Chapter Twenty
Suspended Action
Nmabinia – a small private island of the western African coast.
The stone building was first built by slave labor in the sixteenth century as a secret haven for pirates and various misfits who plundered passing ships or ranged ashore, sweeping villages and compounds of all black and white inhabitants. The island was populated by three different kinds of humans: Women who had been ship-wrecked or abandoned there by slavers or passing ships, men and women slaves from recent mainland raids, and trans engendered men who were now, or were soon to be women.
During the shore raids, the female warriors were discriminating about who they spared and who met the sword and the conquerors often hotly debated who would be kept and who would die. Any prisoners that wer
