Izinyembezi Zothando

(Tears of Love)

By Moseki Rorisang Baloyi

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 068 689 6872
Estimated Word Count: 50,000 words
Synopsis
Set in the 1800s in the rural hills of KwaZulu-Natal, Izinyembezi Zothando follows
Sipho, a humble young man caught in a powerful storm of love, tradition, and
betrayal. Betrothed to Nokuthula, the proud and beautiful daughter of Chief
Zwelibanzi, Sipho tries to honour the union arranged to bring prestige to his family.
But love does not always follow duty. Sipho finds himself drawn to Thandeka —
Nokuthula’s quiet, compassionate friend. As Nokuthula's arrogance deepens and
Thandeka’s inner strength shines through, a forbidden fire begins to burn quietly
between Sipho and Thandeka. When the truth surfaces, Sipho must choose between
the path he was forced into or the woman who sees his soul. His choice leads to
public disgrace, heartbreak, and exile — but also the beginning of a love that defies
fear, power, and tradition. Izinyembezi Zothando is a moving exploration of love,
honour, and cultural identity, rich with isiZulu heritage and emotional depth.
Author Biography
Moseki Rorisang Baloyi is a young South African writer from Mpumalanga,
Vaalbank, turning … years old on June 12. Izinyembezi Zothando is his debut novel,
inspired by the television series '1802: Love defies time”' which sparked his passion
for storytelling. Though this is his first experience as a writer, Moseki brings an
authentic voice to his narrative, shaped by his culture and emotional insight. He
hopes to share stories that preserve African identity while touching the hearts of
readers everywhere.
Izinyembezi zothando (Tears of love)
Chapter One: The Silence Beneath the Hills

The sun was beginning to set over the mountains of uKhahlamba, bathing
eMthonjeni valley in warm, golden light. Grasslands swayed to the rhythm of the
evening breeze, telling — of warriors, cattle raids, lost loves, and found loves.

Sipho walked silently by his cattle, the walking stick on the ground drumming softly.
His tall frame glided in easy step, as most men reared by earth tended to do. He was
not a prince, nor even prince-born — but there was strength in his step and a fire in
his eyes that made even older men lengthen their step in respect for him.

He was not focusing on cattle. His thoughts were elsewhere. They drifted back to
ideas that he had pushed aside for weeks. In a couple of months' time, he was going
to wed Nokuthula — Chief Zwelibanzi's daughter.

It was an honour. A present. A union that would bring honour to his surname across
the valleys and rivers.

But to Sipho, it felt like a noose being tightened on his soul.

Nokuthula was exquisite. That was not the problem. Her skin glistened in light like
riverrock in the sunlight, her voice as soft as that in the reeds. But all that beauty hid
a sharp tongue and an excessively haughty heart. She treated Sipho
condescendingly, as if he were one of her servants who had simply been the one that
fortune had flung at her feet.

But Sipho kept at it. For his family. For duty. For respect.

Until Thandeka. He had seen her at the river some months before. She was gathering
water with Nokuthula, her pot slung effortlessly by someone who had never tried to
assert her beauty to the world. From her, there was not that vocal display. From her,
there was not that thrusting towards the world. But it was there — in lines of her
smile, in her posture while listening, in her hello to every individual in the same
gentle compassion.

She had greeted him, her eyes level and even. Sipho remembered that it was strange
— that his heart had leapt not because she was beautiful, but because she gazed at
him. Not because she had welcomed him as Pemmy's future son-in-law. Not because
she had agreed to marry him. Just… Sipho.

He tried shaking off the feeling. To dismiss it like an illicit fruit in a hallowed copse.
But with every passing day, Nokuthula's pride grew, and so did the unspoken flame
Thandeka's had lit in him.

Soon, that silence would be broken.

Chapter two: Fire Beneath the surface

The ululation cry echoed across the hills as preparations for the festival began. This
was that season when colour, sound, and dance coursed through the village — an
occasion to celebrate abundance and friendship. But for Sipho, every beat on the
drum was like a countdown to concealed despair.

Nokuthula sat at her father's firepit in their courtyard, shrouded in an expensive

leopard hide cloak showing her status. Her face remained beautiful, but her eyes
were hard — eyes that cut more than enveloped.

"Sipho," she said to him, flipping her braid over her shoulder. "You will sit beside my
father at the ceremony. He wishes you to sit with him so that everyone will know to
whom you belong."

Sipho responded in an even tone. “I am privileged, Nokuthula

"You're short on praise for that as well, aren't you?" she snapped at him. "Don't
embarrass me. You talk too little. One who cannot speak is as useless as a spear
outside its sheath — harmless but mute."

Sipho's mouth fell open to answer, but he hesitated. What was he to say to someone
who listened to nothing but herself?

He glimpsed her from the side of one eye — Thandeka, unrolling grass mats on the
dance grounds outside with the rest of the girls. She glided silently but purposefully,
as if the breeze swept through waist-high grass. She wore an isidwaba in dark blue,
and beads at her neck sparkled as she leaned forward.

Their gazes met — for an instant — but in that instant, time shifted. The air felt
thick. Different. Electric.

He gazed aside at once, but that warmth that was spreading in his chest could not be
dismissed.
Later, by moonlight, after dancing began, Nokuthula stood next to him. She laughed
explosively, playfully taunting other girls, telling them that there was no one among
them who could dance better than she was dancing. Sipho obliged by nodding and
clapping when she demanded so.

And it was the unspoken beauty of Thandeka that drew him in.

She danced for happiness, not for attention. Her feet glided softly, her smile soft,
eyes closed as she let the drumbeat sweep her away. Her every movement was
effortless, not forced. Her dance was one that was being done with peace in her soul.

"You're glancing again," Nokuthula whispered beside him.

Sipho blinked. "I was simply observing the dancers."

"Don't act dumb with me," she snapped. "Do you think I don't see the way that you
look at her?"

Sipho stood in front of her, unflustered but stubborn. "You told me that I don't speak
enough. And now I look too much. Which is it, Nokuthula?"

She pressed her lips together. "Listen to me, Sipho. My father is capable of making
your family prosper — or destroying it."

And there it was. The real Nokuthula's voice. Not that lovely maiden that everyone
in the village adored, but that daughter of the chief who thought that love was about
power, and people were tools.

Sipho moved aside from the fire. He wanted some air. Some space. Some silence.

He found it at river's edge where the beat of the drums softened, and moonlight
turned the water to silver.

"Already running away?" someone muttered softly.

It was Thandeka.

She stood on the riverbank, her feet in mud, shawl firmly wrapped about her
shoulders. Sipho's chest constricted.

"No," he replied. "Just… breathing."

She stepped in closer. "She doesn't know you, does she?"

He stared at her in astonishment.

“She only sees what she wants,” Thandeka added, not in bitterness, but in fact.

"And you?" Sipho asked, barely above a whisper. "Do you see anything?"

She smiled gently, her eyes sparkling with more than beauty — with insight. “I see
someone carrying too much within."

For some moments, silence wrapped them in a blanket of warmth. No speeches, not
even expectations — two people simply relishing in being in stillness together. Far
in the distance, the drums beat on. But here on the river's edge, in that silence,
another rhythm had begun — the first beat of something real.

Chapter three: A fire that burns quietly

The sun rose over the mountains of uKhahlamba in reluctant beauty, as if even
heaven felt the tension that shrouded eMthonjeni in a morning's dew.

Sipho sat alone next to the cattle kraal, gazing at yesterday's fire embers. He had not
slept — not for lack of sound, but because the silence from Thandeka still rang. Her
silence had echoed as loudly as drums.

I notice that someone is holding in too much.

He touched his thumb to a rock, consoling himself. It was the truth. Duty had
swallowed him alive, burying his heart under mountains of duty. But that was not it.
Something in him had awakened. A fire that lay smoldering in silence — not with
Nokuthula's flash but quietly like an ember that is secretly kindled.

She arrived that morning in her own style — beads jingling off her, walking as if she
owned the planet.

"There you are," she greeted him not in worry but expectation. "Father wants to
speak with you later about the wedding preparations. The villagers need to be
informed about our wedding — an open declaration this time, perhaps."

Sipho remained silent, gazing at the ground.

Nokuthula frowned. "Whatever is the matter with you lately? Are you ill? Or is that
snake Thandeka again whispering secrets into your ear?"

Slowly, Sipho's eyes lifted to hers. "Be careful what you say about her."

She laughed coldly. "You're siding with her now? After all that I have done for you?"
"For me?" Sipho rose. "You're treating love like it's some kind of favor to be
bestowed. As if you're doing me a favor by being in my company." Pride sparkled in
Nokuthula's eyes. "Do you know who I am? Do you know whom you are insulting?"

"I know who you are," Sipho spoke softly. "Do you know who you're becoming?"

She stepped forward, her tone menacing. “Do you suppose she will stay here in this
village if you embarrass me? Her family will bring ruin to her. You will ruin her.”

Sipho's jaw clenched, but he turned to leave, leaving her shaking in another way —
not from fear, but from loss.

That afternoon, the storm broke.

Not from the heavens, but from the kraal of Chief Zwelibanzi. A summons. Sipho was
commanded to kneel before the chief, his voice low and threatening as thunder on
the horizon.

"I hear there are whispers," the chief began, "that my daughter's betrothed seeks
comfort elsewhere. Tell me now, Sipho — are they untrue?"

Sipho paused. All eyes were upon him — elders, warriors, Nokuthula… and
Thandeka, far at the rear of the gathering, her eyes wide with unspoken fear.

"I have not broken my vow," Sipho said slowly. "But my heart… it is no longer
whole."

A murmur of gasps rippled through the assembly.

The chief stood up. "You speak of love? Love is a luxury for fools. You were
promised. Chosen. Bound. And you would throw that away because your heart stirs
when it should be quiet?"

Sipho stood up too. "What is a promise made in fear worth, Chief? I have not
dishonoured your daughter with my hands, but if honesty is dishonour, then I will
wear the shame."

The chief's eyes flared, but he did not speak.

Nokuthula stepped forward. "Coward! Do you think she loves you? She pities you.
She is nothing without me — she eats the crumbs that fall from my hand."
No one could stop her; she turned to Thandeka and slapped her — a swift, open-
handed slap across her face.

The people gasped. But Thandeka did not cry. She did not flinch. She simply looked
at Nokuthula with a force that shook the ground more than the slap could.

"I would rather be nothing," she whispered, her voice trembling but steady, "than be
like you."

