eyes breaking into a family camp. A man—who must be this new body’s father—bloodied but fighting. A woman—who must be this new body’s mother—lying with her throat ripped open, a bloom of blood haloing her head. The bite of sand on palms and knees as this body crawls to safety, crawls like a dog, choking on fear. I shake the scene from my head and stare at the back of the woman’s neck again.
“You must forget there was ever anything called home,” a voice whispers. Your voice. I feel a gasp of panic explode in my head. You can’t ask me to forget home. I won’t forget home; I won’t forget you. Anger chases away the panic. Grandfather, with his reckless lessons and self-righteous speeches. Doesn’t he know what everyone whispers behind his back? That one, they say, pointing their chins at me, that one gets his wildness from his grandfather. Is he punishing me for being like him?
My arm swings up in an arc, muscles twitching with memory. It’s the block I should have thrown in my last Royale, the arm flick I could have used to knock away the razor and avoid getting cut. The repeated sway of my arm is numbing, like a narcotic. For a few blissful seconds, I’m not on a long desert walk to enslavement—I’m nowhere.
After my arm grows tired, I let it fall limp by my side. I notice two small mounds rising from my chest. Breasts. I touch them with the back of my hand. My sleeve rolls back to reveal the ridges of a scar on my forearm. I push the sleeve up further, there’s a crude X burned into my arm. When I look up at the woman in front of me again, I understand why I’ve been staring at her. It’s not her neck I’m looking at, I’m staring at the scar burned on her back—the top edges of an X visible above the scoop of her robe.
I peer ahead. An indigo-draped figure rides a camel. The set of his shoulders tells me that he decides my next breaths. Whip gripped in hand, lazily swatting air with a motion that cools him and flaunts his power all at once.
What has Grandfather done?
I step out of the snaking line, and look back. My gaze is darting around, looking for more guards when, thwack, something hard cracks against my jaw.
I don’t fight the fall. I don’t even feel the impact when my body crashes against the hot sand. I lay there, motionless, aware of nothing except the sun’s searing heat and the parade of feet stepping over me as the women plod on to their terrible destiny.
I can smell death rising with the heat around my body. It smells like decay, a tinge of sticky sweetness mixed in with a rank earthy scent. I feel a blow to my side, then another. I allow my body to rock with each kick. A thought rips through my mind: If I die here, will my life end? I would rise and fight, but why? Whether I lay here until death claims me, or I stand and walk toward my own slaughter, I will die anonymous and unloved. No one among these trillions of grains of sand can see my true face, and no one knows my name.
“I know,” your voice says. “I know your name. Come home.”
At first I feel a flush of pleasure: you want me. Then that bitter rage flares again and extinguishes my pleasure. You want me, and I am powerless to join you. Coming home is not up to me. This is Grandfather’s game.
The army of feet trod on, kicking up tufts of dust, coating my face with grime. The sun is so merciless that the blazing heat begins to feel physical. The idea of releasing my grip on life is seductively sweet.
“But we have not yet tasted each other,” you whisper.
A small sound that doesn’t know if it wants to be a laugh or a sob pops in my throat. Not even your voice—with its melodies and catches—can stop me from thinking about committing my body to the earth. I want you, but I also want to break into a million pieces and melt into the sand. I want to stop the procession of roughened heels and downtrodden women. I want to die.
“Dance,” you say. Your voice has taken on a depth I have never heard before. You have pushed beyond laughter and flirtation, scattered gravel and broken glass in your voice. Then I understand. You mean not to entice me, but to compel me. You are trying to awaken the warrior in me.