Nada the Lily

by H. Rider Haggard

“How are you named, who are so fair to see?” he asked at length.

“I am named the Lily now: once I had another name. Nada, daughter of Mopo, I was once; but name and all else are dead, and I go to join them. Kill me and make an end. I will shut my eyes, that I may not see the great axe flash.”

Now Umslopogaas gazed upon her again, and Groan-Maker fell from his hand.

“Look on me, Nada, daughter of Mopo,” he said in a low voice; “look at me and say who am I.”

She looked once more and yet again. Now her face was thrust forward as one who gazes over the edge of the world; it grew fixed and strange. “By my heart,” she said, “by my heart, you are Umslopogaas, my brother who is dead, and whom dead as living I have loved ever and alone.”

Then the torch flared out, but Umslopogaas took hold of her in the darkness and pressed her to him and kissed her, the sister whom he found after many years, and she kissed him.

“You kiss me now,” she said, “yet not long ago that great axe shore my locks, missing me but by a finger’s-breadth—and still the sound of fighting rings in my ears! Ah! a boon of you, my brother—a boon: let there be no more death since we are met once more. The people of the Halakazi are conquered, and it is their just doom, for thus, in this same way, they killed those with whom I lived before. Yet they have treated me well, not forcing me into wedlock, and protecting me from Dingaan; so spare them, my brother, if you may.”

Then Umslopogaas lifted up his voice, commanding that the killing should cease, and sent messengers running swiftly with these words: “This is the command of Bulalio: that he who lifts hand against one more of the people of the Halakazi shall be killed himself”; and the soldiers obeyed him, though the order came somewhat late, and no more of the Halakazi were brought to doom. They were suffered to escape, except those of the women and children who were kept to be led away as captives. And they ran far that night. Nor did they come together again to be a people, for they feared Galazi the Wolf, who would be chief over them, but they were scattered wide in the world, to sojourn among strangers.

Now when the soldiers had eaten abundantly of the store of the Halakazi, and guards had been sent to ward the cattle and watch against surprise, Umslopogaas spoke long with Nada the Lily, taking her apart, and he told her all his story. She told him also the tale which you know, my father, of how she had lived with the little people that were subject to the Halakazi, she and her mother Macropha, and how the fame of her beauty had spread about the land. Then she told him how the Halakazi had claimed her, and of how, in the end, they had taken her by force of arms, killing the people of that kraal, and among them her own mother. Thereafter, she had dwelt among the Halakazi, who named her anew, calling her the Lily, and they had treated her kindly, giving her reverence because of her sweetness and beauty, and not forcing her into marriage.

“And why would you not wed, Nada, my sister?” asked Umslopogaas, “you who are far past the age of marriage?”