Chapter BAMBA WEST ALEXANDRIA 1802
Bamba was tired of walking.
Night would fall soon, and she’d lost her blanket to the same woman who’d stolen her sleeping bench.
On the bright side, she’d found a knife lying in the heaps of garbage scattered along the road out of the city.
The dogs didn’t appreciate her crawling under the bridge and competing with them for food, though, and long scratches lined her arms and legs.
The knife had helped her even the score.
Regrettably, the blade didn’t have a handle. She’d already cut her palm twice, but at least she knew the next person who stole from her would deeply regret it.
The setting sun painted the road ahead in burnished gold, temporarily illuminating the miles of empty dirt and desert. The air wavered, soft and inviting, turning dust motes into shimmering diamonds. And the quiet—like a coffin lid had closed over Bamba, locking her in a living grave.
She should have stayed in the city. People who survived in the streets as long as Bamba had honed paranoia to an art.
They were the ones who heeded unsettling rumors about places like these.
Places where humanity had yet to leave its mark, where Masr was still ancient, its stories and superstitions pulsing hungrily beneath the rubble.
And what a floater never, ever did was sleep in those places.
Any other day, Bamba would have turned around and made the trek to an alcove she could shelter under until the shop owner chased her away. Gone back to the bridge and slit those vicious dogs open from stem to stern and curled into their furry pelts.
If only she wasn’t so very tired of walking.
So Bamba trudged ahead, dragging her increasingly uncooperative legs, long after the sun sank into the horizon.
Bamba had never experienced such a dark night.
The air was different here No scent of horse manure left behind from the carriages crowding the city roads.
Not a single trace of grease or cooking oil from the street carts selling chicken and beef shawarma sandwiches.
She heard her every breath, loud as the whip of a cord.
Her shuffling footsteps. She could feel her own heartbeat, hear her thoughts with more clarity than she’d experienced in years.
In the exact spot where she would later build her family villa, Bamba felt her soul for the first time.
She didn’t like it. The shape of it was familiar in the worst ways, etched in too many scars that had once been open wounds. It took her back to evenings in the orphanage, listening to the girls in her room crying softly into their emaciated pillows.
While they wept, Bamba had seethed.
Those stupid children missed parents who had forsaken them.
Abandoned them. Why would she turn their absence into heartache when she could turn it into hatred?
A hatred she nurtured, branded into her ribs, scored in fiery red lines across every muscle and tendon.
Some days, she thought that hatred might be the only thing keeping her alive.
Other days, she knew it was only a matter of time until it burned through the rest of her.
Bamba didn’t waste her tears mourning what could have been.
Her parents hadn’t liked her from the start.
They were weak, easily frightened fools whose name would hardly last another generation before it faded into obscurity.
What Bamba had wanted more than anything was to create a new family.
A strong family, where lineage and home mattered above all else.
Those children would be her stake in this world.
They would keep her alive long after her time.
Bamba’s laugh echoed in the vast nothingness of the desert. What a silly girl she’d been. Just as idiotic as the others. She had no anchor, no home. Nothing beyond the clothes on her back and the blade slicing into her hand.
Bamba’s bare foot scraped a cluster of chiseled rocks. She hissed, stumbled. Dropping to the ground, she pulled the dirt-laden end of her torn abaya to her foot, trying to stem the bleeding.
As pain radiated from the wound, Bamba tilted her head back to search the fathomless sky. She thought of an old rhyme the matron at the orphanage would sing with a child strewn over her lap, just before she brought the paddle down on their behind.
Rocking in the dirt, Bamba sang, “Mama is coming, she’s almost here, she’s bringing toys and gifts!
” The song drifted like a falling flower in the black meadow of oblivion.
An unwelcome sound in this sinister desert void.
She and the other kids had sung it to each other at the orphanage, and Bamba’s mind settled on the silly rhyme any time she found herself ill at ease.
She hummed to the dark. “Do you know the girl named Bamba and what her Mama said to her? She said stand up, Bamba, move quick! Do you see what’s coming? Do you see what’s gone? Look up, Bamba, and move quick.”
