The Village Stars Behind My Zodiac Gods
Earlier this month I was in Botswana's North-East District for my grandmother's unveiling. I am Kalanga, a tribe in Botswana, and all day her village was full of Ikalanga, dancing, and traditional food shared with everyone who came.
That night, with wood-fire smoke filling my lungs and stinging my eyes, I slipped away from the crowd just to be present. I looked up and smiled. The Milky Way was so bright it looked like I could scoop it out of the sky.
These days, the village is the only place I really see the stars. I travel a lot, and I have lived in cities where light pollution hides every single one. Being that disconnected from the earth feels foreign to me. Maybe it's the rural exposure I had growing up in Botswana. Maybe it's the elephants on the side of the road to Nata, the quiet of a village night, or the smell of wood-fire smoke that always means village to me.
My dad says the stars are souls. I thought about that, standing under them on the day we unveiled my grandmother's tombstone.
He isn't alone in that belief. The Karanga people of Zimbabwe say the stars are the eyes of the dead, still watching. Karanga and Kalanga even sound alike, and that's no accident: some historians say we come from the same roots. Where they say "r", we often say "l".
Where my Zodiac gods come in
Maybe that's where the Zodiac Siblings began. I kept thinking about horoscopes: how the stars are supposed to shape your personality and decide who you're compatible with. What if we personified them? I thought that would be fun.
To be clear, because folklore deserves respect: my Zodiac Siblings are my own invention, not a retelling of any African myth. They are twelve celestial siblings named for the Western zodiac, and they are immortal. Not "earthlings", as they would say, or "human", if their cousin Tessa has any say in it. Each year, one of them is sent to Earth for one mortal year, without their powers, to find true love, or go home alone.
Why Nairobi?
I imagine their home, the God Plains, as quiet, a little like that village sky. So I sent them somewhere that is anything but: Nairobi. I worked there. It's vibrant, and it felt like a city that could handle that kind of chaos and make it a part of itself, not apart from it. The world of the books goes beyond Nairobi, but that's home for the first characters.
So when the youngest, Pisces, Goddess of Love, finally gets her turn, she lands in a back alley in Nairobi, loses her powers, gets demon goo in her mouth, and hears a masked stranger say, "Miss, step away from the demon."
That stranger is Isaiah Chase, a billionaire weapons designer who trains to kill gods. Of course he is.
Read the story
If you love gods-and-mortals love stories with a lot of heart and plenty of chaos, start with To Love a God Killer, Book 1 of the Zodiac Siblings. It is a closed-door fantasy romance with a happy ending, set in modern Nairobi.
Buying from lnbokete.com means more of what you pay reaches me, and I will always be grateful for that.
Next time you're somewhere dark enough to see the stars, look up. And tell me in the comments: did someone in your family tell you stories about them? I'd love to know what they said.
L.N. Bokete
Cover image and scene art created with AI tools.
Sources
Royal Museums Greenwich, South African star myths (the Karanga belief)
The Herald (Zimbabwe), Karanga, Kalanga originally from the same area?, 27 Nov 2013
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