Sipho stepped to her, pulling her tightly into his arms, his eyes never leaving the
chief's.

"If you cast me out," Sipho said, "do it. I will go with dignity. But I will not marry
someone who uses love as a leash."

There was a silence so deep that even the birds stopped singing.

And then the chief spoke, his voice low.

"Leave this place, Sipho. You are no longer welcome in my kraal."

Thandeka stepped forward. "Then I will leave with him."

Nokuthula's scream tore through the air, but nobody stopped Thandeka. Nobody
stopped Sipho. Hand in hand, together, they walked through the warriors, through
the elders, through the village that would never be able to forget what it had just
seen.

They did not run.

They did not hide.

Because sometimes, the fire that burns gently… is the one that burns longest.

Chapter four: Into the wilderness

Never a backward look.

Even when Nokuthula screamed and shattered the air, even when muttering elders
and restive warriors shifted uneasily — Sipho and Thandeka moved. Not quickly. Not
with fear. But with the quiet bravery of two people who had chosen one another
first.
The path that led out of the village was rough, flanked by rocks and thorns.
Thandeka's feet began to bleed, but she never uttered a word. Seeing this, Sipho,
without speaking a word, took the outer garment wrapped around his shoulders
and spread it over the rocks at her feet, step by step, until he was at the edge of the
riverbank.

When finally, they came to a halt, the world outside was quiet.

No drums.

No secrets. No expectations.

nothing but the sound of running water. and the burden of what they had just done.

Sipho breathed hard beside the riverbank, although they had not actually run.

"I should have felt free," he whispered, staring at himself in the rolling waves. "But I
feel like. nothing. Like silence."

Thandeka dropped to her knees beside him, laying her hand over his. “Sometimes
silence is where freedom begins.”

He turned to face her, and there was no longer a shred of doubt between them. No
fear. No pretending to be someone.

I never feared the world before, Sipho agreed. "But now, I am."

She would not blink. "Me too."

And then, gradually, he placed his forehead against hers. Two shattered hearts
clinging to the sole truth that remained: to each other.

Later that night

They sheltered under a rock overhang as the gusts ravaged the valley. Sipho made a
small fire with dried grass and twigs, and Thandeka sat beside him, leaning against
him with her head.

"What will your family think?" she whispered.

He paused. "They will be embarrassed. At least temporarily."

"And mine?" she asked, her voice cracking. "My mother. she will suffer."
The fingers of Sipho tightened around her hand. "We'll relocate to a new place. A
little village where no one recognizes us. A new life. Not a shelter only – a life. A
surname. A heritage of our own."

Thandeka looked at the flames, and a smile crossed her face for the first time that
day.

"You always speak like a man with a vision that extends beyond the earth at his
feet."

"And you always listen like a woman with an intuition that goes beyond words."

Their eyes locked and at that instant — beyond their houses, beyond familiarity,
beyond the norms that had held them back earlier — they were kissing.

It was not like the kind of kiss found in books. It was not poetic or flawless.

It existed. It was authentic.

And burned like the fires that encircled them.

Chapter five: What pride leaves behind

In my eyes

There was little quiet peace after the two had left.

It was cruel.

Like the silence after a war where all the combatants are no longer there and the
earth is still bleeding.

She stood in the middle of her father's kraal, her fists at her sides, her chest rising
with every breath, her heart pounding harder than the drumbeats that had ceased.

They were gone.

She had uttered his name.

She had cried that out in anger, and not in lust. Anger that burned fiercer than the
flame in her belly. Anger that he —he —had embarrassed her. Chosen a girl with plain
beads and a cast-down face over the chief's daughter.

What an audacity.
She could not.

But under the anger. under the words she was repeating in her head to stay angry.
lay something more.

Shame.

The one thing she would never tell anyone — not to the elders, not to her father, not
even to the wind — was that she had been expecting it. Whenever Thandeka smiled
too quietly beside him. Whenever he looked at her and not at Nokuthula.

She had glimpsed it. But she was certain that her name — her face — her family —
would be enough to keep him.

She was incorrect.

That night, her father called her to the middle hut. The firelight danced across his
face, and for the first time, he did not seem to be a mountain. He seemed to be a man.
An old man. Tired.

"They've shamed us," he said.

She nodded.

"Do you regret what happened?"

She looked at him, surprised. "Why would you ask me that?"

For because I ask," he said slowly, "if this pained in your eyes… is love shattered, or
pride bleeding?"

She could not answer.

For she did not know.

Her father stood. "This is but a passing thing. We are Zwelibanzi's blood. We will
find a better match. But you may not forget this night."

He waited. "You cannot make a man love you, Nokuthula. Not even if the whole
kingdom kneels at your feet.".

And so, the fire between them died.

Nokuthula walked to her sleeping mat, collapsed… and for the first time in her life
since she was a child, she cried. Quietly. Like the wind on the hut.

Because it was not about Sipho choosing someone else.

It was that power had not been sufficient to keep loneliness away from her.

And that love. true love. had never been beholden to pride.

Chapter six: The weight of a crown

(from chief Zwelibanzi’s perspective)

The stars were out, but they did not comfort him.

Chief Zwelibanzi alone sat in the large hut, his lion-skin cloak draped over his
shoulders like a crown of waning authority. The fire crackled in front of him, but its
warmth did not seep into his bones. Silence was all about him now — the silence of
shame, of challenged authority, of a name uttered with uncertainty.

They were all lost.

Sipho.

The boy he had picked. The one he had hoped would bear his daughter's name, and
thus his own. A valley boy. A quiet boy. An obedient boy. A loyal boy.

Until he was not.

Until he gazed at love and opted for it instead of legacy.

And Thandeka — a girl whose existence had never once troubled him. Gentle.
Uncomplicated. A shadow to his daughter's radiance. But now… she had turned into
something else altogether.

She had become a storm.

He closed his eyes and breathed deliberately.

"Tell me now, Sipho — are they false?"

He had spoken with the full might of the kingdom to back him. And yet. the boy did
not blink.
He did not lie.

He did not beg.

He simply made a choice.

That was what harassed the chief the most — the quiet courage. Not rebellion. Not
mockery. Just. a man making a choice between his heart and the chief's enjoyment.

Outside, a servant called softly, "Nkosi, should the fires be kindled?"

"No," the chief answered. "Let them die."

He stood up slowly and walked towards the kraal edge. From there, he could see the
distant hills. Beyond them his daughter's erstwhile fiancé was building a new fire.
One that did not need a crown's approval. One that blazed not in public adoration…
but in secret truth.

Zwelibanzi clenched his teeth.

He had constructed a kingdom with spears and tactics. But no thousand men could
dominate the heart of a man in love.

And tonight, that was the wound that bled.

Not defeat.

Not betrayal.

But the bitter taste of seeing honour prefer love.

He sat down by the firepit, laying his hand on the ashes of the extinguished flame.

Beware with pride," he whispered into the darkness. "Even kings cannot bury truth
forever.".

Chapter seven: A place with no names

The sun burst over the horizon on them as Sipho and Thandeka walked through
unfamiliar fields.

They had been trudging like a compass along the river for days.

Its waters steered them away from eMthonjeni, away from judgment and sting, and
towards some fuzzy something — not freedom, not safety, but possibility.
Finally, they arrived at a small village at the foot of the hills — a remote settlement
called KwaPhesheya, where the earth was green and the people were introverted.

No one questioned anything.

And that was a blessing.

New beginnings

Sipho got a job herding cows for an old widow, MaDlamini, who accepted him
without question. Thandeka helped with weaving and water-carrying. The villagers
looked at them with silent interest but asked no questions.

They shared a small round hut at night between the two of them. No one knew who
they were. No one knew who they had left behind.

In that quiet hut, they built something voiceless.

He would wash her feet after those long walks.

She would warm his food for him when he came home tired.

Their hands began to search for each other in the dark — not out of lust, but out of
consolation.

One night, Weeks later…

Rain fell gently on the grass-thatched roof. The fire on the hearth spat low, and the
smell of wet earth and ash filled the air.

Thandeka sat on the mat, brushing her hair. Her shawl slipped from one shoulder,
revealing the curve of her back.

Sipho raised his head from the fire. He said nothing.

He simply stood up, went over to her, and gently removed the brush from her hand.

I have never seen anyone carry silence the way you do," he said, his fingers lightly
touching her hair.

She faced him. "And I've never seen anyone take fire and make it gentleness."

Their lips touched again — slower this time, deeper.

No rush necessary. No need to prove anything.

Clothing dropped softly to the mat like leaves from autumn trees.
The rain outside grew softer.

And inside, they moved with the understanding that their bodies remembered
something the world had tried to erase from their minds:

That love, when freely chosen. is holy.

Chapter eight: The night love chose us

The fire was low, its light flickering across the rounded walls of the hut like a
heartbeat on stone.

Rain fell like whispers outside. Soft. Constant. Comforting.

Sipho and Thandeka lay side by side, facing each other. His hand rested just beneath
her chin. Her fingers traced the curve of his wrist — slow, thoughtful, as if learning
the shape of him by touch alone.

“You’re trembling,” she whispered.

"So are you," he replied, his tone soft but determined.

Their mouths met once more, but with no room left between body and soul. He
kissed her as a man who had waited not weeks or days — but centuries. She kissed
him as a woman who had never been claimed but merely seen.

Fingers moved slowly. Gently. No urgency. No hunger. Only reverence — as if sacred

cloth were being unwound for the very first time.

He laid her down as one lays down a prayer, and she opened to him as morning
greets the earth.

Their bodies found rhythm — not raucous, not desperate — but real. As if their
bodies had always known what the world had yet to let them speak.

Breaths were intertwined. Tears fell — not of hurt, but of awe at having been
chosen.

And when they were finally still, wrapped in warmth and heartbeat and quiet,
Thandeka placed her hand on his chest.

"Now," she breathed, "I know what it is to be rocked in love."

Sipho kissed her brow and whispered, "And now I know what it is to be free. even
though I'm not moving."

Rain stopped outside.

But in their hut, the storm that mattered had passed through.

And where it had passed, a harder fire had begun.

Chapter nine: The mother of the one who left

MaMkhize had been employed to silence.

She had raised Sipho in it.

Not the silence of weakness — but the kind that held mountains inside it.

Now, the silence in her hut was different.

It was not peace.

It was absence.

Her son was absent.

Not dead. Not exiled. Not abducted.

Absent by choice.

He had lost a chief's favor, a powerful bride, and a fate carved in stone — all for a
woman who could offer him but her name and her heart.

