The Women Who Saw Tomorrow

CW: Violence, references to self-harm and sexual assault

I always thought death would smell like the freshly turned earth of my father's yam farm. It turns out dying just reeks of stale piss and fermented palm wine.

A guard shoves me into the cell. My knees tear against jagged stone, and a heavy boot slams into my ribs. I taste copper.

"You swing from the executioner's rope tomorrow," he spits, wiping his mouth. He turns to the dark corner of the cell. "And you. You burn. Pity we have to waste good firewood."

The heavy iron door slams shut with a loud clank.

"Cowards!" I scream, throwing myself at the bars. I kick and scream until my knuckles bleed and my throat feels like swallowed glass. Slowly, the adrenaline fades into cold dread. Tomorrow, I will die. Rough hemp will snap my spine.

I drop to the dirt floor. I claw frantically at the mud, searching for a sharp stone, a sliver of bone. Anything to open a vein. I will not let them parade me to the gallows.

"And then what?" a hollow voice asks from the shadows.

I freeze. "I won't give them the pleasure."

A woman leans into the weak torchlight bleeding from the corridor. Clumps of dried blood mat her hair; her left cheek is a swollen mass of purple flesh. "Do you think they would see your body and feel regret? Or sadness? They would feel nothing. Or maybe joy. Because dead girls can't resist."

The brutal truth of her words snaps my restraint. I lunge, slapping her unbruised cheek.

She doesn't fight back. Clear tears carve tracks through the grime on her face. The bottomless sadness in her gaze swallows my anger whole. My tough exterior crumbles. I slide down the wall beside her, letting my own tears fall into the dirt.

"What's your name?" her voice is raw.

"Jabari. Yours?"

"I don't have one anymore. But people around here call me Aje."

My eyes go wide. Aje. Witch.

"Why are you here, Jabari?" she asks.

A bitter taste coats my tongue. "Because I drank too much palm wine at the harvest festival and said a woman can be King. The head of our village demanded I take it back. Looking at his fat face, I couldn't. I repeated it."

Aje frowns. "A woman cannot be King. The men won't allow it."

"Exactly."

She leans her head against the wet stone. "A woman can be King." She tests the words on her tongue, then a genuine smile breaks through the dirt on her face. "It's a very good image."

We sit in a comfortable quiet, shielded by the shared fantasy. "Why are you here, Aje? Are you really a witch?"

She holds my gaze. "I have ties to the spirits of this earth, yes. But that isn't why I'm here. My mother was a healer, and I learned her secrets. I mixed herbs and saved the chief's son from a fever that would have killed him. But when the rains stopped and the crops dried up, they needed someone to blame. They called me a demon for understanding the secrets of the dirt."

"A man mixes a root and they call him a wise elder," I say, rubbing my arms against the cold. "I speak a dream and I am locked in a cage. They repay us with iron chains."

"And ropes. And fire." Aje smiles, her eyes full of sorrow. "If you were King, Jabari, what is the first thing you would do?"

"I'd tell every little girl she never has to marry a man she does not know. A kingdom of free women." I press my back against the damp rock. "You talk to the spirits. Can they show us tomorrow? A hundred harvests from now? I want to see if a woman ever gets to sit on the big stool."

Aje traces a slow circle in the mud. "My mother taught me a secret song to pull the curtain of time. But the water to that world is heavy, and it demands a huge price."

"We are going to die tomorrow anyway. Ask the river. Tell them we are ready to pay."

Aje crosses her legs. Our knees touch. She begins to sing in a grinding, heavy tongue. The air inside the cell turns to ice. The stench of piss vanishes, replaced by the sharp scent of crushed leaves.

Aje throws her head back. Her brown eyes roll completely backward into her skull, leaving only wet white globes. A voice spills out of her mouth—fifty women shouting from a deep well.

"You seek the far bank of the river. Hear the law: You may look. You may listen. You cannot touch the water. You cannot speak to the souls of tomorrow. If you break the water, the river drowns you."

Aje's eyes bleed back to a muddy brown. Thick, dark blood runs from her nostrils. "Focus your mind, Jabari. We get three looks."

"I want to see a woman who rules as King."

"I want to see a woman who heals," Aje says. "A woman with no chains."

She bites down hard on her thumb. With the fresh blood, she draws three thick lines across her left palm. The damp cell walls melt into a rushing river of blinding light.

We lift off the ground, tearing through the sky until my feet slam onto a smooth, hard floor.

We stand in a massive room brighter than the midday sun. Hundreds of men and women pack the space. A man in strange clothing walks right through me. We are ghosts watching a dream.

At the front stands an older woman wrapped in a rich green garment. She does not cower. She looks completely untouchable.

"Today, in this glorious month of March, two thousand and twenty-five," a booming voice echoes from a silver stick. "We swear in Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah as Namibia's first female president! After thirty-five years of male leadership, the streak is broken!"

The room erupts. Powerful men roar with approval, bowing their heads in respect to a woman.

My legs give out. I drop to my bare knees on the freezing floor, tears spilling down my cheeks. I remember the chief telling me a woman's only kingdom was the cooking fire. He was wrong.

"A woman can be King," I whisper.

Aje nods slowly. On her left palm, the first bloody line burns to white smoke and vanishes. "We have to go."

She whispers a strange word, and the bright room shatters.

We land in a massive room shaped like a clay drinking bowl. Behind the center stage, a giant wall of light displays pictures of tiny monsters and green leaves.

"Please welcome the laureate for science, Professor Rose Gana Fomban Leke," a voice announces.

A woman in a garment as white as bleached bone steps forward. She carries the unbending posture of a village elder.

"Our grandmothers started this work," the Professor says. "They boiled bitter leaves to chase the shaking fevers away. Men burned them for knowing the secrets of the earth. But women refused to hide. We stripped away the title of witch. We became scientists. We proved that healing is not dark magic—it is hard, pure knowledge."

A knowing smile touches her lips. "Of course, if the village elders of the old days saw what we do now, they would drag us to the square and set us on fire."

The room erupts into joyful laughter. They think the fire is a joke.

Aje drops like a chopped tree. A wet, ragged sound rips from her throat as she presses her hands over her bruised face. She saved the chief's son from the same shaking fever, and her reward was a shattered cheekbone. It breaks something deep within her and heals it all at once. I hold her tight, letting her mourn the beautiful, respected life she should have lived.

On her palm, the second bloody line boils into smoke.

The wooden floor vanishes. A brutal wind slams into my chest.

We stand on a flat stone roof touching the top of the sky. Far below, thousands of bright lights scatter in the dark. A young girl stands on the absolute edge of the drop. In one hand, she holds a glowing glass slab; in the other, a stack of paper.

"Where are you?" a woman's voice cries from the glass.

"I'm done trying, mummy," the girl sobs, inching her toes over the empty drop. "Nothing works out. I failed at dancing. I failed at writing. I ruined it all."

My blood runs hot. This girl has the freedom to dance. To write. No man beats her for wanting more than a cooking fire. And she wants to throw her body off this roof because she made mistakes?

"She has no idea what she holds," I whisper.

"We need to stop her," Aje says, tears streaming down her swollen face.

"We can't. The river gave a strict warning."

The girl leans her weight over the abyss.

"Stop!" Aje screams.

The girl gasps and stumbles backward onto the solid roof, dropping her papers. "Who... are you?"

A crushing weight drops onto my shoulders. We broke the rule. The river demands its price. But the door is still open. I step forward into the dim light.

"Your God sent us," I say, forcing the absolute authority of an elder into my voice. "To remind you about hope. Death solves nothing."

I point my dirt-stained finger at her. "You have the freedom to try. To write. To dance. Don't throw your life into the dark just yet."

The girl drops to her knees, clutching a silver cross at her neck. "I promise. I won't do it again."

Aje opens her hand. The final bloody line turns to white ash and blows away. The world shatters.

I hit the wet mud of our dungeon floor. The stench of rotted yams floods my nose. I sit up fast, pulling damp air into my lungs. "We're back. Aje, that was incredible—"

Silence.

I turn around. Aje slumps against the rough stone wall. Her dark skin is pulled tight over her bones, brittle as dried leaves. Her thick black hair is entirely white.

The rule of the river. The price for speaking.

"No." I crawl across the dirt, pulling her into my arms. She weighs no more than dry firewood. "You hold the secrets of the roots. Fix this."

Aje pulls a ghastly smile. She coughs, spitting black blood. "One of us has to live to remember the dream."

"Please don't die."

"Without the past, the future won’t exist," she whispers, her chest barely rising. "To build a world where women rule as Kings, we must lay the first stones."

Her chest sinks one final time. A soft sigh leaves her lips, and she grows completely still.

A scream rips out of my throat. I clutch her withered body in the freezing dark, rocking the greatest healer of our age until the first gray light of morning bleeds between the iron bars.

Heavy boots scrape the corridor. Iron keys clank. "Time for the rope, girl."

My hands stop shaking. I lay Aje's white head gently on the dirt. A steady heat rises in my blood.

The iron door swings inward. The two guards step inside.

I launch my body at the first guard, driving my shoulder hard into his knees. He crashes backward. I snatch the heavy iron dagger strapped to his belt.

The second guard reaches for his club. I swing the heavy iron hilt of the dagger directly into his temple. Bone cracks. He collapses.

The first guard scrambles up, lunging for my neck. I slash the sharp blade across his forearm, drive my knee into his stomach, and bring the butt of the knife down on the back of his neck. He hits the dirt and does not move.

I stand over the bleeding men, my chest heaving. I do not understand the deep magic of time like Aje. But I know one absolute truth: I cannot build tomorrow by dying on a rope today.

I sprint out of the cell. I push the heavy wooden doors of the keep open and run straight into the trees. Roots and stones tear my bare feet, but I ignore the blood. I run fueled by the ghost of a witch who showed me the sun.

When the trees finally break, I stand at the peak of the great mountain. Bright, golden morning light washes over my bruised skin.

I step to the edge of the rock and scream at the top of my lungs.

"A woman can be King!"