In the wolf's place I saw a demon. It was not humanoid as Mama had been in her last moments, but instead, a shapeless, evil conglomeration of pure black. Just like the demon had appeared in my mind.
And I wondered how strong it must be, to be able to appear to me in this form, this mouldable dough of gloom, and not offer me any eyes to burn. How powerful it must be, to be able to shield its depthless eyes from me, to turn them into the yellow eyes of a wolf.
It changed in front of me, and the sudden shift made me want to be sick.
But just as I trembled, I remembered something my mother had told me years ago, words I would treasure for as long as my soul lived.
She stroked my hair, a gentle, phantom touch. I leaned into it, savouring the warmth, when I shivered with the thought of leaving my home. My first day of school. I pressed myself into her arms, and shuddered with the protectiveness, the warmth of her being there beside me. Not her body, but her presence, her fire, her glowing spirit. Her soul, her kind, good soul, that would never give up. It was a balmy summer night, and I gripped her tattoo through her open-backed nightgown. She pulled away, staring at me with a flaming intensity.
I recalled the memory easily, and it was so easy to embrace the demon, because, I had tried, I had survived even if it was for only that long.
"I'm scared, Mama," I said.
She smiled at me. "I was scared too, Chandani. I was scared too."
Now, I wondered if she had not been talking about when she herself started to finally show herself to the world, when she went to school for the first time. But when she turned sixteen. I wondered now if she had meant to say more. If she had meant to add, "so much that I ran away."
"It will be alright," she pressed a kiss to the top of my head, smiling softly in that way that mothers do when you know that they love you more than anything else in the world.
"But what if they don't like me?"
"They will like you. You're a Chieftess. They are obliged to like you. Aren't they?"
"But I don't want to be a Chieftess."
"It is your birthright. You know what, though?" She tilted my chin up with a finger.
"I don't care if you don't want it. You can leave it behind when you turn sixteen, if that is what you wish. I don't care if you grow up to be of another gender or never marry, or if you decide you want to leave us, because you are my daughter, and I will love you forever and always. Even when this world grows ancient and withers away, when even our souls become but a whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you.
But it is what you were destined to do. It is in your blood."
A single tear slid down my cheek. I had no idea what half the words meant, but I felt the weight of them, the burden, hanging over me. I felt the importance of them in the quiet voice she used. The way that hearts always grow heavy during rainfall and lift when the sun smiles, I knew that being a Chieftess was my fate.
"To lead. To protect.
"To serve."
-----
I jumped back to reality. The ghost of the memory lingered, an invisible mask of a mother's love. The demon kept moving forward, slowly, casually, as if it were out on a morning stroll.
Pushing down trees like they were paper dolls, the demon inched closer like a tank about to fire.
"I heard Father gave you a task a few days ago."
I nodded solemnly, already feeling the new load of leadership that had been thrust upon me on my fourteenth birthday. I loved leading, knowing that I could make a difference in so many people's lives, but sometimes, I just wanted to be a regular teenager. I'd tried to remember what Saoirse had told me about reading people just over a year ago, and I still ached for her friendship. "Yeah. But the other tribe won't agree to any of the compromises I offer, and we have nothing to give them but our cloth and livestock."
I remembered the moment as vividly as if I was still fourteen, still home, still a normal Chieftess starting to shoulder the lion's share of the work. All that training that had gone into being a Chieftess…all gone now. All gone.
"We have nothing else to give them."
"Up the ante, Chandani. Raise the stakes. We need this trade. It's not our fault they suddenly decided to cut it. Life is a game,"
I finished for her, "and I must learn how to play it."
She smiled. "Tell them that if you can't come to an agreement in two days, then you will cut our trade entirely. Tell them that we can find good iron anywhere else."
I grinned. "And the only place they can get animals and fabric that good from is here," she nodded. "But what if they don't fall for it? Surely there are other places somewhere," I waved my hand in the air, "where they can get that stuff. Compromises for the durability of our cloth. I've already worked on this for ages. Life is a game… but what happens if I lose?"
"You won't lose it. It's the oldest trick in the book, but they won't know what's coming." She rubbed my hand between hers, her graceful fingers starting to show the subtle wrinkles of age. I wasn't entirely reassured. "Chandani. You won't fail us. My word is final, and I say you won't." She said fiercely. "One day…" she looked into the distance of the open chamber, through the windows at the setting sun. "One day you'll be victorious, and it'll all pay off."
Now I wondered if she hadn't been referring to when she married Father, when she became a Chieftess, but instead when she turned sixteen herself. When the fire came alive in her, when she had to learn to control it. It had paid off for her, what I'm guessing was years of solitary training manifesting in a happy, peaceful life in Kaleveh alongside its Chief.
"When the time comes, when you rendezvous with them tomorrow, do not be afraid."
Her brown eyes glowed red, golden in the core like a dragon's egg. I dismissed it as a trick of the light, from the blazing ruby light of sunset streaming through the windows. "You have spirit, more strength than most people have in their little finger. You are born of two great bloodlines. You can be great. You can live up to your name."
Chandani Amita. Chandani. I wondered again who that was.
Star, a beacon of light in the world. The people's saving grace, who would rid the world of evil.
"No matter how many times you fall, you will rise, again and again. Never be scared of failure, for it is that which helps up rise up from our mistakes."
The words she spoke next…I do not know how I could have ever brushed them off, half-forgotten them. Perhaps some god had wiped my mind, made it so I never really processed the words. The rhythmic, powerful-sounding words, not like a simple poem or a spell, but a curse of damnation. A prophecy, or a single verse of one at least. I gasped at the memory.
"They enter on the day of light
They are four, they are forever.
They will lead the front lines to fight,
Elemental is the price."
Then her eyes went back to normal, though worry shone in them.
I wondered if she knew what she'd said, the divination she'd revealed. How could I have ever forgotten it?
"Do not be afraid, Chandani. It will be alright. It is alright to fall, as long as you keep getting back up. Rise, again and again."
-----
The very next day, I had the new trade agreement completely set in stone.
"Well done," she smiled, looking up from inspecting a luscious red rose blooming in the village gardens. She hugged me close. "Pretty." I grinned.
I remember wishing I never had to leave her arms.
"One day you'll be victorious, and it'll all pay off."
The sentence resonated around my mind.
I was not victorious, not yet. But at least this death paid off.
At least the darkness looming before me had stirred up that shadow of memory. Her voice, like a soft brush across my skin.
And I decided I wanted the person who brought me into this world to be the last thing I thought of before the end.