I found Nne Ogwu in her herb garden, surrounded by beds of flowering medicinal plants. The evening air was heavy with their mingled scents – bitter and sweet, healing and deadly, all growing side by side under her careful watch. Like her network of spies, I thought – each one cultivated for its purpose.

She looked up from grinding herbs as I approached, her hands never stopping their rhythmic movement against the stone. "Speak your heart, child. It's been weighing on you like river stones."

I sank onto a wooden stool nearby, watching a young girl – one of her "birds" – dart past with a raffia basket of fresh-picked leaves. "It's Mairo. She's... empty. Like a gourd scraped too clean."

"Mmm." The grinding continued. "And this surprises you?"

"No, but..." I picked up a fallen leaf, turning it over in my fingers. "She held Rimi as she died. She watched our home burn. I understand her pain, but this silence... it's like she's not even there anymore."

Nne Ogwu set aside her grinding stone. "When a pot breaks, do you expect it to hold water the next day?"

"No, but Mairo isn't—"

"Isn't she?" The old woman's eyes fixed on mine. "The girl you knew was built from many things – her strength, her stubbornness, her love for you and Rimi, her pride in your shared work. Now those pieces lie shattered. Would you rush to gather them before she's ready?"

A breeze stirred the herbs around us, carrying the sound of women's voices from the compound – her network of spies, going about their daily tasks as if they were nothing more than servants and traders. Each one carrying secrets like hidden daggers beneath ordinary lives.

"I try to talk to her," I said. "She just stares, or sleeps. Even when I dress her wound—"

"Pain of the flesh is nothing compared to pain of the spirit." Nne Ogwu resumed her grinding. "Remember when I first taught you to heal battle wounds? What was the first lesson?"

"'Sometimes the body must bleed before it can heal.'"

"And the spirit?" She raised an eyebrow. "Must it not also bleed?"

I watched a butterfly land on a flowering herb, its wings slowly opening and closing. "How long?"

"As long as it takes." She scraped the ground herbs into a small pot. "Some wounds heal in a season. Others..." She gestured at her collection of "birds" moving through the compound. "Look at them. Each came to me broken in some way. Each bled their own tears. Each found their way back to themselves in their own time."

"And if she doesn't find her way back?"

"Then you will love what remains." She handed me the pot of herbs. "Put this in her evening tea. It will help her sleep without dreams, for now. The dreams will come when she's stronger."

Something she'd said earlier now crashed into my mind. "Wait... love? Her love for me?"

Nne Ogwu chuckled softly. "You're perceptive to so much, yet blind to the simplest truths."

I fell silent, her words sinking in. How hadn't I seen it? The signs were there, in the glances that lingered a little too long, in the way she seemed to shield me even when she herself was vulnerable. I'd been so caught up in everything else—survival, revenge, duty—that I hadn't even considered her heart in all of this. Maybe I hadn't wanted to.

The realization stirred something unsettling within me. Had I been so blind, so focused on my own burdens, that I missed the one person who cared for me as more than a companion?

I stood, clutching the pot. "Nne Ogwu... when we go after the Onowu—"

"We?" She clicked her tongue. "You still think in straight lines, like a spear to its target. Look around you." She gestured at her garden, where deadly nightshade grew peacefully beside healing herbs. "Power flows in circles, child. The Onowu's poison is already returning to him, drop by drop, carried by birds he never sees."

"But Mairo—"

"Will heal, or she won't. Your path lies elsewhere." She turned back to her herbs. "Now go. Your companion needs her herb tea, and I need to teach young Nlecha how to recognize poison mushrooms before sunset."

I left her there, surrounded by her carefully tended plants and carefully placed spies, wondering how many of the women who'd passed through this compound had carried similar wounds. And how many had found not just healing here, but purpose.

Behind me, Nne Ogwu began humming – an old healing song, its melody carrying across the evening air like a promise, or perhaps a warning.

The evening sun cast long shadows across Nne Ogwu's compound as I approached our temporary home. Mairo sat outside on a low wooden stool, her gaze fixed on something far beyond the bustling compound, beyond the whispering palm trees, perhaps beyond this world entirely. Her hands lay lifeless in her lap, like fallen leaves.

I knelt beside the cooking fire, mixing the herbs Nne Ogwu had given me into steaming water. The honey dripped slowly from my fingers, golden in the fading light. Like so many times before, I remembered how Rimi used to tease us about our bitter medicines, always demanding honey to make them palatable.

"Here," I said softly, kneeling before Mairo. Her eyes didn't focus on me, but her lips parted slightly when I brought the cup to them. She drank mechanically, like a child too tired to resist.

"Rimi," she whispered, the first word she'd spoken in days. My hands trembled, nearly spilling the tea.

The memory crashed over me like wind – Mairo's sudden awakening as I prepared Rimi's body for burial. How she'd burst from our hiding place, still weak from the arrow wound, screaming Rimi's name. Her fingers clawing at the raffia mat I'd carefully wrapped around our friend's body, her cries echoing across the smoking ruins of our compound.

"She can't stay here!" I'd shouted, trying to pull her away. "Mairo, please! They'll come back!"

But she'd fought me like a wounded animal, her nails leaving bloody crescents in my arms. "We can't leave her! We can't leave her alone!" Her voice had been raw, primal – the sound of a heart shattering.

I'd had no choice. The herbs I used to sedate her had been measured in desperate haste, applied with shaking hands and whispered apologies. As she'd slumped in my arms, I'd seen the tears still leaking from her closed eyes.

Alone then, I'd dug the grave as fast as I could, every muscle screaming, every shovelful of earth matched by a silent curse against the Onowu. Rimi deserved better than this hasty burial, this lonely spot marked only by my tears and Mairo's grief.

Now, watching Mairo stare into the distance, I saw that same grief etched into every line of her face. The tea cup was empty, but she continued the mechanical drinking motion until I gently lowered her hand.

"You didn't even let me say goodbye properly," she whispered, her voice rust-rough from disuse.

"I know." I set the cup aside, taking her cold hands in mine. "I know. But I couldn't lose you too."

Her fingers tightened slightly – the first voluntary movement I'd seen from her in days. "The Onowu..."

"Will pay." The words came out hard as steel. "I swear it by every god and ancestor, Mairo. He will pay for what he's done."

She turned to look at me then, really look at me, for the first time since that blood-soaked dawn. In her eyes, I saw a spark of the old Mairo – dim but present, like the last ember of a dying fire.

"Good," she said, and closed her eyes as the sleeping herbs began to take hold.

I gathered her into my arms, carrying her inside our borrowed hut. As I laid her on the sleeping mat, I noticed her hand was clasped around the small medicine bag she always wore – her thumb grazing over each cowrie shell as if trying to summon a protection that had long since abandoned us. I watched as her fingers stilled, hovering over the final shell—the one Rimi had sewn on herself.

Revenge, I thought, watching her finally drift into dreamless sleep. Yes, the Onowu would pay. But first, I had to help heal what remained of my chosen family. Because that's what Rimi would have wanted – healing before vengeance, life before death.

Even if that healing felt impossible right now, watching Mairo's tears soak silently into her raffia mat.

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