You might need to read Just One More Kilometre to understand this short story better.
FATIMA'S POV
I have been in this palace for three seasons and have learned that gold is only a colder kind of poverty.
But I long for warmth and love. I long for my sister, Aisha and my family.
The citizens picture me in silk, fed on honey, laughing in beautiful gardens as though the world is under my feet. They do not see the corridors where the court ladies stop talking when I pass.
They do not hear what the wealthy clans call me when they think my ears are too rustic to understand. The mud bride. The empress never says it aloud, she only smiles with her mouth while her eyes see me as though I were a stain on the shiny marble floor, unfit for her first son.
The prince loved me at first sight. I know because he told me and I saw it in the way he forgot his own words when I entered the hall. But he is a man swallowed whole by duty and travels. In three seasons, I have had perhaps a dozen real conversations with him, each one cut short by his chief scribe at the door. How do I tell the man I love that the palace, their ways, his mother are slowly strangling me?
And my sister, Aisha. Every night, I lie awake in a bed bigger than our whole house and ache for her. I miss her stubborn laugh and her cold feet pressed against mine on the mat.
I used to promise her that one day we would sit together under the rainbow after the first rains, the way we did as children, counting the colours and arguing over which one was missing.
I wrote to her three times. The first letter I wrote with my hands shaking from happiness. The second from loneliness, wondering when she would reply to my letter. The third in desperation, telling her all of it. I gave each letter to a trusted maid to mail.
Last month, the maid wept and confessed that the empress had threatened her to deliver every letter to her chamber. She burned them one by one and all this time, my sister believed I had forgotten her. And read my silence as pride. If only she knew how my heart yearned for her.
I did not sleep on the night of the confession. I lay there with my fists clenched, understanding finally that I am not a part of the royal family nor a guest in the palace but a prisoner who must smile.
A week ago, the emperor announced an official visit to a village in the northern hills to spread the palace’s good wishes among the poor. I was commanded to ride with the empress on this visit, waving and smiling like a painted doll.
While in the village doing my duty, in the market square, I glimpse someone who looked exactly like Aisha standing between a woman selling yams and a crowd of cheering children.
Aisha! She looked thinner than I remembered with a basket on her hip, chatting with some friends. My heart stopped.
I did not think. I slipped my hand from the empress’ sleeve, murmured something about the heat and quickly ducked behind a cart. The guards were looking at the crowd, not at me. I ran, silk be damned and caught my sister's wrist, pulling her into a narrow alley that smelled of smoke and wet clay away from the noisy crowd.
She stared at me as if I were a ghost. “Fatima?” Her eyes pooled with tears.
“Listen,” I gasped, holding her face between my hands and wiping away the tears with my thumb. “I wrote to you three times! The empress burned them, believe me.” She nodded. “I never forgot you or Mama. The palace is not what they say. They hate me there because the prince chose me. But he loves me and I'm going to survive this. I must, for you all.”
I kissed her forehead quickly as she gripped me tightly around the waist because I could hear the guards calling my name.
“Be patient, Aisha,” I whispered. “When I am empress, everything will change. I promise you. Everything.”
“Be careful,” she whispered back as I tore myself away.
I smoothed my face into stillness and walked back toward the crowd, my heart left behind in that alley.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece. It's inspired by the Freewrite #dailyprompt phrase "under the rainbow”.
Thank you for visiting my blog.
Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay