GUARDIANS OF THE WATER
Chapter 7
The dinner was as opulent as ever, the dress she wore nearly dripping with pearls and abalone adornments. Namor behaved as if this was as any other day, any other meeting between them. His smile was broad and glistening, like the well-sharpened incisors of a shark, and his black eyes glittered with fervent delight as he regaled her with his stories.
Finally, when the last of his songs ended, as she rose to leave, he approached so close that she could feel his breath upon the crown of her head. Her heart beat a rhythm as fast as any of the King's Drums. She waited for what felt like an eternity before she heard him ask the question she most dreaded.
"Princess, what is your decision? Will you agree to be my wife?"
She felt his eyes burning a hole through her, as if they carried a weight, a fire, a kindling all their own. So fervent was his gaze that she stood as one paralyzed and she dared not reciprocate for fear he would enthrall her with some strange power she could not understand. Instead, she stared at the many murals on the wall across from her, the paintings depicting the ruler of the Talokanil.
"No, I will not," she answered, though her voice was hardly more of a whisper.
Her entire body tensed as she waited for his reaction. Would he scream? Would he shout? Would he force her to listen to honeyed pleas until she collapsed in exhaustion? Or, perhaps, he would turn to threats and insults? She was not sure. His moods as unpredictable as the tremulous waves of the sea or the bastion of clouds in the sky.
Yet, when her response was met with nothing but silence, she grew even more confused. Finally, she could bear the weight of his silence no longer and she looked up at where he still stood, far closer to her than she felt comfortable with. His eyes did not once turn away from her but his expression remained as still as if he was a stone carving or a painted mural. On his face, she did not see a single emotion betrayed. His stoicism was so entirely uncharacteristic, so unexpected, that she was even more unnerved than if he had shouted and called for the guards to take her away.
Noting her shift in posture, Namor's dark eyes finally broke from her face and instead slowly traveled from the top of her braided head to toes peeking out from the hem of her dress. Then, he nodded once and turned away. While the movement only placed half a step between them, it felt as if it were a great ocean trench instead.
Assuming she was dismissed, she turned and left the room. There, the usual guards waited. They took her back to her cave, retrieved her fine dress, and left her with her nightly ration of fresh water.
And she was alone. Again. She had spent years alone in this exact same rocky cavern and yet tonight, it felt different. It was as if the space had grown darker, deeper, and even more isolated than it had been only that morning when she woke. She did not understand why.
In the days that followed, Shuri wondered what would happen next. Would Namor avoid her? Would he punish her for her refusal by depriving her of even the limited change of scenery she received during their weekly interactions? Did she want him to?
She was confused.
She was even more confused when, after seven days had passed, the guards came and delivered a new dress for her – this one covered with quetzal feathers and bits of turquoise. Then, they brought her to Namor and he greeted her, as if nothing had changed.
And yet, this was the first time, in all their years of meeting, that he failed to ask her if the peoples of Wakanda would ally themselves with the peoples of Talokan to war against the peoples of the earth.
In the weeks that followed, he never once asked her that question again.
In the weeks that followed, he never failed to invite her to join him for their weekly meal.
Sometimes, she wondered if he kept her merely for his own entertainment- like a pet parrot to talk to him when he wished for conversation or a trained monkey to do tricks for him. She thought of the baboon her brother once kept. Kumbe had a jolly, grey face and a wide grin and he followed T'Challa around the palace on his leash, causing all manner of mischief, to the delight of the young prince. Yet, when Shuri asked her father for a pet leopard, he had refused.
"Let the wild creatures remain wild," he had said, his expression full of mirth.
"But Kumbe should be a wild creature!" She had argued.
"You speak the truth," her father had replied.
At first, she thought her argument, the one she was quite proud of, had carried her point and gained her the possibility of her own leopard cup. Instead, her father insisted Kumbe be released.
"But, Baba…..," both children protested. No matter how they whined or pleaded, T'Chaka refused to relent.
"Let Kumbe do what he was created to do," their father said. "If he chooses to return to you, then he may stay."
At first, Kumbe was more than delighted to romp through the savannah and explore the other troupes of primates. One day, however, he turned up in the palace grounds, searching for T'Challa, and eagerly begging for his favorite biscuits.
"You see!" Their father had laughed. "Kumbe has come back to you."
"Does that mean I can have a leopard?" Shuri asked, her eyes wide and pleading.
"Absolutely not," her father replied.
Those days seemed so far away now, lost in the mists of memory, drowned in years so far removed from the days of her childhood. So far from who she was now and where her life had taken her.
She thought of all she once wished to accomplish for Wakanda, all the designs she wished to test, all the improvements she hoped to make. Then she thought of the people. Of course, she thought of her inventions first. Her mother would have chided her and then laughed at her.
"People are the most important, Shuri! What do inventions matter if they do not assist those of us who are living and breathing on this earth? No, it is people who matter. It is people who last and who will remember our names when we have joined our Ancestors again. Do not forget it."
Would she ever see her mother again? Did anyone in Wakanda still remember her? She had already spent five years snapped out of existence. When she returned, the rest of the world had marched on without her and she had failed to age, failed to change, and proved herself entirely oblivious to the catastrophic changes the world had gone through. She had not managed to wrap her mind around any of it before she was whisked away again, this time for a decade.
Yet, she could no longer avoid aging. Each day, she grew older and she was no longer a young girl, a teenager. She was a woman and if the days and nights continued to shift and fade, she would soon grow to become an elder.
Who would remember her name if she died here, in Talokan? Who would pour out libations in her memory or weep for her passing? Even in death, she would be alone and forgotten.
She was not sure how many months passed before her entire world shifted on its axis again. As earth-shattering as the day she blinked and was informed she had vanished for five years or the day she heard about the explosion that took her father's life.
It began as a regular dinner with Namor. Yet, the man had a wariness to him, a barely suppressed tension that was unusual. His stories were clipped and forced and he seemed as though his thoughts were carried away on the back of a pod of orcas rather than present among the coconut rice and broiled chicken.
He did not sing and he did not wait long after the meal was completed before he withdrew a newspaper article from a folder. He placed the article before her, his eyes not leaving her face, though one dark eyebrow arched in anticipation.
"You did not tell me that you are not the heir to Wakanda's throne," he hissed.
Shuri looked down, ravenous for any news of the outside world. Yet, she had never imagined a headline like this, even in her wildest imaginings.
"Wakanda's New King…Azari son of T'Challa and Nakia… crowned in an official ceremony this week in Birnin Zana…."
The newspaper in her hands began to shake and she read the article through four times before she could even begin to comprehend the words. Then the tears began to stream down her cheeks.
T'Challa had a son.
Her brother lived on. His line did not die. He had produced an heir with Nakia.
Her trembling fingers delicately traced the photograph in the article, desperately wishing she could make the picture increase in quality, make it larger, make it clearer, make it so she could seek out her brother's features in the young man's face. Already, she saw his dimpled smile and the turn of his nose and her heart nearly burst.
Yet, the joy in her heart was a fragile, vaporish kind – one tinged with the heat of betrayal and loss.
Why had no one ever told her? Her mother must have known. Nakia knew. T'Challa knew. No one spoke a word. Not in those precious days between their reappearance and T'Challa's death. Why had no one told her?
She was an aunt. Her brother lived on. Her father's line continued. There was a bridge between the past and the future, the Ancestors and the next generations.
It was her job, as aunt to her brother's son, to help raise him, to teach him the ways of the Golden Tribe, to teach him his role in the palace and in the country. It was up to Shuri and not Nakia to teach him how to be a king.
Yet, here he was crowned as king of Wakanda, a fully grown man, and Shuri had missed it all. She had not even known his name.
Shuri's tears turned into heart-breaking sobs and she crumpled onto the floor of the Namor's room, her cries bouncing off the murals and penetrating the curtains with their muted shouts.
Was her impact on Wakanda so small that she had not been considered as Senga, an auntie? Had she been so caught up in her own affairs, her own self-centered thoughts, that no one had thought to intrude? Was it all an oversight or in delicate attention to her mental health? Was it to protect national security during a time of Wakanda's fragility?
She didn't know because no one ever spoke to her.
And she had spent nearly the entirety of the young boy's life imprisoned.
"Why did you fail to inform me of this?" Came a voice beside her. She did not know how long she had wept. She had forgotten all about his presence or even where she was.
She looked up at him from where she lay on the floor, hunched in a miserable ball, her swollen eyes blurry and sodden.
"I never knew," she answered.
Namor swung around and left her there, where she was, on the floor of his dining hall and he disappeared. She hardly even noted his departure but instead curled her head against her knees and wept even more.
Namor had assumed she was the next in line for the throne and so had taken her captive in an attempt to swerve the throne of Wakanda in line with his desires. Yet, she had never been next in line. Not really.
T'Challa's son changed everything.
The moment that boy was born, he became the heir to the throne. Ramonda only had to hold the throne until he was of age and then he could take over as the rightful king.
Shuri spent over a decade in Talokan – for what?
For T'Challa, her heart whispered.
She was buried beneath the waves, lost to her people, so that T'Challa's son would be safe. If Namor had known she was not the next in line for the throne…. She shuddered at the thought of what he could have done… to a child… No, it was better this way. She had done what she must. Wakanda was given the chance to breathe, to rebuild, to recuperate its losses. T'Challa's son was given the chance to grow to become a man. To become king.
Even if she had not understood at the time, she had served her purpose. She exchanged her life for his. Just as she was always meant to do.
She closed her eyes and brought the news article to her chest in an embrace. The paper crinkled and bent, but she did not care. The image of that photograph was burned into her memory and all she could see was that dimpled smile in the ceremonial regalia of the king.
So reminiscent of his father on the day he was first crowned.
It was there on the tiled floor of Namor's dining room that Shuri fell into a deep and sorrowful sleep. No one disturbed her until the morning came. Then, her guards returned her to her cavern where her breakfast waited for her. Then, they left her there alone.
She ate as much as she could. Then, she hung the precious news article on the wall near her bed. She placed a collection of colored glass and fragments of shells and all her greatest treasures on the floor before it. Then she lifted a glass of water and she poured the contents onto the floor of her cavern. moved to pour a glass of fresh water onto the floor of the cavern.
"You did well, Brother," she whispered. "You did well."
Then, she lay back on her bed, a smile on her face, and she closed her eyes.
It was over now. Namor could have no more use for her and she had nothing left but to die. She would not fight it. Her life had served its purpose and she was at peace.
She did not intend to rise again.
Yet, not even Namor could have predicted what would happen next or the explosion that rocked through the underwater kingdom.
Author's Note: Apologies for the long wait! Here we go-it's a short chapter, but at least it's a chapter. I think we can settle up this story in one more chapter- however, sometimes my chapters like to grow and expand so we will see. Thanks for your patience and for reading!