Shumana

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TEXT: BEGIN

Twenty years to become a prince, it was a short time, not a long time…but so long. Hura could wait. Thirteen years had passed already and his mother was so kind. The maidens in the palace were too. He remembered the waterfalls underground, the high ceilings of the cave, the sweet perfume that filled the air. Zemutha and Cazar herding him along, ‘follow your mother now little Hu’. It stuck in his mind though, all of those women bathing, perfuming, crouched for hours saturating themselves with the fragrant incense. His eyes watered even at the memory of the thick smoke that filled the chambers between the two houses of women. Mashu is what he called Mother, it was not her real name. She never spoke it actually, he had asked her so many times and her response was always the same. ‘The king has forgotten my name so it shall not be spoken until he speaks it’. Then one day Hegai came to them.

“Shumana Rekir,” he spoke it as clearly as if he had just asked for a drink of water or for a bath to be drawn, then he turned to leave.

“Hegai Minulai,” she whispered to his back, and it turned his head around.

“Shumana,” he spoke, this time to her eyes.

“Hegai,” she spoke to his. Hura had known that instant that she was leaving. The tears came and he clung to her. “Don’t go mother.”

She kissed him and held his face between her long slender fingers. 

“I love you my son, I am Shumana, the king has spoken my name. Zemutha and Cazar will guard you. Become my Prince Hura, ok?” Her eyes were deep and dark as port wine, they swam with tears as she kissed his forehead firmly and turned to follow Hegai.

TEXT: END

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TEXT: BEGIN

Hura watched her walk the few steps to the stair that Hegai had used to descend into their midst. It had been cut so seamlessly into the stone that when the rock closed behind them it seemed inconceivable that it had ever been there before. Only a cold flat face of rock remained where his mother had been.

“Where do they go when they are called?”

Zemutha answered from behind him. “Hegai speaks for the King and searches for his queen.”

“Is she queen then?” Hura asked.

“Hegai speaks and searches,” answered Zemutha.

“She knew his name and he hers Zemu.”

“What does that mean Hu?”

“That she has found favor.” Hura answered. “So she is queen?”

“Only one is queen,”confirmed Zemutha.

“Who?”

“Only Hegai will know.”

“How do I become Prince Hura?”

“The path is twenty years, the father the king, a prince is made, who has no fears.”

“I have no fears,” said Hura as he turned around.

“We shall see,” said Cazar who had stood silently beside Zemutha until now.

“We start in the morning…come now young Hura we shall make you a Prince.”

Zemutha extended his hand with his wooden baton in it.

Hura bowed his forehead and placed it on the end of the wooden club.

“I accept your tutelage. Bring me my fears.”

“Your fears await you, may they fear the prince when he approaches.”

They rose and walked out of the second house of the women for the last time.

TEXT: END

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INFODUMP: BEGIN

Zemutha and Cazar must begin the training of Hura to be a prince since he was conceived of the King. His mother Shumana has just been called to go to the king by Hegai who knows her. Hura hopes that she will be queen but does not know. He just knows that he will enter training. Something happens between her and the king to where she is somehow associated with the red shoes, who are prostitutes in the kingdom of Scarlet. Hura is somehow sent to the Battle School for training from the Harem, thinking that he is going on to his next phase of training to be prince, but he is being sent to his death sentence instead. His mother Shumana somehow arranges through 123 the cripple to pay him a ransom to rescue Hura from the Battle School and bring him back to the harem to become a eunuch so that she will know that at least he will live. Her association with the red shoes will not be something that Azurean will have wanted and perhaps it is why she is not queen and no longer in charge of the harem. She has been in charge of the harem for a long time and she ran it in an orderly way and her son will have learned her ways and be very skilled at what he does, which will give him an up. The slaves who carry out his castration will know who he is and Shumana will meet him at first but then she will leave and disappear having figured out a way to get out of the harem and escape to Scarlet. I think there will be some connection with Aya who is involved in a plot and knows some people who dislike the king greatly. Aya wants to control and she will not conform to what the king wants either. Shumana is a great leader in the harem and she knows what makes women beautiful and desirable and she knows the details of how to treat them and how to prepare them. The harem has been infiltrated by those who do not wish to please Azurean for the first time. In the end Shumana will leave and she will make it to Scarlet. This will be the beginning of her path to power. She will become the Queen of Scarlet who rises up to replace and oppose the Queen of Jaune Ma’jakin and her daughter Dasta-Evah. Shumana will be one who takes full advantage of the religious system of Scarlet that has been opposed by Queen Ma’jakin that lies in ruin. Yet the abandonment of the babies to the ice cats still continues as a cultural element and custom of the villagers and so there is a steady supply of babies left for the ice cats. The men of the forest and their wives of the family of Buri and Lalai had been protecting and sheltering the abandoned babies and had raised a few of them themselves. Many had gone to the valley of traders to Nias’ vineyard or even to Mardoqueo’s vineyard to be raised and loved and cared for. Yet there were so many now as villages grew and as the customs became stronger and with the wickedness in the land brought by the queen of Jaune, harvests became less profitable and the drought on the land made many abandon their children to try to appease the scarlet idols and some just to not have another mouth to feed. Shumana began to gather them to settle them in the old city in Jericho, to teach them skills again. To teach them the skills of the seamstress, the perfumer, the dancer and the musician. She taught them to become great women worthy of royalty. She taught them to be the kind of woman that could bring royalty to its knees. She was the founder of the “She’s”.