And yet. MaMkhize did not mourn.

She stirred the maize porridge in the pot over the fire, oblivious to the gossip at the
door.

"Did you hear? Sipho left with that girl — the friend."

"He shamed the chief."

"His mother should be shamed.".

Let them talk.

Let them wonder.

Because what the village did not know was that the evening before Sipho left, he
knelt next to his mother's mat and placed his hand over hers.

"I may lose the world," he had told her, "But I cannot lose myself."

She did not weep. She did not beg him to stay.

She simply said four words: "Then go with fire."

And he had left.

And now, days afterward, she stirred her oatmeal as if everything were the same.

And in her heart — a mother's heart — she prayed. Not for her son's return… but for
his becoming.

That afternoon…

Village women had drawn outside her hut, pretending a water has come.

There was a haughty and curtish one of them, Nontle, saying loudly, "A shame, isn't
it, to have borne a son who spits on honour?"

MaMkhize batted not an eye. She moved out of her hut reluctantly, rubbing easily
her apron.

"A shame," she answered, "is to bear a son who weds power and dies in flesh of his
making.".

Nontle's lips parted — and closed again.

And the women, for the very first time, were silent.

Chapter ten: Eyes that see fire

KwaPhesheya was not a loud village.

It awoke early, worked quietly, and slept with the sun. Rumour did not linger here.
What was important was what your hands could do, not what your name was worth.

One pair of eyes, though, observed everything.

Baba Mhlongo, the old man, sat each morning at the base of the large uMdoni tree
near the pens where the cattle resided. His beard was white as snow, his eyes were
sharp, and his silence was louder than most men's voices.
He noticed everything.

And he had noticed them — Sipho and Thandeka.

He watched him with careful steps and quiet dignity. The manner in which he
bowed when interacting with the women. The manner in which he would not meet a
single girl's gaze.

He'd noticed her as well -- how her hands flew industriously by, her smile
occasionally failing to quite reach her eyes. Not always.

There was love, and hidden behind it, something.

One day, when Sipho passed by the tree, Baba Mhlongo raised his hand. A slow,
calculated motion.

“Sit down, son,” he told him.

Sipho obey

The old man was silent initially. He looked out at the horizon, then at the ground, as
if reading something only he could see.

"You move like someone running away from something," he finally told him.

Sipho looked down. "I did."

"Build now…Build as a man who means to stay."

I do.

The older one nodded, then gradually faced him.

Answer this question, Sipho: Are your hands clean?

Sipho remained motionless

Your heart is true. Your love is pure. But are your hands unclean? Did you return
with shame, or lies, or blood on your back?

Sipho swallowed hard. "No lies. No blood. But I am shamed. for hurting others."

He stared into his eyes for quite a while.

And then, to her amazement, he

"Good," he said. "For KwaPhesheya is no haven from that which you once were. It is
a haven to make you that which you should always have been."

He stood slowly, leaning on his wooden cane.

"Look after the girl," he added, as he departed. "She carries more than love. She
carries your second chance."

Later that night

Sipho had told her the same words as they sat beside the fire.

“She bears something more than love…”

And then she gradually turned her gaze toward him, her eyes full of tears.

“I…I need to tell you something.”

Her voice trembled.

Sipho sat upright. "What is it?"

She placed her hand over her stomach.

“I think... I am pregnant.”

Chapter eleven: The beating beneath her skin

Sipho stared at her belly as though her hand was on flames.

His chest rose slowly. and fell.

He did not speak. Not at first. Not out of anger — but out of emotion.

Her gaze swept over him. "Say something."

He looked up at her, however, not with panic, but with wonder.

"Are you sure?" He whispered.

She nodded, her throat constricting. "I've missed two moons. I can sense it. There is
something changing inside me."

Sipho gulped, laying his palm on top of hers. Her stomach was still flat, but he
imagined it — the tiny heart beginning to form under flesh and spirit.
"This child," he said gravely, "wasn't conceived out of shame. It was created out of
honesty. And I will defend both of you… when the world is against us."

Thandeka dissolved into tears -- not ones that precede pain, but ones that follow
once you have waited long enough with terror unexpressed.

He pulled her into his arms and hugged her as if embracing both past and future.

In the days that followed

Slowly in KwaPhesheya — but surely - word spread.

MaDlamini, the old widow who had brought them in out of the night, had lived
through six pregnancies and knew the telltale signs. Early one morning, she gave
Thandeka a bowl of steaming boiled herbs and spoke only, "To make the little one
strong."

Thandeka blinked. "You knew?"

MaDlamini smiled. "My bones knew before you did."

She ran her hand lightly over Thandeka's swelling belly.

You are more than a woman now, child. You are a well — and your waters will be
the next river.

Sipho, however, worked harder than ever. He built fences. He carried firewood. He
bartered goats for cloth and provisions. He spoke little, but he did much.

One evening, Baba Mhlongo took him aside again.

"You plant now," the elder said. "But soon you will have to build."

Sipho nodded. "A hut?"

No, the elder replied. "A future. For her. For the child. For yourself. Love gave you
strength — now the child will demand you for legacy."

That night

Thandeka sat by the fire, her arms wrapped around her distended belly.

Sipho slipped in, wiping sweat from his brow.

She looked up, smiling softly. "Do you think we'll be ready?"
He nodded and lay down beside her. "We're better prepared than most folks are
anyway."

"But we don't have much…"

Sipho looked around at their simple hut — bare walls, straw mats, a clay pot
bubbling porridge.

"Maybe," he said. "But the child will be born in love. And that's more than I had
when I was born."

They leaned into each other — three heartbeats now, instead of two.

Outside, the stars lit up the sky.

Inside, the future was already being written.

Chapter twelve: A visitor from the past

It had been three full moons since Sipho and Thandeka had left eMthonjeni. Seasons
had come and gone, her belly had grown, and hearts had begun to heal in the
intervening time.

But the past never forgets the footsteps of those who leave it.

It came back on a quiet morning.

A sound near the goat pens began it.

The cough of a parched throat.

And then — a voice.

"Ngiyaphila… but this dust is killing me."

Sipho's head jerked up. That voice. That laugh over the cough. He came out from
behind the hut, and for an instant, his eyes played tricks on him.

A person standing outside the fence post, thin from traveling but unmistakably
Duma — the boy he had swum rivers with, fought on the ground with, mooned at
stars with.

"Duma?" Sipho's voice cracked.

"Who else, mfowethu?" Duma grinned. "You thought I'd just let you disappear like a
ghost?"

They clung — gruff, panting, brotherly.

Later that day

They sat outside the hut, Thandeka inside resting while the men talked. Duma's face
relaxed when he spoke of MaMkhize.

"She misses you," he said. "She doesn't say it… but I see it when she sits beside the
fire and looks out at the hills. Your name lives in her chest like a still drum."

Sipho's eyes fell.

"And the village?" he asked.

Duma shrugged. "The chief is a loner. Nokuthula… she is different. She walks
differently now. Pride lies quieter in her shoulders. She does not laugh any more like
before."

Sipho said nothing. There was no joy in her pain. Only understanding.

Duma bent forward.

"But there's something else."

Sipho looked up.

"Word is… the chief regrets sending you away. He does not say a word aloud, but he
is listening when your name is mentioned now. He even told Nokuthula, 'Some
lessons only come after fire.'"

Sipho was still.

"Would he forgive me?"

Duma shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. But I came because… you deserve to know. And
because I missed my brother."

They laughed then — the first laughter in weeks that shook Sipho's ribs with joy.

That evening

Duma stayed overnight. Thandeka brought him dinner, and he smiled courteously to
her, gazing at her belly.
"She's strong," he told Sipho later. "You did a good job."

"No," Sipho replied. "She chose me when all the others turned her down. That makes
all the difference."

Leaving the following morning, Duma clasped Thandeka in a tight hug and
whispered, "Let your child be born with your heart and his courage."

And then he turned to Sipho.

If ever you do come back, he said, "come back as a man who found something better.
Not to beg. but to bless."

And, with that, he vanished.

But the gust of wind with him carried more.

Not just the scent of dust and travel.

But the promise of peace.

Chapter thirteen: Thandeka’s storm

The rains returned earlier than expected.

KwaPhesheya's sky, usually quiet and dormant, now had clouds with thunder and
moods that competed with Thandeka's own.

She stood at the edge of the hut one afternoon, staring into the grey yonder, her
hand cradling her swelling belly.

Her body transformed daily. Her feet swelled up. Her back ached. And yet —
heaviest of all was her heart.

She loved Sipho.

She did not doubt his heart.

But deep inside her, a voice whispered:

"Will I be enough?"

Would she be a good mother? Would she know what to do when the baby cried?
Would she give their child the strength Sipho gave her — or would she break
beneath the name "Mama"?
One night

Outside, the storm was raging — wind howling, lightning flashing like angry
ancestors in the sky.

Within, the fire was dying, and Thandeka was awake, sweat on her brow, tears on
her cheek.

"What if I fail?" she breathed into the darkness.

Sipho shifted beside her. "You won't."

"How do you know?"

"Because failure doesn't resemble a woman who lost her home, her security, her
name… for love.".

She faced him, her face streaked with tears.

"I'm afraid."

He held her hand tight. "So am I. But we will face our fear together. And when the
time comes… we will face our child too."

In the days that followed

MaDlamini coached her — steeping herbs, instructing her in how to sit, how to
breathe, how to rest her back against a wall to numb the pain.

Baba Mhlongo came once with a wooden bowl carved out of one piece of wood.
"This belonged to my wife," he said. "She fed our firstborn from it. It is yours now."

Even the goats in the village seemed to settle down around her — as if nature itself
respected the woman she was becoming.

Then came the moment that changed everything.

She had gone to fetch water and slipped slightly on the wet rocks. Just a slight slip.
But she caught her breath. Her heart racing.

And she sat there — hand on her belly — for a long, terrifying minute, until she felt
it.

A kick.

A soft, undeniable kick.

And in that moment, Thandeka did not cry.

She laughed.

Aloud. Under the rain. Under the grey sky. With joy and terror tangled in her chest.

“You’re here,” she whispered. “You are real. You are mine.”

She walked back stronger. Taller. She was no longer just the girl who followed
Nokuthula.

No longer just the one Sipho chose.

She was the mother of their legacy.

And soon… the child of fire and love would arrive.

Chapter fourteen: The child of fire and love

The evening was still. Not stillness of peace… but stillness that comes before
something sacred.

The mood in KwaPhesheya was tense with expectation. Even the trees leaned
forward. Even the wind held its breath.

