Page 1 of Ngozii's Plight

Prologue

Xenshay

Galactic Year 4057 (5 years old)

Runningthroughthewoodsback home from the lake, I jump onto the porch and rush inside to show my mother what I’ve found. She’s sitting on the floor, tears pouring from her green eyes as her thin shoulders shake with sobs, her long straight hair hanging around her. “Mama, what’s wrong?” I slowly walk up to her. As her eyes lift to mine, I notice the red mark on her face, her lips shaking as she lets out a breath.

Her lips lift in a small smile as she wipes at her eyes. “I’m fine, baby. Everything is fine. Come here.” She scoops me into her arms as I giggle, holding up the shell I found. “Oh, is that for me? It’s lovely!”

“It’s your favorite color. Listen, it sounds funny.” I lift the shell to her ear. She’s quiet for a moment, her eyes staring off across the room before drifting to me.

“It sounds like the waves on the lake, doesn’t it? I could listen to that all day.” She smiles and snuggles me close. “Would you like to help me with dinner?”

I nod as I jump up and clap my hands, Mama laughing as she carries my shell with her to the kitchen.

We sing and cook together, enjoying the cool evening, before we sit down to eat in silence. I look around for Father, but the house is quiet. “Mama, where is Father?” She lets out a long breath before answering, never looking up at me.

“I don’t know, baby, out. He’ll come back when he’s ready.” She finally looks up and smiles at me, and I smile back, telling her all about my time by the lake looking for shells. We enjoy our dinner together, laughing and talking as we eat.

I help Mama clean up before running back outside to play while the sun is still in the sky. As I jump off the porch and turn to play out back, I catch sight of my father.

He’s grumbling to himself, angry, as he drags a large Ngiri boar behind him before lifting it up onto a table. His beard is growing in thicker, his long black hair tied in a braid along his back, and his dark purple skin is covered in mud. Staying out of sight behind the house wall, I watch as he slashes it open with his large hunting knife, yanking out its insides and cutting off the parts we don’t eat.

Blood sprays around him, on him, but he doesn’t seem to mind it at all. A part of me wonders what has him so angry. Father has always been a bit of an angry man, but this scares me and has my stomach rolling. Turning, I head back inside and decide it’s best to go to bed before he catches me and I end up like Mama.

Galactic Year 4067 (12 years old)

Hiding in the brush, Father and I wait for our moment to strike. He teaches me how to be patient, how to call the animals forth before firing the arrow, taking it down. Rushing forward, I watch as he quickly slashes the boar’s throat, making sure it’s dead, before we carry it back to the house to butcher.

As we walk, there’s a proud silence. Father claps my shoulder, letting me know he’s proud of me for taking down the boar without any trouble. I smile as we walk along in silence before reaching the butchering table outside our home.

“You ready to learn how to handle your kill, son?” He grins at me, and I nod enthusiastically, ready to fend for myself in the world. As he begins to make his cuts, deliberately and carefully, he explains what he’s doing and why before letting me have a turn with the knife. When I struggle, he jumps in to help.

Eventually, I resort to simply watching him do it, letting him explain his tips and tricks instead. My mistakes and struggles irritate him, even if he doesn’t say so, and I find it easier to learn this way. Perhaps next time I’ll do better at it now that I know what I’m doing beforehand. As I watch, my gaze wanders around us, spotting a hunting party going off into the woods not far from us. Turning back to my father, I study him.

“Father, why don’t you hunt with a party like the others?”

He scoffs, looking behind him to the departing group that caught my attention. “Hunting parties. Pfft. What are we, a bunch of girls? Hunting isn’t a party, son, it’s a necessary skill for survival. It’s meant to be every man for himself and his family.”

He goes back to butchering my kill, his actions now harsher and angry as he grumbles under his breath. Keeping my mouth shut as I watch, I ponder some things I’ve seen and weigh it against Father’s words.

Playing around the village, I notice how families share goods and services back and forth, working together to provide everyone with what they need. Is that not a good thing? I would think that would make life easier.

“Listen, son. These men hunting in parties, they’re just too weak to hunt alone, and we aren’t weak, you hear? This world, it’s changing, and not for the better. The cities around us are growing every day, and interplanetary travel is becoming a thing now, new species of people moving into our world all the time, muddying up our bloodlines and taking our mates.”

He grumbles under his breath before stabbing at the boar, his anger and passion on the subject holding my attention as I listen to his rambles. I’ve heard of the cities and the fact that we can travel through space, but I’ve never been to one, never seen a spaceship up close. Growing closer to the age of mating every day, I watch the other kids around me frolic together, whisper, and play. There are rumors that float around and some kids even scamper off to kiss and test the physical bounds of relationships, but I have yet to do such a thing. I don’t exactly fit in with the other kids.

“You know we used to have soul bonded mates? Mates made specifically for us, but now we can’t find them anymore. The world is too full of people, and these people are breeding with other species, ruining our chances for finding our mates! It’s sick and wrong.” He points the knife at me, and my eyes widen as I listen intently.

“This village has managed to maintain its purity so far, no outsiders joining our ranks, but without true soul bonded mates, we produce less young, we’re working together as we weaken and die off. If we’d get back to the old ways, let the strongest survive, things would be better, like they used to be.”

He looks down at me, staring at me with an intensity that makes me want to squirm. I don’t know what it is that he’s about to say or what he thinks as he stares at me, assessing me, but I never want to disappoint him. “Don’t you go making friends with those weaklings or letting some outsider trick you into love, you hear? We’re a pure blood family, the way we was intended to be, you got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Good boy.” He nods and gets back to the task at hand, butchering the Ngiri for dinner. I pay close attention to his lesson, and as the night wears on, his words ring in my mind over and over. As I watch the other villagers, I realize that some in our village are growing plumper, hunting less often, and they’re spending more time together than apart.

If Father is right and we are growing weak from all this community sharing and relying on one another, then maybe we won’t survive. If we weaken from working together, then how can the strong endure to keep the bloodlines strong and pure? Without our soul bonded mates, we’re already weaker.

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