“What if this is all a dream?”
“Or a zine?”
They laughed, their theories fizzing out.
“What do we do with this information?” Anoor asked what they were both thinking.
“All we know is that there is a secret, right?”
“Right.”
“We’ve got to fill in the blanks. Maybe Hassa will turn up.”
“Maybe.”
“In the meantime, you better get training.”
Anoor groaned.
“Formation three. Go.” Sylah’s buzz was turning into a throbbing headache.
She watched Anoor’s form as she moved. In half a second she had broken formation and fallen to the floor.
“That was terrible,” Sylah said, standing over Anoor’s crumpled heap. “If possible, you’ve regressed a whole mooncycle. Did you clear your mind like I said?”
“I can’t.” Anoor had curled into a ball, and Sylah had flashbacks of their first run.
“Not this again. What is it? What has you distracted?”
Anoor didn’t say anything for a while, then she spoke. Sylah had to lean in to hear.
“I’m so scared of her. She hates me so much. I’m worried if I fail and I’m worried if I don’t.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes. Today I saw the cupboard she used to lock me in. She locked me in many places, but that was the last. That was the last time I let her cage me in. I…I managed to get out, to free myself. What if I don’t have the strength to free myself again?”
The firerum had dulled as her rage became fiercer.
“She locked you in a cupboard?” Sylah said through clenched teeth. She knew Uka had mistreated her, misused her, but this…this was something Papa would have done. The thought struck her dumb, seeing her childhood with a stranger’s eyes for the first time.
They were the same, Anoor and her.
“Stand up,” Sylah barked, and Anoor winced. “Use it.” Sylah tried again, softly.
“Use what?” Anoor uncurled from her ball.
“Use the anger. The one true gift she has given you can take you all the way. Use it to reach battle wrath.”
“Show me.” Anoor’s words were a challenge. So Sylah obliged. They had hauled a training dummy up from the barracks one sweaty afternoon, though they had rarely used it. Sylah stalked toward it and landed a Dambe punch that skidded the dummy a hundred handspans across the room.
She pounced across the room using her aerobatic agility to land a Laambe slap across its girth. And once the anger beneath her skin simmered to white coal, she slipped into a Nuba trance and moved fluidly through the ten Nuba formations, each one more deadly than the last. White cotton stuffing burst from the dummy’s midriff.
“Show-off,” Anoor muttered behind her, but Sylah wasn’t done. She cracked her knuckles and leaped onto the dummy, her thighs crushing its neck. Suddenly her leg muscle spasmed, and she fell badly onto the floor.
“Are you okay?” Anoor was beside her trying to locate her pain.
“My leg…no, the left one…yes, there.” Anoor’s deft fingers always helped ease the spasms when they struck. She massaged her leg until they subsided.