Inside their hut, Thandeka grasped the edge of the mat, shaking from head to toe.

The pain was deep now — not stinging, but ancient. As if every one of her great-
grandmothers had deposited their strength into her bones.

MaDlamini prayed at her side, whispering phrases that had passed down from older
grandmothers who had given birth to king's centuries before.

"Phee, Sthandwa. Breathe. You're not alone."

Sipho sat outside with his fists clenched, his head against the doorframe. He listened
to her screams. Each one cut like a knife and throbbed like a heart.

He had battled cattle thieves. He had faced a chief and gone into exile.

But this?

This waiting… this helplessness…

This was the most courageous thing he had ever done.

Hours passed

Thunder rolled in the distance. Rain began to fall — soft at first, then steady.

Inside, Thandeka let out one final cry — a sound that shook the walls.

And then… silence.

A breath.

A pause.

A beat.

And then — a sound that cracked through the storm:

A baby’s cry.

MaDlamini’s face broke into a tearful smile.

“It’s a girl,” she whispered. “A strong one.”

Thandeka rolled back into the blankets, beads of perspiration on her skin, tears in
her eyes.

MaDlamini handed her the baby — tiny, wrapped in a cloth, eyes closed, fists small
and dainty.

"You waited," Thandeka breathed to her daughter. "You came when love was
ready.".

Later that morning

Sipho pushed open the door to the hut, rain still falling from his cloak.

He saw them — Thandeka glowing with exhaustion, and in her arms, their child.

He dropped to his knees beside them.

"She's beautiful," he whispered.

"She's ours," Thandeka replied.

He looked at the baby, then into Thandeka's eyes.

"I want to name her…"

Thandeka nodded. "Say it."

Sipho shut his eyes, took a deep breath.

"Zinhliziyo — for she carries both our hearts."

"Zothando — because she was born of love."

"Zinhliziyo Zothando."

Outside

Baba Mhlongo stood under the uMdoni tree, watching the clouds tear apart as
sunlight sliced through for the first time in days.

There was a new wind blowing through the village — soft, full of promise, ancient.

And somewhere, in the arms of a woman who had once been forgotten…

and together with a man who had long turned his back on power…

A new story had just begun.

 PART TWO: Where love dares to burn
Two years later…

Chapter fifteen: When peace is not enough

Zinhliziyo Zothando was two when the wind shifted.

She ran barefoot across the tall grass behind the hut, her tiny feet sending clouds of
dust flying, her laugh ringing out like a peal of chimes through the fields.

Thandeka stood in the doorway, arms folded across her chest, watching her
daughter go with a pride so strong that even pain was a blessing.

Sipho was nearby, mending the fence of cows in silent concentration. His arms
stronger now. His beard fuller. But his eyes still held that same softness when he
looked at his girls.

For two years, KwaPhesheya had known peace. The villagers had accepted them.
MaDlamini had passed away in their sleep. Baba Mhlongo had yielded, letting Sipho
do more work. He was no longer a stranger. He was growing… a pillar.

And yet — things changed.

It began with tracks around the stream. Not animal. Not villagers.

Strangers.

That night

Baba Mhlongo called an evening meeting that was low of voice.

Men from the village gathered beneath the old uMdoni tree, their features lit by the
warm light of smoldering wood.

"News," began the old man. "About men who've been seen out near the hills. Armed
men. Loud-voiced men. Asking questions about this ground."

Sipho stood straighter. "What kind of questions?"

"Around grazing permissions. Around what belongs to them. Around in whose

name…is written what…"

Older men darted nervous looks at each other.

"These are not Zulu men," one of them said. "They are coming from the east.
Wearing cloth coats. Speaking in queer accents."

Whispers of colonialism. Government surveyors. Men in uniform. Whatever names

they had — they all foretold the same thing:

Change was on the horizon.

Later that evening

Sipho told Thandeka what he had heard.

Her smile faded.

"We constructed this house by ourselves," she said. "We bled here. We mended
here."

He nodded. "And now we have to safeguard it — not with spears, but with being
together."

She looked at their daughter, who was sleeping on the mat.

"She cannot be forced to run away from another house.".

The next morning

Zinhliziyo woke early, as always, her laugh ringing off the walls.

Sipho swept her up high. "You, little fireheart, are not going anywhere."

But even when he grinned…

he looked out towards the hills.

And in his stomach, he knew:

Peace must now become purpose.

Chapter sixteen: The blood in the river

The river had always been talking to her.

Even as a child, Thandeka knew its moods in the bottom of her chest before a single
drop of the water even came in contact with her skin.

It wasn't whispering that night.

It was crying.

She was beside the water, the moon full overhead, her feet bare in the mud.

The river ran red.

Not in blood — not exactly — but in her sleep, it flowed thick and dark, and heaven
above her churned with blackness.

She turned her head, and at the bend of the river stood a woman.

In white. Bare feet. Unmoving.

An old… ageless woman.

Familiar on the face, even though Thandeka had never looked upon her in life.

Not a grandmother.

Not a name passed through the family.

A mother of the blood.

The woman raised her hand, slow and sure, towards the water.

There, among the trees — Sipho, with Zinhliziyo in his arms.

Behind them, though. came fire.

Foreign-clad men.

Boots stomping the earth.

Hands ripping up the earth.

Swords. Smoke. Rock.

Zinhliziyo began to weep.

And then the voice: not from the woman, but from deep in the water:

"If you do not rise… they will fall."

She woke gasping

The hut was warm, but she was cold.

Sipho whirled around, surprised. "What is it?"

She came up slowly, trembling, her hand over her heart.

"The river spoke."

He creased his brow, moving closer. "Another dream?"

She nodded. "Worse than the last. This time… there was a woman. Not alive, but not
dead either. She showed me… what's coming."

He put a firm hand on hers. "Tell me."

So, she did.

And when she was finished, Sipho didn't complain. He didn't lie. He had learned
many years ago that some truths don't speak in words — but in water, and wind,
and blood.

The next day

Baba Mhlongo summoned them to the uMdoni tree before they had even spoken
about the dream.

"We have to do something," the elder said. "The men from the hills — they're back.
This time with maps. Measuring rope. Foreign languages."

Sipho stepped forward. "We have to call in the people."

The elder turned to Thandeka. "And you — what do you see?"

She paused, then spoke.

"I see fire if we remain still. I see blood on the ground if we trust the wrong men. But
I see something else…"

She glanced at Sipho, her voice low and certain.

"I see a leader. But he wears no crown. He wears a daughter on his back… and a
village in his heart."

There was quiet among the elders.

Sipho lowered his gaze — not out of fear… but out of the weight of what was to be.

Outside the ring, Zinhliziyo played in the dust — making patterns in the ground.
Circles. Lines. Stars.

She giggled up at the sky.

She had no idea the storm that was brewing.

But she was born of fire and love.

And fire won't be cowed by the wind.

Chapter seventeen: The man in the khaki coat

He arrived with notebook in hand and dust covering his boots.

Nobody was searching for him – only the shepherd boys first, who came back
puffing, speaking of a tall man with sand-brown skin and iron-grey eyes. He came
from the east, along the rocky ridge, and strode slowly as if the ground he was
walking on already belonged to him.

When he arrived at the village limit, Sipho waited.

Thus was Thandeka.

Behind them, standing with arms akimbo and eyes squinting from remembered
tension, was Baba Mhlongo.

"What is this man doing here?" he demanded in an uninviting voice.

The stranger smiled.

"Edward van Niekerk," he said. He spoke Zulu accurately but understandable. "Land
surveyor. Representative of the Crown."

Sipho's eyes grew cold. "Why are you demanding this from us?"

Van Niekerk reached into his backpack and extracted a tightly rolled-up scroll and
allowed it to unfurl. A map. Fresh ink. Red lines slicing through the country like a
scarring wound.

This country was not conquered. The Kingdom is expanding. What is not written.
will be written.

He pointed toward where KwaPhesheya

This entire region is waiting to be developed. New roads. Commerce routes. Farms.

Thandeka moved ahead.

Our ancestors were born here. Died here. Lived here. This is not vacant terrain — it is
holy.

Van Niekerk raised an eyebrow.

Then maybe it is time that the sacred should be shared. You may stay. under our
laws. Or emigrate. Peacefully.

Everything was quiet.

Sipho stepped between us. "We are not going anywhere."

Van Niekerk smiled with ease.

Others have spoken those words previously. Still, here we are.

He removed his hat, turned and made his way back up the ridge with the notebook
in hand. But before he wandered off into the hills, he spoke one last thing - soft, but
piercing:

I'll return in one week. With paper and with soldiers.

That Night

Sipho sat in darkness, honing the spear.

Then Thandeka appeared, placing one hand on the boy's shoulder. "You don't use
ink and sword."

He turned to confront her. "Then what do I use against it?"

She paused and considered.

Then quietly, she replied, "With truth. With others. With something greater than
power."

Far away…

Van Niekerk rolled one and wrote in the diary in a dusty tent on the edge of the hills.

“KwaPhesheya — rich soil. One man who is in command. One woman with fire in
her eyes. A child… untainted by fear. Resistance likely.”

He paused. Gazed out across the moonlit ridge.

But all things will break.

Chapter eighteen: The quiet conqueror

He was not always named Edward van Niekerk.

He used to be Eduardt, with grime beneath his fingernails and hunger in the marrow
of his own bones.

Born on the Free State plains, torn by the wind, with a drinking father and a dead-
too-young mother, Edward soon learned that it was best to keep quiet than be
truthful. and power was better than pity.

He grew up with bitter words spoken by his father.

"Land is the one God, boy. You don't take it, somebody else will."

By the time he turned sixteen, he was already mapping the world in his mind — not
in mountains and rivers, but in influence and ownership and boundaries.

As conflict between natives and empire turned to war, he signed up not to fight, but
to see.

He became a surveyor. A cartographer of kingdoms. A namer of the names of lands

that never asked to be renamed.

He was not cruel at first

No.

At first, Edward believed he was saving the world from chaos. Bringing "civilization"
to what he was raised to consider "wild soil."

But later, he stopped wondering whether the inhabitants of that place had stories of
their own.

He started drinking tea instead of asking questions.

He started erasing names instead of committing them to memory.

And when Edward met his mentor — a grizzled colonial administrator who once
guffawed when he ordered a village burn-for-resistance — Edward did not flinch.

"This is the cost of empire," said the man. "You don't take land with mercy. You take
land with maps."

So, Edward sharpened his pencils.

And sketched lines with the calmness of a priest.

But KwaPhesheya…changed something

He had expected resistance.

He had expected fear.

But he had not expected her.

Thandeka.

The way she looked at him — not like a monster.

Not like a man.

But like something wrong.

Something less.

It cut deeper than any blade.

And Sipho… the way he stood, spear in hand, as if the earth itself followed him.

Edward saw something in Sipho's eyes that he had not seen in decades.

Purpose.

Belonging.

Love that did not shrink from fighting.

He returned to his tent that night and opened his journal once more.

But he did not draw maps.

He wrote a sentence:

"There are men who claim the land… and men who are claimed by it."

He sat for a long while after that.

Then he tore out the page, crumpled it, and threw it into the fire.

Chapter nineteen: The gathering before the storm

The dawn drums were sounded.

To not rejoice.
For not dancing.

Yet to call.

They came from all directions from KwaPhesheya — on foot and wrapped in
blankets, spears slung across the back, children tied to hips. Even old men who
many years back ditched walking came, brought in by grandsons in wagons,
creaking with memory in every joint.

During all this stood Sipho.

Not just that boy who used to run wild in meadows.

But not as a lover or a husband.

Now - A leader.

He raised his voice

"They come with maps. We come with memory."

They come with papers. We come with blood.

They come in strength. We come in fire.

They did not cheer. They did not scream.

They did.

This was not a war of sound.

This was the war of truth.

Thandeka stepped forward

In her arms, she bore a cloth bundle. From it, she produced her grandmother's
necklace -- of bone, of shell, of fire-hardened bead.

It has been passed down by one who fled to the caves with the advent of the first
settlers.

I spoke. She was alive. I will no longer be silent.

She wrapped it round Sipho's neck.

Then, in that moment, the boy with fire in his heart surpassed all men.

He became legendary.
They called the warriors

Men and women who used to hunt the lion, who understood the stars and the
ground, who remembered the cadence of the shield and the flight of the spear.

But Sipho did not call forth war.

He asked for presence.

We will not throw the first stone. Neither will we kneel to paper.

Unexpected allies

Out of the hills there came one whom no one had seen in years - Nomalanga the red-
robed widow, followed by ten orphans, barefooted but each with bowls of grain and
small knives.

"And forget," she reminded him, "We who are oppressed learn how to survive. The
Empire has taught me that."

They were treated like family.

That night

By the light of the fire, the children sang songs older than the colonizers' tongue.

Sipho sat beside Thandeka, his shoulder supporting her head.

She whispered, "Do you think we can stop him?"

He did not answer.

Instead, he gripped her hand tighter and looked up at the stars.

Across the valley…

Edward van Niekerk stood on a cliff, viewing torches shining in KwaPhesheya.

He did not view fear.

But faith.

And for the first time…

He had no idea whether he was grasping a map —

Or stepping into a location that would transform him forever.

Chapter twenty: What we hold before the fire

The village was still.

There were only ashes of the central fire, releasing tiny plumes of smoke into the
stars.

Sipho sat alone on the riverbank, his spear stuck in the ground beside him.

His thoughts were heavy — not with fear, but with the seriousness of what he had
become.

Thandeka found him.

She did not utter a word. Simply sat down beside him and removed her sandals,
letting her feet rest on the chill earth.

"Once I was a girl," she started quietly, "I spoke to the moon as if she were a friend. I
thought she would shield me."

Sipho smiled weakly. "And did she?"

"No," she replied. "But it heard me.".

Sipho looked at her

If I do not come back from what is to come… I need you to know something."

Thandeka's gaze turned to him. Her face open, vulnerable.

He fingered the beaded necklace stashed in his chest pocket and pulled out the
small, intricately shaped bead. The last thing his mother had given him before she
had passed away.

"My name… my bravery… it belongs to you now. Not to earth. Not to war. To you."

She swallowed hard.

Do not talk like that," she panted. "You will come back."

Sipho looked down. "But if I don't."

She buried her forehead in his.

"Then I will wait in this life. And the next one. And the next one after that.".

And then they kissed

Not with the pains of new love —

But with the depth of two hearts who knew time may tear them asunder, and yet,
they would choose each other.

Their fingers touched, slowly.

Clothing loosened. Breathing grew deeper.

And beneath the still sky, two bodies became one — not for pleasure, but for
memory.

A love smelted not in haste, but in knowing.

In mourning.

In faith.

When they held each other afterward, wrapped in a single blanket, Thandeka traced
her fingers along his spine.

“When they write stories of this war,” she said softly, “let them write about
this moment too.”

“They will,” Sipho replied, “Because I’ll survive just to tell it.”

Chapter twenty-one: When shadows return

Dawn came in a wind with no birdsong.

Children were kept indoors.

Women concealed knives under humps of maize.

And the young and old warriors stood in ugly rows along the ridge, watching down
into the valley.

KwaPhesheya was ready.

Yet, fear spread like smoke.

And then. they saw them.

The empire arrives

First dust.
Then hooves.

Then horses.

Then foreign flags.

Edward van Niekerk rode in the lead — face unreadable, eyes hidden behind the
brim of a broad hat. Thirty men rode behind him, armed and clad in armor, colonial
soldiers drilled to strike without emotion.

But Edward did not raise his hand to give the order to attack.

He raised it to give the order to halt.

Sipho stood his ground

He stepped into the clearing with Thandeka close behind him.

"We told you," Sipho yelled. "You will not redraw what was never yours."

Edward gazed at him — long and hard — as though searching for something.

But instead of responding, he dismounted.

Gasps were murmured behind him. His own men were uncertain.

Still, Edward moved forward. Alone. Hands empty.

And then, he spoke

"There is no glory in laying what lives to fire. I brought maps… but I see now — this
land is already mapped."

Sipho narrowed his eyes. "Then leave."

"I intend to," Edward replied. "But I need help."

"Help?" Thandeka stepped forward, spear poised. "Why should we help the one who
came to rob from us?"

Edward replied in a deep voice.

"Because I am not alone."

He turned and waved toward the hills behind him.

"There are men behind me — genuine men of war. Mercenaries. Not surveyors.
They mean to take this land not with papers, but with fire. And when they do… they
won't just take. They'll destroy."

A dangerous offer

Edward withdrew his hand from his coat and let something drop to the dust.

A crumpled sheet. A decree of invasion. A colonial lies about "empty land" and
"sanctioned occupation."

"Its broke rank for me to make it here. I will be hunted for this. But if we join forces
— you with your warriors, I with my intelligence — we might be able to stop them
before they arrive."

The village growled.

Sipho did not trust him.

But there was something in Edward's eyes… not treacherous.

Sipho stepped closer

“If we do it… we do not do it for you.".

We do it for the unborn children.

Edward slowly nodded.

"Then let's make sure they're born into a world where the earth remembers
your names… not mine."

Chapter twenty-two: When enemies build the same fire

No human eye had ever previously seen KwaPhesheya's hills.

Colonial boots and naked warriors.

A map pinned to the ground with a Zulu spear.

And two men — Sipho and Edward — speaking not as friends, but as men with no
other choice.

The actual war was on its way.

And it would not care for flags.

The plan

Edward knelt, pointing to the ground. "They'll come from the east — over the
shattered gorge. The path is too small. If we close it with fire and pin them on both
sides—"

Thandeka interrupted him. "You wish to use fire on our own land?"

Edward paused. "Sometimes, soil must burn before it heals."

Sipho looked out to the horizon. "Or it burns… and never grows back."

A heavy silence.

And then, at their backs, an aged voice spoke.

"Let the ancestors decide."

It was KwaPhesheya's seniormost voice, Gogo Zinhle. She moved forward, cloudy
eyes, shallow breathing.

"The land has always protected its children. If you fight with it, not against it… you
can yet triumph."

She picked up a handful of soil and let it fall into Sipho's hand.

"Use this. Not gunpowder. Let it guide you.".

That night

By the fire, Edward was sitting alone. He had removed his uniform jacket. He wore a
dirty shirt. His face was unshaven.

Sipho approached him.

"Why did you come back?"

Edward stared at the flames.

"Because I once watched as a village burned. I learned the names, made the maps…
and I said to myself I didn't start the fire."

"And now?"

"Now I know that silence is also a weapon."

Warriors and ghosts

KwaPhesheya's warriors trained late into the night — not just with spear, but with
traps, signals, and strategies Edward taught them.

Even children helped — flitting between shadows, carrying messages, whetting tools.

Yet every eye posed the same question:

Can we trust a man who came to conquer… now that he says he comes to defend?

Sipho did not know.

But he did know this: on their own, they would be killed.

Together… maybe they had a hope.

A new fire

They built a circle of firelight before dawn.

Zulu warriors. Women. Children. Edward.

They did not sing of victory. But of remembrance.

Of the rivers that sustained them.

The ancestors who went before them.

And the tomorrow to be born.

Sipho stood in the center, eyes closed, hand on his chest.

"If we are to die," he whispered, "let it be on our feet.

With truth in our mouths.

And love in our bones."

Chapter twenty-three: The night before thunder

The stars were low that night — as if they, too, wanted to be close.

The village was quiet again. Not in peace… but in breath held.
Sipho sat in his hut sharpening his blade. The soft scrape of stone on metal was
calming, rhythmic. A ritual. A prayer.

Then the door creaked.

Thandeka came in, carrying a woven cloth and a bowl of herbs.

For the wounds you have not earned yet," she said, weakly smiling.

Sipho put down the blade.

"Sit," he said gently.

She did.

They faced each other

No weapons.

No titles.

No war.

Only man and woman.

Thandeka took his hands in hers and examined the calluses.

"When I first met you, I thought you were too proud. Too stubborn."

Sipho laughed. "You weren't wrong."

She looked at him. "But I was."

A touch deeper than skin

She dipped her hand in, immersing the cloth in the herbal water, and pulled it back
to wipe his face slowly — forehead to jaw, as if to brand him in her memory with her
touch.

"You keep your fear very well concealed, Sipho."

"So do you."

"I'm not concealing anything," she whispered. "I'm passing it on to you. Carry it
along with yours. Win for both of us."

He looked at her, his eyes blazing.

"If tomorrow I—"

No," she interrupted. "Say when you return."

Sipho nodded, barely.

Then he stooped under the mat and brought out a small wooden figurine. A woman
— powerful, tall, fierce.

"My father carved this for my mother before he went off to war. He never came back.
But this… stayed."

He placed it in her palm.

"If I don't return, this will remember me."

She stared at the carving, then at him.

You idiot," she whispered, holding back tears. "You already live inside me. No need
to carve.".

Their final embrace before the storm

They did not kiss.

They did not undress.

They just embraced each other — hard — as though the night would tear them away
from each other before daybreak.

And in the stillness, Sipho breathed quietly:

"When thunder comes, remember this stillness.".

Chapter twenty-four: The first arrow falls

At dawn, the mist crept over the hills like the spirit of something ancient.

KwaPhesheya was still — not from a shortage of defenders, but because it knew what
war requires.

Mothers kissed sons. Lovers touched hands. Children watched, eyes open,
pretending not to cry.
And then the quite ended.

One horn.

Sharp.

Distant.

Unmistakable.

They were here.

The enemy descends

The mercenaries rode in fire-eyed and metal-fisted.

These were not politicians' soldiers and paper soldiers as Edward's horde was.
These were men who had forgotten what peace tasted like.

They were commanded by a hulking oaf named Doyle, who rode at the front. His
battle cry echoed across the valley:

"Howl!

Burn it all!

Leave none standing!"

But he did not know the land.

He did not know its people.

And he did not know… they were ready.

The ambush begins

From the ridges, warriors appeared like ghosts.

Not charging.

Waiting.

Sipho raised his spear.

Edward also nodded beside him, rifle in hand — although his aim was trembling.

Then, on one birdcall cue, the trap was triggered.

Logs came crashing down from hidden trails, detonating into the gorge. Fire broke
out up behind the mercenaries, cutting off escape.

Shrieks were heard.

Panic broke out.

But Doyle led the way.

Sipho’s first kill

The war was not for land.

It was for survival.

Sipho faced his first enemy — a tall, crooked-grinning man with a machete.

Steel clashed with metal. Blood splattered.

And when Sipho rammed his spear into the man's chest, he did not celebrate.

He simply looked up — and spotted a second one approaching.

And a third.

And a fourth.

Where is Edward?

During chaos, Edward was alone.

He drove through flames, in search of the mapmen — those with explosives waiting
for the ridges.

But someone got there first.

Doyle.

They eyed each other. One ex-commander. One rebel.

"Traitor," Doyle spat.

Edward leveled his rifle. "No longer."

When the dust settles…

By nightfall, the rivers flowed with blood. The combatants fought their ground, but
at what cost.
Sipho sat beside a dead boy — not over thirteen.

He did not cry.

He merely closed the boy's eyes.

And murmured, "We fought for you."

Chapter twenty-five: Smoke, ash and something sacred

The fires had been extinguished, but their aroma stayed.

Carbon-rich wood.

Dried blood. And the metallic breath of death.

KwaPhesheya was not the same

There were huts still upright. Others were smoldering ruins. Warriors walked with
limps, some with vacant eyes. Mothers wandered the field calling names… some
that would never be answered.

Counting the cost

Sipho limped through the village, his spear serving as a crutch.

He stood over every corpse.

Struggled for breath.

Eyes close silently.

Edward stood on top of arms he had accumulated when he reached the crest of the
ridge — shattered rifles, Machete, boots from which feet had long since disappeared.

"We won," he said, his voice expressionless.

"Did we?" Sipho in

The two men gazed out toward the horizon.

Rain threatened on the horizon.

Thandeka Returns

She was off the moment the horn fell silent.

She did not wait for permission.

Cared not for roads.

Her feet bled when she came to KwaPhesheya, with wide eyes full of fear.

She lost control when she spotted Sipho, limping, blood-stained, but alive.

Kept their knees bent.

Cried on his chest. He said nothing. Just hugged her. As though she were the only
thing that made sense in the world anymore.

A whisper beneath the ruins

Then, as villagers cleared away the wreckage, a young man cried out from the
remains of an old shack.

Come in, quick

They huddled round.

Beneath the beams that had fallen, something had remained — intact.

A small bundle, bound in cloth, hot.

A toddler. Screaming. Living.

No one knew who the child belonged to.

But Gogo Zinhle gave her a warm welcome.

"The land has spoken," she breathed. Even fire. can't destroy tomorrow.

Chapter twenty-six: The stranger who watched the fire

High over the valley, where grass whispered secrets, where the trees leaned like
elders, stood a figure clad in bark-hued robes.

His name was Nare.

Few had seen him.

Few survived long enough to tell of what he did look like.

However, he stood on the ridge that night — the night of the blaze when she burned,
when she bled.

Eyes that saw too much

Nare was not just a vagrant.

He was born of two strands — one Zulu, one foreign.

His mother had fled from a Dutch colony to the east. His father had been a
healer…until soldiers put a price on his mouth.

Now Nare carried both their ghosts.

He did not believe in boundaries.

He believed in balance.

But when the mercenaries came… and fire touched the ground…Nare…sensed
something shift.

This was not just a battle.

It was a warning.

A visit in the dark

That night, after the mourning fires burned low, Nare crept into KwaPhesheya
unseen.

No one saw him.

Except one.

Gogo Zinhle.

She stood by her hut, grinding herbs with an empty gaze.

"You've come late," she muttered without looking up.

Nare stepped into the light.

His face was carved from shadow — half smooth, half marred.

"I watched," he told her.

"Why did you not help?"

"Because the land needed to bleed. To wake up."

"You spout riddles," she spat.

"And you speak to the dead," he replied.

They stared.

And then Gogo Zinhle whispered: "So you felt it too."

A hidden message

Nare knelt, pulling out of his cloak a scroll — torn and crumpled from a missionary's
notebook.

"They're coming again," he said.

"Not just soldiers. Cartographers. Miners. Traders. Poison pretending to be

progress."

He unfolded a crude map.

A red dot surrounded KwaPhesheya.

Another… to the east of that.

"They want what is beneath us. The land is only a door. What they want is
underground."

Gogo Zinhle scowled at the crying baby in the hut behind her.

Then she looked up at the stars.

"So, the child wasn't just saved."

"No," Nare whispered. "The child was elected".

Chapter twenty-seven: Shadows speak softly

KwaPhesheya drew breath — just in time.

Children played stick-spear games, copying heroes whose names they barely heard.
Women repaired what remained of torn clothes. Men honed swords not for battle,
but for repairing houses.

But hushed tones grew louder in the darkness behind every hut.

They did not come from trees.

Humans uttered them.

By eyes that listened a little too well.

By voices that fell silent when someone walked into the room.

By secrets.

Sipho feels the distance

Sipho sat on the riverbank, his feet in the water, searching for peace.

Thandeka sat beside him, arms folded, eyes unemotional.

"You haven't slept," she said.

"Can you sleep with ghosts marching in your ears?" he asked.

She did not reply.

He put out his hand to her, but there was something about her that receded.

Not with anger…but doubt.

She had seen something in the eyes of Edward after battle — something that she had
not seen in Sipho's before: certainty.

Edward’s burden

Edward toiled alone, helping in the rebuilding of the watchtower.

He hauled logs, wielded hammers, and dodged queries.

But Sipho tracked him down.

"You knew this wasn't the end," Sipho accused.

Edward did not refute it.

"You think because they ran, they've given up?" Edward said. "You don't know men
like Doyle. You don't know men like me."

"Then instruct me," Sipho snarled. "Before we die unready."

Edward let the hammer fall.

“Fine. But when the time comes, you’ll have to choose between fighting them…
or becoming them.”

Nare’s mark

Nare defaced the tree in the center of the village that night.

A spiral — dotted with rings.

Gogo Zinhle drew a breath in shock when she saw it.

"The mark of the Depthborn," she whispered.

Thandeka, listening, asked: "What is that?"

"A secret older than kingdoms," Gogo said. "A gift… and a curse. The Depthborn
mark puts no one in one world only."

The baby stirred in her hut.

And for the first time… laughed.

Chapter twenty-eight: Echoes beneath the skin

The skies above KwaPhesheya were serene, yet the ground growled turbulence.

The war was finished — at least, so they told themselves. But in the stillness of the
aftermath, something horribler took its place. Something waiting in the wings.

The people began to dream about fire again.

And in each dream, the child stood by.

Thandeka’s doubts

Thandeka burst into Gogo Zinhle's hut without knocking.

The boy was asleep, curled up in a basket made of woven reeds, a soft humming
surrounding him.

t"I want the truth," Thandeka ordered. "No more riddles."

Zinhle did not jump.

She dipped her fingers into a bowl of white ash and smeared it onto the boy's
forehead.

"Some truths are too heavy for young hearts," she said.

“Then I’ll carry it with Sipho,” Thandeka insisted. “I’m not afraid.”

Zinhle finally looked up — her eyes wet but strong.

“It’s not fear I’m worried about. It’s hope.”

Edward’s haunting

Edward alone on the edge of the forest, rifle slung low, plagued by Doyle's voice
even in death.

He remembered their last words:

"You can change your uniform, Edward," Doyle had spat, "but not your blood."

Now Edward watched the villager's toil.

He wanted to help — help — but every time he tried to speak, he saw the same thing
in their eyes:

Doubt.

He filled his journal that night.

Inside was cartographical sketches of colonial paths, stolen letters, and one name
three times underscored: Van Reenen.

"He's coming," Edward said in a low murmur to himself.

Sipho’s storm

Sipho could sense something other than fear in the air that morning.

Not hope.
Something in between.

He stood at the front of the watchtower Edward had rebuilt and looked out over the
hills.

He could feel it — change — like a storm you could not see, but smell.

Thandeka approached him, arms crossed.

"You've been distant," she said gently.

"I'm trying to be the man this village needs," he answered.

"I didn't fall in love with that man," she replied. "I fell in love with you."

They stood in silence.

Then Thandeka gently placed his hand over her belly.

Sipho stood stock still.

She did not say a word.

She didn't need to.

In the hills

Nare returned that night, bloodied and breathless.

"They're coming," he said.

"Who?" Edward asked.

"The men with papers rather than spears. The men who purchase your land, not
torch it."

Gogo Zinhle lit a candle and murmured a prayer.

"Then we fight them with something they've never had."

"What's that?" Thandeka asked.

"The truth.".

Chapter twenty-nine: The man with the silver smile

The village was quiet when the messenger arrived — hot and dusty, holding a sealed
letter in his closed fist. He did not say anything as he handed it over to Sipho and
then turned away and left without even looking back.

They waited in the great hall while Sipho opened the seal and unrolled the
parchment. The ink was dense, thick, and certain.

To the people of the place called KwaPhesheya," Sipho read, slowly. "The Crown has
declared your land amenable to formal acquisition under Act 33. Your occupation
subsequent to that date must be recorded in proper form or you will be ejected by
force."

There was a stunned silence. The wind itself was brave enough to talk, whispering
through the groans in the wooden walls.

Edward stepped ahead. "They're not hiring soldiers this time. They are hiring law.
They'll bleed you with ink instead of spears."

One of the older men spat on the ground. "At least in war, we knew what we were
fighting."

As night began to fall, a shiny wagon appeared, two black horses pulling it, and a
man in white gloves and gold-rimmed glasses guiding it. He stepped down quietly,
brushing off his coat.

"Good evening," he said, voice like stones in a river. "I am Willem van Reenen. I
speak for the Crown."

The villagers said nothing. Sipho gazed at him with an unwavering eye.

"I've not come to threaten," Van Reenen continued, "but to offer KwaPhesheya a
choice. If you relinquish your land, we will pay compensation, educate your children,
and give them work. Your children won't grow up barefoot in the dust."

Sipho raised his hand. "And what if we say no?"

Van Reenen grinned. "Then I return — not with words, but with right to take what is
rightly ours."

At his back, Edward's fists were clenched.

There were no fires lit in the village that night. But upon the hillsides, Nare crept the
darkness, scattering symbols inscribed in chalk and ash across the roads that
climbed up to Van Reenen's encampment.
He addressed the darkness. "This world remembers the blood it devoured. Have it
remember again."

Chapter thirty: Earth that will not forget

A storm came down out of nowhere.

Not the kind that rains water. The kind that rains reminders.

Lightning lit the sky like an angry ancestor demanding notice. The well overflowed
— not water, but black, puffy ash.

Gogo Zinhle was in the rain, arms wide to the sky, bare feet planted in the mud.

The earth rejects them," she yelled. "It speaks in the ash. In the fire!"

Children hushed at night about the white-eyed woman who danced on the far hill.
Edward went out to see for himself.

There, on the edge of a cliff, he found something strange: his old British uniform —
bloody, rumpled as if sitting in wait for him. One bullet rested atop it.

Thandeka stood above her sleeping son that night and felt something stir deep in
her chest.

The boy had grown up — too quickly. He spoke in his sleep in a language that no one
could decipher. The spoke of names of old wars and of rivers where wars were
never spoken of.

"He remembers things no child should," she told Zinhle.

The old woman nodded. "Because he is not only your child. He is a vessel of what
was lost. He is history, reborn."

"And if the Depthborn return for him?" Thandeka asked.

Zinhle's voice turned to stone. "Then they must face a mother who knows how to
fight."

Van Reenen returned a few days later, with a final contract.

"This is it," he said. "Sign or be removed."

But something did happen that he had not expected.

Thandeka stepped forward, in ceremonial white, eyes blazing with unspoken
passion.

"Before we settle on war or peace," she said, "let us remind the world what it is
they're trying to destroy. Sipho and I will marry."

The village exploded in cries — not of fear, but joy.

They danced with the bruised sky above, firelight mapping the boundaries of
shadows. The drums spoke the tongue of the ancestors. The kiss created something
more than love — it created resistance.

And the boy — their son — watched it all with a small, knowing smile.

For he knew that this was just the start.

 Part three: Shadows beneath the flame

Chapter thirty-one: The silence between drums

The morning after the wedding was not an ordinary one.

The drums lay still, the fires reduced to curls of smoke that drifted in the wind.
KwaPhesheya awoke as if from a dream — not to peace, but to the abnormally still
silence that ever precedes reckoning.

Sipho stretched out beside Thandeka, her head on his shoulder, the acrid scent of
ash and marula still on their skin. For a moment, all was right in the world — as if
the war had been outrun by love.

But Sipho knew better.

He slipped out from under the blanket before the sun had risen above the hills,
pressing a kiss to Thandeka's forehead. She squirmed, grumbling his name, but he
was already gone — walking barefoot through the soggy grass, approaching the
elder's hut.

Edward waited patiently.

"They've sent riders from the east," he said before Sipho could say a word. "Three
wagons. Soldiers this time. The quiet part is over."

Sipho nodded, his voice heavy. "Then we prepare. We do not run."

In another area of the village, Nokuthula sat next to the boy, combing his hair with
slow, gentle motions. He hummed an old lullaby; one his father had sung while
working in the fields. A lullaby of rivers and stars and lost kings.

"Does he know what's coming?" Nokuthula asked quietly.

Thandeka entered, her dress still white from the ceremony.

"He knows more than he admits. He always has."

The boy looked up then, eyes too deep for them to have been, and said, "The fires
are not to be feared. They're only coming to uncover the bones under the ground."

Neither woman had a response.

High in the village, among rocks and shadow, Edward stood alone — arms stretched
out, muttering a curse he had forgotten the words of. Behind him, a figure appeared.

Willem van Reenen.

"I told you," Van Reenen spoke coldly.

"You did," Edward said, "but I made my decision when I entered this land."

Van Reenen chuckled. "You think you've become one of them? You're still nothing
but a traitor with foreign blood."

Edward turned. His eyes were calm, but his voice carried steel. “I’m not fighting for
them, Willem. I’m fighting with them. And that’s more than you’ll ever understand.”

Chapter thirty-two: The weight of names

The wind over KwaPhesheya had changed. It no longer rustled secrets — it howled
with a sense of urgency.

Thandeka was alone at the ancestors' river, where women prayed and remembered.
The water ran colder, as if the river itself understood what was to come. In her palm,
she clutched a red-beaded necklace — her mother's, now dead. Her fingers
trembled.

Nokuthula moved behind her, unseen.

"Hours already, you have been here," she whispered.

"I had to tell her something," Thandeka said. "That I would defend what she left us
behind — our strength, our name."

Nokuthula stood up and sat beside her. "And Sipho?

Thandeka's breath hitched. "He carries the world. I see it in his eyes — the fear he
will not speak. He thinks love will be enough to hold this village together, but he
doesn't know the weight of what we've been left behind."

They sat in silence, the river raging at their feet.

While Sipho faced the council for the first time as a husband and as a leader. Edward
stood at his side, discreet and vigilant, his rifle bound tight to his chest. The elders
looked tired — their eyes clouded with ancient fear and current perplexity.
"Van Reenen has moved his camp nearer," Edward said. "He's not just observing
now. He is preparing.".

Old Man Jali, the former adviser of Sipho's father, leaned forward, his back arched.
"And you'd have us stand up with swords against the son of the same man who won
over our grandsires?"

Sipho clamped his jaw, but Edward raised a hand.

"You don't have to trust me," Edward said. "Only to believe that the flames coming in
don't relate to bloodlines. It will burn down to embers all the same if we do not get
ready.".

The hut was silent, thunderously silent.

Then Sipho said: "Let them come. We will not bend. Not to guns, not to ghosts, not to
the past."

Thandeka returned to their hut with a bowl of warm water and herbs that evening.
She knelt beside Sipho, who was sitting on the ground, hands covered in soot.

"I've been thinking," she breathed.

He looked at her, tired but curious.

"If this war is ours to fight… then let's not fight it afraid. Let us leave behind not just
our love — but our legacy. Let our child be born into a name that stood for
something."

Sipho blinked. "Child?"

She placed his hand on her belly.

A moment. Then—Tears, laughter, fear, and love all rolled up in Sipho's chest like a
storm.

He kissed her, hard, his grip on her like the world might come to an end tomorrow—
because it would.

Tonight, though, they were together.

Chapter thirty-three: Beneath the storm light

Rain fell gently on the thatch of their hut roof — a gentle rhythm, like a lullaby only
the earth could sing.

The fire within had died down, so that golden shadows were left to dance upon
Sipho's back as he sat near the hearth, sharpening a spear he had not used in
months. Thandeka watched him from their sleeping mat, a blanket wrapped around
her like the weight of all she had not said.

“You’re fighting with your thoughts again,” she said softly.

Sipho looked over his shoulder, his eyes dim but tender. “They won’t leave me.”

She stood and walked to him, her bare feet silent against the clay floor. “Then let me
silence them.”

He looked up as she knelt in front of him and took the spear from his hands, placing
it gently aside.

"I am not afraid of war," she whispered, "but I am afraid of losing this — us. Before it
gets to be all it is meant to be."

Sipho's hand reached out, his fingers tracing her cheek, lingering as though
committing her skin to memory. "You saved me from the man that I was becoming."

"No," she said, "I loved the man who already knew what was right."

She leaned, her brow to his. Their breaths met in the quiet. He took her in his arms,
wrapping her tightly to him, her shape melting into his like water returning to its
source.

They kissed — cautiously at first, as if asking permission from time itself. Then
deeper, more ardently, but never quickly. It was not just desire. It was memory,
longing, and hunger braided into one.

Clothes dropped away like leaves dropping.

The rest of the world had stopped existing. There was only the hush of rain. The
warmth of skin. The beat of love that was without ceremony, but only truth.

While they lay together, entwined in arms and breath, Thandeka whispered into his
chest, "If tomorrow claims all, I want tonight to be the one thing I never remember."
Sipho said nothing. He only pulled her closer — as if if he held her tightly enough, he
could keep the storm at bay.

Chapter thirty-four: When silence has a voice

Morning broke in gold. The first light spilled over their hut, touching Thandeka's
skin like a blessing. She stirred gently, finding Sipho already awake, sitting in the
doorway, his legs tucked up to his chest, covered in the hand-stitched blanket she
had sewn together.

She sat down beside him without a word, resting her head on his shoulder.

He spoke finally, his voice low. "As a child, I believed that to be a man was to learn
how to kill. That power was the sound of a war cry."

"And now?" she asked.

"Now I know it's the way you held me last night," he replied. "And the way I
trembled."

Her eyes filled with tears.

He moved toward her. "You have given me something no warlord ever gave his son
— the freedom to be frightened and not be ashamed."

A bird was crying in the trees outside. Somewhere, the village was waking, but here
— here they were still huddled in a world of their own.

"I dreamed about my mother," Thandeka whispered.

"What did she say?"

"She didn't say a word. She just placed her hand on my belly and smiled, as if she
knew our baby would be special. That he… or she… would grow up without the
hatred we feel."

Sipho took her hand, kissed the back of it, and placed it over her heart.

"I'll protect that dream," he said. "Even if it kills me."

Later that night, Nokuthula arrived with news: riders had been seen on the north
ridge — too far away to be recognized, but close enough to fill one with fear. The
council was upset again. Even Edward strode back and forth like a caged animal.
But Sipho remained calm.

