“The Queen is the voice of the ancestors,” I continue. “She carries the songs that map our history. Every migration, every war, every birth and death, encoded in frequencies that only a Bouda female can produce. Without a Queen, those songs die. The history dies. We become animals with no memory of what we were.”
Kendra lowers her fork slowly.
Zaki carries the bowl of fruit to the sofa and sets it on the coffee table in front of Kendra. “We will also need to hunt,” my sister says, her voice stripped of its earlier edge. “Fresh meat. Not from a package.”
Kendra blinks, pulled from whatever she was turning over in her mind. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.” She waves us off. “Well, go. Don’t let me stop you.”
Zaki looks to me. I straighten.
“I will eat the human food,” I say. “I will stay.”
Kendra narrows her eyes. She is chewing her chicken again, studying both of us, reading the tension between what we want and what we are willing to say. “I can see the disgust on both your faces. Go. I’ll be fine. Wintermoon is the safest place in the world, so...”
“I will not leave you.” It comes out too loud, closer to panic than command, and I hear it and hate it.
Calm yourself, Alemayehu,myBoudawarns.Do not scare our queen. She is testing us and you are failing.
Kendra sets her plate on the sofa cushion beside her and stands. She looks between me and Zaki, then presses a finger to her lips, thinking. Something calculates behind her eyes, and I can almost see the equation forming.
“Zaki,” she says. “Do you trust your brother with me?”
My sister frowns. “I trust my brother with my own life.”
Kendra nods, then turns to me. “And do you trust your sister with me?”
I feel the offense before I can hide it. “I trust Zaki with my life. She has saved it more than once.”
Kendra shrugs like she has just solved something everyone else was overcomplicating. “Well, it’s settled then. Zaki, you go hunt first. When you get back, Kojo hunts. I’m never alone, someone is always with me, and you both know I’m safe here.”
She is without question a true queen,my Bouda says.This is very good, Alemayehu. This is very good.
Zaki smiles. It is small and brief and it transforms her entire face before she pulls it back behind the mask she wears. She bows her head.
“When I return, I will bring enough for all of us,” she says, and starts for the door. She steps out and closes it behind her, and the cabin goes quiet except for the fire.
Kendra and I are alone. The fire pops behind me, finding its rhythm, and the cabin feels smaller with just the two of us in it.
“So.” She turns to face me. “Now what?”
“You will relax,” I tell her, “and I will watch over you.”
She rolls her eyes and drops back onto the sofa, grabbing her plate and finishing the chicken. I stand where the firelight reaches me and I watch her eat. Every bite, every swallow, the pauses where she reaches for a piece of fruit from the bowl. Kendra cleans her plate, and I cross the room and take it from her hands before she can stand.
“I have it,” I tell her, already moving toward the kitchen.
I wash the plate, dry it, set it in the cabinet. Then I take a glass and fill it with water from the pitcher in the refrigerator and carry it back to her. She takes it with both hands, drinks half of it, then sets it on the coffee table beside the fruit.
“Would you please stop standing around like a guard dog and sit next to me?”
I nod. I sit beside her on the sofa and reach for the blanket folded over the back of it, shaking it open and draping it across her legs and lap. She shakes her head at me, but she does not push it away. Instead she scoots closer until her shoulder presses into my side, and I wrap my arm around her. She fits against me like the space was built for her, her head finding the hollow below my collarbone, her cold fingers curling into the front of my shirt.
I close my eyes. My body relaxes, and the tension I have been carrying, loosens one thread at a time. My Bouda goes quiet.
“What’s on your mind?” Kendra asks, her voice soft against my shirt.
“For the first time in a long time,” I tell her, “nothing. Just peace.”
She tilts her head back to look at me. “I bring you peace?”