The Flame That Faltered
The gardens of Great Zimbabwe held their breath before dawn, as if the stone walls themselves were listening for something that had not yet arrived. Princess Nyasha moved barefoot along the dew-slicked path between the msasa trees, her sleeping shawl trailing behind her like a shed skin she couldn't quite leave behind. The granite terraces rose in the darkness around her, ancient and patient, holding secrets older than her family's line, older perhaps than the kingdom itself.
She had not slept. Not truly. The dream had come again, as it had every night for the past week, dragging her up from sleep with a violence that left her heart hammering and her sheets damp with sweat.
Fire, always fire—not the gentle amber of hearth-flames but something wilder, hungrier, licking up toward a sky bruised purple with storm clouds. And beneath the crackle of it, drums. Not the ceremonial rhythms she knew from the festival dances, but something older, deeper, a pulse that seemed to come from the earth rather than from any drum skin stretched by human hands. And through it all, a woman's voice, calling her name.
*Nyasha.*
Except it wasn't quite her name. The voice shaped it differently,…
