The city moved differently after the café fire. News reports called it “another accident,” but people whispered of omens. Even the pigeons seemed to circle slower, their wings uneasy with the heat of some invisible flame.
Noluntu walked through the streets as though wading through the residue of her own past. Each corner hummed with faint memory—the laughter of comrades, the sermons of street preachers, the soft murmur of her mother’s voice calling her Nkanyezi, my little star. But the name meant something different now. She could feel her light returning, though dim and uncertain.
Asher had vanished after the fire. No calls, no messages, only the faint smell of sandalwood that lingered in her apartment for days after. She wanted to dismiss him as fantasy, but the note he’d written still glowed faintly in the dark: You’re remembering.
In her sleep, fragments of her uncle’s funeral replayed in reverse—the men with gold rings, their eyes sharp as blades, chanting in a language older than isiZulu. One word echoed in her mind: Zedekiah. She found it the next morning in her book’s margins, written in ink that shimmered like oil.
Zedekiah—the priest-king, last of the holy line before captivity. Was it a name? A title? Or a warning?
That afternoon, she visited her parents’ old comrade, MaLebo, a retired revolutionary who lived in an RDP house on the outskirts of Soweto. The walls were lined with portraits of the struggle: fists raised, faces defiant. But the spirit had faded from them, like colour washed from old cloth.
“Your mother was a prophetess,” MaLebo told her between sips of rooibos. “She said your blood was older than the ANC, older than the Party, older than even the tribes. She said your line was the line of Levi—the priesthood of Israel. But we didn’t listen. We thought she was speaking in riddles.”
Noluntu frowned. “Levi? But how could that be—”
MaLebo raised a hand. “Child, there are stories buried under every revolution. Yours is not to explain. Yours is to remember.”
As Noluntu left, the sky split with thunder. A storm rolled over the city like a rebuke, washing the pavements clean of their false holiness.
Lele Muthali 