For within him now burned a new kind of fire — not the fire to burn, but to protect.

The fire that carried a name.

The kind that had a heartbeat.

Chapter thirty-five: Shadows among kin

By noon, the drums had ceased their beat.

Sipho stood before the council fire, his eyes fixed on those of the elders — men once
praising his wit, now huddled behind a screen of concern. Chief Zwide had not yet
returned from his morning hunt, and the village lay under an unfamiliar, windless
sky.

Behind Sipho, Thandeka stood in silent defiance. Her hands rested over the curve of
her belly, a silent reminder of the life they now carried — a future that would not be
dictated by old rules.

But not all hearts in the village beat as one.

Behind the sacred stones, in the shadows, stood Mandla, a man of Sipho's generation
— once his friend, now his silent adversary. Scarred, proud, and true to tradition,
Mandla had never forgiven Sipho for defying the marriage pact with Nokuthula.

He had never forgiven him for putting duty aside for love.

And now, when war rumors swirled on the hillsides, Mandla saw his opportunity —
not to protect the village, but to reclaim what he believed had been stolen from him:
honor, authority, and Nokuthula herself.

That night, while the village slumbered, Mandla disappeared into the forest — riding
north under a crescent moon.

He rode with no weapon. Nothing but a letter sealed and a pouch of silver.

When he got to the secret camp behind the ridge, there was firelight illuminating the
face of an already waiting man — Edward van Niekerk.

"You got here sooner than I expected," said Edward, who smiled thinly.
Mandla bowed but not warmly, his eyes frosty. "I came because we are following the
wrong leader."

"And what do you offer in exchange?"

"I will open the gates," Mandla proclaimed. "I will give you Sipho. Leave us alone."

Edward leaned back, intrigued.

"You betray your own family," he said.

"No," Mandla replied. "I'm holding it together."

Chapter thirty-six: The path of the jackal

The forest whispered surrounding Mandla like a serpent, its coils closing tighter
with every step he took towards treachery. His return to the village was silent,
unseen. He slipped back into the routine of every day, his hands full of work and his
mouth full of lies.

To the rest of the world, he was Mandla the good soldier — helping Nokuthula
educate younger soldiers, guiding elders, and chuckling over the fire with the
children.

But at night, he met secretly in the river caves with Edward's spies. They came
bearing maps. Orders. Timelines.

And one warning: Sipho out by the next moon cycle.

Mandla had thought it through. During the Festival of Rain, when the villagers
gathered to make merry and worship the ancestors, the gates would be unmanned.
The council drunk with the euphoria of festival, the warriors busy with fire-dances
and song. That would be when Edward's horsemen struck.

But Mandla did not want a bloodbath.

No — he insisted Sipho be taken alive, humiliated, led around in chains before the
people. Then only would justice be served and his name be lifted high above Sipho's
embers.

Even in betrayal, however, Mandla was not without conflict.

There were nights he lingered outside Nokuthula's hut, watching her unburden
herself to Thandeka, the two women coming closer again. Nokuthula was softer.
Smarter. She smiled more. And Mandla hated it — hated that even Nokuthula had
healed from Sipho's rejection, but he was still seething.

One night, he hid a sleeping potion in a small bottle in Thandeka's hut — only a test. A
whiff of how easily he could get close.

She never caught him. But Sipho woke up coughing, suspicious.

So, the first crack was widened.

Somewhere in the distance, in the hills, Edward was getting restive. "He is not weak,
this man you detest," he threatened. "You will face the same, Mandla, if you fail to
deliver to me."

But Mandla only smiled, pulling on the string of his dagger. "I don't plan to fail."

Chapter thirty-seven: The wind before the storm

The village was not the same. The happy laughter of children playing among the
huts now echoed with doubt. Rumors crept like darkness—whispers of a
confrontation coming, a reckoning tied to love, betrayal, and the unsettling arrival of
outsiders.

Nokuthula stood on the riverbank, her toes in the water. Her fingers trembled as she
held the lovely bead necklace Mandla had given her once—the one she had almost
buried with the rest of her past when her heart was caught between loyalty and
truth.

The tall grass rustled behind her. Footsteps approached. She turned.

It was Thandeka.

"I thought you would be here," Thandeka said, quietly. "You always come here when
you're trying to hold on."

Nokuthula smiled weakly. "And you always find me."

They sat for a moment, the water flowing beside them like an old man telling a story.
Then Thandeka shattered it.

"You still love him, don't you?"

Nokuthula's breath caught in her throat. "More than I ever dreamed. But it is no
longer love. It is pain. It is confusion. It is fear."

Thandeka grasped Nokuthula's hand in hers. "He's still fighting for you, you know.
Mandla…he is changed since the night he saved you from the rain—"

"I know," Nokuthula breathed. "He hugs me like I'm going to vanish.".

At that very moment, on the hill edges, Edward van Niekerk honed his blade. Faster
and quieter since arriving in the village, but the silence masked the storm brewing
within him. Every smile guarded. Every glance, a tactic.

He watched the men pass with firewood, smiling appropriately. But within his eyes,
something knotted.

He had heard from the Cape—he would be forced to choose between the girl he could
not shake and the power he had pursued for so long.

In the village, the chief summoned a council.

Mandla stood tall among them. "There is danger," he announced. "And it walks
among us."

Gasps filled the air. Nokuthula entered the meeting room just as Edward appeared.

"I believe I get what he means," Edward answered, voice suave, eyes glacial.

Two storms were brewing—one of hearts and one of history. And not everybody
would survive either.

Chapter thirty-eight: Between breath and thunder

The air was heavy with the scent of wet soil as Nokuthula and Mandla crouched
within her hut. Outside, the wind howled, causing the wooden pillars to creak, but
inside, it was hot—sacred.

There was a small fire burning in the fireplace. Mandla's face was filled with dancing
shadows as he looked at her—not as the girl who stood at crossroads, but as the
woman he had resolved to fight for.

"Things have changed," Nokuthula whispered, stroking a hand over his cheek.
"So have you," Mandla said, moving closer. "We both bear scars now. But they led us
here."

There was silence between them for a moment, heavy with memories—her betrayal,
his anger, their second chance.

Then she kissed him.

It was soft to begin with, a wordless question. Then it grew—desperate, grateful,

aching. Clothes dropped from flesh like shed old shame. Fingers relearned one
another. Bodies recalled.

They were tangled in silence afterwards, hearts still racing.

"I don't know what tomorrow will bring," she whispered, her head against his chest.

Mandla held her tighter in his arms. "Then hold on to tonight."

Thunder rolled across the horizon, a promise that the storm did not dissipate. But
within, within that hut, embracing each other with arms, they had found peace.
Fleeting. Short-lived. Real.

Outside, beside the flickering light of fire in the breaks of the hut walls, stood
Edward, with his jaw gripped tightly together.

Within the fold of his pocket was a message from one man from the Cape. Of land. Of
power. Of blood.

He creased the paper slowly and vanished into darkness.

The flame inside of him would not burn indefinitely.

Chapter thirty-nine: The weight of silence

The sun rose slowly that morning. Dark and grey clouds hung low, unwilling to
budge, covering the village in coldness.

Thandeka was at the riverbank, with her arms crossed across her chest. The rains
had raised the level of water, and its surface churned like her mind. In the distance,
the light tread on soggy ground betrayed Sipho's arrival before he spoke.

"You went away early," he said, standing a few steps from her.

"I couldn't sleep," she replied, looking at the water.

He waited for her to go on. She did not.

"Thandeka," he breathed softly, "you've been distant ever since the Chief's message
came. What is wrong?"

She faced him then—eyes pricking with questions she had swallowed for too long.

"I'm thinking everything is changing. That Mandla is gone. That Nokuthula is gone.
That you spend more time with councilmen than with me." Her voice trembled. "And
I'm thinking that maybe… we were never meant to survive childhood."

Sipho flinched as if she had hit him. "Don't say that."

"Why not?" Her voice broke. "What are we, Sipho? Are we still lovers? Or are we
just…pretending we are not falling apart?"

He stepped forward, grasped her hand.

"I've been trying to protect you," he said. "There are things happening—Edward, the
Chief, the land claim—it's more than I knew. If anything happens to me—"

"Don't you even think it," she flared, yanking her hand away. "Don't you even think
of using that as a reason to push me away."

The silence between them stretched wide and bitter.

And then, a voice on the wind. A horseman riding hard out of the hills. A sweating,
dusty messenger.

He did not stop until he reached the riverbank.

"There's trouble," he gasped. "Edward van Niekerk is moving men through the
valley. Armed. Secretly."

Sipho's face hardened.

Thandeka's fear flared.

She grabbed his arm.“You tell me everything now, Sipho. No more hiding. No more
protecting me. If war is coming, I am not waiting by the river while it burns.”

And in that moment, though their love was raw and bruised, it was still alive.
Chapter forty: The jackal in the fog

The air within Edward van Niekerk's stone house was stale and musty, as if it too
were waiting for its breath.

He stood before his great wooden map table, the candlelight playing jumping
shadows over the valleys and villages etched into the wood. His own eyes, chill and
analytical, traced the wriggling route from Nokuthula's village to the mountain
ridges where his men waited now—mercenaries, not soldiers, but for coin and quiet.

A boy slipped in; hat held awkwardly in his hand. Piet. One of his best riders.

"They're going just as we moved, sir," Piet said. "No one's seen anything. The patrols
are staying off the side routes."

Edward nodded. "And the girl?"

Piet swallowed. "Mandla has not returned. But there are whispers she lives. Living
with him."

Edward's lips creased into a thin smile. "Of course she does. A woman such as her
does not disappear… not for want of trying."

He turned and walked slowly to the window, looking out at the fields below where
his horses stood ready, saddled and waiting. He could hear the faint hammering
from the blacksmith—preparing weapons in secret, burying them in crates marked
as grain.

“They think I’m just a man chasing a woman,” he said quietly. “But this is not
about love. It is about power.”

He wheeled round to Piet, voice straining tight as a wire. "She humiliated me. And
now I shall make her village crawl. Let them plead. Let the Chief crack under strain.
Let her know what it is to defy a man who has nothing more to lose."

Piet shifted uncomfortably. "Assuming Mandla returns, sir? The villagers have
respect for him."

Edward's face set in a hard line. "Then he is killed."

There was a silence.

Then Edward smiled thinly.“War is just a game, Piet. And I have played it longer
than they have been alive.”
Outside, the fog began to roll down the hills like ghosts coming home.

Chapter forty-One: