The Shadow King

by Maaza Mengiste

The cook slides to the ground and sits next to her. In the long silence, loneliness stretches between them and draws them close.

Kidane makes of himself a looming figure, a hazy nightmare forming bones.

None of the women have tried to speak to her since Kidane came for her. She has been left alone to get her belongings, pack bandages and powders, and find her own place in the march. She slips in line with the other servants, with the crates and pack animals and water gourds, with those objects other people need in order to survive. She is, she tells herself, where she belongs.

Since leaving the army, he has come to care less about the sequence of things. Has come to understand that it is impossible to connect what happened to what will. What he knows is this: there is no past, there is no “what happened,” there is only the moment that unfolds into the next, dragging everything with it, constantly renewing. Everything is happening at once.