Chapter 36 Samson #2
“Ah, but that’s the beauty of it.” He patted his waist. “‘A beltless warrior is a blind warrior.’ You can’t relax when you wear an urumi like this.
It keeps you alert. Whether for an enemy or—” He hesitated, then rushed her.
Elena immediately snapped back, her urumi slashing upward to fend off his advance.
The cut was slow, lazy. She still had a lot to learn.
Samson sidestepped and whirled around, catching her from behind, his hand pressing into the small of her back. “—a friend.”
But then she did something unexpected. She fell into his instep, her elbow lancing into his side as a red flame curled up from her shoulder and launched into his face.
Samson cried out. He grasped the flame and spun on his toe, using momentum to throw the flame against the arch.
It hit the stone and hissed. Samson steeled himself, his blue flames crackling, black spots already creeping into the edges of his vision.
He still wasn’t strong enough to conjure his Agni fully.
But then the red flame sputtered and died with an undignified gasp.
“You have your urumi, I have my dance,” Elena said. Samson turned to face her. The urumi coiled around her feet like a silver serpent. “To each their own.”
He sensed the flare of her inferno before it appeared. Elena called her Agni, and as flames darted down the blade, he felt his Agni soar.
It was as if he had been plodding through his life in a dream and only now, with her flames rushing down his urumi’s twin, did he know the true feeling of being alive.
For a brief, aching moment, his Agni flared, brilliant and awake.
In his mind’s eye, he saw their connection.
And he followed it to the life force of her inferno, the bloodied radiance of crimson and the heat of sand.
The taste of salt and earth. It ran deep, deeper than he had thought, into the very soil of this land and ones beyond, in the hidden volcanoes of the sea to the mountains kissing the skies.
His heart quickened as the potency of her Agni licked up his spine.
His jaw hurt. He felt a giddiness and an ancient terror, one laid into the very marrow of his bones, and he thought, with an awful clarity, I have done it.
He had linked his Agni to hers.
Unknowingly, she had given a spark of her own Agni to his, which meant…
Amrithi.
Samson wobbled. Elena turned to him with a smile as she gazed at the urumi, but her smile quickly fell.
“Your eyes,” she gasped.
He touched his face. “Wh-what?”
“They’re blue on blue.”
Your eyes are too blue, his mother had said. It is a curse, and a god-given gift.
A death wish, Ruru.
His name used to be Ruru. Little Ruru. Prince Ruru. Little Prince Ruru. His mother had different variations, plucking the name from the air with a smile as white as the beaches beyond their home.
“Samson,” his father had said, “is more suitable. He won’t be singled out by the older Jantari boys.”
And so he became Samson. Studious Samson. Careful Samson. Don’t-Push-Back-Against-the-Jantari Samson.
But to his mother, he was always Ruru. Mischievous Ruru. Brave Ruru. My sweet, beautiful Ruru.
He treasured that name. Kept it close to his heart, like the lion-heart seashell his father had found for him.
“Ruru,” he’d whisper into the shell.
“Ruru,” it would sing back.
At the state-sponsored school, he went by his Jantari name. His official government name, according to the records. The Jantari preferred rigidity and tradition, and Samson, his father had said, was a name that met their demands.
Samson was not the only one with two names.
In school, he rubbed shoulders with other well-off Sesharian boys who had replaced their family names with a Jantari one.
Parsho, Jai, and Ramora became Parson, Jayson, and Ramson.
Son of the father, so it was easier to trace their lineage and their chains.
Their Jantari teachers pattered off their names while the boys struggled with the harsh consonants, the strange letters, the crude signals of a language that, merely decades ago, had lived in a different country, across the sea.
“I don’t like my name,” Samson had told his father one day.
“It’s a fine name, Sam.” His father hated abbreviations but, for Samson’s sake, allowed it. “See, this is how you spell it. S-A-M. Easy.”
“But Ruru is better,” he protested.
“But Ruru is different.” His father’s hand lay heavy on his shoulder. “And we need to fit in right now, Samson. We can’t afford to look foreign. Do you understand?”
Samson nodded, though he did not understand, not really. When his father had left to meet with the Jantari official who, once again, offered to buy their home, his mother slipped him her white smile.
“My little Ruru, how was your day?”
And he’d answer in a conspiratorial whisper: “As fresh as the sea.”
When his eyes had first turned completely blue, his mother took him to the temple. She made him sit before the dais as she lit incense and placed offerings at the feet of the serpent god.
“Great Serpent,” she sang, “have you come to free us?”
She consulted the scrolls. As the high nagini, his mother had access to all the temple vaults—the same ones the Jantari pleasantly but firmly offered to watch for her.
She flipped through scrolls, books, maps, and pictures while he sat, nursing a headache and a terrible itch on his back that would not go away, no matter how hard he scratched.
When she finally found her answer, she descended into an uncharacteristic silence.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” he asked.
She turned to him, her eyes wide, reverent, her face pale with fear.
“My sweet Ruru,” she said. Her hands shook as she touched his shoulders, his cheeks.
“My little warrior. One day, you will set the Great Serpent free.” She pressed her forehead against his, her voice dropping to their familiar conspiratorial whisper.
“But you must keep this a secret. A secret between us. Do you understand?”
Samson touched his eyes and then pressed his fingers against her brows in a solemn promise.
“I swear by the Great Sea,” he answered.
“Good.” She smiled, wide and bright. “Now, let me show you how to hide them.”
“It’ll go away,” he said.
Samson leaned his face into the fire. The flames curled up, kissing his jaw, his cheeks, his lips. The heat brushed against his face, gentle like a lover, but he needed it to be a monster.
“More wood,” he instructed.
Elena threw more wood into the pit, stoking the flames. They jumped onto the dry branches instantly, spitting and hissing. The heat intensified, but Samson did not pull away. He leaned into the fire, the heat pressing against his face and, like his mother had said, chasing away the blue.
Fire and water create the most beautiful dance, she had said. But they will always devour each other in the end.
He sat like that for a long time, letting the flames erase the blue, the curse, until his sclera were white once more.
Elena watched as he palmed a red flame. It curled around his wrist and then stretched to embrace his individual fingers.
He tried to change it. To make it blue, more like him, foreign and strange, a drop of the sea in the ocean of this greenery, but the flame merely pulsed. It did not shed its likeness.
“What was that?” she asked.
He hesitated. He still did not know where he stood with her, if she forgave him or trusted him. Samson curled his hand and killed the inferno.
“You saved me, Elena, when you could have easily left me for dead. Why?”
Her mouth tightened, but her eyes gave her away. Desperation and pain. The same as him.
“Because I need you to save Ravence,” she said.
“And I need you to save Seshar,” he said.
Silence descended upon them, heavy with the weight of truth. They regarded one another, stunned by each other’s honesty, wary of the secrets they still held. Finally, Samson found the strength to break the stillness.
“Elena,” he said, his voice a plea.
She met his gaze.
“I’m tired of fighting you,” he said.
“Me too,” she whispered.
“So fight with me,” he said. Blue flames fanned from his fingers, wrapping around his wrists like bracelets. Like shackles. “Tell me how I can make things right.”
Elena turned away, and he made no further move to persuade her.
The choice was hers and hers alone. He wanted her to know that.
Their alliance could be either a blessing or a death sentence, but she would decide its outcome.
It had taken dying in her arms for him to understand that he could not force Elena to do anything; that her friendship, her Agni, came only when she could control it.
Freedom for Ravence, freedom for Seshar, was one and the same. It was the same azadi. The word sent a shiver through him. It was a song his soul ached for. The song he wished for all his countrymen to sing. Azadi, azadi, azadi.
Finally, Elena answered, her voice tired and quiet. “First we go home. We see to our people. Then we go to the council and make our demands.”
You must face Farin and kill him.
He hesitated. Elena turned to him, and he thought, But I must avenge the dead.
“Are you with me?”
Flames licked down her fingers, and he met Elena’s gaze over the fiery light of their inferno: red and blue, fire and water, the desert and the sea.
He could do both. Seek vengeance and peace. Bring freedom and horror.
He grasped her hands, his flames lacing around her wrists, joining them.
“I’m with you,” he said.