A horrible odor hit Bamba. She retched, leaning back, only for her elbow to descend into a stew of filth. Wet chunks clung to her, drenching her upper body.
Bamba tried to crawl without putting weight on her foot. She couldn’t see her own arm in the darkness.
Frustration welled inside Bamba, blistering into rage.
She deserved better than this. She hadn’t survived beatings and starvation to be dismissed by Alexandrian aristocrats in tailored clothes and feathered hats, to be tossed from village to village.
She was not a rat digging and dying in the dark. She was someone!
Wind howled through the desert, plastering Bamba’s dirt-clumped hair to her neck. Lightning split the sky like a serpent’s tongue, and in the brief glow, Bamba saw a hulking figure crouched by her legs.
A scream caught in her teeth. Bamba attempted to run, but her wounded foot gave out beneath her. Bamba groped for her knife, but it was gone. Most likely dislodged during her slow crawl into the desert.
The unmistakable scent of rot choked Bamba, so strong she thought it must be coming from inside her. Another lightning strike revealed the figure looming an inch away. Fetid breath mingled with hers.
YOU WANT TO BE SOMEONE?
Bamba whimpered. It was her own voice, silky and confident, coming from her head.
The rot intensified. Bamba had spent her thirty-six years living like a vulture, picking apart disaster sites for food or tools, moving around the carcasses of man and animal alike. In all those years, she had never come across a smell half as horrific as this one.
Before she could scream, the veil of darkness shifted, swirling around Bamba as it thinned into a ring of shadows. Through them, Bamba saw—
Bamba saw the impossible.
A grand villa with her name on the gate.
Servants opening the doors to her carriage, taking her gloved hand as she stepped inside.
The same people who would have spit on her in the street smiling across a gleaming marble table, snapping their fingers whenever Bamba’s glass ran dry.
And children. So many of her progeny, filling the villa and eventually making their way through the world. They carry the Haikal name to the highest places, forge connections with powerful people Bamba would never have known existed.
DO YOU WANT TO BE SOMEONE?
This time, Bamba welcomed the voice.
“I do,” she whispered.
CAN YOU PAY THE PRICE?
Thunder shook the sky, arrows of lightning arching inside the network of clouds. Bubbles formed under the murky water she knelt in. A small body rose to the surface, face down in the pond. A dead child.
Bamba’s body finally defeated her self-control, and she retched again.
“What do you want?”
YOUR BLOODLINE FOR THEIRS. YOUR LEGACY FOR THEIR LIVES.
A rush of images flooded Bamba. Her back bent backward with the weight of the visions. Lineage after lineage severed. Families ended and uprooted. She would spin the destiny of thousands right into the greedy maw of the nothingness before her. In exchange, her own lineage would never end.
“What happens if they don’t pay the price?” What if somewhere in her lineage, a weak seed sprouted in their garden?
IF YOUR DEBT IS NOT PAID, YOUR BLOOD WILL BE FORFEIT.
Breath icy in her lungs, Bamba stared at the dark shape. A small part of her recognized this offer for what it was. She had seen enough of the devil’s handiwork to see through his bargains. This offer would permanently tie her bloodline to the altar of this day, to this very moment.
But she would have a bloodline.
Bamba offered one slow nod.
“I want to be someone,” Bamba said softly. “Whoever it costs.”
THEN SOMEONE YOU WILL BECOME.
The world exploded in a wash of blue as a bolt of lightning struck Bamba. Liquid fire raced through her.
A second bolt of lightning engulfed Bamba’s mouth in rust. She was expelling her human weaknesses, the tender morsels of humanity she’d let the world prey on. No more. She was iron and fire. Burning. Molting.
It was the strangest thing. As Bamba’s blood was tainted, doomed to pass from generation to generation of Haikal children, the rancid taste of death stung her throat.
And for the briefest instant, the lightning scorching inside her illuminated a curly-haired young girl in slippers and unusual clothes, staring at Bamba.